Zuckerberg wears t-shirts comparing himself to Julius Caesar? Why is that every time I think I’m up-to-date on the latest weirdness there’s more of it?
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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If you think thats weird you haven't even scratched the surface on Zuck. He actually idolizes Emperor Augustus Caesar so much that he copied the guys haircut for most of his career. Behind the Bastards does a good job of highlighting it. If you want a quick readable version, here's the first non paywalled article I could find. https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-fascinated-by-augustus-future-of-facebook-2018-9
So... Zuck stans the guy who ended the Republic and turned it into a monarchy that pretended to still be a republic?
Well, that's not concerning at all.
At Meta’s annual Connect event in Menlo Park, Calif., Zuckerberg wore a custom T-shirt with the Latin phrase “aut Zuck aut nihil,” or “all Zuck or all nothing,” as he revealed the first working prototype of Meta’s augmented-reality glasses.
The phrase was a play on “aut Caesar aut nihil,” which means “either a Caesar or nothing,” or more simply “all or nothing.”
Zuckerberg has long been interested in the Roman Empire. He spent his honeymoon in Rome and two of his children, August and Aurelia, are named after emperors Augustus and Marcus Aurelius.
Incidentally, fascists tend to have a hard-on for ancient Rome, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
Zuck puts out this weird “pick me” or “me too” energy lately, trying to fashion himself as one compatible with Trump’s world. His interest in Rome may precede Trump’s ascension to power, but his coming out is not a coincidence in my view. And yes, a fascination with Rome started as so many other things as an “innocent” meme and became a fascist dog-whistle.
I think fascists idolizing the Roman Empire goes back as far as Mussolini. The fasces, after which fascism is named, was a Roman symbol.
He's not doing those roman salutes in public yet, though.
But it's kinda funny that the oligarchs are so obsessed with Rome, famous for being a fallen empire, while enabling the fall of the US.
Roman empire, like the nordic pagan BS is also a (extreme) right-wing fetish.
So glad to see our new PM celebrating his election win like this:
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This is my kind of monetization.
Feels way better than getting features pulled and put behind an increasingly higher paywall.
Give it time.
So is lemmy or mastodon selling shirts yet? if not, why not?
I was on Reddit for 12 years with nearly a million Karma, and I got permabanned soon after the Inauguration for repeating an anti-MAGA opinion I had posted numerous times before he was elected.
I came over to Lemmy, and discovered that I was only one victim of a bloodbath, demonstrating that Reddit had decided to forego their free speech mission, and grovel for their new masters. Pathetic punk ass corporation.
I never wore a Reddit shirt, but I'd happily wear a Lemmy shirt.
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No one's taken my lunch money in awhile wearing Linux t-shirts. I need to up my game - I'd buy a Lemmy shirt.
I imagine selling t-shirts would be against the Marxist/Leninist ideology of Lenny’s devs?
But given the volume of non-tankie instances now up and running, I’m sure some enterprising admins would be willing to give it a go.
..and as long as they’re ethically sourced (no sweatshops), high quality (materials and GSM), and reasonably priced (accounting for the other two factors) - I’m all for it!
If they are ethically made by union labor, there is nothing anti marxist about selling a shirts. 😁
Agreed. In fact seeming merch is pretty grass roots tbh. It's how many musicians make a living
The Mastodon project put a lot of energy into a high quality plushy.
That must have been frustrating when the user base responded "but I already got my Blåhaj"
But Plushtodon is fren for Blahaj
Where’s Brutus when you need him?
This is so fetch
What does this mean? Am I old?
Its actually a pretty well aged reference, of legal drinking age in the US.
Are you still attempting to influence that adage becoming well-understood by the common man? I dare say that I don't believe that will come to pass.
cease your attempts at causing "retrieve" to transpire.
Will it not come to fruition?
That's cool but I'll check back in to see which fascist technocrat is running bluesky in 8 years
In 8 years, anyone not mainlining Truth Social through their compulsory Neuralink will captured and euthanized.
I swear there really are two types of people who learn latin…
Lawyers and biologists?
I was going for a specific type of nerd with fascist sympathies ans a very different specific type of nerd with antifascist sympathies. But also yes
As much as I hate to be that guy, it's worth keeping in mind that BlueSky is not really practising what they preach here. The AT protocol formally allows for a kind of decentralization, but it is prohibitively expensive to run an instance, meaning that only rich folks or those who are willing to accept money from venture capitalists will be capable of actually doing so.
ActivityPub already existed when they started BlueSky. They chose to not make their protocol compatible. The reason is simple: They are a company, and they have a profit motive. ActivityPub is too democratic, and therefore hard to monetize. By now they have a bunch of crypto bro investors who want their money back. It's better to leave your money elsewhere.
only rich folks or those who are willing to accept money from venture capitalists
Or non-profits that are willing to accept money from supporters.
ActivityPub already existed when they started BlueSky. They chose to not make their protocol compatible.
Because AT protocol has features that are incompatible with ActivityPub, and those features are important to some users.
Or non-profits that are willing to accept money from supporters.
The fact that we don't see this yet, and that Bluesky has accepted the amount of money they have from actors I would not want to be associated with, makes me doubt this is possible.
Even if a non-profit wanted to operate with good intentions, the expense of running an AT proto hub would eventually prove a challenge, and the non-profit would either go under or need to start looking around for money. Meanwhile people can self-host their Mastodon instance on a Raspberry Pi.
Regarding the alleged missing features of ActivityPub, I have tried and failed to understand exactly which feature is the AT proto folks so desperately wanted that they found it impossible to achieve through ActivityPub. The whole thing with having a mobile identity or whatever seems like a nothing burger to me - at the end of the day it just means that your user name is your DID number, and that web addresses can redirect towards that one. It's hardly some technological marvel that could never have been achieved on a less centralized protocol.
It's hardly some technological marvel that could never have been achieved on a less centralized protocol
My one complaint about fediverse is I have half a dozen baronvonj@ accounts in order to get the features and UI experience of each. They are all separate, with the data for each spread out, and we all have to redundantly follow on each. If I could have one fediverse identity with all my data self-hosted, that would be the awesomesauce. But I can't with fedi and I can with AT.
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