I see your point. On the other hand, chaos is a powerful terror tactic. If you’re a dissident, not knowing what angle you could be engaged from is stifling.

Also, people need to eat and drink daily. Poisoning is a horrible threat with multiple daily reminders.

To all the people in this thread saying this was probably an accident:

Imagine you’re an operator inside a totalitarian regime, and you want someone assassinated. Maybe this person isn’t themself a critical target, your objective is to instill fear in a particular department to increase compliance on a morally abhorrent skunkworks project. You already know everything about this person, of course including details of their personal life and hobbies. Hey they’re a mushroom hunter. Mycotoxins are readily available and can be lethal in small, undetectable doses. Not difficult to figure out what happens from there. Everyone who knows Vitaly knows, hey he wouldn’t pick and eat a poisonous mushroom. The message is sent to the people who you want to hear it.

“Those people are snowflakes”

• Person that twitter is currently making every effort to court and cater to

That oft repeated claim of parallelism between the US Democrats and the CPC might have been more true in the past. I think there are significant differences nowadays as Poilievre plays with populist rhetoric and policy ideas. Considering the voting base the CPC is attempting to court, I’m not sure those two political parties are really in the same boat.

I’m not a fan of either of those individuals. I know Stone has claimed to have played a part (he claims a lot of things and frankly I don’t trust a word that comes out of his mouth), but are you saying Trump was tied to the Brooks Brothers riot in 2000? That’s news to me, and I would be interested to read more about that if you could point me in the right direction.

Sounds like you’re on the right path, and I know you didn’t ask, but just wanted to chime in. I love cooking, and have both stainless and cast iron skillets. The circlejerk for cast iron is strong, but I have to say, it’s genuinely the best available non-stick pan once it’s seasoned properly. I can make a perfect omelette, sear scallops, steaks, sautee vegetables, & use it as a pan for oven roasting chickens and roasts. I use it for bread baking as well. They’re cheap (compared to clad cookware) and I’m not sure I could damage my pan even if I wanted to. They’re extremely sturdy, and hold heat very well. I clean mine with cold water and a stiff bristle brush, dry, lightly oil (when it looks like it needs it) & it’s ready to go.

Down side to cast iron pans is that they need some care in the initial seasoning stages, and it stinks up the house when you season them (do it outside on the bbq if you have one!). It’s a bit messy to keep them oiled. They’re heavy and not ergonomic. Can’t use them to simmer acidic sauces because that actually will soften and strip the seasoning, so I use my stainless for that. Get one, season it correctly, and you’ll never look back.

Fair point. However, we still run in the same professional circles & there would be blow back. The fraud thing offends my core values on fairness, but its easier for me to leave it weighing on my conscience, than report it and stay up at night wondering if it will come back to bite me in my professional life and make it harder to keep a roof over my head and food on my table. It’s a shitty situation.

Managed a shop for over 10 years and took on duties to the point that the owner was only there for a few hours a week in the morning to check emails. The store did record business during the early covid days, and never closed the doors for a single day. The staff was stretched thin, stressed, and everyone was working like crazy and a bit nervous about health because we had a couple older guys working with us and nobody knew the harm profile of covid at that time. The owner bought expensive store improvements (with profits, and fraudulently claimed federal covid benefits) instead of paying the staff, or even saying thanks in any way. See ya!

I want to report them for the fraud thing, but I’m the only one who knows about it aside from the owner, so they’d know it was me who reported it.

we’d need to make our society one that’s less hostile to having kids

You allude to some of this, but in addition, and as a precondition, we need to make our society one that’s less hostile to the people that currently exist in it.

Black lights

Nice.

Dark thought, but maybe that was the plan.

That just seems so crazy as they ramp up to an IPO. Yes, let’s alienate users. reduce our overall active users, and throw hissy fits at our mods who are volunteers without whom, this site cannot operate. That should establish confidence in the marketplace. I just don’t understand the thinking here.

People will say ‘enshittification’, well okay, but even on paper, all their moves have been so bad lately, and they don’t seem to care. It’s weird. Seems to me for example a platform with 100 users and 40% monetization is inherently more valuable than a platform with 40 users and 100% monetization. That’s just my stupid opinion though.