A former GOP donor, who once made headlines after calling former president Barack Obama the N-word, fatally shot himself after attempting to kill his wife, according to reports.
In case you were wondering how an obviously insane person comes to be that rich, it’s from stealing your data.
Apparently he was the founder and chief data scientist at SMA Communications. From their website:
SMA Communications owns data on over 247 million consumers and over 49 million business contacts. We also have over 179 million registered Voters, 165 million automobile owners, Social media connections and more.
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Good luck. If you want to interact with the modern world- have a smartphone, use social media, streaming services, etc., you’re going to have your data sold. And if you don’t do it, the corporation you work for is probably doing it. The horses are already out of the barn. Our data is not ours anymore.
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You’re delusional if you think you’re a “ghost” online. You can make it harder to track you, but you’re never, ever invisible.
You don’t have to be - all you must do is have the value of selling your data be lower than the cost of acquiring it.
I would say Lemmy is a form of social media.
Good luck getting a job that pays anything but starvation wages.
You don’t have to be on social media to get a good job.
A lot of jobs ask you for social media contacts. They also advertise via LinkedIn and Indeed, which require personal data. So you don’t have to be, but you’ll be lucky if you get one. And, like I said, once you get one, the company could easily just sell the data you give them. Are you going to refuse to give them your information too? Why would they hire you? Why would they keep you?
This is the same “everyone can do what I did” nonsense I get from rich libertarians.
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“If I can be a system engineer, everyone can be a system engineer!”
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YOUR*
I agree, but this list doesn’t sound particularly like digital behavior, though I’m sure that’s included. Credit card companies were selling your receipts long before online shopping, voter reg (though not it’s history) is public, a lot of this is just buying straight from companies or scraping.
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Oh nevermind he fixed his spelling mistake by changing project to protect
No, Destraight. You are the data
I never wonder why morally corrupt people are rich.
It is the about the only way you can become wealthy.
That or inheritance. Then the corruption is a side effect.
Jesus, imagine being next-of-kin and this was your inheritance. If it were a physical factory I’d order it shut down and burn it, then leave the smoking ruins as a warning to others.
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I love that the picture they chose was of him standing between DeSantis and the very stupidest Trump offspring (which is a hell of an achievement!) just to rub it in how the GOP has absolutely no standards beyond dollar amounts!
In a freaking obnoxious USA blazer to boot
Absolutely! I also love that, as of the day after the article went live, the dumbass son is identified as the OTHER dumbass son 😂
Wait is that not Eric? I’ve thus far refused to learn the difference.
Same here tbh. I just know that one of them likes to binge on coke before going live to spice up the nonsense to his followers
Something something wrapped in a flag and holding a cross…
Eric Trump is offended. He thought he was the best at being the very stupidest Trump offspring.
He can take comfort in his winning stupidest-LOOKING Trump offspring by a mile even though junior has no chin…
Man, if you pitched these news stories to a studio as ideas a decade ago, they’d call you absurd and outlandish as they laughed you out of the room
Oddly enough, I did have that on my Republican Bingo card.
It was the free space on mine.
And nothing of value was lost.
Hey now! Bullets ain’t free.
But they are back to being relatively affordable. I’d say this was a good way to spend one.
Nice shot, man.
For those who didn’t: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Man_Nice_Shot
Republican moment
Just legal gun owner things
There were good people on both sides
I am a lefty and I own guns. This comment is dumb
edit, i get the point you were trying to make now, by reading other posts of yours.
Was he not a legal gun owner?
Okay this comment is actually stupid.
Saying this is a legal gun owner moment is as stupid as saying it’s an Antifa moment when someone tries to loot a store during a protest or counter protest.
He was a legal gun owner who used his legal gun to try and execute his wife – something that seldom happens in countries that don’t hand guns out like candy.
The vast majority of gun owners have never used a gun in an illegal activity and enthusiast communities exemplify safe gun use so highly that pointing the barrel of even an unloaded firearm close to the general direction of another person for any reason other than self-defense is such a highly offensive act it will often get a person forcibly disarmed or assaulted to even negligently put another person down the line of the barrel.
The issue at hand isn’t that gun ownership is legal, the issue is that a (possibly undiagnosed) sociopath or potential psychopath was able to get a firearm, or more likely a wealthy individual was able to use that wealth to circumvent safeguards and laws that would have prevented a person of his questionable mental health from owning one to begin with.
The vast majority of gun owners have never used a gun in an illegal activity
Completely irrelevant. The vast majority of drivers don’t drive when they’re drunk, but we still have DUI laws that apply to everybody.
The reason we have them is because there was a clear pattern where impaired drivers were involved in more accidents that were more fatal, just like legal gun owners and unjustifiable murders.
And of course because the alcohol lobby didn’t think to start a death cult to fight DUI laws to maintain their profits.
enthusiast communities exemplify safe gun use
Entirely optional. The pro-gun community might go online to tut about poor trigger discipline or unsafe storage but they (or the people representing them) staunchly oppose any laws that actually make these things a requirement.
often get a person forcibly disarmed or assaulted to even negligently put another person down the line of the barrel.
At a range or in your imagination. They don’t rush out from behind a couch to scold a domestic abuser for sweeping his wife.
The issue at hand isn’t that gun ownership is legal, the issue is that a (possibly undiagnosed) sociopath or potential psychopath was able to get a firearm
Congratulations, welcome to gun control. Preventing that is 100% the goal of gun control, has always been the goal of gun control and has been hugely effective outside of America.
Generally, this is through gun licensing* with applicants needing to demonstrate they know how to safely store* and operate*, undergo a background check* and often be a member in good standing at a range for at least 6 months*.
These laws also take into consideration the risk of different guns* with semi-automatic weapons involving increased scrutiny* given that they’re the weapon of choice for impulse killings, mass murder and armed robbery.
And of course, this comes with actual punishments* for anyone caught endangering others with their firearms, rather than just getting the frowning of the lifetime from the people who enabled them.
Unfortunately, everything marked with a * is opposed by the pro-gun community who would rather just keep selling guns to criminals, abusers, extremists and 80% of mass shooters instead of making the “responsible” part of “responsible gun owner” mandatory.
But we all know the talking point you’re working towards – the “it’s a mental health problem” bullshit excuse.
Of course the goal of that excuse is to demand something impossible is done before you will even consider gun control – in this case, accessible mental healthcare for every man, woman and child in America that can instantly cure them of complex problems far beyond even the most cutting edge medical science, so completely that they will never relapse for even a minute, delivered within a budget of $0.
But do you know what you’re actually doing? Admitting that the American public are simply not healthy enough for such permissive gun laws to be safe.
So how about we just fix the gun laws without the gun lobby’s stamp of approval and when the pro-gun crowd has finished building their impossible mental health system, they can have them back.
After all, they’ve insisted that they (and they alone) have had the solutions for 25 years now and the only thing they’ve done is dug the country a deeper hole in the name of profit.
I’m all in on banning guns, but nobody would say “Just driver’s license things” when someone drives off the cliff in a murder suicide.
They would if America’s requirements for holding a driver’s license were just turning up and a DMV and saying “I pinkie promise I know how to drive and will not drive off a cliff in a murder suicide”.
If you don’t want people who commit murder with legal guns called “legal gun owners”, stop selling them legal guns.
Not even kind of close. Legal gun owners can be responsible and law abiding citizens, but you know the ones everyone hears about are not that kind of person. Why don’t the good and wholesome law abiding gun owners root these people out? Is it because a significant segment of that population shouldn’t own guns, even if they say THEY aren’t the problem?
To put it simply… If you had a Gatling gun on your vehicle, would you have used it by now? Most of us would admittedly say yes. Most of us, given unfettered access and anonymity, would have at least thought about doing something really stupid and illegal if everyone had Gatling guns mounted on their vehicles.
Most of us would have killed someone if the likelihood of being caught was minimal… Which is why unfettered and semi anonymous access to firearms is an awful idea
While I agree with the sentiment, I wouldn’t have killed anybody.
Good people find the idea of ending someone’s life innately abhorrent and will hesitate to do it even if their lives are in danger.
It’s why militaries (arguably) make sure to train it out of people and why abused women and targeted minorities aren’t actually levelling the playing field by carrying a gun with them everywhere.
That said, what you’re describing is one of the major issues with permissive gun laws – it only takes a split second to kill someone (or yourself) with a loaded handgun in arms reach.
Okay this comment is actually stupid.
Many GOP heavyweights took to social media to give tributes, including Trump and DeSantis.
So DeSantis donated the guy’s campaign contributions after he kept using the N word but he still decided to give tribute after the guy attempted murder?
Despite, or because?
Nice when the trash takes itself out.
Imagine taking the family out for a burger, and this cunt-sack ruins it by eating a bullet in front of you and your family.
Wait, he did this in public?
What a POS.
Yep. A BurgerFi
If I found out who it was, Id loudly proclaim that he was a scumbag and that I’m buying a round of shots for us to party right through it.
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First, a moment to acknowledge that his wife, who evidently didn’t do anything wrong, got shot behind this.
Now, we dance!
She was a psychologist and didn’t notice this dude was fucking crazy? I don’t want to blame her for being shot, but for her to be willing to put up with him she couldn’t have been innocent of the other stuff he’s done.
Maybe she thought she could “fix” him. Still stupid
Maybe we shouldn’t speculate about things we have essentially zero information on.
New to the internet?
Right, wonderful amazing people don’t marry pieces of shit like this guy, wife is probably just a much of a racist piece of shit.
Damn, that headline just keeps goin’, don’t it?
And here I thought nothing was gonna go right this year at all.
Thoughts and prayers /s
Now that’s a headline
Wow that’s too bad. Anyway now his rich widow can recover and go waste her Inheritance on whatever trivial bullshit she likes. It won’t help the world, but it’s better than actively undermining it.
After what she’s gone through, shall she recover well and have a good time.
It would be nice, if everyone that suffers a life-changing traumatic event like hers, would have the means to take their time to recover, digest the trauma, get over it and finally be able to re-enter life’s daily struggle, timing everything at their own pace, without having to fear financial ruin.
Even more, if the trauma was caused by someone else, ripping you out of your life.
