Lemmings.world

Luigi Mangione is accused of stalking United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and shooting him to death on Dec. 4, 2024.

Summary

The Trump Store released $50 “Trump 2028” hats Thursday, sparking backlash online as Trump has repeatedly hinted at running for a third term.

“I have had more people ask me to have a third term,” Trump said on March 31, claiming the 2020 election was “totally rigged.”

Steve Bannon said he's exploring “five or six different alternatives” to enable a third run.

Critics on social media called it “insane” and a sign of “fascist” ambitions. Though barred by the 22nd Amendment, Trump could run again if it were overturned by Congress and the states. However, it would require a two-thirds vote of Congress and three-fourths vote of the states.

Rümeysa Öztürk was grabbed off the street in my town one month ago.

https://explainxkcd.com/3081/

Tried converting a story from TIFU to greentext because I'm bored at work.

I saved a Gimp Template while working on it: https://files.catbox.moe/ipnjzk.xcf

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250424013900/https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/23/democrats-need-to-make-republicans-fear-the-consequences-of-attempting-a-dictatorship/

From their own internal metrics, tech giants have long known what independent research now continuously validates: that the content that is most likely to go viral is that which induces strong feelings such as outrage and disgust, regardless of its underlying veracity. Moreover, they also know that such content is heavily engaged with and most profitable. Far from acting against false, harmful content, they placed profits above its staggering—and damaging—social impact to implicitly encourage it while downplaying the massive costs.

Social media titans embrace essentially the same hypocrisy the tobacco industry embodied when they feigned concern over harm reduction while covertly pushing their product ever more aggressively. With the reelection of Trump, our tech giants now no longer even pretend to care.

Engagement is their business model, and doubt about the harms they cause is their product. Tobacco executives, and their bought-off scientists, once proclaimed uncertainty over links between cigarettes and lung cancer. Zuckerberg has likewise testified to Congress, “The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health, ” even while studies find self-harm, eating disorder and misogynistic material spreads on these platform unimpeded. This equivocation echoes protestations of tobacco companies that there was no causal evidence of smoking harms, even as incontrovertible evidence to the contrary rapidly amassed.

Summary

• Volkswagen beat Tesla in European EV sales across the first three months of 2025, data shows.
• Registrations for VW EVs are up more than 150%, while Tesla lost huge ground.
• However, the Model Y and Model 3 remain Europe's top two most-registered EVs.

There's an infamous anti-piracy advertisement from back in 2004 that online oldsters will immediately recognize: "You wouldn't steal a car," it begins, complete with shakycam footage of some sketchy looking dude popping a lock, before rolling into various other types of theft and eventually equating it all with downloading a copy of Shrek 2. The ad makes it dramatically clear: Stealing Shrek will get you hard time in the slam when you're inevitably busted for your criminal ways.

It was, and is, overwrought and silly, and so of course it inspired numerous parodies and memes: The British comedy series The IT Crowd did a particularly good one a few years after the original aired—in fact the old URL, piracyisacrime.com, now directs to The IT Crowd Clip on YouTube. I urge you to watch it. The ad itself was only around for a short time, but "you wouldn't download a car" has endured in shitpost form for decades; it's practically embedded in the fabric of the internet at this point.

But as good as many of these parodies are, none are as ridiculous (and funny) as the recent discovery that the world's best-known anti-piracy ad may have used a pirated font.

The distinctive font used in the ad appears to be FF Confidential, created by Just van Rossum in 1992. But there's another font called XBand Rough that's virtually identical, and when journalist Melissa Lewis reached out to van Rossum about it, he told her XBand Rough is an "illegal clone" of FF Confidential.

This is where it gets interesting. After all this, another Bluesky user named Rib used the FontForge tool on a PDF file from the old anti-piracy campaign, available via the Wayback Machine, and discovered the file in question uses the XBand Rough font—the clone.

The March 14 directive, signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, uses an obscure 18th-century law — the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — to give law enforcement nationwide the power to bypass basic constitutional protections.

According to the memo, agents can break into a home if getting a warrant is “impracticable,” and they don’t need a judge’s approval. Instead, immigration officers can sign their own administrative warrants. The bar for action is low — a “reasonable belief” that someone might be part of a Venezuelan gang is enough.

"If you raise the fucking hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out."

In quotes and attributed, in a conversation about the Costco hot dog. But apparently I'm threatening violence. Lol