c/Superbowl

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I’m always interested in these situations where Trump is caught in the middle of 2 actual rich/powerful people to see where his position will land.

    I feel dirty given the source being NY Post, but it’s the biggest coverage I can find on this, and the sucking up to Trump I feel is the best context given his fairly reliable vanity leading him to who he likes or not. It offers a look at the other side of OP’s article.

    Los Angeles-based Leonid Smirnov, who fled Soviet communism in the 1970s, says he’s in a race against time to save Glavprodukt — the Campbell’s of Russia — which he founded in 1999 and built into a household name in his homeland.

    “What’s happening with my company is a raid under a government seizure and confiscation attempt,” he told The Post.

    And if it can happen to him, he said in a warning to Trump, it can happen to any of hundreds of US-owned companies operating in Russia, after President Vladimir Putin set his sights on foreign businesses after the invasion of Ukraine.

    About a dozen companies have been put under “temporary management” in the past three years. Smirnov’s Glavprodukt was the first American-owned company to be targeted, and is famous across the motherland for its canned soups, vegetables, fish, and meat.

    With the FTC being the only agency with any independence left at the end of this week when the regulation oversight executive order goes in effect, the current regime is still hesitant to outright screw with American money, at least for big time businesses and investors.

    Since then, he said, the Moscow-based company — which employed 1,000 workers across three factories — had begun taking losses for the first time. Overall, he estimates the company has lost as much as 30 percent of its value.

    “We basically have this company being destroyed on a daily basis,” said Smirnov.

    He supplied partially obscured photos of himself to The Post, saying he now fears for his and his family’s safety.

    Two weeks ago, a court ordered the seizure of cash and assets connected to Glavprodukt. Russian prosecutors claimed he had been illegally sending dividends from the business to the U.S.

    It was all part of a pressure campaign, said Smirnov, to force him to sell at a knock-down price.

    “I put 26 years of my life into that … building this company from scratch,” said Smirnov.

    How does one run an oligarchy if the oligarchs don’t maintain faith in you?

    Just a note, I’m not pro anyone in this story. I want Ukraine to get their country back (all of it) and for anyone who may have broken the law to see justice. I’m mainly here to ponder the ways this will make Trump enjoy his position as “peace broker” miserable as he needs to weasel between 2 groups he really really wants to like him, but he can only please one or none of them.



  • They’re not deportations because the people being sent there are not from there.

    Bukele, the Salvadorian ruler, is a fellow authoritarian, and told Marco Rubio he would disappear whoever they wanted for cash.

    Guantanamo Bay is US territory, and our government would be responsible for what happens to these people, but by sending them to a cooperative 3rd party country, Trump and company have declared their hands clean of what happens to anyone sent there after that, and as they are out of US territory, we have no means to ever get any of them back.

    They are now talking about sending people born in the US there if they are “bad enough.”

    Here is a pretty short article that gives you some more specifics if you want.

    If you’ve ever spoken out against the government in writing/online, are part of a labor union, or any kind of minority or LGBT or care about anyone that is, you should get up to speed on this quickly.






  • That sounds like it could help people out. I imagine sometimes you might not know you need to talk to someone unless somebody brings to the idea.

    That reminds me that I remember different companies that do gifts (I think I got emails from ProFlowers, for instance) that they send emails a month or so out from holidays like Mother’s/Father’s Day to click anything on the email so you don’t get those promos.

    I wish everyone could do the same. The dang veterinarian that we used years ago kept sending me annual checkups for years after they had to put a few of my pets down. That always really bummed me out, and that’s not a person…

    We also got the Nestle baby formula sample thing in the mail after my ex’s miscarriage. That one was not very appreciated either.

    I feel I got on a tangent, but once I started replying I got reminded of less sensitive companies…


  • I actually saw a post to our town’s community page last night that the big local funeral home holds a once a month meeting in different topics to help people discuss these matters.

    The coming event is a tour of the crematory where you can see the equipment, what can be done with the cremains, and a Q and A to determine if that is something you’d want for yourself.

    A previous one was green burials, which I’m really bummed that I missed!

    One person commented it was morbid, but the two from the funeral home said the last crematory tour had around 100 show up.

    If you search “death conversations” or “death cafe” near you, you may be able to find something similar.




  • I think manga/anime covers mostly one sided rivalry better than a lot of other media. I think it’s that drive for perfection that pushes many characters. One is already shown to be near perfect, and the other is always trying to catch up.

    Examples would be Bakugo and Midoria from My Hero Academia. Midoria is by far the most powerful and sees Bakugo as a friend, not a rival, but Bakugo is obsessed to outdo him and keeps pressing himself to find a way to do something Midoria cannot.

    I also think of Ippo and Miyata from Hajime no Ippo. There is a bit more 2 sidedness here, but it is mostly Ippo. Miyata sees they are becoming closer in skill, so he leaves the gym to build himself up on his own away from Ippo, and though Ippo beats people that would outclass Miyata, Miyata is still the one Ippo wants to beat since he set him on the start to his success but still was usually one step ahead of where he wanted to be. Miyata wanted to stay that one step ahead, but wasn’t constantly using Ippo to do that after a point, he knew he had to keep looking for greater challenges if he didn’t want to be surpassed.


  • Honestly, as someone who largely disliked social media and was typically a lurking doomscroller that was ready to quit social media altogether at the reddit app ban, what made the best change ever was becoming someone who is primarily a poster.

    I post what I want, when I want, and I get to start the conversation that way. It’s always a topic I want to talk about, and it’s something there isn’t much to argue about, and all the interactions will be 99% positive.

    It’s a small crowd here, so you can get people that are ready to talk with whoever reaches out to the masses first.

    You can take time replying to people, and if no one is talking at the moment, it gives you time to plan a next post.

    Pick a topic you enjoy and make yourself our local expert. That prompts you to keep actively learning about something you enjoy too so you can answer people’s questions they ask you.