anon6789

I’m always interested in these situations where Trump is caught in the middle of 2 actual rich/powerful people to see where his position will land.

I feel dirty given the source being NY Post, but it’s the biggest coverage I can find on this, and the sucking up to Trump I feel is the best context given his fairly reliable vanity leading him to who he likes or not. It offers a look at the other side of OP’s article.

Los Angeles-based Leonid Smirnov, who fled Soviet communism in the 1970s, says he’s in a race against time to save Glavprodukt — the Campbell’s of Russia — which he founded in 1999 and built into a household name in his homeland.

“What’s happening with my company is a raid under a government seizure and confiscation attempt,” he told The Post.

And if it can happen to him, he said in a warning to Trump, it can happen to any of hundreds of US-owned companies operating in Russia, after President Vladimir Putin set his sights on foreign businesses after the invasion of Ukraine.

About a dozen companies have been put under “temporary management” in the past three years. Smirnov’s Glavprodukt was the first American-owned company to be targeted, and is famous across the motherland for its canned soups, vegetables, fish, and meat.

With the FTC being the only agency with any independence left at the end of this week when the regulation oversight executive order goes in effect, the current regime is still hesitant to outright screw with American money, at least for big time businesses and investors.

Since then, he said, the Moscow-based company — which employed 1,000 workers across three factories — had begun taking losses for the first time. Overall, he estimates the company has lost as much as 30 percent of its value.

“We basically have this company being destroyed on a daily basis,” said Smirnov.

He supplied partially obscured photos of himself to The Post, saying he now fears for his and his family’s safety.

Two weeks ago, a court ordered the seizure of cash and assets connected to Glavprodukt. Russian prosecutors claimed he had been illegally sending dividends from the business to the U.S.

It was all part of a pressure campaign, said Smirnov, to force him to sell at a knock-down price.

“I put 26 years of my life into that … building this company from scratch,” said Smirnov.

How does one run an oligarchy if the oligarchs don’t maintain faith in you?

Just a note, I’m not pro anyone in this story. I want Ukraine to get their country back (all of it) and for anyone who may have broken the law to see justice. I’m mainly here to ponder the ways this will make Trump enjoy his position as “peace broker” miserable as he needs to weasel between 2 groups he really really wants to like him, but he can only please one or none of them.

Glad to help!

They’re not deportations because the people being sent there are not from there.

Bukele, the Salvadorian ruler, is a fellow authoritarian, and told Marco Rubio he would disappear whoever they wanted for cash.

Guantanamo Bay is US territory, and our government would be responsible for what happens to these people, but by sending them to a cooperative 3rd party country, Trump and company have declared their hands clean of what happens to anyone sent there after that, and as they are out of US territory, we have no means to ever get any of them back.

They are now talking about sending people born in the US there if they are “bad enough.”

Here is a pretty short article that gives you some more specifics if you want.

If you’ve ever spoken out against the government in writing/online, are part of a labor union, or any kind of minority or LGBT or care about anyone that is, you should get up to speed on this quickly.

They’re good. This is the second time I’ve had one. It’s like a regular pancake but a bit denser and it has a nice crisp to the outside. I mostly wanted to maple syrup (my brother is friends with the guy who made it) for my sore throat.

We’ve got the Aldi house brand ones. Good stuff!

A Ricola cough drop, or if that doesn’t count, a generic Kodiak Cake.

I don’t want to have to deal with the mod stuff, exactly like OP said. I’m just here to promote owls, conservation, and wildlife rehab. I do have a great mod that lets me do pretty much anything I want and will do stickies and banner changes and such for me, and I just keep giving good content.

But if the US asks for Europe to consider American opinions, wouldn’t that in itself be diversity?! Paradoxical! 🤔

That sounds like it could help people out. I imagine sometimes you might not know you need to talk to someone unless somebody brings to the idea.

That reminds me that I remember different companies that do gifts (I think I got emails from ProFlowers, for instance) that they send emails a month or so out from holidays like Mother’s/Father’s Day to click anything on the email so you don’t get those promos.

I wish everyone could do the same. The dang veterinarian that we used years ago kept sending me annual checkups for years after they had to put a few of my pets down. That always really bummed me out, and that’s not a person…

We also got the Nestle baby formula sample thing in the mail after my ex’s miscarriage. That one was not very appreciated either.

I feel I got on a tangent, but once I started replying I got reminded of less sensitive companies…

I actually saw a post to our town’s community page last night that the big local funeral home holds a once a month meeting in different topics to help people discuss these matters.

The coming event is a tour of the crematory where you can see the equipment, what can be done with the cremains, and a Q and A to determine if that is something you’d want for yourself.

A previous one was green burials, which I’m really bummed that I missed!

One person commented it was morbid, but the two from the funeral home said the last crematory tour had around 100 show up.

If you search “death conversations” or “death cafe” near you, you may be able to find something similar.

You can still invest in cash while getting the tax advantages of making contributions. Don’t leave money on the table!

Honestly, as someone who largely disliked social media and was typically a lurking doomscroller that was ready to quit social media altogether at the reddit app ban, what made the best change ever was becoming someone who is primarily a poster.

I post what I want, when I want, and I get to start the conversation that way. It’s always a topic I want to talk about, and it’s something there isn’t much to argue about, and all the interactions will be 99% positive.

It’s a small crowd here, so you can get people that are ready to talk with whoever reaches out to the masses first.

You can take time replying to people, and if no one is talking at the moment, it gives you time to plan a next post.

Pick a topic you enjoy and make yourself our local expert. That prompts you to keep actively learning about something you enjoy too so you can answer people’s questions they ask you.

It’s great it’s not an all or nothing thing. It lets you see what components make a bigger difference and then you can pick and choose what you do when.

I wish trial sizes were a thing though. GF bought a ton of stuff that either didn’t help or made her hair worse, so there’s a lot of 90% unused bottles, which at least I end up experimenting with, but some of the styling stuff I don’t use so it just sits there forever.

That’d be a good business for someone with more patience than I. Buy all this stuff and sell little travel sizes a la carte. One year I got her a ton of perfume sample so she could find new fragrances without a big upfront expense and she’s really enjoyed that, and we learned Kohls sells a few products like that we’re you get a few samples for the price of a single bottle and it gives you a code to get a discount off the one you like best.

I always had straight and flat hair and kept it really short for the last 20 years. The girlfriend tried curly girl for awhile and while her hair isn’t really curly, it really made the waves much more dramatic and it looked amazing.

We’re not big on regimented routines though, so while she stopped it after a while, we still get most of the same products, and even just with that selective purchasing, her hair is still nicer and softer than before, and it made me want to grow my hair out, and now I have very handsome looking waves I never thought would have been possible for me.

The Curly Girls speak the truth, even if cowashing and plopping sound like silly things!

That’s very much how I read it. “Be grateful you got what you got, and if you don’t kiss my ass and give me a big payment, I’m leaving you and your people to rot. I’m fine either way.”

Every day I think it’s going to be hard to make me be more ashamed of my country, but they do it with such ease.

Zelensky took it like a champ though, and I got to watch much of the video after my original comment, and while Vance was trashing him for not saying thank you nicely enough, when he mentioned the brave people of Ukraine, that was when Zelensky said thank you again as he was being talked over.

As Zelensky implied, everyone is going to have a price to pay for the result of this, however it ends. Ukrainian ,Russian, and North Korean citizens are just the first to feel it. I don’t want any of them to die, but since everyone spent the last 11 years tiptoeing around this issue, now there is a huge sunk cost for those nations, when the rest of the world should have stepped up sooner. After all the death and destruction, why would Ukraine now not only give up to Russia, but now the US also trying to steal their resources? Trump promises to take from Ukraine but will not commit to Ukraine’s safety. They’ve already learned what a deal with Putin means, and they’ve had 4 years of seeing what Trump deals look like, and what he’s doing to Americans right now.

Even with some news agencies being kicked out in the first 40 days of the presidency, there are still good pointed questions being asked. They aren’t always the ones making it to the front page of anyone’s feeds, which I think is terrible, but I don’t feel most everyday people in the US know or care what is going on with all they are facing. We’re on political posting space, so we often forget we are way more heavily invested in knowing world events compared to most people, just as near everyone uses computers, but only a few of us know how to build on or program one. We’re not prepared in school to follow these events, and our society does not put emphasis on learning them. Broadcast news and for profit media will give what people care about at large, if it’s valuable news or rubbish. There are still outlets that deliver the boring plain facts to those like us here though, and I think we need more solidarity for that. Not all media has fallen in line behind Trump or the billionaires, and many are still doing all they can to report on these important issues. If they weren’t providing the facts, Trump wouldn’t be banning people from press events, Bezos wouldn’t be forcing out editors, and Musk and Zuck wouldn’t need to spend so much money pushing propaganda. We need to embrace tighter than ever what we do have, even if it is imperfect, or soon we will not have that either.

This article has some of the grossest stuff I’ve ever heard.

Trump and Vance accused Zelensky of being ungrateful for three years of American support, telling him he was in no position to tell the US how it should feel about it.

Those years of support were certainly due to no thanks to you. You hated every bit of help that was given to them, and now you want them to thank you for it??? I believe the US could go in and do to the Russian occupied territory what the Russians thought they could do to Ukraine and roll them over almost immediately. But instead, this admin is ready to leave them for dead unless they give up their only key to financing their rebuild without foreign “help.” This is not seeking cooperation of an ally, it is extorsion.

Trump accuses Zelensky of “gambling with World War Three”. He points his finger at the Ukrainian leader.

“What you are doing is disrespectful to the country - this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people said they should have,” Trump says.

Zelensky calmly interjects: “I’m with all respect for your country”.

Vice-President Vance interrupts: “Have you said ‘thank you’ once this entire meeting?”

Zelensky replies: “A lot of times”.

Vance again says: “No, in this entire meeting, have you said ‘thank you’?”

“You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October. Offer some words of appreciation for the USA and the president who is trying to save your country.”

Zelensky shakes his head and looks away, and says the US will also eventually feel the consequences of the war.

Trump appears visibly frustrated, interjecting: "Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. You’re in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel.

“We’re going to feel very good and very strong.”

Sorry Don, I’m not feeling the alliance here. Never seen him once talk about Putin this way. I do think he’s working on an alliance in this war, only it’s not from Ukraine.

230 is important for online free speech, and just like free speech is used in real life, such as protesting against racism, it also protects those protesting for racism. It sucks in some cases, but people of all perspectives have found this a worthwhile compromise for 30 years.

With 230, we protect our online places of assembly. Without it, our right to gather online is greatly endangered.

Say you record police committing abuse. You want to share it online so people can learn about it and spread the word. Host takes it down to avoid being accused of threatening the officer, liable, inciting violence, etc. If the host doesn’t take it down, now you are both open to civil or criminal penalties if they so choose to go after you. If it’s legal or not, do you have the means and will to fight them in court?

Yeah, some Nazis get to dog whistle and push misinformation, but 230 also protects you and hosts that let you tell them off and that they aren’t wanted. Lose 230, and now you could be the one in trouble or getting your favorite site shut down.

I think it would put more websites into the same whack-a-mole situation that piracy sites deal with: moving to domains out of US jurisdiction, mirror sites, etc.

It should be a wake up call to get people more involved locally. We still need to preserve what online protections we have, but many of us may need to work on our ability to rally people in person.

Techdirt

This week, Durbin will join U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to introduce a bill that would sunset Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in two years. Section 230—and the legal immunity it provides to Big Tech—has been on the books since 1996—long before social media became a part of our daily lives. To the extent this protection was ever needed, its usefulness has long since passed.

Here’s a less biased source from the Judiciary Committee.

Debate on 230 has been going on for years. The Left wants it gone so they can hold people responsible for crimes like CSAM and revenge porn and other things like spreading hate speech.

As for why others may want it gone, here is a quote from last year from Lindsey Graham:

ABC

“However, the real prize will be to make sure social media companies no longer enjoy absolute legal immunity under Section 230," Graham said. "I am committed now more than ever to continue to advance my legislative efforts to ensure that those harmed by social media outlets have the ability to seek justice in American courtrooms. Without repealing Section 230, nothing major will change.”

For the “harm”, think if the recent Supreme Court cases where the plaintiffs’ harm turned out to be fake but the case was still found in their favor to protect their ”right" to discriminate.

All those complaints about “right wing opinions being suppressed”, consider your site illegal.

Organize a general strike, illegal.

Make a “threat” against a politician or CEO, illegal.

Site owners in addition to the person “breaking the law” are now liable, in what I am sure would be uneven enforcement.

Check out the History section of the Section 230 wiki entry to see things that have been tried in the past and imagine those protections gone.

Cutting your ability to receive credit card payments if something against the rules occurs in your site, shielding you from liability if someone uploads their manifesto and commits a crime, someone catfishes a minor in your site, and much more would change.

Dang.