Good while Ukraine holds on to it. Worried about the safety of these international folks if Russia regains control… they don’t have a good record here, if the safety record of journalists in the area is anything to go by.

Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post

Isn’t that literally a Miss Manner’s lesson?

I don’t buy it. I wanna see who the “joke” was shared with originally along with details about the additional “context”.

I mean even Ralph Nader, who ran under the Green Party in 1996 and 2000, agrees with AOC.

In his own words,

That’s the problem. The Green Party doesn’t run enough local candidates. You can’t have a national campaign without local candidates. They have about 250 local candidates … They’re not serious.

Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/ralph-nader-third-party-politics-2024-interview/

For those who don’t get the joke: the election is this year and it is held every four years, so Stein isn’t going to run for election next year because she wouldn’t run for an election that a) is already over or b) isn’t being held yet and is several years in the future.

First, what does this have to do with US Politics?

It’s about political repression in Hollywood, a silencing of voices and opinions that’s happening in the US.

I mean, you can’t get more US than Hollywood, right?

Second, Hollywood stars mentioned have money. They can put it where their mouth is.

Perhaps not for much longer…

Mexican actor Melissa Barrera was fired from the Scream franchise
Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon was dropped by her talent agency

Hmm, but now they are denying it. I don’t know what to believe: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-polio-taliban-vaccination-deny-who/33122994.html

If they hadn’t denied it, then I would have imagined that the Taliban was so disorganized that they just discovered this - or at least, just realized the potential implications (just connected the dots). That might still be the case, and the denial is simply a false one with the purpose to not worsen their reputation on the world stage.

Still concerned that it’s fueling a lot of mistrust with the vaccination process though. One would hope that since it wasn’t through UN/WHO then any UN/WHO programs would remain trusted, but who knows?

This made more sense in 2016 (when folks might have hated him but wanted to deliver a shock to the system).

But even now there’s a quote that explains why he attracts as much support as he does: “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/trump-shutdown-voter-florida

That was Wagner, which at the time was technically separate from Russia’s regular military. (Think of it as being akin to a private military company.) And they were lead by the head of Wagner. I think the equivalent in the Russian military would be Putin himself - so I’m not sure if we can expect the same sort of thing nowadays, as a military leader below Putin wouldn’t be expected to command the same level of loyalty over Putin’s army that the head of Wagner did over the Wagner troops.

Shows how desperate the Russian side is if they’re willing to sacrifice such highly skilled individuals in a regular infantry assault. They are running out of manpower for their campaign.

The guy seems like a career specialist based on the article. Lots of regular conscripts have tried to surrender or run away but this guy fought in Russian proxy wars long before the Ukraine conflict. So he’s not the type to disobey an order like this.

When you think about it, the GOP sorta kinda did this to themselves, by loosening restrictions on gun ownership so much…

It’s well known that background checks are delayed, so the law simply says the gun shop can sell if the background check takes too long. Apparently they also don’t do anything if, after the gun is sold, the check comes back with a big red flag.

Sadly he’ll likely be able to assert a first amendment defense, so nothing will happen. One can always hope, though…

The difference is of course obvious to anyone who’s not knee deep in MAGA. (Hint: being a threat to democracy can unfortunately invite this sort of thing).

Still, really? This is what political discourse has come to lately? I mean, what the …

From Meltdown to gagdown.

But I’d add - if someone could draft this up and show me a working prototype, I might be easier to convince. It’s a lot easier to think about something when you can play with an idea.

I mean sure…but essentially you’re using the facts as they stand as justification that it will never work

More or less.

when my whole point is that these facts as they stand need to change because they will never work unless we change them.

I think to make that argument you’d have to first argue that this works elsewhere. But we see warnings like this, https://web.archive.org/web/20221104001618/https://old.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/comments/yljj15/swifties_be_warned_that_this_is_a_fake_account/ or like this, https://www.instagram.com/czaronline/p/CvAts_9MFDf/

then I’m not at all convinced that this is the case.

You can tweet at celebrities, and you can follow celebrities on instagram, and all the other services, but you generally can’t email them.

Perhaps it’s a generational thing? Back in the day you could. Bill Gates used to be reachable at [email protected] and Jeff Bozos at [email protected]

On the flip side, just because a celebrity has a handle on a particular social media service doesn’t guarantee you can reach them. Taylor Swift has a tumblr but she hasn’t publicly used it in years.

People keep using email, and domains as reasons for why it’s not an issue, but there’s a reason celebrities aren’t known for their email.

What’s the reason? Two things come to my mind: first, Bill Gates supposedly said he had an entire team whose job was just to read and respond to his public email.

Second, email is direct contact, like a DM rather than a tweet (that everyone sees). The email equivalent would be a mailing list. If you want that, you can join Taylor Swift’s mailing list over at https://www.taylorswift.com/#mailing-list

you wouldn’t want a second abff08f4813c to exist.

I wouldn’t mind that much, tbh. Though considering the username in question, it’s very unlikely.

Even if you don’t use tiktok, you would want to make sure nobody else has the name abff08f4813c on tiktok.

Much harder with a name like Taylor Swift. How many other people have the same name? Even on twitter there’s a different taylorswift - so the famous singer is taylorswift13 there.

now suddenly 300 more abff08f4813c on 300 different instances all pop up.

My username is probably the wrong one to use for this example.

But more generally - does anyone want to be [email protected] and [email protected] and [email protected] and [email protected] all at once? (Well, okay, yes there probably is someone who wants that, with bad intentions, but practically speaking it’s kinda obvious that these aren’t all official email accounts by the singer.)

Because if you try to sue one person on one other instance that has abff08f4813c,

But Taylor Swift may not be able to sue the other person - she’s not the only one named Taylor Swift after all.

What I’m suggesting is, no matter which instance you’re on, if you search abff08f4813c, the search should find that username, and direct you to the profile that corrilates with you. And even though that profile is only on one instance, it would make it so if I tried to make abff08f4813c, on another instance, I would be told that username is already taken.

And then someone tries to be abffo8f4813c or abff08f48i3c.

I don’t see any celebrity who values their own brand on an international scale, be willing to publically announce they are on the fediverse,

uh … https://joinfediverse.wiki/Notable_Fediverse_accounts

and their fans can migrate to the fediverse to follow them.

I mean, there’s no accounting for the fans, sure. If anything, celebs seek out platforms that have lots of people to connect them with fans, rather than them bring fans to a platform, I’d guess.

From there, you could absolutely create an old twitter style verification system.

Sure, but it’s not a required step.

Mastodon.social could implement a mimic of the old twitter style verification system for folks who join that particular instance - and those joining another instance simply wouldn’t have the guarantee.

And then threads can implement the verification system for folks joining directly through threads - and again those joined on another instance simply wouldn’t have the guarantee.

And then Bluesky can …

I don’t really see anyone but a commercial company even trying to do this - it’d be a headache - and probably expensive - in terms of the requirements to protect the data used (such as identify card verification).

Unfortunately and with deep regrets, I think it’d be tough. From https://lipskylowe.com/when-are-false-accusations-of-racism-defamation/ there are four points:

False Statement about the target was stated as fact (not opinion)
Publication or communication of that statement to a third person
Fault on the part of the person making the statement amounting at least to negligence
Harm to the subject of the statement (damages)

Considering how hard he’s publicly pushed the story as a true fact, I think prongs 1 and 2 have been met. Alas, I can see 3 being not reached (he checked with his constituents who claimed the story was true and a judge accepts that as sufficient due diligence).

And 4 would be the hardest - how does one prove damages (like a dollar amount) and that they were specifically caused by his comments?

This is outrageous. Wonder if there are any grounds for a lawsuit - if that route is possible, then I’d expect the union to get their *** handed to them at the end of it.

This. Exactly this.