Via Planet Of Memes @PlanetOfMemes
I know it would not be consistent with other memes with the same format, but if someone were to tell me this, my response would be, “Don’t make any promises you can’t keep.” Or perhaps, “Make it 90% and we have a deal.”
The Renee Good case was clear-cut self-defense. Objectively, she hit the accelerator when her tires were pointed directly at the officer. If the officer had complete omnipotence he would still have been justified in using deadly force.
The Pretti case is different. It still looks like lawful self-defense, but in this case, if the officers were omnipotent, they would NOT have fired. But from the perception of the individual officer in the moment, all they know is that they are dealing with an agitator who has 1) aggressively confronted a federal law enforcement officer 2) unlawfully interfered in an arrest of a third party and 3) violently resisted arrest. And then the officer hears “gun gun gun.” We don’t know exactly what that officer was seeing at the time; maybe the body cam video will be probative, maybe not. But the officer is allowed to rely on the perceptions of his colleagues combined with his own, so if he heard “gun gun gun” and saw Pretti reach for his waist that’s a lawful shoot even if the officer was mistaken.
Will Chamberlain @willchamberlain
Posted on X, January 26, 2026
He meant “omniscient”, not “omnipotent”.
There is at least one video I have seen that appears to show the officer who took Petti’s gun had an AD with it as he was walking away. This, as you might expect, appears to have initiated the shooting of Petti.
If true, it will almost certainly result in it being a lawful, tragic shooting.
Via The Redheaded libertarian @TRHLofficial, who wrote:
It appears MSNBC gave Alex Pretti a tan, a stronger jawline, better teeth, shorter forehead, and a nose job to make him look hotter for the AWFLs. They broadened his shoulders, thickened his neck, and gave him biceps.
Since they engaged in this deliberate deception you can be sure there are other deceptions in their reporting of their narrative.
Legacy Media Liars.
AI makes deception so much easier. The videos being produced are of amazing quality. Reality was already tough to discern. The current technology could make it nearly impossible to determine truth from falsity. It would require security certificates from source to viewer, a chain of custody, for recording devices with images and/or sound to come close having a chance of being actually true.
This is very scary stuff.
In every clip I’ve seen of Noem today, she’s saying something she can’t know or that is a lie. She also undercuts 2A to say carrying ammo is a problem on its face. I know it’s too much to expect people to be responsible, but this is opposite of a grown-up doing the job.
Mary Katherine Ham @mkhammer
Posted on X, January 24, 2026
It is way beyond having hope of most people to be responsible. Things are more chaotic than I think I have ever seen them. Emotions are running very high. Most people cannot even determine what is reality. Part of the problem is the media lies, selective reporting, and deliberate distortion. Part of it is that many people don’t even believe in the existence of an objective reality. And part of it is that reality is a really tough problem. We are left with people blinded by emotion, without knowledge of how to determine a reality they don’t even believe exists, with deliberate lies as the basis to make decisions on how to interact with the rest of the world.
The dollar is worth less than 1/5000th of an ounce of gold and will buy less than 1/100th of an ounce of silver. The nation debt is nearly $40 trillion.
I just want my underground bunker in Idaho to be finished and stocked before things go really sour.
A vast number of humans, probably a majority, aren’t people.
They are large language models.
I’m not saying this as a generality, as a clever or funny way of saying, “they are stupid”.
No. I mean something very concrete and specific, and there are a lot of people who appear very intelligent, maybe even win awards for writing good poetry or something, who are nevertheless not people, not fully sapient, just a large language model walking around in a human body.
First, you have to understand what a large language model is.
It’s a computer (organic or inorganic), which has been trained on a data set consisting solely of language (written or spoken), and rewarded for producing language that sounds like the data set, and is relevant to a prompt.
That’s all there is in there.
This is why ChatGPT and Grok lie to you constantly.
It’s not because they are somehow just indifferent to the truth — they actually do not understand the concept of “truth” at all.
For something to be a “lie”, or an “inaccuracy”, there has to be a mismatch between the meaning of words, and the state of reality.
And there’s the critical difference. You see, in order to identify a mismatch between the state of reality, and the meaning of a sentence, you have to have a model of reality.
Not just one model, of language.
This is why Grok and ChatGPT hallucinate and tell you lies. Because, for them, everything is language, and there is no reality.
So when I say someone is a large language model, I do not mean he is “stupid”. He might be very facile at processing language. He might, in fact, be eloquent enough to give great speeches, get elected president, win the Nobel Peace Prize, and so on.
What I mean is that humans who are large language models do not have a robust world-object model to counterweight their language model. They are able to manipulate symbols, sometimes adroitly, but they are on far shakier ground when trying imagine the objects those symbols represent.
Which brings us to this woman.
Most conservatives understand her behavior in terms of concepts like “suicidal empathy”, or “brainwashing”, or an “information bubble”, interpreted as reasons why she is delusional, but the truth is far worse than that.
To delusional is to have an object model of the world that is deeply and profoundly wrong. But to have an object model of the world that is deeply and profoundly wrong… you have to have one in the first place.
To sapient humans, words are symbols, grounded in object model of reality, that we use to communicate ideas about that reality. We need those words because we don’t come equipped with a hologram projector, or telepathic powers.
But for another type of human, that object model isn’t very large or robust at all. It consists only of a grass hut or two with a few sticks of furniture, and it can never be matched up with the palaces in the air which she weaves out of words.
And so, to her, there is no reality. Or at least very little.
Reality consists only of her and her immediate surroundings in time and space, and words referring to anything bigger or more complicated are not descriptions of reality… they are magic spells which will make other humans drop loot or give her social approval.
You cannot correct her worldview with contradictory evidence, because there is no worldview to correct.
You cannot confront her with the logical inconsistencies in her worldview, because her object model doesn’t actually have any, it’s not complex enough for that.
The relevant parts of her world-object model can be summed up as follows:
“If I say Goodthing, I get headpats and cookies from all the people like me.”
That model is simply not big or complicated enough to contain notions like self-defense or vehicular assault. She has no theory of mind for a man whose job includes violence. She cannot explain or predict his behavior.
It is too far away from her daily experience to fit into her reality at all.
And if she can’t imagine things like these, how can she possibly imagine concrete meanings for vast and complex ideas like demographic replacement, culture shift, and western civilization?
This is not about intelligence or lack of it. This is about what her brain is trained to do.
Her upbringing, education, and life did not force, or even encourage, her to develop a robust world-object model. It wasn’t necessary for her to get safety, approval, or cookies. She just had to be glib.
So it really didn’t matter if she had an IQ of 125, or whatever, because if she did, then she was just an IQ-125-large-language-model, and only used that brain capacity for writing clever poetry, and saying things that aligned her to her local social matrix.
She couldn’t actually understand the world no matter how smart she was, because her brain was trained up wrong.
I don’t know if this is correctable, or if there was some critical developmental phase that was missed, but it doesn’t matter, because once the LLM-humans are adults, they won’t sit still for corrective therapy, percussive or not.
What’s important is that they can’t be taught things. They can be programmed to repeat stuff, and if you win a culture war, you can even program them to say the sensible stuff. But even then, they will just be saying it for headpats and cookies. They will never truly understand the sense of what they are repeating, because they don’t understand things.
They are just Large Language Models.
And we have to figure out some way to take the vote away from them.
Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_
Posted on X, January 8, 2026
In case you can’t immediately make the connection, this is about Renee Good (Who was Renee Nicole Good, the woman killed by ICE?).
Wow! This is awesome. It is another model to incorporate into my understanding of people.
If you read about Ms. Good you will discover she was an award-winning poet, and an English major.
This reminds me of Peterson Syndrome.
They do not have a process for determining truth from falsity. When asked how they determine truth from falsity they look at you like that is a crazy question. They speak of “My truth”, and “My lived experience.” The concept of a court ruling on basis of the law instead of justice (of course it is their “justice”) is nonsensical to them. They cannot imagine why their opinion on an event they did not see is not just as valid as someone who studied multiple videos from various angles frame by frame.
It reminds me of someone who I once asked, “How do you determine truth from falsity?” Their answer, in all seriousness, was, “It depends on how I feel.”
I do not have a common basis in reality to functionally communicate with these people.
I’m going to say this once, and I don’t care if it makes people uncomfortable.
If you have never lived in Venezuela
If you did not grow up there
If you did not watch your country collapse in real time
If you did not stand in food lines
If you did not watch your parents lose everything they built
If you did not have to leave your home with nothingThen shut the fuck up.
You do not have an opinion.
Your opinion does not matter.
And you don’t get to lecture anyone about what’s happening there.I’m Venezuelan.
I lived there most of my life until my early twenties.
I watched my country go from a functioning democracy to full blown socialism right in front of my eyes.This is not politics to me.
This is trauma.Before socialism, Venezuela was not perfect, but it worked.
There was trade.
There was money coming in.
There was investment from the US.
There were jobs.
There was food.
There was medicine.My family had five businesses.
We had our home
We had investments.
We had a future.Then the government started nationalizing everything.
Private companies were taken.
Foreign investors were pushed out.
Imports were blocked.
Price controls destroyed production.
Corruption exploded.And everything died.
Not slowly.
Violently.People didn’t suddenly become poor because of “capitalism” or “the US” or whatever bullshit slogan people like to repeat online.
They became poor because socialism destroyed incentives, destroyed production, destroyed trust, and destroyed hope.
People today in Venezuela are not debating ideology.
They are trying to survive.They are trying to find food.
Trying to find medication.
Trying to keep their families alive.So when I see people in the West posting from comfortable homes, full fridges, stable currencies, and safe streets talking about “imperialism” or “US bad” or “Trump this or that”
No.
It’s not complicated.
You’re just ignorant.China is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Russia is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Cartels are not rebuilding Venezuela.They are stealing.
They are extracting.
They are draining what’s left.If the US comes in and reinvests
If refineries get rebuilt
If infrastructure gets restored
If imports open back up
If food, water, and medicine become accessible again
If people can work and earn with dignityThen yes.
Let them take all the oil they want.Because at least something gets built instead of destroyed.
This is something to celebrate.
Not because it’s perfect.
But because for the first time in a long time, there is hope.Hope that families can eat.
Hope that people don’t have to flee their country.
Hope that Venezuela can function again.If you’ve never lived through a country collapsing
If you’ve never watched socialism destroy everything around you
If you’ve never had to leave your home because staying meant starvationThen again
Shut the fuck up.This isn’t theory.
This isn’t politics.
This is lived experience.Stephen Subero
Posted on Facebook, January 4, 2026
More food for thought on the topic.
In war, truth is the first casualty. Hence, it is going to be extremely difficult to know the truth of the current events in Iran and Venezuela. For now, I’m going with the content of these two videos as a first approximation of background material.
We will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.
Zohran Mamdani
New York City Mayor
January 1, 2026
Bishop Barron rips Mamdani’s ‘warmth of collectivism’ remark: ‘For God’s sake’ | Fox News
Conservatives sound alarm over Zohran Mamdani’s ‘collectivism’ comment | Fox News
Spell checker wanted to correct Mamdani to “Madman”. I wonder if it there is some significance to that.
If you want an economic argument as to why Mamdani’s plans are a really, really, bad idea read The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents-The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2): Hayek, F. A., Caldwell, Bruce, Caldwell, Bruce, Caldwell, Bruce: 9780226320557: Amazon.com: Books
If you want to read the detailed results of a real-world test case of this political philosophy read The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Complete 3 Volumes Collection (Volume 1, 2, 3): Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn: Amazon.com: Books.
I don’t want to read any more about it. I want my underground bunker in Idaho*.
If you follow the X post above, you will find the following means and many more:
The difference between the two:
Ricardo Gomes sums it up for me:
* The night of January 1st, 2026 was the first time I spend the night in my underground bunker in Idaho. It’s not really ready, but for this time of year, it is better than the camping trailer. While it will not be completed, I expect that within a month Barb and I would be comfortable here should the need occur. It is not a minute too soon.
Via The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee:
If the whole situation were not such a tragic waste of money it would be funny.
My only hope is that the maximum amount of restitution is made by everyone criminally involved — down to the level of auctioning off all their salable body parts. An example needs to be made of these people which will be remembered for generations.
Things like this end up in third world wars. And I told that the other day, I said, ‘You know, everybody keeps playing games like this, you’ll end up in a third world war.’ And we don’t want to see that happen.
Donald Trump
U.S. President
December 26, 2025
Trump issues WWIII warning
I want my underground bunker in Idaho to be finished.
European security officials now regularly broadcast a message nearly unimaginable a decade ago: get ready for conflict with Russia.
Rarely a week goes by now without a European government, military or security chief making a grim speech warning the public that they are headed toward a potential war with Russia. It is a profound psychological shift for a continent that has rebuilt itself after two world wars by trumpeting a message of harmony and joint economic prosperity.
…
European security chiefs say that Russia has begun a covert “gray zone” assault on Europe, to try to damage its economy and sow confusion. Russia is suspected of being behind a string of sabotage on critical European infrastructure and military facilities, cyberattacks on businesses, as well as arson attacks on warehouses and shopping centers. Russian drones have disrupted Polish airspace and jet fighters zipped over Estonia.
Max Colchester, Bertrand Benoit
December 16, 2025
After a generation of peace, Europe tells its people to prepare for war
I think this is Europe’s problem to deal with. But it is hard to imagine the U.S. staying out of it if another European country goes all in.
I want an underground bunker in Idaho before things go hot.
Twenty minutes, there was four policemen there. Nobody give fire back. Nothing. Like they froze. I don’t understand why.
Shmulik Scuri
December 14, 2025
Bondi Beach terror survivor describes how cops ‘froze’ during 20-minute shooting rampage | New York Post
Why do you need a gun? The police are there to protect you.
Oh. Yeah. This is why.
See also, Dial 911 and Die.
The Somali community has been engaged in massive, endemic, systematic fraud against the American taxpayer for years. We’re going to discover ultimately, and we are in the throes right now of a full-throated all-hands-on-deck federal investigation. Is that the scope, scale, size and sheer magnitude of the fraud eclipses anybody’s worst nightmare.
According to official government records, 90 percent of Somali households with children are on federal welfare. The real number is probably 100 percent, because federal records always under count. You’re talking about a population that has been imported into Minnesota in which virtually every single member of that population is receiving welfare from the federal government, this could very well end up, Laura, being the greatest financial fraud scandal in American history.
Stephen Miller
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy
December 13, 2025
Stephen Miller: We’re in the throes of a full-throated, all-hands-on-deck federal investigation into Somalis
We live in interesting times.
Even if we dial rhetoric back by 50%, to compensate for the likely political exaggeration, it is still a big deal. I wonder if we can get some prison time for a bunch of politicians out of this. I’m rather down on politicians. I think sending lots of them to prison will make the world a better place.
Heavy sigh. It is so sad:
Brown University shooting live updates: 2 dead, 9 injured | AP News
A shooter dressed in black killed at least two people and wounded eight others at Brown University on Saturday during final exams on the Ivy League campus, authorities said, and police were searching for the suspect.
Officers scattered across the campus and into an affluent neighborhood filled with historic and stately brick homes, searching academic buildings, backyards and porches for hours late into the night after the shooting erupted in the afternoon.
I hope they quickly find the murderer and justice is delivered.
I wonder what more could have been done to prevent this. Rhode Island has an A- (12th in the nation) grade from Giffords Law Center. </sarcasm>
If only someone had returned fire in the first few second after the shooting started.
1 dead in U-Haul truck explosion in Idaho parking lot: Officials
One person is dead after a U-Haul truck appears to have accidentally exploded in a parking lot in Idaho early Saturday, according to officials.
The explosion caused damage within the blast radius including to a Courtyard Marriott and Old Navy, according to the Lewiston Fire Department and City of Lewiston Police Department.
See also the video of the debris and surrounding area.
The explosion was heard and felt several miles away. Perhaps because we use a U-Haul trailer for Boomershoot some people were concerned I or other Boomershoot staff were involved in the explosion. The answer is no. I was in Idaho at the time, but about 30 miles away in the bed of my camping trailer at the time the truck blew up.
If you watch the video, you will see a much better view of the truck. The blast is odd. All the explosions I have seen 10’s of thousands of explosions (most of them were made with the same explosive type and detonated under similar conditions). But none of them left debris at “ground zero”. There might be a crater with dirt falling back in. There might be objects driven into the earth. But there is nothing of relatively low density left at the center of the explosion. There is a clean spot where everything is removed down to the hard dirt. This explosion does not look like that. I suspect this was a gas (as in propane, gasoline vapor, etc.) explosion of some sort. It was not a conventional explosive or even a black powder pressure cooker type of explosion.
Here is a better YouTube clip of Ry’s Quote of the Day:
I don’t think you and I were ever in the position of, you know, asking grandfather, what did you do in the war, right? But if someone asked me that question later, I don’t want to go, well, I watched on TV and it was pretty cool, man.
…
The people at the Kev Independent were just like asking that question over and over was like, “Why? Why are you doing that? Why?” It’s like, “Because I hate bullies.”
Ry Jones
November 2, 2025
If you don’t want to listen to the first 25 minutes to get the complete context the short story is Ry volunteers to drive “cars” (usually some sort of small truck or van) from Central Europe to Ukraine. They are configured as electronic warfare, command and control, medical transport, etc. You can participate via the fundraiser.
Ry was a huge technical and labor contributor to Boomershoot for many years.
Interesting:
Peter Schiff says only an unlikely government intervention can save Bitcoin
Schiff is again warning that holders of the digital currency are in for a grim awakening — and an unlikely Bitcoin price rally is their only hope. He notes that Bitcoin can only hit a new all-time high if the U.S. government steps in and buys massive amounts of it for its strategic reserve — a move he believes is highly unlikely.
…
He has only recently doubled down on his long-term prediction that Bitcoin is on track to drop well below $88,000 by 2026, as the asset, aside from losing a significant amount of value in its retreat against the dollar, has struggled to assert resistance against gold.
That is an easy prediction to verify as valid:
Bitcoin is a faith-based asset. It has no substance other than many people believe in it. If enough people stop believing it is something of value its value will drop to, essentially, zero.
Has that time come? I don’t know. Other “experts” say no:
Peter Brandt predicts Bitcoin to hit $200K by Q3 2029 – Cryptopolitan
Brandt said that he remains a long-term bull, despite the recent market downturn, viewing the current sell-off as a healthy reset that may open the door for future profits.
Brandt challenged forecasts from figures such as BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes and Tom Lee, who have predicted that BTC will at least hit $200,000 by the end of the year. Notably, in October, Hayes and Lee reaffirmed their belief in the forecast.
…
Brandt believes that the current sell-off is a beneficial moment. He claimed that “this washout is the best thing that could have happened to Bitcoin.” Other commentators like Rational Root agree with him, pointing out that such falls in the past have made room for new market highs. Historically, such “reset phases” have frequently preceded sharp price hikes.
Reality is tough. Really tough. And accurately predicting the emotional direction and magnitude of a large population may be an unsolvable problem.
Brandt has his biases. He owns a fair amount of Bitcoin and advising others to buy it benefits him. I have my biases, I don’t own, and never have owned, any Bitcoin. It has always seemed untrustworthy to me. I view Bitcoin as far less trustworthy than paper money. And, except for certain currencies, and short time periods I don’t trust them. So, my advice* is to get whatever money you can out of Bitcoin as soon as you can and convert the cash into something having real value such as gold, ammo, guns, land, or even buildings or an underground bunker. If paper money were trustworthy, my status as a multi-trillionaire would mean I could now retire in comfort. But I cannot.
* I am not a financial advisor. My advice is, at best, that of an amateur.
Democrats are looking ahead with hope that the anger in their party boils over so they can focus on hammering Republicans over health care. Next month, Republicans will give Democrats a vote on extending the enhanced ACA subsidies. It will almost certainly fail, and Republicans are preparing an alternative plan they can put on the floor to vote for instead. Nevertheless, it will give Democrats another opportunity to go on offense.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said while it’s “definitely a disappointment” the shutdown didn’t end with the outcome Democrats preferred, people should be directing their anger at those imposing higher health care costs on Americans.
Igor Bobic, Jennifer Bendery, and Arthur Delaney
November 11, 2025
Why Democrats Caved In The Shutdown Fight | HuffPost Latest News
What I don’t see discussed in the media in plain language is the consequences of these higher premiums. Except for U.S. New & World Report, the wording is all, at best, very circumspect:
5 Consequences If ACA Premium Subsidies End in 2026 | AJMC
The return of the subsidy cliff would likely lead to “coverage churn,” where individuals cycle in and out of insurance due to fluctuating income. This instability not only undermines continuity of care but also disrupts the broader insurance market by reducing the number of healthy, continuously insured individuals.
What expiring ACA subsidies could mean for consumers and the economy | Mizuho Insights
In the absence of subsidies, the U.S. healthcare system will confront lower volumes, tighter margins, and renewed financial pressure across the board. For a sector already navigating demographic shifts, labor shortages, and cost inflation, the withdrawal of federal support could prove a defining headwind in the years ahead.
What the End of Obamacare Subsidies Could Mean for Your Health Coverage | TIME
Insurers across the market—not just those relying on ACA subsidies—are bracing for the effects of the expiration, as volatility is expected.
The shutdown is about to end. Will millions lose their health insurance?
Without the pandemic-era subsidies, ACA health insurers could face the prospect of serving a larger share of high-cost enrollees, Corlette said.
“We could be in for a stretch where insurance companies have to raise their premiums again to reflect a smaller and sicker market,” Corlette said. “So 2027 premiums are likely to be even higher, and some insurance companies may decide this is not a market they want to continue being in.”
Hospitals Face a ‘Slow Train Wreck’ if ACA Subsidies End, Expert Warns | Health Care | U.S. News
Could the loss of these subsidies destabilize insurance markets, and if so, what kind of consequences could we see for patients and for providers?
We already know that insurance companies are bracing for a market that is much smaller, has fewer enrollees but is also much sicker than it has been.
That’s because insurance companies are assuming that the people most likely to be deterred by a higher premium are folks who are relatively young and healthy. What insurers really need is what they call a balanced risk pool, where there’s essentially a balance between healthy and sick people, with healthier people subsidizing sicker folks. Then the healthy people drop out, which means that the insurance companies have a smaller group of more expensive people to cover and then they raise their premiums.
Some of them may find the market less attractive because they worry they can’t fully recoup their costs. So we could see over time, not only rising premiums in this market but also fewer insurance companies participating.
Let me translate this for you. With the subsidies ending there is a high risk of a death spiral in the health insurance industry. As premiums rise, healthier enrollees are likely to drop coverage, leaving insurers with a sicker, costlier pool. This forces insurers to raise rates further, compounding “instability.”
Copilot supplied:
Bottom Line
The end of ACA subsidies would mean higher premiums, fewer enrollees, and greater instability for insurers, while threatening the ACA’s long-term viability. Unless Congress extends or replaces subsidies, the ACA could face a slow-motion collapse driven by adverse selection and affordability crises.
The insurance companies will have to revert to some of the previous practices which protected them against this sort of death spiral insurance premium situation. They will need to be able to refuse insurance to people with preexisting conditions. While unpopular, they may revert to having lifetime and annual limits which were banned by Obama Care.
As near as I can tell, the U.S. Constitution does not give the U.S. Government the power to provide health insurance. Of course, during the Obama administration SCOTUS disagreed with my reading of the U.S. Constitution.
My take on this is that the money has to come from some place. The subsidies are paid by taxes. By cycling the money through the tax process, then back to insurance companies, then to healthcare providers a considerable amount of “friction” has been introduced, and the total cost of health care has been increased. This is a waste of money.
Free markets are best because they reduce “friction” and the competition results in innovation.
Let ACA fail. Let people evaluate their own risks and be responsible for their own health care. Let insurance companies tailor their coverage for the markets and how they decide to define them. Let private charity groups vet and pay for deserving people unable to afford insurance or pay out of pocket. Let the people who chose to abuse their bodies with consumption of alcohol, tobacco, other recreational drugs, and other risky behaviors pay the price for their stupidity.
Prepare appropriately for the transitions.
In a landmark operation, U.S. authorities have seized 127,271 Bitcoins—valued at roughly $15 billion—from an international scam syndicate operating out of Cambodia. This unprecedented recovery, the largest in American history, marks a turning point in the global fight against cyber-enabled financial crime. Investigators traced the digital currency to a sprawling network of fraudulent investment schemes orchestrated by Chen Vincent Zhi, a prominent Cambodian businessman. The case not only exposes the dark underbelly of cryptocurrency but also highlights the growing sophistication of law enforcement in tracking illicit digital assets.
Shay Johnson
November 2, 2025
World’s Largest Crypto Seizure Announced—DOJ Takes Down $15B Pig-Butchering Empire Across 30 Nations
I heard a presentation on the pig butchering* scams about two years ago. The stories told were just heartbreaking. Lonely, frequently elderly people where completely drained of all their wealth and left with huge loans they were unable to repay. They were frequently convinced to borrow money from friends and family.
The authorities knew the geographical location of the scammer were. It was near the border with China. When the location was revealing in the presentation, I was of the mood to advocate for just bombing the place. If the local authorities would not shut them down, a few dozen bombs should do the job, I thought. Then they told of the slaves they held to implement the scams. Their situation was even worse than the financial scam victims. My high explosives solution to the problem suddenly became significantly less ethical.
That this evil empire has been broken up, some restitution is likely, and the slaves are being rescued is extremely good news to me.
* “Pig butchering” is a type of financial scam where fraudsters build trust with victims over time—often through social media or dating platforms—before convincing them to invest in fake or manipulated financial schemes, such as cryptocurrency or forex trading. The term refers to “fattening up” the victim with attention and false profits before “slaughtering” them by draining their funds. It’s a blend of romance scam and investment fraud, often run by organized criminal networks.