The much longer WSJ article that Rawstory is referencing:
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/as-signs-of-aging-emerge-trump-responds-with-defiance-769c5dcd

Archive link:
https://archive.ph/07uf0

Yeah, the NYT article is extensively written but essentially a puff piece, IMO. Its author got a bit schooled in the comments; almost all the top ones are about what was omitted (like her net worth before and after) as opposed to what was written. But everyone who’s been paying attention already knows all that, so if mainstream media finally helps someone come over from the dark side even in spite of themselves, that’s probably a win at this point. Good luck with your folks.

The much longer NYT article that The Guardian is pulling from:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/magazine/marjorie-taylor-greene-trump-maga-split.html

Archive link:
https://archive.ph/zTlk0

This isn’t great, but it has more information than the above, with links to other sources:
https://old.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/1pwvji3/did_wired_have_a_breach_on_122325/

Alternate link:
https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/1pwvji3/did_wired_have_a_breach_on_122325/

Buttery males too.

One wonders how and why a faked animation depicting a suicide attempt is in the government-held files to begin with. It’s not like just any fan can submit personal art to a set of state-held criminal and civil documentation, nor were any civilians involved anyway because he died in custody: everyone from the snoozy guards all the way to Bill Barr was employed by or representing the government at some level.

Keeping in mind that the DoJ/BoP already have (or don’t have, depending on the current narrative) whatever genuine film the jail cameras actually produced, and that this animation also diverges from the known facts of the death, it’s unlikely to be an investigative recreation:

While the video appeared to show the man trying to hang himself, it did not depict the manner in which Epstein was later found, as specified by a Bureau of Prisons report on the prison’s procedural failings that night, released in June 2023 after a lengthy internal investigation.

Considering the fairly limited group of non-civilians that can have their material end up in this tranche of government evidence, its presence there at all really begs the question of what purpose an “alternate scenario” animation of Epstein’s death serves, and who would have created it (or had it made for them) to be added to their files on his death in custody.

Never forget she was Florida AG from 2011 to 2019, with the power to take action against Epstein herself. She never did, though she held the proof. NY had to do it instead.

Yep. I have to add that David Brooks is not the only one at NYT doing their best to tamp down not just what will affect those in public office right now, but the many more not in office who were either directly involved with Jeffrey Epstein’s financial and recreational interests and happy to go along with it, or obviously blackmailed by their complicity in it.

For example, yesterday NYT published this long expose called Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich (here’s an archive link) but for as deep as they insist they delved into it, they completely avoided Epstein’s time at Dalton (the school where he was hired by Bill Barr’s father to teach as a very young man and from where he was brought into Bear Stearns, an almost impossible leap for anyone else as unconnected as Epstein was at the time, as a man in his early 20s just out of school himself) and elided ANY mention of the vast troves of photos, films, and other material Epstein historically collected on everyone who entered his personal residences, not just the island but in NYC and Paris, etc.

Instead, the authors maintain that he was just a thief, and only stole and conned his victims throughout, painting picture after picture of wealthy “dupes” and “victims” of Epstein’s financial crimes. Throughout they use the refrain “inexplicable” and the like when the very rich victims of Epstein’s financial crimes realize and even speak publicly of their huge losses, but somehow never, not once, bring themselves to report these massive and provable thefts to law enforcement, and only rarely even take him to court to try to recoup some of these losses.

In the case of a select few like Les Wexner, it’s tens and possibly hundreds of millions they allege Epstein stole.

Yet we are to believe it’s only theft, nothing more, Epstein was just that charming, and that all these very rich men who will sue anyone else at the drop of a hat all just shut up and stand back when Jeffrey Epstein steals their money. According to NYT, it’s a total mystery.

Yeah, no. For anyone who’s been paying attention, these omissions were glaringly obvious.

And to make it even more ridiculous, when the authors were called out in the comments, they “explain” that Epstein’s financial victims did not want to be involved in lengthy court cases . . . even though they are all high-dollar people who are already involved in lengthy litigation, and often of their own making.

It’s not just this expose, it’s a current that runs through all NYT reporting on Epstein. They NEVER mention Epstein’s death without the word “suicide” very firmly attached to it, and they’ve always swerved pretty widely around anything that directly points to blackmail, but yesterday’s magnum opus obviously dedicated to making readers believe he was a thief and only a thief makes me think it’s a directive there now.

One thing about the NYT it’s good to remember is that while they do not make up facts, they absolutely can and do omit relevant facts when it suits them. New York City is a city of billionaires; it’s where Epstein played and many of these rich “victims of only theft” reside. It’s not a far stretch to think that NYT has interests other than pure reporting at play in their editorial decision making about Jeffrey Epstein.

I think blanket downvoting happens regularly in political communities and discussions, and a lot of time you can see it without even looking up any votes: if every single comment in a six-comment thread has two downvotes and three upvotes, it’s pretty clear. I looked those political ones up a few times but don’t even bother anymore. Everywhere else, by which I mean non-political and/or non-controversial topics, it genuinely seems to be just a core handful of users.

And no, you’re not an outlier, just a decent person. I like to think most of us vote for actual cause, and that it’s only a handful who don’t. But at some point I do think the admins are going to have to deal with it, because downvoting just to downvote IS toxic and does tend to have a stifling effect on the discussion and community as a whole.

These single downvotes were never followed up by further commentary, and at least one of them looks like a voting-only account with zero posts, so the more I looked the more they just seemed like fuck you votes.

I really don’t think there’s any link to content at all because I did this across multiple communities (whatever I don’t have actively blocked that crosses my feed) and it was largely the same handful of downvoters throughout, but with outliers here and there. I wasn’t taking notes, but when I started to see the same names over and over in wildly disparate communities it seemed less and less likely it had anything to do with content.

Because the fediverse is still fairly small, downvotes stick out a lot more. A number of them I think, “How could anybody downvote that?” and just wonder because often they seem to be “I had a shitty day and I particularly don’t like YOU” downvotes.

I often sort a thread by Top, and even the highest voted posts are often +(big number) -1. Because I personally do not downvote without cause, I assume they are sincere, but then it becomes a question of why, and I could never figure it out. Okay, whatever, no biggie.

But recently I had some time on my hands and I am aware of lemvotes.org, so one day I saw this again and decided to just informally start looking up these weird ass loner downvotes. Nothing sustained, just whenever one stuck out to me as being why??? I’d go and look it up. I’ve been doing this for roughly 2-3 months now, no schedule or commitment other than whenever I felt like it, across the board, no attention paid to community or post content (other than anything political pretty much not being worth the trouble, lol).

What I expected was a variety of usernames attached to these single downvotes.

But what I saw was a core handful of users across the board, with the occasional outlier.

Kinda pathetic, honestly.

deleted by creator

Says the 8-hour old account, lol.

Well said.

Truth. Especially if someone suffers from anxiety: quitting social media will help immediately. They may jones for it for a few days, but the world is full of other things to do, and they’ll be so glad they did. Even if someone is forced to use it for work or business, the personal use of social media can be limited to exactly that.

Also, and it must be said, it’s much harder to become propagandized when you’re not allowing yourself to be exposed to a constant feed of it daily. When you find yourself emoting over something you’ve read, that’s usually a clue to step away. The world is full of horrible, saddening things, but we now have a bunch of oligarch techbros who want to use that to steer us via our own emotions, and that’s what social media excels at. If you’re feeling angry, if you’re feeling fearful, if you’re feeling hopeless about the world at large, social media is a very expensive short-term remedy. Get offline and occupy your body as well as your mind: you’ll be grateful you stopped it when you did.

13 day old account, lol. Bye, Felicia.

They’re here to stay

Eh, probably. At least for as long as there is corporate will to shove them down the rest of our throats. But right now, in terms of sheer numbers, humans still rule, and LLMs are pissing off more and more of us every day while their makers are finding it increasingly harder to forge ahead in spite of us, which they are having to do ever more frequently.

and they’re going to get much better.

They’re already getting so much worse, with what is essentially the digital equivalent of kuru, that I’d be willing to bet they’ve already jumped the shark.

If their makers and funders had been patient, and worked the present nightmares out privately, they’d have a far better chance than they do right now, IMO.

Simply put, LLMs/“AI” were released far too soon, and with far too much “I Have a Dream!” fairy-tale promotion that the reality never came close to living up to, and then shoved with brute corporate force down too many throats.

As a result, now you have more and more people across every walk of society pushed into cleaning up the excesses of a product they never wanted in the first place, being forced to share their communities AND energy bills with datacenters, depleted water reserves, privacy violations, EXCESSIVE copyright violations and theft of creative property, having to seek non-AI operating systems just to avoid it . . . right down to the subject of this thread, the corruption of even the most basic video search.

Can LLMs figure out how to override an angry mob, or resolve a situation wherein the vast majority of the masses are against the current iteration of AI even though the makers of it need us all to be avid, ignorant consumers of AI for it to succeed? Because that’s where we’re going, and we’re already farther down that road than the makers ever foresaw, apparently having no idea just how thin the appeal is getting on the ground for the rest of us.

So yeah, I could be wrong, and you might be right. But at this point, unless something very significant changes, I’d put money on you being mostly wrong.

Holy fuck that’s vicious. And perfect.

If you allow artists to display their work in various communities along with the ability to post links in their profiles, but you restrict actual posts to disallow self-promotion, it’s the best of both worlds, IMO.

In other words, if you can’t include self-promotion in your community posts, but everyone knows you have the links in your profile, it attracts less grifters and keeps the feed clean, while allowing anyone interested to contact a poster directly or ask them promotional questions via DMs.

That said, hosting a full-fledged marketplace is not a good idea, IMO. There are laws and banks involved, which mean lawyers and taxes, and volunteer management does not work for that. There are already marketplaces that do that well, and allowing artists to post their own links of choice in their profiles will let them steer actual business to other platforms, while keeping the fediverse for display, review, share and critique. My opinion, anyway.

Stalled. The Indiana senate will hold their “final” vote on it December 8.