Tootfinder

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.

New court filings allege that federal and state officials withheld evidence of the Trump administration’s involvement in the Everglades detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” a revelation that could revive a court-ordered shutdown. The Jan. 7 filings come as the Miccosukee Tribe presses ahead with its legal challenge amid President Donald Trump’s recent veto of legislation expanding the tribe’s control over Everglades lands.
The filings, submitted by Friends of the Everglades…

New ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ records suggest federal funding and involvement in Florida detention camp
Court filings appear to undermine DHS claims that “Alligator Alcatraz” was a state project, potentially reviving a court-ordered shutdown

My amazing niece flying solo. I took this still* from a video of her getting ATC clearance, taking off, and flying. Solo. She’s not yet 20.
I rly don’t have the words to describe my feelings as I watched the video. I cried like a baby—I can say that much.
Yesterday, I bought her a pair of Ray-Ban aviator shades for Xmas. Because she’s an aviator. ❤️
* I chose to share a pic w/ her face obscured for social media, but she’s as beautiful as she is brilliant.

Filing: Chinese AI chip designer Cambricon reports a $316M net profit in 2025, its first profitable year; rivals Moore Threads and MetaX narrowed their losses (Coco Feng/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-t…

Profits rise for China’s semiconductor firms on AI boom, tech self-reliance push
Domestic A-share companies in the sector are forecast to achieve substantial growth in their 2025 results, according to Donghai Securities.

"That's it. That's why every government in the world allowed US Big Tech companies to declare open season on their people's private data and ready cash.
The alternative was tariffs. Well, I don't know if you've heard, but we've got tariffs now!
I mean, if someone threatens to burn your house down unless you follow their orders, and then they burn your house down anyway, you don't have to keep following their orders. So…Happy Liberation Day?" - @…
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

…everyone there was white. •Everyone•. This particular park would usually be more white than not, but…this was weird.
There’s officially a city prohibition on ICE setting foot in city parks, but who knows what that’s worth? Those bastards will do anything if they think they can get away with it. And they’ll grab people right off the streets if they’re falling behind quota for the day. Who’d risk that?
ICE had apparently succeeded turning the park into all-white world they dreamed of. It was…creepy.
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Sounds easy, looks nice: Crossmodal transfer of auditory processing fluency to visual object preference https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-025-03177-5

Sounds easy, looks nice: Crossmodal transfer of auditory processing fluency to visual object preference - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
Fluent (i.e., rapid and efficient) processing of perceptual objects is vital for humans to successfully navigate their environments. The experience of fluent processing per se tends to trigger positive affect; however, this affect is often misattributed by perceivers to the objects themselves, meaning that easy-to-perceive objects are judged more positively. These fluency-based preference effects have been robustly demonstrated unimodally, and specifically in situations in which fluency and pre…

Alt5 Sigma accumulated $1.5 billion of World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency in August as part of a circular deal that routed more than an estimated $500 million to an entity affiliated with President Donald Trump
Public companies, like Alt5 Sigma, must notify the SEC within four business days when their independent accountant resigns, and their accountant must reviewany interim financial statements included in a quarterly report.
Alt5 Sigma told the SEC on Black Friday its indep…

Trump Crypto Partner Alt5 Sigma May Have Violated SEC Rules After Another Filing Discrepancy
Alt5 Sigma told regulators its accountant resigned in November, while he says he notified the company three months earlier.

I am once again begging, begging everyone to hold these 3 thoughts in their head at once:
1. Plastics recycling is not very effective. It’s far, far better to not use plastic at all in the first place, and that failing, far better to reuse.
2. Plastics recycling is not worthless or pointless. Don’t just throw it all away because “iT dOEsn’T matTeR.” A miserable 5% reclaimed is still better than 0% reclaimed.
3. Plastics recycling is nonetheless part of a petrochemical greenwashing campaign, per @…’s post below. https://mastodon.social/@CelloMomOnCars/115650231600448649

People were jumping into action here in Minneapolis — droves of people, comfortable people, white people — not in mid-January, but in •early December•. (And the groundwork started much earlier!)
Community meetings overflowing. Signal groups exploding. Observer trainings filling day after day after day. Mutual aid networks popping up like mushrooms. On and on.
Why? Because we saw brown and Black neighbors being dragged from their cars, dragged from their homes, stalked, terrorized, •kidnapped• with barely the slimmest shadow of due process or legal oversight.
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