Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions has been bought by US private equity so a contract with ICE is cool and good now.
I wonder how much of this meant to make up for brain drain from inside of the US govt. USGs biggest advantage for many years was that it built its spying tools in-house.
reshared this
G. Gibson and Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
When Journalists are the Target - EUROPE SAYS
“Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.” – ― Stefan ZweigEUROPE SAYS
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Houthis claim drone attacks on Israeli army's General Staff building in Tel Aviv - EUROPE SAYS
Houthi supporters shout slogans during a weekly, anti-US and anti-Israel rally in Sanaa, Yemen, July 4, 2025. (PHOTO / AP)EUROPE SAYS
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan and peelinggecko reshared this.
I own many of his originals but this one is out of my reach. If truth be told I have my share already. The pull of a newly available original is there but I know it's not for me.
I expect to receive Matt's newest book soon. Each of the books will be autographed and full of poetry. Not his paintings but his words. I read a draft copy and loved it.
Because I bought more than I need I will have six extra books.
If you are in the US so I can ship to you easily I would be happy to share. No cost.
I will cover the shipping.
Reach out if interested.
#MattBeard
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
I will pick the books up in the next two weeks. Message a mailing address and I am happy to send you one. He writes much like he paints.
I expect to pick the books up in the next week or two. If you message a mailing address I will get one to you. He writes like he paints.
This guy is US Secretary of Energy and blithely puts certifiably and grossly and embarrassingly incorrect statements on social media.
reshared this
your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦, Spread The Truth, GhostOnTheHalfShell, Barbara Monaco, Ivey Janette McClelland, Radio Free Trumpistan, xs4me2, BrianKrebs, Ned Hamson, peelinggecko and Mastodon Migration reshared this.
I love that in his own post he criticizes people mistaking electricity for energy right after he mistakes electricity for energy (and makes wild, baseless assumptions for that matter...)
It's hard even to imagine the multiple scandals that such gross incompetence in an administration would have triggered in every single other timeline.
The back of my envelope says this is off by about a factor of 10,000.
Or, in other words: freeingenergy.com/the-earth-ge…
The earth gets more solar energy in one hour than the entire world uses in a year
Earth's continents receive 23,000 terawatt hours of solar energy each year, compared to the 18.5 terawatt hours used by all of modern society each year.Bill Nussey (The Freeing Energy Project)
where does one even start...
I kinda wish I could innocently ask him what light is.
This literally cost him nothing to say and it'll probably have the effect he's going for.
Nobody's going to try to hold him up to this more than what you're doing, and nobody cares. His voters will still take this and "believe" it knowing it to be 100% false--250% false even since it's not even decipherable--and respond to anything you might say with, "Stop being rude."
I have a hard time calling him stupid for that.
The shape of a lie is indicative of its source.
Koch Network billionaires like Tim Mellon & Charles Koch are paying RFK Jr to lie about climate change & the fossil fuel industry's culpability in an ecocide.
ah yeah, can confirm. voltage x current x time results in the famous electrenergy. very different from energy.
and to the stake with people, claiming electrical energy is the noblest form of energy, because it can turn in every other form
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Sec'y Chris Wright is dumb as a post, or willing to shill whatever focus-grouped sloganeering team Trump tells him to use, so that it can keep rewarding the fossil fuel industry.
His facts are wrong. And not every solar panel is the same as every other, nor is every installation. He's also ignoring wind energy, perhaps because Trump is as afraid of it as he is of electricity, boats, and sharks. Wright is a shill.
Hahaha, i remember this type of images.
But its just like ice cream can't be ordered online globally, it's not the production, it's a distribution problem.
No one is even suggesting 100% solar so the right wingers are basically fighting windmills.
»Total Surface Area Required To Fuel The World With Solar Power«
landartgenerator.org/blagi/arc…
(Even based on US Department of Energy calculations: eia.gov/outlooks/archive/ieo09… )
A calculation results in an area estimate of 👉0.13% of earth's land masses👈: large.stanford.edu/courses/202…
Total Surface Area Required to Fuel the World With Solar - Land Art Generator
click for larger image download high resolution PDF Note in 2021: We have updated this information graphic in August of 2021.Land Art Generator
Stop assuming truth is in any way related to this US administration!
It’s more related to WWE ”wrestling”.
Hm. Has Chris Wright published the calculation how he come to the conclusion? - I made a rough one and come to the rseult that it will be several 100 times more electric energy than we consume primary energy?! ...
Maybe Chris Wright is a genius maybe he is one like Trump ... i'm not unsure.
I'm assuming human yearly use is ~145 PWh / year.
Also assuming an average solar panel yield of 500 kWh / square meter / year.
(note that typical nominal output (MW) ratings are useless for this yield calculation, because how much MWh did you actually make?)
In my napkin calculation this means you need about 290 billion m^2, so 290 thousand km^2, so about 6 times the Netherlands.
It's a very rough calculation with outrageously lazy assumptions, for my own entertainment.
What an idiot.
#uspol #RemoveTrump #EpsteinFiles
It seems to be based on this report
iea.org/reports/key-world-ener…
Specifically section 3 Final Consumption which states energy use in electric form is about 20% of the total.
(This is referenced by the Wikipedia article on Electric Energy Consumption en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr…)
a recent calculation came out to 50km X 50km of solar would power the entire world.
Obviously needs storage and be spread around, but a bit different.
Mark Twain
$Alt4You Please add to your photo.
A tweet from Secretary Chris Wright (@SecretaryWright) Profile photo of a smiling man in a suit and tie in front of an American flag, with a blue check mark and an official-looking badge icon.
The tweet reads:
"Even if you wrapped the entire planet in a solar panel, you would only be producing 20% of global energy.
One of the biggest mistakes politicians can make is equating the ELECTRICITY with ENERGY!"
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
hypebot, Dgar, Spread The Truth, millennial falcon, Mr. Bill, BrianKrebs, xs4me2, SpaceLifeForm, Fish Id Wardrobe and Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
I so wouldn't blame that guy for hitting that raft with a nuke. Keep those Earthlings OUT!!!!
Yes, they send their best and brightest because their predatory economy hasn't ramped up enough to comodify space travel quite yet, but that's still a toxic level of stupidity they bring.
@enochmm @electrodnd21 Thanks, with this I was able to find the source: thewildword.com/cartooning-str…
Great work by Simon Kneebone!
Cartooning is a strange activity
Simon Kneebone on the magic of cartooning, getting into the reader's head, and the power of humourTHE WILD WORD
That is exactly how I feel about being homeless.
Someone did a post about all the groups being targeted in the USA except for homeless people. WTF?
Dgar reshared this.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan and millennial falcon reshared this.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
hypebot, Ham on Wry and Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
📸 : Samsung Galaxy S20 FE
⏳️ : 2025-09-01
#photography #urbex #urbex-rebels #urbexworld #urban #explore #urbanexploration #abandoned #abandonedplaces #architecture #canada #landscapephotography #naturephotography #photographyisart #fediverse #pixelfed
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
I hope you find this as funny as I did
A 70 ish polish lady that has been in Australia since she was 4 said "Australia isn't racist"
Because she never experienced it
Hugz & xXx
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
I said "you got to be fucking joking, open your eyes and listen with your ears"
Hugz & xXx
Dozens of Scientists Find Errors in a New Energy Department Climate Report - Slashdot
science.slashdot.org/story/25/…
Dozens of Scientists Find Errors in a New Energy Department Climate Report - Slashdot
A group of more than 85 scientists have issued a joint rebuttal to a recent U.S. Department of Energy report about climate change, finding it full of errors and misrepresenting climate science.science.slashdot.org
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Lisa Cook 'Did Not Ever Commit Mortgage Fraud,' Attorneys Say - Business Insider
businessinsider.com/lisa-cook-…
Lisa Cook 'did not ever commit mortgage fraud,' attorneys say
Lawyers for Fed Governor Lisa Cook said the alleged contradictions in her mortgage records were already disclosed to the government.Lloyd Lee (Business Insider)
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
broccoli levels are currently at 52% but fluctuating wildly
(52%) ■■■■■□□□□□
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Dementia Don
What’s that diaper you have on …
He's seventy-nine and the people still call him a baby
All the folks 'round Washington say he’s crazy
'Cause he walks the White House hiding his cankles and his tiny hands
Lookin' for affirmation from anyone in his MAGA clan
#trump #maga #republicans #news
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
Melissa BearTrix and Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
My favorite '80s track almost no one knows. 'Images of Heaven' by Peter Godwin. I've loved every single line ever since a friend of my parents who was a DJ from New York played it for me when I was 11 or 12 because she thought I would love it and was totally right.
And, yes, that's Lisa Vanderpump on the album cover. youtube.com/watch?v=Wog57sBn0b…
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
State Farm
Provided to YouTube by Rhino/Warner RecordsState Farm · YazYou And Me Both℗ 1983 Sire Records CompanyVocals: Alison MoyetProducer: E.C. RadcliffeSynthesizer:...YouTube
The English band called Yaz in the States were actually called Yazoo elsewhere.
Vince Clarke's interlude between Depeche Mode and Erasure with the sublime Alison Moyet. They only made two records and let's just say both cassettes were worn the fuck out because they got so much play at our house.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
Ned Hamson, Ham on Wry, hypebot, GhostOnTheHalfShell, your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Boris Karnikowski, Radio Free Trumpistan, Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪, xs4me2 and Barbara Monaco reshared this.
@briankrebs
Promotional meme for Kevin Smith’s long discussed and often delayed Moose Jaws?
Moose Jaws (2025) | Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
Moose Jaws: Directed by Kevin Smith. With Kevin Smith, Genesis Rodriguez, Jason Mewes, Harley Quinn Smith. Like Jaws (1975), but with a moose.IMDb
"Moose Jaws" coming to a theater near you soon.
themoviedb.org/movie/1047235-m…
#MooseJaws #TrueNorthTrilogy #Tusk #YogaHosers #KevinSmith
Moose Jaws
In a post apocalyptic Canada, the jawbone of the majestic moose has become the most coveted form of barter due to its capabilities as a multi-purpose tool and weapon. One moose has had enough. The great white north is about to be reclaimed by nature.The Movie Database
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦, 𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e, fluffy 💜 and Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
I used to carry around a bootable flash drive with two while operating systems (and a VM in one that would *boot the other one* if it turned out I was in the wrong one) and the whole SNES library.
This was the era where USB boot wasn't universal, so I also had a boot floppy with Lilo.
The flash drive was a two GB model. It held most of my life.
reshared this
𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e and fluffy 💜 reshared this.
When I talk about a time when computers were exciting, what I mostly miss is the sense of hopefulness.
The idea that these communication boxes were going to help people, were going to enable people to make the world a better place to be—that's what I miss.
I'm trying not to be just nostalgic about it. Nostalgia is comforting and pacifying and can absolutely be a signpost on the road to fascism.
Combating that simple nostalgia and turning this impulse into something bigger takes analysis.
So, what's changed?
reshared this
your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦, 𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e and fluffy 💜 reshared this.
When I was the most ardent techno-utopist, I saw computers and networks as tools for the creation and distribution of art, and for communication.
A modern computer can still do all those things, but it's also probably lying to you, stealing from you, spying on you, and trying to sell you something.
I used to dream of a world with computers cheap enough and powerful enough that anyone who wanted one could justify having one. I thought it would be revolutionary! But then we had it, and no one cared. What good is a desktop computer?
Last year, there were dozens of SBCs fully capable of running a full desktop OS and whatever software you might have reasonably wanted circa 2016 available for less than $20. Some of them had storage included at the price. I priced out a full computer lab at $25/seat including peripherals.
This year, tariffs mean those boards start around $45, and the used gear I was including in the above has basically disappeared from the market.
𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e reshared this.
Hell, for a brief period in the 2010s you could walk in to multiple big box retailers in the US (including, for a time, Target) and walk out with a raspberry pi, power supply, storage, mouse and keyboard for $45.
The cheapest new monitor they sold at the time was $60 or so, so you couldn't do a full on $100 computer with all new components but our target was across the street from a goodwill, and they had $5 monitors and $3 mice and keyboards all the time.
I cannot tell you the number of basic web browsing/word processing/email sending machines I bootstrapped in the lobby of a Starbucks or a Dunkin Donuts for folks who lived in my community who just needed *something* to connect them to the world.
𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e reshared this.
Modern SBCs are more powerful than ever and, excepting the current US situation, cheaper than ever. We have new(ish) and potentially very exciting capabilities (like LoRa!) but I am not enthusiastic anymore.
Why?
To answer that we have to talk about what computers are used for now, and how that sucks.
Computers, the ones not designed for playing games at least, today are mostly used to run web browsers (which spy on you) so that you can connect to websites (which are profiting off of you, trying to sell you things, manipulating your attention, spying on you, lying to you, and interfering with elections around the planet) or to run applications which are doing all of the same things as above while also implementing slot machine mechanics designed to bypass your ability to regulate impulses, or tracking your every movement and conversation, or both.
Sometimes they're also used for video calls or to decode DRM so you can watch advertisements and marvel movies.
And, perhaps just as importantly, they're mostly in your pocket. Smartphones are basically ubiquitous. The world is actively hostile to people who don't have one, and cell companies give them away like they're candy (but Also charge you egregious sums of money for them. Both things are true.)
𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e reshared this.
But we'll ignore smartphones for a minute because I'm increasingly convinced that they are uniquely evil and hazardous in ways that I can't fully vocalize.
What's a desktop or a laptop for?
For me, it's mostly long form writing (I'm typing this on a screen, but you know) video editing, graphics production, print design and layout, email, chat, and the occasional game.
Outside of the things I do for money, it's a little bit of personal creative work, a tiny bit of communication, and a small amount of entertainment.
I used to *live* on my computer. These days, I don't even always know where it is.
𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e reshared this.
𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e reshared this.
This isn't anything new. It's what I've been saying for basically as long as I've been on the fediverse. I just forget sometimes.
It's good to remember.
Well, the folks in charge of the related industries are trash in such obvious ways and openly sprinting towards evil as quickly as possible, so anyone conscious would probably feel this way.
This is the first time since people called IBM The Evil Empire that it's been so obvious how vile the people in charge of the industries are. For doing nearly the exact same things. How odd.
Kind of related to your thread I think Zuckerberg's "lets connect everyone to everyone" was a terrible idea.
It really seems like getting interrupted by people with different social expectations is a fast route to stress.
I bet people would be less stressed if they knew who their audience was, something the current design of social networking software is terrible at.
@alienghic The "Circles" idea behind Google+ was A) great, B) probably ahead of its time*, and C) doomed, because Google was running it, and it couldn't be monetized enough.
(* I think social communication in the future, post-social media will be entirely hyperlocal. Think a very small discord instance to communicate with, rather than broadcasting one's thoughts to the entire world, like Twitter.)
Andrew (Television Executive) reshared this.
Over my life, I have owned many computers of many shapes, but most of them had been on a 6 to 8 years upgrade cycle. I grind them to the ground, with my current NAS just being my previous workstation, which was 8 yo when I replaced it. Those upgrade cycles have always been fun and exciting.
Now that it's time to upgrade my spouse's machine, I've been noticing how much I did to avoid the negativity. I've designed my last computer to be linux first, self-hosting everything I can from office documents to web search, using Floorp for my browser...
They're stuck on Windows. They need to run ZBrush for work. The prospect of building a new machine for them knowing they'll have to use Win11 on it is dreadful for us. They've been postponing for 2 years...
I hope there's enough good people to bring it back... I fear that fun is gone forever.
Tech Promised Everything. Did it deliver? | Scott Hanselman | TEDxPortland
The technology industry promised us connection, convenience, and creativity. Has it delivered, or offered false promises that may never be fully realized? Sc...YouTube
sweet summer child…
no storage at all, I typed in BASIC programs from memory on whatever computer I could find. Usually at a store, for as long as I could till they chased me away.
And yes they were amazing…
@wohali
I was once employed be Be, Inc. We had an operating system called BeOS. It had a system call is_on_fire()
One day my coworker came in to the office to find his computer turned off. It had a post-it note on it saying, "was on fire."
@cyanautik I mean, I've definitely had some power of 10 issues on systems that processed billions of records resulting in hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in complications.
But I wouldn't call that exciting. That was just Tuesday in Telcom.
I still have a MS-DOS 6.22 floppy that lasted throughout college.
And got it because the first time I tried reinstalling Windows 3.11, didn't know I needed to boot from DOS.
My 'toolbox' was a 1.44MB floppy with dos, multiplan, word and PCTools.
(we were doing a software for accounting.)
After all the other OS disappeared and only windows really existing it got boring very fast.
I still use my Amiga 3000 on a regular basis. That's still exciting, 35 years after its production.
Back then PCs haven't been exciting for me, I hated DOS (because AmigaOS was SO MUCH better), I hated Windows until XP. Of course I still used them because I had to.
Looking back now, I think even DOS/Win9x PCs *were* exciting. And I also love messing around with a PentiumMMX 166 PC.
THOUGH - nothing beats the excitement of my Amiga 3000 !!! 😀
All modern machines are boring...
@redacid
Part of what made them exciting was the diversity. DOS was winning, but it was far from universal. I ran DOS and Window 3.0, but I also had GEM installed. I used RISC OS on some machines, friends had Amiga or Atari machines. My favourite computer was a second hand Psion Series 3, which had similar specs to the original IBM PC but fitted in my pocket! And it ran an amazing system that used 8086 segmentation for process isolation.
At the same time, these systems were sufficiently simple that you could understand a large proportion of them. You could also implement something from scratch that was a similar scope and complexity. Maybe an order of magnitude worse, but close enough that you could squint and see how the rest would be built.
Now, we have monocultures of complexity. Computers aren’t there to empower users, they’re there to keep users in ecosystems where they can buy more things. The Free Software movement continued in its path of completely ignoring the social aspects and so built systems shaped like the ones designed not to empower users, but without the things that tempt people into these ecosystems. When people didn’t want them, they decided that the problem was that their licenses weren’t complicated and wrote ones that even qualified lawyers misinterpret, with the expectation that end users will read them, follow all of their conditions, and understand why they’re better than an equally incomprehensible EULA.
reshared this
Felix reshared this.
You mean when the next gen could plausibly have a 2x speed improvement?
New HW was exciting when it was actually faster.
I remember when computers hit that inflection point where they were exciting because you could finally get your hands on a reasonable one if you had a little money or were scrappy and crafty. I remember pulling parts for a desktop build out of dumpsters, bartering cleaning for parts at the local shop.
Then I remember the netbook era where you could get a lot of machine for half a week’s pay.
I think why it’s back to being boring is that it’s all commodified now; even without the corpo enshitification, it’d be hard to be excited because consumer capabilities of a “PC” have kind of peaked.
If a new computer came out tomorrow that was 3x faster than my laptop for half the price, I wouldn’t get excited because what I have is already far more capable than the vast majority of people (including me) could ever need.
Zucchini everywhere.
Zucchini stuffs the freezer.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
State Fair season
email 1: we received your order!
email 2: we've confirmed your order!
email 3: thank you for your order! We love you, and our product will completely change your life!
email 4: we're preparing your order!
email 5: we're shipping your order!
(shipping company: someone is shipping you something !)
email 6: we've shipped your order!
(shipping company: someone has shipped you something!)
email 7: your order is coming today!
(shipping company: your order is coming today!)
email 8: your order has been delivered!
(shipping company: your order has been delivered !)
email 9: how was your order?
(shipping company: how did we do?)
email 10: please help your community and review your order!
email 11: please, please, please review your order!
email 12: wanna order something more from us??? it's will change your life! we'll even give you a fake discount and everything!
email 13: we're sorry to see you go. Could you tell us what we did wrong?
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
smeg, your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦, Furbland's Very Cool Mastodon™, Radio Free Trumpistan, Kingu, peelinggecko and Jeff Forcier reshared this.
Where have all the flowers gone
Long time passing...
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Habitat restoration as a national defense strategy makes me happy.
france24.com/en/europe/2025082…
To defend against Russian tanks, Finland and Poland consider restoring wetlands
Finland and Poland are both considering rewetting dried out peatbogs to form defence barriers against a potential Russian ground invasion. Restoring these natural carbon sinks could also bring significant environmental benefits.Joanna YORK (FRANCE 24)
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
diana 🏳️⚧️🦋🌱 and Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
reshared this
Doreen32128 ready to rumble!, Sandzwerg, your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦, Court Cantrell prefers not to, Radio Free Trumpistan, Melissa BearTrix, Zaphod Beeblebrox, 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat and Glyn Moody reshared this.
BikeRegister - The National Cycle Database
Used by all UK Police forces, BikeRegister's marking kits can help reduce the likelihood of cycle theft by 83%. Every year hundreds of cyclists are reunited with their stolen bikes through the BikeRegister database.www.bikeregister.com
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
I am so glad Canada has no abortion law and Trudeau decriminalized providing reproductive care. So many conditions that would lead to a short painful life are not discoverable until after 6 months.
theconversation.com/a-doctors-…
A doctor’s story shows ‘late-term’ abortion access is politically charged – but crucial
Doctor Shelley Sella was one of just a few who openly performed late-trimester abortions in the US. Her memoir, Beyond Limits, is also the story of the abortion wars.The Conversation
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
"Extrajudicial assassination🚨seems like something the CON shouldn't permit."
-D Bier
"Given how poor the admin’s intel has been about TdA so far, there’s a poss this is just a random fishing boat they drone striked."
-A R-Melnick
"Today: US MIL conducted a lethal strike in the Carribean against a drug vessel which had departed from VE & was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist org."
-SOS Rubio
#TrumpRegime:🚨prioritizes #deportations, extrajudic hits...
#USPol
cnn.com/2025/09/02/politics/us…
reshared this
Kim Perales, Radio Free Trumpistan and Ned Hamson reshared this.
"Lethal force🚨agst a civilian vessel in INTL waters is a #WarCrime if not in self-def (this video doesn't show). Only non-lethal actions, like warning shots or disabling fire, are allowed.
Being suspected of carrying drugs doesn't carry a🚨death sent.
The US MIL's own stands for these situations are frustratingly vague...
In 2001 Peruvian forces, acting on US-provided intel, shot down a planeload of US missionaries over the Amazon..."
-A Isacson
#DOD #MarcoRubio #USPol
esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documen…
reshared this
Kim Perales and Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan and Sylkykat (she/her) 📚🖖🦉🐱☕️🇺🇦 reshared this.
Do any of you have a good source of financial news that isn't too right wing and explains things like the Intel deal? Or even just a really dry but not too technical source. The government bought a tenth of a company with left over CHIPS act money? But also Taiwan is in it too for some reason. I don't understand what they are even doing.
Can the government buy a tenth of my cousin's sticker etsy shop for national security? I'm confused.
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan, your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦, Cassandrich and hypebot reshared this.
Presumably Taiwan is in on this because that's where all the chips are actually made and Intel was at least ten years away from being able to build anything here that could sufficiently reach that scale. (But at this rate I'm wondering if they can even do that if they don't fix their business issues and maybe give up this whole unified design to go with the more effective chiplet design.)
I'm a bit surprised anyone in this administration can remember Taiwan isn't China.
There was an NPR program that fit this description and that was The Motley Fool.
I'm gonna go see if I can hunt that up online.
===========
Yes, they have their own website but they look like they sure grew up huge since their founding in 1993, providing paid-for advice programs and such.
fool.com/
Stock Investing & Stock Market Research | The Motley Fool
The Motley Fool has been providing investing insights and personal finance to millions of people for over 25 years. Learn how we make the world Smarter, Happier & Richer.The Motley Fool
max oakland likes this.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
Ya, both of those are NPR-affiliated. Actually was listening to Marketplace on the way home from the store tonight.
like this
Laukidh, max oakland and PrinceOfDenmark like this.
I oppose the deal, but this point of view is smart and interesting:
stratechery.com/2025/u-s-intel…
U.S. Intel
The U.S. taking an equity stake in Intel is a terrible idea; it also happens to be the least bad idea to make Intel Foundry viable.Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
Etsy stores should be safe for now.
Marketplace - Business News & Economic Stories For Everyone.
Marketplace raises the economic intelligence of the country through the unorthodox story, casual conversations and unexpected angles on the news.www.marketplace.org
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
It was obvious very early (1970s) that there would only be a single chip manufacturer standing. (Everybody talks about Moore's Law, but the cost to create the fab doubles, too, not just the chip performance.)
Intel figured they were the Lord's anointed and made repeated strategic errors: x86/Itanium (could be three), ignoring power efficiency, not making phone chips for Apple, relying on monopoly power/Wintel leverage for market share, and missing graphics processing.
This has a bunch of consequences; the major one (anything not a phone is a niche device) is that Apple put billions upon billions into full vertical integration which funded TSMC for the half what wasn't "not in our strategic interests to deal with those monopolists at Intel" (any value of strategic you want, there); the result is that the one global chip foundry when the music stops for Moore's Law is NOT Intel.
(It is that hard to do; the entire global economy can afford _one_.)
So, anyway; China has internal chip-making initiatives, the US public stake in Intel is part of the US internal chip-making initiative, the actual economic capability to do it is mostly Europe and Taiwan (and the rest of insular and peninsular Asia) being held up by the entire global economy, and it's painfully obvious (since about 1990) that chips are up there with oil as a necessary input to an effective military.
Note that tariffs tend to break the necessary global integration.
OK why are some liberals being weird and calling it "communism" I thought the CHIPS act was... fine. Like I wish it said something about mandated unions or something, but for what it's about it's fine. Isn't this trying to do the same thing in a kind of clumsy way?
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
A lot of people who will say they are liberals are actually mammonites and have market idolatry axioms. Anything even resembling direct public production is a heresy and can't be tolerated. (Which is bad for everything, but never mind that now.)
And yes, it is; the CHIPS Act was a bunch of policy wonks trying to maintain the imperial status quo in a least-aggravating way. This is a combination of incompetence, panic, and different panic recognising the same problem.
it's consistent if you believe in the falsehood that social democrats are communists, and then consider any kind of social democratic "nationalising" to be "communist".
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
@myrmepropagandist @Graydon
Okay, looking for a place to jump in on the chips-are-national-security-issue-history-up-to-the-1990s segment because that's when I was making chips for Motorola's Semiconductor Sector before it took The Great Nosedive.
Motorola SPS was the public chip maker but it had another sector: the Government Sector, which nose-dove in parallel with SPS, and during its active years was second-sourcing with Intel to supply the government...ergo the government has always had an interest in Intel as its best customer.
This is what happens when you privatize government ops and supplies--your company is already a security requirement for government operations. The alternative is for the government to run its own factories to supply what it needs for itself, so here we are.
Rewind to the housing crisis of 2008, or you can go back to the time when Chrysler was about to go bankrupt and AMC pretty much had already. Why not GM or Ford? They were government contractors and the government couldn't have them die...however...in 2008 we saw a GMC bailout when that was a housing crisis. Why the hell was that, hm? GMC has a financial branch that makes loans and interacts with Fannie Mae AND nearly all of America's farmers, part of that crisis.
The government would go belly up in ops and supplies if its private contractors went belly up. That's just how things iz.
Graydon likes this.
It's generally dangerous from a policy perspective to have government for-profit investments, because typically the government takes more downside & less upside than the average investor would. Consider for example the government bail-outs of the big banks in the late 2000s.
It's not that government/industry partnerships are guaranteed to line pockets of the wealthy,it's just that corruption usually takes it that way.
& one rarely knows if you did right until a decade later…🤷…my 2¢
Mostly because the majority of people in the USA have no idea what words like ‘communism’, ‘capitalism’, ‘democracy’ and ‘republic’ mean.
The USSR was probably a communist state for about a week (being generous), but was held up for decades to the USA as an example of what communism looked like (whether a stable communist state with more than about 500 people in it is possible remains an open question). The biggest difference between the economies in the USSR and the western world was that the USSR was a centrally managed economy, whereas the rest of the world relied on markets.
In a centrally managed economy, a single controller is responsible for creating a plan for economic output and defining what factories should be built, what skills people need to be taught, what supply chains look like, and so on. In a pure market economy, all of these decisions are local and you rely on emergent properties to generate a globally efficient system.
In theory, a centrally managed economy can be more efficient because it can avoid duplication of effort. In practice, it suffers from incomplete information and is slow to adapt (most attempts to build one have involved famines. It turns out they’re a really bad idea). Conversely, markets are staggeringly good at optimisation, but will often end up optimising for the wrong thing, and tend towards monopolies.
Both models are pretty bad in their pure forms. In practice, most countries now adopt some hybrid approaches. China is the closest to a centrally planned economy (all companies are partly state owned and the state intervenes in markets a lot), whereas the USA has traditionally been the closest to a pure market economy (though not actually very close). Interventions in markets come in a variety of forms. The most common form in the USA is for the government to act as a guaranteed customer for some product. In the EU, it tends to be weighted more towards regulation or nationalising critical industries. In China it tends to be a lot more direct. All use various forms of direct and indirect subsidies.
It is quite misleading to call any of these ‘communism’. A communist society could (theoretically) exist at either extreme, with worker-owned cooperatives using markets to distribute resources between them, or by coordinating directly via representatives or direct input to drive a centrally planned system. A capitalist society requires some form of markets, but markets have a number of failure modes and are not self-sustaining (without intervention, markets tend towards monopolies, which are a form of central control without any accountability) and so capitalist societies end up somewhere in the middle (pure capitalist societies decay towards feudalism without regulation).
If you need a label, Mussolini had one: He described the merger of corporations and government as ‘fascism’ (and thought it was a good idea).
That said, a 10% stake in a company is a long way from the merger of corporations and government. Most countries are realising that almost all modern infrastructure depends on computing and having a supply of processors that a potentially hostile government can’t control is important. The CHIPS act was largely propping up Intel. They have been staggeringly badly managed for 15-20 years, and without them it’s not clear how much chip manufacturing would be done in the USA (the DoD owns a fab for really critical things, but it’s a very old process).
If anything, it was quite surprising that the CHIPS act invested so much in Intel without taking any ownership. It’s not unusual for a government bailout of an industry to come with that kind of condition. The British government, for example, ended up owning a bank after the 2008 financial crisis. Typically in a mostly capitalist society, the goal is to get the company into a state where you can sell it and recoup the cost of the initial subsidy. In some cases, it will never be profitable but its existence improves the rest of the economy and generates more tax revenue than the company’s losses (public transport typically falls into this category) and so it makes sense for it to remain in public ownership.
npr.org/transcripts/520430944
If you don't already subscribe to Matt Levine's Money Stuff newsletter, I highly recommend. Very smart, sane person covering finance. He has the background to get technical and understand things, and the writing skills to explain them well. Plus he sees how ridiculous many of the aspects of our financial system are, and so has an honest and amusing writing style. I don't always read his newsletter, but I never regret it when I do.
I imagine he will write something on it.
I do have a source of financial news like what you're looking for: the Money Stuff newsletter by Matt Levine.
He is good at explaining things and also has a sense of humor, or at least an appreciation for the absurd, which is critical in his line of work.
You might appreciate this. I listened to it this morning....
youtu.be/cqGPJz8O5TM?si=Cuj5VG…
How Trump Is Changing American Capitalism
In a series of extraordinary deals, President Trump has muscled himself directly into the business of corporate America.The U.S. government has been made the...YouTube
I’m enjoying Paul Krugman’s Substack, but he writes about what he wants when he wants and isn’t trying to be the source of all info. Good explainers of things like how we perpetuate wealth inequality, though.
Also enjoying The Economist, which is only right-wing if you consider its free market stance right wing (& in my opinion it’s not). They benefit from not being US-based IMHO, too.
As for the US taking a permanent stake in key companies, seems Putinesque to me.
Keep an eye out for useful biz writing/reporting from NPR — esp. some Marketplace features. Minnesota Public Radio economics contributor Chris Farrell is good (but not regularly featured):
mprnews.org/people/chris-farre…
Andrew Ross Sorkin is featured in a lot of places (I read him, but you can also watch or listen):
andrewrosssorkin.com/
Also the Economist.
"Right wing" is in the eye of the beholder, as long as you avoid Fox or worse!
Paywalls everywhere...
I liked this article on the topic:
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
Intel details everything that could go wrong with US taking a 10% stake
Intel warns investors to brace for losses and uncertainties.Ashley Belanger (Ars Technica)
theregister.com/2025/08/29/int…
Intel’s deal with Trump includes a penalty clause against selling off its fabs
: The $5.7B check has cleared, CFO saysDan Robinson (The Register)
standard bailout of a company in trouble, a company that is strategically important, but described in Trumps usual whacko nonsensical terms.
Regurgitated from opinion I heard on the FT economics podcast (I think).
Marketplace - Business News & Economic Stories For Everyone.
Marketplace raises the economic intelligence of the country through the unorthodox story, casual conversations and unexpected angles on the news.www.marketplace.org
Comrade Trump Seizes The Means Of Production
The American government now has a 10 percent stake in computer company Intel — is Trump turning into a socialist?The Lever
Time For 9 o'clock #HashTagGames hosted by @paul Let's play!
How to play: Write something, Use the HashTag, Toot/Post and Repeat!
Tip: Welcome to September, the time when summer ends. Meteorologically, it ended on August 31 in the Northern Hemisphere. Use the medium of your choice: Song, text, movies, shows, poems, etc.
There's no wrong way to play or interpret a game.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
Paul Chambers🚧, ɹ uɐp, Bean 🇺🇲🇻🇪, Radio Free Trumpistan, Joey BoughtACola, Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Eddie Show 📷🎧❤️, Ray*mond Li*terally and 9 o'clock Hashtag Games reshared this.
I’m still on the fence about Corbyn and Sultana’s #YourParty.
There is so much baggage with Corbyn and Sultana seemed to jump the gun on announcing the party, which got it off to a very bad start in many people’s eyes,
But that doesn’t take away from the fact #Labour under #Starmer is a far cry from what people thought they voted for.
The points Corbyn makes here are entirely right and will resonate with many.
tribunemag.co.uk/2025/09/labou…
Labour Is Paving the Path to Fascism
As Labour embraces anti-migrant rhetoric, Jeremy Corbyn argues that the government is demonising vulnerable people to distract from its domestic failures.tribunemag.co.uk
reshared this
GhostOnTheHalfShell and Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
“Scapegoating vulnerable people has always been a deliberate ploy by the government to distract from its own domestic failures.
Today, it might be #asylum seekers.
Tomorrow, it could be #disabled people.
The next day, #trans people.
Whatever the minority, we are witnessing the demonisation of vulnerable people, to the grave detriment of us all.”
#Starmer’s #Labour government has laid itself wide open to these criticisms by #Corbyn.
Because it has turned against each of these groups.
reshared this
charlesmagne1 and Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
If #Starmer thinks he can demonise the same minorities that #Reform and the #Tories have been kicking for over a decade and get away with it, he’s deluded.
Those who enjoy bashing minorities will continue to vote for the full fat version of rightwing parties.
Those that don’t, will no longer vote #Labour.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
There is not a version of this, where it all ends well by a notionally centrist party donning the clothes (flags) and policies (hating on minorities) of the Far Right.
It ends badly not only for that notionally centrist party (Labour) but also for the entire population of this country.
We need strong, ethically grounded leadership to reinvigorate democracy and address inequality and climate change.
Anything less and we’re all toast.
And I’m honestly not sure who that much needed ethically grounded leader is right now…
Many are putting their hat in the ring:
- Corbyn and Sultana
- Davey
- Ramsay and Chowns
- Polanski
But we need someone (or a couple) who can unite the Left.
The political system that we’ve known is broken…and the electorate can clearly see that.
So do we wait and slide towards the fascism of Trump’s US or does something very un-British need to happen?
@Juggling With Eggs
Well, the UK is never going to have that as long as it has a monarchy with its thumb on the House of Lords and the House of Commons via the Tories. I can't say that those who voted for "Workable Brexit" Starmer didn't know what they were getting before they voted for him.
The UK quite possibly has entered the duopoly phase of its concept of "ruling party" and "party opposite" whereby the only way to effectively unseat the ruling party is to vote for the party opposite because voting for any other party would leave the ruling party in place. Welcome to your Americanization, UK.
Juggling With Eggs likes this.
I don’t see Starmer as the ‘safe pair of hands’ he was sold to the electorate as. Am I alone in that?
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
You probably should be.
Compare and contrast to Johnson, Kemi Badenoch, Jenrick, Farage.
I didn't notice that the selling proposition was that. though.
More of repair, honesty, competence, and not being a total shit.
The Labour Party does have a rather wide range to accommodate and hold together, and we do not have a Presidential system.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
The Tories and Reform membership don’t rate competence at all…hence the shower you mention. For them it’s all about waging the ongoing election campaign, even when in office.
But that doesn’t by default make Starmer ultra competent.
Very tangential, and rather agricultural.
Starmer occupied high office as DPP, and did it, I think, quite well. That's a demonstration of competence in office.
He also lead a Party to an election success.
Now you may argue that the Tories had disintegrated tot he point they put themselves out of power, or dived for cover as their shit hit their fans, but that is orthogonal.
I'm for bed now, though, so leave it for now please.
Davey was a government minister in the coalition government…during which he managed to completely ignore the brewing Post Office scandal which was part of his brief.
Corbyn has been leader of the Opposition and lost two elections.
Ramsay completely untested…and not the charismatic half of the current Green Party leadership.
Sultana and Chowns also untested.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Um, tangent?
(I've been watching the Post Office/Fujitsu thing since Computer Weekly started reporting it. IIRC Thatcher's lot floated it off out of government supervision. All the shareholders appear to have been lied to.)
Apologies I think our posts crossed. I assumed you were talking about Starmer’s competence in comparison to the other political leaders I’d mentioned.
@Photo55
No, not at all. The unforced errors are his own. The withdrawal of Winter fuel payments was a gift to Reform which circulated its freezing pensioners memes round social media before the first cold snap. Austerity 2.0 is neither necessary nor a winning strategy in a country hobbled by threadbare services and even more threadbare local economies. Cosplaying Theresa May on immigration alienates his own constituency and will never win over a constituency that prefers sincere bigotry to the ersatz copy being cynically played out.
As I've mentioned on other occasions the problem we have is that after the cataclysmic experience of the Brexit years, Johnson's shambolic circus, the lettuce days and the final disintegration of the Conservative Party we've forgotten what ordinary not being very good at politics looks like and mistake not being a howling shit show for being a safe pair of hands.
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
reshared this
Juggling With Eggs and Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
Corbyn is spot on in his writing here…but will people see past his baggage to vote for a party co-led by him when he will almost certainly be an octogenarian by the next election?
Radio Free Trumpistan likes this.
Radio Free Trumpistan reshared this.
I guess it depends whether you think the co-leadership model works.
Does it increase the current Green Party appeal across genders or make them seem like part timers, when it’s a full time job?
There is nothing to suggest that Corbyn is physically/mentally frail in the way that Biden is…but will he leave enough oxygen for Sultana to expand her profile in the public eye?
I guess it’s a British version of Bernie Sanders and AOC. Does that work either side of the pond?
"Biden had a bad debate performance and for the next two months, we had 20 front page stories a day calling him a demented danger to America and demanding that he resign immediately.
Trump, for the first time in his life, is hiding from the media and all you hear from the same exact people is crickets."
~ Greg Fish
reshared this
hypebot, Mastodon Migration, Zhi Zhu 🕸️, Radio Free Trumpistan, xs4me2, Ivey Janette McClelland and Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪 reshared this.
"If Trump is healthy, the obvious solution is for him to appear before the press to answer questions, as was his daily habit, rather than releasing photos that prove nothing other than the fact that he has a motorcade at his disposal and owns a golf cart."
~ Robert B. Hubbell
"The President plans to make a special announcement today at 2pm. So it may well be that Dr. Barbabella is right, that he 'remain[s] in excellent health.' It may well be that this whole thing was a charade, designed to distract us from the Epstein imbroglio; the survivors are coming to Congress when it re-opens tomorrow, after all, and there’s no way POTUS can put a positive spin on what they are about to say."
~ Greg Olear
gregolear.substack.com/p/dying…
Dying Words
Is the President really on death's door? If so, why isn't the White House being honest about it? *Should* they be honest about it? And: what happens if he dies?Greg Olear (PREVAIL by Greg Olear)
"The President is almost 80 years old, he’s morbidly obese, his diet is shit, his ankles are swollen, his hand is bruised, he’s under enormous strain because of the Epstein stuff and the Gavin Newsom trolling and the pressure of the job, he stinks to high heaven because he can’t control his bowels, he almost died of covid, and he’s showing signs of dementia."
Allison Gill wrote already on 31 August,
"Trump hasn’t answered questions or spoken publicly since last Tuesday. There’s clearly something wrong with his gait, his health, his hands, and his heart - and since corporate media refuses to call for his resignation as they called for Biden’s in 2024, I will. Trump must resign the presidency effective immediately."
muellershewrote.com/p/trump-mu…
Trump Must Resign Now
Since corporate media won't call for Trump's resignation, I will.Allison Gill (The Breakdown)
"I do not think the president is dead. He is scheduled to make an Oval Office appearance at 2pm today. However, this kind of disappearing act is cause for concern. The president is accountable to the American people. This administration has been among the least transparent in modern history."
~ Jill Filipovic
jill.substack.com/p/where-is-d…
Where Is Donald Trump?
The president has been out of the public eye for days, and speculation is running wild. We're owed an honest explanation.Jill Filipovic
"And the press seems to have decided that Trump’s physical and cognitive health aren’t of significant concern, or perhaps that those are old stories no one cares about anymore.
It’s a failure all around. And indicative of all the ways in which this president has repeatedly hidden the truth, intimidated journalists, gutted public trust, and created a culture of impunity in the Republican Party."
reshared this
Ned Hamson reshared this.
"Trump scheduled 'an announcement' in the Oval Office for Tuesday afternoon at 2PM ET, exactly a week after the Cabinet meeting.
Knowing this regime, my only prediction is that we will be presented with far more theater than truth."
~ Jim Stewartson
mind-war.com/p/giant-sucking-s…
Giant Sucking Sound: Trump’s Illness Is Creating a Power Vacuum
For a narcissist, leaving center stage is torture.Jim Stewartson (MindWar: The Psychological War on Democracy)
reshared this
Radio Free Trumpistan and Church of Jeff reshared this.
"If that was Joe Biden, clearing his schedule and posting an old picture, it would be on the front of every page! If it was Hillary Clinton being dead of pneumonia times Parkinson’s (she got better), there’d be multiple above-the-fold stories for days. The NYT sent a push alert to notify people that a Parkinson’s doctor had been to the White House, and could have even passed Joe Biden in a hallway, could be!"
~ Marcie Jones
wonkette.com/p/new-york-times-…
New York Times, Washington Post Forget To Investigate If Trump Is Dead
Seems like an oversight!Marcie Jones (Wonkette)
"But no, not even one comment from Jake Tapper, and if there was one word from the Washington Post, LA Times or New York Times, about the President’s disappearance and/or posting of a week-old photo as a proof of life, well, we missed it. The foreign press like BBC and SkyNews noticed, though."
Zhi Zhu 🕸️ reshared this.
"The profound unhealthiness of the Trump moment is all around us: the MAGA social media grifters making bank on quack supplements; its women injected with plastic and hobbled in stilettos like footbound Chinese peasants, the reverence for pollution and worship of fossil fuel extraction, for 'beautiful coal,' and more cracker plants to produce more tons of nurdles just as the rest of the nations on earth are trying to reduce plastic."
~ Nina Burleigh
"And most unforgivable – the deliberate destruction of our national medical research and public health systems to own the libs, save a few tax dollars for billionaires, and commence the great eugenics project openly cherished by the right wing fringe. ...
The doddering old man’s body is metaphor for the ghastly corrupting effect he has had on our country:"
“... in America, we were richer, safer, more powerful, better defended, better fed, more entertained than any civilization had ever been in the history of the world.
And we were willing to burn it all down so we could be mean to people again.”
- Heidi Cuda
bylinesupplement.com/p/hot-typ…
#America #Americans #Cruelty #Bigotry #Racism #Sexism #Trump #MAGA #GOP #USPol #Politics #US #USA #UnitedStates #Meme #Memes #Quote #Quotes
Hot Type: Complying in Advance to the Fall of America
American political columnist Heidi Siegmund Cuda reflects on the tragedy of a country that willingly relinquished to its own cultural destructionHeidi Cuda (Byline Supplement)
libramoon reshared this.
@ZhiZhu Except that they never were most of that. They were poorer, unsafe (subjecting kids to live fire drills), and fed as if they had free healthcare.
Yes they were more powerful and bettter defended. Were they entertained more? I prefer to call it "distracted."
This post should have mentioned George Clooney and his money in particular.
Gave the old guy the boot so that we could elect the other old guy. There's gotta be a special place in hell for him.
ambiguous0
in reply to evacide • • •Alpha Male Martha Stewart 🍉🌈
in reply to evacide • • •Jon
in reply to evacide • • •CW Wilkie
in reply to evacide • • •evacide
in reply to CW Wilkie • • •Gabriel N
in reply to evacide • • •Karl Auerbach
in reply to evacide • • •Mark vW
in reply to evacide • • •Adam
in reply to evacide • • •I thought the U.S. government has been relying on Israeli spyware for years now. A few years ago it even bought Israeli spyware from a company it already blacklisted for working against U.S. interests
seattletimes.com/nation-world/…
Growlph Ibex
in reply to evacide • • •* "Defend the Homeland" is seriously their slogan? Jesus Tonedeaf Christ.
* WHY CAN'T THEY EVEN CENTER IT RIGHT WTF?
Orion Ussner kidder
in reply to evacide • • •slash
in reply to evacide • • •Diogenes Pontifx
in reply to evacide • • •