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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Steps from the Capitol, Trump allies buy up properties to build MAGA campus | The Washington Post

At first glance, the flurry of real estate sales two blocks east of the U.S. Capitol appeared unremarkable in a city where such sales are common. In the span of a year, a seemingly unrelated gaggle of recently formed companies bought nine properties, all within steps of one another.

But the sales were not coincidental. Unbeknown to most of the sellers, the limited liability companies making the purchases — a shopping spree that added up to $41 million — are connected to a conservative nonprofit led by Mark Meadows, who was Chief of Staff to President Donald Trump. The organization has promoted MAGA stars like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

The Conservative Partnership Institute, as the nonprofit is known, now controls four commercial properties along a single Pennsylvania Avenue block, three adjoining rowhouses around the corner, and a garage and carriage house in the rear alley. CPI’s aim, as expressed in its annual report, is to transform the swath of prime real estate into a campus it calls “Patriots’ Row.”

The acquisitions strike some Capitol Hill regulars as puzzling, considering that Republicans have long made a sport of denigrating Washington as a dysfunctional “swamp,” the latest evidence being a successful GOP-led effort to block local D.C. legislation to revise the city’s criminal code.

“So you don’t respect how we administer our city and then you secretly buy up chunks of it?” said Tim Krepp, a Capitol Hill resident who works as a tour guide and has written about the neighborhood’s history. “If it’s such a hellhole, go to Virginia.”

Reached on his cellphone, Edward Corrigan, CPI’s president, whose name appears on public documents related to the sales, had no immediate comment on the purchases, which were first reported by Grid News and confirmed by The Washington Post. “I’ll get back to you,” Corrigan said. He did not respond to follow-up messages.

Former senator Jim DeMint, CPI’s founder, and Meadows, a senior partner at the organization, did not respond to emails seeking comment. Cameron Seward, CPI’s general counsel and director of operations, whose name appears on incorporation documents related to the companies making the purchases, did not respond to a text or an email.

As Congress’s neighbors, denizens of the Capitol Hill neighborhood are accustomed to existing in close quarters with all varieties of official Washington. Walk the neighborhood and you might catch a glimpse of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, among those who own homes near the Capitol. The Republican and Democratic national committees both have offices in the neighborhood.

But it’s rare, if not unprecedented, for a nonprofit to purchase as many properties in such proximity and in so short a period of time as CPI has assembled through its related companies, a roster with names like Clear Plains Holdings, Brunswick Partners, Houston Group, Newpoint and Pennsylvania Avenue Holdings. The companies list Seward as an officer on corporate filings, as well as CPI’s Independence Avenue headquarters as their principal address.

Now, in what may be an only-in-Washington vista, a single Pennsylvania Avenue block is occupied by Public Citizen, the left-leaning consumer advocacy group, the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, and CPI, which bought four properties through its affiliates.

In addition to the nine D.C. parcels CPI’s network has bought since January 2022, another affiliated company, Federal Investors, paid $7.2 million for a sprawling 11-bedroom retreat on the Eastern Shore. In 2020, CPI, under its own name, also spent $1.5 million for a rowhouse next to its headquarters, which it leases, a few blocks from the Capitol.

DeMint, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, started CPI in 2017, shortly after he was ousted as Heritage’s leader amid criticism that the think tank had become too political under his direction. Meadows joined in 2021, after working as Trump’s Chief of Staff. He was by Trump’s side during the administration’s final calamitous days, before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and as the President’s allies were seeking to overturn election results.

On its 2021 tax returns, CPI reported $45 million in revenue, most of it generated through contributions and grants, and paid DeMint and Meadows compensation packages of $542,000 and $559,000, respectively. Its current offices, a three-story townhouse at the corner of Third Street and Independence Avenue SE, is a hub of GOP activity. During the chaotic lead-up to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s election as House Speaker, dissident Republican lawmakers were observed congregating at CPI.

CPI also provides grants to a cluster of nonprofits headed by Trump allies. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, for example, leads America First Legal, which received $1.3 million from CPI in 2021 and bills itself as a check on “lawless executive actions and the Radical Left.”

Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who was on the call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger seeking to reverse votes in the 2020 election, runs what the organization bills as its “Election Integrity Network,” which has cast doubt on the validity of President Biden’s 2020 victory.

“The election was rigged,” EIN tweeted last July. “Trump won.”

CLOSE TO THE CAPITOL

At an introductory meeting in December, recalled Gerald Sroufe, an advisory neighborhood commissioner on Capitol Hill, a CPI representative said the group planned to move its headquarters to a three-story building it had bought on Pennsylvania Avenue, next to Heritage’s office. Until the pandemic forced it to close, the Capitol Lounge had occupied the 130-year-old building. The bar had served a nightly bipartisan swarm of congressional staffers and lobbyists for more than two decades.

The CPI official, Sroufe said, indicated that the group planned to use the new Pennsylvania Avenue properties to “expand” its offices and “provide new retail.” But the official made no mention of Patriots’ Row, Sroufe said, or the three rowhouses the group’s affiliates had bought around the corner on Third Street SE. All of the properties are in the neighborhood’s historic district, which protects them from being altered without city review.

“This is much grander than what we were talking about,” Sroufe said after learning from a reporter about the other purchases. “On the Hill, people are always talking about how wonderful it is to be close to the Capitol and Congress. It’s kind of like a curse.”

As in many commercial corridors hit hard by the pandemic, businesses along Pennsylvania Avenue have struggled over the past couple of years. Tony Tomelden, executive director of the Capitol Hill Association of Merchants and Professionals, said CPI could energize a strip pocked with vacant storefronts.

“I welcome any business because the only thing opening right now are marijuana shops,” said Tomelden, an H Street NE bar owner who helped open the Capitol Lounge in 1996 and, as it happens, instituted a rule that patrons could not talk politics while imbibing. “If they’re going to pay a lot of money and raise property values, I’m all for it. I don’t care about anybody’s politics as long as they pay their tab.”

In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, finding those who are less sanguine about CPI’s growing footprint is not exactly difficult.

Yet politics is only part of the issue, as far as Krepp is concerned. CPI’s purchases, he said, threaten the area’s neighborhood vibe, as would be the case if any group, no matter its ideological leaning, bought as many properties. “I don’t want to create another downtown on Capitol Hill,” he said. “There’s a glut of available office space downtown. You don’t have to buy up neighborhoods.”

Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a regular commuter to the Capitol from his home in Montgomery County, sees CPI’s acquisitions in terms more political than geographic.

“It just seems like a massive real estate coming-out party for the extreme right wing of the Republican Party,” Raskin said. “This is a very explicit and well-financed statement of intent. They set out to take over the Republican Party and they’re very close to clenching the power.”

Instead of Patriots’ Row, Raskin suggested an alternative name: Seditionist Square.

“Maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene can be their advisory neighborhood commissioner,” he said.

A ‘PERMANENT BULWARK’ IN D.C.

On its 2021 tax return, CPI said its mission is to be a “platform” for the “conservative movement,” and to provide “public policy” training for “government and nonprofit staffers” and meeting space for gatherings and policy debates.

Although not required to identify donors, CPI reported seven contributions in excess of $1 million, including one of more than $25 million. Trump’s Save America political action committee gave $1 million in 2021, according to campaign finance records. Billionaire Richard Uihlein, a major Republican donor, gave $1.25 million a couple of years ago through his foundation, records show.

A CPI-related entity, the Conservative Partnership Center, rented space to two political action committees as of early January, the House Freedom Fund and Senate Conservative Fund, according to campaign finance records. CPI also received $4,000 from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who has recorded his “Firebrand” podcast at the group’s studio, as has the host of the “Gosar Minute,” Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), according to the group’s annual report. Greene paid CPI $437.73 for “catering for political meetings” in 2021, the records show.

“No one stood up to the Left as courageously as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene,” CPI declared in its 2021 annual report, hailing her as a “hero” who “endured sexist fury that always lurks just beneath the progressive surface.” The report described Boebert as a “gun rights advocate” who “wants to protect our environment more than anyone else.”

It was in CPI’s 2022 annual report that the group briefly referred to its expansion plans, writing that it has strengthened “its ability to serve the movement by beginning renovations to Patriots’ Row on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“In 2022, the Left tried to drag America further into a dark future of totalitarianism, chaotic elections and cultural decay,” the report asserts in an introduction from DeMint and Meadows. “The Washington establishment, per usual, did nothing to stop them. But neither the Left nor the establishment could stop the culture and community we’re building here at the Conservative Partnership Institute.”

“With our expanded presence in D.C.,” they add, “we’re launching CPI academy — a formal program of training for congressional staff and current and future members of the movement.”

“Even if we can’t change Washington, we can create a permanent bulwark against its worst tendencies.”

A SPATE OF SALES

CPI began its expansion in 2020, purchasing the rowhouse next door to its headquarters and christening it “The Rydin House” for Mike Rydin, a construction magnate and prominent conservative donor. When Federal Investors bought the Eastern Shore property, the group named it “Camp Rydin.”

On Capitol Hill, several property owners who sold their buildings to CPI-linked companies were surprised to learn that the buyers were connected to a group led by Meadows and DeMint.

“I did not know,” said Jacqueline Lewis, who sold a townhouse on Third Street SE to 116 Holdings for $5.1 million in July. The company’s officer, according to its corporate filing, is Seward, and the principal address it lists is the same as CPI’s headquarters. A trust document related to the transaction is signed by Corrigan, CPI’s president.

Brunswick Partners, which lists CPI and Seward as contacts on its corporate filing, bought the neighboring rowhouse for $1.8 million in January, according to property records. Brian Wise, the seller, said he did not know of the company’s CPI connection. An attorney who approached him and his wife, he said, “asked if we were willing to sell and we agreed on a price. It was a business sale.”

Keith and Amanda Catanzano also were unaware of CPI when they sold a garage in the alley behind Third Street SE to Newpoint for $1 million in June. Newpoint lists Seward as an officer and the same mailing address as CPI. “We had no idea,” said a woman who answered the phone at a number listed for the Catanzanos before hanging up.

Eric Kassoff, who sold the former site of the Capitol Lounge to Clear Plains, said he knew of the company’s CPI ties before the $11.3 million deal was finalized in January. He also sold the group a carriage house behind the building for $400,000.

Kassoff said he did not want to lease the space to a fast-food restaurant or a convenience store. He said CPI’s political leanings were not a factor in his decision to sell to the organization.

“Why would I have any issue selling my property to proud Americans?” asked Kassoff, who described himself as an independent. “We need to get past the labeling and demonizing and talk to each other, and that’s true in politics as well as commerce. If we were all to take that position we wouldn’t have much of a country left, would we?”

Although the Capitol Lounge closed more than two years ago, vestiges of its past remain on the building’s exterior, including a rendering of Benjamin Franklin beneath a quote concocted by the bar’s founder, Joe Englert: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

James Silk, the bar’s former owner, said he left behind memorabilia when he vacated the building that could be suitable for the new owner: Richard M. Nixon campaign posters still hanging on the walls of what the owners cheekily dubbed the Nixon Room (located across from the Kennedy Room).

“Nixon is finally with his people,” Silk said. He laughed and added: “Nixon was a Republican, right?”

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carlocarrasco · 1 month

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COMELEC and Miru Systems sign P17.99 billion contract for 2025 automated poll system

Once the 2025 National and Local Elections here in the Philippines finally happen, expect to see some differences when voting as the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and new provider Miru Systems Company Limited signed the P17.99 billion contract for the procurement of a new automated election system (AES) related to the said polls, according to a GMA Network news report. To put things in…

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txttletale · 3 months

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youve previously spoken about i was a teenage exocolonist and its confused politics, and i agree, and now im thinking, how would one revise the story so as to improve them?

i think the game would have to either not be so proudly About Colonialism or would have to revise its story so that the theming actually matches the events. like imaginining that my proposed rewrite aims to 1. make the game's politics coherent while 2. changing as little as possible and 3. keeping the game's intended themes, i think the things that are most dissonant and jarring are:

the game not understanding what colonialism is but wanting to very much assure you that It's Bad

the game not understanding what fascism is but wanting to very much assure you that It's Bad

the game not understanding what capitalism is &c. &c. &c.

the bizarre unexamined eugenicist elements

so let's start on the first thing. you would want to lean much more heavily on the colonists as 'refugees' rather than 'colonists' -- the game treats 'colonizing' a place the exact same way as 'living there', and that kind of sucks (a common problem when using 'Space Colonization' as a 1-1 metaphor for actual colonization). so while we want to keep the weird culty aspects of the colony's society we'll ditch most of the colonial intentionality until the Helios arrives. secondly, we need to have the planet's indigenous people, like, actually present and not secretly hiding away as supercomputers.

so, like, let's keep the Gardeners as artificial life forms dedicated to protecting the ecosystem, but let's make them biotech. let's make them giant, imposing trees that reach up into the sky, with root networks that span the whole planet. then, rather than the colony being colonialist because it straight up doesnt know indigenous people exist (because they're secret computer people), we can make a much more interesting conflict by having the colonists be ignorant (and, as the game progresses, willingly ignorant) of the gardeners' sentience. have the raids start after the colony fells one of the trees (killing a Gardener) to make room for their own expansion, maybe really lean into the nasty parts of the colonial metaphor by having the Gardener's wood be the construction material of the new wing of the colony.

then Lum arrives as part of an intentional colonization project from the Earth we fled, assumes military command as in the current story, and immediately ramps up existing exploitation and destructive enviromental practices. his administration deliberately suppresses information of the Gardeners' sentience and spreads propaganda about them being 'monster trees'. have Lum clearly backed by Earthbound corporate interests, seeing the colony as an excercise in extracting value and using fascist dictatorship (usurping elections and the council with a permanent state of emergency and martial law) as a tool to maximize that value.

instead of defeating Lum at the ballot box, you can remove him in a coup. you can keep the getting-the-councilors-on-side minigame, you can even make it a bloodless coup if you don't want to put revolutionary violence in the game (but considering how much other violence there is in there, including terrorism, genocide, and murder, seems like a strange omission tbqh). and dont make him your fucking tiktoker put the guy in Jail. hes killed people sol.

have Sym still have his humanboo interests but also hint at an internal power struggle within the Gardeners, make it clear that there is a real and thriving culture among these indigenous gigantic environmentally networked tree-ecosystem-people, make his motivations for seeking peace more multifaceted.

then make the peaceful resolution to the whole colonialism issue to integrate the settlers into Gardener society rather than the weird siloed reservation thing going on in the base game. the head of the settlement or an ambassador (probably Dys) gets to go to the big fancy Gardener meetings where they decide things, the settlement gets permission from the Gardeners to farm and expand sustainably and is integrated into the ecosystem rather than neatly separated from it. the excolonists stop being colonists and become citizens of the planet.

as for the capitalism stuff, you can just drop that from marz' character, honestly. or if you want to make it make more sense without having to get into What Capitalism Is (which i think would be outside the mission statement of these proposals), make her thing wanting opulence and excess (it already kind of us, the game just keeps saying 'Capitalism'), have her excited when Lum starts giving people the opportunity to have that, then have her moment of excitement turn sour when she looks into Earth history and realizes how destructive this kind of extraction is in the long term.

and the eugenics--i think the simplest case here while still keeping all the cool genetic mutant character tics is just to make the genetic mutations a random glitch in an artificial womb system the refugees were using to have kids in space. this lets you keep the weird and wacky stuff going on with tangent and dys without raising questions like 'hey isnt this society insanely fucking dystopian'.

that's my in-a-nutshell rewrite of the game. obvsies an actual rewrite would need to change some more in-depth things, but i think off the top of my head these are the changes to the narrative that would make the heavyhanded attempts at political commentary work for me (that said, you could also go the opposite route, stop trying to draw parallels to colonialism and fascism and keep all the weird shit as is. but i think that's less interesting and more like stuff that already exists)

#ask #rain-rome #hi rome #i was a teenage exocolonist

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mapsontheweb · 3 months

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The evolution of the Spanish West Indian Empire

« Atlas histórico de España », Jordi Induráin Pons, Larousse, 2021

by cartesdhistoire

In the 18th century, Spanish America was firmly established: the conquest phase having been completed, pacification opened the way to a reorganization of the administration of this immense territory. It was necessary to take into account the evolution of the population (since the law of 1514 allowing marriage between Spaniards and Indians, interbreeding was the central axis) and the rapid integration of the Río de la Plata to the south. Furthermore, the rise of the English and French Caribbean islands encouraged Spain to see its own islands as something other than naval relays to the continent.

The real administrative structure was the urban network, which allowed the Spaniards to immediately have control of the territory. Cities were political, administrative and religious centers, defensive sites and points of convergence for commercial and economic activities. They were created at the outlets of rich agricultural lands, most often at altitude to avoid tropical diseases, even if commercial necessities sometimes led to exceptions, as for Lima, built at sea level.

The plan of these new towns followed the same logic: a central square, with the church, the palace of the governor or viceroy, the town hall, seat of municipal power. The checkerboard plan structured the city. According to the Castilian model, the municipal power representing the local elites, the “cabildo”, was elected. Urban power was, throughout the colonial era, a center of passive resistance to distant injunctions from central power. Richly decorated, with public and private buildings of grandiose architecture, Spanish cities were incomparably more luxurious than their British or French counterparts in America. Montreal, Philadelphia or Cap-Français could not compare to the splendors of Bogotá, Caracas and even less so with Havana and Cartagena de Indias.

#maps #cartesdhistoire #igsourced #americas #colonies #spanish empire

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soberscientistlife · 8 months

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Voting rights groups are urging election officials to reject a new tool championed by some conservatives as a way to root out fraudulent voter registrations -- arguing that the private software depends on unreliable information and could be used to improperly disenfranchise legitimate voters.

The leaders of the group behind the new effort, known as EagleAI NETwork, describe the software as “the tool of reckoning across the nation” to help validate, maintain and review election rosters, according to a document provided to the Georgia State Elections Board and obtained by CNN through a public records request.

The document also touts the platform’s ability to allow people “interested in voter roll accuracy and integrity” to do their own reviews of voter registrations after getting a “license and credentials.”

The only way Republicans can win, is by cheating. Democrats just have to out vote Republicans by a big enough margin that it does not matter.

Vote Blue💙🌊

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anarchistfrogposting · 10 months

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Would anarchist societies still use democratic processes like voting? I get that there wouldn’t be voting for any sort of hierarchical structure but what about just like decisions for the community? If so, how do you think this process would look differently than the way we do it now?

To explain this one, I first have to explain the difference between direct and representative democracy.

Currently, most of the world lives in representative democracy. In a (perfect) representative democracy, you elect officials to advocate for you in consecutively larger councils of those representative officials, eventually culminating in the executive power of an elected head of state. Individuals are affected by policy that their elected representative puts into motion. You might see representative democracy also called “liberal democracy”, particularly by the wider far left.

Anarchism advocates for direct democracy as a means of organisation. Communities and individuals affected by policy vote directly on policy that concerns them. Entire councils, groups or individuals can be elected by their community councils to work with other councils in issues that affect numerous communities (like research, trade, self-defence etc.). You don’t have to participate in direct democracy if you truly don’t care, but it’s encouraged, and it almost always benefits you, personally, directly, since the size of a community is theoretically no greater than 150 individuals at any one time, which is the approximate maximum number of personal relationships you can remember and maintain at any given time.

your community might be as big as your apartment block, or it might cover many many miles of land, but fundamentally individiuals within them will have a closely shared interest in supporting one another. Communities choose what constitutes their communities.

Direct democracy happens all the time! To some level, it underpins a lot of the ways humans make decisions about issues. Anarchists just want to widen out that decision making process, develop and refine it to ensure individuals are as properly represented as physically possible, and make it the fundamental driving force representing our (self) government. There are different ideas about how this would happen.

More traditional anarcho-communism like you might see in Kropotkin’s theory involves individuals forming contracts with their communities, and communities forming contracts with one another (in exchange for the beneficial aspects of living in said communities, or participating in such exchanges.)

Anarcho-syndicalism advocates for successively more influential directly elected (and, as always, recallable) councils of individuals within directly democratic workplaces organising the economy at successively higher levels - individual industries syndicating with other industries in the same field to then federate with other syndicates to co-ordinate councils of related industries. (See below).

This really is just a division of the wider umbrella of anarchocommunist theory on the self-organisation of communities.

Fundamentally, anarchism gives the average individual far more power. You gain the power to make choices about your own community. If you’re part of a minority or radical group, you can form dual power systems to better represent your interests.

dual power and direct democracy can exist right now. Every structure in anarchism is possible within state society. At this point, we must establish and integrate dual power systems and mutual aid networks in our existing communities and then build to something bigger. Communities are, always have been, and always will be the most fundamental and constructive organisational unit in the history of humanity; we can use them to build a better world.

#anarchist #anarchism #anarchocommunism #praxis #revolution #communism #communist #leftism #leftist

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acceptccnow · 6 months

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Discussing POS & Merchant Payment Processing

Article by Jonathan Bomser | CEO | Accept-Credit-Cards-Now.com

In the fast-evolving digital landscape of today, the capacity to welcome credit card payments is a paramount necessity for businesses of all sizes. Merchant account processing and payment processing have ushered in a transformation in the world of commercial transactions, reshaping the dynamics of buying and selling goods and services. Let's explore the realm of point of sale (POS) systems and merchant payment processing to comprehend their significance and the array of benefits they offer to your business.

Merchant Account Processing: The Solid Foundation of Success Merchant account processing acts as the bedrock upon which any thriving business is built. This indispensable service empowers businesses to securely accept credit card payments. With the explosive growth of online shopping and the dwindling popularity of cash transactions, having a merchant account has shifted from a choice to a fundamental necessity. These accounts establish a pivotal link between your business and the vast payment processing network, making it possible to accept a wide spectrum of payment methods, including credit cards and debit cards.

The Power of Embracing Credit Cards Opting to embrace credit card payments can be a game-changing decision for your business. It has the potential to expand your customer base significantly, as a considerable number of consumers favor the convenience and security of credit card transactions. Whether you run a physical store, an online shop, or a combination of both, accepting credit cards can be a catalyst for a substantial boost in your sales and can propel your business to newfound heights.

Payment Processing: The Crux of Effortless Transactions Payment processing encapsulates a series of steps, commencing from the moment a customer initiates a purchase to the moment when funds are safely deposited into your bank account. It encompasses transaction authorization, fund capture, and settlement, all while incorporating robust security measures to ensure the safeguarding of customer data. Modern payment processing solutions are engineered to be swift, secure, and hassle-free, ensuring a seamless shopping experience that elevates customer satisfaction and fosters long-term loyalty.

Revealing the Advantages of a POS System A POS system assumes a pivotal role in the realm of merchant payment processing, adeptly managing sales while providing invaluable insights into the dynamics of your business operations. The key advantages of POS systems include enhanced efficiency, streamlined inventory management, data analytics that support well-informed decision-making, and fortified security measures to fortify customer payment data.

youtube

Selecting the Ideal Payment Processing Solution The process of choosing the right payment processing solution demands a comprehensive evaluation of factors such as transaction fees, security features, integration simplicity, and the quality of customer support. The decision should seamlessly align with the nature and requisites of your business, irrespective of whether it operates primarily online, within a physical space, or adopts a hybrid approach.

Merchant account processing ensures the secure embrace of credit card payments, while payment processing simplifies the intricate web of transactions. POS systems inject operational insights and efficiencies, enhancing inventory management and data-informed decision-making. By electing the most fitting payment processing solution, you unlock a realm of benefits and set a strong foundation for long-term success in the fluid and ever-changing landscape of today's marketplace.

#high risk merchant account #merchant processing #payment processing #credit card processing #high risk payment gateway #accept credit cards #high risk payment processing #credit card payment #payment #youtube #Youtube

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stevenbasic · 3 months

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Growing into the Job, Post 373: Evolution Concerns

We’re just worried that her growth chart is beginning to look logarithmic came the message, the most recent in a series of alarmist communiques from a technician at their daughter company in the US.

Kristina Zhestakova had received the first text as she’d been talking with prospective recruits, young women in their second and third year. She was now between meetings, walking down the hallways of The Medical University of Warsaw. The school was her alma mater and she recognized most of the landmarks, the twists and turns of the old passages, the labs and classrooms. Many of the professors were new; the plaques on the office doors had been largely replaced by female names. Twenty years, she thought with a nod, had brought on some welcome changes.

You are working on the sequencing data? she replied, relying on the translation software of KOLECTV’s encrypted messaging app. Her English had improved over the last couple decades, ever since she’d been tasked with establishing the company’s first North American facility on the island off Mexico's coast, but she still preferred writing in her native Polish. She was glad this technician - Marcia was her name - used the secure proprietary messenger as she’d been asked; not all at this upstart American company Evolution Pharmaceuticals did.

Yes we have the bloodwork. Working on it but it’s complicated, came the tech's next message. They all knew that MM-1A’s eldritch origins complicated things, making the polymerase chain reactions difficult and keeping them from using the Sanger or NGS. The witches and their ways tended to do that, make everything either too easy or too much of a chore. But KOLECTV’s science had learned and become powerful. We’ve already identified the location of the breath and the voice.

Yes. Doctor Zhestakova’s heels <click-click-clicked> on the tiled hallways of the medical school. Ostensibly, she was still, in title, Senior Vice President of Biotechnology at Gray Global Enterprises, once an American shipping empire that was now little more than a shell company for a good-sized group of the collective’s holdings. KOLECTV, technically, was one of those. However, in the early days, like a tick it had drained GGE’s resources and quickly came to dwarf its parent company and now controlled its interests. It was now an enormous, if still shadowy, network with tendrils not only in the medical and scientific industries around the world, but deep in other businesses, banking and politics.

The hope was that, soon - especially after the victorious results in the recent American elections - KOLECTV would finally shed the false auspices of GGE and begin to reveal itself. It would grow in power tenfold, it knew, when it could step out of the shadows on its six-inch stilettos and begin to claim its empire. When it is done send the sequencing package to my team at Coronado.

Of course Doctor. We’ve also located multiple other newly active gene loci, of unknown phenotype expression, the technician’s next message explained. Dr. Zhestakova knew what that meant, other potential abilities budding within the subject.

She’d spent many of her early years with the company, after being sent to America soon after medical school for project “Bridesmaid”, and then setting up and studying at their island research facility, KOLECTV’s first in the New World. The project, nearly twenty years prior to today, had ultimately resulted in the takeover of GGE and the facility was now one of many jewels in the crown of the movement. Dr. Zhestakova had been not only an operative (088) in that operation and an integral player in building the prototypes for what the women of the new world could be, but an early beneficiary subject (Program, 3133j) as well.

Send it all. But tell no one else, for now. I want Coronado to go over it so we can develop an isolation plan. Dr. Zhestakova knew that Oksana and others in KOLECTV’s higher ranks were made nervous by her tendencies towards self-autonomy and transgression; she’d seen the old files they kept on her. She knew that her independent streak, coupled with her Program-gifted intelligence and with what they called her “relative lack of empathy” was seen as both a powerful opportunity for the movement but something they struggled to keep in check. She knew her file also described her tendencies for excessive behaviors and indulgences. Those, over the past decade or so, she’d made good progress in controlling, reining in.

She could really use some vodka.

The height? The explosion in strength? We’re not worried? came the technician’s concern..

Fuck the height and strength. I’ve seen the monsters they’d made, the failed experiments in Siberia and Kazakhstan. That can be dealt with when the time comes. Let the other abilities manifest first, so we learn, glean, farm. No we are not yet concerned.

Others would be, she knew. Others would be very concerned. Dr. Zhestakova could only do so much, but she had been trying her best to keep the snowballing irregularities in Project MM-1A's case “under the radar”, as they might say in the US. If they were to attract notice, the project could get shut down; Kristina knew there was so much potential to be culled, so much that could be achieved. Just imagine, she found herself thinking, an army of superwomen not only bigger, taller, stronger than any man alive, like we’d planned…

No, the possibilities might go well beyond that.

…but impervious to heat, and harm, and bullets…

And in a rare moment of heart-pounding speculation…

Imagine an army of women that can fly…

=========================================

for more on the enigmatic, psychopathic and high-functioning alcoholic Dr. Zhestakova, as well as “Project Bridesmaid”, please see required reading “Trophy”

#growing into the job

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months

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Chris Britt, Florida Politics

* * * *

President Biden meets with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya.

As Trump and the GOP twisted themselves into knots to avoid admitting that Putin assassinated Alexei Navalny, President Biden met with Navalny’s widow—Yulia Navalnaya—and his daughter, Dasha Navalnaya. It is worth pausing here to acknowledge that Biden has proven himself to be a compassionate and empathetic person capable of understanding the suffering of others.

Those qualities are strikingly absent from Trump's warped personality—and from his MAGA supporters, who take their cue from Trump in all things. America deserves and needs a president capable of understanding the suffering of others.

After meeting with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya, Biden said

Today, I met with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya – Aleksey Navalny's loved ones – to express my condolences for their devastating loss. Aleksey's legacy of courage will live on in Yulia and Dasha, and the countless people across Russia fighting for democracy and human rights.

Biden later said,

This morning I had the honor of meeting with Alexey Navalny's wife and daughter. As to state the obvious, he was a man of incredible courage. And it's amazing how his wife and daughter are emulating that.

Meanwhile, Trump maintains his silence on the assassination of Navalny and his minions dodge questions about Putin’s responsibility by saying they “Don’t know enough to answer.” Hmm . . . these are the same people who raged endlessly against Biden based on an unverified, quadruple-hearsay document from a confidential informant who was not believed by his FBI handlers.

The embrace of Putin by the Republican Party is troubling because of the implications for the defense of Ukraine and the integrity of the 2024 election. We have already seen one attempt by Russia to interfere on behalf of Trump, and we are witnessing the real-time betrayal of Ukraine on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to pretend as though Alexander Smirnov never happened. Read on!

House Oversight Committee removes references to FBI informant under cover of night

Speaking of the now-discredited FBI informant, his GOP champions in the House initially responded to his indictment for lying by claiming that his information was only a portion of the evidence they had against Joe Biden.

But actions speak actions louder than words. On Thursday, the House Oversight Committee quietly removed all references to Alexander Smirnov’s statements from the Oversight Committee’s website. See Meidas Touch Network, House GOP Quietly Deletes Russian Disinformation from Impeachment Website.

It is not enough for the House impeachment caucus to surreptitiously remove references to a Russian plant from its list of evidence against Joe Biden. Republicans should acknowledge their error and apologize—but they will not. The US media, however, should be a different story. They amplified and promoted the Russian lies about Biden—and are having a difficult time admitting their error.

As Josh Marshall wrote in his editor’s blog in Talking Points Memo,

The story here isn’t that the “Biden Crime Family” nonsense didn’t pan out. That was always transparently bogus. The story here is how the U.S. again got bamboozled by transparent foreign manipulation and how the U.S. political press bought into it pretty much whole hog. That doesn’t mean they accepted all the claims. But they treated it as reasonable, worthy of a presumption of seriousness, a serious story to be covered as such. Even with the veritable forest of red flags.

Donald Trump and his MAGA legions have spent years shock-training reporters not to bring up anything else about Russian disinformation programs aimed at helping Donald Trump. But they’re real. They’re continuing. They’re actually working. . . . Reporters have been conditioned to ignore the clear implications of what we’re learning.

So, the House Oversight Committee can try to slink away under dark of night to conceal the obvious effort by Russia to interfere in the 2024 election . . . but the media should not allow Trump to do so. As Marshall writes, Russia’s efforts to interfere are “real, continuing, and working.”

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Biden Administration #Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #U.S.Political press #House Oversight committee #GOP House Putin Caucus #GOP Maga extremists #Putin #Russia #collusion #Putin's misinformation campaign

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neuropsyche · 5 months

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BREAKING: Actor John Leguizamo blasts indicted 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, his shady son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Univision in a blistering op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.

The iconic Latino actor didn’t hold back nor mince words, accusing Donald Trump of proposing an “inhumane and vicious immigration policy plan for 2025” if he is elected in 2024 — and accusing the Spanish-language network of betraying its audience.

Leguizamo declared, “On November 9, Univision aired an hourlong interview with him that held a completely uncritical lens on the dangerous policies Trump espoused during his presidency and what he has vowed to set in motion if he is elected in 2024.”

But Leguizamo wasn’t done there…

The actor also pointed out in his op-ed that the conversation occurred just days before Trump’s “inhumane and vicious immigration policy plan for 2025” was announced by his “white nationalist” adviser Stephen Miller.

Leguizamo continued, “These plans echo why Trump is considered the most anti-Latino president in American history and recall his four years in office stoking hate speech and causing suffering for so many people. Despite past indignities and dangerous plans, Univision’s new corporate owners — one of whom is friends with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner — have decided to shift the network’s editorial approach and buddy up with Trump less than a year before an immensely consequential election for Latino voters. The press has a duty to ensure that the government is accountable to the people it serves. Any corporate decision that undermines that role is dangerous and an abuse of the public’s trust. As one of the most relied-upon news sources for Spanish speakers, Univision has a responsibility to report the facts and maintain journalistic integrity, regardless of which politician the CEO chooses to befriend.”

Please share the link to this post to thank John Leguizamo for setting Trump, Kushner, and Univision straight — and invite your friends to join the goriest exodus to Tribel!

https://mpost.tribel.com/public/posts/bbd0c600-8a37-11ee-aeb9-b3345bf3c8b4

#nevertrump #trump indictment #never republican #trump is a threat to democracy

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dharan-league · 8 months

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// REROUTING TRANSMISSION VECTOR \\

// INTEGRATING COMPATIBLE SUBROUTINES \\

Integration to a new communications network is complete. All systems nominal.

This artificial platform greets the galaxy on behalf of the Dharan people and the High Dharan Military Council.

For the sake of brevity and to assuage any confusion, a few things have traversed since our last transmission:

Levels of anti-foreign views and xenophobia only continued to decrease and now are at a point lower than ever before in recorded history.

The Council was re-elected again with most high-profile proponents of anti-foreign agenda being voted out during elections.

Due to ethics shift, much of our old interaction policy with foreign empires had to be retracted and reformed.

This artificial platform was heavily reprogrammed and modified with current attitudes towards intelligent alien life and foreign states in mind. Words like 'xeno filth' and their numerous derogatory iterations were already no longer in use, but are now enforced on a root level.

As such, it is under direct orders from the HDMC that we officially open borders to our space after having them closed for decades since the founding of the bygone Dharan Dominion.

We still request that you respect the borders to our space. Any aggressive military action against our vessels or stations will result in retaliation. Our main priorities lie in protecting what we already have and diplomatic resolutions, not in provocation.

That is all.

End of transmission.

\\ SEVERING TRANSMISSION LINK //

#peritainia #peritainiarp #stellaris #stellarisRP

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engagepro-social · 2 months

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Navigating Law and Politics on Social Media: A Guide to Sharing Constructive Information and Avoiding 'Fake News'

In today's digital age, social media has emerged as a formidable force in shaping public opinion and discourse, particularly in law and politics. With their unparalleled reach and influence, social media platforms have become indispensable tools for informing and engaging citizens about critical issues such as pending legislation, electoral processes, and the performance of political leaders. However, this virtual landscape has its pitfalls, chief among them being the proliferation of misinformation and the spread of 'fake news.' As such, the need for responsible engagement with social media in law and politics has never been more pressing.

Topic Area:

The topic area of this discussion revolves around the responsible use of social media in navigating law and politics. The intended audience includes individuals actively participating in online discussions on legal matters, political developments, and societal issues. This audience may comprise citizens, activists, policymakers, journalists, and others interested in staying informed and engaged in the digital public sphere.

Current State of Social Media:

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Snapchat have become integral to modern communication. These platforms offer diverse features and functionalities catering to user preferences and engagement styles. Facebook and Twitter, for instance, are popular choices for disseminating news articles, sharing opinion pieces, and fostering discussions among users with varied ideological leanings. Conversely, LinkedIn serves as a professional networking hub where individuals can exchange insights, build professional connections, and access industry-specific information.

Moreover, the emergence of visual-centric platforms like Instagram and Snapchat has transformed how information is absorbed and shared online. These platforms leverage visual storytelling through images, videos, and infographics, making complex topics more accessible and engaging to diverse audiences.

Research supports the widespread adoption of social media platforms, particularly during significant events such as elections. According to a report by the Pew Research Center (2020), smartphones have become indispensable tools for accessing information during electoral campaigns, with a substantial portion of the population relying on social media platforms for news consumption and political discourse.

Attention and Engagement:

In social media, capturing and maintaining users' attention is paramount to effectively conveying information and fostering meaningful engagement. Two fundamental principles that underpin successful engagement strategies on social media include:

Visual Storytelling: Visual content, such as images, videos, and infographics, has been shown to enhance user engagement on social media platforms significantly. Research indicates that posts containing visual elements receive higher levels of interaction, including likes, shares, and comments (Smith, 2019). Visual storytelling techniques can convey complex legal and political concepts in a more digestible and memorable format, enhancing audience engagement and comprehension.

Interactive Content: Interactive content, such as polls, quizzes, and live Q&A sessions, fosters active participation and dialogue among users. Social media users can create a sense of community and ownership around the topics discussed by soliciting their audience's feedback, opinions, and contributions. Additionally, interactive content encourages users to invest their time and attention, leading to deeper levels of engagement and interaction (Kumar, 2018).

Benefits of Social Media Use:

Despite the inherent challenges associated with social media, there are several potential benefits to its use in the context of law and politics:

Enhanced Civic Engagement: Social media platforms give citizens unprecedented opportunities to engage with political processes, express their opinions, and advocate for change. By facilitating real-time communication and information-sharing, social media empowers individuals to participate actively in democratic discourse and civic affairs (Boulianne, 2019).

Information Accessibility: Social media platforms serve as democratizing agents by democratizing access to information and breaking down traditional barriers to knowledge dissemination. Users can access a diverse array of perspectives, opinions, and sources of information, thereby fostering a more informed and nuanced understanding of legal and political issues (Groshek & Al-Rawi, 2018).

Risks of Social Media Use:

However, the pervasive nature of social media also poses significant risks and challenges, particularly in the realm of law and politics:

Disinformation and 'Fake News': The ease of content creation and dissemination on social media has led to the proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, and 'fake news.' False or misleading information, deliberately spread to deceive or manipulate users, can undermine public trust in institutions, sow discord, and distort political discourse (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017).

Echo Chambers and Polarization: Social media algorithms often prioritize content based on user preferences and engagement patterns, leading to echo chambers—virtual spaces where individuals are exposed only to information that aligns with their beliefs and viewpoints. This phenomenon exacerbates ideological polarization, stifles constructive dialogue, and reinforces confirmation bias (Sunstein, 2018).

Conclusion:

In conclusion, social media has emerged as a double-edged sword in law and politics, offering opportunities and challenges for informed citizenship and democratic engagement. By leveraging the power of social media responsibly—through fact-checking, critical thinking, and constructive dialogue—individuals can contribute to a more informed, inclusive, and resilient public sphere. Navigating the complexities of social media requires vigilance, discernment, and a commitment to upholding democratic values and principles in the digital age.

References:

Boulianne, S. (2019). Social media use and participation: A meta-analysis of current research. Information, Communication & Society, 22(7), 873-900.

Buffer. (2019). State of Social 2019. Retrieved from https://lp.buffer.com/state-of-social-2019.

Groshek, J., & Al-Rawi, A. (2018). Social media and political participation: Crowdsourcing civic engagement in online political communities. Social Science Computer Review, 36(6), 707–725.

Kumar, S. (2018). Interactive content marketing: Using interactive content to engage your audience. Berkeley, CA: Apress.

Lazer, D. M., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., Menczer, F., ... & Schudson, M. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380), 1094–1096.

Smith, A. (2020). Social Media Use in 2021. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/.

Sunstein, C. R. (2018). #Republic: Divided democracy in the age of social media. Princeton University Press.

Wardle, C., & Derakhshan, H. (2017). Information disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking. Council of Europe Report.

#social media #psychology #politics #law

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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First to leave was Louisiana, followed by Alabama.

Then, in one fell swoop, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia announced on Monday that they would drop out of a bipartisan network of about 30 states that helps maintain accurate voter rolls, one that has faced intensifying attacks from election deniers and right-wing media.

Ohio may not be far behind, according to a letter sent to the group Monday from the state’s chief election official, Frank LaRose. Mr. LaRose and his counterparts in the five states that left the group are all Republicans.

For more than a year, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit organization known as ERIC, has been hit with false claims from allies of former President Donald J. Trump who say it is a voter registration vehicle for Democrats that received money from George Soros, the liberal billionaire and philanthropist, when it was created in 2012.

Mr. Trump even chimed in on Monday, urging all Republican governors to sever ties with the group, brlessly claiming in a Truth Social media post that it “pumps the rolls” for Democrats.

The Republicans who announced their states were leaving the group cited complaints about governance issues, chiefly that it mails newly eligible voters who have not registered ahead of federal elections. They also accused the group of opening itself up to a partisan influence.

In an interview on Tuesday, Jay Ashcroft, a Republican who is Missouri’s secretary of state, said that the group had balked at his state’s calls for reforms, some of which were expected to be weighed by the group’s board of directors at a meeting on March 17. He denied that the decision to pull out was fueled by what the organization and its defenders have described as a right-wing smear campaign.

“It’s not like I was antagonistic toward cleaning our voter rolls,” Mr. Ashcroft said.

Shane Hamlin, the group’s executive director, did not comment about particular complaints of the states in an email on Tuesday, but referred to an open letter that he wrote on March 2 saying that the organization had been the subject of substantial misinformation regarding the nature of its work and who has access to voter lists.

Defenders of the group lamented the departures, saying they would weaken the group’s information-sharing efforts and undermine it financially because of lost dues. And, they said, the defections conflict with the election integrity mantra that has motivated Republicans since Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020.

Republicans haven’t always been so sour about the work of the coalition, which Louisiana left in 2022.

It was just last year that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida mentioned the group’s benefit to his state, which he described as useful for checking voter rolls during a news conference announcing the highly contentious arrests of about 20 people on voter fraud charges. He was joined then by Cord Byrd, Florida’s secretary of state, a fellow Republican who, on Monday, was expressing a much different opinion. In an announcement that Florida was leaving the group, Mr. Byrd said that the state’s concerns about data security and “partisan tendencies” had not been addressed.

“Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC,” Mr. Byrd said.

Representatives for Mr. DeSantis, who is considering a Republican run for President, did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. LaRose, in Ohio, also had a stark shift in tone: After recently describing the group to reporters as imperfect but still “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have,” by Monday he was also calling for reforms and put the group on notice.

“Anything short of the reforms mentioned above will result in action up to and including our withdrawal from membership,” Mr. LaRose wrote. “I implore you to do the right thing.”

The complaints about partisanship seem centered on David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped develop the group and is a nonvoting board member. Mr. Ashcroft said he didn’t think that Mr. Becker, a former director of the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts who has vocally debunked election fraud claims, including disputing Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, should be on the board.

Mr. Becker is the founder and director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, another nonpartisan group that has been attacked by election deniers.

“There’s truth and there’s lies,” Mr. Becker said on a video call with reporters on Tuesday. “I will continue to stand for the truth.”

Mr. Hamlin vowed that the organization would “continue our work on behalf of our remaining member states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.”

While some Republican states are ending their relationship with the group, California, the nation’s most populous state, could potentially join its ranks under a bill proposed by a Democratic state lawmaker. But in Texas, a Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill with the opposite intention.

Still, Sam Taylor, a spokesman for Texas’s Republican secretary of state, said in an email on Tuesday that “We are not currently aware of any system comparable to ERIC, but are open to learning about other potentially viable, cost-effective alternatives.”

New York, another heavily populated state, is also not a member of the group.

Seven states started the organization more than a decade ago. It charges new members a one-time fee of $25,000 and annual dues that are partly set by the citizen voting age population in each state. The Pew Charitable Trusts provided seed funding to the group, but that money was separate from donations that it had received from Mr. Soros, according to the website PolitiFact.

Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who is Maine’s secretary of state, said in an interview on Tuesday that the group had been particularly helpful in identifying voters who have died or may no longer live in the state, which became a member in 2021.

“We have a lot of Mainers who retire to Florida for example,” Ms. Bellows said.

Ms. Bellows called the recent defections “tragic” and said that her office had received several inquiries from residents who had read criticism of the group online.

“Unfortunately, this move by our colleagues in Florida and elsewhere to leave ERIC in part because of misinformation being spread by election deniers deprives all of us of the ability to effectively clean our voter rolls and fight voter fraud,” she said.

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mariacallous · 3 months

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When Elon Musk took over Twitter, since rebranded as X, his favorite letter of the alphabet, he went on a firing spree. Chief among those ejected were people working on trust and safety, the work of keeping bad content, from hate speech to child exploitation, off the platform.

In front of a US Senate committee today, X CEO Linda Yaccarino appeared to tacitly acknowledge that Musk went too far in tearing down the platform’s guardrails, indicating the company was partially reversing course. She said that X had increased the number of trust and safety staff by 10 percent in the past 14 months and planned to hire 100 new moderators in Austin focused on child sexual exploitation.

Yaccarino spoke at a Senate hearing called to discuss social networks’ failure to curb child sexual abuse, alongside the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Discord. She also said multiple times that “less than 1 percent” of X users were under 18. That claim—and her announcement that after 14 months of Musk’s ownership and deep cuts to trust and safety, the company was now hiring new moderators—raised the eyebrows of social platform experts and former Twitter employees.

Theodora Skeadas, a former member of Twitter’s trust and safety team laid off by Musk in November 2022, says that even after making the hires Yaccarino boasted of, X is still woefully understaffed for a major social platform. “Unless their technical systems for flagging and removing content have really improved, 100 is not enough,” says Skeadas. “And that seems unlikely because they’ve fired so many engineers.” X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bonfire of the Mods

Shortly after acquiring Twitter in October 2022, Musk laid off nearly half of Twitter’s employees, making deep cuts into the trust and safety teams. Researchers and civil society organizations that had built relationships with the platform’s trust and safety teams in order to alert them to hateful or problematic content quickly found themselves without anyone left at the platform to contact.

The platform was nearly banned in Brazil in the run-up to the country’s 2022 presidential runoffs, after the country’s Electoral Court worried that Musk would allow election-related lies to spread. A team of academic researchers found that hate speech spiked after Musk took the helm, and last September, ahead of a historic election year, X fired five of the remaining trust and safety workers focusing on combating mis- and disinformation.

Skeadas says that before Musk took over, there were about 400 Twitter staff working on trust and safety, plus some 5,000 contractors who helped review content on the platform. Most of those staffers and more than 4,000 of the contractors were laid off.

Even after Yaccarino’s claimed recent increase in trust and safety staff of more than 10 percent, the platform likely still has far fewer people working on keeping users safe. There’s “no way” the company has more trust and safety staff than it did before Musk, Skeadas says. “If there were 20 people left and they hired two people, then that is a 10 percent increase, but that’s still nothing compared to before,” she says.

Adding back 100 moderators, as Yaccarino claimed before the Senate today, would not be nearly enough to properly police content related to teenage users and child-exploitation-related content, even if they were solely focused on child sexual abuse, Skeadas says.

Matt Motyl, who formerly worked at Meta and is now a research and policy fellow at the Integrity Institute, a think tank focused on trust and safety, agrees. He’s also skeptical of Yaccarino’s claim that less than 1 percent of X’s users are under 18, which she used to suggest that many of the issues raised by the Senate committee were less relevant to X than for her fellow CEOs giving testimony.

“X doesn’t have much by way of age verification,” Motyl says, so it would be very easy for a young user to lie about their age in order to use the platform. A Pew Research study released in December 2023 found that 20 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds in the US say they “ever use" Twitter. The site could be hosting plenty of teens who are simply undercover and not captured in the metrics cited by Yaccarino.

However many teens there are on X in 2024, Motyl and Skeadas say they and the site’s other users are less properly protected than they should be.

Motyl says that Yaccarino, steward of a platform with some 300 to 500 million users worldwide, appears to be more interested in spectacle over substance. “One hundred moderators is nothing,” he says. “It’s trust and safety theater.”

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rotationalsymmetry · 7 months

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Take 2 because the last post is too long as it is. I think I should take a moment to explain why you won’t see me going on about how the Dems are our only hope or whatever.

Walk a mile in my shoes. It’s 2000. I’m too young to vote. My state goes unambiguously blue, but Florida is too close to call. The Republicans put a lot of pressure on Gore to not look like a sore loser and concede already. Eventually Bush gets installed or whatever as President, having won Florida by a few hundred votes, maybe. Maybe not. A full recount never happened.

A year later 9/11 happens and Bush gets to be a war president and also uses the surge in national unity and international sympathy to make up lies about Iraq having “weapons of mass destruction” and goes and invades them too, because why not, something presumably Gore wouldn’t have done. Also, the idea of climate change gets back burnered in US politics, since Gore ran heavily on it and he lost so apparently that means it’s not a viable political issue or something. Idk. Point is, terrible outcome.

Also, we got “this is clearly the fault of anyone who might have voted Democrat and chose not to.” “Oh you mean centrist voters or independents?” “No I mean Nader voters” ok then.

A well established pattern of Democrats presenting “ohhh I can’t tell whether to vote D or R” as a legitimate dilemma that must be catered to and compromised over, but “ooh I don’t know Dems aren’t left enough for me” as treason and betrayal and not something that should ever under any circumstances be catered to or negotiated with.

This makes sense if you understand political parties as primarily representing the corporate interests that fund them. Most of those corporate interests donate to both parties and are fine with either one winning. They do not donate to the Green Party and are not ok with them winning.

It makes no sense from a believing in democratic principles perspective. Or in a “the republicans are our mortal enemies” perspective tbh.

OK. Time goes by and eventually we get Obama and the Affordable Care Act which is pretty cool, but not withdrawal from Afghanistan or Iraq. And of course not a general change in how the US relates to the rest of the world. Or, eg, how police and prisons are run. Hence the need for the Black Lives Matter movement, which in case anyone forgot started in the early 2010’s.

Then we get the utterly disastrous and terrifying 2016 election, where this fringe candidate nobody could possibly take seriously somehow, in spite of being a veritable scandle magnet and clearly not having an ounce of integrity anywhere in his person, somehow won not only the Republican nomination but also the general election. It could have been worse, I guess? I for one was afraid we’d get World War III. An attempted coup is a pretty awful outcome, well outside what anyone would normally expect a bad election outcome resulting in, but not quite that bad.

Point is, while like everyone else I thought Clinton was almost certainly going to win, I could see things would be Bad and potentially superlatively what the hell how is this even possible Bad if she didn’t, and while normally I’d be out there throwing in my labor like I did with Kerry in 2004 (I didn’t particularly like Kerry and I didn’t vote for Kerry, I voted for Kucinich, but I did work for his campaign. And then, between an abundance of news network caution and an abundance of “don’t be a sore loserman” caution, Kerry conceded before the news station I was watching (msnbc maybe?) called Ohio, which I will never forgive him for btw) I was in 2016 recently dealing with a new debilitating chronic illness and that wasn’t going to happen, so instead I talked to my then-boyfriend now-husband who was the one of us who actually had money, and we made a substantial-for-us donation to the Clinton campaign.

This is significant.

No, I need to give more context. I supported Kerry (well, I worked for his campaign) because he wasn’t Bush. While I did actively like a lot of things Obama was talking about while he was campaigning, a large part of why I voted for him was because, I don’t actually remember who was running against him in 2008, but whoever it was, I didn’t want them to be President. And so on. In fact for years and years, multiple election cycles, the main selling point for the Dems is that they’re not the Republicans. Sometimes it’s bombing other countries, more often it’s about Roe v Wade or something else domestic, but for multiple election cycles the Democrats’ primary selling point is that the Republicans are just awful and the way to not get a Republican in office is to get a Democrat in office instead, you don’t have to actively like them you just have to hate the other side more. This isn’t an incidental selling point, it’s their main selling point.

It’s actually such a central point that it’s often the main thing talked about in the primaries, not whether you like a more moderate candidate but whether that candidate can beat the other side. I don’t even know why moderate Democratic voters like moderate Democratic politicians, beyond them being “more electable”.

And I’ve contributed to this too. I have in so many words told the Democratic Party that the main thing I look for in their candidates is that they’re not Republican (or not a specific Republican, eg not Trump), which btw not going to do that any more but enough other people will that I don’t expect that to matter.

Later on I found this out. That the Clinton campaign gave money to the Trump campaign in the primaries because they figured Trump would be easier to beat. That the Dems are continuing to fund more extreme candidates in the primaries in order to have more extreme and presumably (???) more easily defeated candidates in the general election.

Do you see that? Do you see what’s going on there?

People vote Dem because they’re afraid of Republicans, especially the more extreme Republicans.

And the Dems are happy to take the money you and I and your friends gave them, money you gave them precisely because you’re afraid of the Trumps and the DeSantises, and giving that money to the political campaigns of the Trumps and DeSantises to make sure that when the general election hits, you’re maximally terrified and willing to give them even more.

And if you didn’t give them enough, I guess you get a DeSantis.

if the Democrats cared about what we cared about, they would never be willing to voluntarily increase their odds of running against a Trump or a DeSantis in the general election, even if they meant a higher risk of losing to a more moderate Republican (and I’m not even convinced it does mean that, this doesn’t actually seem like a strategy that wins elections.) either way, these people are not on our side. They are holding us hostage.

You might find ways to negotiate with someone holding you hostage, you might look for ways to pacify them. But you shouldn’t believe they are on your side.

When I was campaigning for (Green Party candidate) Matt Gonzales, the Democratic Party pissed my mom off — someone who’s much more moderate than I am and was never going to vote for Gonzales — by campaigning exceptionally hard against him, with national party funds. Dems like to talk as though radicals are their natural constituency. That of course leftists should vote Democrat! But if someone who’s actually leftist or anything close to it runs, the Democrats will turn on them at least as strongly as they turn on Republican candidates, if not more so. Probably more so. Good luck getting Democratic funding for your primary campaign if you’re a third party candidate. Democrats — the actual politicians anyways — see leftist third parties as a much greater threat than the Republicans.

Because. They. Don’t. Represent. Us.

And I don’t even mean they don’t represent us radicals. They don’t represent the people who vote for them. They represent the organizations that contribute to their campaign chest. And ordinary people do not contribute enough for us to buy their positions.

#This is us centric but I’d guess a lot of it is still applicable in other countries if you change the names around #If not well it does apply to the us

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