dsilverz

Exactly, and it could surely be done. After all, they already have default opt-ins in place... opt-in "Sponsored shortcuts" by default, for example...

Just out of curiosity, a quick look on the Forbes "Real-time Billionaires List" shows us an interesting suffix after several of those names: "& family". It's an ampersand (meant to be the conjunction "and") followed by the word "family".

My previous comment is a reference to the Supernatural TV series. The protagonist brothers Sam and Dean Winchester had Poughkeepsie as a distress signal whenever one of them needed to inform the other to "pack up and run". One of the situations involved Dean telling Crowley the distress signal so Crowley could enter Sam's mind and warn him about his ongoing angelic possession.

All of a sudden, poughkeepsie suddenly pops up inside my head as a curious "secret distress signal".

Isn't "homicídio" more like a broad term which includes unintentional deaths (which we'd call as "homicídio culposo")?

Both of the terms "murder" and "assassination" imply intention, with the intention behind an "assassination" being a political/ideological one rather than the intention behind a "murder" (which would be more personally-oriented intentional homicide).

My question is because I can't remember of a Portuguese term that carries a political/ideological sense when referring someone killing another. Portuguese-speaking media outlets here in Brazil often use "morte" e "assassinato" interchangeably, even though "morte" is an even-broader term referring to "death".

Perhaps the Brazilian media lacks an equivalent word, too. "Globo" (one of the major media outlets here), for example, is using the term "assassinato":

Even UOL, another major media outlet which is said to be more left-leaning, is also using the term "assassinato":

So, as the OP said, these headlines, especially in Portuguese, "makes it sound unwarranted".

and then $2,000 in foreign currency

Seems like the typical American Scapegoat™. I wonder what "foreign currency" they're referring to... Feels like an urge from US authorities to use this case as "muh [placeholder for the name of some imaginary international bogeyman which US authorities believe it's under their beds right now]".

“Also they said that he had a Faraday bag,” which blocks cell signals, a move that prosecutors alleged marked “an indication of criminal sophistication

Something that's one of the most sold products from Amazon, Shopee, AliExpress, among other marketplaces. For example, it's sold even in some major grocery stores here in Brazil, so I imagine that a similar scenario happens in the US.

It's got protection especially for contactless cards (so these cards can't be used at a distance for paying things the cardholder isn't aware of), and it generally offers some water protection (it's not expected to be diving together at some beach with the cardholder, but it'd definitely offer some protection against spills and minimal soaked clothes due to rain, for example).

As a Brazilian, this makes me wonder what would be the equivalent terms in Portuguese, because "murder" translates to "assassinato" and "assassination" also translates to "assassinato".

Yeah, you're right, if he was caught carrying an explicit manifesto with him while he was in a McDonalds, he indeed doesn't seem discrete and subtle.

I thought about the possibility of hidden messages left by him due to three reasons: firstly, because he seem to have left "riddle-like breadcrumbs" (the Monopoly money inside a backpack, the writing on the bullets, etc) which sounds like a puzzle to be solved. Second, because he's both a programmer and an AI-enthusiast, he's even Master in Computer Sciences (IIRC), which does involve lots of math passion and logic. Last but not least, because I'm also a programmer and I like math, unorthodox thinking, ciphering, steganography and cryptography.

My apologies for the long text ahead...

But to contextualize: ciphering is a set of techniques used to conceal a message behind a code (for example, Caesar cipher, Vigenere cipher, Playfair cipher and so on), while steganography is a set of artistic techniques used to hidden a message in plain sight (for example, a text hidden within the initials of another text, as in how the seemingly innocuous phrase "He is definitely driving every night" hides the word "HIDDEN": just notice each initial letter from every word).

You see, most platforms have a "Scunthorpe problem" when a message triggers a false alarm due to an isolated word or string (sequence of letters) which otherwise would be dependent on a surrounding context. And I myself suffered several "Scunthorpe" censorship episodes throughout the social platforms, especially after the emergence of LLMs and Sentiment Analysis models, due to specific choices of words, for example.

Publishing ipsis literis an anti-capitalist manifesto that is definitely seen as "extreme" and "radical" by many people is something very likely to trigger algorithms, especially in major social platforms (such as Facebook, even X). This is easily circumvented through ciphering and steganography because LLMs can't (yet) understand ciphered texts (with maybe the exception of simple alphabet substitution ciphers such as Caesar shift which is something really straightforward for LLMs to decipher), let alone steganographies (due to how LLMs struggle basic lexical tasks such as counting how many "R"s are there in the word "strawberry", and hiding a message within the initials of another message is not the only way of steganography, there are many many other techniques). Some platforms have more censorship than others, and while GitHub isn't used to deliver everyday messaging, its GitHub Gists is a perfect platform for unconventional thinkers to publish something (concealed within a code) that wouldn't be welcomed on platforms such as Facebook.

A person like Luigi, a tech-savvy, a programmer, a master in Computer Science, AI-enthusiastic, someone deeply dissatisfied with the status quo, someone who seems to navigate across several fields of knowledge (therefore, a polymath kind of person), such person is someone very likely to be an unconventional thinker, almost in the edge of being a real-life Elliot Alderson (edit: he's not, see below). I can sort of visualize how such a person could think outside the box and creating a whole puzzle with digital breadcrumbs, comparable to a Cicada 3301 back in the past... (because I dealt with similar things throughout my entire digital life since the Orkut times, puzzles and riddles involving ciphering, linguistics, math, art, cultural and historical references, because it's something that pleased me both to create my own puzzles and to solve puzzles from others). Seems like it's not exactly the case for Luigi, tho... Well, perhaps... Things are yet to unfold, I guess.

Edit: I just saw a screenshot of one of his past tweets criticizing someone because they "Overcomplicates everything he says aloud, wasting everyone's mental bandwidth in having to decipher it. The best teachers are the best communicators: clear, succinct, simple language". This sadly rules out every possibility for puzzles and riddles, doesn't seem like a person that really values the beauty of math, linguistics, cryptography, ciphering and steganography. Welp, maybe I went too far in fantasizing some real-life thrilling plot of Elliot Alderson's Fsociety. Anyway, I'm keeping the reply and my explanation about some (perhaps) useful concepts/knowledge (for anyone who finds it useful).

I couldn't access his GitHub profile yet, but I wonder if his GitHub Gist have something... I dunno... Maybe a manifesto hidden within the code snippet (through steganography or ciphered message).

(CW: Long text ahead)

My beliefs are somehow multifaceted and complex to put into words, but the closest label would be "syncretic Luciferian", but I'm not sure what exactly I'm believing and following nowadays, as I've been so distant from spiritual practices that were once a fundamental part of my daily life.

Sometimes I feel like I should've attend some "terreiro de Umbanda/Kimbanda" (Umbanda and Kimbanda are two of the main Afro-Brazilian religions, and terreiros is the name of the sacred place from both religions, a place where they engage with their respective sacred spiritual practices, chants and dances, with several similarities as well as several differences between the two religions) which especially focused on the figure of the Pomba-gira (a name for powerful feminine entities within Umbanda and Kimbanda, strongly related to the Lilith's archetype, complementary to Exu, Her masculine homologous archetype often associated with Lucifer/Satan; the Kimbanda's relation with the Pomba-gira is very different from Umbanda, Kimbanda is more reverent towards Exu and Pomba-gira than Umbanda), or even being part of some Satanic initiatory school (I have an inexplicable strong pull on both, especially the dark/shadowy beauty and aesthetics of Satanic rituals, hooded robes, deep and strong chants to Satan; I have never attended either of them yet). Problem is that I'd be a complete stranger to them as I know nobody within Umbanda, Kimbanda or Satanism (I'm kind of a solitary person without friends, it's my personality).

Probably. For example: European Portuguese often uses "está a fazer" / "estás a fazer", Brazilian Portuguese often uses the gerund form ("está fazendo"). Also, there are slight differences on how some words are written: Brazilian Portuguese uses "objetivo" (objective/target), "ação" (action), "tela" (screen), "mouse de computador" (computer mouse), while European Portuguese respectively uses "objectivo", "acção", "ecrã" and "rato de computador".

However, I once heard that a "Brazilianization" of European Portuguese is happening through the European Portuguese youth due to how major online Portuguese-speaking influencers are often Brazilian, such as Lucas Neto (an infuencer whose content focuses on the youth). Considering that the youth people has more online presence than older people, chances are that the variations of Brazilian Portuguese (especially the "Carioca" variation, as those Brazilian influencers often come from Rio de Janeiro's city) is overriding European Portuguese among the European Portuguese people all over the the web. This makes it slightly hard to identify the nationality solely from written text.

(Edit: "Brazilianization" is different from "Brazilification". The latter refers to ethnic diversification, while the former refers to "An increase in the percentage of Brazilian people or cultural elements in an area or industry" (to paraphrase Wiktionary). Although the ethnic diversification is also indeed happening across the world, the focus of my reply is the cultural and linguistic realm, so "Brazilianization" seems to fit better.)

Brazilian here. Brazilian Portuguese has lots of variation across the country.

One thing that I can remember of European Portuguese is "tu" (singular 2nd person). Brazilian Portuguese vary, with states such as São Paulo and Minas Gerais using "você" (you) while states such as Pernambuco and Ceará using "tu" in a peculiar way.

For example, Cearenses, Pernambucanos, among other northeastern states, they would say "tu tá fazendo o quê hoje?" (English: "What are you doing today?"), when "tá" is a shortened "está", the verb "estar" (be) conjugated in the singular third person, but "tu" is the singular second person.

European Portuguese would say "tu estás a fazer o que hoje?", with "estás" correctly conjugated in the single second person ("What art thou doing today?").

And there are Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. I was born Paulista (São Paulo state), and paulistas speak slightly differently from Paulistanos (São Paulo city and capital of its homonym state). This includes slightly different dialects, terms, colloquial expressions and, especially, different accent. But both paulistas and paulistanos say "tá fazendo o que hoje?" or "você tá fazendo o que hoje?" (The first implies an "você").

Minas Gerais, as well as some places within Sao Paulo's interior, would say "cê tá fazendo o que hoje?" or "ocê tá fazendo o que hoje?", where both "cê" and "ocê" is a shortened "você" ("ocê" is very stereotypical of Mineiros).

There are many other aspects and examples that could be mentioned as well, but my comment is already long. But, basically, Brazilian Portuguese differs a lot from the European Portuguese, which also have their own regional variations (e.g. the Portuguese spoken in Porto differs from the Portuguese spoken in Ilha da Madeira).

As for sounds and accents, the northeasterners as well as the Cariocas (Rio de janeiro) have more in common with Portugal as their "s" sounds like "x" (not your English x, but the "sh" sound as in "shell" and "ash"). Paulistas even make some lighthearted funny from cariocas when they say "isqueiro" (lighter) and "chiqueiro" (pigsty), because they say both words in a very similar manner ("eesh-kay-roo" and "sh-kay-roo"). In contrast, paulistanos say something like "ees-kay-roo" (our "s" sounds approximately like the ending sound from the English word "fizz".