this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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Political Memes

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[–] Atlas_@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

The equals aren't part of the emails actually, they're from bad decoding (probably by the govt) https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2026/02/02/whats-up-with-all-those-equals-signs-anyway/

[–] JTskulk@lemmy.world 11 points 5 hours ago

This makes me so happy to see how based Chipzel is. For those who don't know, Chipzel is a really awesome classically trained chiptune musician. She's in a bunch of videogame soundtracks, check out her albums!

[–] Aknifeguy@piefed.ca 39 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

That is the biggest grift of all. Being a billionaire doesn't require intelligence, it requires you to be a ruthless asshole willing to exploit humanity for your own self interest.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago

The "Great Man Myth" was founded by people trying to justify their theft going back as long as we've had currency.

[–] Tanoh@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

And having rich parents to get a huge head start.

[–] binarytobis@lemmy.world 90 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Every time someone pitches the argument that billionaires got there through sheer intelligence and hard work, I want to scream “Have you seen anything this person has wrote or said in public? They are barely coherent! If you asked them where they are right now, they probably wouldn’t know because they pay someone to babysit them through their day.”

[–] night_petal@piefed.social 5 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

There is a non-zero chance that this is due to them having enough money to constantly be on their drug(s) of choice without consequence, though.

[–] OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

I can't imagine myself living that shamelessly

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Even people who can't afford it spend their lives completely self-medicated out the ass until the day they die, it should be self-evident that people with no limitations are going to just spend their days zonked out on the deck of their boat instead of working on helping others.

[–] night_petal@piefed.social 1 points 24 minutes ago

Real talk. I was unfortunately like that for about 15 years.

[–] ceenote@lemmy.world 112 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

There seems to be a correlation between being wealthy and being a thoughtless sociopath.

Who'da thunk

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 8 hours ago

It's almost like pathologically hoarding wealth and power far beyond any personal practicality correlates with specific mental defects and personality disorders!

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 47 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

Back in the day the super rich couldn't bother to write any better, but at least they had the decency to hire a secretary so their messages were even somewhat legible. Seems like the habit of dictating your messages has all but vanished, even in professional contexts.

Maybe the 14-16 year olds they now "hire" are too young to write professionally, compared to the 18-20 somethings of yesteryears.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Everybody is so worried about the environmental impact of LLMs...has anyone stopped to consider the etymological impact?

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Many people consider these things. On microblog fedi, I see threads (long posts, effectively) about this regularly.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 hours ago

This is honestly the first I'd thought about it...but language has always been dynamic and organic. Rapid communication has already led to rapid evolution of language and distribution of slang.

Then you get LLMs slurping up all this content and condensing it and adding their own language into the pile.

Eventually the majority of what they intake will be the output of all the other LLMs, and then it's a feedback loop.

[–] collectif_imaginaire@piefed.social 14 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Hey hello there I had never heard yesteryears and it is exquisite.

Thank you very much

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 6 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

I think I encountered it first in (old school) Runescape, where one of the songs in the soundtrack is named yesteryear. That was back before the old school distinction, when I was still in elementary.

It's one of the first tracks you hear when you start playing, in case you're not familiar.

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

And for anyone who doesn't know, you can experience Runescape as it was in its heyday via 2009scape!

The best part is, they offer XP multipliers (by default you can select 1x, 2.5x or 5x XP in case you have a job and responsibilities) its also a super active project with a brilliantly healthy official server to play on, and completely free to play with optional singleplayer!

[–] redknight942@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Cries in sea shanty 2

[–] fartographer@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Sure, but a lot of that is holdovers from back when you had to put pieces of dead trees into a cryptographic mangler just to tell your secret lover that y'all're gonna get your freak on that motel by the movie theater.

Nowadays, anyone can type "U up?"

[–] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 25 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

they simply don't have to care. in a similar way where jobs was wearing jeans and black shirt while everyone around him was saluting in suits. he didn't have to.

also these messages were supposed to be private, lot of our signal/whatsapp chats also look less professional than work emails.

[–] piconaut@lemmy.ca 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Were these emails encrypted? I thought that regular email is basically public, like sending a postcard. Or is that not the case anymore?

[–] bort@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

iirc it's tls secured between client and server and again between servers. So no e2ee, but if you trust your provider, everything should be good.

iirc law enforcment regularly forces providers to reveal content of client's mailboxes.

[–] Tanoh@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago

but if you trust your provider

Which you should never do. They might look good and safe today, but all it takes is a subpoena or a change in management and they will spill all the secrets. Most likely past and present.

Basically, don't do illegal shit over unencrypted forms of communications. But the billionares are not the smartest people, or Epstein thought he was protected enough that keeping a record of his co-conspirators and their crimes would protect him.

[–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 hours ago

Yeah and you know all these assholes were protected by the cops at all levels

[–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 hours ago

His provider was GMail, who nobody should trust.

[–] resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world 13 points 9 hours ago

This is why they think AI writing emails for them is revolutionary, isn’t it? Because they’re too fucking stupid to articulate a coherent thought.

[–] minorkeys@lemmy.world 16 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

The rich aren't better they are just better positioned.

[–] SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Yeah but it's also that they're better positioned, yet definitely worse.

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 14 points 9 hours ago

If I write a crappy email, I get reprimanded by the boss, or I lose a contract, or people just stop emailing me.

If a billionaire writes a crappy email, their correspondent still wants their money.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

I can’t tell if it’s an encoding issue or just spastic.

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 8 hours ago

It's encoding. I read a detailed explanation the other day, but can't find the article anymore. = and =n\ are new line indicators that have been truncated by incompetent text replacement by the handlers.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 17 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

It is an encoding issue from older mail servers. 

[–] vivi@slrpnk.net 21 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

well, some of it is, like the =, but he also misspells tons of stuff, adds spaces all over the place, doesn't capitalize anything, etc

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 5 points 9 hours ago

Yes, but that’s pretty standard for business people.

[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 5 points 9 hours ago

The ID10T encoding scheme

[–] Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I’m caught between thinking it’s a really stupid billionaire flex (interpret my unfiltered gibberish, peasant) and thinking he was actually just sub-literate.

[–] vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago

I've known some pretty wealthy people. It's for sure a mix of both but mostly the latter.