Or, make it all about you, but only with that person.

“When that happened to ME…”

“That reminds me of the time <totally unrelated thing in your life>….”

“I have a friend who’s an expert in that and HE said….”

[edit] actually, what I do with those people is ask probing questions, things they couldn’t possibly know the answer to. As a last resort, I insert something that I know someone else in the group is interested in, and invite them into the conversation, exiting at the same time or shortly after.

Also, holding a plate or glass and then realizing you have to go refill it and making yourself scarce works.

Yes, but that seems like over engineering a solved problem?

And it would be rather tricky. The button would be simple; even a pair of Bluetooth headphones could do it. The tricky bit would be in figuring out how long the ad is and pressing the 10 second skip key the correct number of times and then pressing the skip ad button if required.

Easier (and more secure) just to use an ad blocker.

Ah, but they’ve already claimed that Musk wasn’t part of DOGE and he’ll claim that the employees were making assumptions and he never said such a thing. And he’d probably be correct; Musk is much better than Trump at weasel wording things.

Doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a meticulous investigation though.

Why not revert to the Internet of the 1990s, before it was commercialized and before Internet became synonymous with Web Services?

Of course, the truth is, even back then, there were a lot of dark memes on Usenet.

That would be yet another illegal order, wouldn’t it?

It doesn’t make good headlines though.

What I find odd here is that I predicted exactly this problem back when WhatsApp first started using the protocol. I encouraged people to use Signal instead of WhatsApp because WhatsApp moved discovery outside the security model, where it would just require one “mistake” and all that data could be harvested. Plus, of course, once Meta bought them, they had unfettered access to this data.

The challenge here is that it takes more than money to solve world hunger.

You also need some way to prevent the greedy from hoarding food and using it as a weapon to subjugate others, keeping them hungry.

As usual, the problem isn’t lack of food or lack of money, it’s greedy people not wanting to share.

In my area, the leaves turned from green to brown two weeks ago and fell off last week — something that normally happens at the end of September/beginning of October.

Temperatures are still in the early Autumn range with no dips below freezing yet this season, although it’s finally starting to get close. In past years, it wasn’t unheard of to have snow for Halloween.

When the Kuwaiti girl talking about Iraqis killing babies turned out to be a US plant during the first Bush reign, that was enough to get me to start asking what the US game plan was, and what the real motivations in the Middle East were. And I was old enough to remember who installed Hussein.

So when Bush II came along, I was expecting the action, just waiting to see what the excuse would be. And the excuse didn’t match the action; there was already a UN delegation that could have helped Iraq clean up the remaining agents with no involvement of US troops.

And of course, there was no reason to attack Iraq because of a Saudi who successfully attacked the US was hiding somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

The Roma are an easy target because traditionally, they haven’t owned land and have been their own political entity, not beholden to any local government.

This makes them difficult to control, which makes them extremely dangerous to property-based politicians.

Think of it— Western government is generally based on the premise that people who live in defined geographic areas select representatives to govern them. And the Roma live wherever they want, with their own language, culture and politics, and can’t be manipulated based on where they live and who controls that land.

So how about this scenario: someone with a terminal illness has access to the files. Said person sticks their copy in a timed release, so when they die, the documents are distributed everywhere.

At this point, enough people have access to the files that such a thing is feasible.

Of course, it’s also possible that enough of the files are so boring and inconsequential that nobody would see the value in releasing them like that; the main power is to leverage the innuendo to direct public opinion in a timely manner.

Why is he listed as a Zelenskyy associate instead of by name?

It’s not even speculation on the value of their assets; in most cases, it’s speculation on the value of their speculation on someone else’s revenue growing power.

Are we talking about people with $1B in the bank, or people “worth $1B” though?

If you got rid of the stock market today, forgave all loans and capped property values, it would be interesting to see who is actually rich.

…the President has said that the two men fell out prior to Epstein’s convictions.

…tells us only that he didn’t sever ties because of the bad optics.

Epstein didn’t become a child exploiter when he was convicted. There’s documented evidence and witness testimony of him taking underage girls from Mar-a-Lago to his private island —which there is documented evidence of Trump having visited numerous times — where they were sexually abused.

I do say that I’m curious what they fell out over though. Did Epstein try to blackmail Trump? Vice versa?

Her apology and future actions should be considered if she’s ever found guilty and put before a court for sentencing.

Messing up while running for political position should result in a permanent return to private life. There’s a limited number of seats and millions of people who can fill them.

Very few non-dictatorial countries have ever had the equivalent to a US President. Most other countries also have a Prime Minister (and many also have a Governor General). Germany adds in a chancellor. Some even have actual royalty or religious leaders whose only political job is supposed to be to disband parliament when things get out of hand.

Nope; I have no idea why. Cough seems hardwired to my “this person is about to die!” reflex, compounded with “…and they’re transmitting whatever is killing them to me!”

I can’t think of any traumatic childhood events that would have conditioned this response.

Wow… that’s some REALLY heavy spin there.