I’m just a spectre out of the nothingness, surviving inside a biological system.
Just out of curiosity, a quick look on the Forbes “Real-time Billionaires List” shows us an interesting suffix after several of those names: “& family”. It’s an ampersand (meant to be the conjunction “and”) followed by the word “family”.
and then $2,000 in foreign currency
Seems like the typical American Scapegoat™. I wonder what “foreign currency” they’re referring to… Feels like an urge from US authorities to use this case as “muh [placeholder for the name of some imaginary international bogeyman which US authorities believe it’s under their beds right now]”.
“Also they said that he had a Faraday bag,” which blocks cell signals, a move that prosecutors alleged marked “an indication of criminal sophistication
Something that’s one of the most sold products from Amazon, Shopee, AliExpress, among other marketplaces. For example, it’s sold even in some major grocery stores here in Brazil, so I imagine that a similar scenario happens in the US.
It’s got protection especially for contactless cards (so these cards can’t be used at a distance for paying things the cardholder isn’t aware of), and it generally offers some water protection (it’s not expected to be diving together at some beach with the cardholder, but it’d definitely offer some protection against spills and minimal soaked clothes due to rain, for example).
Yeah, you’re right, if he was caught carrying an explicit manifesto with him while he was in a McDonalds, he indeed doesn’t seem discrete and subtle.
I thought about the possibility of hidden messages left by him due to three reasons: firstly, because he seem to have left “riddle-like breadcrumbs” (the Monopoly money inside a backpack, the writing on the bullets, etc) which sounds like a puzzle to be solved. Second, because he’s both a programmer and an AI-enthusiast, he’s even Master in Computer Sciences (IIRC), which does involve lots of math passion and logic. Last but not least, because I’m also a programmer and I like math, unorthodox thinking, ciphering, steganography and cryptography.
My apologies for the long text ahead…
But to contextualize: ciphering is a set of techniques used to conceal a message behind a code (for example, Caesar cipher, Vigenere cipher, Playfair cipher and so on), while steganography is a set of artistic techniques used to hidden a message in plain sight (for example, a text hidden within the initials of another text, as in how the seemingly innocuous phrase “He is definitely driving every night” hides the word “HIDDEN”: just notice each initial letter from every word).
You see, most platforms have a “Scunthorpe problem” when a message triggers a false alarm due to an isolated word or string (sequence of letters) which otherwise would be dependent on a surrounding context. And I myself suffered several “Scunthorpe” censorship episodes throughout the social platforms, especially after the emergence of LLMs and Sentiment Analysis models, due to specific choices of words, for example.
Publishing ipsis literis an anti-capitalist manifesto that is definitely seen as “extreme” and “radical” by many people is something very likely to trigger algorithms, especially in major social platforms (such as Facebook, even X). This is easily circumvented through ciphering and steganography because LLMs can’t (yet) understand ciphered texts (with maybe the exception of simple alphabet substitution ciphers such as Caesar shift which is something really straightforward for LLMs to decipher), let alone steganographies (due to how LLMs struggle basic lexical tasks such as counting how many "R"s are there in the word “strawberry”, and hiding a message within the initials of another message is not the only way of steganography, there are many many other techniques). Some platforms have more censorship than others, and while GitHub isn’t used to deliver everyday messaging, its GitHub Gists is a perfect platform for unconventional thinkers to publish something (concealed within a code) that wouldn’t be welcomed on platforms such as Facebook.
A person like Luigi, a tech-savvy, a programmer, a master in Computer Science, AI-enthusiastic, someone deeply dissatisfied with the status quo, someone who seems to navigate across several fields of knowledge (therefore, a polymath kind of person), such person is someone very likely to be an unconventional thinker, almost in the edge of being a real-life Elliot Alderson (edit: he’s not, see below). I can sort of visualize how such a person could think outside the box and creating a whole puzzle with digital breadcrumbs, comparable to a Cicada 3301 back in the past… (because I dealt with similar things throughout my entire digital life since the Orkut times, puzzles and riddles involving ciphering, linguistics, math, art, cultural and historical references, because it’s something that pleased me both to create my own puzzles and to solve puzzles from others). Seems like it’s not exactly the case for Luigi, tho… Well, perhaps… Things are yet to unfold, I guess.
Edit: I just saw a screenshot of one of his past tweets criticizing someone because they “Overcomplicates everything he says aloud, wasting everyone’s mental bandwidth in having to decipher it. The best teachers are the best communicators: clear, succinct, simple language”. This sadly rules out every possibility for puzzles and riddles, doesn’t seem like a person that really values the beauty of math, linguistics, cryptography, ciphering and steganography. Welp, maybe I went too far in fantasizing some real-life thrilling plot of Elliot Alderson’s Fsociety. Anyway, I’m keeping the reply and my explanation about some (perhaps) useful concepts/knowledge (for anyone who finds it useful).
I couldn’t access his GitHub profile yet, but I wonder if his GitHub Gist have something… I dunno… Maybe a manifesto hidden within the code snippet (through steganography or ciphered message).
The descriptions you wrote resonate a lot with myself.
I’m often “robotic”, I even sound like some LLM as someone recently accused me of being. It’s not AI, it’s me, although I’m not sure who exactly…
That’s because I often find myself fighting with me, as if my essence/soul and my physicality/body were two distinct entities. Part of me wants to “just be normal” (whatever that means), while the other part of me finds no purpose at all, a nihilist perception from a cosmic level, all the way to myself and my existence.
And there’s my brain, often diving itself into an almost obsessive seeking for information and knowledge. I try to learn as much as I can find (self-teaching was always an easy thing to me), and I dive into a whole ocean of information and knowledge across several fields, from STEM fields to philosophy and a syncretic spirituality (from several belief systems). Deep inside, it’s me trying to flee from myself.
I feel like I exist in a bubble of myself, with my own culture, habits and thoughts disconnected from “other humans”, as if I couldn’t really get to understand the “invisible and unwritten rules” while having my own “invisible and unwritten rules” which nobody else seems to understand, yet deep inside I know there are people similar to me, struggling to cope with themselves and their surroundings just like I struggle to cope with myself and my surroundings.
Lots of people went from Twitter/X to Bluesky, and we know how much the Twitter environment has long been toxic, so the probability of toxicity within Bluesky increases as more X people are establishing there as we speak. I mean, it’s obviously not everyone, it’s obviously not a rule of thumb, but Bluesky was made a new agora by currently 20 million people (numbers from news dating back to two weeks ago), with the majority of them having left X long after that billionaire bought the platform, so they kept within the toxic environment (the X platform) longer than expected. Chances are that people who were structural maintainers of the toxicity of X are now on Bluesky, trying to toxicize it too, by means of attacking people. (I read through a Lemmy post that there’s an entire botnet pretending to be people and these bots are engaging in combative/trolling replies across Bluesky)
I have no Bluesky account, and many things make me dismiss my own intrusive thoughts of signing up there, one of which is directly related to this, the possibility of facing bots and toxicity from X, following the exodus of people (bots and trolls need people to spam/impersonate and to troll). While Mastodon (the real fediverse’s Twitter/X alternative) is often a cemetery (lacking enough interactions and activity), it seems to lack the toxicity from X.
… drawn on a paper sheet, so it has no other side (the sheet is blank at the back)
Optimistic, me? Lol! I’m far from an optimistic person.
On the one hand, you’re right, humans easily forget things, especially when our daily lives are so exhausting and humans have limited attention span (it reminds me of a video about an experiment involving attention span where a person wearing a monkey costume appears during a moment where the viewers are trying to count how many times a basketball kicked on the ground: as our eyes are focused on the basketball, we can’t even notice them).
On the other hand, I never saw this kind of broad and unified reaction and feelings of “justice had been made”. Hell, it even caused a reaction inside myself, and I’m not even an American. I’m Brazilian but I’m following what’s happening around the world, especially what’s happening with USA. I notice how the world has long been a gunpowder barrel, ready to explode. The bad things kept happening, humans kept being enslaved by this modern slavery, humans kept being silenced (“shut up and work, get us our profits, peasant!”), and everything has a tipping point. Everything has an “enough” point. A broad “enough” reaction was just a matter of time. And it seems like it happened through an anonymous symbol of this “enough” sentiment inside everyone.
At least that’s what I feel, even when I’m from a whole another country and hemisphere, because it’s a system with tentacles over the whole world. Corporations are multinational, they got branches here and there and everywhere. For example: back in 2015 and 2019, hundreds of Brazilians were killed by a mining corporation, when a dam broke, flooded an entire town and drowned people to their deaths. If was known as “Brumadinho dam disaster” and “Mariana dam disaster”. It took years for their families to receive money (I’m not sure if this happened yet, when or how much they received), and some people even weren’t found. People were “indirectly” murdered by a mining corporation, and that mining corporation continued to operate until nowadays!!
Something definitely needs to change, something definitely needs to happen so our “that’s enough” feelings can be awakened, so things can change even if it’s a little bit.
You’re considering that these photos are his photos, when actually it could easily be an entirely other person or, worse, AI-generated person (sites such as This Person Doesn’t Exist is a clear example of how AIs can generate non-existent faces). IIRC, these photos came from news outlets, so it couldn’t really be trusted as a matter of fact.
Despite that, people here on Lemmy seem to be sharing it just for the lulz of it, because meaningful things need a meaning symbol to symbolize it. And those photos, even when they’re not his, is a well-agreed symbol.
If those photos really helped the authorities somehow, they’d already have a grip on him, but they haven’t. So, hey, relax…
I first knew fediverse through Mastodon, so my answer has more to do with the whole concept of fediverse than with Lemmy alone.
My main reasons initially were the following:
And I kinda of liked it. Well, Mastodon has been a cemetery, so most of my fediverse interactions happen through Lemmy.
Just out of curiosity: among several Lemmy instances, I specifically chose The Lemmy Club as an instance for having a Lemmy account for a symbolic reason. Back when I was signing up on Lemmy and trying to find a good instance, the initial “thelem” from “thelemmyclub” got to my attention, because at that time I was delving into Aleister Crowley’s Thelema (Liber Al Vel Legis, The book of the Law). So “the lemmy club” kinda of resembled “Thelema club” to me. I’m not a Thelemite, at least not entirely, because I’m more inclined towards a syncretic Luciferianism, but I liked the hidden symbolism that I got to see within the instance’s name (also it’s actually another personal trait of mine, trying to find patterns everywhere at every time, even though it’s just a pattern to myself).
One could also argue that posting a man as a homeless is ignoring countless homeless woman and countless homeless trans people.
If this was a conspiracy to benefit someone to become the next CEO, their shot certainly backfired. The next CEO will be under a massive public scrutiny and if UHC’s policies don’t change, he/she will certainly be the next target.
Actually, the shot backfired twice: every CEO is now under public scrutiny, as The Adjuster became a powerful symbol of the awakened feeling of “that’s enough” inside everyone who can see the corporation greed.
As a non-American citizen (Brazilian), I hope this feeling of “that’s enough” could spread beyond US territory, especially towards the southern hemisphere, where the political lobby, bribery and corporate greed is strong and possibly worst than in US. Perhaps it’d bring the fear from people unto politicians and corporations, which will be left with two choices: be changed or be (literally) deposed.
Which, in turn, seems to have copied Brazil.
People seem to be forgetting the existence of robots (such as Spot and Atlas from Boston Dynamics) that can be adapted with guns and programmed to serve the rich in a way that (supposedly) won’t turn against them… (Until someone gets to hack those metallic dogs)
These robots (particularly Spot) are already being used for security and guarding purposes. It’s a matter of not if, but when, they get transformed into dystopian real-life Cyberdyne machines.
It’s not about the money, it’s about what money allowed them to possess. If they get to possess all the lands, all the commodities, all the technologies, all the books, everything (as explicitly said by the character’s dialogue “We have finally given you all of our worldly possessions”, notice how the word “possessions” is used instead of “money”), they’ll still have it even though money isn’t circulating anymore. After all, money is actually their creation to hold what the money was really meant to represent: gold and wealthy. Money was created as a “certificate of gold ownership” in a world that used to use gold as a means of exchange resources. People don’t possess gold anymore, they possess what is promised to be a “certificate of gold”, with gold not having monetary backing anymore due to fractional reserve banking and stock market speculation which together “created” “money” out of thin air without actual value other than “guarantee” from the banks that they’d keep accepting it and circulating it, until they don’t anymore.
That’s why they are investing in robots and automation. Once they have servants programmed within the constraints of their will, servants that (supposedly) won’t turn against them because they’re non-sentient machines, they won’t need “peasants” (as they consider everyone else) anymore.
That’s why they’re investing in flying to the damn Mars. Once they (supposedly) have a new (supposedly livable) settlement far from “peasants”, they can let everyone else die in this scorching Earth that reached this point due to their greedy actions.
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and the rest of the fediverse probably wont see this.
As a The Lemmy Club user, I can properly see the post. Federation seems to be working okay.
The school bullying.
Out of curiosity, “Forko” sounds to me like “Porco” which is Portuguese for “pig”. Lol.
Maybe it’s something related to Sora? I heard that they recently launched it to the public, and yesterday Altman published about OpenAI having a high demand for signups, so they temporarily shut down new signups.