Trump, but more likely one/some of his sycophants, explained how hard-line immigration enforcement could help in removing political opposition with the help of a corrupt and stacked Supreme Court

It's definitely Stephen Miller. Zero doubt. He is the true believer in racist/white supremacist and the New York Times' recent story had multiple anecdotes about the DOJ and DHS/ICE being directly controlled by him, while Bondi and Noem are only interested in making TV appearances.

Right but... you know 90 out of 100 Americans on Lemmy didn't even vote for him and oppose him?

I kind of just read your message as: Hey, domestic abuse victim, you need to figure out your abusive spouse who you're forced to live with pronto! Their abuse spills over and it's making a mess everywhere.

Pretty sure many of them are LLMs by bot factories with an interest in the US tearing itself apart, and the prompt is, "Write a reply to {post}. Agree and amplify what is said, but make more racist and divisive."

I really only notice that for your tongue.

The contest won't be over who can imitate Trump the best. It'll be who can use Trump as a martyr best. They all know Trump is the glue that holds their machine together.

You're confusing him. It's not a big deal, he's some guy and we're just two people on the Internet, but he's a left populist, not a "both-sides-er." He's fed up with institutional politics becoming ineffective, not with people being too "left."

I've been watching him since the beginning too, I wouldn't say that 10 years ago, but this is where he's at right now.

The modern fascist terraforming plan is:

Step 1: Flood the zone.

Step 2: Population gives up and tunes out.

Step 3: Remove all remaining checks to power.

Step 4: Purge all political and social undesirables.

The funny thing is, Stephen Miller and the rest realized they can do the steps in parallel, each one reinforcing and normalizing the others.

The most valuable and hardest thing we can do is not give up resisting. But pace yourself, find some good in the world and give it some of your attention every day. They're relying on wearing us down.

I assume it's going to come out of DHS or ICE-allotted funds.

So...I agree. Yes, it's our tax or debt burden, and yes, that's infuriating. But the money has already been stolen from us. Now the only question is, is that money going to be used to accelerate fascist policies like the end of due process or not?

So drain the bank, please. Every dollar for judgments or settlements is a dollar not spent on racist, unconstitutional immigration policy.

Hmmm, I have been skeptical of AI, but it looks like it's getting smarter.

Ok, yes, sure... but - and stay with me here - what should you do if you're the single most incompetent and confident person on the planet, surrounded by morons you chose solely because they would agree and amplify everything you say? What then, Mr. Smart G- I mean, Pancake?

They can't, and either way, with Bondi in control, she can decide what the DOJ says. I can't think of a reason not to expect she'd change what the report contains or concludes, forever distorting that history in favor of Trump.

Would expect nothing less from MiniTrue.

Well, I guess now we know how Elon refers to himself in private.

Have xAI's real employees considered hiding the password to alter Grok's system prompt, at least while Elon isn't allowed to play with his other favorite toy, the lives of millions of federal employees? Or just setting up a fake interface for him so he can alter a sandboxed Grok instance that's only accessible from his Twitter?

Thank you for submitting your final exam for AP American History. ChatGPT 5-TeacherEdition graded your Llama 6.3o answers to be 25% incorrect. This determination is only appealable by confirming an error in grading with a Gemini X-5-level grading-appeal service, with a Standard Reliability rating of 7.5 or higher. Our system notes from your records that this service is not available to your income tier.

Your future profession is selected as: Meat packer.

Have a nice day.

ChatGPT would never make those capitalization errors unless you specifically added to your prompt, "Capitalize words like you're a brain-damaged capuchin."

Flash forward eight years, to this past May, when Mr. Miller, still livid and now the White House deputy chief of staff, paid a visit to the Washington headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he berated officials for not deporting nearly enough immigrants. He told the officials that rather than develop target lists of gang members and violent criminals, they should just go to Home Depots, where day laborers gather to be hired, or to 7-Eleven convenience stores and arrest the undocumented immigrants they find there.

This time, the officials did what Mr. Miller said. ICE greatly stepped up its enforcement operations, raiding restaurants, farms and work sites across the country, with arrests sometimes climbing to more than 2,000 a day. In early June, after an ICE raid in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles triggered protests, Mr. Trump deployed several thousand National Guard troops and Marines to the city, over the objection of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The crisis, from the immigration raids that sparked the protests to the militarized response that tried to put the protests down, was almost entirely of Mr. Miller’s making. And it served as a testament to the remarkable position he now occupies in Mr. Trump’s Washington. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who reportedly accompanied Mr. Miller on his visit to ICE headquarters, seems to defer to him. “It’s really Stephen running D.H.S.,” a Trump adviser said. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, is so focused on preparing for and appearing on Fox News that she has essentially ceded control of the Department of Justice to Mr. Miller, making him, according to the conservative legal scholar Edward Whelan, “the de facto attorney general.” And in a White House where the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is not well versed or terribly interested in policy — “She’s producing a reality TV show every day,” another Trump adviser said, “and it’s pretty amazing, right?” — Mr. Miller is typically the final word.

That last paragraph... Ooof.

I knew Miller was a nihilistic misanthrope who would take as much power as he could, but I expected Bondi, Noem and Wiles to be nearly as craven to demonstrate their value to Trump and carve out their own fiefdoms. I didn't expect them to cede it without so much as a shrug.

Yes, but you see, now they can "read" the outline, and end up with just enough memory of it to reference the work in a condescendingly authoritative opinion about it.

Well, I'll give my own impression: I was never a fanboy, but I think his PR team did a good job making him seem vaguely non-threatening and focused on bringing the sci-fi ideas into reality. I remember rolling my eyes when he appeared in Iron Man 2, and the "Tony Stark" comparisons always seemed, to be charitable, aspirational. But then he started tweeting about that cave diver being a "pedo guy," fired his PR people, and it quickly became obvious who he really was.

Basically standard tech bro protocol. Appear neutral on politics and vaguely altruistic in motive, until they have so much money nobody can stop them from being their worst techno-fascist selves. (Altman seems next in line for this transition.)

Yeah, this post started as a reassurance that Tailscale wouldn't enshittify. But it turned out to just be an argument about how to avoid enshittification that boiled down to two principles:

1. You shouldn't make your product worse because it'll eventually harm the company; and
2. Founders are magic and need to never turn over control of the company to others (be it new CEOs or VC) to resist enshittification.

Both are partially right and partially wrong.

For #1: Yes, making your product worse eventually harms the company. No, you can't expect CEOs to accept that as a reason to not make their product worse because even if it harms the company, short-term incentives that lead to enshittification are eventually going to become irresistible. His comment about reaching "zen" with leveled growth and profit will never stop VCs from calling in demands and favors.

For #2: Yes, founders typically "get it" more than their VC- or failure-initiated replacements. No, that doesn't mean founders are uniquely resistant to enshittification. This is your point too, and it's why I don't believe this person - they lose credibility here because they don't acknowledge they aren't special. Every tech bro out there thinks they've cracked the code to permanent tech hegemony. That exceptionalist thinking turns into enshittification, since the product-worsening or overcharging is easier to justify as temporary/necessary/not-a-big-deal (until it isn't).

And all of this doesn't explain why Tailscale specifically gets immunity if the principles are true.

So interesting post, and a lot more self-awareness than most founders which is still a little reassuring, but a lot of warning signs too.

Edit: clarity