I saw the video of this a little earlier. He smirked with the “My heart goes out to you” part. 🤢

I heard he almost wasn’t confirmed in the church in the first place, but I didn’t know about the gaming website editorial staff resigning. Wow.

I’m also considering alternatives to Proton myself. I’ve seen the privacy-oriented communities give a bunch of options. Search “Privacy” and you’ll see them listed. Tuta probably isn’t bad as a paid account but the free app left a lot to be desired the last time I checked (no message search or sorting like Proton).

There’s been controversy over a founder’s public backing of the US Republican party.

I came to comments to find out what “gills” kicking in meant. 😂

(Now Kerry Ann’s comment makes sense but the original still doesn’t.)

Congrats! I hope the two kitties will get along well. :)

I’m so sorry. Rest in Peace, little snuggler. 🕊

I didn’t read it. A day or two before this was posted, I watched a video commentary where the clip of her interview was played. I heard it in her own words. Unfortunately I go through a lot in a week so I don’t remember whose video I saw it on. The interview was originally on MSNBC though, so you can probably find the original clip by searching for that.

Thanks for the correction. I shouldn’t use those terms interchangeably.

Anyone can be ushered into a cult if their channels of information are limited, especially in this increasingly isolated world. Something related I’d estimate is true of most people, regardless of affiliation, is that they can be viciously loyal to communities they strongly identify with.

When chances arise that they might be receptive to it, the right person/people can reach out to misled folks like her. Condescending or patronizing them will just push them away. Should be obvious no one is going to listen to people they perceive as not recognizing their dignity as a human being.

Probably the only ones among that crowd that are truly impossible to reach would be the subset that are as narcissistic as Trump himself and see themselves in him-- the ones who do fully get what Trump is doing, and like it. Many of them are likely in hate groups or working in positions of authority because they want to power trip over others. The rest are just ordinary people who were brought up in a way that made an opening for them to be duped.

Repentant. In the interview, she said that at some point people on Twitter opened her eyes and she realized that she was in a cult. She thinks she belongs in jail.

Not that different. They’ve got the same kind of face. 🙂

Aw, like Dexter the orange cat / cardboard hole puncher)

Very open to it. Just want to respect indigenous land claims.

What? I was talking about what used to be called alt-right recruiting channels. This is the kind of thing they would do (but more skillfully). I got the impression he heard what to do from them and then went and botched it, trying it out.

I suspect the idea is to disarm the folks who are still in denial by making these familiar names sound all cute and cuddly. (He’s not anywhere near successful at pulling it off thankfully, but it strikes me as the kind of thing they’d try to do in subtler ways through their social media pipelines, where there are reportedly stages of indoctrination.)

I would tend to assume the first two here are LLM nonsense; the last is a confused human. Might be wrong, but I steer clear of that garbage so it’s not going to hurt anything if I’m not.

I guess since they’re no longer an official now, it doesn’t matter to them.

They’re definitely going to make criminal amounts of money off this one way or another, but he still has to put up a pretense (like the incomplete border wall).

Also, I don’t know about Masayoshi Son, but I suspect this is a prestige thing for Sam Altman and Larry Ellison, among their billionaire buddies. I don’t know if Altman in particular is going to be okay with just bailing from something high profile.

I can’t help envisioning long-term corporate welfare here (similar to Musk companies, hence his jealous jabs about it), nominal jobs (with a sudden loss of job security as soon as AI can replace them), and horrid potential uses for the AI advances they do make.

Yup, even if the short-lived boost I mentioned was about the people who will do work in the datacentres, he’s really doing this to benefit the tech billionaires he has swarming around him lately.

Believe me, I’m no fan of the guy but for now he is trying to spin the Stargate thing as a job creating measure. Hell, in the short-to-medium term, it could well spur some short-lived economic benefits within the US. Beyond that though, it will probably be disastrous. I really hope world governments have the sense to develop countermeasures as soon as possible, with high priority.