FriendOfDeSoto

joined 2 years ago
[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 17 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Psy op implies an amount of planning and the involvement of the military or the intelligence community. I think it is better attributed to chance that the cryptic pretentious musings of one person snowballed into a cultish internet movement. Because it garnered strength online, the musing person at the heart of it probably changed due to tiny power struggles.

People like to know there is a plan for everything. People always suspect a secret cabal behind everything. People are also dumb and impressionable. It doesn't take a general or CIA buffin to try to target the Venn diagram of those three groups. I think it had the results you describe, it contributed to what we see in the US today: a weakening of the rule of law and a slide into fascism.

Calling QAnon psy op is giving what basically started as a 4chan meme too much credit. If no one took a gun to find a nonexistent basement in a DC pizza restaurant, society at large may have never discovered this snowballed cult, and jumped on it like a cat does catnip, enlarging its reach. The secret "cabal" behind it is maybe a handful of people. Bored and slightly Machiavellian internet users with odd political views and/or the love of endorphin-inducing likes and reach. Never attribute to conspiracy what you can more likely attribute to stupidity. QAnon is stupid. Stupidity with disastrous cobsequences. But not a planned psy op campaign.

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website -3 points 3 months ago

If illegal immigrants were possible to be identified easily by the IRS, ICE would have taken them over already.

The problem is two-fold. A lot of the immigrants who fall into this "illegal" category are not on the books, they get a brown envelope, and pay little to no taxes at all. And the more "sophisticated" ones look just like your average American. So if you taxed them more, you'd be affecting a lot of the "legal" population as well.

Also, the American economy is full of jobs that no "non-deportable" would like to do. Agricultural jobs come to mind. The current regime's idea of eradicating all illegal immigrants runs contrary to a lot of economic interests (and I read that they've done a lot less deporting on the farms recently. Curious ...) Even if you could just tax them more, you'd still mess with those interests as well.

And while I'm not a tax lawyer, I'm gonna go out in a limb here and say it's not going to be easy to make a tax law like that that isn't going to be heavily scrutinized in the courts because it is unabashedly discriminatory.

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think it's because these are people with the power to do more than thoughts and prayers. But they just stick with that while also taking health care off veterans and giving tax breaks to the rich.

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Gaslighting

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Sphinxy is mad then. Or poops prodigiously. Sphinxy is much, much smaller than any of the surrounding pointy poop parlors.

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's not an argument, that's somebody who only looked at the cover of the cliff notes on presidential terms but didn't read it. Consecutivity isn't required. Neither president should get elected a third time without a change or suspension of the constitution. With the rule of law under 47 weakening it is not impossible but I'm still optimistic.

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 27 points 3 months ago

This is grade A PR fluff. We are providing free advertisement here for the company that did a reasonable test with no big hope of success. It's corpo clickbait - even when you're snarky about it. It's perpetuating their talking point that so-called AI will do everything in the future. Which, frankly, remains to be seen.

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

So you're trying to apply logic to an animated kids show. My advice is: stop. It doesn't matter. Cookie monster never eats a cookie either.

I like to imagine that all creators of kids shows were high as a kite when they came up with the premise. [Takes a massive hit] "Duuuude, they're like a team of first responder dogs but they can fly helicopters and one is a cop. They're like the Village People but dogs." [Takes another hit] "And they can talk!" And thus Paw Patrol was born.

[Lights up spliff] "Oy, mate. 'ere's the thing. She's a cheeky one, this Peppa. And she's a pig. 'Er 'ead's always sideways. She's always mucking about." [Inhales deeply] "And all the other muppets are animals too. But get this: there are other animals." [Exhales] "But they can't talk."

Who thought it is a good idea to let George Lucas edit Trek? It's like an Odo shot first kind of situation. And I think Odo never used a phaser.

Is this is the guy that Scotty shoots in the end? If so, I've only ever seen the version with that scene and the bad Mission: Impossible face mask reveal. And I owned this movie as a VHS bought in Europe as part of a set released before VII came out...

II, IV, and VI are all worth a watch. They are a good movie, an entertaining movie, and a surprisingly good movie respectively.

I'll watch the odd numbered ones as well but I'm a fan and I know I is too long, III is mostly not good, and I enjoy V for its craziness.

I think the Sony hack is not a great example because there is a very good chance it was more politically motivated than financially. It's one of those cases where we might never know but there is a good chance it was orchestrated by North Korea in response to a Sony movie that made Kim III not look very divine. NK is most likely connected to other hacks as well that were really just a way to get hard currency/to evade sanctions.

Effort and reward are like supply and demand. If I want to steal your credit card number to go shopping, it might take me a long time to get to it. And then it turns out there is only $500 left on it. Too much effort for not enough reward. That's why phishing, Nigerian princes, texted IRS/DMV fines, missed FedEx deliveries, and all that jazz happens. Low effort to throw a net out and then catch the dumbest of the fish. If you are a person of interest to me though the math if different. Maybe I'm a stalker (look behind you, I'm there right now). Or maybe horny me is looking for your (perfectly legal) sexting thread. Or you're a pedo, a socialist, a cult leader, or all of the above. Private people get hacked. But it rarely makes a splash in the news like the Sony hack.

Also, hacker ≠ hacker. There are good guys who hack stuff to show what needs fixing or to hold people to account. There are bad guys who do it for money or because they like it. There are those with one foot on either side of that fence. Motivations differ wildly.

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Do you let your network set the time or did you do it manually? Could be a hint that you're off by a minute or so (considering you've checked all the other reasonable things already).

Any other apps installed that may want to set alarms? Maybe a sideload? Calendar app you've tried and not uninstalled?

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