I've not done a deep dive into his background, since he's clearly been in journalism for a long time with the choice of tangents he goes off on and presumed questions he addresses. I needed only one video to know he was becoming part of my daily news diet. If he does not have a military background in some way, I would be surprised.
I think he said he was a contractor for army but didn't go into any more details. He was also in prison for smuggling immigrants across border if I recall correctly.
His real name is Justin King, and his background is... checkered at best. His politics on screen are solid but he also has prior convictions for human trafficking. These are things you can look up. So I take everything around him with a grain of salt.
I appreciate the background. I've worked with a lot of journalists with checkered pasts and am one myself, so that sort of thing doesn't bother me so long as he's good at predicting the things he can based on experience and data and is clear when he can't. That his politics align somewhat closely with mine makes it easier to watch, but I'm there for the analysis.
An important distinction here is that he was convicted for the visa fraud kind of trafficking and not like sex trafficking or something. There's a huge difference there but people hear trafficking and just assume it's the worst kind imaginable.
Justin Eric King, 27, of Chipley, Fla., has been sentenced to 41 months in prison followed by three years supervised release resulting from his conviction on charges of conspiracy to commit visa fraud, visa fraud and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and United States Attorney Gregory R. Miller of the Northern District of Florida announced today. The defendant and his co-conspirators brought illegal aliens, mostly from Bulgaria and Romania, to work in the hotel industry in and around Destin, Fla. King was sentenced by Senior District Court Judge Lacey A. Collier of Pensacola, Fla.
This isn't usually what we think of as "human trafficking." It seems that the people he smuggled understood what they were doing, and not being forced or coerced it. If that were the case, additional charges of exploitation would have been filed.
This is what like 99.9% of human trafficking is. They’ve successfully propagandized anyone who conflates sex trafficking with normal undocumented human movement.
He is intentionally vague in his videos, but he has worked with the military in some capacity as a civilian before, and he still has a lot of contacts in the military. Mostly though, I personally trust him more than most because I've been watching him for years and he usually turns out to be correct. He's also pretty level headed and willing to admit what he doesn't know.
So. To the practitioner, or to the internet tough-talker, what does this mean? It means that the law of the land, at least 7-2, is that a threat is only outside the protection of the First Amendment if:
A reasonable person, familiar with the context, would interpret the threat as a sincere statement of intent to do harm, and
The speaker was reckless about whether the threat would be taken sincerely — that is, they “consciously disregarded a substantial risk” that it would be taken seriously.
To play devil's advocate, I think they're making a ruling that's analogous to the murder/manslaughter distinction. Murder (as is commonly defined) requires the prosecution to prove intent, whereas that's not required for manslaughter charges.
Obviously, it's possible to prove intent in some cases because people do get convicted of murder sometimes. They're saying the same thing here - it's okay to convict someone for this kind of speech if you can prove their intent was harmful. But the speech equivalent of "manslaughter", where you haven't proven intent, is constitutionally protected.
I can see ways that this as a good ruling, frankly. I can imagine situations where someone says something that can be interpreted as a threat but that really and truly was "just a joke" or some other such misunderstanding, and I would not want that to result in a conviction.
But proving criminal intent does not require you be able to hold up a magic mirror that reflects the inner thoughts of the person's soul.
Mens rea in the law is something you can establish. Certain actions a person takes imply intent and that's adequate for the criminal justice system. This isn't being flippant; often the entire purpose of the trial is to establish the criminal intent in a case where the actual facts (actus reus) are not really in dispute.
Colorado's law is defective because it didn't require establishing mens rea. And while some kinds of crime do not require criminal intent, because this particular crime conflicts with the first amendment, the level of scrutiny on the statute is much higher.
The outcome here should be that Colorado corrects its defective law to close the loophole.
Yeah, I think we're in agreement. I brought up the murder analogy because it often does require intent to be proven and prosecutors do manage to find ways to prove intent in those cases. Magic mirrors are clearly not a necessity for this.
There's a fundamental disconnect in how the economists in this paper view profit and how companies view profit. Essentially, their theory is that if we raise interest rates, this will subdue demand, and thus tame inflation as companies drop prices to compete for a smaller market share.
The problem is that the companies that control the core essentials - food, energy, and to a growing extent housing - are effectively monopolies. Markets that had hundreds of competitors in the past now only have a few dozen at best, and they actively use their vast power and influence to reduce the capacity of any smaller players to participate, let alone compete in the market.
You can't reduce demand on core essentials, because people can't do without. As a result, in a monopolistic market, an interest increase only harms the consumer when it comes to core essentials unless a company decides to reduce prices and subsequently their profit.
There is no publicly traded company on earth that will voluntarily decide to lower their profit. The only way they'll do it is if it's hurting their bottom line - aka through competition. With no competition to reduce market share, effectively the company can simply keep pace with interest rates by continuing to profiteer, especially when they're operating in markets without price controls. In those that do, the companies often engage in aggressive regulatory capture to ensure a steady profit margin well above cost, regardless of the market conditions.
In our current situation, interest rate increases will do little to nothing in the short term save to tighten lending and push home ownership out of reach of the middle class. We will not see drops in prices, only a leveling off from increases, as consumers have come to accept them as the new normal. Rate increases do nothing to address the core issue, which is that the extreme consolidation of wealth in a handful of companies has given them a power over our economy far greater than the central banks that claim to run it. If anything, those rate increases encourage the same consolidation of wealth and monopolistic markets that have led to our current economic state.
Sounds coherent. Would you say there are any effective tools to counter that problem? I wonder what the central banks can do at the moment, because it seems they are kind of in a deadlock regarding the control of inflation.
My personal opinion for the current situation would be to keep rates where they are to avoid further wage suppression. Let the PPP money and COVID impacts move through the economic system without increasing the cost of borrowing further. A statement by the IMF and/or Fed directly admitting that the current inflationary trend is due to corporate profiteering, not wage growth, could prompt stricter price controls and regulation across multiple governments. In a perfect world, this would result in criminal cases and prosecutions of the worst offenders (I'm looking at you, egg producers), but I think we all know that's not going to happen.
My feeling is that the economy really just needs some breathing room to be robust enough to deal with the next climate and/or political crisis. Raising rates feels like a self-inflicted wound meant to shore up the profits of those who made out like bandits during COVID at the expense of everyone else who was just barely making it through.
Agreed and well said. I remember a report in the past year that showed the more consolidated an industry, the greater the amount of profit driven inflation. I think that helps show your point that it's monopolistic power that's enabling these companies to do this and that is what needs to be addressed, not interest rates.
This article is factual yet also rage-bait. Suspending accounts is something he's doing now. Contacting employers of people working at car companies and investment firms is something he did five years ago. The article does not say he is contacting the employer of accounts he is suspending now; they leave you to infer that by placing both facts in the same headline but separate paragraphs.
Even before gaining control of Twitter, Musk would take a proactive approach to addressing criticism.
Back in 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk actively monitored Twitter for tweets containing the hashtag $TSLA, often used by Tesla short-sellers. Musk would reach out to executives at companies to investigate employees who were potentially publishing negative tweets about his electric vehicle company.
During that time, Musk reportedly emailed former Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess in July 2018, questioning whether one of Diess's employees was using Twitter to criticize Tesla anonymously. Business Insider later reported that Volkswagen determined the tweets were posted by the employee's brother.
Musk also allegedly texted Lawrence Fossi's employer. According to the WSJ, on July 23, 2018, Musk sent a text to the top executive at Fossi's company, asking the boss whether he knew his employee, known on Twitter as Montana Skeptic, "was obsessively trashing Tesla via a pseudonym," as disclosed in the report.
Musk would reach out to executives at companies to investigate employees who were potentially publishing negative tweets about his electric vehicle company.
These are all very heavy sentences. No arguments from me there. But, tell the story without putting a spin on it.
Remember that in France it is civil law and judges study the case and make decisions. Lawyers aren’t pleasing cases and objecting as much as in North America like we see in Hollywood movies or on Netflix.
Cases mentioned:
Guy gets 10 months in prison for stealing a Redbull [Source in French]: Yes. Based on different laws, he was found guilty of looting, among other things. He was made an example of. Harsh. Not his first rodeo…
6 months for stealing fruit. Cannot find source. Looting, not protesting.
Looting a Louis Vuitton store. 1 year in prison. Homeless guy with schizophrenia. Said he was looking for food.
1 year of prison. Was found in the store after the looting… picking up the leftovers.
After giving 4 examples states that he gave 5 examples. Says the courts are “cramming as many cases per day”… Yes, that’s how they do. Makes false claims (says they are told to plead guilty, we can’t know that, says they have no lawyers, provides no proof).
I’m sorry, but I cannot call this independent journalism. This is just 12 minutes of false connections and misleading or manipulated content. It is not news.
Fact: the judges handed out harsh punishments based on the current laws because these individuals were caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
In France, the truth depends on the time, the place, and the context. Judges have to rule based on that. There are options to appeal. But, if it’s 4 in the morning, for example, and you’re in the Louis Vuitton shop checking out handbags on the same night as riots, you’ll get the book thrown at you.
The guy who made this video could have told the straight facts, no spin, just facts, and it would have been a stronger argument.
Also…
Furthermore, the French government is censoring social media
They have been suggesting that, haven’t done it yet.
I mean every example you listed is fundamentally a property crime. I don’t see how property crimes could possibly translate into such long prison sentences. Unless they’re using weapons and attacking or threatening people it just doesn’t make any sense. “Looting” is an arbitrary definition that seems very ripe for abuse by a government that is already out of control. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE_Om13VpQw
I don't personally steal at self-checkout, but if saw anyone stealing I'd just ignore it. As far I'm concerned, they deserve to be stolen from. Zero interest in hearing the crocodile tears of those who were complicit in price gouging.
Yeah, there was this weird moment shortly after the pandemic where people were throwing darts at food staples and then raising their prices into the stratosphere, just to see how much they could charge. Pretty detestable behavior, especially when the average American already has so little money to spare.
Yes it is, the pricing is set by retailers competing against each other, all of which are having theft problems. They will all simply pass along the costs associated with theft because purchasers can’t get the same or substitute products anywhere else cheaper.
Good? It’s not like it’s the only game in town. They raise the prices then that will just open a window for lower priced competitors who don’t have the same issues.
How are lower priced competitors not having the same issues? If those competitors use labour to checkout, they’re going to be more expensive. If they’re using self-checkout, they would have the same theft issues.
ALDIs in my area is a great example. No self check out, lower prices and they know their market, always placing stores within sight of a Walmart. Winn-Dixie somehow still exist where I live and they do have shelf check out but it’s not like Walmart. And like Publix they always have people at other check out lanes. So it definitely seems like a choice to be only self check out that Walmart chooses.
I hear what you're saying, but we're not talking about a single-mother sneaking diapers out because she needs them or a Jean Valjean-type taking bread because they're hungry...
This is OCR (Organized Retail Theft) where a team of 3+ people coordinate with phones, distractions, and a driver, to quickly get as many high-dollar, shelf-stable items out of a store as possible to resell on Facebook marketplace/eBay/etc. It's typically at least $1000 per store.
If you hate large organizations, you should hate the greed of criminal rings like this, because we all absolutely pay more because of it...
EDIT: I'm just talking about what the article is referring to. I'm not saying companies don't pass the costs on to consumers, and I'm not casting moral judgement.
If it's actually a problem and that organized, then it's either a problem for law enforcement (lol) or for the retailer's internal security department. Anything else is just incompetence.
Did you read the articles above? There's no source for this, that's not even remotely true. From some of the articles posted above, there's no real data to support these claims, and the term is widely overused and abused in many states across the US. From this The dishonest blame game of retail store closures and crime
Then there’s the warning of “organized retail crime,” or ORC in industry parlance. The term sounds ominous, evoking a network of thieves operating a sophisticated enterprise. But state laws and the retail industry use it broadly to describe coordinated theft of almost any kind, and in some cases theft involving just a single person. The National Retail Federation, a trade group that lobbies on behalf of retail businesses, releases an annual survey on “organized retail crime” and “ORC gangs” that doesn’t define either term and is based entirely on a survey of retailers (a total of 61 in 2020). The group then uses that survey to make claims like organized retail crime “affects 9 out of 10 retailers,” and “among ORC victims, three in four report an increase in the past year,” and to demand federal organized retail theft legislation.
Also, what is OCR? Your explanation of the acronym doesn't even line up with the initials from the acronym. Secondly, do you have any sources or data to back up this claim of teams of criminals, besides "trust me bro"?
Same. It got me to oficially jump over to Lemmy. Reddits been veering downhill and always wanted an alternative. Kind of glad all this got more people to Lemmy etc.
I’m with you. We need to publicize, though. It would be helpful if there was a concerted effort around a transitional choice. Even better if subreddit admins replicate communities and content over here. Also, I kept my Reddit username - wonder how many others did the same?
Yeah but if we don't see a community/magazine we want (that exists on reddit), do we take it upon ourselves to start it or do we wait for the mods of the reddit sub to create it?
There's no guarantee they're going to come over, so I'd say make it yourself. You can always add them in the future if they do make the switch and still want to be a mod.
I for one had modded for r/beards and r/moustache and decided to make a moustache community over on lemmy.ml. Anyone is welcome to join!! Moustache community on Lemmy.
So far I'm in the wait and see camp, especially until the apps actually shut down on the 30th. In an optimistic view where this site takes off (I don't even know what that means in a federated situation. Aren't the instances fracturing communities? Posts transfer but it doesn't seem comments do...), moderation of huge magazines would be incredibly time consuming and difficult, I imagine.
Admittedly the system is a bit confusing as far as UX goes. I’m a fairly nerdy gal and am familiar with servers and software packages and “instances”, and I’m still having issues wrapping my head around the UX.
For example. I’m on Kbin, federated with Lemmy instances. Which is working obviously. But how do I go about discovery of networks and instances and communities within those instances from Kbin? That seems possible but to an uninitiated user, not exactly the simplest thing. None of this is a dealbreaker for me, but what about others? Am I the only one not quite understanding how it all slots together interface wise?
No, you are definitely not the only one. I explored this style of social media for the first time several months ago because of what was going on with Twitter.
I got confused pretty quickly and ultimately decided it would be easier to just quit Twitter and use Reddit only, even though I would be giving up things I liked about Twitter.
But now we're here, so I'm trying again. Still confused tho
Same here! Just so I understand, it doesn't matter if you choose kbin or Lemmy, the content is the same? What about Mastadon? Is that also combined into this same network?
They all implement ActivityPub which is just the protocol used to move everyone's posts and such around to any other server that's supposed to receive it. So yeah, you can use Mastodon to follow Lemmy or kbin magazines. You can also do the opposite where you follow Mastodon users from Lemmy/kbin. As long as the blog uses ActivityPub federation, you can ingest that content in to whatever other compatible service you want.
I will say things get a little weird if you follow on a service that presents that information in a drastically different way, but it is doable.
And not just Lemmy or Kbin. You could follow videos from Peertube, pictures from Pixelfed, and soon even articles from WordPress and Tumblr - and you will be able to post comments to any of them.
I feel old and out of touch. 15 years of being Reddit only, and now I have no idea what half of those words mean or how these services work. Hah, time to do some learning again
I landed on lemmy first, then I found out about kbin over there. I'm glad for the Fediverse because I don't have to lose the ability to continue to participate in the community and not be tied to one website. Now, if they could figure a way to import the subscribed list from my old account, that would be icing on the cake.
I think it’s more than, more than just COVID. I mean, I think that there’s deaths of despair.
Remind me, which party's policies actively push out dispair, be it by enacting cruelties on people, taking away benefits that they don't feel are deserved, and promotes rhetoric that increases hate against minorities?
I wonder if all of that has anything to do with it...
I honestly think both of these categories are largely astroturfing. The way they attack queer people who are actually concerned about their rights precludes their even being half-assed allies. It doesn’t really matter how much they claim otherwise, their actions speak louder than their protests.
Demographically a lot of them are teenage girls and women in their 20s. The “Little Pink Army”. So it’s like if MAGA was fuelled by the same passion, energy and stamina that fuels a lot of pop star fandom.
The “left…right” is just not a good scale, it only refers to where people sit. In reality there are several orthogonal scales, like:
Conservative — Progressive
Totalitarian — Anarchist
Nationalist — Internationalist
Capitalist — Communist
Autocrat — Democrat
Monarchist — Republican
Bigoted — Egalitarian
…and some more.
That means there can be “Conservative Anarchist Bigots”, and “Progressive Capitalist Bigots”, and “Progressive Anarchist Internationalist Communist Democratic Republican Egalitarians” (sometimes called “hippies”), or “Monarchic Democratic Internationalists” (we have some of those in Spain). The scales don’t really influence each other (“Autocratic Monarchist Anarchists” are rare nowadays, but they do exist and have a precedent in Aristotle’s “one good ruler” idea, or the “Benevolent dictator for life” in FOSS).
China right now, is a “Conservative Totalitarian Nationalist Capitalist Autocratic Bigoted Republic”, they only keep “Communist” in the name for historical reasons, and to prevent anyone from trying to push for actual communism. To their credit, they’re still “Popular” (Nationalist) and a “Republic”… yet it’s still anyone’s guess when they might become a “Hereditary Autocracy” (aka: Autocratic Monarchy) like North Korea.
What I find the funniest though, is US’s “Democrats vs. Republicans”… they’re not even on the same scale! While the country is already both, a “Democratic Republic”, the parties are named less like what they might defend, and more like an insult to each other: “you’re a monarchist!” vs. “you’re an autocrat!”. And look at that, a Republican wannabe-Autocrat is getting indicted right now… but might still win the Democratic elections 🤦
All of this article completely ignores why manufacturing left in the first place. By the 1970s Japan's manufacturing quality revolution put financial pressures on American corporations to become more competitive. As more globalization occurred, the ability to economically compete with foreign economies became more prominent in management philosophy. Pair this with the invention that corporations exist to drive shareholder value, increasing shareholder value became the primary concern driving corporate strategies.
Companies who listen to shareholders and not markets become asset-light with high risk aversion. Few companies want to weather a storm not because the employees don't want to work there, but because any slight can be perceived in the market as a weaken position. There has to be a fundamental disconnect from the companies and the investors. We cannot be a stable manufacturing economy if the primary driver is speculation.
With weak labor protections currently prevalent in the United States, there's little possibility to buy the notion that employees and their product will be placed higher than speculative investors who are completely disinterested in the particulars themselves. So long as boards listen to financial gurus who prognosticate from their Excel tea leaves and market models, and less to middle management who just want the company to do well, there's zero ways manufacturing will attract the numbers required for a complete return to domestic production. If we want the people to work, we must give the people the power to dictate that work. Anything less is sure fire means for a return to whence we came.
Engineers: "This is possible but we will need to equip every car with an expensive sensor suite"
Management: "So you're saying we can just remove the sensors and figure it out with your engineering magic, you guys are really good at that, you got my iPhone connected to ICloud so you must be reeeally good with technology."
Engineers: "..."
Management: "Also, anyone not up to this task is fired."
This is true, but when safety is on the line it actually goes further than that. As an engineer you have an ethical duty to say no to making a product unsafe for end users or the general public.
It doesn’t matter if you get fired, if your boss goes to the media to bitch about you, if your boss threatens to sue you, you as an engineer hold a position of public trust to keep the people that use your product safe. If you don’t respect that and take it seriously, well we see where oceangate ended up.
Yeah my boss has been going back and forth with me on this for months. Wanting to release unsecured products to the general public. I’m getting exhausted with him. I hold the keys and frequently I’ve told him no, and threatened to quit. Each time they just retreat back and hold a meeting how it will “stay on dev for now”. The features aren’t even feasible to release in the near future but I know they will force the issue. My resignation letter is on the table.
And neither have FAANG companies for the massive social consequences to ubiquitous surveillance
This moral high ground you think you’re standing on doesn’t exist, and won’t until engineers who push back get the support from society to do so. They currently are very much expected to stand up to a corporation on their own, risking their own livelihood, and that’s plain bullshit
The number of times I've rejected something because of security flaws (usually database injection), only to see other engineers later approve and merge the pull request is infuriating. There seems to always be an engineer who is willing to make an unsafe product.
Yep, it's a damn shame, but we're gonna let them do that because we don't want to be responsible for deaths or security flaws and ultimately there's organizations and people out there who value that if our current jobs don't
It's a clickbaity title in a sense that Trusty already quit from his team in the documents case. It's not another lawyer quitting, but the same lawyer, it's just that this time he's quitting altogether from all other cases and any cooperation too.
Well, it’s another silly sensationalist headline… Oh a UN link…?
“There are reports that some of those who fled the hospital have been shot at, wounded, or killed. The latest reports say the hospital was surrounded by tanks”, he wrote.
“WHO is gravely concerned about the safety of health workers, hundreds of sick and injured patients, including babies on life support, and displaced people who remain inside the hospital.”
WHO again called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza “as the only way to save lives and reduce the horrific levels of suffering”, Tedros added.
I think what they were trying to say was that at first it looks like a click bait headline, but that the dark truth is that it’s actually directly from the UN.
I read an interview last week with some hospital staff. They had to avoid windows when treating patents as if seen the snipers would shoot them. Many staff were killed that way. Just a nightmare.
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