This article stinks of an agenda. The author goes out of their way not to mention the term Fediverse (pluriverse? wtf is that?), and they clearly haven’t done their due diligence on Activity Pub. Either they skimped on the research or this article was heavily edited afterwards to remove any concept of the Fediverse being a viable alternative to centralized platforms. Doesn’t surprise me coming from Business Insider.

That being said, the overall dynamic the article speaks to is valid, as is the discussion it engenders, so have an upvote despite my gripes with the writing.

@PugJesus weren’'t you looking for a spot to perform baptisms?

It’s always wise to satisfy the requests of time squirrels. Keeps them away from one’s nuts.

Had a feeling this is how the political dynamics would play out.

Trump made a lot of enemies in the GA GOP when he first dragged Raffensberger through the mud and then cost GA a senate seat by telling his supporters the special election was rigged. I’ve said it before - those good ole boys down south never forget a slight. Hell, they’re still pissed off at Sherman down there, and that was 170 years ago.

Kemp knows that stepping in now to disqualify Willis would give the Dems a lot of ammunition for turning GA blue in 2024 - I can’t see him sticking his neck out for Trump here.

Good ole mass media, telling you something big is going down, and giving you absolutely no clue as to how to get involved.

The FCC has made the comment process extremely difficult to navigate, but it looks like the hearing is on docket 23-293 (commenters, please correct me if I’m wrong). You should be able use the form here to place a comment on the proceeding. Use 23-293 in the proceedings field to bring it up for selection.

Here’s a more detailed view of the Media and Democracy Project’s petition, which includes a supporting filing from Jamie Kellner, former president of Fox Broadcasting.

No worries & thanks for the suggestion.

Pretty much, although these days a lot of folks find it more convenient to have the rules in .pdf for easy access. There’s hundreds available. Here’s a listing I had posted last night on the @13thFloor magazine I run over here on kbin - happy to crosspost if you feel it fits.

Oh boy, have I got some treats in store for you…

Question - is it just video games, or are you looking for tabletop RPGs too?

Looks like the non-profit founded by Higgins and Mehta is active in promoting this law on a worldwide scale, with ongoing legislative efforts in Spain, Finland, and Brazil. Here’s their action page to get involved and offer support.

It actually might - check out the second half of the article:

There are minimally six aspects revealed in the latest indictment that we believe justify Georgia – under Section 3 of the post-Civil War Fourteenth Amendment – keeping Trump off the ballot:

1. The racketeering scheme was a multifaceted attempt to subvert Georgia’s own part of the 2020 electoral process;

2. The officials on the receiving end of the unsuccessful racketeering scheme were elected and appointed Georgia officials. …

3. … whose actions to reject election subversion vindicated their own oaths to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States as well as Georgia’s;

4. Most of these officials were and are Republicans – including Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, Governor Brian Kemp and former Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan;

5. These officials will, in 2024 as in 2020, collectively determine who is qualified to be on Georgia’s presidential ballot; and

6. These officials’ testimony, and related evidence, is at the heart of the proof of the Georgia racketeering case against Trump.

In other words, the evidence to convict Trump in the Georgia racketeering case is the same evidence, coming from the same Georgia officials, who will be involved in determining whether, under the 14th Amendment, Trump is qualified to be on the 2024 presidential ballot – or not.

Little if any additional evidence or proceedings are needed. The Georgia officials already hold that evidence, because much of it comes from them. They don’t need a trial to establish what they already know.

How could Trump avoid this happening? A quick trial date in Atlanta with an acquittal on all counts might do it, but this runs counter to his strategy to delay all the pending criminal cases until after the 2024 election.

With no preelection trial, there will likely be no Trump on the 2024 Georgia ballot, and no chance for him to win Georgia’s 2024 electoral college votes.

Once Georgia bars him, other states may follow. That would leave Trump with no way to credibly appear on the ballot in all 50 states, giving him no chance to win the electoral votes required to claim the White House.

This indicates that the GOP of GA are done with Trump after he dragged Raffensberger through the mud and cost them a Senate seat. They might just be petty enough to give him the middle finger here. Those “good ole boys” down south never forget a slight.

I buy games based on the following tier scale:

Gameplay > Performance > Price > Expected time playing > Graphics

I agree with your point in the post, especially after playing Darktide, which chucked performance out the window for fog and lighting effects. It doesn’t matter how pretty your game is if it’s rendering at 3fps.

Lawmakers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and legal experts have since called for Roberts to face a subpoena that would force him to answer for Supreme Court corruption.

Stop talking about it and do it. Each day the issue goes unaddressed, the public’s confidence in the court decays. We’re at the point where in a normal political arena, there would already be an impeachment investigation in play. Roberts is betting on either Trump winning or having a divided legislature in 2024 so that everything can be swept under the rug.

This reduces the minuscule interest I had in replaying Paladins to a negative number. Smite’s been nothing but frustrating garbage, but I thought that with a bit of polish and a lot more character development, Paladins had promise when it came out. Starting a labor dispute to begin a practice that will degrade the overall quality of the game means it’s not worth my hard disk space to install their products - it’s clear things are only going to get worse for Hi-Rez titles from here.

Excellent article that really looks at the history of antitrust law and draws a pretty spot-on analysis of the current case, and how the presiding judge, Amit Mehta, compares to Harold Greene, who broke up AT&T:

There is also a loss of faith in American institutions writ broadly, which differs from the 1980s. At the same time as he’s been dealing with Google, Mehta is presiding over trials of January 6th perpetrators, a showcase of the deep fissures that simply did not exist decades earlier. One result is that the politics of corporate power is very different, and that antitrust is on a generational and bipartisan upswing. (Indeed, Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr brought the case, Biden’s antitrust chief, Jonathan Kanter, is continuing it.)

The net effect is that Mehta is an important actor here, but not as important as Greene. The case is likely to be appealed, probably all the way to the Supreme Court. And if the Supreme Court erodes antitrust caselaw against Google, then Congress will be confronted with the reality that it is hard to use the existing antitrust laws to address big tech. But ultimately if no cases against dominant firms succeed, then eventually Congress will change the law. Moreover, this case isn’t a one-off; the environment is less like AT&T in 1982, or even Microsoft in 1998, and more like that of the turn of the 19th century, when Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson brought dozens of cases against dominant firms. This is one chapter in the fight over corporate power, but not the only one.

I think the author is being a bit too hopeful here that Congress will enact stronger anti-trust legislation if the case fails, but he’s likely right about this eventually ending up in front of the Supreme Court.

No more Githankypanky?

Ok, but if you don’t return them this time I’m sending your ass to collections.

Holy shit, this is beyond fucking vile:

After all, he had years of practice writing about eugenics as Richard Hoste, advocating for precisely those types of policies.

“The maintenance of the quality of the population requires not just a stable population at all levels but the active weeding out of the unfit,” Hoste wrote in 2011 for Counter-Currents, the white supremacist site.

“There is no rational reason,” he wrote, “why eugenics can’t capture the hearts and minds of policy makers the way it did 100 years ago.”

To make matters worse:

Hanania has his own podcast, too, interviewing the likes of Steven Pinker, the famous Harvard cognitive psychologist, and Marc Andreessen, the billionaire software engineer. Another billionaire, Elon Musk, reads Hanania’s articles and replies approvingly to his tweets. A third billionaire, Peter Thiel, provided a blurb to promote Hanania’s book, “The Origins of Woke,” which HarperCollins plans to publish this September. In October, Hanania is scheduled to deliver a lecture at Stanford.

For those you wanting to make a statement regarding publishing and promoting Nazi filth, here’s the link to contact the Stanford Ombudsman, the Harvard Ombdusman and here’s the contact info for Harper Collins Publishing:

ADDRESS
HarperCollins Publishers
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007

HARPERCOLLINS RECEPTIONIST
212-207-7000

HARPERCOLLINS CUSTOMER SERVICE
800-242-7737

Make sure they know exactly who they’re promoting and supporting, and that we know it now, too.

Don’t bother talking to Musk or Thiel, they’ll take it as encouragement.

They committed treason for less than $15k a pop. This indicates to me that either the CCP was threatening their family members in China, or that they’re just dumb as rocks.

I have to admit, Barbie becoming a Chinese feminist icon was not on my 2023 bingo card. Anyone taking bets on when we’re gonna get a kpop version of this classic?

Looks like Bolivia’s next in line for the Belt and Road Bait and Switch, and they’re sending out the messaging that they want a shot at what Africa’s getting.

That being said, it’s not surprising that we’d see this reaction from Bolivia and other economically distressed countries in Latin America given the interest rate increases by the Fed. This caused downstream liquidity problems that the economic minister is directly speaking to. Note, this explanation appears disingenuous, as the Boliviano has been rising against the dollar since the beginning of 2022.

Digging in a bit, it’s important to note that:

In February 2021, the Arce government returned an amount of around $351 million to the IMF. This comprised a loan of $327 million taken out by the interim government in April 2020 and interest of around $24 million. The government said it returned the loan to protect Bolivia’s economic sovereignty and because the conditions attached to the loan were unacceptable

That they did this in the middle of the pandemic is actually a stronger indicator than the attached article that the Arce administration is determined move Bolivia out of the US’s economic sphere of influence. This is understandable given the abuses many countries have suffered as a result of IMF policies.

That being said, Belt and Road is a very similar deal, just without the same conditionality that the IMF requires of its debtors. I don’t see it being a better choice for Bolivia in the long run, and I would be far more worried about China and Russia gaining additional influence in my country than I would the US, but that’s only considering current geopolitics, and disregards the history and scars of US action in Latin America.