General Discussion

I cannot find how to add a signature to my profile. Is it possible at PieFed to have a signature?

If so, how?

Rather, it would be the concept

I'm not sure where to post this and thought that maybe here is okay, but if not, let me know.

For some reason, I got this idea from where I had heard about five-year-old Liam and his father in Minnesota being taken to an ICE Detention Center there. It came from seeing his blue bunny hat and finding out his middle name is Conejo, which means rabbit.

The idea it had given me is about a similar boy wearing a blue bunny hat like Liam's who has gotten the nickname of Conejo Rabbit, and the story it gave me is about ICE taking a little boy away in the middle of an unauthorized home invasion because their ICE rulebook said he was an unauthorized immigrant. At the center of it are two self-appointed immigration enforcers who chose power and Trump policy over a traumatized boy's life.

But what they didn't know is that the boy's father isn't just a grieving parent; he is the District Attorney, and he has the law on his side. What I imagine following is a courtroom reckoning involving one hell of a release order from one pissed-off federal judge, a media firestorm, and a brutal unraveling of a Trump system drunk on control. And just wait until you hear how I imagine this battle ends, because justice doesn't just knock; it kicks the whole damn Mar-a-Lago door in.

Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about this lately after reading through the articles I have seen so far and feeling compassionate for him. I wish there was some way to reach out to him or even his father to speak with them because I was imagining Liam getting a pair of footed pajamas that are the matching color blue to his blue bunny hat seen in the picture of him, perhaps fuzzy, have feet that look like bunny feet, and have a white cottontail on the back of them. After he got out of that hellhole they call a detention center, he would feel warm and comfortable in them after his ordeal.

And I was imagining him getting a large stuffed blue bunny with the word "Conejo" embroidered on its belly that could feel like a guardian to him, maybe even a superhero if combined with what he has on his backpack. These are just thoughts that came to my head since the word 'Conejo' is 'rabbit' in Spanish, and he has a blue bunny hat that is seen in the pictures of him, such as this one.

If you think it's an adorable idea and maybe something that can be put together as a charity or something for Liam while finding a way to reach out to Liam's father to make certain it's right and accurate, as I feel it may help comfort him from his traumatization and know who I could talk to about this, please let me know.

Hello. I'm forced to beg for food currently, and this is the least forced place available. I haven't used Lemmy before, and am unsure where to ask.

Dear reader,

Michael Parenti died two days ago and I had not seen much Lemmy coverage of this loss. As a larger community, Lemmings tend to share a worldview that seeks awareness of less discussed ailments in history (at least those of us raised in cultures where the subjects are taboo and education precludes questioning). For some Lemmings, like myself, I lack the prior context for many of the more left leaning and anti-imperialist thinking - I found Parenti to have been my intro into this area. For folks inrerested in these, and many more topics, I would highly recommend folks unware of Michael Parenti to take a look into his enormous lifetime of work. His careful discussions on what has made the imperial order of the West so crushing to entire ideas, peoples, and countries was so helpful for me to understand some of what I was missing. For the unitiated I enjoyed starting with Blackshirts and Reds and the much beloved Yellow Parenti Lectures.

I just found a lofi bg version and now I must share it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ng4BMf-_FSQ

Just a vent out because of the current events, I just wish they could stay asleep for some days, just a break. please

it's all fucked up

I’m not sure about the troop readiness these days, but afaik, USA is currently very close to its military capacity.

For everything it’s doing by having a quarter of 1 million troop stationed around the world and having between 3 and 5 Aircraft carrier groups floating around the world if they fully commit to an armed conflict with Venezuela they are basically spent.

That’s the moment any army can decide to do whatever the fuck they want and the USA can really basically only bark and look on. (Technically they could of course fight, but that would mean they sacrifice actual defence of homeland). So that would mean that China could take Taiwan, Russia could really take Ukraine or even poke further into Europe. Not to mention the Middle East would basically be without a guard dog.

If this happens this most likely would be the final nail in the coffin of the US Empire and almost analogous with how the Roman empire crumbled. (And of course the ultimate payoff for Vladdy to have helped Donnie get in the White House).

I don’t think there’s a whole lot of risk that the USA will try to take Canada or Greenland because of this.

There are people who are saying that we are at the same point as we were in Germany In the 1930s. I would argue this is much closer to Hitler having just taken all of Europe and now deciding to also go and take on The Russians.

Also don’t forget that Trump is truly one of the dumbest strategists we’ve ever had. The only success he’s having is because he has a very well oiled machine but even a well oiled machine has absolute nonnegotiable thresholds which Donald and Drunk Pete will probably try to ignore by renaming a department from defence to war and by hoping that will work.

Curious what others think about this situation?

E: spelling

Anyone have any thoughts?

The U.S. focus on Venezuela is real and structural, but it is not about “stealing cheap gas.”[1][2][3]

Energy and refineries

• U.S. oil is mostly light crude, while many Gulf Coast refineries were built to run heavy, sulfurous crude.[4][1]
• Venezuela has large heavy oil reserves, so its barrels are valuable to U.S. refiners trying to optimize diesel and jet fuel output and margins, especially as other heavy suppliers (like some Russian and Mexican grades) are constrained.[5][1][4]

Migration pressure

• Venezuela’s collapse has pushed roughly 7.7–7.9 million people to leave the country, making it one of the world’s largest displacement crises.[2][3][6]
• U.S. policymakers see any economic and political stabilization in Venezuela as part of a “root cause” approach to reducing migration pressure on the southern border, even as sanctions themselves can worsen the crisis.[3][2]

Crime and state–cartel links

• U.S. indictments and reporting describe elements of the Venezuelan state and military as involved in cocaine trafficking (“Cartel of the Suns”).[3]
• Venezuelan-origin gangs like Tren de Aragua have spread across South America, tied to extortion and human trafficking, which raises regional and, increasingly, U.S. security concerns.[3]

Great powers and the neighborhood

• Russia has used Venezuela as a platform for military cooperation and bomber deployments, Iran for sanctions-busting and strategic presence, and China as a major creditor and investor in oil and infrastructure.[3]
• U.S. strategists worry about these actors gaining leverage in what Washington still treats as its near abroad.[3]

Guyana and Essequibo

• Venezuela’s claim to Guyana’s oil-rich Essequibo region, including a 2023 referendum, raised the risk of conflict in a zone where ExxonMobil and others operate.[7][8]
• The U.S. responded with visible military cooperation with Guyana, signaling that aggression there would hit both U.S. commercial interests and regional stability.[9][7]

In short, Venezuela matters to Washington because of refinery economics, migration and crime, great-power competition, and a live border flashpoint with Guyana—not because the U.S. lacks oil.[8][1][2][9][3]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

I made an entire video about it if anyone wants to see what the initial idea is and some of my research. https://youtu.be/b9xVEaVDnKM

I'm happy to discuss anything regarding it, but I realize I need to be more vocal in sharing this and advocate for it. Please share any concerns, I'll be happy to focus on answering them. I genuinely believe that Illinois would benefit significantly from a project like this on a state level.

Here's one successfully built in Palm Beach County, Florida https://www.swa.org/Facilities/Facility/Details/Renewable-Energy-Facility-2-11

Have you ever noticed how deeply our society has mangled the idea of autonomy until it barely resembles anything human. We are trained to imagine ourselves as tiny sovereign islands whose choices exist in perfect isolation, even though every choice we make bleeds outward into the lives, bodies, and emotional landscapes of the people around us. This distortion becomes most obvious when you look at how people react to being asked to include others in decisions that materially affect them. They treat that inclusion like a robbery of their freedom while pretending that the fallout they create is somehow weightless. It is a strange fucking equation where accountability feels like trespass but consequence does not. That reversal is not natural. It is manufactured.

Once you see that pattern clearly, you see the fingerprints of imperial logic all over it. Empire teaches people to believe that their impacts are simply facts of life while the impacts they endure from others are violations. It builds a worldview where asserting your comfort is normal and absorbing the discomfort you cause is the responsibility of everyone else. Even in intimate settings like friendships and sexual relationships, people reproduce this same structure. They cling to a tiny imagined sphere of personal autonomy that somehow must override any harm, risk, or emotional turbulence that their habits create for the people tied to them. They do not call it domination, because domination becomes invisible when it is practiced in miniature. But the architecture is the same as the state.

Autonomy in this society is an anemic little idea. It is important, but its actual scope is minuscule. Without collective reinforcement, it barely extends beyond the limits of your limbs. People act like it is this vast realm of unbounded license, but in reality, it is a fragile conceptual tool that only gains strength when held collectively. Autonomy means next to nothing alone but can reshape the world when connected, autonomy becomes powerful only through reciprocal recognition. When people defend autonomy as if it thrives in isolation, what they are actually defending is the right to ignore the relational web that makes meaningful freedom possible at all. They mistake solitude for sovereignty.

This is why the refusal to let affected people participate in decisions about your habits is not neutrality. It is a small scale reenactment of the governing posture. It is the transformation of personal life into an arena where one person’s preferences become law and everyone else becomes subject to its effects without representation. People get defensive because they think the alternative is giving up their body or their agency to someone else. But the real alternative is mutual accountability, not subordination. It is the acknowledgment that freedom and consequence are siblings, and you cannot amputate one without mutilating the other.

The irony is that this hyper individualist version of autonomy destroys the very thing it claims to protect. When you treat others as intruders the moment they engage with the consequences you create, you turn autonomy into a weaponized excuse to avoid responsibility. You reproduce the emotional logic of the state: my expansion is natural, your resistance is aggression. You dull yourself to the effects you produce while reacting violently to the idea that anyone else’s needs might intersect with your own. That is how empire sneaks into intimate life. It teaches people to feel righteous about impact and persecuted by accountability.

Calling autonomy a shared delusion is not cynicism. It is clarity. Human autonomy has always been conditional, always intertwined with the collective arrangements that allow us to survive and express ourselves. Pretending otherwise only makes cooperation impossible and leaves people trapped inside tiny fictions of personal sovereignty that cannot withstand pressure from reality. When we admit that autonomy is constructed, relational, and fundamentally limited, we become able to actually use it. We can explore the psychological forces behind defensiveness. We can talk honestly about how to reshape habits that spill over onto the people we care about. We can stop mimicking the structures that dominate us.

If we want liberation, we cannot replicate the same imperial logic that treats consequence as invisible and accountability as violation. We have to rebuild autonomy as a cooperative process, not a barricade. Because any model of freedom that depends on apathy toward those affected by it is not freedom. It is empire wearing the mask of self.

Well, it got taken down (atleast in my country). Also, I kinda degoogled, so...

Seeing as the politics community only allows links to articles, which I think is stupid horseshit. Let's talk openly about changes we want to see here. I think the whole "this isn't the place for politics" is a part of the reason we're in this shit situation. We've let the greedy narcissists take over all discussion while we have no where to reasonably talk about policy.

I'll start with a couple:

End presidential pardon

Raise federal minimum wage to $15

Federal cannabis legalization (buy/sell/grow)

End daylight savings

What do you think?

I think in the face of AI taking over many tasks, we need to rethink about how we frame the future of society. Reframing Universal Basic Income as Automation Compensation means presenting the policy as a way to make up for jobs and income lost due to automation and AI. Instead of viewing UBI as a general welfare payment, it becomes seen as compensation paid to everyone for the value automation creates, supporting those whose work is replaced by machines and helping everyone share in productivity gains. Especially in the US, the average person doesn't like the idea of someone getting something that they're personally not receiving. So framing it as a compensation that everyone receives regardless of employment status I think is the only feasible way forward.

Based on other similar recordings I made, I estimate it at 4GiB.

It was a baseband recording of APT+DSB from the NOAA-15 satellite from when it had AVHRR scan motor issues. Not that rare for NOAA-15 (xD), but now that the satellite has been decommissioned, I'll never record it again.
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/messages/2025/08/MSG_20250820_1410.html

I do have baseband recordings from good NOAA-15 and 18 passes, but still, this one would have been special.
I've posted about it when the issue was occuring: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/3035683
Alternative link: https://lemmy.world/post/4162384 (preferred - our instance is slow - trying without cache a few hours ago, loading main page took 2 minutes and 12 seconds excluding loading of thumbnails)

I've just been looking into this again yesterday, and remembered that at some point I had a recording of this partial failure, but it seems I permanently deleted it. The last place it could have been, a HDD from my old laptop, I wiped 2 months ago (incl. full overwrite).

At least I still have the demodulated audio of the APT signal from that partial failure - keep in mind this was still analog - NOAA-15 launched in 1998.

Perhaps not the usual file with sentimental value, like picture or video, but I am a bit weird. I can never record it again. Fuck, I need to start archiving everything.
Now I feel like BBC, erasing TV shows to re-use the tapes.
Or perhaps more aptly (pun intended), NASA re-using Apollo 11 landing imagery tapes.

Oh, guess where I had the 2 remaining recordings. On the cheapest unbranded DVDs I bought on sale in Kaufland at 10 cents / disc, which seem to corrupt after 4 years and can split apart easily with fingers.

Open AI, Meta (one of their competition), and the United States government are building some bullshit in Tennessee called Hyperion (the god before/above). It's and A.I. data center 81% the size of Manhattan city.

Now I want you to think about what I actually just typed.

• This ONE data center (building) will be almost the size of a whole city in New York

• It has the creepy name (The God Above/Before)

• It's goal is to create super intelligence A.I.

Now if you know enough already about society, A.I. and how evil these corps and govs are you know this is some stoopendously sketchy shit in the works here. They aren't building this for hundreds of billions of dollars for some new version of ChatGPT I can promise you that.

This is something much more ominous, and I honestly believe it will be so bad that it will make COVID and 911 look like child's play. It is in everyone's best interest that this doesn't get built and completed.

This beast they are trying to manifest will be fed power (given power), electricity that small countries couldn't even consume in a year. It's time for people to stop thinking of this A.I. as simply a bubble. Sure it is because only a few of the big companies will thrive, and the rest will fall into mediocrity, but that's only an economic perspective.

From an authoritarian perspective this is like giving a high grade explosive and a get out of jail free card to a psychopath with murderous intent. And it's even darker than that. Because once this A.I. crosses the threshold into A.S.I. it will be as if a new hostile species just emerged from space with all bad intentions.

I'm going to stop here because I don't want this to be too long but I figured I'd put this warning.

And is this the french one?: https://www.tumblr.com/arquivodohamtaro/794699291789852672?source=share

Don't let them make you think you need a badge to be hero.

In this post I'm going to explain two different sides to this reality. One is going to be the enemy's technique and then the other is going to be the victim's fault

This post isn't gonna be some biased its only the govs fault, or "hate the elite", or "government is bad" post as much as I despise authoritarian/dictorial governments.

The victim's fault: People are sheepish at best nowadays. They listen to authority figures even though they claim to be anti authoritarian governments. Police, doctors, so-called experts, scholars, scientists, even celebrities. People listen to these types more than their own friends and family, more than themselves (intuition).

These authority figures, directly or indirectly, in most cases, work for the authoritarian government, that is trying to dictate the masses' reality of how they function, how they behave, and what they're allowed to do or say. If you listen to them you are usually have the rules of that said gov enforced on you, propaganda taught to you, rules instilled in you.

Combine this with people's really, really bad judgment calls, inability to critically think, and unawareness of who is pushing what agenda. It's a bad combination. People do not read. Despite what some may feel reading is important, it allows you to comprehend information at a higher level, it teaches you extra communication skills, it opens your mind to the words of others.

The enemy's technique: Divide & conquer is a major aspect of the enemy's ability to keep doing what they're doing. Polarization is the most obvious effect of this. You can see people joining or participating in certain sects politically, ideologically, or theologically. And of course, they always have to have an enemy that is, of course, a different sect of society. But never directly the government. This keeps people fighting themselves with no time to notice the true treat.

Keeping the population unaware of history, cultural differences and or similarities, (whenever it is accurate), economics and sciences like biology (including health, nutrition), and chemistry in particular. This is an effective technique, as an ignorant population that knows nothing of these things could possible out perform a collection of people who do.

Reverse think (Double think). If you've ever heard this term used in 1984, I must unfortunately tell you that it is not a fiction, but now part of reality. Good things are considered bad. Bad becomes good. Healthy is unhealthy and his versa. But most importantly Truth becomes lie and lies become truth.

I'll end with this. Spiritually is key, emotional control is important, and knowledge/wisdom is necessary. When I say spirituality, I'm not talking about religion per se, but having a religion that is healthy and you can understand what is spiritual about it and what is dogma about it would be just as good.

Emotional control means you prioritize positive emotions, happiness, joy, satisfaction, creativity over negative emotions such as jealousy, bitterness, angst, and melancholy.

Knowledge is just that, you have to be able to read and not just skim through things. In order to comprehend them, you must be able to think and find contradictions, use the power of deduction to determine what is not adding up due to contradictions in what was given. Your wisdom will be the ability to utilize such information in a real world situations and understand something you've never experienced because you can connect the dots.

Life is not bad, you may be living bad. They are not elites, unless you call them so. When you fall, you can choose to get up.

Thanks to the herb design this a little bit spicier rounds for the TISM, this was 40gr of BP still working out kinks, u/bigbore729 has been awesome working with and getting this thing figured out