@dismalnow - Codeberg
@dismalnow - Lemmy
@dismalnow - Mastodon
@dismalnow - Pixelfied

  • 3 Posts
  • 193 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 17th, 2023

help-circle


  • As bluntly, and as often as possible to ensure the demarcation is obvious to all.

    Hate to turn your putrid argument around on you, but this isn’t as trivial as the annoyance of needing a sarcasm flag to avoid Poe’s Law, even though the impact of vaping on adult members of society who do not use it is merely an annoyance which causes their knees to jerk.

    And your facts are wrong: Tobacco smoke kills half a million people per year. The jury is out on whether or not vaping is quantifiably medically dangerous at all. There is absolutely no data on harm from 2nd hand vaping, so you cannot say (in good faith) that it’s causing harm.

    Specifics matter in comparisons when the potential outcome is a total ban on a substance that has helped minimize harm for millions, and is mostly harmless in comparison.

    In short - gnash your teeth elsewhere, you smug turd. You’re wrong.

    Is that clear enough?



  • This isn’t a logo. It’s a cry for help from a severely distressed mind.

    W̸͖͆H̵̡̹̖͂̂̑̅Ǎ̷̲̩͔̿͜͠T̷̩̫͗’̶̺̩͖͚́̚Ś̴̭̺̼̳ ̶̼̱̗̓̄̾H̸̡̗̫̝͘A̵͍̥̔̾P̸͇͎̾́P̵̙̦̀́ͅE̸̢̧̹͐͝͠N̸̫̲͙̘͝I̵̳͍͇̼̾̋̀̕N̶͚͖̪̒̈́̈G̵͕̱̓̃

    ̷̛̰̣̠͛͊ ̸̳̼̹͂ ̸̳͕̳̔̈̉͝ ̸̛̲̋̄͘ ̴͎͐ ̸̝̃̽̚W̵͓̙̏̄̀̉Ḩ̶͚͍͗͠A̷̢̹̥͙͑͐͆T̷̫́̉̄̚’̸̧͍͌͆͜Ş̷̗͚̻̓̉͒͠ ̶̣̯̬͑̈́H̷̘͛̇̚A̷̭͗̓͘P̶̭̠̔͒͝P̵̱̯̲̓͌͘E̵̡̪̣͇̕͝N̵͓͊̇̿̋Ì̷̭̯̠͗̈́͠N̴̬̹̲͔͑̈͝G̵͎̖̥͇̀


  • I got curious and did the math if $44B was denominated in $100 bills.

    That’s 496.85 cubic kilometers of cash. Or a pile of money that covers half of the continental US, stacked 1/4 of the height of Low Earth Orbit.

    I honestly don’t think one could physically burn that much cash since May 2022 in real life.

    Edit: more mind bogglery!

    The earth is ~40,000 km in circumference, so you could stack the bills almost 28m high around the equator (or circle the globe 256,482 times.)




  • Yeah. The last time I saw such hubris, it had to be shot in the chest as it tried to climb through a window to prevent the certification of the 2020 election.

    The government (and the electorate) needs to do many things right to prevent Cheeto or a Cheeto Analogue from sending the US into abject totalitarian misery, and there’s not a great deal of evidence that will happen.





  • In the article, clear indicators that this was a money laundering exercise are described.

    A spokesperson for his publisher, a company cofounded by Donald Trump Jr. and a former campaign staffer named Sergio Gor, said “Our Journey Together” sold more than 500,000 copies. The representative refused to provide documentation to back up that figure, which Forbes was unable to independently verify.

    NPD BookScan, an industry data service, tracked 10,200 sales at retailers through January 2023. NPD BookScan doesn’t track purchases directly from a book’s website, though, which appears to have been a major sales avenue for “Our Journey Together.”

    Just 2% (10,200) of the quoted sales (500,000 copies) is able to be validated from booksellers.

    In 2022, the former president’s joint fundraising committee and political action committee paid Winning Team Publishing, which released the book, $231,000.

    So they paid the publisher 4% ($231,000) to receive payment ($5,750,000)?

    “Our Journey Together’s” $5.75 million payout dwarfed the other royalty payments Trump reported receiving over the past 18 months. “The Art of the Deal,” published in 1987, brought in somewhere between $100,000 and $1 million, according to the filing, which lists the income of Trump’s older books in broad ranges. Four other books each earned him $5,000 to $15,000, one made $2,500 to $5,000 and 10 earned less than $200.

    So he made $5 million more with a book which is totally comprised of content from the public domain than his previous (and trackable) pride and joy?

    Oh, and…

    Trump also disclosed that Winning Team Publishing paid his wife, Melania, $250,000 in licensing fees. The spokesperson said that payment was for promoting “Our Journey Together.”

    Except she didn’t promote the book. Like, at all.