62 pointsby johnbarron3 hours ago8 comments
  • jacquesm2 hours ago
    Of course he does. His father and his father in law would expect nothing less of him.
  • Igroman hour ago
    I once won a power bank in an anonymous raffle at a marketing event of a company that could be imagined as our distant competitor. I voluntarily gave it away to another attendee, because God forbid there's a suspicion of a conflict of interest. But I am clearly a bear of very little brain.
    • comrade1234an hour ago
      You and me brother. We've lost so many opportunities for having integrity.
  • nerdsniper2 hours ago
    Any practical way for a startup to get investment from these grifty slush funds that don’t involve scary amounts of loss of control/independence?
    • genthreean hour ago
      1) Get a couple million dollars you’re willing to gamble.

      2) Spend a few tens of K creating some amount of a front of having a company.

      3) Buy a dinner or two with the right people in the admin, ideally Trump himself (you can literally do this). Talk like an AM radio host or MAGA-aligned right wing podcaster any time political topics come up (that part’s extremely easy, but you do need to do it)

      4) Work out some way to help someone at that dinner line their pockets with any public money they send your way. This will mean only keeping part of what you get, but you’re still gonna beat your investment handily.

      Remaining cash is for incidentals and having to repeat the dinner thing (not sure it’s enough for 2x with Trump himself, but should get you a few with other groups of admin members)

      Don’t forget to buy and have tailored a Hickey Freeman suit (modern, post-production-shift overseas is fine, no need to track down the good vintage Rochester-made stuff), either pinchingly-tightly-tailored like it’s 2009 (Hegseth) if you’re fairly trim, or ill-fitting (leaning too large in every way) otherwise. Brooks Brothers might be an OK option too, in the latter case. Do not buy a dinner jacket, they just wear business suits everywhere. Red tie is safe. Don’t forget some tasteless dumbshit lapel pin, maybe an AR-15 (don’t go for a US flag unless you’re an elected official) or something outright Trump-branded (if you can get one with his face on it, do that for sure)

      • yread44 minutes ago
        I love this. It sounds like you've done it multiple times already
      • croisillonan hour ago
        don't forget the ill-sized Florsheim shoes
    • essephan hour ago
      Once you get money from people like that, you never get "out".
    • VladVladikoffan hour ago
      Step 1) Buy domain: militarytech.ai

      Step 2) Have an LLM make a shitty website about your advanced military AI tech.

      Step 3) ????

      Step 4) Profit!

  • djohnston2 hours ago
    Age of the grift we either jump in or stay dryyy
  • an hour ago
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  • maximilianburke2 hours ago
    The amount of blatant, out-in-the-open corruption and double dealing with people in Trump’s orbit is absolutely astounding.
    • gigatexalan hour ago
      Pretty soon it’ll be the norm. If the next president is a GOP one the grift will continue so long as we are “owning the libs”…

      My hope is that it’s not a GOP whitehouse and we see Nuremberg style trials for this whole administration

      • genthreean hour ago
        The new norm is blanket pardons for everybody at the end of a presidency. And a lot more even-more-openly selling pardons in those final weeks, than already went on.

        Real fear of malicious prosecution of out-of-power political enemies (we’re seeing a bunch of this attempted now, though grand juries mostly haven’t been cooperating) and real fear of being held accountable for tons of actual criming you did, guarantee that everyone gets pardons now. The more-corrupt admins will also use this as a tool of control (I think this is why public “fealty” is so constantly on display with this second admin, to a degree it was not the first time)

  • poisonarena2 hours ago
    welcome to /r/worldnews