orclev

Either way a definite improvement over his current state.

Edit: also as with any Trumpian statement it's always safe to assume that reality is the exact opposite of whatever was said.

Trump would make the best tree. He'd be 'UGE! Lots of people are saying it, the best people.

It will last right up until Trumps dumbass policies have them struggling to afford their basic necessities because he kicked off the second great depression, and people are dying in the streets because our healthcare system has collapsed under the load from all the unvaccinated people.

I would say I hope that leads to a moment of self reflection, but I'm not that hopeful. They'll just blame it all on Trump and not the terrible Republican policies they've been supporting for decades.

I mean it's almost certain the value of the dollar is going to tank and that the US is hit with at least a recession if not another depression if Donvict does even half the things he's said he will, but banking a bunch of bitcoin isn't going to help with that. Anything that tanks the dollar will likely tank the value of bitcoin as well. This reads more like a) idiots that don't understand bitcoin and b) an attempt to pump the price up so some of the more heavily invested techbros can exit the market before it tanks.

If they actually wanted to form a strategic reserve they should have picked something with inherent value like buying a bunch of lithium, Iridium, or just plain old gold (which is honestly one of the least valuable metals as it has very few actual uses outside of acting as a corrosion barrier).

I don't see any mention in there of Thalidomide being a mirror molecule, do you have a source for that?

Yep. I'll care when the politicians actually do something besides make speeches. Not that I'm expecting anything at all from the Democrats, they're too busy trying to decide which Republican policy they want to water down and implement next.

I don't think this is "hand slap" level, but it also isn't multiple decades behind bars level which is what they would be looking at for that quantity of CSAM, particularly for a couple of horny teenagers that likely weren't even sure what they were doing was illegal. I do think you're over exaggerating somewhat the harm in this case as fundamentally what was done isn't much different from something like cutting out photos of these girls heads and pasting them into a porn magazine. It's certainly fancier and more convincing, but at the end of the day that's what happened, their faces got superimposed on the bodies of porn stars. That likely bothered these girls in the same way the thought of some random creep jerking off to their original photos would, and if the images were widely circulated it could cause some issues down the line (heartache certainly, but job loss certainly not), but if this bothered them enough to alter the way they feel about sex for the rest of their lives there were already significant mental issues at play.

I honestly don't know exactly what an appropriate level of punishment would be. My gut says something like 6 months to a year in juvenile detention plus some years of probation. I think a significant amount of weight needs to be given to the fact that these were a couple of teenagers doing something that wasn't obviously illegal. They cannot and should not be held to the same standards as adults would be for the same reason statutory rape is a thing, they're incapable of reasoning about their actions to the same degree as an adult is.

You have to admit there is a pretty fundamental difference between manipulating an otherwise legal image to look like a minor in a sexual act vs an actual photo of that same minor engaged in a sexual act. While both might be considered a crime, the damage to the victim is of a fundamentally different nature. I think there's a strong argument that the former bears a closer relationship to slander than it does to rape.

I think the argument in this case isn't that a crime wasn't committed, but rather charging a minor for CSAM possession is inappropriate (particularly when the images are fake). Perhaps a different law needs to be made for these highly specific cases, as the existing CSAM laws typically carry very hefty sentences that don't seem entirely appropriate in a case like this.

This has always been one of the problems with CSAM laws. There have been a number of cases now where minors were charged with CSAM possession for either naked pictures of themselves, or pictures (consensual) of their girlfriend/boyfriend who was also a minor. There's also the broader discussion about what exactly qualifies as CSAM, with some jurisdictions going for a more maximalist approach that considers things like drawings (even highly unrealistic or stylized ones) of people or even fictional characters to be CSAM. Some jurisdictions don't even require the photo or drawing to depict the minor naked or even engaging in a sexual act, they instead define it as pornography if the person in possession of it gets some kind of sexual gratification from it. So for instance a photo of a minor that's fully clothed and just standing there could actually be considered CSAM.

The problem is that it's hard to draw hard lines about what does or doesn't qualify without then leaving loopholes that can be exploited. This is why many jurisdictions opt for a maximalist approach and then leave it to the discretion of the police and prosecutors for what they do or do not consider, but of course that has the flaw that it's entirely arbitrary and leaves a lot of power in the hands of prosecutors and police for something widely regarded as a extremely serious crime.

War on mergers? What in the absolute fuck are they going on about? Our government has never been more friendly to mergers. We need to be breaking corporations up left right and center not approving more mergers.

These fuckers aren't going to be happy until there's just one mega corp that owns literally everything (including the government).

Massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and pollution in general, massive reduction in both poverty and homelessness (ideally homelessness would be eliminated, there's literally nothing stopping that from happening), access to healthcare as a fundamental human right, and massive reduction in wealth inequality would be a good start. On top of that we need better democracies (nothing has fundamentally improved on that front in hundreds of years), and equal protection of rights and access to justice for everyone, not just for the rich, those with the "right" color of skin and who happen to believe in the "right" delusion.

The EU has done a bit for a lot of these points in theory but the execution in many cases has been sloppy, haphazard, and generally ineffective. The rest of the world is looking a lot worse and in many cases is actively regressing. While individual countries at various points in time have seen improvements in individual areas in many cases those improvements were short lived as the various elements of humanity that oppose progress for selfish reasons chip away at and eventually destroy these small gains.

Our science, technology, and medical knowledge do constantly improve, but when all of that is then used for warfare and squeezing profit out of the suffering and misfortune of others the net effect is negative.

It seems like it's almost a law of nature that for every gain and improvement humanity makes in one area, we must have an equal negative impact in another.