The Labour Party could have made the case for a humane immigration system that treats refugees with dignity. Instead it has fanned the flames of racism and emboldened the far right.
How very sad it is that Corbyn was ousted as leader for making the case for Palestinian rights too early. Now look at what the current ruling Labour party is doing.
He's one of the most honest, straight talking and unpretentious politicians I've ever seen. It's a real shame the UK missed its chance to change direction with him.
Unpretentious? There was a chance to stop hard Brexit, and the opposition parties called a meeting to organise it. Corbyn flounced out of the room in a huff because some independents were invited. The vote passed. That’s pretentiousness.
This is a very weird framing of what I understand was a refusal to join a meeting in Jan 2018, which was organised by SNP and had no government presence. He never went in the room at all, so the "flounced out in a huff" appears to be complete fiction.
I personally don't think that one meeting, containing small parties that were not in power, had any meaningful effect on the proposed deal with the EU, which was still being discussed up until 2020.
I don't think letting asylum seekers work would make a blind bit of difference. The right just don't want them here at all. They want them to stop coming, not let them continue coming but then working. The right will just complain that they're taking people's jobs.
I'd be curious what approach Corbyn's policy would be on this.
I don't think letting asylum seekers work would make a blind bit of difference.
It would because if they can work and become productive members of society, the real issues fueling rightwing bigotry would be lessened. Of course the already bigoted will want them gone, but the right relies on issues like crime and the budget to spread.
The right will just complain that they're taking people's jobs.
True, which is why a comprehensive leftwing program is necessary to facilitate job creation and provide safety nets for those who fall through the cracks.
As long as they keep seeing x number of immigrants arriving each day, they'll keep voting far right. They just want them to stop, I think they've been clear on that. They want a party who says what they want to hear (I doubt Reform would be able to do anything about it).
I think the reason why asylum seekers aren't allowed to work is because the stay is supposed to be strictly temporary. They're supposed to return home when things are safe. Letting them work would probably make it less likely they're going to return home if they start settling. I can't see that being a popular policy as they'll see it making the UK more inviting (either way it's the wrong move as they'll just complain they're on benefits).
Again, my point isn't that addressing issues related to immigration would make bigoted people not bigoted; it's that doing so would curb the far right's ability to expand. By delivering material gains for the working class and leading by example, it's possible to inoculate the wider electorate against the far right (and the right in general). Immigrants are only one scapegoat in a long line of scapegoats; the real mechanism behind the spread of rightwing ideas is that they provide something to scapegoat for people's (very real) troubles. Put another way, Hitler didn't need immigrants.
China's harvesting of detainees' organs serves a booming transplant trade that is worth some $1 billion a year, according to an international tribunal.
Putin's good friend and fellow enjoyer of underage kids Berlusconi also had great faith in organ transplanting to live forever. Leukemia decided not to care about his opinion tho.
The fact that they are serious just shows how dumb they really are. We are not even close to that. The stress from that many transplants would probably reduce life expectancy. But let's just imagine it works, you would still have to deal with brain degeneration and dementia. These are not serious people. Can we please stop allowing arrogant psychopaths to take top positions of power
Yup. The elderly generally do not do well with: 1. Major surgery 2. Immunosuppression
And they're asking for repeated episodes of 1 and possibly 75 years of 2. I'd be all for letting them slowly kill themselves this way if it weren't for the fact that every organ they use is an organ that could've been given to someone who actually needs it.
Your phrasing of "allowing" implies that these guys are in power through some sort of legitimate electoral process. They're both dictators, who claimed power through force and intimidation. There's no "let" about it, nor any "say" in the situation from people at large.
Just because dictators demand to be called by western elected official terminology in translations to english media, doesn't make them same animal. It's propaganda meant to normalize their rule.
Every country is a democracy in a sense. Its just a matter of the amount of effort needed for the people to make their voices heard. Under dictatorships, to make your voices heard, it usually requires a significant threat of violence. Its much more stable in the long term to just have elections. Not fighting for a better government is, in a sense, allowing that dictatorship to continue.
Right, by that reasoning the people of Gaza are willingly allowing themselves to be genocided. They should just rise up and declare a democracy in the region.
That's a little bit of a different issue. Not so much a dictator taking power from within but an invading neighbor. My appeal would be to the Israelis. Netanyahu should have been gone a long time ago. If I remember right he was under a lot of pressure before Oct 7.
To me it seems naive to think that the disparity between the people of Gaza, and the people of Israel, is not dissimilar to the wealth inequality of the poor, and the rich. People seem to gloss over how modern western democracies generally got going -- through violent revolutions with lots of dead rich people. And those movements were often seeded by essentially the middle class military, who the rich had paid to outfit with the intent that they'd carry out the upper class's orders. People like Cromwell didn't exactly wake up one day, and just happen to trip across a bunch of Cannons to point at the British royalty. Until there'd been that blunder from the nobility giving the military too much autonomy, coupled with the advent of Canons, the ability for regular peasants to rise up against the nobility and their goon squads was pretty fuckin limited. For such a revolutionary figure to emerge from a poor, downtrodden and financially bereft area such as Gaza, would just be highly improbable.
Like China hired gangs of thugs with bats to beat the shit out of Democratic advocates during the crack down in Hong Kong, and has taken out bounties on people living abroad who advocate too vocally for human rights in the region. You can't realistically look at what went on there, in my view, and say that the people didn't try really hard to maintain their civil liberties -- but were beaten down quite explicitly by force and the sheer scale of resources available to the CCP. Yes, if there was some mass uprising all across the country they could spontaneously change their systems of governance -- but that's practically unheard of in real world countries of note in modern times. Taking a more realistic view of the situation doesn't make it any better, in that things will most likely continue to suck for most people, but it at least sets more reasonable expectations.
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here, but yes there are lots of oppressed people all over the world. There are lots of people fighting for a better world. I just meant to plead to the ones who are not. Authoritarians have power because a not insignificant amount of people support or at least tolerate them. I used to think that everyone could agree that anyone who wants to be a dictator should be held far away from positions of power, but now there are too many people that tolerate it when their leaders go too far.
Have they ever met someone trying to live with an organ transplant? It's not like swapping out parts for a machine. Your immune system is permanently suppressed to prevent rejection so you are at risk for so many other problems, and even if you don't reject the organ, you will need another replacement eventually.
It's disturbing when you hear the idiot techbro billionaires fantasizing about engineering their own immortality, but it's really disappointing that the most powerful world leaders are also this detached from reality. All the most powerful people are utterly delusional sociopaths.
Honestly it's great to know they're struggling with their inevitable deaths. Got to sting a bit. They're headed for the same dirt they've sent so many people to.
They have a child's understanding of the concepts... which is not particularly surprising, you don't get to be a dictator by being well-educated, in fact it almost requires being shut off from as much knowledge as possible. They tend to be unable to hear the truth and basically force their underlings to gaslight them.
leaders of two of the world's most technologically prominent countries muse on the prospects of transhumanism in front of a crowd of dozens
rabid disapproval from liberals who claim that Putin and Xi got caught on a hot mic wanting to live forever so they can rule eternally or something, idk
Seriously, the reading comprehension is abysmal in this thread. Can someone show me where Putin or Xi said they personally wished to live to 150?
Not even remotely related to the part I quoted and laughed at, but I'll humour you.
It's called deduction, you just need to use that gray matter of yours. Two, rather old, psychopaths muse about extending one's lifetime. Could it be that they themselves have a vested interest in this? No, that must be a conspiracy theory by filthy liberals.
Not even remotely related to the part I quoted and laughed at, but I'll humour you
So how does a claim regarding Russia's technological capabilities relate to my original comment? The only person being humoured here is you.
The way the healthy skepticism just leaves the liberal mind once a state department hit pieces comes out is laughable. You have been effortlessly oriented. Yall just eat this shit up. "Deduction"... lmao.
Again, maybe one day show me where Putin or Xi expressed interest in extending their lifespan. You won't.
My original claim was that in none of these articles is there any evidence of Putin or Xi expressing interesting in extending their lifespan.
It's a claim you still have yet to disprove, btw.
Claiming that Russia is not technologically advanced is a nonsequiter. Refusing to engage with a nonsequiter is not underhanded. And you're not humouring anyone by backing down from your attempt to turn this conversation into one about Russia's technological capabilities. You're just backpedaling.
Again, please show me where Putin or Xi expressed interest in extending their lives.
Old farts should sit in care homes, not ruling nations. Term limits and the same age cutoff as the regular blue collar worker and then go paint bad pictures on your ranch like W Bush.
I didn't think I'd ever get a very opinion of the latter, but here we go.
I don't object to old farts ruling nations. If they're elected or otherwise democratically chosen, so be it. It's just that there should be a term limit for everyone. 5 to 10 years top then you're out.
I think there's a difference between the problems with leading a nation stemming from the natural ails of very old age versus what minority someone was born as.
Putin strikes me as the kind of guy who would have some clones grown in the comfort of their blissful ignorance to harvest as spare parts in case of an emergency the great leader finds himself in. 🤷
Why does no journalist ever ask why government officials want Israel to be our ally. Just because they were for x number of years has no bearing on whether or not they should have been or should still be our ally. Russia was our ally, guess what, they’re not anymore. We don’t have to ally ourselves with murderous countries.
The whole interview centers on Israel must be our ally so we must do stuff for them. They shouldn’t fucking be our ally!!! They’ve been committing atrocities for generations at this point!
Isreal is an ally because it's a FOB for the US to use against the middle east.
That, and modern Evangelical Christianity hinges on the Jews controlling the holy land as a precursor to the apocalypse. And Evangelical Christians vote Republican.
I’m not actually asking for the answer. I want a journalist to actually get a government official to admit whatever personal reason they have so that we finally stop supporting this genocidal nation. Nobody is going to try to vote to remove these people from power until they actually admit their reason.
He got super close to asking that, and Lew’s answer was completely infuriating, as was every response he gave. But you’re right, I wish they would ask it outright.
Q: In the essay, you write a lot about the shared values of America and Israel. But today you have talked about pushing them to deliver aid, and you’ve talked about the fact that once Trump came into office and that push wasn’t there, the humanitarian situation got worse. Why was there a need to push so hard? Why do they need to be pushed to not ethnically cleanse Gaza? Why do they need to be pushed to have their military act in an honorable way? If they are our shared ally and our great friend, why aren’t they doing these things on their own?
A: The environment in October and November of 2023 was how do you sustain an enemy that just slaughtered twelve hundred of your citizens? You had to create a way for the aid to get in without it having the effect of making your enemy succeed. It is pretty unusual.
They have never been allies. They have never put Israeli lives on the line to do anything for the US. They're a parasitic client state that only takes. At best, they sell at a discount to us. They're no more an ally than Saudi Arabia is.
Politics. Over the years there have been quite a few UN votes where only Israel stands by the us. Supposedly clandestine operations that the us wanted to stand apart from. The alternative would be having to think about why the rest of the world opposed
Wow, what pieces of shit. I had often wondered if it was just pride and sunk cost fallacy, but they’re pieces of shit
Maybe I’m naive but I bought into it at first. Israel did suffer a horrible terrorist attack, their citizens were kidnapped, and terrorists were hiding among Palestinians, so a military response could be expected. But there’s got to be a point where they recognize the harm to innocent civilians, where enough is enough and they’ve long past it for most people. Yet still trying to justify it?
Trusted‑source Illusion: Even when a link seems to point to a reputable platform such as GitHub, the underlying URL can be manipulated to resolve to a counterfeit site.
Ad‑driven Redirection: Paid search and display ads can be weaponized by bad actors to distribute malicious payloads at scale, misleading users who rely on search engines for discovery.
Privilege Escalation: Once the malicious payload is executed by the user, it gains administrative rights, enabling further lateral movement and persistence.
Malware Uniqueness:
The initial installer is a 128 MB MSI file that mimics the legitimate GitHub Desktop installer but contains over 100 dummy executables to inflate size and evade sandbox limits.
The installer employs a GPU‑gated decryption routine: an OpenCL™ kernel derives the AES key only on machines with a real GPU, whose device name is at least ten characters long, causing the payload to remain encrypted in headless analysis environments. (A headless environment is where the front-end or user interface of an application (the “head”) has been decoupled from the back-end services, allowing each to be developed and operated separately.)
The GPU-based decryption mechanism suggests the attackers are targeting systems with specific hardware configurations, potentially focusing on users involved in development, gaming, or cryptocurrency mining activities.
- Campaign Goals: We believe the goal of this campaign was to gain initial access to organizations for the purposes of malicious activity such as credential theft, infostealing and ransomware deployment, by misleading IT workers (who often have higher level of network access) into downloading malware while attempting to install GitHub Desktop. - Geography and Industries Targeted: The campaign we observed targeted users in Western Europe, in the Information Technology industry. - Attribution: The threat actors behind this campaign have native Russian language proficiency, as demonstrated by PowerShell script comments written in Russian. :::
a threat actor leveraged GitHub’s repository structure together with paid placements on Google Ads to funnel users toward a malicious download hosted on a lookalike domain. By embedding a commit‑specific link in the advertisement, the attackers made the download appear to originate from an official source, effectively sidestepping typical user scrutiny
The delivered malware is unique: the bloated 128 MB Microsoft Software Installer (MSI) evades most existing security sandboxes, while a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-gated decryption routine keeps the payload encrypted on systems without a real GPU. We have called this new attack technique “GPUGate”.
Arctic Wolf has uncovered a sophisticated delivery chain: a threat actor abused GitHub’s repository structure and Google Ads to redirect users to a malicious download, while a GPU-gated decryption routine keeps the payload encrypted on systems withou…
A live-stream broadcast of China's military parade has captured Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin discussing biotechnology's potential to extend life.
An interpreter translating Mr Putin can be heard saying in Mandarin that human organ transplants could let "us live younger and younger, and perhaps even achieve immortality".
Mr Xi responded that it may be possible for people to live to 150 years this century.
This blog is part of a summer blog series written by the McCain Institute’s Summer Junior Fellows. Jillian Proshan is a junior fellow for the Human Rights & Freedom program. Let’s begin with a math problem.
I hope they try it. At their age recovering from major surgery will be a breeze. I wish I was on immune suppressants for the rest of my life. Oh and don't forget another surgery when the organ fails! Sounds like immortality to me
Liver is a weird one. The liver is one of the only organs that can regenerate. Anyone can donate a chunk of their liver. It just regrows after awhile, as well as in the recipient. So livers are better at staying under the radar from the immune system.
Hadn't thought of that! Yeah, got my first negative results from my liver a few months ago. Cut the bad habits, and not simply beer, tested fine a month later. LOL, my doctor was so proud! Thought I had quite drinking! Nope. Just cut the kratom powder that enabled me to stay up and drink more. 😀
Long term heavy drinking is really rough on the body. My cousin's ex husband recently passed away from drinking. She left him because of if and his kids didn't want much to do with him. He had been sober for a year and was just talking with my cousin about trying to have a relationship with his kids. It was going well. Then he died. It just doesn't seem worth the risk.
Given that there’s not really a solution yet to a brain degenerative desease(?) - not looking forward to a dictator in power with one of those kicking around for an additional 50+ years.
These people are idiots, because that's definitely not how aging works. But please go through all the organ transplants, it will just kill you both and do the world a big favor.
It's weird because Xi is a chemical engineer. Putin and Kim I understand being gullible and clueless about scientific matters but I don't expect the same from Xi.
Never underestimate a scientists, especially an engineers ability to arrogantly misuse and misunderstand science outside of their specific area of practical experience.
Xi responded to the idea that you can achieve immortality by saying that it may be possible for someone to live to 150 years this century, which is not totally unrealistic if we make some advances in medical science
Apart from the fact that your brain ages too and it's 100% irreplaceable, the main issue with turning yourself into the human Ship of Theseus is that you're going to be on immunosuppressant drugs forever.
I guess if you were a monster you could raise clones of yourself to adulthood and then murder them for their body parts. This doesn't solve the problem of some parts not being reasonably replaceable, but it could protect you from some organ failures.
There are current studies about growing entire organs in a lab environment using 3D printed scaffolding and stem cells harvested from the patient, so the final product is 100% compatible and eliminates the need for immunosuppressants.
Still a few decades out for human testing imo but they'd be the first in line.
If we figure that out, artificial blood (which is already making good progress) and finally a way to regenerate brain cells without causing massive brain tumors we can extend life considerably, probably closer to 200 years on extreme cases.
Or, at least, making it to 110 while still having a good quality of life, basically making 100 the new 60.
They can't even give us a relatively nontoxic living environment and adaptive and responsive nutrition plans
Not to mention there has NEVER been a patient who has had MULTIPLE 3D printed organ transplants, let alone continuous transplants PRN (the suture sites are going to be dissolving scar tissue). And that 3D printed organs are extremely complicated especially depending on which one is being built, with their own cellular memory including circadian rhythm and local homeostasis.
Not to mention that merely transplanting an organ does not mean the patient will have adequate neurochemicals or enzymes or receptors to carry out the processes needed to support these organs, regardless of supplementation
Like certain conditions, at end of life, oppose each other especially in treatment. Eg congestive heart failure, pulmonary edema, and kidney failure all interfere and interact with each other. Assuming you could successfully perform a lung, heart, and kidney transplant in a geriatric patient, whose to say their veings, connective tissue, ureters, etc won't prolapse or blow out from all the pressure and new stressers?
This shit isn't as easy as they want to claim (maybe they want to taunt Trump with immortality), but if they want to be the guinea pigs for it, let them ig - that's the most ethical thing they could do with this, is experiment on themselves and take the consequences.
And then what, that's even LESS likely to work out compared to 3D orinted organs or animal organs that have been gene edited. That's what I'm saying, this is a pipe dream, they cannot harvest/transplant MULTIPLE organs with random people's genes in them, place them in someone's body and have it work out like replacing car parts. Multiple organ transplants like that are just not really done because of how many variables and issues come from each transplant. They can try to Frankenstein themselves as much as they want, but like all fascist delusional "science," it is genuinely idiotic and done stupidly and badly.
Well, you suggested to let them do it. I'm suggesting that they will not hesitate to commit massive human rights violating, nonconsensual nazi experiments, so no we shouldn't allow them.
The fact that it absolutely won't work is secondary.
I'm not granting permission, I'm saying if we follow their logic and methods to its natural conclusions, they will die, eg giving a proof.
They cannot use other human organs, this is already a roadblock for them. If they could, they already would be doing so (see blood transfusions). I was talking about 3D printed organs, not organs from others.
You brought up organs from others. I then explained it is even MORE of an issue to attempt to transplant (hence why we developed other means). Your refusal to understand that does not mean you are correct that they will do this. You're in fact wrong.
However, perhaps they want to eat these organs instead of transplant them, I'm not saying they won't go after human bodies for various reasons, and obviously all genocide should be stopped.
But they aren't going to do multiple organ transplants from other human to human donors in our lifetimes, if ever. If you understood transplants, you'd understand why that just isn't a thing and won't be a thing.
I think if ALL, literally ALL of your other organs were functioning great, then it is unlikely your brain will deterioriate by itself randomly. Your body is constantly repairing itself, that's why we are able to live so long.
But like, are they REALLY going to transplant things like the thymus? Can they even do that? Adrenal glands, parathyroid glands, thyroid, kidneys, livers, pancreas - idk man, I do not see these people getting all these organs replaced. That is an INSANE bodily experiment that has never truly been tested, let alone with lab grown organs (as Xi or Putin suggested), let alone in elderly and delicate subjects. We can't even pull off natural looking facelifts in most subjects.
Adding in organs with different ages and donors also means they also may have increased loads on their remaining old aged organs too. Everything works together and donor organs can have a different circadian rhythm, let alone different genes which means different reactions to stimuli. Not to mention currently the most likely situation for organ transplant would be gene editing animal organs - again, experimental and never done on multiple organs. hms.harvard.edu/news/first-gen…
Like managing multiple organ rejections in a 90yr old seeking immortality sounds like a joke of a case for any health care provider.
But please, someone convince both those men to get multiple organs transplanted ASAP
Apart from the fact that your brain ages too and it’s 100% irreplaceable
Braincells are irreplaceable (barring some experimental stem cell work) but the networks between those brain cells keep growing and intertwining. It's the network between the cells that defines your mental aptitude. Plenty of stories about people with severe brain damage who still continue to function comparatively normally after a period of recovery and rehabilitation. The human brain is remarkably plastic.
I guess if you were a monster you could raise clones of yourself to adulthood and then murder them for their body parts.
Even that isn't strictly practical. The failure rate on cloning is enormous. What's legit more monstrous than killing someone for organs is producing all of the failed clones necessary to land on a copy that's viable.
Dolly the Sheep was a "successful" clone, and even it didn't live a particularly long or happy life, being euthanized at half the normal age of a domesticated sheep of her breed due to arthritis and lung disease.
No doubt someone is out there doing human cloning illegally. But I would not bank on it as a viable alternative to simply getting bumped up the organ donor list the old fashioned way.
With an unlimited amount of power and resources, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people have clones or their kids that never meant to live, just grow up in a happy farm that one day will get their organs harvested and blood taken. Like Horcruxes. No immune rejection. I don’t see why they can’t live 150 years with that.
Israel admits that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.
It is weird to point to a country that's actively engaged in a holocaust and compare it to one that has eliminated poverty and boosted life expectancy by decades. One is slaughtering hundreds of thousands and the other is dramatically improving the lives of hundreds of millions.
Look let's ease of the Xi Jinping dicksucking. The CCP is an objectively oppressive regime with a terrifying human rights track record. All the tankie whataboutism in the world isn't going to change that.
It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
~ Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
Right, so that is clearly written with such incredible bias. At the end of the day, people in China, Russia, north Korea etc still suffer, no place like the utopia you described exists.
This precipitated a wave of de-industrialization, mass displacement, and famine spanning the USSR. It paved the road to multiple civil wars, invasions, and genocides, not the least of which we're seeing the modern day.
Westerners will tell you that these countries were liberated with the collapse of the USSR. They'll also insist the residents of these countries are subhuman and deserve to die.
Washington, D.C., October 4, 2018 – Twenty-five years ago last night in Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered tanks and airborne troops to shell and storm the “White House,” the Russian Parliament (Supreme Soviet) building, to suppress the …
Westerners will tell you that these countries were liberated with the collapse of the USSR. They'll also insist the residents of these countries are subhuman and deserve to die.
Maybe some, but certainly not most, but to say that there was no one ruling over them before yeltsin is silly, fucking Stalin was a monster, krushchev wasn't great. Mao was a horrible dictator.
to say that there was no one ruling over them before yeltsin is silly
The Soviets self-governed for the length of the Cold War. A radical departure from Nazi occupation of the 30s/40s or the debt peonage of the interwar period.
fucking Stalin was a monster. Mao was a horrible dictator
Confederates said the same thing about William T. Sherman and Abraham Lincoln.
I was going to say there was no actual evidence, but huh, I actually fell for some of the tankie lies after enough time. China's deputy health minister Huang Jiefu repeatedly publicly acknowledged that most organ transplants came from death row inmates, and separately China was exporting organs to south korea on a massive scale prior to 2007.
(though it's notable that this has not been connected to the Uyghur situation specifically)
(Also noting that it's Israel claimed to end the practice in 2000, while China claimed to end the practice in 2015)
With the Olympics in Beijing just 500 days away, China has begun cleaning up organ trafficking practices. Not only have exports been banned, but with fewer prisoner executions, a major source of organs has dried up.
I honestly believe people could live to 150 within the next century and if organ transplants are part of it it will either be due to cloning or far better control of the immune system than we have now. I don't expect those advances to be soon enough to help either of these guys, no matter how much money they have.
I would expect nothing or much more than 150. You only live as long as the weakest links in your body. Solving one isn't going to get ypu to 150. And if you solve enpugh to get to 150, you should live a lot longer.
I wasn't setting an upper limit. There is good evidence we are closing in on some of the causes of the symptoms of aging, as well as gaining evidence that dealing with the symptoms may reduce the effects of aging. If we only have those basic tools in the next 100 years, I could see lifespans being pushed to 150 to 200 for the typical person. If we can also deal with the lesser regenerative capability of the brain, I could see people living for centuries. As you said in other comments, there are a lot of interconnected pieces, and just fixing one or some of them won't be as useful as fixing all of them, which really takes transplants off the table as a general solution, but also means we may see limited increases in life span rather than getting past the tipping point of life extension research outpacing the gain it gives you, eg., extending lifespans more than one year per year.
There also is one thing I believe is still unknown. Why 115ish seems to be the upper limit. The ones who make it that long are often in relatively good health. But they still die (usually in thier sleep) anyway. With no real reason why. So we need to figure that out to break through the current line.
And if you solve enpugh to get to 150, you should live a lot longer.
Really depends on how you solve it. Announcing "we can keep you in a vegetative state for an extra 50 years" isn't a strong sign that the technology is there yet. Besides, there's a lot more to living than just heartbeat and baseline brain activity.
I honestly believe people could live to 150 within the next century
It's a fun and easy thing to believe. Significantly harder to accomplish.
I don’t expect those advances to be soon enough to help either of these guys
They've already benefited substantively from the last 70 years of health technology. And I wouldn't be surprised of Xi, in particular, is enjoying some knock-on effects of being the head of state in a nation that's on the cutting edge of medical research.
But there's a huge difference between "living to 100" and "being a functional adult at age 100". Xi's already pushing the line in his 70s and should have been queuing up a successor two terms ago. Putin's in it even worse, having trotted out Medeved and watched him flop in front of Parliament back in... what? 2008? Now he's got the tiger by the tail as he coasts into his own golden years.
The fact that the US is floundering amidst its own techno-fascist gerentocracy should be a giant alarm bell for every other national government. You can't just stack the fate of your country on whether Chucks Grassley and Schumer can maintain a pulse indefinitely. But I guess when its your turn in the big chair, its easy to think you'll live forever.
Life expectancy at 25 hasn't changed dramatically in the last 2000 years, less than 10 years in most parts of the world. Life expectancy at birth has improved dramatically, and that isn't doing much for me, Putin, or Xi at this point. Certainly, the improved healthcare afforded to Putin and Xi is going to help their life expectancy more than the average. All that said, a lot of improvements have happened in the last couple centuries, mostly based on our knowledge. Sure, exponential growth isn't going to happen forever, not even in gaining knowledge, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen in biology for the next century. If it does, extending life expectancy at birth to 150 could be quite conservative.
Life expectancy at 25 hasn’t changed dramatically in the last 2000 years
Heavily dependent on where and when you lived. In Tibet, for instance, life expectancy topped out at around 35 years in 1950 and is now cresting 75 in 2025. In the Palestinian Territories, the last ten years have seen life expectancy actually grew from 67 years to 76 years between 1992 and 2022. Then, in 2023, it fell off a cliff for some reason.
A nasty famine, a brutal war, or a global pandemic can clip the lives of senior citizens short very quickly.
But otherwise, sure. Solving the problems of agriculture and sanitation modernization have been comparatively easy relative to addressing telomere erosion or alzhemier's treatments. Simply not killing people is a lot easier than keeping them alive indefinitely.
Although, one might also argue that the problems of aging haven't been felt so acutely prior to the 1950s, because comparatively fewer people were living into their senior years. Now that we have a bumper crop of senior citizens, we've been given a strong economic incentive to pursue technologies at an industrial scale. It's not just The Qin Emperor downing cups of mercury, thinking his exceptional wealth and privilege will grant him an extract century of youthfulness.
There is a difference between maximum age and life expectancy, just as there is a difference between life expectancy at different ages. The life expectancy at 25 in Roman times was about 70 years old. All of our advances have added about 10% to a person's life span after they got past childhood diseases, the recklessness of youth, and serving in the military in the case of Romans. And I'm not entirely sure of the relevance of a genocide in Israel to Xi's prospects.
in the early 20th century (around 1900-1902), a 25-year-old could expect to live approximately 39 to 40 more years, reaching around age 64-65. By 2017, a 25-year-old could expect to live about 55 more years, reaching roughly age 80.
So, closer to 20%
of our advances have added about 10% to a person’s life span after they got past childhood diseases, the recklessness of youth, and serving in the military in the case of Romans.
The vast majority of these advanced have occurred in the last 70 years. The intervening 2500 has been relatively flat.
And I’m not entirely sure of the relevance of a genocide in Israel to Xi’s prospects.
Mostly just a comparison of wealth and technology.
This article constructs new life tables for the white population of the United States in each decade between 1790 and 1900. Drawing from several recent studies, it suggests best estimates of life expectancy at age 20 for each decade.
It is very strange for how when I call for age limits on our politicians, that people say it is unfair or ageist. Honestly, I find that weird, because age and all the issues that comes with it, will find us.
A lot of people see the idea of age limits (or term limits) as a backdoor way of getting "their guy" off the ballot. Because so much of the modern political scene is just charismatic demagoguery, anything that threatens the position of your personal political Messiah is an attack on your ideological faith.
Better to elect some decrypt mummy leaking shit out of his adult diaper than risk some rival sect of the party taking office.
Immune suppression drugs have their own risks, and the older you are, the harder surgeries are on you. Even if they have cloned organs, how does that help systemic frailty?
Honestly kind of idyllic. The premise of living in a childish Utopia until you've "won the lottery" seems far more generous on its face than the slaughterhouse conditions most domesticated animals endure.
LOL whatever. Them, plus Trunp, plus all billionaires are human and will all die one day. No amount of organ transplants, cryogenic freezing or shipping embryos to Mars will ever change that.
Okay, just because you think can live that long physically doesn't mean you'll be there mentally. You can do all these transplants to keep your body going, but I don't think we've figured out how to replace the brain without killing someone since I doubt healthy living and organ transplants are gonna keep the brain healthy enough to be mentally fit to do much of anything.
Also, I personally wouldn't want people like them to be living that long.
Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist, has written "Head transplants are fake news. Those who promote such claims and who would subject any human being to unproven cruel surgery merit not headlines but only contempt and condemnation."[10]
I'm not sure if they will transplant head to another body or to the robot or just make a wolverine with artificial heart. China have it's own rules. interestingengineering.com/sci…
If that is really true, they can probably create many more cybernetic devices. Far as keeping dear leader alive that way they would need to keep secrecy of it tight enough that nobody would be aware of it until it was too late.
Belgium will join France in recognizing a Palestinian state at the upcoming UN General Assembly session in New York this month, the country’s foreign minister announced on 2 September.
Zionism is a political, legal, moral, economical and social liability. If they won't stop supporting it, because that is the legal and moral thing to do, then they need to suffer consequences that make them stop supporting Zionism.
Belgian here. Their wording is confusing and I’ve been trying to figure out how much of it is meaningful.
They tacked on a precondition to them recognizing Palestine: Hamas must give up power. I don’t see that condition being met faster than Israel can flatten what remains of Gaza and force its population out – which in turn only creates more suffering and anger for the militant recruit pipeline.
The sanctions mostly concern boycotts on products produced in occupied regions. Fuck that – boycott all trade with Israel.
Our rightwing prime minister is on record saying that the whole debate was annoyingly motivated by ‘morality’ and that he’s glad the government (an uneasy coalition) can move on to more important matters. Downright shameful.
Come protest this Sunday in Brussels. Last one was attended by 100k demonstrators. Was a fun afternoon. More info at 11.be
Whitout doubting what you say, from this last tweet it looks like the narrative (at least in this instance) has shifted? In the sense that this text seems pretty clear to me.
No matter what, I hope the protest goes incredibly well!!
Honestly, recognition is worthless. The sanctions on the West Bank settlement goods are all that matters and that is huge. Good job on that (if actually implemented).
How the world’s largest encyclopedia became the factual foundation of the web, but now it’s under attack from the right wing, tech billionaires, and AI.
Is it paywalled in some countries? I saw the article when it first went up and it was paywalled then — The Verge restricts new articles to paid subscribers. But after an hour or two it went free to read and the link is fine now. At least from my machine in my location — can't speak for others and the Archive link is definitely welcome.
These lapel pins represent each of the 17 Wikimedia projects with the additional W pin, from Wikipedia to Wikispecies. Do you have a specific project you love? Want them all? Individual pins: $3.00 18-pack: $45.
There's a pretty good Citation Needed newsletter and podcast run by former Wikipedia Arbitrator Molly White that also has a store that of course has [citation needed] merch. The newsletter and podcast is pretty good, too; the Verge article even links to it.
Transparent [citation needed] sticker. Useful for decoration, or perhaps for adorning your local questionable advertising or political campaign messaging.
While our store is sold out, you can order directly from our partners at Wiki Project Med Foundation via this link Please note: Shipping to the USA is currently paused, with plans to resume again soon.
Thanks for encouraging to read the whole thing. That is a loooong article! But a great informative read. Took me a couple of sittings to read it all properly, well worth it!
I had no idea about so many of the challenges they’ve gone through & seemingly managed to fight back so many attempts to control & mask the content on more volatile subjects. Always had a lot of respect for the editors, but even more so now.
I do donate a small amount to them once or twice a year. I think I will try to increase my donations going forward knowing it might help with some of their legal fights.
Knowledge really is power, & we all deserve access to true knowledge, more now than ever it seems.
Lots of it is still pretty shit, but that's what happens when you have an entry on incredibly obscure things where there's not a lot of sources information.
A free open source alternative Wikipedia front-end focused on privacy. 1. No JavaScript or ads. 2. All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Wikipedia. 3. Prevents Wikipedia getting your IP address. 4. Self-hostable. Anyone can setup a private or public instance.^[[1] https://github.com/RealFascinated/wikiless]
1: You can easily disable JavaScript and still browse Wikipedia without any issue. This also removes all banners, which I assume is what I mean by "ads", which on Wikipedia only appear from time to time and advertise WMF events and donations.
2 and 3: Your IP address is deleted after 3 months, and there's nothing people can do to you just for reading Wikipedia either. Just visiting Wikipedia's servers carries no risk. The exception is if you edit courts could get your personal information when the WMF loses a case, but you can't edit using an open proxy like Wikiless either (because if they allowed you to edit, it would be also be easy for banned editors to edit).
I hate to say it, but I don't think Wikipedia is as neutral or as open as it claims to be. Some of the article comments talk about there definitely being some bias against anonymous editors, even if they're correct.
I'm not sure if it was in that article or in another comment section, but someone said after Elon Musk did the Nazi salute at Trump's event, an anonymous user mentioned it and there was a big controversy. And a registered user took it down and berated them for it, and another registered user came along an added the salute info back in and it was fine. Or something like that.
I definitely still think Wikipedia is a net good. But it seems to me any time you have a centralised source of information, a small group of people will fight to control the narrative so they can spin it any which way they want. For example, on Reddit, my favorite band's unofficial subreddit is run by a guy who bans any fan cams of the events — unless they're his. So obviously he does fan cams so he can make ad money on YouTube, but he uses Reddit to block those of others to direct the traffic to his. I think Fandom (the shitty wiki site with all the ads) run a lot of gaming communities, again, to drive ad revenue. Lot of that shit going on. I mean, if they tried that on Lemmy, someone could just open a community on another instance and the users could then decide who they want to support.
Is Wikipedia susceptible to that kind of influence? Of course it is. And I worry about it being taken over by the wrong people. I don't think that has happened yet, but I've seen it happen on other sites.
To be clear, we should definitely support Wikipedia against the alt right, but we should also be cautious that they, and other bad actors, don't destroy its credibility from within. Yes, the alt right has their own Wikipedia (Conservapedia or something like that) but that's not good enough, they want ours to be theirs, too.
Wikipedia has mountains of useful information, but it is limited and censored when it comes to "controversial" and dissident information, due to it being the status quo and the establishment.
It is known the three-letter agencies have a lot of power controlling and censoring information in media and social media; this includes Wikipedia.
We should always question and be highly critical of these types of organizations and groups, similar to anything politicians and the military spew out.
Thanks for your informative comment; it seems many don't know or care to question status quo sources and establishment organizations.
Whistleblowers and independent journalists have spoken about this for many years.
I don't see that in the comments and the article said user PickleG13 was the first person to add the salute information. You can also just go check at the Elon Musk article.
did that squabble include moderators or was it just some users? anything will have issues especially on that large of a scale and the 'hand wave vs nazi salute' was debated for the first few days when it happened (though it's an utterly BS argument when looking at his history)
For your Lemmy example of just opening a community on another instance, is that really any different than on Reddit opening a new sub with a different name? You just need subscribers to migrate, or at least add your sub.
So on Reddit, the people who run the iPhone subs have iPhone 17, iPhone 18, iPhone 19, and so on registered and they're squatting on them until they become useful. Or Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout 5, Fallout 6... Now what some people have done is add a word. Like you have the "Cyberpunk" sub and "Low Sodium Cyberpunk." That works. Or like you have Atheism, and you have RealAtheism. So you can put a word on it, or something like that. But you'll never be able to be the "original" because a small group of people control those.
Now with Lemmy, those same people will just make those communities on the biggest Lemmy instance, but they won't do it on all of them. I use Divisions by Zero, which leans a little further left than some of the others, it's more of a fringe instance I guess? They're probably not gonna target that. So if someone made a community and tried to divert views to their videos for profit like I said in my example, I could make a community with the exact same name on this instance. The other community probably wouldn't let me advertise it there. I could do it once and get banned and maybe get a couple people to join both, at least, but I could promote it on neutral ground, and people could decide who they want to support. Because of federation, even if you aren't on db0, you can still subscribe to a community hosted on it. Like this community is on lemmy.world and I'm subscribed to it and freely commenting on it (at least until/if lemmy.world decides to defederate the instance I'm on — they have that right and ability. But I could make an account on their instance or one that is federated with them. And that's kosher as far as I know, as long as I myself am following the rules of the instances I post on.
I’m not sure if it was in that article or in another comment section, but someone said
a small group of people will fight to control the narrative so they can spin it any which way they want.
Your source for your broad categorization and claims seems incredibly weak. "Someone said, somewhere, I'm not sure where I read it, though."
Wikipedia tracks anonymous contributions, too. You could check the Article and Article Discussion pages histories before making these claims, and before concluding from one comment that Wikipedia has the same systematic issues like Reddit or other closed-group moderated platforms.
As far as I see it, Wikipedia has a different depth and transparency on guidelines, requirements, open discussion, and actions. It has a lot of additional safeguards compared to something like Reddit. Admins are elected, not "first-come".
What I find much more plausible than "they didn't want to accept an anonymous contribution" is that the anonymous contributor may not have adequately sourced their claims and contributions. Even if they did, I find it much more likely that it may have been removed, then a discussion was done in the page discussion, and then it was added back.
Of course, instead of theorizing what happened in that case I could have checked Wikipedia too. But I also want to make a point about my general and systematic expectation of how Wikipedia works, which other platforms do not have.
Good science is boring, good politics is boring, good espionage is boring, good journalism is boring, good history is boring, good banking is boring, good business is boring. Entertainment serves us this pop view of the world...
But wikipedia is more valuable than all the LLM slop machines combined.
This is so true. These systems that provide the foundation to our daily existence should be all boing, because they should be always working well and never surprise us.
Then everybody would get the chance and energy to pursue excitement in their life’s meaningful parts: having interesting conversations with friends, passionate relationships with their partner, or finding excitement anywhere from horror movies to skydiving.
WMF has been headquartered in San Francisco since 2007, with chapters and data centers around the world. Not that California's in the US, but much better than Florida.
No, you don't get it, the US has so excelled in pitting others against each other to emerge as one victor, than it's bringing the thing home. So you are going to weaken yourselves by making a quarreling mess of the old system, then it imploding and some nominally democratic and free new system taking over. Probably simultaneously trying to nuke half of the rest of the world.
I’m not Russian at all and I want to separate because all I get from the federal union is taxation without representation. I’m tired of subsidizing failed religious extremists. It’s abundantly clear that there is no rule of law at the federal level, and I would sooner die than bend the knee to a king.
Edit: and our homegrown Russian asset Jill Stein has never once mentioned balkanization. I just don’t believe your accusation, it doesn’t seem to be based in reality.
As a Russian, honestly these are all sorts of shit with no practical difference for us.
Except for Alaska, some people think it shouldn't have been sold. And 0.7 mln total population is (far) less than Crimea.
That aside, a confederacy (I guess some other word would be better) of the old US and some more autonomous things, like, for example, California, would possibly be a stabilizer.
Sincere question as a foreigner, is there any basis to this "Jill Stein is a Russian asset" thing other than the nature of FPTP voting resulting in the royally fucked-up US two-party system?
Very much yes, we literally do not have laws restricting “donations” and “fundraising” for politicians here. I say this as someone who (embarrassingly) voted for her when I was young and uninformed many many years ago because I liked the headlines her party platform pushed. I am not sober enough to spam you with news articles at the moment but please feel free to bug me again tomorrow. If you do some of your own reading please tell me where you heard it and I will provide context as well.
There's been a number of news coverages of this. It's not like it's the biggest operation or anything but they have been trying to plant that seed intentionally.
I think they's perfectly understandable and their links directly discuss Russia funding Californian separatism. The only error's pluralizing "coverage".
Lol. I just have a writing style that I use. It can be considered eclectic with a mix of various influences. The pluralized word is a buffy "whedonesque" influence.
But the point is that Russia has been running alternative warfare efforts and cyber stuff for a long time. They stoke various movements and invent ideas and spread them with bots and shills. Basically anything that strengthens Russian imperialism and weakens or fractures NATO.
“One of the things I really love about Wikipedia is it forces you to have measured, emotionless conversations with people you disagree with in the name of trying to construct the accurate narrative,”
Yeah, I think what makes Wikipedia resilient is that you can’t just go there and say something subjective. You need to find the correct way to state the actual fact, even when it can have different interpretations. Cause that way, no group can contest it.
Oh no, I once had an article I contributed removed for exactly that, notability. Not sourcing or lack thereof. That was also the last time I ever contributed, obviously.
It didn't help that a couple years later somebody else decided it was notable after all and created the article.
Notability is sourcing: Articles generally require significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the topic. They even made a catchy name for it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedi… (well they borrowed it but you catch my drift). Even if every single claim is Verifiable, it will be deleted if there aren't enough secondary (independent of the topic) sources because it's dangerous and likely non-neutral to only hear the subject's view of themselves. Confusing Notability with something else is a pretty common pitfall for new article creators, so there's things like "Articles for creation" where you can submit article drafts for review and have conversations with the reviewer on what exactly is wrong with your article, as well as many other guides and forums like Help:Your first article, WP:Teahouse, and WP:Help desk.
It didn't help that a couple years later somebody else decided it was notable after all and created the article.
The essay en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedi… is often cited to say "This might get the needed sourcing in a few years, but right no we can't tell, so it's better to create the article again when it has what's needed to align with our content guidelines rather than rush to make a misleading one right now." So either that's exactly what your situation was, or . I'd love to take a look at the article you're talking about.
It was about Leeroy Jenkins. Yes, I'm old. No, it wasn't about reliable sources or neutrality. It was literally because a bunch of folk decided it wasn't important enough to be immortalised in Wikipedia. It was very much reflective of the bias of the editors at the time.
Ooh, creating that article's a lifetime achievement!
Looking at the deletion discussion, I see why you would think everyone only looked at the fame, but none of the article's citations such as "Leeroy/Mortal Kombat Techno Remix" could've shown that it was actually a meme beyond someone's personal character. One editor mentioned hardly finding any Leeroy Jenkins results from Google back then, let alone reliable sources. I have to admit there were definitely some !votes that didn't look for sourcing, though It doesn't help that the article did look like something some random guy created for their OC:
Comically offsetting his ham-handed actions, which led directly to the disgraceful slaughter of his entire group, Leeroy is shown with exhibiting machismo [...]
Anyways, just five months later a year-old editor with just over 200 edits made a draft with plenty of good sourcing and took it to WP:DeletionReview, and everyone agreed it was notable enoug.
As of 7 September 2025, there are 7,052,247 articles in the English Wikipedia containing over 4.9 billion words (giving a mean of about 706 words per article). The total number of pages is 63,983,130. Articles make up 11.02 percent of all pages on Wikipedia. As of 16 October 2024, the size of the current version including all articles compressed is about 24.05 GB without media. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedi…
The following graphic illustrates how large the English Wikipedia might be if the articles (without images and other multimedia content) were to be printed and bound in book form with a format similar to Encyclopædia Britannica. Each volume is assumed to be 25 cm (9.8 in) tall, 5 cm (2.0 in) thick, and containing 1,600,000 words or 8,000,000 characters. The size of this illustration is based upon the live article count manually adjusted by the average word count on an irregular basis on a user subpage of the graphic's creator Tompw. The growth rate is approximately one full volume every three days if the increase in average article size isn't accounted for over time. The print volumes as shown in the illustration would take up just over 9.34 m3 (330 cu ft) in total volume.
downloading it is fine but i think the contents of wikipedia are so thoroughly archived that i doubt it is in danger of becoming "lost media".
my fear isn't that the information would be destroyed, but that the ongoing project of keeping the knowledge up to date would stop, or be split across some underground efforts with varying quality standards.
I agree here. I'm looking forward to playing these games myself, but I didn't even consider it being a possible spoiler before the other person mentioned it.
Individually, not much. Journalism as a profession, however, has been not so slowly transitioning to sensationalism in lieu of a "just the facts, folks" methodology. Thats what I call living on drama.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Soldiers shouldn't march in unison like that. If you were a smart adversary you could just shoot like 30 of them with a single bullet. Just an observation.
Beijing landmark = Tianmen Square. They're mocking democracy as our "king" wears orange paint instead of clothes. They're telling the world that democracy will always devolve into fascism and Nazism. They highlight the nature of man to always seek absolute power while ignoring their role in tipping the USA into madness from afar. It is imperative that we stop the madness in the USA and prove them wrong. The battle has always been democracy vs authoritarianism. They've played us as the right is preoccupied with infantile notions of good versus evil and the left doing the same thing with capitalism versus socialism.
So is the endgame for Ukraine to acquire underground nukes? Honestly that might be the only way to really force a standoff and de-escalation. I wouldn't blame them at all, since they were betrayed after giving up the ones they originally had.
They should be. Russia would have never set a toe in Ukraine if they kept the nukes, and the fuckery of Russia invading and the 'civilized world' sitting around with thumbs up their asses since 2014 seems like proof that having nuclear weapons is a prerequisite to maintaining sovereignty
Some people are getting very very rich from the ongoing war. There are now definitely strong forces at play to keep it going as long as possible, without a victory for any side.
I can’t blame them for wanting it, but let’s not go there.
Reducing the number of countries with nukes was and still is a good idea. Everyone seems to think that MAD was a reasonable strategy because we muddled through without ending civilization. It is not. It is not foregone. It is not likely. It is way too big a risk for all of civilization.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Action is the first brought under the Act, which ensures consumers can report suspicious activity to online marketplaces and contact major third party sellers
It supports the thesis that Lumo is not open source in many common sense ways that most people would expect when a model claims it is open source. So in that sense, it does though.
In the 1 September update they state they found that web client and a mobile client as well, but not the API (I guess) containing the system prompt and the actual routing to the models.
TLDR: Apps are open, models are open weight but you don't know which one you get, and they have not yet disclosed any tweaks they may have made (although for me, it never sounded like they actually tweak the models all too much)
It get worse, and the model weights is a bit inaccurate with the Sept update:
The only open source code we have found is for the Lumo mobile and web apps. Proton calling the Lumo AI assistant open source based on that is a bit like Microsoft calling Windows open source just because there's a github repository for Windows Terminal.
The models listed on Lumo's privacy policy page are "Nemo, OpenHands 32B, OLMO 2 32B, and Mistral Small 3". OpenHands is a QWEN fine-tune, and Nemo and Mistral Small are both Mistral models. Since Proton has open-sourced neither the Lumo system prompt nor the mysterious routing methods that decide which model will handle your query, you never know what you are going to get.
So if the server isn't open source, and the server does all the work, this system is simply not Open Source.
Prominent women including cultural figures, politicians and campaigners have signed a letter criticising rightwing attempts to link sexual violence in Britain to asylum seekers.
Signatories include the musicians Paloma Faith, Charlotte Church and Anoushka Shankar as well as Labour, Green and independent MPs including Kim Johnson, Ellie Chowns, Diane Abbott and Zarah Sultana.
"We reject the far right’s racist lies about ‘protecting’ women and girls. They are not defenders of women – they exploit violence against women to fuel hate and division,” the letter says.
The open letter, titled Women Against the Far Right, follows a surge in protests outside accommodation housing asylum seekers and far-right attempts to exploit a number of cases of alleged sexual crimes involving asylum seekers.
Signed by; Leftist women from good neighbourhoods.
Signatories include the musicians Paloma Faith, Charlotte Church and Anoushka Shankar as well as Labour, Green and independent MPs including Kim Johnson, Ellie Chowns, Diane Abbott and Zarah Sultana.
So you believe the world is a monoculture? That the entire world shares the same views of sex and gender relations, the same crime statistics everywhere, the same milquetoast liberal mindsets are held across all lands...
...and saying otherwise is "prejudice".
Or basically you think the studies are wrong, and that the "behavioural barriers" mentioned in those studies are just a product of Westerns judging the crimes too harshly:
All issues are class issues, and they only become subject to rightwing populism when ruling leftist elites CHOOSE to disconnect from working class realities in favour of elitism and denial.
Your prejudice is the erasure of all cultural and economic differences. That's the prejudice you're practicing.
(1) Background: Sexual violence (SV) is a major public health problem, with negative socio-economic, physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health consequences. Migrants, applicants for international protection, and refugees (MARs) are ...
You are clearly defending a prejudice viewpoint. Go on with your bad self, or what the fuck ever. But you can right fuck off with putting words in my mouth to justify your bullshit.
Just so we're clear, those are all your words, your arguments, your bullshit.
Now you're playing rehortorical games rather than responding with an argument.
That's rich coming from someone who's literally spewing xenophobic and politically tribal stereotypes about "good neighborhoods" and "left wing elites" in response to a simple objection to racist demagoguery.
Your studies demonstrate the fact that immigrants are much more likely to be the VICTIMS of sexual violence than native born people, which does NOT justify the "immigrants are coming to rape our women" hate speech that the women in the article are objecting to.
You've just thrown RACE into the conversation here, I said it was cultural and socioeconomic.
How are studies tribalism? Also I'm a leftist, I'm just also aware there are out of touch leftwing elites (writing denialist letters in this case).
Your studies demonstrate the fact that immigrants are much more likely to be the VICTIMS of sexual violence than native born people
No one said otherwise! Sorry, what's your argument? That it doesn't count as rape if immigrant men rape immigrant women? That's disgusting dude.
No asshole, of course that still counts as rape. Of course that's part of the higher amounts of SA and SV in those communities. I don't know why you needed to be shown studies to admit that.
Of course leftist elites aren't going to recognize that, and are going to try to pretend it's not true - like you were doing.
I take it you're no longer claiming it's "just prejudice" to point this stuff out? That you see a problem with not addressing increased rape stats now - and that not addressing and contextualizing gives the far right something to gripe about?
At least admit that much. I'm so sick of leftwingers denying problems. It's a politics of willful blindness and denialism sometimes. Easy to do for professionals at the top end of town.
Your studies demonstrate the fact that immigrants are much more likely to be the VICTIMS of sexual violence than native born people
No one said otherwise! Sorry, what's your argument? That it doesn't count as rape if immigrant men rape immigrant women? That's disgusting dude.
No, that's asinine. My point is that the anti-immigant rhetoric has nothing to do with protecting immigrants from being raped and everything to do with falsely portraying immigrant men as inherently likely to commit rape.
No asshole, of course that still counts as rape
I didn't say or even imply anything to the contrary. You can pack away your weird strawman now.
Of course that's part of the higher amounts of SA and SV in those communities.
Immigrant women being victims ≠ immigrant men being the perpetrators. To imply that immigration leads to rape is like implying that black people existing leads to killer cops.
I don't know why you needed to be shown studies to admit that
I didn't. In fact, I never suggested otherwise, see above.
Of course leftist elites aren't going to recognize that, and are going to try to pretend it's not true - like you were doing.
Again, that's not what's happening here.
The “leftist elites" are objecting to demagogues exploiting the very real problem of sexual violence against women (of which none of them nor I have denied that immigrant women are disproportionately the victims) as a way to further demonize and persecute immigrants.
I take it you're no longer claiming it's "just prejudice" to point this stuff out
Prejudice, conflating victims and perpetrators, or both. Take your pick.
That you see a problem with not addressing increased rape stats now
Nobody's arguing for doing that.
not addressing and contextualizing gives the far right something to gripe about?
That's the POINT: the far right are putting it in a false context for their own disinformation campaigns and you're doing something similar for different reasons.
Meanwhile, the "leftist elites" are simply saying that demonizing and scapegoating immigrants doesn't help any victims and is MUCH more likely to cause MORE immigrants to be assaulted by native born people who are taught to dehumanize them.
I'm so sick of leftwingers denying problems.
Saying that the fascists are blaming the wrong people is not denying that there are problems.
It's a politics of willful blindness and denialism
Nobody's denying anything. At least none of the people you're accusing of it are.
I don't think you being reactionary to a far-right whose not present here, or the letter writers trying to preach to the far-right from a "corrective left" perspective of professionals in the top end of town works.
It's hot air. The far-right aren't going to read the edicts past down from on high and see the error of their ways. It's a totally pipe dream leftism that assumes "being a scold" does anything but push people right.
I mean take yourself - you couldn't even handle my original comment pointing that out. Look at all the time we've wasted here just because you had an "I've detected prejudice" error.
This is just all the stuff the left gets wrong, that feeds into the far-right populism. We need an alternative ti being scolds.
I don't think you being reactionary to a far-right whose not present here, or the letter writers trying to preach to the far-right from a "corrective left" perspective of professionals in the top end of town works.
Good thing that none of that is happening, then.
It's hot air
Back to the self-description, I see.
The far-right aren't going to read the edicts past down from on high and see the error of their ways
Public figures tend to react to media pressure and other public figures taking a public stand tends to create such pressure. This is politics 101 stuff.
It's a totally pipe dream leftism that assumes "being a scold" does anything but push people right.
So what do you suggest, then? Never speaking up about harmful lies and the suffering they cause? Because that's DEFINITELY not going to convince anyone.
I mean take yourself - you couldn't even handle my original comment pointing that out.
Again with the ridiculous strawmen. You were wrong and I pointed it out. The only one unable to "handle" anything seems to be yourself.
Look at all the time we've wasted here just because you had an "I've detected prejudice" error.
Again, not the case. It doesn't say anything good about your point that you need to keep insisting on two or three strawmen to make it.
This is just all the stuff the left gets wrong, that feeds into the far-right populism. We need an alternative ti being scolds
Yeah, right. Telling them that they're harming people forces them to double down because that's how interpersonal communication works 🙄
You're invoking this comic in spite of pretending to be a leftist yourself:
Oh please, you're the one claiming it's prejudice to call out wealthy leftists for being so far removed from the situation that they don't even know rapes are happening in these communities.
Your defense of ivory towers of wealth, lifestyle disconnection and intellectual privilege is far more fascist aligned than anything I've said.
Hence your whole "anyone who disagrees with me must be MAGA" stance here...
...and again, it's an discourse where studies show that negative reinforcement is far less effective than positive reinforcement. Your line of thinking on these issues actually contributes to the polarisation and prolonging of them (so is pro-rape). As was your original denying there was any issue (saying it was just prejudice).
You just keep pushing bad answers... And I keep having to explain to you what the actual studies say (be they how negative discourse creates polarisation, or the very fact that rapes are happening).
You need to learn political nuance. Get off tiktok or whatever's got you so ideological boxed in.
But yeah, I'm done with you, and your reactionary polarisations. I hate you and we're on the "same side" - I can't imagine you're doing anything out there worthwhile. I just hope people like you can educate yourselves so I don't have to. Good luck.
I don't know where to even BEGIN adequately refuting that whole wall of nonsense, so I won't waste any more time on you to do so. Have the day you deserve.
"Results: Evidence shows that SV is highly frequent in MARs in Europe, yet comparison with other groups is still difficult. Methodologically and ethically sound representative studies comparing between populations are still lacking."
You are just linking studies because you see some numbers and you think it supports the story in your head. These people are aware of the nuances and difficulties of confounders and they don't make any of the baseless claims you are making. All they are saying is "there is high incidence of rape among immigrant females and we should help them by improving reception practices". They even say any over reaching conclusions are wrong. And yet here you are, undermining the work of these authors by fabricating conclusions that don't exist in the papers. I suspect you don't even read the conclusion, or anything beyond the title. And if you are, then you are just discussing in bad faith. In any case you don't seem to be here for a genuine scientific discussion so don't try to use science to support your claims, it feels insincere.
Yes, what's more sex crimes tend to be "crimes of opportunity" - or to frame that idea differently - "crimes of circumstance".... And those circumstances tend to be created by a lack of money, lack of education, and an abdication of responsibility from those in charge.
That the letter writing is a form of elite leftist denialism of the issues.
That it's essentially covering over that there are issues to be discussed here, in favour of going after "the right" and trying to scold ones enemies rather than actually look into the issues (which I'm claiming are cultural and economic).
You know, sometimes it's better to conceed than it is to alienate and deny.
Hilarious. They actually expect the ideology of pedophiles and rapists to listen to them.
Hahahaha good god.
Edit: Conservatives worldwide are rapists, pedophiles, and imbeciles. Just recently. Japan is having a right wing moron resurgence because of misinformation.
Elite leftists who want to disconnect themselves from the complex issues and incompatibilities of cultural exchange are just fueling the problem, and allowing right wing populists to make points.
Fact is that different regions have different gender relations, and different problems because of that, and we need to understand that.
American here under fascism and seeing no improvement anytime soon here.
From me to you, spare me the self righteousness.
FYI: you literally just supported my point. I am sure Israel will take into consideration what they are doing to the Thai women. Just like they are taking into consideration the Palestinians right to live.
Are there real concerns? Yes, some. Are there tons of misinformation campaigns actively trying to push anti-immigrant narratives and fake statistics to fearmonger and activate conservatives? Absolutely.
And a lot of those concerns will get worse by poverty and inequality but the right wing policies usually make that worse while blame it on the migrants. Rinse and repeat.
That's still some xenophobic nonsense that potentially punishes men for losing their families, not to mention is some dystopian "guilty with no opportunity to be proven innocent" assholery.
they have the statistics and data to back them up.
Then again, 69% of statistics are made up on the spot or deliberately skewed and that goes double any time governments want to justify abusing foreigners.
I know right? A culture that engaged in eugenics and genocide backed by statistics and data yesterday just happens to have statistics and data to back their regrettably cruel but totally pragmatic policy today.
Like damn I'm sure dictators have legitimate data that shows dissidents threaten their power. Good evidence is like a thought jammer.
A culture that engaged in eugenics and genocide backed by statistics and data yesterday just happens to have statistics and data to back their regrettably cruel but totally pragmatic policy today.
Setting aside the fact that I have no idea what specifically "a culture" refers to... this "women are afraid of men because of statistics" thing isn't limited to Canada.
She doesn't give a shit about true evils in the world, not about some malific dark figure wreaking death on innocence to make "inferior" people bow in fear. She only cares about making the lives of young people born different to her strict worldview as abysmal and horrible as possible. She should read this book about a boy born different to his peers who embraces it and eventually overthrows true evil and terror... oh wait.
In the book, many of those wacky characters "grow out of it".
Modern conservatism is just fascism, but with "they will grow out of it eventually" mentality. Crustaceans evolve into crabs, conservatives evolve into Hitlers.
Nearly 40 years after breaking off Antarctica, a colossal iceberg ranked among the oldest and largest ever recorded is finally crumbling apart in warmer waters, and could disappear within weeks.
Earlier this year, the “megaberg” known as A23a weighed a little under a trillion tonnes and was more than twice the size of Greater London, a behemoth unrivalled at the time.
The gigantic slab of frozen freshwater was so large it even briefly threatened penguin feeding grounds on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean, but ended up moving on.
It is now less than half its original size, but still a hefty 1,770 sq km (683 sq miles) and 60km (37 miles) at its widest point, according to AFP analysis of satellite images by the EU Earth observation monitor Copernicus.
That caught me eye too. The article says a bit more about it:
“I’d say it’s very much on its way out … it’s basically rotting underneath. The water is way too warm for it to maintain. It’s constantly melting,” he said.
“I expect that to continue in the coming weeks, and expect it won’t be really identifiable within a few weeks.”
The way I interpret that is that it will have broken up enough that it would no longer be identifiable as the single iceberg A23a, but there would still be lots of its ice floating around.
Wow, this is really disappointing. I thought A23a had what it took to last. I suppose in the end the fame and the pressure to live up to public expectations will break up even the strongest bonds.
No doubt the paparazzi following the 'berg around, shooting photos of every dip and rise, and the temptations found in warmer waters led to this demise.
I tried to find the current location of the iceberg and was met with a sad reminder of how much data the U.S. government contributes. Basically, all the location updates came from NOAA, and those haven’t been updated since March.
Ciao, questo pomeriggio è stato fatto un aggiornamento a NodeBB 4.5.1 passando prima dalla 4.5.0. Mi sembra funzioni tutto ma se riscontrate errori o problemi scrivetemi pure. Non allego i changelog perché stavolta sono luuuuuuuuuuuunghi ma li trovate su
Ciao, questo pomeriggio è stato fatto un aggiornamento a NodeBB 4.5.1 passando prima dalla 4.5.0.
Mi sembra funzioni tutto ma se riscontrate errori o problemi scrivetemi pure.
Non allego i changelog perché stavolta sono luuuuuuuuuuuunghi ma li trovate su GitHub:
Release build (patch) of NodeBB @ 2025-09-04T16:02:47.165Z
v4.5.1 (2025-09-04)
New Features
use _variables.scss overrides from acp in custom skins and bootswatch skins as well (0c48e0e)
Bug Fixes...
The U.S. military on Tuesday struck a drug boat from Venezuela, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, as tensions spike between the Trump administration and the Venezuelan government.
I note the details of this incident are sparse, per the article, yet CBS utterly fails to use the word alleged at all. This is a 'drug boat' not an 'alleged drug boat,' nor a 'boat allegedly smuggling drugs.' Did they even ask what proof the military had before blowing up this 'drug boat?'
Is the USA now blowing up any boat at sea that they feel is a drug boat? Isn't the norm to have the Coast Guard intercept such boats board them, gather evidence, and make arrests? I guess this is the new war on drugs.
Yes. These are normally handled by the Coast Guard. There's a reason the Coast Guard vessels are armed. They can more than handle anything a cartel drug boat is carrying. They're heavily armed enough that most intercepted vessels surrender without a fight. Actually taking fire is extraordinarily rare.
There is absolutely zero reason to waste US Navy vessels on this. It appears Trump just blew up a random boat that could have easily been intercepted. Even assuming it is a drug boat, this attack is completely detrimental to fighting the drug trade. If you intercept the vessel, you can interrogate the crew, gather evidence from the vessel, and help crack the cartel network they are a part of. But you can't do any of that with a corpse-filled wreck on the bottom of the ocean.
Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers.. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence. Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them. If the punishment is strong, the attacks on innocent people will stop. - Donald Trump
It wasn't until 2002 that the five men were exonerated after convicted rapist and murderer Matias Reyes confessed to the crime. Reyes' DNA matched the sample found on Meili.
Here is another example of his love of killing people. Did you know that since 1976, only 16 people have been executed by the federal government. Two in 2001. One in 2003. The other 13 were executed in 2020 and 2021 when then President Trump learned he could expedite their executions.
Expect a lot more blood from this man now that he can and is ordering the military to wantonly spill it.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
This isn't the 80s, I don't think people are buying into the war on drugs facade masking imperialism as much as they used to. Drugs flow along the pacific. Venezuela is small fries for drug trafficking. This is absolutely reasserting imperial interest in Latin America and Venezuela being the most prominent non-US aligned country at the moment in Latin America. If the US acts stupid and tries to false flag themselves into a regime change invasion, it'll be more of a clusterfuck than Afghanistan. No doubt in my mind nonsense in Venezuela would spark something in Colombia and I doubt Brazil would want the US to win either
It wouldn't push Venezuelans to not want whoever reforms them once the U.S. scuffle is over to not join BRICS as well, and move away from the U.S. dollar. They already wanted in now if I remember, but Brazil vetoed it.
Whatever opposition there was against Maduro, the US is ruining it for them. Instead Venezuela gets a clear view of the regional existential threat, further motivation to modernize its military and build non-US aligned trade. They're shaping up to be, and getting help from the US in drumming up motivation, the Americas Iran but they can't be boogyman'ed as Muslims
Over the past decades power grids have undergone a transformation towards smaller and more intermittent generators – primarily in the form of wind and solar generators – as well as smal…
Moss Landing battery storage facility has repeatedly caught fire, which highlights another potentially major savings for grid operators, as the fallout of such events are instead borne by the operator of the battery, which for the DSGS would be the home owner.
Did I understand right that VPPs are just a way of grouping some generation and storage together in such a way that you can pretend it will act as a CCGT plant?
If so, surely this is papering over the challenge. A real solution will present all the information used to operate a "VPP" to the entire grid, and allow all the available resources to be managed by the grid.
Israel has begun mobilizing some 60,000 reservists to take part in its planned occupation of Gaza City, the army confirmed Tuesday, signaling a major escalation in the genocidal war now in its 23rd month, Anadolu reports.
The military said the reservists will be issued weapons, personal gear and full tactical equipment, with units undergoing drills in urban and open terrain combat “to boost readiness for upcoming missions.”
Israeli daily Maariv said the mobilization would see reservists undergo three to four days of training before some are reassigned to replace regular troops stationed on the northern front.
The step follows Friday’s declaration of Gaza City as a “dangerous combat zone,” accompanied by heavy bombardment and demolitions that have already caused mass civilian casualties and widespread destruction. Gaza’s Government Media Office has accused the army of deploying explosive-laden robots and adopting a “scorched earth” strategy.
I don't live there so I never really knew the extent of Israeli depravity until recent events pulled back the veil for me. What I've read and seen in the last year has convinced me that entire society is fucked beyond redemption and collectively deserve the title "Nazi". Maybe they were just as shitty 50 years ago, I think that a lot of people myself included are learning a lot about Israel recently.
the only difference is the lack of a german language.
And the lack of anti-semitism
And the boundedness of their expansionism
And many other differences.
Expand your fucking vocabulary, rather than reaching for the only genocidal analogue you can think of. There has been more than one genocide in history, and you do dishonour to the victims of any one by using its name to describe something different.
They want to remove Gaza and sell homes to other zionists.
Stop. just … grow the fuck up. It’s almost like you’re either defending zionists or nazis, I can’t tell which. Done with you.
There are TONS of genocides happening today. Not all are by nazis. I never said that. Two things can be true at once… and zionism’s growth and foothold on the semitic people of Palestine is a ww1/ww2 era invention. You know. When those silly nazis you seem to think don’t exist seemed to crop up.
I am defending the truth, and you're too committed to your untruth (whether mistake or lie) to accept that someone can do that while otherwise sharing your beliefs.
They are GENOCIDING SEMITIC PEOPLE.
"Semitic people" is not a category that is used any more; it could refer to "speakers of Semitic languages" but is completely obsolete for referring to ethnicity. And besides, Zionism, or the current Israeli government's version of it, is not murdering Palestinians because they belong to the group of people once referred to as "Semitic" because that would include all Arabs and all Jews as well as several other people. Genociding people who belong to a certain category doesn't mean you're anti- that category. For a trivial example, they are genociding human beings - does that mean they are anti-human? Obviously not.
So, if anti-semitism does not refer to hatred for the entire group of "Semitic people", what does it refer to? Well, it has some history being used more or less in the way you apparently believe it still is used, but in 1879 a chap called Wilhelm Marr wrote a pamphlet in which he used Semitismus interchangeably with Judentum, and Antisemitismus as a synonym for Judenhaß - Jew-hatred. That is what it has meant since.
There is only one reason I can think of beyond blinkered stubbornness that you could possibly want to associate the Nazis and antisemitism with the Israeli government, and that is out of some pathetic sense of irony, that it is somehow poetic that the Jews have become what befell them in the early 20th century. That is poetic, but poetry isn't truth, and disregarding the suffering of Jews at the hands of the real Nazis by calling what Israel now commits "Nazism" belies a disregard for Jews as a whole which is at best distasteful and at worst abhorrent.
You are letting yourself speak in a prejudiced way because of your opposition to the genocide that Israel is carrying out. How can you say "grow up" when you let that happen? No population deserves to be murdered the way Israel is murdering Palestinians - but no population deserves to have its past suffering mocked in the way you mock the suffering of Jews by calling Israel Nazis.
Prejudiced, discriminatory, hostile or opposed politically or religiously against ethnic or religious Jews or against Judaism
More information on usage can be found here but even if you want to use the non-standard sense of the word, it is: * clearly wrong, because Zionism privileges one group it should be prejudiced against if it were anti-semitic in this sense; and * clearly not the anti-semitism of the Nazis - so in no way does this make Zionism a form of Nazism, which is what we were talking about.
Zionism relies on "othering" Jews, making them feel unsafe in their home countries. They literally sterilized African Jews in the pursuit of their colonial vision.
As for Nazism, I'm not arguing there, it is technically different. But insofar as people think about Nazis as evil, it's a useful word in these conversations.
I agree it's useful to highlight the parallels between what the Israeli government does now and what was done to the Jewish population by the Nazis, but equating the two is not useful, is actively harmful, and extremely offensive. That's what I objected to above.
Zionism relies on “othering” Jews, making them feel unsafe in their home countries.
You can just as well say that all nationalist projects rely on "othering" in the sense of dividing whatever group is deemed "us" from everyone else. But of course, nobody normally calls this "othering", because it explicitly makes the in-group us not other than us. It would be wholly wrong to say that Zionist Jews characterise Jews as other than us, so I don't see how this is "othering" in any way that makes sense. They may other particular subgroups, but that is simply not a basis for describing the process as "othering Jews" because Jewishness is not the axis along which the division is being made; rather it is the axis of the subgroup. Scots might other the English, and this would not be a basis on which to accuse Scots of anti-British prejudice.
Othering alone is in any case not prejudice; it is merely something that often precedes it.
They literally sterilized African Jews in the pursuit of their colonial vision.
That would be a subgroup of Jews, not Jews as a whole. You wouldn't call it homophobia to bully Michael who happens to be gay if you don't bully other gay people.
That was a great read. Let's hope the author is right with most of it, especially the part where they predict an upcoming focus on teaching media/information literacy as a tool of societal resilience.
But someday after that, we’ll reach a point when the phrase “social media is all fake robo-crap” will be as common of knowledge as “cigarettes cause cancer” or “slot machines are a poor investment”. Adults can still smoke and slot, sure. But nobody in the developed world can say they weren’t warned of the risks.
Next Sosyal is a new social media platform with close ties to the Turkish ruling party, that is based on Mastodon but does not federate
A shuffle in the places, forums and sites to talk about #activitypub, with new owners for forum SocialHub, the activitypub.rocks website now managed by the W3C SocialCG, and the new activitypub.space forum
Next Sosyal is a new Turkish social media platform that is based on Mastodon. The platform has not enabled federation, and is thus not accessible from the fediverse. Next Sosyal is endorsed by Turkish ruling party AKP, and president Erdogan recently made his first post on the platform. Erdoğan quoted a poem from a prominent Turkish poet, and posted “Are you ready?”, with the hashtag “We’re starting,” along with emojis of the Turkish flag, the Earth and a rocket.
Next Sosyal is developed by Selçuk Bayraktar, who owns military drone company Baykar and is the son-in-law of President Erdogan. The platform is branded as a “local and national” alternative to global platforms such as X and Facebook. Bayraktar describes the platform as a safer and cleaner space for constructive dialogue free from trolling, disinformation and Western platform algorithms.
The Nordic Monitor news site further reports: “Several ministries and public entities now maintain official Next Sosyal profiles. Staff in these offices report that social media guidance increasingly favors the platform. Press releases, bulletins and announcements are expected to appear on Next before being shared on global platforms. Some officials say internal memos suggested de-emphasizing X and Instagram entirely. In addition, some major corporations have reportedly started opening accounts on Next out of fear of government pressure.”
Bayraktar claims that the app now has over 1 million users. Since Next Sosyal is a slight reskin of Mastodon, it means that the same API also works. API calls to Next Sosyal on August 22nd showed an exact user count of 850.000, and as of September 2 the API claims a total of 1.100.000 accounts. Registering on the app requires a Turkish phone number, making it difficult for me to verify these numbers by looking at timeline activity, but the exact roundness of these numbers does raise some suspicions for me.
The platform was originally released without any reference to Mastodon’s source code. Mastodon is released under the AGPL license, which means that you can use, modify and distribute the software freely, as long as you publish the code under the same AGPL license. After some requests from the Mastodon organisation, Next Sosyal is now compliant with this, and explicitly mentions that “NSocial is an open source Mastodon-based social media platform developed by TEKNOFEST entrepreneurs.” on their About page.
We live in a world where authoritarian rulers seem to have a better grasp of current social media dynamics than many democratic leaders have. Both Trump and Erdogan understand the value of building a social media platform where they have a direct connection with their supporters, and can control message distribution. That both leaders use Mastodon for this, while democratic leadership shows little interest in building out their own social media distribution platforms on the open social web is painful.
In Other News
Last week I wrote about SocialHub, a forum to discuss ActivityPub, and how it fits into a larger understanding of the ‘substrate’ layer of the fediverse. One of the points I made is that the communication layer underneath the fediverse (meaning places to discuss and collaborate on ActivityPub, for example) is fairly decentralised. The positive effect is that this creates a distribution of power, nobody can control all the conversations that happen about ActivityPub. This also means that coordination is more difficult, as developers are spread out over multiple places. There has been quite some movement this week in this space of “what are the places to talk about ActivityPub”:
The direct cause for writing the article was SocialHub potentially shutting down. A new administrator has been found, workers cooperative Pavillion. The cooperative was hired by forum software Discourse to create the ActivityPub plugin for the forum.
Activitypub.rocks is the ‘official’ website for the ActivityPub protocol, but it has not been updated for almost five years. Christine Lemmer-Webber, one of the co-authors of ActivityPub, has decided to hand over the website to the SocialCG, the community group for ActivityPub that is part of the W3C. A new initiative to work on the website from the SocialCG is led by Johannes Ernst, who also organises the FediForum conferences.
Activitypub.space is a new forum to discuss ActivityPub, created by NodeBB developer Julian Lam.
Fediverse software updates:
A blog by the WordPress ActivityPub team with more details on their latest updates, with expanded moderation tooling and improvements under the hood.
Piefed now has a build-in discovery tool to find new communities to subscribe to.
Blogging platform WriteFreely has further fediverse integrations with their latest update: it now displays ‘likes’ on WriteFreely blog posts made on other platforms. Other platforms such as Mastodon will now also show a preview or summary of a WriteFreely post, in addition to a link.
LemmyBridge is a new browser extension that connects you to Lemmy discussions for any website you visit.
Pixelfed releases the ‘Stories’ feature on their Android app.
And an overview of all fediverse software updates of the week.
And some more links:
WeDistribute writes about the Client-to-Server part of ActivityPub, a part of the protocol that is rarely used, and how the Social Web Foundation is working on promoting its use.
A tutorial that explains how you can do podcasting with PeerTube.
FedInspect, a desktop application for analysing fediverse server configurations and features.
In Spain, dozens of ships carrying civilian activists and loaded with humanitarian aid departed Barcelona on Monday, bound for the Gaza Strip. The Global Sumud Flotilla is the largest attempt yet to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg helped to organize the flotilla.
Greta Thunberg: “Israel are very clear about their genocidal intent. They want to erase the Palestinian nation. They want to take over the Gaza Strip. And if that doesn’t make people act, if that doesn’t make people go out of their couch and take action, fill the streets, get organized, then I don’t know what will.”
In Australia, peace activists held a nonviolent protest Monday blocking the entrance of Port Melbourne, demanding Australia suspend trade with Israel. Meanwhile, in Colorado, dozens of Jewish peace activists and allies rallied on Friday outside the Denver office of Senator Michael Bennet.
How that fat wino ever got close enough to a woman to be in a position to assault her in the fisrt place is the most puzzling question in this case. What a repugnant man...
Peru’s Congress has rejected a long-delayed proposal to create the Yavari Mirim Indigenous Reserve. That's a 1.17 million-hectare tract of Amazon rainforest on the Brazil border meant to protect five uncontacted tribes.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
I have no doubt that the muslims would do the exact same thing, if they had the chance.
That's how religious genocide works. The religion doesn't matter, they all do it. It's how 'the largest fictional religion in the world' game works, and all religions have been playing it for thousands of years.
Not the best fictional religion. Not the kindest. The one with the most people and control.
I have no doubt that the muslims would do the exact same thing, if they had the chance.
This belief is a prerequisite to turning a blind eye to the Palestinian Genocide or perhaps it is simply the last defense people have for turning a blind eye. Is that you? Is that why you are behaving like a child on such a serious topic?
Shame on you for responding to a genocide only with laughably speculative handwaving about how in a wildly different situation Muslims who are victims of a genocide would commit genocide.
Freund wasn’t looking for a backdoor when he noticed SSH connections to his Debian testing system taking 500 milliseconds longer than usual. As a database engineer benchmarking PostgreSQL performance, he initially dismissed the anomaly. But the engineer’s curiosity persisted.
The backdoor’s technical sophistication was breathtaking. Hidden across multiple stages, from modified build scripts that only activated under specific conditions to obfuscated binary payloads concealed in test files, the attack hijacked SSH authentication through an intricate chain of library dependencies. When triggered, it would grant the attacker complete remote access to any targeted system, bypassing all authentication and leaving no trace in logs.
The backdoored versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 had been released in February and March 2024, infiltrating development versions of Fedora, Debian, openSUSE, and Arch Linux. Ubuntu’s upcoming 24.04 LTS release, which would have deployed to millions of production systems, was mere weeks away.
The technical backdoor was merely the final act of a three-year psychological operation that began not with code, but with studying a vulnerable human being.
Exhausted volunteers maintaining critical infrastructure alone. From personal experience with contributor burnout to AI-powered future threats, here’s why our digital foundation is crumbling.
A new working paper authored by three Stanford researchers, titled "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence", claims that GenAI has significantly reduced employment opportunities for individ…
So the author's argument is that youth have just gone to gig work instead of traditional jobs. OK, maybe true, but first of all, this is not a good thing on its own either. And secondly, we have to consider why gig work even exists, aside from being a fresh new way to exploit workers and deny them the traditional protections of the labor market. Because there is a specific reason gig work exists right at this very transitional moment in the workforce, and I'll give you a spoiler: It exists because of AI.
AI is going to do the same thing to gig work that gig work has already done to traditional youth employment. It represents the transitional step from traditional human labor to full automation. That's part of the reason companies are using gig work in the first place. It makes it really easy to treat workers as instantly and transparently interchangable in an extremely efficient and flexible way. And they are going to start interchanging them not just with other gig workers, but AI drones -- self driving cars, drones, and other machine infrastructure as it gets developed and matures. The flexibility allows them to absorb the impact of any issues with the technology by instantly falling back to more "human gigs" when needed, but whenever the technology becomes successful, the human jobs will just instantly evaporate as quickly as the technology can roll out, and not a single thought will ever be spared for the millions of gig working humans waiting for their phone to buzz for the next gig that will never come while looking at bills that are never going to get paid. That's literally the goal that gig work exists to enable, it's fundamentally designed for the AI endgame, it's inevitably going to leave millions of people suddenly and quietly unemployed and unemployable without warning or even any official notification when it's happening, and it's coming sooner than we think.
So the author’s argument is that youth have just gone to gig work instead of traditional jobs. OK, maybe true, but first of all, this is not a good thing on its own either. And secondly, we have to consider why gig work even exists, aside from being a fresh new way to exploit workers and deny them the traditional protections of the labor market. Because there is a specific reason gig work exists right at this very transitional moment in the workforce, and I’ll give you a spoiler: It exists because of AI.
Considering the author is possibly the most relevant scholar on (against?) platform work, I'm quite sure he would agree with you. The article implies that AI is deskilling and displacing workers and that's intrinsically a bad thing.
And secondly, we have to consider why gig work even exists, aside from being a fresh new way to exploit workers and deny them the traditional protections of the labor market. Because there is a specific reason gig work exists right at this very transitional moment in the workforce, and I’ll give you a spoiler: It exists because of AI.
Wrong, gig work existed way before the advent of AI, even before the advent of Internet and PC. It was not uncommon that teenagers worked during the summer holidays to have money to go on holidays, to buy themself something or to pay for school or other activities. The problem is that for some people it is the only way to work, and this was happening way before companies started to use AI for everything.
You're understanding of "gig work" is comically outdated. You sound naive or trollish. "Jobs for teens" like fast food work, grocery clerking, and working at movie theaters have always been taken by people who need "real jobs" and not just teens looking for extra money. So you're wrong that these careers exclusively for kids to get pocket money ever existed, certainly not in living memory.
Secondly, OP isn't talking about working the carwash for the summer. He's talking about Uber and AirBNB. Maybe you heard of them? Over the last decade, they've caused massive disruption of the hotel and taxi industries by allowing thousands of unlicensed and unregulated "micro entrepreneurs" 🤮 to create a new economy of pay-per-task workers who end up owning all the physical assets (which rapidly deprecate in value) but none of the infrastructure or investments (which do not, or do so on much different schedules).
Houses being bought up for short term rentals has contributed to the housing crisis. Its caused economic harm to inner cities. It's a looking part of the polycrisis destroying the practical economy and the planet's livability. But yeah man, the real problem is lazy people just don't want real adult jobs, give me a fucking break.
I agree with most all of that, but shit jobs for teens were all teens in the day. We started in those shit jobs, and our coworkers were all peers. That's why so many middle-aged people don't get the modern paradigm. The modern world no longer reflects our youth, at all.
I worked at Lowe's for 5-months. But you're right. Most of the gig workers coming through were older than me. I'm 54. Imagine that.
There was no tech middleman taking in part of the profit while making every other part of the transaction a net negative for everyone else though. I do agree that AI might not have much to do with it though.
Let me connect a few dots for you that may be a key part of the Trump-Epstein drama and may even be what Trump has been trying to keep hidden in those files. I’…
Israeli leadership is treating Gaza like a war crime buffet at this point.
"I mean, if genocide's on the menu, why not sprinkle in a little murder-children-by-starvation and robot warfare? It's my cheat ~~day~~ year and a half, after all."
RedPandaRaider
in reply to technocrit • • •History repeats itself.
We'll get another entry for "Social democracy the left wing of fascism" in another decade or two.
I wish Corbyn and the like-minded success in preventing fascism and further neoliberal regression.
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NoneOfUrBusiness
in reply to RedPandaRaider • • •Rentlar
in reply to technocrit • • •jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/ar…
How very sad it is that Corbyn was ousted as leader for making the case for Palestinian rights too early. Now look at what the current ruling Labour party is doing.
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Nanook
in reply to Rentlar • • •floofloof
in reply to Nanook • • •like this
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ohulancutash
in reply to floofloof • • •like this
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NoForwadSlashS
in reply to ohulancutash • • •This is a very weird framing of what I understand was a refusal to join a meeting in Jan 2018, which was organised by SNP and had no government presence. He never went in the room at all, so the "flounced out in a huff" appears to be complete fiction.
I personally don't think that one meeting, containing small parties that were not in power, had any meaningful effect on the proposed deal with the EU, which was still being discussed up until 2020.
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ohulancutash
in reply to NoForwadSlashS • • •blackn1ght
in reply to technocrit • • •I don't think letting asylum seekers work would make a blind bit of difference. The right just don't want them here at all. They want them to stop coming, not let them continue coming but then working. The right will just complain that they're taking people's jobs.
I'd be curious what approach Corbyn's policy would be on this.
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NoneOfUrBusiness
in reply to blackn1ght • • •It would because if they can work and become productive members of society, the real issues fueling rightwing bigotry would be lessened. Of course the already bigoted will want them gone, but the right relies on issues like crime and the budget to spread.
True, which is why a comprehensive leftwing program is necessary to facilitate job creation and provide safety nets for those who fall through the cracks.
blackn1ght
in reply to NoneOfUrBusiness • • •As long as they keep seeing x number of immigrants arriving each day, they'll keep voting far right. They just want them to stop, I think they've been clear on that. They want a party who says what they want to hear (I doubt Reform would be able to do anything about it).
I think the reason why asylum seekers aren't allowed to work is because the stay is supposed to be strictly temporary. They're supposed to return home when things are safe. Letting them work would probably make it less likely they're going to return home if they start settling. I can't see that being a popular policy as they'll see it making the UK more inviting (either way it's the wrong move as they'll just complain they're on benefits).
NoneOfUrBusiness
in reply to blackn1ght • • •phutatorius
in reply to blackn1ght • • •Fuck the right wing.
That's what the policy should be. Throw their Nazi asses in jail.
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Avicenna
in reply to technocrit • • •like this
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