Here is what we know for sure about the shooter’s politics. His entire childhood, he was raised right wing. He even dressed up as Trump for Halloween a year or two ago.

Unless he specifically joined a group that promotes violence, there is simply no reason to think that his violence came from anything but his childhood.

So, even if it was hypothetically true, what MAGA has been saying, that he had recently been dating a trans woman, and his politics had changed, even if that hypothetical was true, it would just mean that his conservative upbringing that glorified violence got a different target.

Does this mean that he actually thought the attacks were “partisan”, as opposed to, say, “legitimate criticism”? Or, is it a note designed to remind himself to be consistent with his lies?

If it’s the first, then he is even dumber than I previously thought he was. I saw several clips from his testimony, and he certainly seemed extremely dumb.

The second is more devious. It’s very difficult to lie well, and a tactic like this would make the lie harder to detect.

I can’t think of a third possibility. Either he thought the note was the truth or he thought it was a lie… Maybe he wrote the notes intending for them to be seen? That’s difficult to fathom.

I canceled my Hulu/Disney+ subscription two days ago. A long time ago, I had an absolute boycott on Disney because I hated their hypocrisy when it came to copyright law. They tried to extend their copyrights indefinitely, even though the majority of their IPs came from the public domain. They were like a dog who only knows how to fetch the ball, but won’t ever release it.

When Disney acquired Pixar and was the American distributor for Studio Ghibli, and bought Star Wars, and distributes Marvel, at some point I eventually relented and stopped my boycott. I stopped caring as much about hypocrisy, in general. But never again. It was obviously a mistake to ever give them money. They will never get anything from me again.

I was hoping to get buy in about the uses of downvotes.

I think that if people know that comment downvotes are public information and if they agree on the proper use of downvotes, we will be able to identify bad actors.

On the other hand, if people believe incorrectly comment downvotes have been unethically used against them, then anybody, even me, may let their demons get the better of them, and vote in revenge. So it’s very important for people to know it’s public information.

By the way, Trevita17, I can see that you downvoted my other comment. Did you do this in retaliation, thinking that I had downvoted your comment? I didn’t, and you can see that with this link, which is the same service I used to see your downvote. I don’t approve of using downvotes like this. Comment downvotes should be reserved for trolls, spam, and serious misinformation.

https://lemvotes.org/comment/lemmy.world/comment/19467935

Still, an employer might have two applicants who they otherwise have a hard time selecting between, but one has been arrested and one hasn’t. They will probably choose the one who hasn’t been arrested. I would say that’s the bias against somebody who has been arrested is the whole point of asking the question.

Here is a lawyer who says that it’s one of their most common cases, employers who ask if somebody has been arrested at a job interview.

https://www.reaveslegal.com/faqs/-have-you-ever-been-arrested-.cfm

“Have you ever been arrested for a felony?”

They don’t even need to make it stick. Just being arrested for something like this can ruin a person’s life, and the legal bills could be financially ruinous.

Yeah, the thing about propaganda is that it works, and if it doesn’t work, then the propagandists will come up with something else that does work. The thing is that they’re constantly thinking about how to exploit you, while you’re thinking about other stuff.

So for example, I hate feeling like I receive a hard sell. So, if I am at a store and somebody tries to sell me something, I will not buy it, and in fact, I’ll probably assume the product is so shoddy that it can’t be sold without pressure. Same goes for popup ads online.

But if a marketer knows this about me, then they can definitely manipulate me. They just have to do it in a way that I don’t realize is marketing. And there are all sorts of campaigns like that.

Or at least commit acts of terrorism?

How do you add “no terrorism” to “no organization”, and come up with “terrorist organization”?

Antifa’s Wikipedia page has a similar juxtaposition:

Several analyses, reports, and studies have concluded that antifa is not a major domestic terrorism risk. On September 17, 2025, Trump announced plans to designate Antifa as a “major terrorist organization.”

If you’re offering me the job, I’ll give it a go. I think I’d do a shockingly great job, but even if I didn’t, there is no universe where I’m as evil and incompetent as the people who are currently in charge.

I would just ask my brother to give me $40. I think he would probably do that to avoid exploding.

The reason I wouldn’t call myself a free speech absolutist is that I don’t think people should have the right to intentionally lie and mislead people from a position of authority.

The reason this is relevant is that I cannot think of an example of hate speech that is truthful. And the reporter’s question was about whether Trump viewed hate speech as free speech.

For that matter, why say it in the first place?

It’s not like he was reading a bunch of statistics and came up with this as an informed opinion. No, out of nowhere he just decided that it was okay to murder millions of innocent Americans.

This is not an opinion that a moral person can say, even accidentally.

And he felt safe advocating for it on national television.

This is seriously excellent. Now I can tell who downvoted my comments. I had even previously tried to look through the public lemmy API to see if I could find this information. Thank you!

What I mean is that I would like to see the usernames of everyone who downvoted.

What I’d really like is if comment downvotes were public.

I would be in favor of public blocklists, to be honest. At least let the person know that you’ve blocked them, and so you will not see any of their replies.

Same for Texas… just kidding. I had you going for a second there didn’t I? No, in truth, we Texans are fucked.