Tootfinder

A Palestinian middle school student in Michigan
who was publicly admonished for refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance as part of a personal protest against the war on Gaza
has settled with her school district following a lawsuit around her first amendment free speech rights.
The teenager, identified as DK in court documents, said she faced racism from a teacher at the West Middle school in Canton, Michigan,
after she did not participate in the pledge.
T…

As salty as I am about it, there's also another way to think about this. For anyone who still has connections to folks on the right (which is perhaps unlikely for anyone on this server, I digress), the cult that has consumed them thrives on isolation and grievance.
The words "you were right" have the potential to cut through the programming and open up an opportunity for reconnection. The modern conspiratorial cult of the Right has been built partially around people who were told they were wrong or were crazy. In the vast majority of cases, they were wrong and even when they were right they completely misunderstood why, but we'll skip that for now. Liberals making fun of them (even the times when they definitely earned it) has pushed them further and further into their ideological hole.
The thing about those words, "you were right," in this context is that the way they offer reconnection also requires them to take one little step of betraying their ideology to accept them. So they must choose between maintaining allegiance to a pedophile or finally getting to feel superior after years of living in an illusion of persecution.
Under the ideology of the Right, admitting one is wrong is a weakness. It is admitting defeat. They have to "own the libs" by saying things, things that they know aren't true, in order to feel dominant. But these things are often so absurd that they end up being made fun of, feeling even more weak and pathetic, reinforcing their fear and alienation.
Offering what they're looking for can offer a way out, but only if they're willing to start to recognize the thing they've supported for what it is.
And they were right about some things. They were right that Bill Gates was a terrible person. I've had plenty of liberals defend him based on his philanthropy washing, but he's awful and always has been. The Epstein links make that blatant. They intuitively recognized him and didn't trust him, even if they were wildly off base about *how and why* he shouldn't be trusted... Even if their correct mistrust was leveraged into one of the most destructive conspiracy theories ever (vaccine denial and COVID vaccine avoidance).
They were right about Bill Clinton. He was always shady as fuck. Sure, the people who attacked him at the time turned out to be even more shady but that's not the point right now. He was connected to Epstein and that was always creepy as fuck.
And the Epstein thing was an open secret that liberals ignored for a long time. It was seen as some weird thing that right wing nutjobs believed about the Clintons. But it was true. Not all of it, and there has always been an antisemitic element to the right wing interpretation or Epstein stuff, but his whole pedophile conspiracy was always kind of real.
The whole "Illuminati"/deep state thing is a vast oversimplification, an attempt to make comprehensible an incredibly complex set of interlocking and emergent behaviors. But Epstein did very much want to remake the world, to create a new world order, and he absolutely played a part in it.
The Right wing nutjobs talked about global authoritarianism, Blackhawks flying over American cities, masked men with guns disarming and executing legal gun owners in the streets. That's all happening right now.
The "FEMA concentration camps" are not actually that far off. ICE and FEMA are sister agencies, both under DHS. I'd be more than happy to call that one "close enough" in order to hear some MAGA admit that ICE is, in fact, building concentration camps.
There was always a huge millennialist element to these things. They tended to be connected to "the antichrist." It was absurd, especially for me as someone who no longer identifies as a Christian. But I'll even acquiess that to a degree. The "the number of the Beast" is 666. That's just the sum of the Hebrew spelling of "Nero." Revelations focuses a lot on Nero coming back to life after his death. His death that involved a head wound, thus the line from Revelation 13:3:
> And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast.
The parallels between Trump and Nero are easy to draw, and Trump's ear wound feels pretty on-the-nose for this. I don't believe in "prophecy" in this way. I think that there are patterns, and useful patterns can become encoded in beleif systems. But I will, again, happily call this one "close enough" for anyone on that side willing to also acknowledge it. I'm happy to meet on that common ground, because anyone who accepts it must recognize that their duty is to fight against it.
A lot of these correct nuggets are embedded in a framework of religious extremism and antisemitism. The vast majority of the beliefs holding these together are wildly wrong and incredibly toxic. But by giving some room to feel validated, listened to, understood, can give some room to admit things that were wrong.
Cult de-programming starts with an opening. People have to talk through their own thoughts, hear their own inconsistencies. Guiding questions can help them untangle these things for themselves. And it all starts by having enough room to feel safe, to not feel cornered, to not feel stupid. Admitting mistakes means being vulnerable, and the MAGA cult is built on fear. It's built on exploiting vulnerability and locking it away.
De-programming takes a long time. It's not easy. It takes patience. But every person who comes out does so with a powerful perspective, a deep understanding, that can be turned back against it. The best people at getting people out of cults are former members. Some of the most dedicated antifa are former fascists who understood their mistakes and dedicate their lives to fixing them.

Filing: The Trade Desk CFO Alexander Kayyal has left after only six months in the role; longtime executive Tahnil Davis will become the interim CFO (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek)
https://www.adweek.com/media/the-trade-desks-cfo-is-out-after-just-6-months-on-t…

The Trade Desk’s CFO Is Out After Just 6 Months on the Job
Outgoing finance chief, Alex Kayyal, served at The Trade Desk for nearly six months and will remain on the company’s board through its 2026 annual shareholder meeting.

He creates a 3D-printed Lamborghini in his garden for just $20,000 and turns down a substantial offer: "it's the best feeling in the world" https://www.italpassion.fr/en/lamborghini/

You know how you’re in the middle of a process and you refresh a web page and it loses state?
So that sucks.
With Kitten¹ – when using the new state-maintaining/class-based and event model-based component model – it’s easy to have flowing interfaces that animate between states, etc., that don’t lose state if you refresh the page (or open another tab).
What you can’t do on the Web, however, is restore the state of any cross-origin iframes. (As you have no visibility into th…

The Gospel According to ICE: How Christian Nationalists Betray The Faith They Claim to Follow | Tim Hjersted https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-gospel-according-to-ice/

The Gospel According to ICE: How Christian Nationalists Betray The Faith They Claim to Follow | Tim Hjersted
There’s a profound contradiction at the heart of contemporary American Christianity: the disconnect between claimed allegiance to Jesus and actual allegiance to state power. The irony is devastating when Christians defend ICE killings and deaths in custody with appeals to “law and order.” The standard response has become...

Chromebooks train schoolkids to be loyal customers, internal Google document suggests https://www.theverge.com/news/867138/google-chromebook-education-expansion-court-filings

Hands-on with Gemini task automation on mobile: it's super impressive despite being very slow and failing at some tasks; it can order food, book Ubers, and more (Allison Johnson/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/898282/gemini-task-automation-uber…

Gemini task automation is slow, clunky, and super impressive
Gemini’s task automation feature on the Samsung S26 and Pixel 10 series is an impressive glimpse at what the future of AI assistants could look like.

Trevor Noah Sues Donald Trump Over Alleged Threatening Messages
Following Explosive Truth Social Rant
A high-profile legal and political controversy has erupted
after comedian and television host Trevor Noah filed a lawsuit
against Donald Trump,
alleging that the president sent “damaging, intimidating, and dangerous” private direct messages
following a public dispute tied to comments made during the Grammy Awards

Trevor Noah Files $100m Lawsuit Against Donald Trump for damages, Alleging the President Issued Dangerous and Intimidating Private Messages After Explosive Truth Social Rant where The President Denied Epstein Island Allegation Following Grammy Awards Backlash
Trevor Noah Sues Donald Trump Over Alleged Threatening Messages Following Explosive Truth Social Rant A high-profile legal and political controversy has erupted after comedian and television host Trevor Noah filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, alleging that the president sent “damaging, intimidating, and dangerous” private direct messages following a public dispute tied to comments […]