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the gathering’s keynote speaker: Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whom President Donald Trump is also reportedly considering for attorney general.

I could see how Trump’s EPA administrator and Trump’s AG would both need the same qualification: the ability to deny the most factually convincing reality out of existence. The man could do a few more jobs, like explaining that America is not suffering from inflation, that gas prices have not gone up, or that jobs are plentiful in America!

With a few more years under his belt, he could probably also convincingly explain whatever the administration is doing in Iran. So far, every rationalization of that mess has sounded like my 4-year-old nephew trying to explain special relativity.

The man committed tax fraud to the tune of $30k. That’s not nothing, but when you hear that Trump paid nothing in taxes for years and that his “charitable” foundation was shuttered because of abuse of tax law, you sort of wonder whether the government has the right priorities.

Just kidding, of course this man was just another notch in the quota collection bin. I am sure the ICE officers got a tiny chubby when they heard the words, “probation officer,” as that meant they could detain and deport.

Never heard of it before, thanks for posting!

That’s how it all started for me: I had Netflix and Spotify from ages before, and then Netflix did their, “ads or double the price” thing and Spotify gave me more and more corporate music instead of what I wanted, so I dropped them both and switched to YouTube Premium for both music and video content.

OMG I feel like when I found out that Borat was not scripted, which makes the movie 600 trillion times funnier!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Coward#Jizz

It is REAL!!

I think the key here is to get used to react immediately, because the immediate reaction causes a reversal of the action. We don’t have to live with the increased cost and decreased service forever, because an immediate negative reaction means the service is restored to what it was before, with any luck. So everybody skips a downgrade or price increase at the same time, and until CEOs figure out the trick, it’s bye bye enshittification.

Okay, fine, I am ready to come out of the closet: I’ve been a YouTube Premium subscriber for two years. Lynch me if you like. I thought it hypocritical to crucify YouTube and have a Spotify or Netflix or Hulu subscription, and I found the cost acceptable.

Three price increases and a worsening of service later, I cancelled my subscription as soon as I received the email about a price increase.

Incidentally, I think that’s the thing to do: you get a price increase, there is no tangible benefit to the increase, you immediately drop the service. None of that “Whatchagonnado?” stuff. The only thing these services react to is an instant drop of revenue. You can live for a month without Spotify (or YouTube Premium), they can’t live for a quarter without subscribers.

We always have to remember that the short-term focus of modern capitalism is their weakness: a stupid mistake, a sudden drop in revenue, and the CEOs are flying out the window faster than Putin’s generals.

To be “fair” to hard-line settler types, the mood of the world is swinging so strongly against them and their regime, this might be the very last time they have a chance to get what they want.

Hopefully, they’ll never find a world again that is as complacent as it is now.

A’right, this is disgusting, but it’s really not Reddit’s fault if a Grand Jury requests evidence.

So who are they going to levy war against?

Mostly, it seems, that feeling of emptiness that invades their soul when their bank account hasn’t grown by 20% in a day.

You are so mean! I had just stopped crying over not getting the new version of OS/2 the other week!

Also, we always think, “This is the worst it can possibly get!” and then history proves us wrong :-(

because of financial concerns

Yeah, I am calling bullshit on that explanation. The services that were enjoyable just a few years ago are now absolutely dog shit. Low quality shows, unexplained cancellations, increased number and length of ads, release schedules meant to keep you on forever, password and location crackdowns, VPN rejections…

It’s become a garbage product, even if people had tons of disposable income they’d think three times before subscribing again.

OP, I tried out one of those guaranteed offers. it’s a giant scam: they told me amount X, but they’d send an inspector to adjust in minor details. The inspector came, they made me wait another week, and then offered “guaranteed” 60% of X. The whole thing wasted two weeks of my time that I could have spent finding a buyer.

Note: when you sign a contract as a seller with a realtor, you are generally on the hook for the commission even if you don’t sell through the realtor. You could force a clause into the contract that makes that exception, but the realtor is realistically going to wait with marketing until that’s sorted out. You’d still lose time, basically.

Now, if you are not currently talking with a realtor, you might as well invite as many of the cash offers into your place to give you a binding offer. I’d make sure they are still reputable firms that aren’t just there to scope your place or to sell your information, but if you are not actively thinking of contacting a realtor, you might as well talk to these people and see if they are for real. Do not sign anything, of course, until the final number is there.

You are absolutely right, but the time frame for a traditional house sale is still in the month range, at least. The only way around it is a cash buyer that voids all inspections, because just coordinating a mortgage, appraisal, inspection, and mandatory repairs takes some time.

If you are lucky, you’ll find a cash buyer with no contingencies, but it’s rather rare, depending on how (little) desirable the property and the location are.

It’s weird how the first-past-the-post voting system emerged. You start with geographic areas that are tightly integrated and only loosely associated with the greater polity. Then the polity is integrated and it is less important to elect someone for specifically your place. Then parties are formed that represent factions of the polity instead of the place.

Once national parties are formed and geography is not the primary distinguishing factor, first-past-the-post in geographic districts makes no sense. In fact, gerrymandering is only possible because geographic districts make no sense any longer and it makes no difference to you as a voter if you are in one of them or the other. You are going to vote for party anyway.

I showerthoughted the other day a possible explanation: the Republicans are by aggregate reckless, the Democrats feckless. The Republicans cheer any stupid thing Trump does because they are reckless and don’t consider or care about consequences. When the consequences come, the Democrats are too feckless to punish him and simply clean up the mess until Republicans find some new angle to bullshit the people into voting for them. Then the cycle reboots.

Every time the cycle restarts, the Republican gets worse. Reagan was bad, but in the moment his economic recipe worked. Then there was Bush, and he created the double calamity of the Iraq war and the 2008 Great Recession. Then there was Trump #45, and that was all about wealth redistribution towards the richest and enriching himself while his country was dying of COVID. Now we are at #47 and it’s as if we are doing a speedrun towards the cliff.

Right now, it feels as nothing could top this shit show. But I am sure some Republican, somewhere, is thinking to himself, “Hold my beer!”

That is some garbage take. The opinion of the Secretary of (gag) War means very little when it comes to threat assessment. There are specialty services that report on that, and a whole National Security Council that is tasked with advising the President on this precise matter.

If someone is pinning this on Hegseth, it’s in bad faith. He is performing as well as you’d expect from a recovering alcoholic with military experience limited to lower ranks. It was clear as day when his name was announced that he was just going to be the conduit of the White House. With his personal flair in essence consisting of all kinds of religiously motivated bigotry and a weirdly homoerotic idea of what soldiers should be and look like.

If anyone thought he’d give you more than “Boom! Boom!” and “Everything is perfect,” that is definitely on them.

In particular, the judge that signed the warrant should face questions. What kind of “evidence” of misconduct was presented and was it sufficient to grant such an outlandish remedy?

Very, very fair points. I wondered sometimes why no enterprising manufacturer simply took an existing ICE car and made an EV conversion kit. Like a conversion kit for a 2010 Honda Civic, take out the ICE engine etc. and replace it all with electric. That’s the car we want.