The 7.4-magnitude quake struck off the eastern coast of Mindanao island on Friday morning and was followed by a significant, 6.7-magnitude aftershock. A tsunami warning was issued.
Donald Trump has reportedly suggested that Spain’s membership in the Nato alliance should be reconsidered due to its insufficient military spending.
The intervention follows an agreement in June where members of the US-backed security pact committed to significantly boosting their defence budgets to 5 per cent of gross domestic product. The move aligns with President Trump’s long-standing demand for European nations to contribute more substantially to their own defence.
But Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said at the time that he would not commit to the 5 per cent target, calling it “incompatible with our welfare state and our world vision”.
Dude needs to look at a fucking map; the straight of Gibraltar is an important choke point and that little sliver of it the Brits control isn’t as good as having Spain included in your alliance.
The intervention follows an agreement in June where members of the US-backed security pact committed to significantly boosting their defence budgets to 5 per cent of gross domestic product.
This makes it sound like it was some kind of done deal, but that's not how I remember it; more like a suggestion, basically as it's been until now only 2% more? please correct me if I remember wrong.
Trump has been ranting and raving about this ever since 2016, making all sorts of weird demands, calling it debt etc.
De Wever is far-right himself. He played the long con into getting elected as mayor of Antwerp to pave his way into becoming prime minister. Before he was elected he used indirect racism - the kind where you say you respect them but you want to be respected back by disallowing hajibs kind of bullshit - to get elected as mayor. As soon as he was mayor he started "helping out" the minorities. And he actually was successful. He dropped a lot of his prejudice and seemingly racist standpoints. Many people respected him for this. Right up until he became prime minister and started fucking over the people like it was his goal all along. Anti immigration and anti low-class now look like his main goal again.
So no, he has far more enemies within the religious context as well as the anti fascist context than with other right wing grifters.
Yep, and the same agenda is being attempted in the Netherlands right now. Those fascists are playing "nice" so they can get more votes and then seize an anti-people's dictatorship.
If thats your style, go get it. I cant. Opiates make me itchy. Also I heard if you do them, it makes marijuana feel like nothing and I love weed a shit ton.
I finally stopped smoking weed because I recently got access to gummies from a legal state far far away in a freer land then where I am. I'd move but I really need a year or two break from being homeless.
Maybe ill get some opiates when im older and everything fucking hurts all the time. Then the itches will be worth
See? I didnt feel the need to create a police state that will eventually consume us all. Dont want to do the drug? Dont do it.
Democrats seem to understand that for other things, yet for some reason that doesn't translate to drug use. No, marijuana legalization will not end the war on drugs. Good thing the dems have the republicans to make them look good!
The addiction destroying our country is the addiction to licking boot polish.
This happened during the Obama administration, I was active duty in those days. I think USAA and AER had some programs if you needed a check during the shutdown, not sure if that’s happening these days.
I didn't experience it so personally but I'm only seeing one shutdown during Obama's terms. That's not to say that certain media didn't screech about it endlessly, of course.
Ah, yeah you’re right. My bad. I believe there were threats of shutdowns but they never happened. Still got some emails from USAA about what to do in a potential shutdown AFAIK.
Also, a lot of Federal Credit unions front government paychecks...
They credit normal paychecks a couple days early as soon as they see the amount coming in. Traditional banks wait til it's actually in your account.
So in a shutdown those places keep fronting money, but that was because they had faith back pay was coming. With trump openly talking about not doing backpay, that may change.
Navy Federal Credit Union was a popular choice, but there's a couple that handle it like that.
Then there's programs ran by the bases to offer financial relief even in no shutdowns, not sure how'd they ration their funds during a shutdown.
Then there's programs ran by the bases to offer financial relief even in no shutdowns, not sure how'd they ration their funds during a shutdown.
I haven’t seen programs run by the base themselves, but AER is Army Emergency Relief. They have a lot of money and will either give you a no or very low interest loan or often just give you a grant that you don’t have to pay back.
We activated a handful of NG, and one of them is already talking "I can't do this without getting paid".
Like, it's NG so he's dumb as fuck for thinking he even has a say in if he works or not. But he hasn't even missed a fucking paycheck yet and he's already just openly contemplating going AWOL...
There's a reason the military got paid during every other shutdown (sorry Coasties).
Nice to know that's where they draw the line. Not, "I can't do this because I don't want to attack my own countrymen". It's the possible late pay that's going too far
NG are getting activated for a lot of things these days. We grab them for random office drone bullshit constantly, but they do all types of stuff. Not sure how common it is these days, but back in the day they'd even get them for state construction projects.
The headlines recently are just the ones activated to "cities" which makes zero operational sense, but that's not the only way the NG is utilized.
Washington had to put down a potential mutiny of Revolutionary troops due to pay. Washington was able to do that due to grativas and the troops respecting him.
I can understand, at least. Risking court marshal is still better than your family going homeless. Everyone values the lives of people they know more highly than numbers on a screen.
They probably want this so they can remove anyone who protested and then give bonuses to the ones who were loyal/subservient, and fill in the empty spots with more people who will fall in line and follow orders no matter how illegal they may be.
So are ICE and the National Guard getting paid? I’m sure some of the people in ICE enjoy being assholes for free, but after a while it won’t pay their bills.
ICE is. But even before the shut down, they were jerking the NG around by deploying them for just under the amount of time that it takes to activate all their extra deployment pay.
Why aren’t more people complaining “ICE is getting paid but our troops aren’t” or “ICE is getting paid to kidnap Americans, but your flights are delayed because air traffic controllers aren’t”?
He has a loyal following despite the harm he does to those very people. They live in a completely different world fed by Fox and other right wing grifters. They place the blame for everything bad on Democrats and use bad actors (in the literal "terrible acting" sense) to portray characters like "former Antifa member" and other bullshit.
Its a cult. They have their dear leader who tells them what to think and empowers them be loud and proud about their hateful ideology with memorable catchphrases and slogans and whatnot.
NG was getting paid when activated, they were getting cut right before housing allowance and other benefits kicked in. But they still got the base daily for being activated.
Now activated guard (for any amount of time) aren't getting paid.
The agency took to X on Wednesday morning to dispel rumors after people on social media were speculating about what federal government services would be suspend
This is false afaict. ICE enforcement is considered essential, so they (like military members) will get backpay, but are not paid during the shutdown. See: apnews.com/article/trump-feder…
Oh no, anyway just a reminder that all unionization and striking was illegal until unions killed enough US military troops to force congress to recognize the bare minimum of workers rights and enshrined them in law. The reason it is illegal for your boss to lock you in a factory for an indefinite period of time at gun point is because your ancestors killed a lot of us army soldiers that were ordered to force us citizens to work or shoot them.
Because she'll be the final vote to release the Epstein Files.
ALL of this is to keep the evidence of an enormous international child sex trafficking operation that included many of the highest members of our government and the most wealthy men in the world, from becoming public.
Shut it down indefinitely! We can fund all the good stuff with state-level taxes. The world can live without our Gestapo at home and imperialism abroad. At this point they're more harm than good.
We can revisit Federal government in three years. They screeched about less government for so long, let's give it to them while they're in power.
Red state scabs like that probably get welfare. Besides, we've seen over and over that these ignoramuses would cut off their own dicks if it offended Libz.
The U.S. directly purchased Argentine pesos on Thursday and finalized a US$20 billion currency swap line with Argentina’s central bank, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post, a rare move aimed at stabilizing turbulent financial markets in the cash-strapped Latin American ally.
The U.S. directly purchased Argentine pesos on Thursday and finalized a US$20 billion currency swap framework with Argentina’s central bank, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post.
I don't believe this article or at least the framing. If true Maduro is giving away his only excuse for his legitimacy. It is also crazy how the leader of the opposition is open about letting the USA have Venezuela ressources for almost free
She played the "Blame the immigrants" card and still got removed, that's unusual to see. Here's hoping the coalition here in Australia sees that and chooses to stop blaming immigrants for everything...
Literally what are you blabbering about, she's been wildly unpopular for a good while now and this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone watching her administration for the last year.
India said it was reopening its embassy in Kabul after four years for "closer cooperation" with Afghanistan. Afghanistan's foreign minister was in New Delhi on Friday as part of a six-day trip to India.
The UK’s terror law watchdog has insisted China is a “threat to national security” and he is investigating the matter after the collapse of the trial of alleged Chinese spies.
Jonathan Hall KC suggested the explanation given on the matter was inadequate and the public deserved fuller clarity, as Sir Keir Starmer meanwhile insisted no ministers were involved in the pulling of the case.
The Prime Minister reiterated that responsibility lay with the previous Conservative administration which was in power at the time of the alleged offences.
It came after two former top civil servants questioned his explanation for the pulling of the prosecution of Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, a teacher.
[...]
Former cabinet secretary Lord Simon Case said intelligence chiefs had warned of the threat from China for years, while his predecessor Lord Mark Sedwill expressed puzzlement about why the trial fell apart because Beijing was “of course” a threat to the UK.
[...]
Critics have pointed to Sir Keir’s attempts to build relations with the world’s second-biggest economy as a possible reason for the Government’s reluctance to label China an “enemy” or threat.
Lord Sedwill, who served as national security adviser from 2017 to 2020, during which time he was also Cabinet secretary, said he was “genuinely puzzled” about the collapse of the trial.
“The truth is that of course China is a national security threat to the UK directly, through cyber, through spying and so on, and indirectly because of some of their aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea and elsewhere,” he added on The Crisis Room podcast.
I realize my title has little to do with the post, lol, tired ADHD brain. I did have the thought that if someone were to be ambitious and motivated enough, the Red Dwarf code could be used to build direct access to BlueSky content into a Fediverse client.
But then, I'm always the guy in the corner pining for the good ole' days of Trillian for IM, the one client to reach them all ^_^
I was recently playing around with Constellation and - partly as a statement but mostly as a personal challenge - used it to build ATProto notifications support into my ActivityPub enabled web app (writeup here, I'd post from that but I think lemmy.world blocks it since I sent it too many invalid activities or whatever).
I already had the ability to follow someone on atproto by resolving their handle and hitting their PDS directly (without authentication - that's all public), and I also turned Bridgy Fed on. With Constellation, I was able to (a) find the bridged atproto version of each ActivityPub post I made, and (b) find any likes, replies, or reposts related to each post.
When a Bluesky post hits my inbox and I click on it, my app checks to see if that user is also using Bridgy Fed, and if they are, it shows me their post over ActivityPub instead, so I can like or reply to it.
More broadly, it might be interesting if someone made an app that used a PDS as its primary datastore, but also had ActivityPub S2S support built into it. I know wafrn can do both protocols, but I think in its case it mirrors posts to a separate PDS kind of like you're describing.
PandaCap is freaking awesome! Pretty much just what I had in mind when I posted previously about a single client to act as inbox for all ActivityPub and RSS/Atom content, only I had imagined it as a browser plugin or full on custom browser so that the content from the inbox would be opened in a client of the user's preference based on post type.
Really awesome project! including DeviantArt etc is really great for the art angle.
The only feature I would miss here vs. other clients is the search function as you mention. I assume that is omitted because it is a lot of work to implement. Have you looked at extending your project with someone else's code for that function? I know sometimes that is more trouble than help, but it would really take the project to that next level of "completely full featured client".
I have looked at wafrn, definitely a cool project and I like that it handles both protocols, but it has some limitations that hold me back from switching to it as my main client. I didn't know it was using a PDS in that way, do you mean it uses a server side PDS to mirror ATProto content or is it PDS per user?
I'm not exactly sure how it works in wafrn - I haven't looked into it myself - but last I heard, they were using blacksky's PDS (lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51892713) which I'm guessing means all their users (at least the ones who've turned atproto on) get mirrored to that particular PDS.
The search functionality missing from Pandacap is in some ways intentional; I don't personally like searching for anything in the fediverse or in Bluesky, because I run into a lot of text posts, photos, screenshots or whatever that I don't have context for and that I haven't mentally prepared myself to see. But there's also the technical issue that right now, Pandacap doesn't index incoming posts in one place; they either go to the inbox, go to notifications, or get ignored. If search were to be implemented, perhaps it could take the form of an external ActivityPub instance that indexes posts, and Pandacap would just hit its API or something.
The other issues with Pandacap are that it's single-user, and that it's on the Microsoft stack, so no one can really use it unless they're willing to sign up for Azure and know their way around it enough to get it deployed. But that keeps overheads down for me compared to running a VPS.
I've never tried loading a PeerTube post in Pandacap but I wonder if it would try (and fail) to display the video in an image tag, or if it would just show up as a text post.
Wafrn (tumblr alternative with fediverse and bluesky support) has started using an alternate relay; this means that they depend on none of bluesky's infrastructure to work.
Bluesky post by @[url=did:plc:72wa4qoe4ssxx2az3xljtq5d]Gabbo the wafrn guy[/url] saying: "Thanks a lot to @rudyfraser.com for hosting the blacksky PDS. After confirmating thatis ok, wafrn now uses blacksky's relay! In the next update other wafrns may also use the relay"
I think it could be. Cosmos DB might have to be replaced with a different EF Core provider - not sure which would be most appropriate but I'm sure something would work. Key and image storage could just be done on disk.
No man, he's trying to use this thing to divide Europe. US (not only Trump, even all previous presidents) don't like EU, it's a problem for the geopolitical monopoly of US. In this historical period, US need to reaffirm their economical superiority and want to call their vassals to the order. But EU is an obstacle to the US vassalage project, so they want to destroy it. They help anti-EU movements and at the same time the pro US parties. They impose double taxes and military expenditure (that is another tax). They pretend to EU trades only with US and US vassals by requiring economic taxes against China and support to Israel. They put at war the EU in Ukraine to stress it's economy. And now, their just using another opportunity to stress the relationships between UE states, because now Italy, Hungary, Polony, and France (which is a soon-to-be right-wing US friend) need to take position about it, and are just looking forward to have another opportunity to divide EU.
Yes, the US looked forward the war in Ukraine because it was another obstacle for the EU economy and its dependance on Russia and the commitment of the EU in it. It was also a way to make EU more tied to the US vassals than what it was before
Not to mention their continued efforts in destabilising MENA which has tangible negative effects on the whole Mediterranean area and to the rest of Europe
Oh wow yeah, that must be why we’re seeing all the Bundeswehr and Armee de Terre and Wojsko Polskie and so on casualties in the war as they fight against Russia.
Except that’s utter bullshit and none of it is true. What the fuck are you smoking?
I don’t disagree that the current US regime is doing its best to undermine EU unity, but at the same time, don’t parrot idiotic and patently false Kremlin talking points.
Before the war started, Biden’s administration executed one of the most shrewd and incisive applications of intelligence sharing and publication to categorically disprove not only Putin’s smoke screen of “we’re totally not planning on invading Ukraine”, but also pretty much their entire casus belli.
After the war started - and before the current regime took power - there was a frustratingly long period of time where the US more or less hung Ukraine out to dry, and we only started seriously supporting them (in a similarly frustratingly piecemeal and nannying fashion) pretty far into the active phase of the war.
There’s an argument to be made that the Biden admin’s policy towards the war was aimed at bleeding Russia out; while I agree that there’s something to that with regard to the outcome of that policy, I honestly think Jake Sullivan (Biden’s NS advisor) being such a categorical limpdick with infuriatingly outdated worldviews, particularly with regard to Russia, was the primary driver of why things were so stingy and halting for so long. The attrition was much more an effect of that hemming and hawing, and much less the actual intent - at least, until towards the very end of the administration’s tenure… at which point leaning into the attrition strategy was blindingly fucking stupid, considering the incoming regime’s obvious predilections.
I don’t think it’s coherent to try to tie the Biden admin’s policy - frustrating, myopic, and stuttering as it was in many ways - to how the current regime is trying to orchestrate things, for several reasons:
Orangeboi is still kind of obviously super Russophilic for deeply suspicious reasons
Orangeboi et al have an extremely transactional, zero-sum, and kissingeresque worldview, and are demonstrably quite frustrated that Ukraine isn’t acquiescing to being treated like a nice little obedient pawn
Orangeboi personally dislikes Zelenskyy, and orangeboi is notorious for letting petty personal disputes dictate his actions, and is further notorious for holding the most insanely stupid and spiteful grudges far beyond the bounds of logic and reasonability
Orangeboi detests his political opponents, to the point where his regime is disassembling pretty much every single thing not associated directly with him, simply out of spite and animosity
The war in Ukraine didn't start during the Biden administration, it started in 2014 with the Euromaidan, where both Russian and Western assets certainly played a role in the events, resulting in the annexation of Crimea and the "civil war" in Donbas where Russian paramilitaries and unmarked actual militaries operated.
I support the Ukrainian peoples' right to self determination and reject war as tool to settle disputes, but saying the US has no responsibility in starting the war is just dishonest. If they wanted they could have assuaged Russia, it's not like they actually care about Ukrainian people, but it was in their interest for this war to happen, so they stoked the fire. Is it solely their responsibility? No of course, Russia is the one actually waging war, but please let's be objective.
Oh - I didn’t by any means intend to say the US has no culpability in the war. We absolutely do. A huge contributor to the active phase kicking off in 2022 was the US and the UK essentially abrogating their parts in the Budapest Memorandum - specifically, their guarantees of territorial integrity and sovereignty to Ukraine, in exchange for Ukraine surrendering their nuclear weapons to Russia (which Russia repaid by, of course, doing a shadow invasion in 2014 and an active/open invasion in 2022).
I blame Obama and Merkel for doing fuck-all in 2014. I believe Obama was interested in doing more, but Merkel dug in her heels because of that sweet, sweet oil from Nordstream I (and the at-the-time potential for NS II). She is never to be sufficiently damned for being a core enabler/useful idiot in this clusterfuck of a war that Ukraine is being subjected to. There are not a lot of politicians who fell further in terms of my respect for them than Merkel.
Bleak. But still you're perpetrating the picture the US likes to paint of themselves: the de facto sheriff of the world. Which has always been delusional (but something voters really go for apparently), and getting more so by the minute.
I also need to add that Russia's invasion was a European problem in early 2022. Sure, US influence had already been a thing in Ukraine, but imho all that has been blown up by Russia's troll army after the fact. Even "NATO coming too close" or some such - painting Russia as the victim, not perpetrator - wasn't a talking point until long after the war started. Seriously, Finland joining NATO? That's entirely your fault, Putler. That said, of course NATO-Russia relations have never been very good, almost by design.
Incredibly stupid even if he could, they hold the straight of gebalter which is one of the most important if not the most important military location in the world. Stupidity is the reason authoritarians destroy their own countries more so than even corruption.
All the American politicians that managed to persuade foreign states to voluntarily join an "alliance" where one "ally" is dominating everything, decisions, how much land for bases and so on, are all rolling in their graves now
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS These media sources are slight to moderately conservative in bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor cons…
Does the article have any problems you'd like to point out, or are we just being weird and racist for the fun of it? The Straights Times is Singaporean, not Chinese. The only link I can find between The Straights Times and the government of China is from a few months ago when the CEO met with several Chinese state-run news agencies to discuss collaborating to "tell the story of the two countries’ development and people-to-people friendship." That's the only link I can find. The Singaporean news outlet is most definitely not "a state owned newspaper by the Chinese government."
Edit: The Straights Times is republishing this article by Reuters. Any complaints you have would be directed there, not at The Straights Times. You're being weird.
The U.S. president demanded that alliance members allocate 5 percent of GDP to defense spending. Spain was the only country to refuse to commit to the benchmark.
This article doesn't even say why Spain isn't committing to the 5% target. The article OP crossposted says why in the first few sentences:
But Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said at the time that he would not commit to the 5 per cent target, calling it “incompatible with our welfare state and our world vision”.
Not sure how the Politico article is better in this case since it seems less informative.
Because the source is important, and Politico is generally more trustworthy.
With both articles, you can now probably trust what's in them (and maybe use context clues to figure out a little bit about the biases of both authors). But until seeing the story corroborated by a reputable source, I will not take it at face value.
So what does the dumbass think Spain is suddenly doing or not doing? Did he see someone from Spain speaking Spanish on TV? Does he think since Mexicans speak Spanish that Spain is also Mexico?
A) because they have more money than they know what to do with it.
B) because they think that greasing his palms will help them schmooze and collude with even more ultra-wealthy people, and get them even more money and influence.
Isn't that the same Infosys that is involved in scamming the H1B visa programme by using "projects" with non profits to bypass the H1B cap? I think it is.
Human trafficking with more steps, making a small group of people obscenely rich.
Naphtha is a primary feedstock in the petrochemical industry for producing olefins and aromatics, which are then used to manufacture a wide array of products, including plastics, synthetic resins, synthetic fibers, and various other chemicals.
Naphtha export loadings from Russian ports to Taiwan more than doubled in August month-on-month to around 370,000 metric tons and totalled 1.8 million tons in the first eight months of 2025, according to LSEG data.
China, Singapore, Malaysia and Turkey were among the other top destinations for Russian naphtha export supplies in August.
Milei had been struggling with market turbulence after a defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections seen as a bellwether for crucial mid-terms later this month.
The US has stepped in to bolster Argentina's floundering economy, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday announcing a $20 billion economic support package and the purchase of Argentine pesos aimed at stabilising the South American nation’s…
Argentina successfully repaid US$4.341 billion in debts under President Javier Milei’s leadership, signaling a commitment to restoring investor confidence. Despite ongoing economic challenges, sign…
because Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (billionaire former hedge mgr) is friends with another billionaire (Rob Citrone) who is heavily invested in the right wing Milei government.
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.
Thats simply not true of the UK, the Crown earns billions off the back of the peasents. One example, every sea borne wind turbine pays a tithing to the king so UK citizens have more expensive electricity as one example.
The palace has staff in parliament to advise it if there is legislation it might deem inappropriate to the crown, they obterfer often.
No legislation is legal until it gets Royal Ascent ie the asshole signs off on it. Similarly on Australia where he abdicates rhe job to the GG, HIS representative (not ours).
The Crown has a massive land portfolio and rent seeks billions from many.
The UK crown is toxic as fuck, just becase we have normalised their repugnant behaviour means nought.
The previous Queen witch oversaw the slaughter of millions in the Mau Mai uprising in Kenya as another example
Trumps an arsehole no doubt but he's there becase that's what people wanted, they even had a look back on 2016 amd said we want this shit again bitot was their choice The king should be hung and the royalty disbanded.
So.. What are these two idiots going to do in a few months to a year when the dollar finally crashes under the weight of all the tariffs and other monetary malpractice committed by the fascists?
Its normal to be depressed in western society. We have all the food we could want but we have to work all the time for someone else, and its hard to get enough money to buy your own place.
Still, we have it better than most of the planet i guess. We dont starve, we dont have wars. Even though they are trying hard to add wars, since its so profitable.
After the Nazi invasion of Denmark this placed them in danger; it was illegal at the time to send gold out of Germany, and were it discovered that Laue and Franck had done so, they could have faced prosecution. To prevent this, de Hevesy concealed the medals by dissolving them in aqua regia and placing the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid.
Imagine if they announce "Donald..." drumroll "Duck!" and a little RC car rolls up to place the prize on and a big screen shows an animated Donald Duck receiving it overlayed over the RC. Trump would probably have a senile moment just staring and not understanding, lmfao.
The drone strike on Pakistan happened before he won
The White House released long-awaited figures last July on the number of people killed in drone strikes between January 2009 and the end of 2015, an announcement which insiders said was a direct response to pressure from the Bureau and other organisations that collect data. However the US’s estimate of the number of civilians killed – between 64 and 116 – contrasted strongly with the number recorded by the Bureau, which at 380 to 801 was six times higher.
The use of drones aligned with Obama’s ambition to keep up the war against al Qaeda while extricating the US military from intractable ground wars, but the programme has drawn much criticism.
If Norway just created a Noble Prize, would he notice the difference? And if you surprised him with it in person, no one could ever point out that it wasn't the Nobel prize as trump can't stand to ever be wrong so he'd say that's the one he really wanted all along.
Problem solved, someone can nominate me for the second Noble prize.
What worries me is what he will do after he doesn't win that prize and is no longer incentivised to maintain that extremely superficial pretense of "peace" that he's already awful at.
I don’t think deserving things (or not) is really a relevant consideration for people like that. They just have things that they want for whatever reason and the power (or not) to have them
Remember how Putin stole a Super Bowl ring from Bob Kraft? He just asked to look at it then walked out of the room with it. I bet Trump would do exactly the same thing with a Nobel medal if he had the chance.
Trump did nearly the same thing with some young injured military guy's Purple Heart. Trump told him much he admired it, obviously fishing, so the guy offered it to Trump, probably never imagining that Trump would actually take it.
Instead, Trump said "I've always wanted one of these!" And kept it.
I had to look this up. Omg holy crap, that might have actually happened. How sad. Honestly after that I kinda hope they just made him another one and didn't tell pooty LOL.
He knows he's dying and is having an end of life crisis. He desperately wants to be liked by the same type of cunts that pick nobel piece prices as sail on mega yatchs before he starts getting fucked in the ass by Satan.
Overgrown toddler mentality. He doesn't use logic, doesn't consider other people, fairness, accomplishments, optics, etc. He just wants it, hasn't been told 'no' enough, and has Big Feelings about it...
The Nobel Peace Prize -once granted by a jury of scholars- has been given by politicians to other politicians for years now and has become just as worthless as you'd expect. Trump should definitely have one, just because he likes golden things so much. Maybe they should create a special category, the Trump Nobel Peace Prize, just as the economists did with their "Nobel prize" for economy (or whatever). The latter is not a Nobel prize at all, but who cares. Maybe put double gold on it or better put two medals and extra cheese in a burger roll. I bet Trump would like that,
Nah, one of his psycho followers with a tongue so far up his ass they can taste his boogers will create it for him, trying to suck up. Just like all the other absolutely insanely bizarre shit they’ve been saying/doing/trying for the last few months.
It's only "real" if your definition of "Real NOBEL Prize" doesn't include NOBEL Prizes being set up by somebody called Alfred Nobel, which is kinda like calling a Theatre Play done by somebody working at the Shakespear Globe a "Shakespear Play".
You will noticed that modern plays in Shakespear style are called Shakespearian Plays, not Shakespear Plays.
All this neatly illustrates how the Theatre World is actually more genuine than the Economics World.
Yeah, I consider it real because they're administered by the Nobel Foundation. Nobel didn't set up any of the prizes himself - they were created after his death by the foundation set up to d execute his will.
The Ig Nobels already have an occasional peace prize (the exact list of prizes changes year to year) but they're far too cool for Trump to get one.
The 2025 peace prize went to "Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann, for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person's ability to speak in a foreign language"
"The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prestigious peace prize, held its final meeting on Monday, the Nobel Institute said Thursday, a day ahead of the announcement of the 2025 laureate.
This means a decision was made about the laureate or laureates before the conclusion of an agreement between Israel and Hamas,"
We will be lucky if we have a democracy after his term.
It looks like he’s reforming the government so that it follows the dictates of the President who is wholly owned by the billionaire oligarchs of the world.
That civil war is a few years late. Not going to happen, everybody's glued to TVs and social media, too bothersome to get out of the couch and do something.
What if we get it in his head that he hasn’t built any pyramid yet. At his age, Khufu had probably completed and was buried in his pyramid; the one that is still visible today, five millennia later. Where is Trump’s? What legacy will he leave us? He needs to start building asap
Once he gets convinced and starts appropriating funds for that, we only talk about that. Non stop. That way he doesn’t make any progress on his fascist agenda. Just a narcissist tar pit.
What could go wrong? Worst case scenario we have an American pyramid that is not a casino or a hunting and fishing store.
Jesus Christ tells us to love each other. Even the sick and the mad, we should love. Turning a mental disorder into an insult isn't what Jesus would want. Jesus would be friends with people who have narcissistic personality disorder, because they're society's rejects, and because Elohim has been for six thousand years the god for the oppressed.
Trolls are people who try to upset others. I can understand why you'd think I was trying to upset you by spreading the teachings of Jesus Christ, and I can understand why you'd think I was trying to upset you by encouraging you to love the mad. But I'm doing neither, and I think your sense that I'm "trolling" in a weird way is your mind's way of telling you that. I'm here to spread understanding and empathy, not hate.
You just called Trump an oppressed in a very round about way in your last comment. Thats troll behavior. The man himself was pleaded to by a priestess to not stomp immigrants with a gestapo regime and he then proceeded to stomp immigrants with a gestapo regime. Jesus would want us to protect these immigrants.
I believe you think I called Trump oppressed. May I guess as to why? I think it's because you're of the opinion I simply must agree Trump has NPD, so if I call people with NPD oppressed, I am including Trump. But the only mental disorder I think Trump has is dementia. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a disorder. It disables or distresses the one who has it. Trump does not look disabled or distressed to me, so he does not have the disorder. I'm far more concerned about the innocent people you're vilifying who have a disorder you've chosen to treat with hate. They've done nothing to harm you. Please, think about what Jesus would do. Love your neighbour instead. And then we can all team up and sacrifice the orange Antichrist on a pyre.
We are all each of us capable of the same love, the same kindness, the same wisdom, and the same miracles as Jesus Christ.
23 “Truly[d] I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
Yeah, like they're going to give the Peace Prize to the guy that renamed the Department of Defense, the Department of WAR. Hard to imagine a worse mixed message.
Easier to argue that even WWII wasn't a defensive war (not that I think we should have stayed out of it, just that everything since then has been for sure us causing problems).
It's complicated. (Ignoring for the moment that we deposed the sovereign government of the Kingdom of Hawai'i for a strategic outpost and tropical farmland.) Japan wasn't trying to invade the United States at all, they didn't want us to interfere with their attacks on the rest of the South Pacific and thought crippling our fleet would buy them the time to do that. And we were already putting pressure on Japan with a naval blockade so it's not like Pearl Harbor was unprovoked. (And we had been supplying their enemies.) It's not really a "defensive war" for the US like it was in Europe.
I didn't forget about pearl harbor, that's why I said arguably WWII, I think that's the last time the US experienced a military attack. I'm not including terrorism here, but you could argue 9/11 was a military strike. I wouldn't tho.
Yeah, IIRC I wouldn't say that was a war of defense but it was certainly defense of an ally. Yeah the US got blindsided, then MacArthur got it into his head that he could unite Korea and loads of American and allied soldiers died. From what I've read, it was a bad one. I'd highly recommend the coldest winter by David Halberstam for ppl who want to learn about this monumental fuck up.
He's actually done a phenomenal job of redefining the limits of USA politics. I mean, he's completely destroying our country, and at a rate that even I have to acknowledge is kind of impressive, despite being horrifying.
Sadly, I don't think they give out the Nobel for that. But maybe we can get him one of those trophies little kids get for playing sports.
Not actually trying to sum it all up in a quick phrase. This here is just a late night kinda one of those “Yo, that sounds right” kind of thingy things. If you wanna bust my ball sac, let’s talk sports. I hope we are all on the same side politically speaking. If not politically on the same page then your mother is a Munt.
He's like Scooby Doo who would do anything for a Scooby Snack, or Kel who would do anything for orange soda.
Except Trump won't do anything. Like he literally won't do anything. He'll just say he did something amazing and then shit his diaper and retreat back into his mansion.
Give him one in physics and make it the sort of thing only an absolute moron would think is praise, like for his unique demonstration of angular posture; or in normal speak because he leans like a Pisan tower at a Houston rap concert
And Obama's drone strikes live rent free in the minds of an entire generation of people in the middle east. Still weird as fuck that he got a peace prize, but it would be much weirder if Trump received one.
Haha. Wouldn't it be awesome if the next POTUS after Drumpus, was awarded a Peace Prize LOL ? It would be the only reason to wish Mushroom Dick a slightly longer life, so that he can enjoy that moment too.
I was wondering about that as well so I looked into the dates. Apparently Obama got the award in October 9, 2009, and some of the first controversial drone strikes under his administration were in March and April of 2009. Dude came out the gate drone striking and the Nobel Committee just ignored it.
I'm laughing that the committee awarded the prize to a Venezuelan. Trump is going to be raging all day - all caps screeching about how he deserved to win, how Maria Machado is a loser, about how many conflicts he resolved etc. His government is going to be striking out against Venezuela (despite the winner being an opponent of the regime), Norway and the Nobel Prize organization. Fox will be on a rage fest too and all his proxies too. I guarantee that we'll see esteemed members of Nobel getting detained at US borders, being deported etc because Trump is a sore loser little bitch.
I think it's worse than that. His cult members are sore for him. Trump probably won't flag everyone he wants detained, but his disciples will do it for him to please daddy.
Not that I think Trump's not petty enough, I think he's not capable enough.
Your instance is heavily censored, both in terms of that filter, and also your instance admins who are very, very ban-happy towards people who don't share the same views they do. I recommend switching to a less controlling instance if that sounds like a problem to you.
I hadn't heard that they gave it to someone else until I read your post.
That's hilarious. Any day that Trump is unhappy is a good day. I love to see unhappy billionaires because they always thought their money would make them happy, and it doesn't. Their solution is that they'll finally be happy if they have even more.
Now we're going to have to hear him cry about it for the next year, like the world-class sore loser that he is. He'll probably try to get his followers to storm the Nobel HQ.
The bright side is that maybe he'll go around settling wars and conflicts around the world. Maybe we can steer his naked ambition to do some good.
Cool. How about them Epstein files? If you want a peace prize, they should be released to settle the matter finally. Then you can have your participation trophy Mr. Poopypants.
Why not offer a participation trophy called the ‚Noble Piece Prize‘? At his reading level he’ll not notice any difference and no one is going to tell him.
Even if this pause on Israeli imperialism lasts, he's simultaneously extrajudicially bombing foreign civilians, on purpose, in international waters. And bragging about it.
He also thinks he's smart, attractive, beloved by all Americans, and good at golf. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and just thinks that's the way it's supposed to be. It's never occurred to him that he might not deserve anything he wants, from companies to political victories to sexual conquests to accolades.
"But amid the naked ambition behind Trump’s push for peace in Gaza, even those who have been highly critical of the war have hailed the deal as a major achievement."
It seems like they are celebrating too early. Getting the hostages back doesn't end the war. Once the hostages are returned, they'll go right back to genocide.
Narcissism is scary and ridiculous thing. I actually know a guy who desperately wants to get a Nobel Literary Prize because "he deserves it!". Except no one rightfully gives a fuck. He's an old timer who ended up migrating to US after WW2 with a whole can of worms and then some regarding his national identity. Depending on his mood he's either Ukrainian or American, I'd say he's 100% narcissist who is all about clout. Dude never made it as a writer and gained notoriety in Ukraine due to his outsider status first and yet he's so vain it is kinda morbidly funny - like he insists he's the most experimental Ukrainian writer (even though he disregards every other writer as primitive and retarded) or that he did this or that first (like who gives a fuck?). But even with all these "accomplishments" he struggles to publish anything in Ukraine because wants publishers to cover the expenses and give him "the bag" for their trouble and when he fails at that he blames it on "Ukrainian people being ungrateful".
When you're looking for a peace prize while pitting US citizens against each other, you know it's because whatever "immunity" you got won't be enough to hide from your crimes. - People aren't dumbasses donny.
He knows he'll never see the inside of a jail cell. He knows he doesnt have the decade or so that trial would take, even if the house and senate magically flipped this midterm and the dems were able to impeach him and his court.
Major media and social media seem to promote the winner - Maria Corina Machado - despite that she is a Trump fan, and Israel supporter. Also in Mastodon she is trending.
Maria Corina Machado had strong political ties with Netanyahu’s Likud party and has said on Twitter that “Venezuela’s struggle is Israel’s struggle” when it comes to the matter of terrorism
Just make a Nöbel Prize, throw a big fake ceremony and give him one, making sure it's bigger than the Nobel medal yet also make it of yellow shiny plastic.
They're all saying it. Every time I see somebody they're saying the same thing. They say mister trump you're the most peaceful guy I know. I heard somebody say that once and now they're all saying it.
They all come up to me and stop and they say sir, I'm sorry to hear you lost the prize to a very nasty person. A real nasty person. I hear she didn't even win in her own country you know, and I shake my head and I say it's too bad, the state of things. A big shame. You know who else was big? Palmer. Let me tell you about palmer ...
If they award the obese orange lard souffle a Nobel Peace Prize, then that will just be another achievement that's become meaningless. It would be like giving Hitler a Peace Prize for not invading Poland a bit earlier. And Donny 2 Inches body count is in the same magnitude as Adolfs, and still growing. Associating Hitlerpig with anything prestigous will demean and pervert it. EVERYTHING Donny 2 Dolls touches or is associated with, DIES !
Its probably out of character for them, but the Nobel Commitee should make an announcement of things they consider disqualifiers for the prize to see if they can push him into relenting on his fascism.
You know, "we will not consider any leader as a candidate who imposes or utilises martial law to rule their country. We will not consider any candidate who orders international killings of civilians. We will not consider any candidate that ignores their own countries constitutional protections when it comes to foreign nationals living in its territories, etc.
I think they should give a NPP to Little Marco, or Steve Witkoff (ewww..), just on the chance that maybe Donny 2 Weeks will stroke out in rage.... Or another to Obama, LOL.
Yeah well the person the Nobel committee gave it to is a Trump supporter and wants the US to intervene in Venezuelan politics. They gave it it Trump by proxy even if he is too stupid to realize it.
From mega-embassies to alleged spies, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is struggling to recast the U.K.’s relationship with China to create a best of all worlds situation. But the U.K. doesn’t have the clout to pull this off successfully, and Labour doesn’t seem to realize this. It wants to both cooperate and challenge, without any plan for what happens when Beijing won’t play ball.
[...]
The U.K, along with the rest of its allies, is supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion, the worst conflict on European soil since World War II. China, whatever its denials, is aiding and abetting Russian aggression.
[...]
China has escalated this economic pressure into an explicit threat. [...] Back in the spring, China warned the U.K. that it would retaliate if Labour decided to classify China as a top-tier threat under the foreign influence registration scheme, which would have heightened the risk of criminal penalties for anyone who failed to disclose their activities with a Chinese state entity. In the end, Labour did not classify China as a top-tier threat.
[...]
It’s not hard to make the leap that China is likely applying similar pressure on the Starmer government to approve its proposed “mega-embassy” at the heart of London. Even though the application was shot down by the Tower Hamlets Council in 2022, China resubmitted an identical version of the application after Starmer became prime minister.
[...]
The irony is, it is because both Whitehall and the Chinese diplomatic staff in London mismanaged their handling of the alleged spy case that it may be politically impossible to approve the new embassy this autumn. And if what currently looks like a brewing scandal comes to the boil and there is a high-level resignation or firing, the ramifications could be more long-term.
Gray Sergeant, a research fellow in Indo-Pacific Geopolitics at the Council on Geostrategy, recently wrote a Substack post about the U.K.’s position on Taiwan, pointing out that last month Chinese jets practiced attack runs on a Royal Navy frigate in the Taiwan Strait. China-U.K relations, he concluded, “cannot, and should not, be good.”
While Trump’s plan offers the important possibility of a pause or end to Israel’s genocide, the worst of Trump’s plan for Gaza is embedded in its long-term vision. The plan amounts to a blueprint for external neocolonial domination over Gaza, under which Palestinians will have no formal ability to assert their rights or determine their future. Trump’s plan for Gaza denies Palestinians self-determination and says nothing of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
Under the plan, Trump would personally chair an Orwellian “Board of Peace” that would rule over Gaza, with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side. The Trump-run “board” would convene an unnamed “panel of experts” who would create a “Trump economic development plan” that would “rebuild and energize Gaza.” But dig a little deeper, and it is clear that Trump’s vision for Gaza is yet another page from the Trump family playbook for corruption and self-enrichment.
Protection of political, economic and commercial interests has led to FIFA’s ‘double standards’ in countering anti-Israel protests and calls for sanctions, say experts.
Fediverse Report 137 - this week’s fediverse news
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[li]altstore joins the fediverse, and you can interact with apps on the alternative iOS app store now via your fediverse accounts. Altstore also made a 500k USD donation to various fediverse platform
Fediverse Report 137 - this week's fediverse news
altstore joins the fediverse, and you can interact with apps on the alternative iOS app store now via your fediverse accounts. Altstore also made a 500k USD donation to various fediverse platforms
Mastodon is getting Starter Packs, with more details on the design, soliciting feedback
A New Social announced a new version for Bounce, which allows you to transfer your account from the fediverse to #bluesky
AltStore, an alternative app store for iOS, is joining the fediverse. The store launched early last year as an alternative to Apple’s own App Store, thanks to the EU’s Digital Markets Act. AltStore has been growing over the last year, and is now taking the next steps. AltStore is now connecting to the fediverse via their own Mastodon server. The integration that AltStore has build consists of every app on the store automatically also becoming a fediverse account, hosted on their AltStore Mastodon server. They explain: “Using ActivityPub, we plan to federate apps, app updates, and news alerts from AltStore to the open social web. Each AltStore source will receive its own ActivityPub account, which can then be followed by any other open social web account. You’ll be able to like, boost, and reply to everything, and most importantly all these interactions will appear natively in AltStore.” For now, they are using the microblogging format (ActivityPub ‘Notes’), but AltStore plans to publish new native ActivityPub objects specifically for software releases, that can be used by other fediverse app market places.
The organisation also has raised 6M USD in VC funding for further development. They believe that the long-term success of the AltStore is tied closely to the success of the open social web, and they are donation 500k USD to various fediverse projects. AltStore is donating 300k USD to Mastodon, and the other 200k USD is split across various fediverse projects: the bridging software Bridgy Fed (which AltStore uses to also connect their store to Bluesky), the fediverse clients Ivory, Phoenix and Tapestry, the mastodon server mstn.social (as operator Stux is also a regular publisher to the AltStore), and the platforms Akkoma, PeerTube and Bookwyrm, as well as the Fedify ActivityPub software framework.
Recently I wrote about how the app stores are the most likely choke point that authoritarian governments will use to apply pressure to force open social web platforms into compliance. Alternative ways of distributing apps that fall outside of the control of two Big Tech platforms is a crucial part of keeping the open social web open. AltStore connecting their marketplace to the fediverse is a great step into taking back control from these two gatekeepers, although much more work remains to be done. Over on ATProto people are also experimenting with distributing apps and software packages via the protocol, and the space of app distribution via open protocols is primed for more experimentation and projects.
Mastodon has shared more information on their upcoming plans to introduce ‘Packs’ to Mastodon. The design is based on Bluesky’s Starter Packs, which is a list of accounts you can create and share for other people to easily follow. Mastodon is taking a careful approach to designing the feature, and is actively soliciting feedback from the community. The main change that Mastodon is making is in giving people control over if and when they can appear in a Pack, as well as giving people the ability to easily remove their account from a Pack if they so desire.
One of the pain points for Starter Packs on Bluesky is that people got included on Starter Packs with no easy way to remove them from the list. When the Starter Pack got popular, that resulted in an account getting lots of new followers, but in a way that collapsed the context of the account, resulting in conflict. One of the challenge points with Starter Packs is that the identity of an account does not always match with what they are actually posting about. For example, if someone has a PhD in philosophy and sometimes posts about that, they might get added to a philosophy Starter Pack. But in practice they might mostly post about US politics, or reposts anime, which creates a mismatch in expectation and friction between the original account and the new follower from a Starter Pack.
Bluesky’s Starter Pack have gotten a lot of praise for their effectiveness in onboarding entire communities at the same time during migration waves, when entire communities move from one platform to another all at once. This seems to be one of the major reasons for Mastodon to also adopt a similar feature with Packs. But for Bluesky, the feature has turned out to be a mixed bag, with the developer who created Starter Packs being decidedly mixed on the feature herself. She says that Starter Packs are indeed highly valuable during migration waves, but that in other times they are susceptible to abuse for engagement-hacking, as well as the context collapse earlier. Mastodon is taking a careful approach with their Pack feature, and they are actively engaging with the learnings from Bluesky, so it’ll be interesting to see how the feature will turn out in Mastodon.
You can soon transfer your social graph from Mastodon to Bluesky, with the new version of Bounce. Bounce is a tool by A New Social, the organisation behind the bridging software that connects various open social web protocol. With Bounce, you can move your account from one social networking protocol to another. The organisation earlier released a version which allows you to port your Bluesky account to the fediverse. With the new update, which will be available on October 20, you can now do the same in reverse: move from the fediverse to Bluesky.
The projects by A New Social, both Bounce and Bridgy Fed, represent an effort to give people more control over their own digital identity and social graph. Both ActivityPub and ATProto give people the option to move their account to a different platform on the same protocol. With tools like Bounce, this capability is enhanced even more, with the ability to move an account to a different protocol as well. For people more interested in moving from Bluesky to the fediverse, the tool Slurp now allows you to import your Bluesky posts into your fediverse account.
Fediverse podcasting platform Castopod now has a repository for plugins for the platform. With plugins people can customise their Castopod instance to their own needs. As anyone can create plugins, this allows for greater diversity in development of the software. Castopod also announced during this week’s Fediforum that there are now over 1000 podcasts using Castopod.
A pro-Russian propaganda network has targeted the fediverse and Bluesky, “promoting pro-Russian narratives and linking to Telegram channels associated with known state-aligned disinformation operations”, IFTAS reports. Their findings are based on the work of the antibot4navalny research team, which notes that the campaign makes use of the Bridgy Fed to get their accounts that impersonate news organisations into Bluesky.
The ActivityPub framework Fedify has gotten a 192K EUR grant by the Sovereign Tech Fund to further strenghten the ecosystem. The grant will be used for further development of the framework. Fedify is already in use by Ghost, and is also supported by Ghost.
Mastodon is soliciting feedback for their new Terms of Service for their mastodon.social and mastodon.online servers. The organisation originally proposed a new ToS in June, but retracted those after criticism from the community.
China is increasing military activities near Taiwan and honing its ability to stage a surprise attack, as well as seeking to undermine trust in the government with "hybrid" online warfare tactics, the defense ministry said today.
Taiwan has faced increased military pressure from Beijing during the past five years, including at least seven rounds of major war games around Taiwan since 2022.
"The Chinese communists have adopted routine grey zone harassment tactics, combined with joint combat readiness patrols, targeted military exercises and cognitive warfare, posing a comprehensive threat to us," the defense ministry said in a report released every two years.
[...]
Beijing is also using "hybrid warfare" to weaken people's trust in the government and support for defence spending, and using artificial intelligence tools to weaken Taiwan's cybersecurity and to scan for weak points in critical infrastructure, it added.
"Through both conventional and unconventional military actions, it aims to test its capabilities for attacking Taiwan and confronting foreign forces," the ministry said.
[...]
The report said China is using a "professional cyber army" to manipulate social media accounts and flood them with misinformation to sow division in Taiwanese society and weaken trust in the government.
Chinese state media outlets and collaborators have also worked to weaken the will to fight, it said.
The ministry added China has also been using deepfake technology to make videos and utilising AI to "generate polarising political rhetoric".
[...]
The report was released one day before Lai gives his key national day speech. China last year held war games after that same event in what it said was a warning to "separatist acts".
China won't get a damn thing if they invade. Taiwan has bombs strapped to every server, computer, and machine. The moment China steps one foot on the island, everything they are invading for goes up in smoke. It'll cost them a million fighters lives for a bombed out island. Sadly, China isn't going to let that stop them. They have 3 years to take the Taiwan while America continues to crumble under Trump. Right now I doubt our military is prepared for any boots on the ground war because Trump just insulted every general and military personnel.
At the time of his arrest in 2015, Gui Minhai held only Swedish citizenship. Chinese officials have frequently stated that foreign passports do not protect individuals who were born in the People’s Republic of China, an interpretation that violates the Vienna Convention.
In February 2020, a Chinese court sentenced Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison on charges of ‘illegally providing intelligence abroad’, after a secret and unfair trial where he has been denied proper legal representation and access to Swedish consular services.
His current whereabouts are still unknown.
On 9 October, an overwhelming majority of 546 out of 593 Members of the European Parliament voted of a resolution calling on the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Commission and EU member states to urge China to release Swedish publisher Gui Minhai.
JOINT MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION pursuant to Rules 150(5) and 136(4) of the Rules of Procedure replacing the following motions: B10-0412/2025 (The Left) B10-0414/2025 (Verts/ALE) B10-0429/2025 (Renew) B10-0431/2025 (S&D) B10-0433/2025 (PPE) B10-0435/202…
In February 2020, a Chinese court sentenced Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison on charges of ‘illegally providing intelligence abroad’, after a secret and unfair trial
The first sign of the American order came when a Houston TV station aired video showing people in the courtyard of the consulate apparently burning documents on Tuesday night.
Demonstrations went ahead despite calls from politicians and police leaders for the protests to be postponed in wake of the Manchester synagogue attack.
Americans will believe this about a Swede distributing anti-Communist agitprop, then lose their fucking minds if they see a Confucius Center or a Mosque open up in their neighborhood.
One of the best-known photographers in Mexico. Her work looks away from the sensational images of violence that have for years defined the nation, and instead looks inwards, to the traditions, faces, and unusual sights seen everyday.
Iturbide came to photography later in life. She was the eldest daughter of a wealthy, conservative couple. In 1962, she married the photographer Pedro Meyer and had three children. It was after the death of her daughter in 1970, aged just 6, that Iturbide turned to photography.
The 5th image is perhaps her best-known photograph. Nuestra Señora de Las Iguanas (Our Lady of the Iguanas), it was originally published as part of her photo essay Juchitán de las Mujeres (1979-86), a project which began with Iturbide's support of feminist causes.
Iturbide was also involved in documenting the indigenous cultures of Mexico. This image, Mujer Ángel, in which a woman carries a tape recorder on her journey to ancient cave paintings. was shot in 1979 in the Sonora desert, when Iturbide was living with the Seri Indians.
In many of her photographs there is a sense of playfulness and strangeness. These qualities are at odds with many people's expectations or experiences of Mexico. Iturbide has always strived to look beyond the lurid headlines, to the absurdity of life.
Folk stories and religious themes are common throughout her work. Particularly when the visual language of the catholic church meets ancient native traditions and the realities of contemporary life.
Iturbide started photographing landscapes and birds. She had heard the Seri Indians talk of the significance of birds, and she began to incorporate living and dead birds into her art; symbolic of strength and fragility, freedom and vulnerability.
In the mid-1980s she photographed Mexican-Americans in Eastside Los Angeles, many of whom were involved in street gangs. The cholos and cholas of the White Fence Gang would later feature in the anthology A Day in the Life of America (1987).
The Green party of England and Wales, at its conference last week, passed a landmark – and long overdue – motion backed by the Greens’ new, Jewish party leader Zack Polanski demanding the proscription, or banning as a terrorist group, of the so-called ‘Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF), in reality an arm of the terror state occupying Palestine, as well as calling for an apology by the UK to the Palestinian people for the ‘Balfour Declaration’ that paved the way for the theft of their land to create Israel as an ethnostate.
The Green Party: IDF are terrorists
It is the first time a UK political party has named the IDF as a terror group, despite the Israeli regime’s genocide and endless crimes against the Palestinians for the past two years and for decades before that.
The motion calls for:
The Israeli military (IDF) to be banned under UK counter-terrorism law, so that participation in or praise of its operations could be criminalised;A formal apology from the British government to the people of Palestine for the Balfour Declaration;An immediate cease of Israeli military operations in Gaza, a withdrawal of forces, and the guarantee of humanitarian access – food, water, medical supplies – to civilians;Support for the International Criminal Court’s case of genocide, and a full arms embargo on Israel;The end of British training, intelligence sharing, and spy-plane flights over Palestinian territory;Use of British shipping resources to deliver aid to Gaza and the West Bank;Deployment of a UN peacekeeping force into Gaza and the West Bank to protect Palestinian lives.
There is, of course, zero chance of the Starmer government classifying the IDF – and therefore itself for aiding it – as terrorists, or of either Reform or the Tories, both strongly Zionist, doing so either. All the more reason to do everything to ensure a Green/Your Party coalition is in government after the next general election.
Now that I know what's really going-on: it's a policy of Netanyahu's "Israel".. it makes much more sense.
( Thank you Lemmy.World for informing me of that doctrine, the other day )
It also makes-obvious that you have to meet force with force proportionately, such that any player who always throws-around disproportionate-destruction so as to always-increase their control-of-the-world, you HAVE to hit them with force-equal-to-what-they're-throwing-around, XOR you are accommodating-their-gaining-control-of-our-world.
Same as always, G-D's law is reflective, and that means equal-and-opposite-force. ( yes, same as physics )
The really-sad thing about Netanyahu's "Israel" is that their own scripture, like Jeremiah & Isaiah, identify that their relationship with their god is cyclical: with-god then against-god .. and when they go against-their-god, then their-god torches them.
So, IF their scripture holds-true, and their god is as it/"he" stated in their scripture, THEN Netanyahu's "Israel" should be toast, shortly.
if their god won't torch them, or enforce-their-torching, THEN their god is .. evil, apparently, or intermittent, or .. periodic, or something.
So, the Scientific thing to do, is simply .. wait & see.
Let's see if their scripture is right, & they're getting torched, shortly..
If so, then maybe their god is someone of integrity..
( for a bit more context, Jews are ordered to NOT read all of Isaiah, apparently, by their rabbis:
1 entire chapter of it is forbidden because it looks too-much like it backs the root-guru of the Christians, benJoseph.
The whole concept of rabbis outranking the prophets of Judaism .. I find that hard to reconcile with logic, you know?
but ideological-contortionism is normal, among humans.. )
whatever. From what I've read, zionists insist that Ezekiel .. iirc it is 39 .. vetoes all Jeremiah & Isaiah, & blesses their genociding of ALL peoples around them..
Therefore genociding Palestinians is just the beginning, right?
Rabies is rabies.
Ideological-rabies is ideological-rabies, it doesn't matter whether it is "zionist" or "christian" or "islamist" or "capitalist"/moneyarchist/oligarchist or "buddhist" or "hindutva" or "atheist" or "confucian" or "marxist" or "leninist" or "right-wing" or "fascist" or mass-shooter or ANY ideological-rabies:
we've got the inherent right to fight against ideological-rabies!
Same as the right to fight against the biological rabies, & ebola, too.
Healthiness is a right!
Always was, always will be.
Anyone opposing healthiness-is-a-right is .. representing wrongness.
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On October 13, a court outside Paris will put on trial Dr. Dilnur Reyhan, a prominent French-Uyghur scholar and activist, and the president of the European Uyghur Institute, for the criminal offense of “degradation of property belonging to others.”
Three employees of China’s embassy in Paris had filed a complaint against Dilnur Reyhan for her participation in a protest against the Chinese government at a Paris-area music festival in September 2022. During the festival, she allegedly threw red paint on an embassy banner, which, one plaintiff reported, resulted in a €25 shoe-cleaning fee.
The Chinese government alleged that Dilnur Reyhan had caused “damage to property” and that it was a “racist attack” -- a charge later dropped. Dilnur Reyhan was publicly protesting Chinese government crimes against the Uyghurs in northwest China, including mass arbitrary detention and imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, separation of families, and forced labor. Human Rights Watch and others have concluded that some of these acts amount to crimes against humanity.
“For the Chinese embassy, the aim is not to win or lose the case, but to impose a psychological and financial cost [on me] to silence [my] criticism,” Dilnur Reyhan said during a hearing in March. “I should not be prosecuted by the French courts but, instead, protected against China’s attempts to silence me.”
[...]
The prosecutor initially dismissed the Chinese government’s complaint in 2023. But the prosecutor reopened it on appeal a month after Chinese President Xi Jinping made an official visit to France in May 2024 and hundreds of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and others protested. A hearing scheduled for March 2025 was postponed until October when neither the Chinese embassy representatives nor its employees showed up.
In recent years the Chinese government has escalated its harassment of critics abroad and members of the diaspora, acts of abuse beyond China’s borders known as “transnational repression.” For instance, in July Chinese authorities arrested a Chinese student, Tara Zhang Yadi, for the grave crime of “inciting separatism,” all because she advocated for Tibetan rights while studying in Paris.
Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services
Update October 14: Accounts are still being created, and unused accounts registered earlier are being activated.
Since 15 September, IFTAS has been tracking a coordinated network of over 300 accounts operating across Mastodon. These accounts are engaged in a high-volume propaganda campaign, promoting pro-Russian narratives and linking to Telegram channels associated with known state-aligned disinformation operations. We became aware of a related investigation by the Antibot4Navalny research team that observed these accounts bridging to Bluesky, and we have since collaborated to enhance our investigations and share our findings. Their public post provides further context.
Antibot4Navalny’s observations identified additional impacted services we were unaware of, and highlighted that accounts were still being created. Furthermore, thanks to their specific expertise in this area, this helped clarify and confirm that what we were seeing was indeed the work of a coordinated campaign with an increased likelihood of it being a state-sponsored or state-approved campaign.
We have been contacting affected Mastodon administrators, and are now moving to a public advisory to inform the broader network.
The network includes accounts impersonating reputable news outlets such as BBC News, Euronews, and Meduza, designed to give credibility to Telegram propaganda links. We believe it may be connected to the “Pravda/Portal Kombat” pro-Russia propaganda network.
Accounts are hosted across numerous Mastodon instances and bridged into Bluesky, creating the appearance of independent sources. Activity on Bluesky helped reveal aggregate patterns, identical usernames, posting schedules, and content themes more clearly than across decentralised Mastodon services.
This campaign appears to mimic tactics observed in earlier influence operations, blending low-cost automation with impersonation and volume-based amplification.
Remember every time we find Putin backed propaganda outside of Russia in the wild, it's nearly always boosting predominantly conservative viewpoints versus anything else.
Outside of their borders they're more interested in people fighting with each other than anything like coming together. Right wing politics is how they do that
Sorry, but this is wrong. They're also actively sponsoring "left wing" propaganda, to further sow discord. Depending on which group you yourself belong to, it's just easier to spot "the others".
And of that propaganda being created, that conservative inclined people are most likely to fall for it: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/…
There seem to be plenty of other papers that more or less reach those same conclusions with a good number of citations, but I can't find anything really at all on Google Scholar concluding the opposite with a quick search, let alone something also credible.
The closest some papers come is saying that they try groups all over the political spectrum, as their goal is disunity ultimately, but they seemingly don't really have any kind of continued success with misinforming those groups anywhere near as effectively. They more or less all end up concluding that most of the propaganda targets conservatives, because they're the ones that fall for it.
I think one of the problems with citing that first study as evidence Russian disinfo is targeted at conservatives more than liberals is that it only studied one case, and Russian disinformation campaigns tailor their disinfo to different demographics, often through brute force/trial and error. So it is quite possible that the particular case they studied happens to be tailored to (or more successfully resonated with) conservatives, while another specific case would have resonated with liberals more thus resulting in more liberal exposure by their metrics.
Your assertion that more is conservative is a meaningless assertion in the context of this discussion.
More can be conservative on average but you don't see an average view of the internet, you see your filter bubble, and that source backs up the original assertion that yes, Russia is targeting leftists too.
Rumors and smears are part of free speech. To the extent that right-wing trolls and their audience are actual voters, it's essentially just a coarse form of ordinary political speech.
The extent to which a foreign government acting coverly is either creating or artificially boosting such content is scandalous.
True enough. But even a tyrannical government at least has a presumable intent of working for the betterment of its country. (Albeit through wrongheaded and small-minded means )
A.foreijgn power, especially a historical adversary and bad actor, is instead presumably working to harm or diminish us.
No, they have the intent of working for themselves. That's it. They don't give a shit about the country and you should never presume the ruling class of your country has your country's best interests in mind.
You presented it as proof that Russia is supporting misinformation on the left. To be that, it has to both include all three parts of the claim -- that there is disinformation on the left, that Russia is covertly supporting disinformation, and that some of the disinformation on the left was supported by Russia.
If your wife sleeps around, and I engage in casual sex, it does not necessarily follow that I slept with your wife.
A common suspicion in America is that Vladimir Putin believes that Trump as POTUS is good for Russia, and that Putin interferes with US politics with a specific goal of helping Trump.
If you have some reporting that directly links Russia to left-wing disinformation I'd love to read it. But the BBC article I read after following your link didn't have any such link.
When you make a statement it's your responsibility to provide proof because what if you're talking out of your ass? How would we find any proof in that scenario when it literally wouldn't exist? How would we know if you misinterpreted a source? How would we know we misinterpreted the correct source? What if we think what you're saying is so stupid we don't want to waste our time looking for proof? There are a lot of reasons the burden of proof shouldn't fall on us, which means the burden of proof should fall on the person who made the statement. They know if what they said is factual and if it's factual they know where they found this fact and thus it would be significantly less effort for them to find and present the source.
Better. That actually supports the assertion that Russia does engage in left-targeted disinformation (in Canada, on Twitter.)
It also supports the original point you dismissed as "wrong" -- of the 90 "most influential" accounts, only 9 were subjectively identified as "Canadian far left".
Maybe you should spend more time reading the actual articles, and not just their headlines?
Absolutely and utterly false. They try and promote fighting, anger, and distrust of government to everyone.
They target leftists with things that will upset them, make them angry at the right and the government and other leftists and sow further discord and polarization.
Less extreme Leftists generally aren't nearly as likely to be control freaks as the right (although there are always exceptions), so getting them (as a group) angry enough to fight takes much more effort than it does the right.
A source for my lived experience? Or do you mean an example?
I have been banned from .ml twice for stating that Russia shot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine - a matter of incontrovertible fact which has absolutely nothing to do with any leftist theory, as far as my masters degree in political science can discern.
.ml is moderated to be ideologically one sided. Pro-capitalism is literally not allowed and will deleted. Making a pro-west or anti-China or Russia comment is like a bat signal for .ml admins and users alike to dogpile on your comment.
It’s their right to moderate their instance how they see fit, but removing content on ideological grounds is going to result in people thinking what’s left is propaganda.
For the most part I like .ml users, I don’t care for the admin team and moderator decisions and that’s why I’m not on that instance. I could care less about the fact my instance is defederated from hexbear users or grad users. They do want to be polarizing and live in a propaganda bubble
I wouldn't call them that. Most if not all of them are genuine people with some having accs for many years before Reddit crossed the line for most of us and them becoming anyhow relevant to interfere. In a recent hexbearean post about fediverse negativity I've read a couple of opinions with a notion that federating with others wasn't that great, and they were pretty happy just by themselves. I assume, it's the same for other two too. That's a game too long and effortful to be a psyop imho. Their positions and where they get their info are things to argue, but let's not get as far as dehumanizing them.
Almost everywhere I soundly proclaim that I am a russian dummy anarchist, that I live in that state for I have no options, and I angrily disagree with their fascination, mystification of what it is, I hold a grudge with anyone who wants that russki mir to be the model the whole world should share.
I, nevertheless, find a lot of points, like personal stuff and grieveancies, theoretical things, sympathy to protesters, to Gazan survivors that I share with them. Unlike transparently racist/fascist troll comms that were there, unlike their campaigns I've noticed, there is a huge population of real people worthy of talking, arguing with.
Call me any names and ban me, but as long as any person or community is supportive of basic pillar causes like body autonomy, you, like, can at least talk to them and find something in common.
What I missed though, is that Diva said the same, but misleadingly doubted the existence of russian bot networks. Them and state suppression ruined the rusophonic space to that degree I dropped it altogether. I don't know how their actions affected other countries, but as a nolifer shitposting addict trying to trust them just a bit, I came through fire, water and copper tubes before dropping them altogether. They are like current Twitter, but worse. And, well, fuck, I wasn't abandoning that to find the next option already corrupted.
To be honest I didn't understand the thrust of most of what you wrote, but if you are against the Rusky Mir, you are probably on the right side to begin with. If you are an anarchist, you probably have no place on .ml to begin with.
Drunktexting and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
The main point why I wrote it was that I don't find them either bots or artifical influencers. They do probably want to have some reach or fresh blood, but don't want their local culture to be spread too thin like it's reddit 2.0. They are anything but cancer that I've met seeing real botfaming ops.
And, although I don't share many of their thoughts, most of the posts I see in my feed discuss common issues where we aren't that far from each other. Closer, than to maga/zionist/z-crowd. And in that context I find it alright to not draw any lines and just talk.
When things start to get overly political, well, that's a whole another thing, where different bestest solutions are incompatible, historical betrayals are dugged up and the internet infighting ensues. It's exhausting and pointless with just 2mil mostly irrelevant nerds on Fediverse. It's easier to just scroll through some amuzing takes, and instead focus on things where we can cooperate.
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.
"Thank you," the KGB agent says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
Lots of people can not stand the fact that you don't agree with them. They will accuse you of being a bot or something, rather than to accept the fact that people have different opinions on things.
The fact the comments here are so contentious is just funny. I will block as is appropriate but so far have not had to do to much of it on the fediverse. Man it needs to be reciprical though so their training is limited.
There are obviously agents from elsewhere, and some of them may be pretty effective, but it's nothing compared to Trump and Co getting money from the likes of Saudis and acting like they own the place. If the main concern is american politics, well, the real worms aren't theoretical or real foreign enemies, but corrupted fuckheads that ignore human, state rights, shutdown government, pack people from the streets to deport. No enemy could've done such damage so-called friends are doing.
The rise in right-wing nationalism has been notable across Europe, as well. It's a good guess that the Russians have been pushing that, too. The US is just ahead of the curve.
The network includes accounts impersonating reputable news outlets such as BBC News, Euronews, and Meduza, designed to give credibility to Telegram propaganda links. We believe it may be connected to the “Pravda/Portal Kombat” pro-Russia propaganda network.
Accounts are hosted across numerous Mastodon instances and bridged into Bluesky, creating the appearance of independent sources. Activity on Bluesky helped reveal aggregate patterns, identical usernames, posting schedules, and content themes more clearly than across decentralised Mastodon services.
If your first reaction was to post "posts I dislike are Russian bots", then you haven't actually grasped the argument. It has nothing to do with anyone disagreeing with specific posts.
It's also very telling that you're reflexively posting that when it says nothing about the data being presented.
I really loved when, a few years ago, he fell ill and flew to France (IIRC) for medical treatment. His family was so sure he wouldn't make it, they filled a commercial airliner with people ready to flee the country.
Then he bounced back! GD Methusala over here. And they all had to go home and pretend like nothing happened.
As the central African country prepares for Sunday's presidential election, he said he would not be heading out to vote. [... ] “He is already too old to govern, and it’s boring knowing only him as president," Nghobo told The Associated Press
Their main purpose is enabling their users to consume content from various sources in one place.
Uh, no? RSS/Atom only contains a summary. It's to inform you about news, a alternative to E-Mail newsletters. Website scraping is extra functionality some clients do.
RSS/Atom can contain a summary, or it can be the full article. It's the choice of the website what to put in it. They only put a summary to force you to visit their webpage to serve ads.
I have tried all sorts of RSS feeds. All the same painful to navigate through a painful, outdated email-like interface that makes it vastly inferior to, you know, scrolling through a website.
FFS, RSS people must have grown up on being desk jockeys stuck in Outlook all day and they don't know how to navigate anything else.
I don't know if it's Lemmy not standing different opinions than: A) some opinions don't add much value to any conversation except to say "I disagree" and that's both not super helpful and in a small community I'd argue it's healthy for positive engagement to be more prevalent than negative engagement. B) some comments disagree or tear down a solution without offering up a good alternative - which leaves the people with solutions feeling worse for their solution, the problem unaddressed in a different way, and if someone likes their solution or even knows it's superior to alternatives it becomes very easy to down vote a subjectively wrong opinion.
In this instance "going to the website" is not a helpful alternative for a tool who's purpose is to aggregate many desired websites into one location only when they have new content. "Going to the website" would be less efficient both in time and effort. This person saying they don't get them, while being on Lemmy - a site aggregator - is to me very funny.
My instinct was to down vote because it was already down voted and for the reasons above, but your comment gave me pause so now I won't down vote but I also won't upvote because it's not content I think anyone should waste their time reading.
Should there be a neutral response on site aggregators for this very circumstance? Never thought about that before.
I think that's a very common and logical instinct/bias. I'm fairly confident you and everyone else does this as well. If someone told you two compare two drinks and that one was expensive, the expensive one gets a statistical boon. If someone says this book sucks and the author is an asshole, you're primed to take previously neutral statements and skew them towards a negative understanding.
I always read before voting but ya, we have bias my guy and talking about them is good.
I’ve liked using FreshRSS in the past, but has the developer finally capitulated and allowed users to sort entries by publication date?
It was probably the most requested feature and they always insisted it didn’t make sense or wasn’t possible despite being a common feature among other RSS feed readers.
my problem with these was that id have one website filling up the feed with a lot of posts and another interesting website that only makes a post every once in awhile and i almost never see it
I have a firehose folder on freshrss that has its own rotation rules such that posts are only retained for a couple days and are then deleted. It is also excluded from the “main” feed listing. Works great for news sites.
I’ve been using FeedBin after Google Reader sunset… so, a long time now. Every year I say I’ll bring it in-house, then I get billed for another year and say fuck it. It works fine. And now they have a minimalist podcast app called Airshow that lets me use my FeedBin account to synch my podcasts across devices. So, whatever… take my money. 25$ a year isn’t going to break me.
Edit: want to add that I use Netnewswire (free) to read my feeds. Integrates Feedbin and isn’t overkill on ridiculous feature that turn it into a p.o.s. subscription app.
During Friday's massive strike action in support of the Palestinians, demonstrators went to the Italian national team's training centre in Florence to demand the match against Israel be called off.
As of Tuesday only around 4,000 tickets had been sold for the game in Udine, a small city in Italy's far north-east, which was picked specifically to help limit the potential for disorder.
Italy are struggling to qualify automatically for next year's World Cup finals and the pressure on the team is exacerbated by the tension surrounding next Tuesday's qualifier with Israel in Udine.
All children – wherever they are in the world – deserve to be children: to explore, laugh and play, especially since play is a vital path to their learning and growth. But what about Palestinian children’s play time – or lack thereof? This is a human right taken from them by Israel.
One of the best-known photographers in Mexico. Her work looks away from the sensational images of violence that have for years defined the nation, and instead looks inwards, to the traditions, faces, and unusual sights seen everyday.
Iturbide came to photography later in life. She was the eldest daughter of a wealthy, conservative couple. In 1962, she married the photographer Pedro Meyer and had three children. It was after the death of her daughter in 1970, aged just 6, that Iturbide turned to photography.
The 5th image is perhaps her best-known photograph. Nuestra Señora de Las Iguanas (Our Lady of the Iguanas), it was originally published as part of her photo essay Juchitán de las Mujeres (1979-86), a project which began with Iturbide's support of feminist causes.
Iturbide was also involved in documenting the indigenous cultures of Mexico. This image, Mujer Ángel, in which a woman carries a tape recorder on her journey to ancient cave paintings. was shot in 1979 in the Sonora desert, when Iturbide was living with the Seri Indians.
In many of her photographs there is a sense of playfulness and strangeness. These qualities are at odds with many people's expectations or experiences of Mexico. Iturbide has always strived to look beyond the lurid headlines, to the absurdity of life.
Folk stories and religious themes are common throughout her work. Particularly when the visual language of the catholic church meets ancient native traditions and the realities of contemporary life.
Iturbide started photographing landscapes and birds. She had heard the Seri Indians talk of the significance of birds, and she began to incorporate living and dead birds into her art; symbolic of strength and fragility, freedom and vulnerability.
In the mid-1980s she photographed Mexican-Americans in Eastside Los Angeles, many of whom were involved in street gangs. The cholos and cholas of the White Fence Gang would later feature in the anthology A Day in the Life of America (1987).
I think QoL tools for moderators need to become more of a Fediverse priority. This burns people out. Key moderators of communities quit and communities become abandoned.
Ideas : - Automatic removal option to remove posts and/or comments for specific keywords. This would be most useful for automatically removing posts and comments when people slur. Piefed already has a keyword filter for visibility. This could be expanded to community settings. Have it also fire-off a report to the moderators when someone triggers it. - Automatic URL removal. Allow communities to blacklist specific urls. Useful for politics or news communities that want to negate sources known for misinformation. - Automatic removal for repeat URL posting. Very useful for politics or news communities to prevent double-posting. - Make it so a community can set itself up to only accept text posts, video posts, or image posts. This should prevent tedious janitorial cleanup for communities that only allow links, or text posts (the most common two). - Post Delay Restrictions. Some communities, perhaps not many, might be interested in posting cooldowns for users. So you can only post 1 post every hour, or 2 posts every hour - or whatever the chosen limit is. This would help negate spammers and over-enthusiastic posters flooding a topical community. - Post Formatting Requirements. This one could be trickier and more effort than most of the others, but setting conditions for the formatting of new posts would be useful.
Now, not all communities would make use or have any need to make use of all of these - but many would to varying degrees - and it would help them.
I think going down this road is important to prevent moderators burning out over the drudgery of moderating communities.
I suppose not. Although I imagine if the Fediverse gets more users it will happen more and more. The current mod tools are not really up to the job as it increases in activity.
If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.
By now I've written four bots using the lemmy API.
Any one of your ideas is doable in a weekend if I ever feel the need for a modding bot. But I haven't. Several communities and instances already have them.
Honestly that's how it should be. Modding can have such diverse needs depending on community that just implementing every possible eventuality into lemmy itself, is a huge ask.
Any large community on discord, reddit and other platforms, make extensive use of automod bots. Because using the API, you can write bots that do whatever you can think of.
Modding is volunteer work, but it is work.
If you need tools, find them. If they don't exist, create them. If you don't have the skills or time, then don't volunteer.
Asking some volunteers to do more than they already are because you think they are letting down another set of volunteers just risks burning out a different set of volunteers.
To be clear, I'm not thinking about Lemmy here specifically. But in any case, however its done - either via the settings, or an easy to access official or officially endorsed mod-bot - access and knowledge to and of these tools should be easy and well-known for community owners.
If you need tools, find them. If they don’t exist, create them. If you don’t have the skills or time, then don’t volunteer.
Not every would-be moderator of a community has the skills or knowhow to make and/or host these things. Even Reddit now, at its size, lacks some capable tools not consistently covered in automod tools.
What I disagree with is that this is a priority. It's a nice-to-have.
Once mod actions are supported, and an API exists, any imaginable automation can be implemented by anyone with the impetus to do so.
As such, the priority of further integration drops drastically and platform developer attention can and should move elsewhere.
Mod tools are best created by the people who use them. Even better when they are created for the needs of a specific community. As such, more advanced features should be deferred until later.
Once communities grow large enough that there are a significant number of moderator-developers around, it might be worth creating a generic bot that can be configured as needed. (As has happened with reddit, discord, etc.)
Asking for these tools before then, is inefficient, because the people who ideally should be working on them, haven't shown up yet, and the platform developers time is better spent on other things.
Well I'm thinking in terms of how to 'shore up' the fediverse, so to speak - to make it able to cope with potential future growth. I do think all of the examples in my OP that I've given are pretty general and one or more of them would be implemented by most communities the moment they were able to do so.
In Skavau's defense, they aren't a programmer, but are probably one of the most active people on piefed's chat server/matrix room as well as the codeberg repo providing ideas and feedback. So they are volunteering time that way (in addition to being site staff for piefed.social).
Some of the ideas in this post are good imo, but are currently not possible yet using the piefed api due to it being much less complete compared to lemmy's. So, it helps us figure out prioritization on what kinds of endpoints would be useful to flesh out next.
My core point is that when it comes to moderation, I would prioritize actual mod actions (such as a mod being able to mark posts nsfw instead of deleting them outright) and API support for those actions, over built-in automod features.
Once you have an API, anyone with the skills can implement whatever automation they need.
After that, I would priotize a bunch of other things, too, before ever coming back around to built-in automod features.
There are a lot of people who make excellent mods who are not programmers. It's already a small enough pool that requiring a particular skill only further narrows the pool. It also has a secondary effect that good mods may be unwilling to take on larger communities, or additional responsibilities.
If we want better moderation, the fediverse has to become more friendly to non technical people.
That seems like the best of these ideas. But it would be better for the originating instance to warn the poster that their url has already been seen and stop them posting it unless they really really want to.
Well yeah Piefed actually already does this. But some people will just ignore it even if everyone uses Piefed. I would make use of blocking repeat-url posting and have it so anyone who ignores it has their post automatically removed or blocked.
What are the differences between piefed and lemmy? Is one financed/supported/organised by commercial companies (or people that work for them)? Are they both grassroots and independent? Do they combat algorithms? Or something else?
Yes, piefed is independent in the same way as lemmy is.
Piefed has tools that Lemmy does not: Flairs, user flairs, hashtags, custom feeds/topics, scheduled posts, poll posting, events - word filters for users.
Most of these features are also implemented in Lemmy, and others too such as private communities (which can only be browser by users that were manually approved by moderators). However we have very high standards for correctness, performance and UX so it takes a while to get all of this released in the upcoming 1.0 version.
Don't donate to the Lemmy devs except if you are ok with supporting transphobes and tankies, because that's what the Lemmy-Devs are (and it's very well documented!). Donate either to the piefed team or to your local instance instead!
Donations are to pay for the development of Lemmy which is a full-time job and pays for our bills. Donating to Lemmy does not mean "supporting transphobes and tankies", thats a really weird thing to say.
If you want to donate to lemmy instances (or the devs as well if the other replies haven’t changed your mind) a lot of them are on Liberapay and if yours isn’t, they probably have a donate link on their web UI.
Interesting, why do you think that scriptable moderation bots need a completely new platform? Wouldnt it be much easier to utilize the Lemmy api directly?
Well, my initial idea was to build this only for lemmy and yes it would be easier that way if I didn't care about scalability.
However, the API was not good enough for my use case. Polling new posts and comments was my main issue with it. So mostly scaling issues. You could miss some posts and comments. The amount of API requests would get bigger with the amount of communities the bot moderates. There are also some problems with the rate limits.
They can be solved by directly querying the database, but who's going to give you database access? So you'd have to host lemmy yourself just for the bot. And I'd imagine the database would grow pretty fast with the number of communities. I explicitly do not want to store any posts or comments.
Another solution would be using Lemmy's new webhook system, but I don't know how reliable it will be.
So I stopped halfway through and started a new project with new goals:
Make a new federated platform
With federation, the problems above would be solved. This also allows it to be hosted without having to find a suitable Lemmy instance for it or even self host one yourself.
Stronger integration with platforms via a modular federation system
If I made it depend on Lemmy, a strong integration with other platforms wouldn't be possible. Piefed has features that Lemmy doesn't, for example. People can maintain a set of platform specific activitypub structs and enable the bot to federate with that platform.
Not really answering your question, but I'd like to make a clarification: The bots will only be able to operate within the boundaries of the communities they are appointed to (or I guess groups). They cannot manage any instances. Furthermore, my main intention is for them to be used primarily as moderation bots, but they can also be used as general purpose bots within the community.
To get new posts and comments for all known communities you only need to make regular requests to /api/v3/post/list?limit=50&sort=New&type_=All and /api/v3/comment/list?limit=50&sort=New&type_=All. Its not necessary to make separate requests for each community. The default rate limit allows 180 read requests per minute so you can comfortably poll this every second (in practice every 30s or so should be enough). If you miss an item (ie post or comment id was skipped) just load the following page.
The plugin system in 1.0 would be another option. It will still take some time until that is released, but there shouldnt be any reliability issues.
Youre right that federation solves these problems, but instead you get another problem of writing all this federation code and making sure it is compatible with different platforms. Lemmy's federation code has around 12k lines so that is a lot. It seems much simpler to use the API for Lemmy, Piefed etc and write abstractions for common functionality.
Anyway this is my opinion. Its your project so in the end its your decision how to implement it.
Yep. I did use those endpoints with the ModeratorView (The bot doesn't need posts or comments from communities it doesn't moderate) on my first attempt. I went with the federation approach at last because of future scalability issues. Though that is probably an exaggeration. If the default rate limit is 180 read requests per minute, that would be more than enough, honestly. The scale at which the scalability issues I mentioned would appear at about more than 4500 comments/posts per minute. Frankly, I think we'll never reach that in the near future. So actually the rate limiting issue is practically not an issue for the foreseeable future.
The plugin system would work. The fetching problem would disappear.
Though I don't think the federation code would be huge. I am not trying to make it compatible with all platforms. For example I'll write the required Lemmy ActivityPub structs to send moderation related activities and actors. The Group's instance would handle distributing the activities, so even though this project might not federate with Piefed for example, it would still receive the activities the bot sends to the Group's inbox through the instance's software, Lemmy.
If someone wanted to get the bot to work on another Ap platform that supports groups, they would have to write the necessary Ap actors, activities, and a bit of glue code, and that would be it... or at least that's how I'm planning it.
I guess I'll try to work with the plugin system if I can't achieve what I want and keep it simple. It would at least be a learning experience, if nothing else. Thank you for the info.
With 4500 posts per minute you will probably get a lot of other scaling issues too, like with your database or the processing of incoming and outgoing activities. In any case its a good way to learn how Activitypub works. Is the code open source? Dont see it on your codeberg.
Using the plugin system you basically just need a way to get notified about each new post and comment, right? I expect that will be one of the major use cases for plugins. We will likely provide various official plugins, eg push notifications for Android and iOS. The same thing should also work for you.Version 1.0 will let you subscribe to communities to get notifications for all new posts and comments (code).
Rewrites the notification system to be more flexible and extensible
Removes the tables inbox_combined, person_post_mention, person_comment_mention and comment_reply replacing them with a single not...
I haven't released the source code yet. The private repo at the moment is very messy in general so I am just waiting until I get a somewhat working pre-alpha done with the design that I am still experimenting with finalized. There's still a ton of work to be done since I just started 2 weeks ago.
Yes, although communities on here already roll with some of these rules. Some don't want double link posting or want to ban specific urls or specific keywords - they just have to do it manually. This can cause mod burnout over time.
That could happen in the future but at the moment and in the past surely we lost more mods as a result of their community being dead than from their community being too active. But we don't hear from them because they feel rejected and like they failed so they slink away quietly.
True. I am just mostly trying to make a record of this stuff for the future. Obviously in the event of these tools existing, mods wouldn't have to turn them on.
I definitely think there needs to be some rough guide on making your community federated and then advertising it effectively so communities can get that early kick.
wewbull
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Cyclist
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Typhoon
in reply to Cyclist • • •Bronzebeard
in reply to MicroWave • • •Why does the guy who want to leave NATO care about who remains a member of NATO?
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NOT_RICK
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Ch3rry314
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i_stole_ur_taco
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in reply to i_stole_ur_taco • • •hellequin67
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SkaveRat
in reply to hellequin67 • • •Corporal_Punishment
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in reply to Corporal_Punishment • • •A_norny_mousse
in reply to MicroWave • • •This makes it sound like it was some kind of done deal, but that's not how I remember it; more like a suggestion, basically as it's been until now only 2% more? please correct me if I remember wrong.
Trump has been ranting and raving about this ever since 2016, making all sorts of weird demands, calling it debt etc.
DarkFuture
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