Lesley Carhart 
Even as a digital forensic investigator who’s seen people dragged to prison for their darkest evil impulses, I’m still stunned by so many powerful people letting their vices draw them into an incompetent circle of depravity and susceptibility to blackmail. Billionaires are truly maladjusted idiots.
FUCKING -GMAIL-???
I am grateful every day that so many of the worst people in politics are stupid. Things are horrible but they could be a lot worse with an ounce of intelligence.
Andrew Zonenberg@hacks4pancakes I'll take a stupid fascist over a smart one any day.
@azonenberg hard same
sanpan@azonenberg @hacks4pancakes Smart fascist…not sure those exist. Even the „smartest“ (read: efficiently killing perceived threats/enemies/scapegoats/minorities while staying in power) only seem smart when condensed to a few pages in a history book. The closer you look, the dumber they become.
Dan W@azonenberg @hacks4pancakes
Stupid Fascist is a tautology.
If they were not stupid, they wouldn’t be fascist.
mkb@hacks4pancakes Quinta Jerecic described the US administration as “malevolence tempered with incompetence.”
azninsect@hacks4pancakes there was all that qanon "theyre doing all this stuff to hide things"
and all it really was, was gmail accounts in plaintext saying "hur hur he likes dis"
Paul Dot X@hacks4pancakes so true.
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)Above a certain level of power, I’m not sure it makes too much difference. Exercising power thoughtlessly will cause harm, it’s quite random whether it will cause more or less harm than exercising it maliciously.
When I was at MS, I looked at some of the ways incidental choices distorted the market. These often directly benefitted competitors. They also caused a bunch of random harm. I wrote a report with the title ‘how to use open source to empower our competitors’ which documented how the company was stifling the kind of competition that would undermine core businesses for competitors, while empowering projects dominated by competitors and giving them more market influence. I don’t think anyone outside of a couple of folks at the open source office read it.
The US government is an even bigger concentration of power. Exercising it without immense care will cause a lot of damage. Exercising it to intentionally harm a specific group is like using a flamethrower to kill a mosquito: it will probably work, as long as you don’t mind the collateral damage.
Wade Roberts@hacks4pancakes financial obesity is neurotoxic.
Phil 🇺🇦💙💛🇺🇸 ❤️🏳️🌈❤️🏳
Ygor@waderoberts @hacks4pancakes It's Howard Hughes disease, as @pluralistic explains in this essay: https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/24/robo-lickspittle/
Ed@ygor @waderoberts @hacks4pancakes @pluralistic the real tell is how Musk refers to most of us as "NPCs"
Just Tom... 🐁
CypherS@hacks4pancakes incompetent circle of idiots? Naaah, just people with sadly common impulses wandering around messing with other people without any consequences.
Miss Carrusel
KerplunkI’m still stunned by so many powerful people letting their vices draw them into an incompetent circle of depravity and susceptibility to blackmail. Billionaires are truly maladjusted idiots.
Maladjusted yes
More privileged to the point where such persons are convinced they can buy their way out of anything including child abuse rape murder.
In most country's that works very well, in others they become politicians and are then above the law
Called Parliamentarian Immunity,
VulcanTouristAny billionaire has the agency to reject or minimize his "pay package" and redirect it back into the corporation or even acknowledge the harm of concentration of wealth by donating it.
Do any of them do that? Not many, certainly, and certainly not Elon Musk.
Hasufin@hacks4pancakes I think the performative hedonism and illegality is part of the package: "I'm so rich the rules don't apply". It's not enough to indulge - and they may not even particularly enjoy the indulgence itself - it's making it inown they are indulging in ways mere mortals cannot.
@Hasufin the legal rules may not apply, but there appears to be a lot of blackmail and leverage happening around them, sometimes resulting in murder
@hacks4pancakes Granted. Because to a certain extent the rules *do* apply, and it's crucial to their self-image to maintain the appearance they don't. They'd rather pay blackmail and hitmen than, y'know, NOT do cocaine and have sex with underage girls.
My thinking is, the forbidden aspect IS the addiction.
My thinking is, the forbidden aspect IS the addiction.
Strong agree. (I suspect that's one reason the legit pot market hasn't really taken off in the USA.)