Nathan

Yet another computer geek

[William Allen 🇺🇸 ���🇦 @wmallen2024]

Growing up, I always wondered why I was the way I was. Why did I want to be a girl? I thought, if only I knew why, perhaps there was something I could do about it. I couldn't figure it out and I gave in to it and transitioned in 1993.

I passed well as female; I deceived many. I was perfectly content living out the rest of my life pretending to be a woman. Then, in my late 50s, I heard the Gospel. The Holy Spirit stirred in me and I began to see my sin, all sin, in its true light and I could see myself for who and what I was, a wretch in desperate need of a savior; I was crushed.

I broke down one night and cried out to God confessing my sins and asking forgiveness. For the first time in my life, I repented and put my faith in Jesus. I was then washed clean; made a new creation. I was given a new heart with new desires... I was born again.

I saw my lifestyle as repulsive and I hated it, I wanted no more of it; I wanted no more of sin. Even though it didn't seem practical because I was way more entrenched as Maggie than I ever was as William, I began the detransition process.

It took three years, it was expensive and it was painful. But as of October of 2023, after 30 years of living a lie, William was back and I live my life now for my savior, for my King.

From childhood, I never knew why I was like this, but now, I know, and it's simple. It's because there is sin in the world.

Come as you are, and be transformed.

[Daniel Friedman @DanFriedman81]

According to the GDC State of the Games industry report, 31% of US games industry workers identified as LGBTQ+. Among younger cohorts the number was even higher -- 39% of those 18-34 and 43% of those 24 and younger.

This is not an incidental fact; it is shaping the content of games, especially single-player narrative games like Obsidian's recent failures, "Outer Worlds 2" and "Avowed," as well as Bioware's disastrous "Dragon Age: The Veilguard."

Asha Sharma seems to be under the impression that the reason Bethesda's new game "Starfield" underperformed their past titles is that it is a new IP rather than "Fallout" or "Elder Scrolls."

But "Starfield" turned players off with its extremely prominent LGBT elements. Out of 4 major companion characters, two of them had significant LGBT backstories, and all the characters regardless of sex initiate flirty dialogue with the player.

"Starfield" also had a lot of large, desolate empty worlds that weren't that fun to explore, a lot of repetitive side missions, and frequent and annoying load screens, but the fact that these kinds of elements of the story were alienating rather than engaging is a big part of the reason "Starfield" never developed the kind of devoted fanbase that "Skyrim" and "Fallout 4" had.

If Bethesda makes an "Elder Scrolls" game and it's really gay, it's not going to get the reception from players that Sharma is hoping for.

A big part of Sony and Microsoft's recent problems, and a big part of the reason that Asian and indie games are hitting big while Western AAA games are crashing and burning is that these big studios undertook a major diversity push beginning around 2015, and transformed themselves to the point where these games are now being made by people who have wildly divergent tastes and values from the audience that is expected to play them.

And unless that changes, all the restructuring going on is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

[Non-Hyphenated American @NHAunleashed]

Totally legit

[LoLNothingMatters @DastDn]

Our system was built to guard against the passions of the mob as much as against a dictator.

But we have systematically democratized it, removing many guardrails against the former.

[Weekend Warrior ☝️🐉🏆🐏 @wwarrior_1]

"tastefully recontextualizes the story for the modern day"

[Wesley Yang @wesyang]

There are many people who claim in all sincerity to have been saved by giving all their money to Scientology or the Moonies. This may even be true. We look at them and feel pity -- but the cult gave them what they were lacking in life. It gave them community. It gave them a sense of purpose. It gave a structure to their desire and their striving.

That is what cults sell and what its salesmen sell successfully precisely because they are themselves true believers in their product because they did in fact derive many of the benefits they sell to others from their own immersion in the cult.

This is what transgenderism sells to its adherents. It sells a story of magical self-transformation that is also the attainment of an authentic self. It does so through rituals of self-mortification that impose a sunk cost so great on those inflicting them on themselves that escaping the resulting immersion in a fictive, pseudo-reality that would vindicate such a sacrifice -- constructed in the same way that all social realities are constructed, through institutional validation -- becomes nearly impossible. "Death before detransition." It does so by creating intense trauma bonds between those who have undergone the rituals, which are further intensified by the cultivated sense of being oppressed unto death by the cisnormative world that surrounds them.

In a liberal, pluralistic society that honors freedom of speech and freedom of association, we don't ban commercial cults. We allow them to proselytize. What we don't do is give them access to schools to recruit children, we don't brainwash children in the millions to accept their beliefs as the only truth, we don't give their cult rituals the imprimatur of medicine, we don't allow them to use state power to force people to pay obeisance to their cult dogmas. The President doesn't affirm their dogmas or direct his executive agencies to propagate them.

Transgenderism is novel in this way. Sharing aspects of many prior group psychological phenomenon -- the social contagions of eating disorders and Recovered Memory Syndrome, the business model of multi-level marketing schemes, the trauma-bonding of the gang initiation or the hazing ritual -- it melded these elements with institutional capture via two masquerades in which it successfully passed as something it is not: firstly, as a form of medicine, secondly, as a civil rights movement.

Undoing this unbelievable concatenation may actually be beyond the critical and epistemic capacities of the Western world.

[Jackie Chea ⚖️ @Fair_and_Biased]

This is Ellen at the Inception premieres in Los Angeles & London in 2010.

The Odyssey may be an epic poem, but Ellen’s tale is a tragedy.

[Greatwhitehope1776 @inDJTwetrust1]

I watched Odyssey, and it is as bad as you expect. The script is ghetto slang, then you get sub Saharan Greek Princess, Asian and tranny Greek warriors, who talk crap to each other... Let's goooo is the call to war.
Pure garbage

[Kevin Malone @Malone_Wealth]

Wow. For the first time I have ever seen, 200/200 of the largest insider trades over the week were all SELLS. This is absolutely not normal.

[tic toc tic @TicTocTick]

Today a lot of folks almost got bagged at a mere 2% sell off in Nasdaq.

This shows astronomical level of margin and speculation.

When real sell off eventually comes there won’t be a stretcher in sight to carry the departed.

Immense dark powers of markets will be unleashed and generations upon generations of men will not touch stocks with a ten foot pole ever again..

[Nostra, House of Gold @Nostre_damus]

We are going to end up giving Iran another $20 Billion after all this

[LoLNothingMatters @DastDn]

Proportionality remains one of the most toxically suicidal concepts adopted by the West to cut off its own nuts when it comes to exercise of military power.

Military action must be proportional only to the success of the operation. Not the lunatic idea of "fair" casualty ratios.

[Hannibal999 @Hannibal9972485]

If your kid depends on FAFSA this Trump accounts will destroy them .
🚨🚨🚨

The government is giving a child $1,000 in "free money" but by placing it in an asset account in the child's name, they are disqualifying that child from thousands of dollars in Pell Grants and subsidized loans over their college career

($200/yr x 4 years = $800 lost immediately, plus more if the balance grows).

The "free money" is effectively clawed back by the financial aid system. The Treasury gives with one hand and the Department of Education takes with the other. This ensures poor families remain indebted to the system rather than receiving outright support

🚨🚨🚨🚨
——

THE WAGE REPLACEMENT SCHEME (THE CORPORATE TAX DODGE)⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️🏦🏦

Another anomaly Employers can contribute up to $2,500 per year to these accounts, and these contributions are "not considered income to the employee or the dependent." The Treasury promotes this as a "tax-preferred benefit" for small businesses.⚠️⚠️⚠️

So If an employer puts $2,500 into a Trump Account instead of giving the employee a $2,500 raise, who wins? 👀

The employee gets locked liquidity (can't touch it for 18 years), but the employer gets a tax deduction.

This incentivizes corporations to replace liquid wage increases with locked equity contributions. An employer can tell a worker, "I can't afford a $2,500 raise," and instead give them $2,500 in a Trump Account. 🚨🚨🚨

The employee thinks they got a bonus, but they actually got nothing they can use to pay rent or buy groceries today. This suppresses real wage growth by funneling compensation into illiquid government accounts that the worker cannot access, while the employer maximizes tax benefits.🚨🚨🚨🚨
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THE NEGATIVE TAX ARBITRAGE (THE POOR MAN'S PENALTY)🚨🚨🚨

Another Anomaly: it says Contributing to a Trump Account is done with after-tax dollars (no deduction), but withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income upon distribution.⚠️

This is the opposite of a Roth IRA (where you pay tax now, but withdraw tax-free). In this system, you pay tax now, and you pay tax later.⚠️

This structure is predatory for low-income families who are currently in a low tax bracket. If a family in the 10% or 12% tax bracket contributes today, and the child withdraws the money at age 35 when they are in the 22% or 24% tax bracket, the family has voluntarily entered a higher tax liability. This structure guarantees the IRS collects more revenue decades from now than they would under a normal savings account or Roth structure.

The "benefit" of tax-deferred growth is wiped out by the penalty of higher taxes at withdrawal.⚠️⚠️⚠️
——

All these Trump accounts do is 🚨🚨 Loop:

The Government (Treasury) forces money in -> Robinhood/BNY manages it -> The money buys stocks/companies -> BlackRock/Goldman/etc. run those companies/assets -> The stocks go up due to forced demand -> The companies match employee contributions (tax write-off) -> More money in -> Stocks go up more.

It's a circular enrichment scheme for the financial sector.🚨🚨🚨STOLEN from US TAX PAYERS 🚨🚨🚨
@RepThomasMassie

[Calvin Freiburger ✝️ 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 🇺🇦 @CalFreiburger]

Yeah, because no other NATO leader is so easily manipulated by pageantry.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

China isn't just forcibly deindustrializing Germany. It's doing the same to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.

https://t.co/CP4qx6IFLg

[LoLNothingMatters @DastDn]

Fucking idiot piece of garbage.

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

A four-day-old baby girl experienced her first night at home to the sound of explosions during Russia's attack on Kyiv.

"You're four days old. This is your first night at home. It should have been a joyful one for you - and for us, your parents. But the neighboring state is nothing but the scum of society," the baby's mother, Arina, wrote.

📹: arina.fanova / Instagram

[Peter Schiff @PeterSchiff]

Trump rang the opening bell today to ring in his new Trump accounts. But there is nothing to celebrate, as the $1,000 federal contribution to these accounts is funded by issuing more debt. So the kids who get the money also inherit the debt. Cutting spending would be far better.

[Sana Ebrahimi Ledene @__Injaneb96]

I just spoke with multiple sources on the ground in Tehran.
According to them, the turnout for Khamenei’s funeral was surprisingly thin, only a few thousand people at most. That number included Afghan mercenaries, Iraqi Hashd al-Shabi fighters, and regime-invited supporters flown in from abroad.

My contacts noted that the crowd was comparable to the usual attendance at the Tehran International Book Fair, which is held at the same venue, the Imam Khomeini Mosalla.
For a Supreme Leader who ruled for decades, that’s an embarrassing farewell.