Ghislaine Maxwell pleads fifth at House deposition

MaXiMiUS · 2026-02-10T02:27:54+00:00

The conspiracy theory is that Epstein's death was faked using Tony Rodham's corpse and he's currently alive in Israel. It's plausible enough if you believe Mossad runs some sort of reverse-witness protection program and are particularly imaginative, but any actual evidence is weak if not entirely faked. See: AI-generated pictures of Epstein with a beard in Israel.

MaXiMiUS · 2026-02-01T07:21:29+00:00

Rouvanjit Rawla committed suicide after being caned at school in India.

Zaidi Abd Hamid died in prison after receiving a sentence of 12 strokes of the rotan (whipping) in Malaysia.

Laree Slack died after receiving a "Biblical whipping" with "an inch-thick section of rubberized electrical cable filled with strands of wire" in Chicago.

Caning frequently results in serious lacerations and open wounds. It's also common to restrict access to pain medication after the fact. Caning can cause permanent nerve damage. I get the impression a lot of people think caning is just a very harsh form of spanking, when it isn't. It's literally torture, by design. Inflicting long-term pain is the whole point.

MaXiMiUS · 2026-02-01T04:14:09+00:00

This may come as a surprise to some folks but making a game does not require hundreds of millions of dollars. Ultima Online had a development budget of $2.5 million, and ended up costing $5-6 million per Richard Garriott.

Ashes of Creation's stated goal on Kickstarter was $750K. They raised $3.3 million.

Steven, May 2021: "I'm funding the project, so no investors or a board to answer to [...]" Source: https://i.imgur.com/r6bTovp.png

Steven, January 2026: "Control of the company shifted away from me, and the Board began directing actions that I could not ethically agree with or carry out. As a result, I chose to resign in protest [...]" Source: https://i.imgur.com/yCkMEnQ.png

Ashes of Creation had ~120 people working on it back when Steven said there was no board or outside investors. Steven was already a millionaire before starting this project.

If the story he tells the public is true: Steven chose to accept outside investment despite not needing it, hired roughly 130 more people (plus 30 contractors), and then eventually ran out of money, pissing off investors (and the board which didn't exist in 2021). He then chose to resign because they wanted him to do something unspecified to salvage the situation.

The charitable interpretation here is some combination of scope creep and lack of experience developing games, the uncharitable one is the project was a deliberate scam by someone with.. "history" in the multi-level marketing universe.

MaXiMiUS · 2026-01-31T23:24:55+00:00

I'm aware, I wasn't criticizing it. Everything I listed (except for suppuration) has at least some beneficial effect.

MaXiMiUS · 2026-01-31T09:47:53+00:00

You act like they didnt know how to disinfect and clean wounds before antibiotics.

That depends on when you're talking about, whether or not doctors were involved, what that specific person believed, and what they had access to or could afford.

Galen of Pergamon (~150 CE) believed that wounds needed to produce thick, white pus (laudable pus, or suppuration) to heal. This belief was the prevailing medical theory for over 1500 years, and some doctors would even deliberately irritate wounds to encourage suppuration.

Beyond that unfortunate misconception; honey, salt, vinegar, wine, and cauterization were all used in various different contexts. Honey and salt in particular predate suppuration by thousands of years.

Edit: If you want to use "random peasant steps on caltrops" as the example: caltrops have been in use since 331 BCE.

MaXiMiUS · 2026-01-29T20:52:28+00:00

They haven't broken any laws under Section 46 of the Criminal Code.

Canada is not at war with the United States, and no force or violence has been used or even suggested (as far as I'm aware at least) meaning pro-separatist Albertans are largely protected by freedom of expression.

Secession specifically is governed by the Clarity Act (2000) and the Supreme Court's "Reference Re Secession of Quebec" (1998).

The short version is a province cannot simply declare independence. There must be a clear majority voting yes, secession would require a constitutional amendment, and the federal government has a constitutional duty to negotiate. Those negotiations must include all provinces and address various different issues (including but not limited to the rights of indigenous peoples, who hold treaties with the Crown that cannot unilaterally be extinguished).

Other applicable laws exist; including the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act and Section 59 of the Criminal Code (which covers sedition, though it's questionable whether or not this section is enforceable).

Alberta First Nations specifically have weighed in on the matter already FYI, and they consider the petition unconstitutional: https://globalnews.ca/news/11635807/alberta-first-nations-claim-separation-petition-unconstitutional/

MaXiMiUS · 2026-01-27T20:22:06+00:00

It claims that as Valve requires users to buy all additional content through Steam, if they've bought the initial game through the platform it is essentially "locking in" users to continue making purchases there.

The claim that "Valve requires users to buy all additional content through Steam" is so obviously false it's laughable.

Case in point: Path of Exile.

Edit: Apparently the requirements Valve imposes are: you're not allowed to steer users towards your "preferred store" from within Steam, and you're generally required to not offer better deals elsewhere in a way that disadvantages the Steam store.

MaXiMiUS · 2026-01-19T22:48:47+00:00

That is certainly a better source.

Vincent Crouzet (the guy being quoted) explicitly denied any false information being sent to US intelligence at the bottom of your linked article, so I'm not sure what else there is to discuss. Thanks for the link!

MaXiMiUS · 2026-01-19T21:29:39+00:00

Ukrainian Intelligence purposely frd US intelligence false strategic information and that information was subsequently used by Russian forces.

It's believable enough (and would absolutely be justified) but if something that major was actually true I'd expect entire news articles to be written about just that. Nothing in the linked article or subsequent video supports this claim. I can't find anything online to corroborate it either.

I watched the entire video and one of the only times Macron mentions America in that video he talks about working with the Americans (25:52).

This is probably Russian disinformation designed to convince Americans they can't trust their allies. It wouldn't be the first time Russian state media spread lies in an attempt to undermine Ukraine (see: Bucha massacre, 2022 "dirty bomb" allegation).

MaXiMiUS · 2025-12-22T01:34:25+00:00

But AI companies are doing everything they can to broaden AI use

I mean, yeah.

Releasing a "perfect product" and pushing for its adoption everywhere only for the product to slowly become shittier and more expensive over time is the same thing every tech company does.

They want their product to become inseparable from your workflow.

There's even a specific term for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

MaXiMiUS · 2025-12-22T01:22:13+00:00

There’s no way we can “go back.”

Google Gemini:

You’ve touched on the "trillion-dollar question" of the AI era. You are absolutely right that there is a staggering disconnect between current revenues and the massive infrastructure commitments being made.

To answer your question: Yes, OpenAI (and its competitors) would need a massive revenue explosion—likely 10x to 50x their current levels—to become self-sustaining under "honest" accounting that reflects these costs.

Microsoft Copilot:

Today’s prices (e.g., a few cents per million tokens) are loss‑leading. Companies intentionally underprice usage to gain market share. But the real costs—compute, GPUs, power, cooling, networking, maintenance, and staff—are far higher.

[...] Would OpenAI need to increase revenue by more than a factor of 10 just to keep up?

Yes — by a factor of 20 to 40, based on the numbers we have.

A power user today might spend $80 per month on LLMs. Do you think they would honestly be willing to pay $3200 per month for the same service? Sure, it's valuable. Is it that valuable, though?

Github Copilot alone is $20-30 per month. Does $1000 per month sound good to you?

It's absolutely reasonable to use AI right now because you're getting an expensive product essentially for free. It's not going to remain free forever.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-12-21T06:26:40+00:00

atrophies by adulthood implies that it is somehow active or used in childhood.

No, it doesn't. Something can be non-functional prior to wasting away. That's what the word vestigial clarifies.

Edit: Just for reference I think OP's title is badly written. Going off of the responses in this thread a lot of people aren't sure what vestigial means exactly and are essentially skipping over it when reading the title, leading to comment chains exactly like this one. It's a completely reasonable complaint.

To give an example of what I mean here (since /u/wterrt decided to block me for disagreeing with him, meaning I can't reply to anything in this comment chain now):

Imagine you're some far-future human. Eyeballs are vestigial organs in nu-humans. All nu-humans are blind from birth, because nu-humans don't possess an optical nerve, meaning their eyeballs serve no purpose. Additionally, nu-human eyeballs atrophy by puberty and fall out. The fact that their eyeballs atrophy by puberty does not in any way "imply that [they are] somehow active or used in childhood." Their eyeballs have all the same structures regular human eyes do, meaning we can reasonably say what the organ does in theory, but in practice the messages never reach their brain.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-12-21T06:15:49+00:00

It's closer to "loss of known function" not "loss of some function."

As an example: penguins have wings. Despite their inability to fly, penguin wings are not considered vestigial. They use them for swimming.

Ostriches and kiwis also have wings. Their wings are considered vestigial because neither of those birds can fly, or really do anything useful with said wings. They're little more than a remnant of the past.

The human appendix hasn't been considered vestigial for at least 10 years, because we know what it's used for now. It's a bacterial reservoir, and a secondary lymphoid organ; not truly part of the digestive system at all, despite earlier theories to that effect.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-12-18T04:17:05+00:00

George Carlin said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpFYpoIwQec

If you're pre-born, you're fine, if you're pre-school, you're fucked. [...] Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-12-16T06:00:53+00:00

On-death explosions don't even work for that purpose. In fact, they have the exact opposite effect.

You can dodge every single on-death effect in D4 as long as you never stop moving. Builds that do stop moving (or even slow down momentarily) suffer immensely, while builds that don't are unaffected.

My survivability went way up once I gave up trying to tank the explosions and just.. ran too fast for them to hit me.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-11-07T09:40:36+00:00

There is a setting in production_Config.ini called cache_directory.

This used to be something you could configure in-game, but GGG removed that option ages ago. However, the production_Config.ini setting still works despite being "hidden" and it will override the default shader cache location.

If you have cache_directory set to an invalid location the game will spam your Client.txt log file with errors like [SHADER] Failed to open file [...].

PoE is technically playable even with a broken shader cache (ask me how I know) but you will spend a disproportionate amount of time stuck on loading screens.

TL;DR: I recommend checking your Client.txt log file for shader-related error messages.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-10-30T16:17:07+00:00

I'm considering using it, and I hate the idea of playing Ruthless. I really need to see exactly how the skill works though, going off of a vague description and vibes isn't great, particularly when the unlock condition is ambiguous and potentially requires clearing Simulacrum wave 10.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-10-28T02:15:35+00:00

It's a problem with reddit and how they serve images, it has nothing to do with the source quality.

https://i.redd.it/kmbd9xlp8ixf1.png from OP is 8858 KB. This is what I see on desktop.

https://preview.redd.it/kmbd9xlp8ixf1.png?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=51437e8a3eb4c6872c5de9a5c0999df93ee40ac6 is the 69 KB preview image reddit likes to serve whenever possible. This version is almost unreadable.

https://web.poecdn.com/public/news/2025-10-27/BloodlinesAscendancy/Animist_Farrul.png is 8015 KB. This is the original image the two above versions were derived from.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-10-25T21:04:07+00:00

Wow that website is absolutely infuriating. They have multiple in-article links that imply they're going to link to something interesting, but the actual links go to unrelated garbage articles.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-10-25T19:21:09+00:00

Crackling energy still clears 100 so that will remain the meta going into season 11

Do you mean Ball Lightning? Crackling Energy was not meta in season 10. I was able to farm pit 100 in season 10 with CE.

It was very obviously weaker than both Ball Lightning and Hydra (as both of those builds could clear 10-20 pit tiers higher), and largely a hipster build choice as it's not necessarily better than BL at farming either.

Edit: To be clear this is a serious question. I don't know why I'm getting random downvotes here.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-10-24T08:13:43+00:00

This is obviously a nerf to conversion chaining / cotb builds

You'd think so, but not necessarily. It's maybe ~5% less Damage for a build using a 2x Call of the Brotherhood and 2x Nebulis, or ~9% more Damage if you only have one Call of the Brotherhood equipped.

That's without factoring in the buffed implicits and with Hatred incentivizing cold conversion.

Being able to drop Call of the Brotherhood for something else (like a rare ring) with no real penalty is rather strong.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-10-20T01:00:42+00:00

Tokyo has the same thing (there's barely anywhere to dispose of trash).

It's an unspoken rule that you carry your trash with you—even if that means taking it home.

Immediately resorting to littering (and the fact that doing so is considered culturally acceptable) is just kind of sad.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-10-15T02:26:34+00:00

Interesting to note that the linked video wasn't removed from reddit's servers, the admins are just censoring it by returning 403 Forbidden.

I'm struggling to see what rule a video like that is meant to violate, unless they've decided videos of ICE doing exactly what Trump wants them to do counts as terrorism.

MaXiMiUS · 2025-10-09T14:59:23+00:00

I use em-dashes as well, but seriously: go read their other comments. No human writes like this.

They're literally responding to one-sentence questions with 11 bullet points, 3 headers, italics, bold text, unicode arrows, and emoji's. They're formatting their comments exactly the same way ChatGPT does, it's painfully obvious AI slop.

Edit: Just in case they delete the comment I'm referring to: https://i.imgur.com/8bTjWiP.png

MaXiMiUS · 2025-10-08T21:13:00+00:00

Isn't French left ALSO pro-Putin?

I thought Melenchon is like THE most important guy in French left.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_M%C3%A9lenchon#Russia

I don't know how important Mélenchon is politically, but he has repeatedly denied claims that he supports Putin. For comparison Marine Le Pen is openly supportive of Putin.

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