Politics

Why Can't I Hold All These Indictments?

Trump indicted yet again with even more in the pipeline. Also, Michigan bans conversion therapy, Tesla continues to lie about their cars, Reddit's CEO gets a strong message from users, and thank you Mr. Worldwide

Endeavorance

Jul 28, 2023 — 4 min read

Trump Indicted Again, Again, but Not the Again We Expected

Donald Trump, former real life president of a country with nukes, has had yet more indictments added to the ongoing investigation into his willful retention of classified documents and attempts to conceal that evidence from investigators.

To be clear: Trump's attorneys have been told to expect an indictment for another, different case, and these indictments are instead an expansion on the existing indictments over the classified documents. He is also likely to be indicted over his role in January 6th.

But while we're waiting on the new indictments, the existing indictments have been expanded to include a charge that Trump directed his staff to delete security footage so that a grand jury would not be able to get their hands on it. Real cool presidential stuff, y'know? It also includes charges around the audio tape we heard a few weeks back in which he showed off classified documents, acknowledged he should not have them, acknowledged he could not declassify them, and then asked for someone to grab him a soda.

Conversion Therapy Banned in Michigan

Michigan has banned "conversion therapy" for queer folk in the state, becoming the 22nd state to outlaw the oppressive practice.

I wanna be clear: there are still a majority of states in the US who have yet to outlaw the practice of "conversion therapy," thinking that you can bludgeon (physically or psychologically or both) the queer out of someone.

According to The Trevor Project, 15% of queer youth in the state were threatened with or subjected to conversion therapy as recently as 2022. Meanwhile, 45% of queer youth seriously considered suicide.

Reminder to anyone who needs the reminder: you are the valid one, and your validity and existence threatens the carefully crafted worldview of bigots. They are afraid of confronting difficult truths about the world, and you are a glaring reminder of that. They are the scared, sad, obsolete people. You are the light in this world.

Weird! Tesla Lied About Their Cars!

A Reuters investigation reports that Tesla has spent a considerable amount of effort fucking over customers by first lying about the driving range of their cars and then preventing customer complaints from being addressed.

Quoting the report:

Tesla employees had been instructed to thwart any customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service. Last summer, the company quietly created a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible.

Turns out, the company has been inflating range numbers in their marketing and even in what the car will tell you, and then when customers realize that their own car is lying to them, the company essentially ghosts them.

Anyway, the head of Tesla now wants to make a "super app" that controls every online aspect of our life, including banking, communication and media. That seems like a solid idea.

What a Place

If you're not familiar, Reddit has done a thing a couple of times in the past called "r/Place", a site-wide minigame in which each user can place one pixel of color on a large canvas every few minutes. Groups come together to make large art projects and compete with other communities to claim spaces on the canvas.

Fun fact, the concept for it was originally by the guy who made Wordle.

ANYWAY, Reddit has been having some uh, trouble recently, and for some reason they decided to put up r/Place again as an event.

Well, it quickly turned into people finding unique and creative ways to say "Fuck Spez" (Spez being the username of Reddit's CEO). In fact, the last thing that happened before r/Place ended this time around was the entire canvas—which grows over time, mind you—cleared out with nothing but a giant "FUCK SPEZ" in black text, for posterity.