literature.cafe

Happy holidays 🤡

Summary:

In what may be a first in American history, President Trump just expanded the presidential pardon power to include corporations.

Corporations are artificial legal fictions designed to maximize shareholder wealth. Nonetheless, they can theoretically commit crimes and be indicted for them. According to a 1999 memorandum from the Justice Department, the “important public benefits” of prosecuting corporations include “deterrence on a massive scale,” particularly for “crimes that carry with them a substantial risk of public harm,” such as “financial frauds.”

Such public benefits now fall prey to the whims of the president with his pardon of a cryptocurrency company that smacks of political corruption.

On Friday, Trump issued full and unconditional pardons to four individuals and a related cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX.

BitMEX solicits and takes orders for trades in derivatives tied to the value of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Last summer, BitMEX entered a guilty plea in a Manhattan federal court for violating the Bank Secrecy Act for having operated without a legitimate anti-money laundering program. Prior to August 2020, customers could register to trade with BitMEX anonymously, providing only verified email addresses. The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the Opinion newsletter

On Jan. 15, 2025, BitMEX was criminally fined $100 million in connection with its guilty plea, which was on top of $130 million in civil penalties previously imposed by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. At sentencing, the judge noted that BitMEX, which is incorporated in the Seychelles, had claimed not to operate in the U.S. for several years even though U.S. customers comprised a large share of its business.

Williams' success with APX led him to create several games for Synapse Software, including the beloved Alley Cat and the incomprehensible fantasy masterpiece Necromancer, before moving to the Amiga, where he created the experimental Mind Walker and his ambitious "cultural simulation" Knights of the Crystallion.

Necromancer, Williams' later creation for the Atari 800, plays like a fever dream—you control a druid fighting off spiders while growing magic trees and battling an undead wizard. It makes absolutely no sense by conventional standards, but it's brilliant in its otherworldliness.

"The first games that I did were very hard to explain to people and they just kind of bought it on faith," Williams said in a 1989 interview with YAAM (Yet Another Amiga Magazine), suggesting this unconventional approach started early. That willingness to create deeply personal, almost surreal experiences defined Williams' work throughout his career.

Just thought it was funny

Source: https://lemmy.world/post/27640056/16162941

Modlog: https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&modId=26&userId=13461998

Join the lemmy.ml boycott today! No more posts, comments or up votes on any comms on the lemmy.ml instance!

Just have to share this here because of how unbelievably tone-deaf it is.

I have an upcoming flight with Lufthansa, booked cheapest economy class. Now I get a mail that says I am eligible for an upgrade.

Correction, I am eligible to make an offer to maybe maybe get an upgrade. When I click that link I get to the page above in the screenshot where I can now choose an amount between 90 and 300-ish EUR per passenger, per flight, to maybe upgrade to business class.

Just look at the slider, it is almost hilarious that it says poor when you leave it at the low amounts. Is any other airline doing that?

Open WebUI is an extensible, feature-rich, and user-friendly self-hosted AI platform designed to operate entirely offline. It supports various LLM runners like Ollama and OpenAI-compatible APIs, with built-in inference engine for RAG, making it a powerful AI deployment solution.

There are so many new changes, and I don't know which ones are more important. See the link for full changelog

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27985235

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The fewer seats republicans have in the US house, the harder it is to get their stuff through. Moreover, if these seats flip or show a strong overperformance, Republicans will be way more weary about going along with Trump

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20241729

Rice University researchers have developed an innovative solution to a pressing environmental challenge: removing and destroying per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly called “forever chemicals.” A study led by James Tour, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of materials science and nanoengineering, and graduate student Phelecia Scotland unveils a method that not only eliminates PFAS from water systems but also transforms waste into high-value graphene, offering a cost-effective and sustainable approach to environmental remediation. This research was published March 31 in Nature Water.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60113523

GERMANY IS REPORTEDLY seeking to deport two Irish citizens for taking part in pro-Palestine protests in Berlin.

Four foreign residents are reported to have been hit with deportation orders, including two Irish citizens – Roberta Murray (31) and Shane O’Brien (29).

Solidarity demonstrations will take place tomorrow in Berlin and Munich in response to the deportation orders.

MBFC

As US President Donald Trump prepares to announce reciprocal tariffs on April 2, which he calls “Liberation Day,” attention is turning to the potential impact on global trade.

Trump’s tariff plans remain a major source of global uncertainty, with fears that countermeasures from other countries could deepen trade tensions.

His announcement that the US would impose 25% tariffs on car imports has brought renewed attention to Türkiye’s automotive exports to the American market.

According to data from the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM), the US remains a key destination for Türkiye’s automotive sector.

Summary

NYU canceled a March 19 talk by Dr. Joanne Liu, former head of Doctors Without Borders, citing concerns her slides on Gaza casualties and USAID funding cuts appeared “antisemitic” and “anti-governmental.”

Liu, who flew to New York for the event, said she was “stunned” by the last-minute cancellation.

NYU Langone stated she violated guest speaker guidelines but was compensated.

Liu argued the decision reflects a “climate of fear” in U.S. academia, referencing threats to federal funding like those faced by Columbia University after pro-Palestinian campus protests.

Because oppessing people is okay as long as you're the one doing it for totally good reasons! Absolute power TOTALLY won't corrupt you! Even funnier how a ton of Hexbear tankies showed up to that thread to downvote bomb everyone, just like they're known for doing. Haven't changed one bit in the past year or so!

I work for a small company, in the United States. Part of my duties is building out quotes for products and services our company sells. I'm trying to avoid being overly specific, but basically I have been asked to quote out a product we often sell, but to also include in the quote a feature which out company cannot actually provide. The customer has several of the item I am supposed to quote already and believes that they have the additional feature on all of the existing devices, so expects to see it on this quote for their new site.

I have brought up with my boss in the past that we have not implemented the additional feature and to the best of my knowledge we can't. He assured me he was looking at addressing that. Today, after receiving the request for this new quote, I asked my boss about it, he said he still hasn't come up with a plan to address the issue, but wants me to move forward with pricing it out anyway.

It would be a big hit to our company if the customer left us, but I struggle to see how what my company is doing here isn't fraud. I'm not really comfortable with doing this, but my relationship with management is already strained and I wasn't really looking to create any more waves at the moment.

Are there good resources I could look to to determine if this would constitute fraud from a legal perspective? Has anyone here ever been in a similar situation?

I'm looking for another job, but don't have anything lined up yet, so nervous about doing (or not doing) something that would get me fired, but Im not comfortable with what appears to me to be dishonest at best and fraudulent at worst.

Edit: wanted to add that to the best of my knowledge, we aren't selling that additional feature to anyone else at the moment. I think my boss is just afraid of this customer in particular finding out since they've already been sold the feature and they're a larger customer.

Edit 2: thanks everyone for the advice. It is much appreciated. I've got a lot of thinking to do tonight.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/23949886

He said this assessment was well-founded, citing Russian plans and military capabilities that are being developed and deployed in close proximity to NATO borders. He added that Russia had invested in these capabilities over decades and was clearly preparing for a long-term confrontation with NATO.