No tinfoil needed, because what we put out into the world in terms of behavior and choices and the way we interact with others comes back to us, and everything you said simply matches what they regularly put out. They both thrive on chaos, and he especially goes out of his way to blow up whatever just quietly works, using kindness and the goodwill of others as an opening through which to exploit and destroy, so whatever comes back to them both – especially in terms of their ongoing antisocial and criminal behaviors and associations – is not going to be sane, stable, or predictable. What you wrote is prescient, not crazy.

are both acting like they are being actively blackmailed.

Yes, and imagine how much, and by how many. Think about all the parties they went to twenty-thirty years ago; all the illegal, immoral, and repugnant shit they did when none of it seemed to matter. Imagine them being quizzed by their attorneys, "Are you sure you’ve told me everything?" and having to say no because even if they do remember some of what they did, they did far too much over too long a period of time to remember any of the specifics now. Picture the moment they realize that Epstein’s penchant for having secret cameras everywhere (including tissue boxes, apparently) in addition to the cameras of paparazzi as well as the straight media means they literally have NO idea what old evils will surface next, or from where or when, or with what proof.

In that context, an individual blackmailer that comes forward with a specific demand is almost a mercy, lol.

I think you’re probably more right than you know when you surmise that their evil is coming back to them in ways and from directions they never imagined, and cannot now control. But it’s not like they are people that spared the children and family members of others, or value that kind of morality in the people they associate with, so they shouldn’t be too offended when that’s how their own actions return to them.

Yes! I saw that after I posted, it’s short and well worth the watch. I think he put his finger directly on it by dissecting the actual language of her statement: it is crafted to be specific to the elements of a successful defamation case. In other words, the way he sees it, it’s a very carefully worded warning to whoever is about to release some immensely damning story on her. Excellent recommendation.

For myself, what I noticed when Voidzilla dissected her speech was her repetitive mention of photos, pictures, images, meaning that if she’s trying to get ahead of something by shooting a “you know who you are” legal warning across the bow of someone about to publish, then whatever they have it’s pretty bad, and it includes photographic evidence, just going by the content and direction of her own statement.

But I saw something else as well that you might find interesting: a brief appearance by Rep. Ro Khanna on MS NOW where, after the host shows a bunch of happy group pictures of Melania not being friends with Epstein and Maxwell, he discusses one of the bizarre statements she made – “Epstein did not act alone,” which is in direct contradiction to the government line that it’s all a “hoax” and nothing to investigate – with Rep. Khanna.

Rep. Khanna’s position is simply that Melania could not have said that unless she has relevant information, and if she has relevant information, she should testify under oath before the committee. If the standard for appearance that was applied to Hillary Clinton – “I don’t know him” – is the bar for requiring someone to testify under oath in regard to their relationship with Epstein, then Melania by all means should also be among those who do. I agree.

I did not know this when I posted the above, but apparently the press conference itself was both unexpected and highly unusual, or as Heather Cox Richardson put it more than once this evening, “bizarre.”

Apparently Melania walked out of the White House, stood behind the presidential seal – in itself a huge breach of White House protocol and tradition, not that they care – and spoke for several minutes in the place of the president, who was possibly unaware that she was even doing this, and made her statement direct to camera before walking back in without another word to any of the reporters assembled for it.

Meanwhile, no one has any real idea why she did this, nor why today, nor what denying the mountains of proof of her interactions with both Epstein and Maxwell was meant to accomplish. From the NYT: (archive link)

In remarks that lasted just under six minutes, she said she wanted to clear “my good name.” She addressed rumors about the origin story of how she met her husband, the president of the United States. And she called on Congress to give a hearing to victims of Mr. Epstein’s crimes. “The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,” Mrs. Trump said. She talked about “numerous fake images and statements about Epstein and me” that “have been percolating on social media for years now.”

It was not clear why she chose to speak out now, or to what reports she was referring.

A spokesperson for Mrs. Trump said the president knew that the first lady planned to make a statement, but later said it was not clear if Mr. Trump was aware of the topic of her remarks. In a phone call with an MS Now reporter, Mr. Trump said he had no prior knowledge of what she had planned to say.

The White House did not respond to questions about what the president knew on the matter and when.

Another pundit, George Conway, believes it is possible that she did it because she knows something that is about to come out, but no one has any real idea. Even the NYT is flummoxed, ending their article with,

And then she turned on her stiletto heels and stalked out as the dazed reporters started shouting after her: “Why now!? Why now!?”

No one knows. So if anyone can bring a cloud of confusion to a duststorm of conflicting reports and call it a job done, that’s apparently what she has accomplished today.

Note: I am aware there are problems with archive.world, but it has the content. If you have a better alternative, feel free to post it.

Meta today began removing ads from attorneys who were seeking clients that claim to have been harmed by social media

. . . Thereby proving the absolute ease and facility with which content can be rapidly identified and removed when that content removal serves the corporation, and thereby actively helping to prove the plaintiffs’ cases for them.

Now that’s meta.

Given that the survivors at every turn are asking for privacy, for protection, and that their own names be redacted from the process, this is, in my own opinion, nothing short of a brutally insane twisting of the judicial process to force the victims to carry the weight of it all.

Also, Mrs. Trump’s statement becomes even more farcical for anyone aware of the Congressional Record of which she speaks.

“Each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the congressional record,” she said.

Yeah, no. As any historian will tell you, if you want truth, the Congressional Record is not the first place you go look for it. From Wikipedia,

By custom and the rules of each house, members also frequently “revise and extend” their remarks made on the floor before the debates are published in the Congressional Record.

What this means in practice is that there is a certain amount of time during which any member can edit and even remove whatever they want from the official record of what they said, among other allowed changes. Thus it is not nearly so much a record of what was actually said, as it is a record of what a member would have liked to say.

Add to this the fact that the other Epstein-related depositions have been conducted privately and under very different rules via subpoenas issued by the House Oversight Committee, and any survivor would be unwise, at best, to engage in any part of this charade: they would have no protection whatsoever not only from the public, but from the very members of the Committee they would be testifying in front of, or whatever body of Congress actually conducts this circus.

To put it bluntly, for every Ro Khanna or Thomas Massie who genuinely wants to see the truth come out, there are a hundred Gym Jordans and James Comers and Lindsey Grahams who desperately want the survivors to shut the fuck up, and will do whatever immoral, illegal act they have to do to make sure that happens.

If Melania Trump had set out to victimize the survivors further, she literally could not have done a better job than this.

I posted this in the other sub and forgot to do it here, my apologies. Anyway, the actual letter sent yesterday by Ro Khanna and Nancy Mace to Chairman Comer explains the actual legal position and precedent, and the DoJ refusal to have Bondi appear has no legal substance at all. It’s an easy read, so I included the text along with the source. See it for yourself.

Note especially the assertion made in paragraph 5, “As you know, Congress’s oversight authority does not end when an official leaves office. In fact, just last year the Committee issued subpoenas to six former Attorneys General, spanning multiple administrations of both political parties.”

Even a President and an ex-Secretary of State/Senator had to appear in response to the same kind of subpoena from the same committee: there is no legal room for Pam Bondi to refuse. Whether there is poitical will to hold her feet to the fire is another matter, and with Republicans crossing the aisle for this, there just might be. Time will tell.

Source

Congress of the United States
Washington, DC 20515

April 7, 2026

The Honorable James Comer
Chairman
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Comer,

We urge you to make clear former Attorney General Pam Bondi remains obligated to comply with the Oversight Committee’s subpoena and appear for her scheduled deposition on April 14, 2026.

We moved to subpoena Pam Bondi, and the Committee voted to approve this motion on a bipartisan basis, because the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) still has not complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act (Public Law No: 119-38), and because serious questions remain regarding the DOJ’s non-compliance and their handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and his associates while she was Attorney General.

The removal of Pam Bondi as Attorney General does not diminish the Committee’s legitimate oversight interests in seeking her sworn testimony or the need for accountability and information about files withheld from the public by the DOJ. On the contrary, it makes her sworn testimony even more important, especially with respect to actions she took as Attorney General, matters already under investigation, and decisions made under her leadership.

When Pam Bondi appeared last month for a briefing, you reiterated you would continue to pursue her sworn testimony and would discuss holding her in contempt of Congress if she failed to comply. She also stated that she would follow the law with respect to her subpoena, which clearly requires her to appear before the Oversight Committee.

As you know, Congress’s oversight authority does not end when an official leaves office. In fact, just last year the Committee issued subpoenas to six former Attorneys General, spanning multiple administrations of both political parties. The American people deserve answers about whether Congress was misled and whether information is being withheld by the DOJ.

We ask you to publicly reaffirm that Pam Bondi must appear on April 14 for a sworn deposition as ordered or face appropriate enforcement if she refuses to comply.

Sincerely,

Ro Khanna
Member of Congress
U.S. House of Representatives

Nancy Mace
Member of Congress
U.S. House of Representatives

This is really good. Thank you for taking the time to write it.

Thank you for writing this up, as someone not familiar with what’s going on over there I really appreciate you taking the time.

It’s all good. I think it has a lot more to do with accommodating one’s own brain, and how we individually categorize and enjoy our listening, than with specifics of music like genre/artist/album/track.

For myself, I almost always have some tune or another out of nowhere running through my head, so when I choose something to listen to, I am either picking with or against what’s already playing. So if I tune in to the music that’s already playing, I can see associated choices that are the same, similar, or completely unrelated on a superficial level, but my brain has linked them all somehow. Any of those choices, if I put them on, will satisfy because my brain is already playing one and mentally I’m already there.

I think the reasons algorithms never work for me is because no one could ever follow that, much less predict it. Even I can’t. Instead I’ve learned to simply accommodate it.

I’ve been living off a folder of mp3s for 30 years.

Same here. I love that shit. My mood is the algorithm. I still occasionally get new stuff, but from other sources I happen to see or hear, like a Netflix show that has it in the background or a musician’s personal recommendation in an interview, and I go look it up manually. But even if I never got anything new, I already have more music than I could easily listen to in a lifetime that I already know I liked at least once.

I’ve tried streaming sources, but it never hits right. This way, where I am specifically picking the artist or album, it’s always right, always fresh, and I’m always listening to something I want to hear.

Lol, me and my poor memory started it. My apologies to you both.

I love dbzer0 and have an account there, it’s a really well-run and well-moderated instance with a LOT of thriving diversity, but they are also very pro-AI and I am very not, so I didn’t move completely. But I keep that account open just in case. It’s a great place.

Wow, thank you. When I wrote this, I was trying to explain something I have been thinking about and understanding innately for years but have never really put into words, and as a result it got long. But it has to do with how the act of consuming short-form content like social media (tweets and tik-tok videos, for example) has the effect of placing us in a semi-trance state, where the usual walls between ourselves and the outside world blur or even disappear, and our trust is the default even as we are certain it isn’t.

When we go in to consume that short-form stuff, because we think we actively chose it and believe our own chemistry has nothing to do with it, we’re walls down, thinking we’re in charge, but in fact our inner landscape has changed dramatically: mentally we’re in another world that we’ve created for ourselves. It’s made of the combination of what we brought and what we’re seeing, and how our imaginations combine that mix into something almost trustworthy at the moment of consumption when in reality it’s anything but that. Entirely Hitchcockian in a sense – “let the viewer create the fear” – but for the technological age where the mantra is “let the reader create the sense of trust” where trust could NOT be less deserved.

So later I was thinking about a TL;DR for all that, and honestly, if I could offer one, it would be that the more intentionally and forcefully we hold our own mental space, the freer and safer we are to read and skip whatever we want, because we are not feeling the same pressure to stay and get more. We can literally drop something mid-sentence and not feel a loss. The usual hooks of alternating dopamine and subtle fear just don’t hit the same when you really can just take it or leave it.

And because there’s no part of us feeling trapped and unable to let go, the need to hit back at something disagreeable also lessens. And that’s the part that lets the subtlety of diverse opinion in: it’s no longer a threat, because you’re not in the same kind of trance mode. You never stop maintaining that critical inner separation from its content. But that takes work and vigilance: I have to know what I’m up against to do it and actively continue working at keeping myself separate.

Yeah, not at a good TL;DR yet. Still needs work, clearly. Also, no denigration to food trucks! It’s not unusual to get better food from a truck than a sit-down restaurant, depending on where you’re located. And speaking of diversity, especially national, they can offer a lot more than the usual. To be clear I was thinking more the smaller, limited item ones – hot dogs and pretzels – they have at amusement parks than the real street trucks in NYC and LA, for example, and totally forgot about some of the amazing, unusual ones I’ve had the privilege of trying.

I genuinely hope no food trucks were harmed in the making of my comment, lol. But it’s a point well taken. Thank you for the correction!

Imagine it is two weeks before a major election in a closely contested state. A controversial ballot measure is on the line. Suddenly, a wave of posts floods X, Reddit, and Facebook, all pushing the same narrative, all amplifying each other, all generating the appearance of a massive grassroots movement. Except none of it is real. …Trust in the information people encounter on X, Facebook, and Reddit, already eroded, could fall even farther.

It’s much more difficult to be propagandized by any means, including autonomous AI, when you’re not freely offering up your own time and devices daily to have it fed to you, individualized just for you by means of your own data, which you are also donating to the cause of propagandizing you.

I get why people do, there are lots of good reasons, but at a certain point the good outweighs the bad. And there’s no time like the present to make a change.

So if you’re reading this and you are still interacting with these centralized corporate-owned propaganda sites regularly, maybe it’s time to rethink that strategy.

It was several years ago so in regard to dbzer0 signups I bet it’s my memory, lol. Thank you for the correction!

Lol. No. I’m what AI trained on.

Throughout history, there were people who read, and in reading, gained the ability to write. Look at my post history. (I looked at yours: it explains your stance perfectly.)

Let me know when you get something that idea-diverse out of a machine that isn’t actually a list or start out as one.

Thank you for saying so. Makes it worth writing.

Lol, no. Where else am I going to hear from the proudly atheist, anarchist, socialist, not-mainstream-and-not-interested folks? Even folks on the outer edges from my own position, like hexbear and lemmygrad, educate in their own way: not so much about what they think but about why they believe what they do. That doesn’t mean I want to go roll my brain around in that full time, but I am absolutely better for having encountered them.

I love these comments and opinions when I see them in the wild, and while I may completely disagree, when they are presented courteously they are fascinating and informative.

This next bit is long, but relevant: it’s about getting yourself to a point where you are able to see and enjoy the diversity that is already here. Just my opinion, skip it if you want.

You don’t have to agree with something to be able to read it. And you don’t have to possess, or even form, an opinion of your own just because others express theirs strongly. That need comes from innate human evolution, a deep quiet fear that if you stray too far from the pack or disagree too strongly you will be ostracized and not survive, but in the here and now in online spaces it’s just a fear. You can, within your own tolerances, choose to set that aside and just read whatever you want.

Or to see it from the opposite direction, ALL people, including you, including me, derive comfort and security from being in agreement with the herd. But these days, in online spaces, and in every open space where public discourse occurs, that is no longer natural discourse, but a mindfuck: something manipulated beyond recognition by hooking into our primal human fears and using that subtly activated fear as a leash to drag people into thinking, and then doing, what they would otherwise not be inclined to think or do on their own.

That’s what fucks it up for the rest of us. Propaganda, bad actors, and endless marketing. Remember how it was when the internet was young? That’s the difference between then and now: those three things weren’t there then, and the internet was a space as great as we could all make it. But they sure are there now. And if you’re human, you too are susceptible to it. I know I am.

So you carefully choose your spaces, you make the effort to know and respect your own tolerances, you take the time to look up sources on your own, and you curate your own feed like your sanity depends on it, because it does.

Some young person told me off many moons ago about how “all people [his] age are overwhelmed” and how he could not be held accountable for his own shitty behavior online because of his resultant “anxiety,” while at the same time absolutely refusing to curate his own intake. To me, he was drowning in a flood of negative, low-value content he refused to turn off or even slow.

I feel bad for him because while it is absolutely true that everything, coming at all of us all the time, is a tsunami of mental and emotional overwhelm that never stops, he CAN easily take control of what he chooses to see, and choose to cut it off when it’s too much. No one’s going to do that for him. But I can choose to do that for myself, and I do.

And that’s how I can easily read differing opinions without being threatened by them: they are just that. Opinions. Not even necessarily factual. When you get to that place, the world is your oyster, but it takes constant vigilance. Get lazy and you’re back to just doomscrolling the propagandized mainstream mental and emotional manipulations again.

But hit that sweet spot in your own feed and viewing tolerances, and that’s when you can see and appreciate the diversity that is already thriving here. Instead of a glance and a discard in a world of one-line comments – what doomscrolling and social media are made of and count on – you can actually read, really read and not just skim, and recognize when something is worth more than five seconds or not. The more you actually read and don’t just skim, the better and faster you’ll become while still enjoying the pleasures that deep reads will bestow.

People are still making ten course meals of real content, but most readers are still hanging out at the food trucks. Only you can find what you’re really looking for, but chances are excellent it’s already here and you’ve either trained yourself to look past it, or actively cut it off by blocking it because it was too much trouble to deal with (high noise to signal, bad actors or behaviors, poor moderation, spam, etc). Look again.

I especially tip my hat to dbzer0 forcing new users to write a brief essay on anarchism just to sign up. I don’t know if they still do that, but their requirement made me think about something I already knew from the distant past that I had not thought about in years – Sacco and Vanzetti came to mind, though they are perhaps not the best example of real anarchism, lol – and given recent world events it has been a VAST personal relief to know that there is a huge, thriving set of alternative philosophies that are NOT just designed to move masses of people through orphan-crushing and value-extraction machines until we all die. (And that’s before you get to the scam that is politics in the US.)

So yeah, I’ve learned more about grassroots populist movements and beliefs just browsing Lemmy in three years than I ever learned in the space of many decades prior, and I can honestly say that while my values have remained the same, my entire worldview has been transformed by quietly hearing and listening to others talk about their own, even when I did not agree.

TL;DR: If you’re not seeing diversity, that’s a sign to carefully broaden your own scope and tweak your own viewing boundaries.

My personal conclusion is that the DoJ is redacting directly from a list of known co-conspirators, and/or anyone whose ongoing involvement with Epstein would prove to be even more of a liability to certain governments around the world.

For example, Sarah Ferguson still has daughters that are directly in line to the British throne, and while many of her public contacts have cut ties, she is still very much a face of the British royal family whether they like it or not. Also, Andrew did not generally use his own name in written communications, preferring “The Duke” and other such light pseudonyms, arrogantly assuming that that was enough. And of course now his involvement is open knowledge, and presumably the truly bad stuff is either behind black boxes or in the documents still withheld from release.

So to me, both “royal” and “Ferguson” being redacted makes perfect sense, even where “Andrew” is not.

I believe that the DoJ is redacting from a specific “VIP list” not just because some male names are redacted and others are not, but because Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said in his interview with Heather Cox Richardson this week that, in his own experience viewing the still-redacted “unredacted” files available to him as a member of Congress, the DoJ seems to be “really focused on redacting specific ones that keep you from connecting the dots.”

But from what I’m seeing now, in a completely unrelated, non-criminal, boring probate filing in the U.S. Virgin Islands, I think that anyone with the technical capacity to do so can unredact redactions from public duplicates, and create a list of non-victim (iow, perpetrator and co-conspirator) names that are actively being redacted.

Oh, yeah, it absolutely does belong here. And the “reasons” we absolutely need this or that new incursion on our privacy are always something that ends up being inflated to cartoonish proportions, while everyone else is supposed to feel reassured.

Lol, no. What surveillance ends up being used for primarily – not even as an exception but as its primary goal – is backwards criminalization, where a person or organization in power has someone in front of them now that they wish to see rendered powerless, or disregarded, or silenced, so they just go back through the data looking for the points where that troublesome person stepped over some invisible line, charge them retroactively for their “crime”, and are done with them.

Even in the example of the article, surveillance doesn’t prevent anything. It only ever looks back. In a world (especially in the UK) where cameras already abound but crime rates stay the same or go higher, and regular police forces that supposedly exist to serve the community remain strapped, understaffed and underfunded, it is unrealistic to believe there will be some magical space where this collected surveillance data is processed, rings some alarm as designed, and the good guys come pouring out of a nearby substation to save the damsel in distress.

And we know this because there are already countless criminal alarms, and data, and specific cries for help that get ignored as a matter of routine. This new alarm will simply be added to the pile of those already ignored, while the people in power – who really want to just pre-emptively collect surveillance data on a supposedly free society – use it at-will and unseen to create and keep their own power by any means possible.