• MourningDove@lemmy.zip
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    1 hour ago

    It blows my mind that that ratfucked littlecoward of a traitor to America has actually managed to normalize starving citizens to his little criminal organization masquerading as “politicians”.

    He’s got them all on board doing shit they probably never would have believed they’d do when they started out.

  • daannii@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    As someone from poor rural Midwest, I can tell you from first hand experience, that people have usually ran out of food stamps about 3 weeks into the month.
    Meaning, most people on snap are waiting for the first to get groceries because they don’t have anything.

    And now we are going on week 2 of the month.

    So for many. It’s now getting close to 3 weeks without food money.

    And with the rising food costs, I wouldn’t be surprised if people are running out of snap money closer to the midpoint of the month.

    So for them. It’s been 4 weeks

    • MourningDove@lemmy.zip
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      1 hour ago

      He’s banking on many of them resorting to crime so he can say, “see! I told you!” and justify martial law and calling the nations guard to come down hard on American citizens.

  • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    A better source.
    https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/09/trump-administration-tells-states-to-undo-full-snap-benefits-00643887

    USDA’s latest memo, sent Saturday to state directors of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, instructed states to deliver just 65 percent of benefits during the government shutdown and required those who already sent full payments to claw back that money.

    There really is no bottom to this administrations evil.

    • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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      7 hours ago

      It confirms my theory that they are desperately trying to implement the mass killing of people.

      The political violence they wanted isn’t happening. The dropping vaccine rates isn’t fast enough. And now people aren’t starving as they should be.

      That indicates to me that they are finding out just how hard it is to kill 268,000,000 people. It might have something to do with the fact that 268,000,000 are more than enough to keep themselves alive.

      • zwerg@feddit.org
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        6 hours ago

        I have theory that the Republican party (note, not voters) is made of three very different factions:

        • Christians hoping to bring about Armageddon and the end of times so they can get to heaven. How they hope to get to heaven by supporting Trump is beyond me. In the mean time, they’ll settle for Christian theocratic dictatorship.
        • Atheist tech-bros that can see the environment is going to shit. Their plan is to remove as many people as possible to reduce the impact of humans on the environment, replacing them with AI and robots as needed.
        • Old, oil connected and/or corrupt politicians that just don’t give a fuck so long as they get a fat pay cheque. They are too rich and old to ever feel the consequences of this administration.

        While they have wildly different motivations, they seem to agree on letting people die serves their goals.

      • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        It’s a plausible theory. They want to create a system that inevitably leads to revolution, so they need to weaken those that might revolt as much as possible. They are also stubbornly sticking to the old rightist tactic of inflicting pain and suffering while trying to blame that pain and suffering on their opponents. That tactic is starting to fail, which means they have to fall back to weakening those who will rise up. They are openly admitting that they know their criminal coup has been noticed and won’t be forgotten.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          It’s not even just that. I can’t find a source right now, but I remember reading about how the “dark enlightenment” lunatics have worked out their “ideal” US population for their technofeudalist dystopia, and it’s vastly lower than what the population is currently. I believe that’s what the commenter was referencing with the “kill 268,000,000” figure: 343 mil - 268 mil = 75 mil, which I think might’ve been what the thing I read said.

          • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            That sounds like a great way to end up being in Russia’s shoes with failing to win a war they started. The feudalist part of that technofedualist dystopia is undoubtedly going to have imperialistic ambitions, and—somehow—I don’t think Musk’s Optimus robots are going to be able to compensate for the fact that they’ll have less than half of the combined population of Mexico and Canada.

      • NeilBrü@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        “quite literally” would mean there are federal officers or agents in people’s homes scraping chewed food out of children’s mouths.

        I think you mean “virtually taking food BACK out of their mouths.”

        • Optional@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          Anyone who tries to start that “literally also means figuratively” shit here is going to get shivved. By me.

          • MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip
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            3 hours ago

            But, like, it does. Because language evolves, and history shows most who choose the Old Ways of Language as the hill to die on don’t win out.

            So many of the word shifts that have conglomerated into new dialects, and eventually new languages, come from people who don’t feel like saying a whole word anymore, who combine 2+ words together, who lose the need for a word’s specific meaning and let it become something more general, etc.

            • Optional@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              NO. IT DOES NOT. WORDS DO NOT EVOLVE TO MEAN THEIR OPPOSITE ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE SPECIFIC TO WORDS THEMSELVES. INSANE CHAOS SUPPORTERS GTFO.

              SIX IS NOT GOING TO MEAN NINE, EVER. (well okay maybe once for fun, or like in a substitution cipher or something.) “RUN” SHOULD NEVER MEAN “STAND STILL”. STEP AWAY FROM THE BONG.

              • MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip
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                3 hours ago

                Quora user Ben Waggoner had this to say about words evolving to mean their opposites:

                Well, the classic example is “awful”, which used to mean, literally, “awe-full”, i.e. full of awe, awe-inspiring. It now generally means “really bad.”

                In my long-passed Methodist childhood, the hymnal included a hymn that we never seemed to sing, called “Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne”. I remember wondering as a lad why God would put up with a bad throne. . .

                There’s an often-repeated story that when Christopher Wren completed building St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, King Charles II exclaimed that the building was “awful”, “artificial”, and “amusing.” Supposedly, this was actually meant as a compliment: “awful” meant awe-inspiring, “artificial” meant made with great art and skill, and “amusing” meant amazing. Hey, what do you know—words can change their meanings!

                The truth is not quite that good a story. There is a documented royal warrant from Charles II that praises the plan of St. Paul’s as “very artificial, proper, and useful; as because it was so ordered that it might be built and finish’d by Parts”—so it’s true that St. Paul’s was called “artificial” in the sense of “designed with great art”, which I guess is another example of a word that has taken a very different meaning, if perhaps not the exact opposite of its original meaning. But the bits about “awful” and “amusing” seem to have accreted to the story much later. (And “amusing” originally meant “deceiving; deluding”; I don’t think it meant “amazing” at all, although I’ll check that.) Check out St Paul’s Cathedral Is Amusing, Awful, and Artificial for documentation.


                Responding to the same question, Quora user Jennifer Bransfield offered:

                What are examples of words which, archaichly, had the exact opposite meaning?

                You can thank our West Coast surfers for some of these switcheroos:

                Sick - used to mean ill, bad or unhealthy. Now it means something very good.

                Dude - used to mean a man who works on a ranch. Now it is used as a gender-nonspecific pronoun. Yes, even women can be dudes.

                Awesome - used to mean extremely worthy of awe. Now it can be used for ordinary things. It can also be used sarcastically to describe something that is not good. For example, “I think this toast is awesome because it has just the right amount of butter.” Or, “Awesome. I just lost my job.”

                Tubular - used to mean shaped like a tube.

        • TheFogan@programming.dev
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          7 hours ago

          You gotta realize even the dictionary has given up on this one…

          https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally

          Because the dictionary covers the practical usage, and the misuse is as common as the actual use. The dictionary definition for litterally includes the formal “in a way that uses the ordinary or primary meaning of a term or expression” and the informal that means the exact opposite “statement or description that is not literally true or possible”

          I find it kind of ironic to say it’s actual definition for literally includes effectively or it could also mean “not literally”

  • Scrambled Eggs @lazysoci.al
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    9 hours ago

    so what is the purpose of this? Besides the obvious “evilness”. Is it to better control the masses? Or retaliation for protesting? For force people to get a second or third job to say he is creating jobs? What is the logic behind this?

    • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      They are holding the most vulnerable Americans hostage in the hopes that it will convince the democrats to allow them to be hurt in a different way, by agreeing to the proposed budget.

      But most importantly, they are also trying to extend the duration of the shutdown, while making it seem like they aren’t the ones doing it. So the deal they are offering has to stay something that the democrats would never agree to…

      So they also benefit from anything other than that being what is in the news, but they have lots of practice making sure the news is talking about stupid stuff instead of important stuff.

      As long as the government is shut down, the vote to release the Epstein documents can’t happen. Currently if it happened, it would pass. That will be devastating not to just trump, but a large percentage of rich republicans, in and out of government. (As well as a small percentage of rich democrats) so they are just waiting until the situation changes enough that they think a vote would go their way.

      And while that does seem both comically evil and too simple to possibly be what it is all about… or wait… does it still seem too evil and simple to be the real plan?

    • chisel@piefed.social
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      8 hours ago

      It’s a tactic to get the Dems, who actually give a shit about starving children, to fold and allow the Republicans to take away our already shit healthcare and to protect pedophiles and child traffickers.

    • VeryVito@lemmy.ml
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      8 hours ago

      Power. This administration wants so badly to go to war with the American people.

      • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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        7 hours ago

        Hungry people can’t think. Hungry people can’t fight. Hungry people eventually stop being a barrier to power.

        Same with the sick.

        They really don’t have an end goal beyond that. They want to take what they please, and enjoy killing some people in the process.

        • ngdev@lemmy.zip
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          18 minutes ago

          im pretty sure animals are more dangerous when theyre hungry/starving

        • TheCriticalMember@aussie.zone
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          5 hours ago

          Would be a shame if the starving masses and the farmers with produce rotting in their fields got together and realised that this administration is the cause of all their problems…

    • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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      8 hours ago

      Ooo hadn’t thought of the job creation angle. Though I assume those are part time jobs. Do they count those when computing employment numbers?

  • crandlecan@mander.xyz
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    8 hours ago

    Bread and Games: it’s how one keeps the populous under control. Everyone knows that, right?

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Giving away free bread and entertaining everyone is the theory there.

      Taking bread away from people and being insufferable pricks about it is a new twist, i guess.

      • crandlecan@mander.xyz
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        6 hours ago

        You first need to get their attention, then their admiration, then you feed them. Bonus: 100000s will quickly die and not be missed as the unproductive leaches they are… sigh.