clawfulneutral

https://soc.port0.org/users/clawfulneutral

US & global politics; media; current events; privacy & surveillance; the post-truth era; preparing for the coming cataclysm; and more.

anti-authoritarian above all. class realist.

I'm on a single-user instance because I believe in the DS9 Promenade / Star Wars Cantina type federation model, therefore fediblock isn't for me unless it's me wielding the cone of silence. certain types of nerds will understand.

disclaimers: I boost what's interesting, I don't agree with 100% of what I boost. and sometimes I miss a message because I'm trying to live my life.

Public Key

npub16rpnyh6ezdusnyap2l42l83sz8cugvkr4f5jyx6n6s60sz0kyexse3m8vh

NIP-05 Address

clawfulneutral_at_soc.port0.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsdpsejtav3x7gfjws40640nccpruwyxtp656fzrdfagd8cp8mzvnggs9hwg

Author Public Key

npub16rpnyh6ezdusnyap2l42l83sz8cugvkr4f5jyx6n6s60sz0kyexse3m8vh

Show more details

Last Notes

2025-04-13 19:30:51

paul krugman now has a substack 😑

2025-04-11 19:29:48

#uspol #Democrats #WorseThanUseless
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/06d628e230151e174365f4f7b41fd9647bbef854b430cf6b773c3d3cf802f07b.jpg

2025-03-21 22:11:59

- reply

lol I just now saw this on this instance and realized that The Mastodon Network™ didn't display the quote at all

2025-03-19 19:10:29

- reply

weird, Akkoma is failing to load the post you replied to in this thread and on my profile
anyway if it's the pizzacakecomic thing, it's because people keep reposting these god-awful insipid webcomics that are basically an extremely unfunny Questionable Content knockoff with bad art

2025-03-19 19:06:55

fuck, apparently I have to filter 'pizza cake comic' on every account I have #onhere

2025-03-09 22:26:17

- reply

if Tulsi wrecks shop and leaves the spooks mired in total disarray, that's a win in my book. hopefully she will also pull the covers on some more domestic spying. that's one of the very few potential silver linings I see

2025-02-28 19:05:38

**Trump cuts short talks with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy after Oval Office blow up**
The last 10 minutes devolved into a tense back and forth between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Zelenskyy — who urged skepticism about Russia’s commitment to diplomacy, citing Moscow’s years of broken commitments on the global stage.
“You’re gambling with World War III, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have,” Trump said.
It was an astonishing display of open antagonism in the Oval Office, a setting better known for somber diplomacy. #Trump laid bare his efforts to coerce Zelenskyy to give the US an interest in valuable minerals and to push him toward a diplomatic resolution to the war on American terms.
“You’re not acting at all thankful,” Trump said, before adding, “This is going to be great television.”
AP / https://archive.li/aXoSj #Ukraine #uspol #geopol @npub1h77…st7u

2025-02-27 20:43:10

- reply

it's hard to shove it all into a 1000 character limit, but of course Rufo and Grossman's angle was pursuing this because a lot of the traffic involved LGBT employees, supposedly on chat channels related to "DEI."
in any event, it doesn't matter. get your jollies from NSFW chat on the taxpayer dime, get fired. the end.

2025-02-27 20:35:59

**100-plus spies fired after NSA internal chat board used for kinky sex talk**
After the #NSA confirmed on state media it was "aware of posts that appear to show inappropriate discussions" by intelligence community employees and "investigations to address this misuse of government systems are ongoing," Trump's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced over 100 people had been terminated.
Writer and activist Christopher Rufo, working with Hannah Grossman of conservative think-tank Manhattan Institute, said they obtained chat logs from "NSA's secret transgender sex chatroom" on #Intelink and shared samples via X.
For the sake of journalistic scrutiny, El Reg pored over the logs, and what we've seen appears to be NSFW discussion of sex lives and preferences, the kind we reckon would be harmless among friends but career-limiting in plenty of professional settings.
The Register / https://archive.ph/TgkQ6 #IntelligenceCommunity #Spooks

2025-02-23 01:35:27

- reply

I'm now vaguely curious what, if any, scholarly output Musk has produced.
he got his big break at fucking PayPal. he's obviously not an idiot, but I'm curious how much ladder climbing and managerial bullshitting and parlaying off money he's done versus actual hard scientific output.
not curious enough to waste my time looking into it, though 😄

2025-02-23 01:25:18

billionaire fight!!! a failbook screenshot broken up into parts.
#ElonMusk #PhilipLow #billionaires #scumbags
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/e7d1faf5358f973999db50ff08bb1f79f7f8f538b49448cc57f00afa7245278f.jpg
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/7b007799431886b4d322e4bc1df3f6bb97390fe80ae7410877302068271e1d9f.jpg
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/53448426a7d6014d03d76ed7655ae3c39e6132caf8d713c96697800fb25fc757.jpg
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/ad1e790f50a5e4a44b5273d15d1ebbb80c20ef46753abbc35c5fb85fe076e075.jpg
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/22643f6f597888d7e6b66db180f301b2a47451b36631f544f3cd73a2272a8de3.jpg
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/1806081689ce570aa58db7a533f5f274cbd5ca6433c12e36f331594f4cdcf562.jpg
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/c8d2acb6600e12f54f0508ab6ad897e6fa65d6f6a3dc6bc32db69eaf63572bc6.jpg
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/77b0f41078fbff6eb87d79e2243ec3de5397136968f21aea4a0e7a61a2148d58.jpg
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/27b76827a77038dbd555ae4f62cbc5ed625d1c59a379c8334cb6fff8efce37b0.jpg

2025-02-23 01:13:40

**Musk gives all federal workers 48 hours to explain what they did last week**
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the last week as part of billionaire Elon Musk’s crusade to slash what he describes as “waste everywhere” in the federal government.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Shortly after, federal employees received a 3-line email with this instruction: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”
The deadline to respond is Monday at 11:59 p.m.
#Musk on Friday celebrated his new role at a gathering of conservatives by waving a giant chainsaw in the air.
AP / https://archive.vn/7cwCI #ElonMusk #uspol

2025-02-21 23:36:40

- reply

heh, interesting point. I haven't paid super close attention to him

2025-02-21 23:32:07

**Steve Bannon accused of Nazi salute at CPAC but says it was just ‘a wave’**
Steve Bannon was accused of making a Nazi salute at a conservative gathering where President Donald Trump is slated to speak this weekend, but Bannon said Friday the gesture was merely a “wave.”
Bannon, who once served as Trump’s chief strategist and helped lead his 2016 campaign, was onstage at CPAC Thursday evening when he extended his right arm in the air, palm flat, after imploring the crowd to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — a reference to what Trump shouted after an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
“Steve Bannon’s long and disturbing history of stoking antisemitism and hate, threatening violence, and empowering extremists is well known and well documented by ADL and others,” the Anti-Defamation League wrote on X in response. “We are not surprised, but are concerned about the normalization of this behavior.”
AP / https://archive.vn/YPNx5 #uspol

2025-02-19 02:17:50

- reply

the one NFT use case I'd be interested in is profile pics :P

2025-02-15 23:37:47

#uspol
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/a0d1b93b8e81edd65c09cb789c89c36e07d9b5d624a5d3154ff3b663ef694a67.jpg

2025-02-15 18:51:48

very interesting paragraph when reading about the Zizian vegan 'rationalist' death cult:
> “Ziz’s tendency towards inscrutable metaphors and loaded jargon serve [sic] essentially the same purpose as typos in a spam email - it’s meant to filter you out,” one rationalist wrote online. “If the hypnotic language made more literal sense, it would bring in people who weren’t especially susceptible in particular to Ziz’s brand of rhetoric.”
https://archive.ph/Ib57O

2025-02-14 22:45:37

- reply

please tell me that LinkedIn app is running on a burner or VM specifically for extremely untrustworthy apps

2025-02-09 14:25:21

- reply

no wonder reddit is astroturfed to the gills

2025-02-05 03:32:23

**Saudi Arabia says it won't establish ties with Israel without creation of Palestinian state**
Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it would not establish ties with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state - a statement that comes after U.S. President Donald Trump said that the Saudis were not demanding a Palestinian state.
The statement from the Saudi foreign ministry said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has affirmed the kingdom's position in 'a clear and explicit manner' that does not allow for any interpretation under any circumstances.
Saudi Arabia also rejects any attempts to displace the Palestinians from their land, the statement said, adding that its stance towards the Palestinians is unnegotiable.
Netanyahu said during the press conference with Trump that Israel will give it a good shot with Saudi Arabia and would succeed.
Reuters / https://archive.md/g9Rht @npub1zxn…0kqm #Gaza #Palestine #SaudiArabia #MiddleEast #geopol

2025-02-04 22:41:32

- reply

that's a big fucking part of it. or, they haven't even done that.

2025-02-04 20:50:29

maybe this will surprise people who subscribed to my blather because I routinely roast the shit out of the Democrat party, but I am temperamentally a leftist and will be one til I die, just ... not in the same mold as many others who call themselves that. as such, most of my friends are either leftists or (sigh) radlibs. and I'm in a bunch of chat groups with such.
for people who largely swear that we are seeing an actual fascist uprising in real time, there is nothing, and I mean _nothing,_ happening which would indicate any sort of desire, inclination, or ability toward planning a response of any kind.
I bring up very basic ideas related to preparing to, you know, deal with this as if it's actually happening, and it's all blank stares and the deer-in-headlights act. nearly all of these people - good people - are deeply unserious about doing anything to protect themselves & others.
this country is cooked as fuck, and I want out.

2025-02-02 23:54:15

- reply

I can't tell the difference between it potentially being something like that, vs it potentially being Trump having a personal obsession with getting a narcissist feather in his cap because he somehow thinks it might be possible

2025-02-02 22:08:30

- reply

I can't tell with this one because I'm not in that political orbit: is he just fucking with them or is he serious?

2025-02-02 19:07:40

#resistance shitlibs falling all over themselves about what they consider an *actual Nazi uprising* of *actual Nazis* and near-zero discussion of preparing to actually, you know, fight. like for real.
that's how I know liberals are not serious people. if they meant what they say, they'd have already *been* prepping.

2025-01-30 19:45:23

**Democrats denounce Gabbard for Snowden sympathy**
Democratic senators on Thursday tore into #TulsiGabbard, President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, over her past support of leaker #EdwardSnowden.
Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and other Democrats condemned Gabbard during her confirmation hearing for sympathizing with #Snowden, an intelligence contractor who leaked highly classified programs in 2013 and fled to Russia.
Gabbard, a former Democratic lawmaker who left the party, argued in 2019 that Snowden’s disclosures had a positive impact by curbing intelligence agencies' abuses on personal rights.
“The fact is, he also, even as he broke the law, released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government, issues that led to serious reforms,” Gabbard said.
POLITICO / https://archive.is/scLed #Democrats #uspol

2025-01-26 18:35:11

- reply

completely different thread, mad about the CIA thing because it's :checks notes: being done deliberately to diffuse responsibility from the government for handling it poorly
not the absolute dumbest theory in the book, I suppose.

2025-01-26 18:25:37

hey look, an Eternal November settler having a meltdown about the lab leak theory. they've really added so much to the discourse around here

2025-01-26 01:41:55

- reply

translation: somehow 12 base pairs with an unusual (for viruses) way of representing Arg got pasted in. that's definitely weird, but if humans were doing it why would they have done it that way instead of using the virus's own idiom for representing Arg? my Occam's Razor interpretation is that the 12 pairs got pasted in from garbage floating around the host cell as happens plenty during virus reproduction, and were then selected for during serial passage in the Wuhan lab 😄

2025-01-26 01:38:54

- reply

> The furin cleavage site consists of four amino acids PRRA, which are encoded by 12 inserted nucleotides in the S gene. A characteristic feature of this site is an arginine doublet.
>
> This insertion could have occurred by random insertion mutation, recombination or by laboratory insertion. The researchers say the possibility of random insertion is too low to explain the origin of this motif.
>
> Surprisingly, the CGGCGG codons encoding the two arginines of the doublet in SARS-CoV-2 are not found in any of the furin sites in other viral proteins expressed by a wide range of viruses.
>
> Even within the SARS-CoV-2, where arginine is encoded by six codons, only a minority of arginine residues are encoded by the CGG codon. Again, only two of the 42 arginines in the SARS-CoV-2 spike are encoded by this codon – and these are in the PRRA motif.
random MD's essay https://archive.fo/nxMNr

2025-01-26 01:31:18

- reply

right but the mutation could have arisen during the serial passaging itself. anyway my argument rests on it being a plausible-to-acquire mutation (ie, a few base pairs flipped or a frameshift or similar, a mutation that's seen commonly), and I only vaguely remember that to be the case, and am currently unwilling to open a 🐰hole that I **will** go down for hours and/or days, so... 😆

2025-01-26 01:06:56

- reply

but it would be beneficial in serial passaging to adapt to cell culture with human cells (or any animal that has the same receptor, so mink cells or whatever). that's my point. doing serial passaging in cells with the proper receptor for a furin cleavage site to do the thing, results in high selective pressure encouraging one to be selected for.
I still think it was a lab leak of an accidentally virilized virus, but like I said, haven't bathed in the glow of information on the subject for quite a while, so I could be wrong or out of date

2025-01-26 01:00:09

- reply

i mean wasn't the furin cleavage site due to a change of just a couple base pairs? improbable, but imo not implausible to have occurred thru serial passaging (adapting virus to grow in cell culture) rather than deliberate engineering. but I haven't looked deeply at this shit in quite a while so I could be misremembering

2025-01-24 01:09:34

**Trump staff ‘furious’ after Musk trashes AI project**
A White House official said Elon Musk “very much” got over his skis when he launched a daylong screed against the project. Another Republican close to the White House went further, saying Trump’s staff is “furious” over Musk using his massive social media platform to pour cold water on the deal that Trump had called “tremendous” and “monumental.”
“It’s clear he has abused the proximity to the president,” said a Trump ally. “The problem is the president doesn’t have any leverage over him and Elon gives zero fucks.”
It is highly unusual for a senior adviser — #Musk — to criticize a president’s initiatives in public, and his broadsides renewed speculation within GOP circles about whether he and Trump will eventually have a falling-out.
Trump said it did not bother him that Musk criticized the deal, saying, “No, it doesn’t. He hates one of the people in the deal.”
POLITICO / https://archive.li/W0oZS #uspol

2025-01-23 02:17:09

- reply

yeah, it's extremely white in this area, and the littler companies (which I exclusively worked for) are less diverse than the big fish. a good number of women in those companies, precious few non-white employees of any persuasion

2025-01-23 02:08:33

- reply

white boys were definitely still the majority in the tech jobs I had in my extremely deep-blue city a decade ago, dunno about now tho because I've become a member of the permanent underclass

2025-01-22 04:02:14

- reply

that's one slice, and another slice wants somebody to cause as much chaos in The System as possible, because they do correctly identify the current System as a problem

2025-01-22 03:56:01

- reply

I wonder what % of his supporters would agree with that, probably a sizeable fraction

2025-01-22 03:53:46

- reply

you make a deal with this particular kind of devil, and that's exactly the type of result you will get

2025-01-22 03:52:14

**Trump’s embrace of meme coin sours mood in #cryptocurrency industry**
President Donald Trump’s goodwill has taken a hit after he and his wife launched meme coins — a move critics say looks like an unseemly cash grab that undermines efforts to legitimize digital assets.
The industry, which felt unfairly targeted by the Biden administration and spent heavily to help Trump win, is eager for the president’s help to make crypto a bigger part of mainstream financial systems.
The price of bitcoin and other digital assets has soared since Trump won.
Meme coins are among the wilder and more unregulated corners of the crypto universe. They often start as a joke with no real value but can surge in price if enough people buy them. Popular meme coins include Dogecoin and Fartcoin.
“It does the opposite of validating us, it makes it look completely unserious.” said Nic Carter, a Trump supporter and partner at crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures.
AP / https://archive.ph/UJ0AV #uspol

2025-01-21 19:08:37

- reply

the spooks who signed that bullshit letter deserve to be in prison

2025-01-21 19:06:32

- reply

personally, I love it when liars & criminals fight, and liars & criminals get taken down a peg because of that. 🙂

2025-01-21 19:05:39

**Trump moves to revoke clearances for officials who signed Hunter Biden letter**
President Trump took executive action Monday to start revoking the security clearances of his former national security adviser, John Bolton, and dozens of intelligence officials who signed a letter in 2020 claiming emails found on a laptop owned by Hunter Biden bore the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Mr. Trump said in his order that the signers of the letter "willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions."
The letter at issue was signed by 51 former intelligence officials and released in October 2020.
Among those who signed the letter are former Defense Secretary #LeonPanetta, former Director of National Intelligence #JamesClapper, former #CIA and #NSA Director #MichaelHayden and former CIA Director #JohnBrennan.
CBS News / https://archive.md/NmFfc #spooks #liars #uspol

2025-01-20 21:24:43

so I'm hearing that known scumbag Elon Musk did a Sieg Heil to Dear Leader, that should help his various brands a lot
how's that Twitter shareholder lawsuit coming along, I wonder?

2025-01-19 16:02:04

Democrats shoot themselves in the foot **AGAIN** with the #TikTok ban, handing Trump a giant win: can the malevolent incompetent cryptkeepers at the head of the Democrat party ever stop losing?

2025-01-18 18:36:07

just out of curiosity, is anybody else seeing a constant trickle of #Luigi stickers & posters from different cities in their feed? I'm seeing this on tumblr, at least 1 or 2 every day I scroll much, and every design is different. it's all grassroots.

2025-01-16 01:22:36

**Kamala Harris Paid the Price for Not Breaking With Biden on Gaza, New Poll Shows**
From 2020 to 2024, Democrats saw a staggering dropoff in support at the presidential level, with some 19 million people who voted for Joe Biden not voting in 2024. Now, a new survey conducted by YouGov suggests Biden’s support for Israel’s unrelenting assault on #Gaza played a surprisingly large role in the choice of those previous Biden supporters not to vote.
The top reason those non-voters cited, above the economy at 24% and immigration at 11%, was Gaza: a full 29% cited the ongoing onslaught as the top reason they didn’t cast a vote in 2024.
Even if the true numbers aren’t as stark as this survey found, it points in a clear direction: Biden’s ruthless support for Israel’s genocide, and the refusal of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to break with him, hurt her among voters who stayed home.
Drop Site News / https://archive.md/zClkQ #Democrats #uspol @npub1zxn…0kqm

2025-01-16 01:11:41

- reply

Israel has been and remains a client state of the USA. Biden could have ended it with a phone call.
Dear Old Joe didn't do that because he, and the Democrat party he symbolizes so very very perfectly, are quite literally worse than useless. senile, doddering, moldering, desperately out of touch... yet they all still manage to do a great job at being bald-faced sociopathic liars with nothing in the way of values.

2025-01-15 23:38:25

- reply

the only thing I'm certain of is that sociopaths, liars, and criminals are crawling all over this deal
I would like to see the Democrat-flavor sociopaths, liars, and criminals publicly eat shit for their feckless hypocrisy this entire time, though.

2025-01-15 21:11:37

**Trump's Mideast Envoy Forced Netanyahu to Accept a #Gaza Plan He Repeatedly Rejected**
Last Friday, Steven Witkoff, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, called from Qatar to tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's aides that he would be coming to Israel the following afternoon. The aides politely explained that was in the middle of the Sabbath.
Witkoff's blunt reaction took them by surprise. He explained to them in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him. Thus in an unusual departure from official practice, the prime minister showed up at his office. Witkoff then returned to Qatar to seal the deal.
In fact, Witkoff forced Israel to accept a plan that Netanyahu repeatedly rejected over the past half year.
Monday morning, Netanyahu mouthpiece Jacob Bardugo said, "The pressure Trump is exerting right now is not the kind that Israel expected from him. The pressure is the essence of the matter."
Haaretz / https://archive.md/Tm13Y @npub1zxn…0kqm

2025-01-09 22:33:20

am I supposed to be wringing my hands that a bunch of rich people's stuff burned up? asking for a friend

2024-12-27 18:24:10

haha wait wait wait, are rightoids turning on Elon Musk now?? just last night I was thinking there was no fucking way somebody that autistic would stay (or perhaps ever be) in their in-group, fash values or no

2024-12-21 02:42:46

I gotta figure out why the instance keeps going tits-up under load

2024-12-21 02:12:04

"b-but why doesn't anyone trust the press?? 🥺👉👈"
#LegacyMedia #CrisisInJournalism
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/81adda9b7bef2b1e536eb0017e5288dc1b5148b0b23c3367ae38c5c6a78e5ba3.png

2024-12-19 19:38:37

check out the dog & pony show they're putting on for our masters! #LuigiMangione #TheAdjuster
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/fe9494df9070d4c38036b80d59efaa177dfc4e310e491067941deab20805f0ec.jpg

2024-12-12 22:09:48

the New York Times is swill produced for the shitlib elite. the fact that they expect the rest of us to lap this up is a direct insult. #LegacyMedia
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/e67b14c4ba90b530fce64b3bf7d882af64b79f19b3de6067d75a80fd140ed2c9.jpeg

2024-12-12 20:57:26

it raises a lot of questions 🤔
https://soc-med.port0.org/media/2d8b22e3ea13429cbaca1c527e202b9690dc5d8a4757f9b9d0acdc06b62c0745.png

2024-12-05 23:52:34

**Insurance executive's murder sparks online praise and hate**
Support for the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, as well as sympathy for it, has spread on social media, alarming experts.
The Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University identified thousands of such posts on X. The posts, which could have been viewed by more than 8.3M accounts, garnered 180K likes and 24K retweets, according to the institute.
“The surge of social media posts praising and glorifying the killing of #UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson is deeply concerning,” said Alex Goldenberg, senior adviser for the institute and fellow at Rutgers.
“We’ve identified highly engaged posts circulating the names of other healthcare CEOs and others celebrating the shooter," he said. "The framing of this incident as some opening blow in a class war and not a brutal murder is especially alarming.”
NBC News / https://archive.fo/bI3P1 #UNH #UnitedHealthcare

2024-11-13 12:39:49

- reply

cool cool cool... so he's doing that thing chameleons do where they change the color of their scales to suit the situation?

2024-09-01 18:26:43

- reply

having taken US low-speed rail from one coast to the other last month, on a journey so cursed that Amtrak offered sincere apologies and a travel voucher completely unbidden, I wish we could have a rail system to be proud of in this country
new account btw, my old instance shut down