• Infynis
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    8 days ago

    There are two kinds of Republicans—billionaires and suckers

    He proves he’s a sucker, because a real fascist would know never to ask to be proven wrong

  • 🍔🍔🍔@toast.ooo
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    8 days ago

    man i just spent like an hour in the bathtub reading further into this and belly laughing

    i will say though that i think the guy who sold mike lindell the ‘data’ that he’s referring to in the challenge might actually be a genius lol. this is apparently the third or fourth time he’s identified someone who needs some kind of technological hail mary and then he just shows up and is like “i have… the data”. he sold proof that obama faked his birth certificate and also sold a bunch of completely bogus software to the pentagon during the post-9/11 defense industry boom such as software that “decodes” al jazeera broadcasts into secret al qaeda messages. an employee of his testified that he doesn’t even have an IDE installed on his computer. he’s literally made tens of millions of dollars off of this grift and despite being basically constantly legally embattled for the past 20 years has apparently not suffered any consequences. i wish him a long and successful career being the smartest dumb guy in the room

    mike lindell actually comes away from this looking almost sympathetic because he is so, so clearly a moron whose conception of data is like, a PS1-era spinning icon of a CD-ROM. it’s very hard for me to guess whether or not he was acting in good faith: on the one hand, the logical thing to do with proof of election tampering is not ‘announce a five million dollar challenge for someone to prove that i don’t have it’, but on the other hand, it doesn’t make any fucking sense to do that if you don’t think you have proof either. either way i would love to know how much money he paid for it (by the way, the data is: a text file with a list of IP addresses in mainland china, a PDF with a ‘graphic depiction of voting machines’, and many terabytes of gibberish binary files timestamped to several days before the challenge was set up). look at this quote the guy is literally zoolander stupid

    “I said, ‘Wow!’ This would absolutely explain what I couldn’t explain!” Lindell recalled in an interview. “It was done with computers! I knew that was the only explanation."

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 days ago

      an employee of his testified that he doesn’t even have an IDE installed on his computer.

      that doesn’t make him not a programmer, plenty of linux pilled programmers don’t use IDEs.

      Hell some of the really prominent ones use shit like text mate, DHH for example.

      • frezik
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        7 days ago

        Oh, if only my moral compass was just a bit weaker. The TSA spent about a decade after its conception trying to find a magic box that identifies terrorists in airports. The millimeter wave scanners are the most successful thing to come out of the entire effort. Those at least sorta work, and most of the rest on the list are far worse than that. Made a bunch of people a lot of money, though.

        • Pandantic
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          7 days ago

          Security theater, just like signatures for credit cards. At least they’re doing away with those.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          I don’t know if it is unethical. They want a narrative and you sold it to them. Is making a superhero movie unethical? Is roleplay in the bedroom unethical? You are taking money away from fascists which is always a good thing.

    • Pandantic
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      7 days ago

      The fact that he did a “prove me wrong” instead of a “here’s the proof” tells me, at minimum, had a suspicion that the proof had no merit.

      • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        No, he admitted at some point the “5 mil to prove me wrong” was a publicity stunt to drum up media coverage of his conference.

        He thought it was impossible to prove a negative, but in this case the data was so clearly unrelated to any election, much less election fraud, the judge found that the confrence go-er had proved him wrong.

  • slickgoat@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    What I find fascinating is the total number of numbskulls and cartoon villains, all collected under the Trump banner, and that lunatic mob may very well take government.

    What’s the hell wrong with American voters?

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      They are in a conservative news bubble or they don’t pay much attention to things that don’t directly affect them and attribute those that do to the wrong party. Or they’re just greedy or racist. Or stupid.

      Take your pick, mix and match.

      • sudo42@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        True. I’m gonna go out on a limb and add another reason: Money in politics.

        When I was a kid, if a politician was accused of taking bribes, they would fall over themselves to deny the accusation. Later, the politician would simply reply, “It was pay for access, not a bribe.”
        Now, they don’t even respond to such accusations. Bribes are so normalized that we don’t even notice them anymore.

        (For the pendants, yes there are pols that are occasionally punished for literally accepting bribes, some recently. My point is that there is little difference between literally accepting money and storing it in a freezer and having several billionaires fund your re-election campaign with dozens of legal loopholes.)

        This allows The Rich to have a very heavy hand on the tiller for which way elections go. If rich folks weren’t pouring big money into elections (corporations are people too!) I’m willing to bet at least one political party in the US would be dead now.

      • el_abuelo@lemmy.ml
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        7 days ago

        I think you need to be intentionally naive, or just an absolute shitbag, to want to vote for lower gas prices at the cost of increased human suffering. Let alone whether it’s something Trump could even deliver.

        • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Also, consider what was going on 4 years ago: COVID. Gas prices went up because people are using their vehicles again , and because of that, oil isn’t in the negatives and gas prices rise.

          • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            Same thing with inflation. People weren’t buying as much crap during COVID. After that, corporations wanted some of that lost revenue so they raised prices and/or shrunk content. Then others followed suit due to need or greed. They all just went further than they needed too to up their profits.

        • mortemtyrannis@lemmy.ml
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          7 days ago

          Well that’s the public reason they are voting for Trump.

          The private reason is that they are a boot licking fascist.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 days ago

            i think it is the reason that their voting for trump, not because they’re stupid, but because they have the entitlement to think that gas prices should be lower even though clearly they haven’t dissolved in bankruptcy yet.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      What’s the hell wrong with American voters?

      Rage at a system that doesn’t work and dreaming of being a person who doesn’t have to apologize for anything. There is a reason why crime movies, games, and TV shows are so popular. It isn’t that most people want to be going around murdering all day, it is they want to be able to.

    • pantyhosewimp@lemmynsfw.com
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      7 days ago

      On average, insufficient education and critical thinking skills because of a quasi-oligarchy that favors lots of desperate people to keep unskilled labor costs down. These oligarchs are also in league with sociopath religious leaders who know that religious recruitment is higher when life is miserable. Because 80% of our leadership are effectively solipsists, little is done to improve anything long term because it doesn’t benefit them immediately or personally.

      Based on the probabilities we can derive from examining history, the situation will have to deteriorate for a few more generations before a widespread radical event changes key aspects of civilization. We should all try to change things now in less destructive and less risky ways, but I fear it won’t work.

      • nifty@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        lots of desperate people to keep unskilled labor costs down

        America needs more unions sooo badly

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    8 days ago

    Having heard him make a deposition, Lindell’s the kind of guy I could see insisting on representing himself against better judgement.

    • jaybone@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      You… you’ve seen his commercials right? He seems like not only the kind of guy who would represent himself, but he would also be on a ton of cocaine when he does it.

    • Devdogg@lemmy.ml
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      7 days ago

      I don’t think he can. I seem to recall businesses aren’t allowed to represent themselves in court.

  • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    Ya’ll should watch some of his ‘broadcasts’.

    Not, like, the whole things.

    Tommy Campbell’s YT channel does basically recaps of the stupidest shit the stupid MAGA clowns do and… well Mr. Lindell features quite often.

    Lindell is basically the most perfect stereotype for a loser idiot boomer that lucked his way into being a business owner, and he is of course astoundingly technically incompetent.

    There are at this point running gags with a number of words that he seemingly is incapable of pronouncing correctly, the guy produces moron clips at such a rate Im surprised he isnt a number of widely used meme formats.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      incapable of pronouncing correctly

      Lonely bookish kids, grown men who do not listen to anyone else, ESL adults who had to pick up the language without help. Take a guess which one of the three he is.

      • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip
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        7 days ago

        Alex, I’ll be forgoing your 3 options and asking instead “What is an obviously still using cocaine addict?”

        He might have graduated from the rock to the powder, but at this rate he’ll either be incarcerated or back to the rock soon.

      • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip
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        7 days ago

        Sure!

        https://m.youtube.com/@tommycampbell

        I am on mobile but the url should fix itself.

        Another running bit he does is…

        Ok, so he calls it a ‘special version’ of Lauren Boebert’s autobiography.

        I think what this means its that the only editorializing is that he adds ‘It was like a fairy tale.’ at the end of all of the maybe couple of pages he reads, which presumably would not actually be in the actual book.

        But you see, I cannot actually tell how much of the rest of what he is reading is direct from the book and hammed up for effect.

        She comes across as having the writing ability of maybe an 8th grader… and the stories are so absolutely absurd… but the problem is that Lauren Boebert is so fucking absurd, I cannot reliably draw a line between what Boebert has written, and what Campbell is hamming up.

        Its … its like reading a diary of the villain from mean girls, except she’s a hick, regularly does crimes, has the trashiest life imaginable, she has infinite self confidence and is somehow self aware but also not self aware at the same time.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    “But the pillow executive moved forward with an appeal anyway.”

    God damnit… I truly hope that history looks back on this period of time as the outrageously ridiculous and overwhelmingly disappointing failure that it is. Fuck, man… God damnit, this is so FUCKING stupid.

    • bcron@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      History will probably unveil one of the largest psychological operations ever perpetrated by foreign actors in order to dismantle a hegemony and it’ll be clear as day. In a couple decades everyone will act at though it was totally obvious that in less than 10 years the ‘common sense’ rural folk decided to worship someone with used car salesman ethics and elect his entourage of unqualified nincompoops, none of which have enough intuition to start a lawnmower

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        “Less than 10 years” isn’t giving Rupert Murdoch the blame he deserves. Repubs have been working on this for decades.

    • Railing5132@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      My concern is that within a couple of decades this country will be converted into a theocratic fascist nation that won’t allow history to be taught (at least, not the “unapproved” version). My closest data point in support of this is the current projected electoral vote count: Biden - 224, Trump - 301, tied - 13. How in the hell (gerrymandering, media horseracing, and everything else) is this fraud LEADING?

      • nomous@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. I hope he’s remembered, just poorly.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          I’m okay with conservatives repeating a past where they con themselves into having to pay out $5 million and having all of their lawyers abandon them over trying to fight that.

        • Snapz@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Well said - I’ve said this since he first ran, but his truest instinct is to nuke the entire world a day before he dies to avoid even the chance that people laugh at him when he’s dead.

          That said, he will die thankfully and I hold out hope that we will collectively raise the money to buy the land he’s eventually buried in, raise the body and live it to the middle of nowhere where we to turn it into the only public restroom within 50 miles of the closest mega truck stop - that our money also subsidizes to run a 24 hour all you can eat $2.99 fried fish, stuffed cabbage and chilli buffet.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    7 days ago

    I have no idea why this man is in the American news cycle so much. I guess “talks a lot of bollocks” is enough these days.

    He always looks like he should be dictator of a small South American country. Not a real one, obviously, they’d decorate the nearest tree with him, but the sort of dictator who ends up there through a series of zany mishaps in the kind of shit sitcom that Paramount+ might greenlight. With a really uninspired title as well, like El Presidente.

    • Daxtron2@startrek.website
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      7 days ago

      Because he spent millions on ads for his shitty pillow so everyone who was exposed to ads knew his face. And then he came out as a raging fascist so then he became a controversial commercial celebrity.

    • III@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I don’t think MAGA really view him in high regard, they more or less allow him because Trump loves him. For all non MAGA people, it’s medium entertaining how much of a top to bottom train wreck this guy is. I haven’t seen a single instance of him in a public space where he doesn’t make himself look like a complete fool only to realize he has exposed himself to then try to get out of whatever hole he just dug unsuccessfully, making him look even more foolish. So, you know, an honest and reasonable representative of the average MAGA.

  • smokebuddy@lemmy.today
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    8 days ago

    “I think he’s the single greatest purchaser of advertising I’ve ever seen.

    I said, Mike, I don’t care how many pillows you sell, and now you’re selling slippers, and sheets, you’re selling everything. I said, I don’t care, you can’t afford that much advertising.”

    • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I don’t think its that rare, but its not common. Usually it means that the client is breaching their agreement. Often that breach is in the form of they lied to the lawyer. Lawyers have confidentiality, so the only reasons to lie are external to the case itself.

      Could also mean Lindell stopped paying them, probably for money troubles.