I read some books by Alice Miller that discussed some childhoods of authoritarian rulers and they were all of unloved. They had not one adult stick up for them, be their advocate or helper, during their childhood years.

Many of us as children have been unwanted or unloved by our caregivers. Most of us had at least one adult: an uncle, grandmother, teacher etc, who truly tried to help at least once.

What the monsters in history had in common is an absence of evidence of even that happening for them. And their revenge as adults was terrible.

One arm hair in the hand is better than two in the bush

Don’t know. But if the tariffs are as bad as many think, I believe the black market in the USA will grow faster than the speakeasies and smuggling booze did a century ago. There will be huge demand to bring in cheaper goods that are legally sold at higher rates.

It’s a new and huge untapped market to provide support, even if most of the movement of goods will be done by organized crime later. A lot of what will happen is unknown.

Certainly there will be a new cat and mouse dynamics. Very rarely does a huge layer of graft poof into existence to fast in a country. Lots of dynamics navigating this new electronic frontier!

So anyway, here I was, drifting through the lemmy pages, when I realized there was a ton of money to be made by writing software for smugglers.

I have never really known a smuggler of physical goods, but I imagine I will try now

I think of all the oppressive governments, giving this medal must be a near universal thing that separates them from other governments.

It’s not ideal, and can be abused by the central service later by price increases or probably other things.

But it’s the best a corporate and evil platform can do to legitimize users.

I also think this reflects the true number of the user base: less reports because of what you said, and also there are less people who see the material

Does it matter then? I think I will not care what he does later, unless he wiggles into real power

My understanding is that this is not terrible, only bad then? In top ten new movies this year?

Shout out to the employee who interrupted to accuse Microsoft of war crimes!

And that is why I am going to clean up on the betting markets. More seriously, anyone thinking of this exchange only need compare exit polls for all the states, in general and primaries.

I remember when exit polls used to be talked about a lot in the 1970s. But I think most people reading will be puzzled about why I harp on a type of polling.

Likewise I think finding exit poll results might be challenging these days in the USA. Which is a pity, indeed

You would be correct if the majority of USA states fairly counted the ballots. But if not, there is no reason to prevent a double chamber majority. In fact, it’s necessary then, because it derails paper ballot efforts.

This is a long game, so to speak. There will still be dem presidents later too.

What people who decry fascism tend to overlook is that the country has not been a democracy for a while. This is all theater on a grand scale, for decades, and we are the audience

They did not have computerized voting back then, it was paper ballots mostly. Until then I fully expect the same voting patterns as the last generation to continue; yes, democrats will win more at the mid terms. No, little will change. I fully expect democrats to win solid majorities in both houses in 2026.

Americans, as a group, should look at exit polls and understand them, and use paper ballots as the rule, not the exception. Until then, it’s just an oligarchy. And they don’t have our backs .

But I don’t think it will change any time soon

Depends where it lands

A plague of posts please

Have you heard of our lord and savior memory management?

No, not those other false gods

Rust is both a nice programming language, and an obnoxious social movement made of a small minority of Rust programmers who are very loud

This will also help lessen the monopoly cloud flair has in Spain

Proton recently closed their masterdon account because of the mutual hostility

Yea, I seriously tried to think of one merger, big enough to be noticed, and not willing to even break laws to show their appreciation.