Invertedouroboros

As a rimworld player I fear sims players. Rimworld has a certain degree of violence inherent to it, it's part of the game. The Sims though? Particularly unmodified Sims? It inspires creativity. Horrifying, horrifing, creativity.

Along with what the others have said, legally I think it's just too close to the fire for them.

Porn has always existed in a bit of a legal grey area, that much is true. But with the more modern evangelical assault on it I feel like it's more in the grey area than ever.

It's one thing for them to say "I'm sorry Texas, but the ip says it's coming from California. We can't digitally sluth the locations of every user on our site.". It's another for them to say "We got a porn website that's legal in some states and a VPN that's legal in the rest! Assemble it yourself!".

Is it legal to do that? Sure? Probably? I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. Is it smart? No. I don't think it is. Pornhub scrapes by because they can be seen to be putting in the token effort to comply with the puritanical laws foisted upon them. At present, that's enough for everyone to declare victory and go home happy. If pornhub starts flaunting those laws though, by doing things like for example packageing in a service that bypasses state legal restrictions, lawmakers will get pissy and get even more draconian about shit. Which means pornhub will either have to get more creative or maybe won't survive.

It's eminently stupid, but this is the dance we're all locked in at the moment.

I only "disagree" in the sense that I don't think they're thinking that far ahead.

I think a lot of what's driving a lot of the more stupid capitalist behavior lately is an emphasis on stock price above all else. Don't get me wrong, capitalism never had a fantastic incentive structure, but right now I think that the base instinct is to do whatever you can to bump that stock price. Even if that means laying off your workforce and ripping the copper out of the walls.

It comes out to the same place at the end of the day. Eventually you'll simply do too much damage to the company and you certainly don't want to be the one left holding the bag. But... I genuinely feel like noone's thinking beyond the current quarter. It's like capitalism's in a panic mode where "the apocalypse is happening tomorrow so you might as well cash in whatever you've got" and has been for years.

I love how deep-facebook boomer mindrot is the official stance of my government! It only got better when the mindrot could generate itself at the low low price of boiling an ocean!

Fuck this reality man. Who can I talk to about cashing it in for a new one?

Not sure the UK's interested in having us back at this point.

It's that "everyone with a brain" bit that's different now. Because you're right, nothing here is new. Trump and Epstein's ties have been pretty common knowledge to anyone not in the cult.

What's changed is that those inside the cult can't really ignore it anymore. They went from "the democrats are all pedophiles and the Epstein files prove it!" to "they have the Epstein files on their desks, they are just doing some final checks before they release them" to "there are no Epstein files, there never were any Epstein files, and if you think different you need to shut up.". Cognitive dissonance may be a powerful force, but "the Epstein files" have been the conspiracy bread and butter that's been holding this cult together for a while now. They were probably willing to bend on just about anything but that.

A lot of hay is made out of the fact that Trump managed to fuck up running a casino, and it’s true. In a business where the saying goes "the house always wins", it takes a special breed of incompetance to bankrupt the house. This feels very similar. Dude could have said that aliens stole the Epstein files, Q-anon folks would have bought it. Or better yet don't say anything at all. I think a lot of folks wouldn't have bat an eye if Trump's cronies were still "working on releasing the Epstein files" in 2028.

But he didn't do that. He made a huge song and dance about "releasing the Epstein files" then obviously canned it at the last minute. For the rabid conspiracy theoriests that comprise his base, the folks who were willing to invent an entire child trafficing code for pizzagate, that was probably the one manuver even he couldn't pull.

Will this mean anything in the long run? Well, I've kinda had my hope beaten out of me in that respect. But this does kinda feel different, I will say that.

Yeah, I think this is more valuable to her as conservative bonafides than anything. "I stood up to libral, woke, Disney and won!" will probably play great fox news and the other rocks these folk thrive beneath. It's a further step in a career in the rightwing culture-war bullshit sphere, not back twords Disney.

This has been a republican strategy decades in the making. The comment above framed it as an arms race and that's a good way to put it. They’ve had the overthrow of democracy in their heads as an objective and have undertaking a concerted strategy to achieve it.

The democrats were always going to be at a disadvantage simply responding to that, but that disadvantage is made a lot worse by the fact that they don't seem to want to respond to it. They have an idea of what this country is and that comes with a bunch of lines their unwilling to cross. Meanwhile republicans had a clear idea of what they want this country to be and were willing to trample any line, break any law or norm, in order to make it a reality.

This? The news story we're responding to? It may represent the first stumbling steps off the starting line. But it doesn't change the fact that the starting pistol sounded decades ago and the republicans have been running the whole time.

Too little, to late. I don't want that sentiment to be true, but I find it hard to look at this situation and view it in any other way.

Yeah, I know. Just leaving room for miracles I guess.

On paper there's plenty that could. The Supreme Court could have stepped in to stop a lot of this. Executive orders only stand in places where a full fledged law from congress doesn't cover the issue. The military is theoretically as obligated to disobey an unlawful order as they are to obey a lawful one and states are theoretically pretty insulated from federal interference except in a few explicit areas.

But, we don't live on paper and none of those protections exist unless there are people out there who are ready, willing, and able, to act on them. What happens if the Supreme Court somehow manages to rule against the administration and they just flagrantly disregard the order? What happens if Trump orders the military to start attacking US citizens openly or starts an illegal war without congressional approval? What happens if Trump runs for president again in 2028? Or just says he's president for life and we're not doing elections anymore?

The answer is nothing, unless people stand up against him. And... so far... we haven't seen much of that. Not from people in government at any rate. We've seen a bit from normal folks on the ground in places like LA, but our government's been working to neuter the power of popular protest since the civil rights protests, perhaps even earlier. So reasonable people can disagree on the efficacy of that.

I really don't want to echo the doomer line I've seen written here a lot, but yeah, we're probably fucked. Like maybe if something was done like... a decade ago? Two? Maybe we wouldn't be in this situation. But... as things stand? I don't even know if the damage from the first Trump presidency can ever truly be repaired and more damage is being done on a weekly, almost a daily basis. Personally? I think it's only a matter of time before this man breaks the global economy irreparably. In a way that simply can't be swept under the rug again. Domestically? Who the fuck knows at this point? I have to resist the urge to laugh out loud whenever people ask where I see myself in five years because at this point I've got no idea what the next two weeks are gonna hold.

So... yeah. Fun times in the ol US of A.

I mean, we kinda already ended up there with the Ashley Madison hack in 2015. Problems with that site aside, I feel like it's kinda the blueprint for everything wrong with companies that retain personally identifable info on folks. If a company collects details like your driver's license, it's not a question of if it gets out but when. There's just no way to collect that sort of data and truly keep it safe.

But, it seems like we've kinda forgotten how to learn lessons in the modern day, so I'm sure this was an isolated issue and we'll never see it's like again.

(/s on that last part, just in case that wasn't blindingly obvious.)

Every day we get closer to teaching the robots how to feel pain.