i think the original commenter is just reaffirming the idea presented in the meme by sharing their own conceptions of iran. this highlights how westerners generally seem to view the region.

i wouldn’t use the word mediterranean here myself but i see where they’re coming from saying that, especially with regards to cultural perception versus the real, lived culture.

westerners traditionally associate the stylings of like, Parthia or maybe the Sassanids with iran/persia. those cultures are also inextricably linked with a wider western image of the bronze age and greece. i think the more interesting part of note here is that westerners tend to conflate classical cultures as all having a general “vibe” that might be described as mediterranean, and both in the case of modern iran or greece it seems that this lasting cultural image is heavily impressed in the social consciousness

frankly, and people can call me an asshole for this but i truly do mean it as kindly as possible, talking to you doesn’t seem worth my time. someone who knows you in your life and cares is in a much better position to explain why what you’re saying is not just simple, but morally maladjusted.

yeah i was rude to you. you were espousing ideas that are racist in nature. no i don’t have a responsibility to explain before i respond negatively in turn. i really do hope you take this and your admitted previous bad receptions as an indication you should study what race actually is, and get a clearer idea of what “human classifications [sic]” really are. what you are saying is wrong and hurtful. it makes people’s lives worse when you say things like this and you don’t really care

“sub-variants” “blacks” “equater 🤠” “american blacks vs african blacks” just the entire lines between “it’s interesting…” and “…for people of kinds too.”

(((kkkomplex))) variant

had some neat ideas of classification

people might not see in the same light

think it meant to offend

gee, buddy, i wonder why.

look i won’t even begin to sit here and try to break down the problems with your rhetoric & diction for you, but whatever tf it is in your head that regards race; it got sum mad fucked up with it. like wtf does half of this racist drivel mean?? subvariants?? excuse me is it 1902??? i’d wager a bet your “neat ideas” for human classification are some of the most bigoted and awful things to come out of someone’s mouth, and you’d say them with complete unremorse and not a single wince of irony.

that’s fair, my absolute statement doesn’t reflect the exclusive way anti fraud laws are written. you certainly might find and successfully exploit legal ways to lie for financial gain, but at best it’s unethical and at worst you’ll have to defend why your deceit isn’t criminal fraud in a lawsuit. it kind of depends on who you piss off the most, imo.

uh, yes? it’s at the least fraud fs? the article says the doj is charging mike smith with three money laundering charges and one count of wire fraud. obviously the wire fraud charge comes from an argument that smith defrauded the distribution companies into illegitimately paying out royalties for false streams. note that the artificial intelligence solution only comes into the argument for the purposes of how he committed the crime, it really had nothing to do with the crime itself, at least intrinsically. if you read the press release from the doj, you can see that they make a pretty airtight argument that, quote:

SMITH made numerous misrepresentations to the Streaming Platforms in furtherance of the fraud scheme. For example, SMITH repeatedly lied to the Streaming Platforms when he used false names and other information to create the Bot Accounts and when he agreed to abide by terms and conditions that prohibited streaming manipulation. SMITH also deceived the Streaming Platforms by making it appear as if legitimate users were in control of the Bot Accounts and streaming music when, in fact, the Bot Accounts were hard coded to stream SMITH’s music billions of times. SMITH also caused the Streaming Platforms to falsely report billions of streams of his music, even though SMITH knew that those streams were in fact caused by the Bot Accounts rather than real human listeners.

SMITH’s hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs were streamed by his Bot Accounts billions of times, which allowed him to fraudulently obtain more than $10 million in royalties.

it is not illegal to lie. it is absolutely illegal to lie for the purposes of financial gain. sure, i’m not disagreeing that what he did could not somehow be construed as something of a robin hood character arc (even tho he most certainly did this for the purposes of his own personal enrichment). but he almost definitely is guilty of the wire fraud charge and i do have a strong feeling, based on the prosecutorial level of this case, the involvement of a specialized division of the fbi, and his purported co-conspirators; that the money laundering charges are ironclad as well. frankly, i’m hoping his co-conspirators actually do end up going to trial and we get to learn what the company that aided in his fraud actually was. on fucking god it’d be one thing if he ran this grift machine for a little while, paid off a lil bit of his debts and all, maybe even lived off of it. but to steal $10 million fucking dollars with it, even when he knew he was committing fraud and had to explicitly hide his criminal activity??? no shit the fbi was hot on your trail. what an absolutely, colossal dipshit michael smith must be. i respect the ingenuity but it is so blindingly obvious that 10 million dollars was egregiously too many times to press a “free money button” you just invented in a capitalist autocratic hellscape.

QUICK EDIT: i do just wanna say also i did not downvote u/shani66 and i just wanted to contribute to discussion. just noticed after i posted someone had downvoted them which is kinda goofy of whoever that is.

that’s a monistic point of view. you clearly have never lived in or near a food desert, or somewhere where fast food is the only option, because oftentimes at a local scale restaurants do buy up all available food resources. sure. these people could subsist off of wild fucking berries outside instead. why not. the choices of large restaurant megacorps weigh heavy on millions.

restaurants provide a service the same way landlords do. just bc you privatized an essential commodity does not immediately make your privatized entity a useful or essential service, and i detest the notion that it does. it’s circular logic.

EDIT: i’m getting downvoted but idc. i still think im right. weep all you want, but at its core, the buying and selling of goods/services represents an ethical dilemma at best and an atrocity at worst. the argument that restaurants are entirely a choice to go to is both overly broad and a straw man. restaurants often do impact people’s budgets and lifestyles, believe it or not. you can’t just blanket say they have no culpability in this arena because reasons. it is the mechanisms of the market and economy themselves that oppress us. it is not inherently human. it is not the only way to organize ourselves. we can do better, and we deserve better. who the fuck cares how much “value” literally anything has? i’ll trade you five smogels for a smilji. yay, everyone magically gained bc of the incantation! grow the fuck up. outdated ideas have no place in modern, civilized society. any imagined net benefits of money you can come up with are a drop in the bucket compared to its power as a stupid fucking thoughtworm