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Cake day: March 12th, 2025

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  • There are some legal scenarios under which this could technically happen, but it would be monumental and shocking if the Trump regime could actually manage to wield the coordination and leverage the trust needed to pull it off:

    Peabody, email to FactCheck.org, Nov. 15: There are actually five fairly clear scenarios through which a twice-elected president could again become or act as president:

    Such a person could[:]

    (1) serve as Vice President and then become President in the case of removal, death or resignation of the President

    (2) serve as Vice President and then act as President during a period in which the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the Office, as authorized by (a) a written declaration from the President him or herself, or (b) through the VP and a “majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments” or some other authorized body indicating that the President is disabled/unable to discharge the duties of the office (25th Amendment)

    (3) become Vice President-elect and then President if “at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President-elect shall have died” (20th Amendment)

    (4) become Vice President-elect and then act as President if “a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of [the] term, or if the President-elect shall have failed to qualify” (20th Amendment)

    (5) act as President under circumstances provided for by the Succession Act of 1947 which kicks in [when] both the President and the VP are unable to discharge their duties

    Despite Vance having the electability of a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, it would be pretty delicious to see him become President with Trump as his VP, only for Vance to refuse to resign. Watching the administration eat itself to get him out would be the height of irony.



  • This is a small piece of the slow and steady march to fascism and genocide we have been warned about for generations.

    Trump is a borderline vegetable and is now essentially a populist figurehead for the de facto Christian and white nationalist leaders that he delegated power to: JD Vance, Russel Vought, Pete Hegseth, Steven Miller, and so on. These people are openly racist and gleefully fascist and the idea that they can’t put brown and queer people in real, Nazi-style concentration camps is dangerously shortsighted. They absoloutely despise us, and have dedicated their lives to figuring out ways to subvert our democratic system to get back us for daring to reject their authoritarian way of life.

    The surveillance state is built. Our devices are being turned against us. All the data they need to find and imprison enemies of the fascist state is there for the taking.

    When you see these capabilities being sold as features, ask yourself why can’t these “features” be turned off?


  • The electronic machine you’re operating, and the electrons flowing through it that illuminate the screen constitute a highly ordered abstraction that your human brain interprets to have meaning. The software implementing that abstraction has been structured with paradigms developed over decades with functionality specifically created for you to manage the information displayed to you. Such is the power of these technologies that they are widely regarded to have culminated in a digital information age of revolution. One of the defining moments of that age is the point at which the software, which previously was designed to implement the will and preferences of the user, began changing to instead serve the developer. It could be said that the fundamental philosophy of social media software has become to optimize it such that the user continues to use it while still freely feeding it information and being subject to manipulation.

    The abstraction has become hostile, and the tools to manage the information displayed are quickly disappearing as the implementation is abstracted away. The ability to block mimetically harmful information is being designed out of software - exposure to advertising, propaganda, violent or disturbing content, and even the addictive abstractions themselves, have become requirements for use. The filtering and management of information through the hardware and software that you OWN is not just a feature, it is a RIGHT that must be intrinsic to its design.

    In my view, the use of blocking technology should not be considered a human social action with emotional weight, but rather a mechanical one like switching off a light or moving an object out of the way. They are information management tools built to serve YOU, the user. If the technology you are using does not serve you, then who are you serving?









  • This reminds me of ELIZA, a natural language processing program from the 60’s that induced what they coined as the ELIZA effect, a tendency to anthropomorphize the computer. Joseph Wizenbaum, the computer scientist who created ELIZA, wrote Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation in which he contends that while artificial intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions, as they will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom.

    Most people STILL have no concept of how digital mass surveillance functions, what it can do, and how it can be used to manipulate them right now, today. Now, it’s common practice to pour your heart out to and have intimate extended relationships with AI systems controlled by the very same corporate surveillance complex.

    The danger is not that AI will become self aware and turn against humanity, it is that people will not realize that it has already been turned against us by its masters.