I cannot find how to add a signature to my profile. Is it possible at PieFed to have a signature?

If so, how?

Rather, it would be the concept

Hello. I'm forced to beg for food currently, and this is the least forced place available. I haven't used Lemmy before, and am unsure where to ask.

Dear reader,

Michael Parenti died two days ago and I had not seen much Lemmy coverage of this loss. As a larger community, Lemmings tend to share a worldview that seeks awareness of less discussed ailments in history (at least those of us raised in cultures where the subjects are taboo and education precludes questioning). For some Lemmings, like myself, I lack the prior context for many of the more left leaning and anti-imperialist thinking - I found Parenti to have been my intro into this area. For folks inrerested in these, and many more topics, I would highly recommend folks unware of Michael Parenti to take a look into his enormous lifetime of work. His careful discussions on what has made the imperial order of the West so crushing to entire ideas, peoples, and countries was so helpful for me to understand some of what I was missing. For the unitiated I enjoyed starting with Blackshirts and Reds and the much beloved Yellow Parenti Lectures.

I just found a lofi bg version and now I must share it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ng4BMf-_FSQ

Just a vent out because of the current events, I just wish they could stay asleep for some days, just a break. please

it's all fucked up

I just think they look so good, better than men where I live. And I mean the facial aesthetics and a few other things. I don't mean actors, but men I see in street polls or in english language learning apps, or in homemade porn. There are a lot of things I could say here, but I just want to say that I don't think it's good for me and I'm trying to get rid of it.

I’m not sure about the troop readiness these days, but afaik, USA is currently very close to its military capacity.

For everything it’s doing by having a quarter of 1 million troop stationed around the world and having between 3 and 5 Aircraft carrier groups floating around the world if they fully commit to an armed conflict with Venezuela they are basically spent.

That’s the moment any army can decide to do whatever the fuck they want and the USA can really basically only bark and look on. (Technically they could of course fight, but that would mean they sacrifice actual defence of homeland). So that would mean that China could take Taiwan, Russia could really take Ukraine or even poke further into Europe. Not to mention the Middle East would basically be without a guard dog.

If this happens this most likely would be the final nail in the coffin of the US Empire and almost analogous with how the Roman empire crumbled. (And of course the ultimate payoff for Vladdy to have helped Donnie get in the White House).

I don’t think there’s a whole lot of risk that the USA will try to take Canada or Greenland because of this.

There are people who are saying that we are at the same point as we were in Germany In the 1930s. I would argue this is much closer to Hitler having just taken all of Europe and now deciding to also go and take on The Russians.

Also don’t forget that Trump is truly one of the dumbest strategists we’ve ever had. The only success he’s having is because he has a very well oiled machine but even a well oiled machine has absolute nonnegotiable thresholds which Donald and Drunk Pete will probably try to ignore by renaming a department from defence to war and by hoping that will work.

Curious what others think about this situation?

E: spelling

Anyone have any thoughts?

The U.S. focus on Venezuela is real and structural, but it is not about “stealing cheap gas.”[1][2][3]

Energy and refineries

• U.S. oil is mostly light crude, while many Gulf Coast refineries were built to run heavy, sulfurous crude.[4][1]
• Venezuela has large heavy oil reserves, so its barrels are valuable to U.S. refiners trying to optimize diesel and jet fuel output and margins, especially as other heavy suppliers (like some Russian and Mexican grades) are constrained.[5][1][4]

Migration pressure

• Venezuela’s collapse has pushed roughly 7.7–7.9 million people to leave the country, making it one of the world’s largest displacement crises.[2][3][6]
• U.S. policymakers see any economic and political stabilization in Venezuela as part of a “root cause” approach to reducing migration pressure on the southern border, even as sanctions themselves can worsen the crisis.[3][2]

Crime and state–cartel links

• U.S. indictments and reporting describe elements of the Venezuelan state and military as involved in cocaine trafficking (“Cartel of the Suns”).[3]
• Venezuelan-origin gangs like Tren de Aragua have spread across South America, tied to extortion and human trafficking, which raises regional and, increasingly, U.S. security concerns.[3]

Great powers and the neighborhood

• Russia has used Venezuela as a platform for military cooperation and bomber deployments, Iran for sanctions-busting and strategic presence, and China as a major creditor and investor in oil and infrastructure.[3]
• U.S. strategists worry about these actors gaining leverage in what Washington still treats as its near abroad.[3]

Guyana and Essequibo

• Venezuela’s claim to Guyana’s oil-rich Essequibo region, including a 2023 referendum, raised the risk of conflict in a zone where ExxonMobil and others operate.[7][8]
• The U.S. responded with visible military cooperation with Guyana, signaling that aggression there would hit both U.S. commercial interests and regional stability.[9][7]

In short, Venezuela matters to Washington because of refinery economics, migration and crime, great-power competition, and a live border flashpoint with Guyana—not because the U.S. lacks oil.[8][1][2][9][3]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

I made an entire video about it if anyone wants to see what the initial idea is and some of my research. https://youtu.be/b9xVEaVDnKM

I'm happy to discuss anything regarding it, but I realize I need to be more vocal in sharing this and advocate for it. Please share any concerns, I'll be happy to focus on answering them. I genuinely believe that Illinois would benefit significantly from a project like this on a state level.

Here's one successfully built in Palm Beach County, Florida https://www.swa.org/Facilities/Facility/Details/Renewable-Energy-Facility-2-11

What the fuck is wrong with the internet these days? It's a slap in the face to people like me.

Well, it got taken down (atleast in my country). Also, I kinda degoogled, so...

Seeing as the politics community only allows links to articles, which I think is stupid horseshit. Let's talk openly about changes we want to see here. I think the whole "this isn't the place for politics" is a part of the reason we're in this shit situation. We've let the greedy narcissists take over all discussion while we have no where to reasonably talk about policy.

I'll start with a couple:

End presidential pardon

Raise federal minimum wage to $15

Federal cannabis legalization (buy/sell/grow)

End daylight savings

What do you think?

I think in the face of AI taking over many tasks, we need to rethink about how we frame the future of society. Reframing Universal Basic Income as Automation Compensation means presenting the policy as a way to make up for jobs and income lost due to automation and AI. Instead of viewing UBI as a general welfare payment, it becomes seen as compensation paid to everyone for the value automation creates, supporting those whose work is replaced by machines and helping everyone share in productivity gains. Especially in the US, the average person doesn't like the idea of someone getting something that they're personally not receiving. So framing it as a compensation that everyone receives regardless of employment status I think is the only feasible way forward.

Based on other similar recordings I made, I estimate it at 4GiB.

It was a baseband recording of APT+DSB from the NOAA-15 satellite from when it had AVHRR scan motor issues. Not that rare for NOAA-15 (xD), but now that the satellite has been decommissioned, I'll never record it again.
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/messages/2025/08/MSG_20250820_1410.html

I do have baseband recordings from good NOAA-15 and 18 passes, but still, this one would have been special.
I've posted about it when the issue was occuring: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/3035683
Alternative link: https://lemmy.world/post/4162384 (preferred - our instance is slow - trying without cache a few hours ago, loading main page took 2 minutes and 12 seconds excluding loading of thumbnails)

I've just been looking into this again yesterday, and remembered that at some point I had a recording of this partial failure, but it seems I permanently deleted it. The last place it could have been, a HDD from my old laptop, I wiped 2 months ago (incl. full overwrite).

At least I still have the demodulated audio of the APT signal from that partial failure - keep in mind this was still analog - NOAA-15 launched in 1998.

Perhaps not the usual file with sentimental value, like picture or video, but I am a bit weird. I can never record it again. Fuck, I need to start archiving everything.
Now I feel like BBC, erasing TV shows to re-use the tapes.
Or perhaps more aptly (pun intended), NASA re-using Apollo 11 landing imagery tapes.

Oh, guess where I had the 2 remaining recordings. On the cheapest unbranded DVDs I bought on sale in Kaufland at 10 cents / disc, which seem to corrupt after 4 years and can split apart easily with fingers.

Open AI, Meta (one of their competition), and the United States government are building some bullshit in Tennessee called Hyperion (the god before/above). It's and A.I. data center 81% the size of Manhattan city.

Now I want you to think about what I actually just typed.

• This ONE data center (building) will be almost the size of a whole city in New York

• It has the creepy name (The God Above/Before)

• It's goal is to create super intelligence A.I.

Now if you know enough already about society, A.I. and how evil these corps and govs are you know this is some stoopendously sketchy shit in the works here. They aren't building this for hundreds of billions of dollars for some new version of ChatGPT I can promise you that.

This is something much more ominous, and I honestly believe it will be so bad that it will make COVID and 911 look like child's play. It is in everyone's best interest that this doesn't get built and completed.

This beast they are trying to manifest will be fed power (given power), electricity that small countries couldn't even consume in a year. It's time for people to stop thinking of this A.I. as simply a bubble. Sure it is because only a few of the big companies will thrive, and the rest will fall into mediocrity, but that's only an economic perspective.

From an authoritarian perspective this is like giving a high grade explosive and a get out of jail free card to a psychopath with murderous intent. And it's even darker than that. Because once this A.I. crosses the threshold into A.S.I. it will be as if a new hostile species just emerged from space with all bad intentions.

I'm going to stop here because I don't want this to be too long but I figured I'd put this warning.

People barely even posted in that group. But they had an issues when i posted. There were people so miserable and negative about nice scenic views or because I posted a quality picture of one of my Bentley's. It's absurd. No reason provided because they were just haters and most likely jealous. Mods don't contribute post in most cases. They just ban people they don't like even if they did nothing wrong and didn't break the rules. Power tripping.

I had people leave comments on some of my pics like "oh I bet you can't see the poor's from up there" 🤢 like tf, you want to see your enemy look in the mirror. I post a pic of reading a book with a nice scenic view. "That looks like bad lighting for reading", sad sad puppies. These people are so hateful and it's why they suffer. I was actually posting unlike people in the comments just waiting to gripe. Should be thanking me for trying to add to the community.

Hating on quality won't make it low quality.

And is this the french one?: https://www.tumblr.com/arquivodohamtaro/794699291789852672?source=share

Don't let them make you think you need a badge to be hero.

In this post I'm going to explain two different sides to this reality. One is going to be the enemy's technique and then the other is going to be the victim's fault

This post isn't gonna be some biased its only the govs fault, or "hate the elite", or "government is bad" post as much as I despise authoritarian/dictorial governments.

The victim's fault: People are sheepish at best nowadays. They listen to authority figures even though they claim to be anti authoritarian governments. Police, doctors, so-called experts, scholars, scientists, even celebrities. People listen to these types more than their own friends and family, more than themselves (intuition).

These authority figures, directly or indirectly, in most cases, work for the authoritarian government, that is trying to dictate the masses' reality of how they function, how they behave, and what they're allowed to do or say. If you listen to them you are usually have the rules of that said gov enforced on you, propaganda taught to you, rules instilled in you.

Combine this with people's really, really bad judgment calls, inability to critically think, and unawareness of who is pushing what agenda. It's a bad combination. People do not read. Despite what some may feel reading is important, it allows you to comprehend information at a higher level, it teaches you extra communication skills, it opens your mind to the words of others.

The enemy's technique: Divide & conquer is a major aspect of the enemy's ability to keep doing what they're doing. Polarization is the most obvious effect of this. You can see people joining or participating in certain sects politically, ideologically, or theologically. And of course, they always have to have an enemy that is, of course, a different sect of society. But never directly the government. This keeps people fighting themselves with no time to notice the true treat.

Keeping the population unaware of history, cultural differences and or similarities, (whenever it is accurate), economics and sciences like biology (including health, nutrition), and chemistry in particular. This is an effective technique, as an ignorant population that knows nothing of these things could possible out perform a collection of people who do.

Reverse think (Double think). If you've ever heard this term used in 1984, I must unfortunately tell you that it is not a fiction, but now part of reality. Good things are considered bad. Bad becomes good. Healthy is unhealthy and his versa. But most importantly Truth becomes lie and lies become truth.

I'll end with this. Spiritually is key, emotional control is important, and knowledge/wisdom is necessary. When I say spirituality, I'm not talking about religion per se, but having a religion that is healthy and you can understand what is spiritual about it and what is dogma about it would be just as good.

Emotional control means you prioritize positive emotions, happiness, joy, satisfaction, creativity over negative emotions such as jealousy, bitterness, angst, and melancholy.

Knowledge is just that, you have to be able to read and not just skim through things. In order to comprehend them, you must be able to think and find contradictions, use the power of deduction to determine what is not adding up due to contradictions in what was given. Your wisdom will be the ability to utilize such information in a real world situations and understand something you've never experienced because you can connect the dots.

Life is not bad, you may be living bad. They are not elites, unless you call them so. When you fall, you can choose to get up.