AirLynk - Secure Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Airlynk — browser peer-to-peer file sharing without servers
I built Airlynk because I was frustrated with every peer-to-peer file sharing tool I tried — connections would fail, transfers would stall, and NATs or firewalls always got in the way. Nothing I tested was reliable enough for real use, and I wanted a solution that actually worked.
So I decided to build it myself. Over several months, I crafted Airlynk to work entirely in the browser, using WebRTC for direct peer-to-peer transfers. I designed it to be simple, fast, and server-free, with fallback relays only when absolutely necessary. Chunked transfers and progress tracking make even large files move smoothly.
The journey taught me a lot about peer-to-peer networking, browser limitations, and user experience. My goal with Airlynk is to make file sharing effortless for everyone, and I’m excited to keep improving reliability and security based on real feedback from users.
you will find here: airlynk.in/
AirLynk - Secure Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Transfer files directly between devices with end-to-end encryption. No size limits, no storage fees, just pure speed and privacy.www.airlynk.in
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AirLynk - Secure Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Airlynk — browser peer-to-peer file sharing without servers
I built Airlynk because I was frustrated with every peer-to-peer file sharing tool I tried — connections would fail, transfers would stall, and NATs or firewalls always got in the way. Nothing I tested was reliable enough for real use, and I wanted a solution that actually worked.
So I decided to build it myself. Over several months, I crafted Airlynk to work entirely in the browser, using WebRTC for direct peer-to-peer transfers. I designed it to be simple, fast, and server-free, with fallback relays only when absolutely necessary. Chunked transfers and progress tracking make even large files move smoothly.
The journey taught me a lot about peer-to-peer networking, browser limitations, and user experience. My goal with Airlynk is to make file sharing effortless for everyone, and I’m excited to keep improving reliability and security based on real feedback from users.
you will find here: airlynk.in/
AirLynk - Secure Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Transfer files directly between devices with end-to-end encryption. No size limits, no storage fees, just pure speed and privacy.www.airlynk.in
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White House knocks Nobel Committee for snubbing Trump, but peace prize winner praises him
Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado praises Trump after White House criticizes snub
Some of Trump's Republican allies have called for him to get the Nobel Peace Prize, though the nomination deadline passed early in his current term.Kevin Breuninger (CNBC)
Doge-ish comes to Florida: a DeSantis loyalist is going after ‘waste’ in Democratic cities
Doge-ish comes to Florida: a DeSantis loyalist is going after ‘waste’ in Democratic cities
Blaise Ingoglia was handpicked by the Republican Florida governor to lead an assault on municipal spendingRichard Luscombe (The Guardian)
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[Announcement] The Third Edict Race Event VoDs
Early Access Announcements - The Third Edict Race Event VoDs - Forum - Path of Exile
Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.Path of Exile
Trump threatens 'massive' tariff hike on China over rare earths dispute
Trump also threatened to cancel his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping because of the dispute.
Trump threatens 'massive' tariff hike on China over rare earths dispute
Stock markets dropped on Trump's bellicose Truth Social post that said China is "becoming very hostile" in seeking tough export controls on rare earths.Dan Mangan (CNBC)
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i guess it is NYT bad journalism again
On the Tibetan Plateau, nearly 10,000 feet high, solar panels stretch to the horizon and cover an area seven times the size of Manhattan. They soak up sunlight that is much brighter than at sea level because the air is so thin.
I remember this. From the 90's.
Autosave has existed AND been the default so long that taking it for granted is now actually okay.
This is not related cloud storage or corporates spying on users. It's just autosave. That's all it takes.
I'll make One guess.
"Starting today, new documents in Word desktop on Windows (Insiders) now save directly to OneDrive, with autosave enabled,"
Yeah.
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Makes me wonder if there is something in the terms that allows them to use documents stored on onedrive to train AI. Adobe is doing the same bullshit and keeps pushing you to send PDFs as Adobe cloud links instead of directly attaching the file to an email. They're doing everything they can to get your data on their servers.
We're no longer the customer. We're the product.
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I would be shocked if this hasn't had some set of controls to disable it in Group Policy for months now.
This is just rent seeking against Home users.
People with One Drive through corporate Azure sjbscriptions (rather than the free "you have a microsoft login" tier) already have fairly robust controls available for handling and securing private data. There's even special Azure tiers for government work that are even further secured.
This is only going to impact home users and conpanies without strong IT teams. Which is an egregious amount of people, don't get me wrong. It's also a horrible anti-consumer move. But this isn't "Microsoft fucks over their golden calf: business users".
Here's why it matters
I'm going to have to put together a script to block any instance of a headline that includes this phrase. It's so fucking overused.
"Why does knowing where my Word documents are stored matter?" Hmmm... let me fucking think, assholes.
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- Here’s why it matters
- Here’s why you should care
- Here’s what experts have to say
- X happened, here’s what that means for the future
It’s like they feel the need to remind us what the purpose of an article is
You'd be surprised how many people actually need that. My boss is one of them and I constantly have to explain to him why shit like this is bad for us. We're currently in the process of upgrading all our PCs to Windows 11 and I'm trying to convince him to let me install Linux on all the computers that don't meet the hardware requirements. Fortunately we use an older version of Microsoft Office that doesn't come with all the bullshit, but there will eventually be a day where we will have to "upgrade" that too. And because of this, I'm also trying to convince him to switch to something like LibreOffice.
Uploading all of our shit to OneDrive is not only a bad idea because we have our own secure servers in house, but it's also a bad idea because we deal with a lot of files that could get us sued if it was leaked online. We don't even let our servers connect to the internet for that very purpose. And it's not a matter of if, but when windows starts uploading all of our shit to OneDrive it will be a complete disaster. And I'm sure there are a lot of guys doing IT at various other companies all trying to explain to their boss the same thing I am while they ignore the issue.
I've worked in business IT before, so I have a (very small) bit of background I can probably share from your bosses side.
If you're not recommending a distro that has a support contract (e.g. Red Hat), what you're creating is a bus situation - if you get hit by a bus, who is going to maintain the Linux terminals when they go down? Would that contract cover supporting LibreOffice? How will normal staff be able to figure out how to use Linux, and will there be a measurable increase in productivity from them, or will they be slow to adjust?
Regarding OneDrive (or more realistically, SharePoint and Microsoft 365), Microsoft has a service level agreement for this. I can't read it on my phone because it's in docx format, but I dare say that it does have some coverage for if data is leaked, otherwise most enterprises wouldn't even touch it.
Your boss likely doesn't have concern in that aspect because of the SLA assurance, and thus it makes more financial sense to move completely over to M365 and away from on premise servers that require constant maintenance, upkeep and power costs.
I'm not sure of the business size you're in, but I'd hazard a guess that its a small business if your boss is in a position to potentially change out the existing IT infrastructure. You're facing an uphill battle in convincing your boss to move to Linux because the desktop support for it is limited and likely expensive, and the alternative is to keep you and probably hire other Linux technicians to maintain those Linux systems when they go down.
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Microsoft can't seem to figure out sync, ever since Briefcase, if you involve multiple computers you invariably end up with more and more conflicting copies. It's embarrassing.
Office itself is insanely bloated is a world with Markdown, open data formats, and easy access to scripting. They used some pretty unethical tactics to make OOXML a "standard" to stop governments from switching to an actual standard: ODF-based Libre Office.
Why Microsoft deserved to lose the OOXML standards vote
I believe that the world is big enough for multiple file-format specifications. I don't think the Open Document Format (ODF) deserves to be the only format sanctioned as an "open standard.Mary Jo Foley (ZDNET)
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I mean this softly, but I'm going to guess you haven't used OneDrive recently, and haven't used it where it's been set up in a competent manner. The default settings absolutely are not conpetent, espiecally for how messy computers for personal use get.
My workplace uses OneDrive to sync a specific set of user profile folders so we approximate having profiles and files that follow us without everyone needing a personal folder on a network drive that mounts at login.
The only issues we've had are profiles auto-downloading too mant of peoples files and eating drives on shared machines (so you just have your meeting room computers wipe all profiles every reboot and schedule reboots nightly), and I've had some issues where OneNote hadn't actually synced the notebook back to the cloud before I closed on one machine and opened on a different machine so I lost some notes.
Beyond that, it's handled even situations where I have the same file open siniltaneously on multiple machines smoothly. Syncs between login on multiple machines take 3 minutes max, and I can force it faster if I really need by pausing and resuming the sync.
I'm sure there's situations it's still not suited for, like editing and syncing large monolithic files (think video files over 1GB a piece). It probably sucks big time on personal machines where you're going to have a complete mess of every file type imaginable tossed in one big unorganized heap.
But configured correctly, for general business use, it can work very well.
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Am biz. I see it.
Sovereignty is almost the issue that it needs to be, but our 'security' types totally trust MS at their word when they say "it's only stored in your country and can't be touched from here. Trust me, bro."
These are security types who know to ask "how do you know" 5 times, and don't even ask it once.
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" Word will now save new documents to OneDrive by default — and that changes everything"
Wouldn't it be great if all your docs were stored out in the cloud? Just think, you wouldn't need a hard drive! And someone else could guard them for you, like, say, Deputy Dan. descope.kwwhitaker.com/wallofs…
DeScope -- "I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus"
A cranky journal for anyone who makes a buck off of the themed entertainment or themed design racketdescope.kwwhitaker.com
Honestly, even as a privacy guy, this makes sense. SkyDrive was unique in giving people 30GB, plus 5GB if you turned on photo upload (even if you turned it right back off). So even without paying, my OneDrive is still 35GB. That's plenty for documents.
What Windows 10+ does with backing stuff up to OneDrive and sharing it across builds is smart, if not the best execution. I kind of have that between my Macs and iPhone with Safari bookmarks and passwords.
I would be asking how safe OneDrive is and if it had any major breaches, if I were a Windows user. I'm actually using iWork and iCloud though, and I trust that a little more, but OneDrive doesn't seem that problematic to me. There's a lot I don't like about Microsoft, but OneDrive doesn't earn any ire from me. Should it? (Probably not since I'm a Mac user and it's all abstract anyway.)
Is there no longer a "save as..." option to select where you want to save the file? 🤔
I have used Open Office for over a decade now so this is kind of a genuine question.
Is this just for home edition? Or other editions as well. I work at a school with education edition, and I have a co-worker who said when I was helping the with their file management problems
me: just save to Desktop for now. We will fix it later.
Them: I don't think I have a desktop.
I can't imagine how many other offices having to train their staff about all these new features.
I know Google's office products are essentially the same problem, but they are at very least free (in dollars).
I haven't used MS Office in years. We use Google at work. I use my NextCloud at home.
My God, THANK YOU! I've seen this article in five different places and everyone is losing their minds over this, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that:
1) This ONLY affects people who are using OneDrive in the first place.
2) It's a setting that you can change any time.
3) If you want to keep the default but have a specific file outside of OneDrive just - exactly like you said - click "Save As" and store it locally.
It's mind boggling how much people switch off their brains whenever they see Microsoft doing literally anything, and the entire conversation devolves into "Microsoft bad".
"Guilt by association": Children of human rights defenders are suffering from severe psychological trauma under China's state violence, new report says
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/43833960
ArchivedThe exiled Chinese civil society organization “Chinese Human Rights Defenders Families Network” has released a nearly 30,000-word specialized research report titled: “Collateral Childhoods: The Psychological Impact of State Violence on the Children of Human Rights Defenders.”
It marks the first systematic study [...] to unveil the situation and profound psychological trauma suffered by the children of human rights defenders in an environment of state violence.
Zhou Fengsuo, Executive Director of Human Rights in China (HRIC), who has long provided humanitarian aid to the families of human rights defenders (HRDs), stated that under the reality of authoritarian rule and high-pressure politics, the children of Chinese HRDs are often forced to endure the associative harm resulting from the persecution of their parents: their education is interrupted, their daily lives lose stability, and their psychological sense of security is repeatedly shattered.
The associated repression by state violence that these children suffer is akin to the barbaric ancient system of ‘guilt by association'. Because they lack adequate cognitive and defense mechanisms, the scars left by these traumas are often deeper and more difficult for society and the system to recognize.
Key findings:
- Severe Deprivation of the Right to Education: Used as a Tool of Repression. The report found that children in nearly all cases experienced educational interruption or denial. Some were outright rejected by schools due to their parents’ identity, others faced forced displacement and multiple transfers, and some were publicly shamed as “children of political prisoners” by teachers and peers in the classroom. The education system, meant to ensure equal development, has been weaponized for political persecution.
- Widespread Mental Health Crisis: Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideation. Multiple children and adolescents exhibited severe symptoms like depression, anxiety, insomnia, and hypervigilance. Furthermore, some reached a point where “they sought ‘liberation’ by abandoning life,” resulting in documented cases of self-harm and attempted suicide. Prolonged exposure to high-pressure, fear-inducing environments prevents them from achieving normal identity formation and socialization during adolescence, posing severe risks for their adulthood.
- Frequent Fragmentation of Family Structure. In the majority of cases, one or both parents were subjected to long-term imprisonment, restriction of freedom, or forced exile. Children lost their primary attachment figures during critical developmental stages, relying on single parents or fragmented kinship care. This chronic separation led to severe attachment disorders and a pervasive sense of insecurity.
- Continuation and Silencing of Intergenerational Trauma. The parents’ fear, shame, and powerlessness are often transmitted to their children through emotional atmosphere and behavioral patterns, forming a “silent legacy.” Some children even normalize torture and humiliation, prematurely adopting the role of “protecting their parents,” thereby losing the safety and freedom of childhood through premature adultification.
- Exile Abroad: Not an End, But a New Predicament. While some children were fortunate enough to leave China, they faced new difficulties abroad: language barriers, cultural isolation, identity anxiety, economic hardship, and the persistence of trauma responses. Exile marks a relative start to safety but simultaneously represents a continuation of isolation and compounded adversity.
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Hackers can steal 2FA codes and private messages from Android phones
Hackers can steal 2FA codes and private messages from Android phones
Malicious app required to make “Pixnapping” attack work requires no permissions.Dan Goodin (Ars Technica)
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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
Your body your choice.
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.
I'm here for you.(Keeps pulling) You make boss memes.
"DONT GIVE UP ARTAX! (Cries a bit til I meet the big turtle)
~~Didn't the US just give them a $20 billion bailout? ~~
Wrong country, sorry
ctvnews.ca/world/article/us-bu…
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.
U.S. buys Argentine pesos, finalizes US$20B currency swap
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.The Associated Press (CTVNews)
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Corrected title:
Peru self-coups democratically elected Boluarte, probably through American corruption.
India set to reopen embassy in Afghanistan
India set to reopen embassy in Afghanistan
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.Dharvi Vaid (Deutsche Welle)
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UK’s terror law watchdog ‘investigating’ after collapse of China spy case, says China a ‘threat to national security’ and the public deserves better explanation of what happened with prosecution
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/43814870
ArchivedThe 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.
UK’s terror law watchdog ‘investigating’ after collapse of China spy case
Jonathan Hall KC said China was a ‘threat to national security’ and the public deserved a better explanation of what happened with the prosecution.Laura Elston (The Independent)
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Red Dwarf and Constellation: could we skip the Bridge?
@whey.party/red-dwarf
an appview-less Bluesky client using Constellation and PDS Queries - https://reddwarf.whey.party/tangled.org
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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 realize my title has little to do with the post
I was going to say. Red dwarf is the name of a ship and Constellation is a class of ship. In any case, you can't have a proper ship without a bridge.
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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.
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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"
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I actually like the single-user Delft hosted aspect.
As far as the Microsoft stack goes, could it be hosted on a home server running Windows or does it have to be in the cloud on Azure?
Trump floats dropping Spain from NATO alliance
Trump floats dropping Spain from Nato alliance
He said European leaders need to prevail upon Spain to boost its commitments to Nato. Read more at straitstimes.com.ST
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That's not how NATO works. He can't kick out somebody because he wants to.
NATO is agreement they all members are committed to defend each other in case of attack.
What he is actually doing is trying to divide and break NATO for his boss, putin.
From his actions so far I'm worried that if Russia attacks Europe, not only US won't help, he will be actively sabotaging any operations.
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The US put the EU at war in Ukraine?
I'd say the war in Ukraine is the direct result of the illegal Russian invasions in 2014 and 2022 and the ongoing war of aggression, but go off buddy.
Apart from that, yes, the EU is inconvenient for every other bigger power, this includes the single remaining mayor power, the american empire.
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they put at war the EU in Ukraine
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.
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Uh… no…?
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.
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The Straits Times, launched on July 15, 1845, is an English-language newspaper based in Singapore.Singapore Press Holdings currently owns The Straits Times
mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-str…
The Straits Times - Bias and Credibility - Media Bias/Fact Check
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…Media Bias Fact Check
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.
Trump suggests booting ‘laggard’ Spain from NATO over defense spending
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.Faith Wardwell (POLITICO)
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?
Come on, you know it's something stupid...
Britain’s ex-PM Sunak to take up roles at Microsoft, Anthropic
Britain’s ex-PM Sunak to take up roles at Microsoft, Anthropic
Sunak, who is still an elected parliamentarian, has been told not to lobby the government on Microsoft’s behalf. Read more at straitstimes.com.ST
Why?
He's a useless twat, what good will he bring Microsoft other than helping kill them?
An AI startup sounds about right for him, but why is MS employing him?
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.
Didn't Nick Clegg go to work for Facebook?
Rishi Sunak can still influence the government on Microsoft's behalf.
Isn't Rishi Sunak married into an Indian billionaire IT family?
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.
If this were truly a democracy, his constituents would get a referendum on whether he can both represent them and Microsoft at the same time.
I thought we at least used to try to hide the corruption.
Isn't it traditional to reward those "elected" who boosted one's "lobby"?
He's still got his ties in gov't: he can continue "influencing" gov't for his owners' sake, obviously..
Lobbying needs to be openly declared to be bribery & criminally-undermining.
( like that'll happen within my lifetime.. )
_ /\ _
Why do useless rich dickwads always have the need for another grifting position?
At what time do they go enjoy their free time and be as free of the world as someone can be?
Well, I think far worse about Anthropic than I did before seeing this news.
Microsoft? Not so much, my esteem for them was already in the shitter.
Trump boosts Argentina's Milei with $20 bn economic lifeline as US buys pesos
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.
Trump boosts Argentina's Milei with $20 bn economic lifeline as US buys pesos
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…FRANCE 24
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You can’t have an axis without making some friends.
It may also be a roundabout way of satisfying some creditors in New York.
Argentina successfully pays bondholders $4.3bn, Javier Milei celebrates
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…Eurasia Business News
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.
succinct explainers: YouTube shorts from MorePerfectUnion and NowThisImpact
- YouTube
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.youtube.com
No, we (Aus here) have a King and he doesn't concern himself with our or England's finances.
They have some sort of Dictator.
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.
Service guarantees ~~citizenship~~ Tricare. Would you like to know more?
Wait, no, military medicine and VA hospitals suck too.
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.
Trump's Nobel Prize desperation now a 'running joke' among diplomats
Trump's Nobel Prize desperation now a 'running joke' among diplomats
President Donald Trump's desperation to win a Nobel Peace Prize is now a "running joke" among diplomats at their regular gathering.Nicole Charky-Chami (Raw Story)
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this can be dealt with
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.
Israelis nominate radical settler leader Daniella Weiss for Nobel Peace Prize
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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.
thebureauinvestigates.com/stor…
Obama’s covert drone war in numbers: ten times more strikes than Bush
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.Jessica Purkiss (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism)
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.
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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.
Vladimir Putin Stole Super Bowl Ring from Robert Kraft?
Russian President Vladimir Putin stole a Super Bowl ring from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.Nick Hardinges (Snopes.com)
That was Violet Beauregarde's fate. Veruca was the one who was a bad egg (or a bad nut, in the book/Depp adaptation).
But in keeping with the theme, Trump wins nothing. He loses, good day sir.
Thin skinned snowflake is literally trying to start wars WITH STATES because they told him and his fascists to fuck off...
That child rapist deserves jail time, not a peace prize.
The great thing about electing Republicans is that the rest of the world doesn't laugh at us when one is in charge.
Does this /s make my butt look big?
Ah, the good old "Swedish Central Bank Prize For Economics In Honor Of Alfred Nobel", for which they use the shortname "Nobel Prize For Economics".
The whole thing neatly reflects the honesty of the profession.
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.
Did Alfred Nobel leave explicit instructions in his will that the Foundation he created could create more Nobel prizes?
Because ultimatelly, it boils down to whether they were following his will or not.
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"
"hours before the European group will decide the award recipient"
They think they make the decision same day as the announcement... LOL.
The winner has already been picked.
timesofisrael.com/dampening-tr…
"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,"
Oh, well, maybe they'll remember him next year.
Then he's going to throw such a tantrum for the next year...
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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.
Not going to happen, everybody's glued to TVs and social media, too bothersome to get out of the couch and do something.
Yeah. I listened to an episode of ologies about this.
Age is a big part of it. Like no one over 30 wants to risk everything for something they believe in.
The average age is older than it was in the civil war era.
Could we use his narcissism in a productive way?
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.
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.”
Mark 11
For a pharoh your probably looking at 40-50
Khufu died at 43
Wow trump could have had two pyramids by now, look at that!
Maybe we should give him a Nobel in economics.
He showed that the worlds economy isn't a glass house that suddenly implodes if somebody looks at it the wrong way.
We've had this clown running his tariff circus for a while and no financial Armageddon or world wide recession.
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.
Best case scenario for this worse case reality.
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.
For best genes, because of nuclear. From his uncle.
No, it doesn't need to make grammatical sense, just give it to him.
Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize
Oslo City Hall Oslo, Norway 1:44 P.M. CETwhitehouse.gov
Obama got the Peace Prize for creating hope after dubya ... and partly in order to "bind" him to commuting to peace.
That was not one of the better selections.
It would be the only reason to wish Mushroom Dick a slightly longer life, so that he can enjoy that moment too.
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.
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.
At his reading level he’ll not notice any difference and no one is going to tell him.
If he did his campaign promises of ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza with his first week, he might’ve had a shot.
But no, he decides to divide and antagonize.
As it should be. It’s pathetic. Which is something Trump nows all about. Like diddling little kids.
Also, the fact an entire country is now fearing the turds petty revenge for not winning justifies him not winning.
To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
"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.
Oh yeah. Anything the orange lard ass fails to win, is stolen. Anything he wins, he cheated.
The only thing the corpulent cunt deserves, is a grave plot in the back of the prison yard. I hope he wins one of those soon.
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.
He just wants the accolades before he dies.
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.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Mara Corina Machado supports Israel’s war and Benjamin Netanyahu? Here are the facts
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 terrorismThe Week News Desk (The Week)
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.
Or another to Obama, LOL.
another to Obama
Donny still not got over that joke at the white house dinner. It would be hilarious to give Obama an award for services to immigration or golf.
PM Starmer is driving the U.K.’s China policy into a quagmire: London doesn’t know how to respond to pressure from Beijing. The aborted China spy trial feels like a turning point.
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/43788090
ArchivedFrom 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.”
The question is, when Labour will realize this?
Starmer is Driving the U.K.’s China Policy Into a Quagmire
The U.K.’s China policy is “we will cooperate where we can and we will challenge where we must." But this doesn't work.Domino Theory
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Trump’s Plan to Deprive Palestinians Any Say in Their Future
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.
Archive article: archive.is/CKRtp
Trump’s Plan to Deprive Palestinians Any Say in Their Future
This is not the time for supporters of Palestinian self-determination to be quiet. It’s the moment for us to demand more.Sunjeev Bery (The Intercept)
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‘Total impunity’: Why FIFA won’t sanction Israel despite Gaza genocide
World Cup 2026 qualifiers: Why FIFA won’t ban Israel despite Gaza genocide
Protection of political, economic and commercial interests has led to FIFA’s ‘double standards’ in dealing with Israel.Hafsa Adil (Al Jazeera)
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This should not come as a shock to anyone. FIFA is corrupt AF
Yips. I wonder how many corpses they'll find in the FIFA closet when they are properly investigated.
Fediverse Report – #137 - AltStore joins the fediverse
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
Fediverse Report – #137The News
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.
The Links
- Getting started with Mastodon’s Quote Posts – technical implementation details for servers
- Lemmy development update for September 2025.
- How Decentralized Social Platforms Grew from Identica to Modern-Day Mastodon – a podcast interview with Evan Prodromou by WordPress-ActivityPub developer Matthias Pfefferle.
- Trunks & Tidbits, Mastodon’s monthly engineering blog, for September 2025.
- A new forum for the Brazilian fediverse community.
connectedplaces.online/reports…
The Official Castopod Plugin Repository
We’re thrilled to announce the Official Castopod Plugin Repository is live at plugins.castopod.org [https://plugins.castopod.Yassine Doghri (Castopod Blog)
China honing abilities for a possible future attack, Taiwan defense report warns
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/43773688
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 honing abilities for a possible future attack, Taiwan defense report warns - Taipei Times
Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwanwww.taipeitimes.com
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European parliament calls on China to release Swedish publisher Gui Minhai, kidnapped 10 years ago by Chinese agents in Thailand
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/43773109
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 on the 10th anniversary of the detention of jailed Swedish publisher Gui Minhai in China | RC-B10-0412/2025 | European Parliament
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…www.europarl.europa.eu
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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
That period was synonymous with a national anti-spy dragnet effectively dismantling CIA operations in China installed during the Bush/Obama era.
Incidentally, the US was arresting and prosecuting Chinese spies during the same period, provoking similar complaints from Chinese consulates. The peak of this being the forced shuttering of the Houston, TX based Chinese consulate on charges of espionage that came at the height of Trump admin officials claiming COVID was a bio-weapon created in a Chinese lab to target Americans.
Houston’s Chinese Consulate ordered closed by Donald Trump administration
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.Anna Fifield (The Texas Tribune)
Nearly 500 arrested at Palestine Action protest in London
German police crack down on pro-Palestinian protest in Berlin
Arrests and accusations of police misconduct at anti-far right counter-protest in Helsinki
Brother, its coming for you, too.
London Palestine Action protest: Met Police make nearly 500 arrests
Demonstrations went ahead despite calls from politicians and police leaders for the protests to be postponed in wake of the Manchester synagogue attack.Thomas Mackintosh (BBC News)
Don't hurt the NPCs.
They need to believe their owners are the good guys.
Blender 5.0 Beta Officially Released with HDR and Wide Gamut Display Support
Blender 5.0 Beta Officially Released with HDR and Wide Gamut Display Support - 9to5Linux
Blender 5.0 free and open source 3D creation suite is now available for public beta testing with major new features and improvements.Marius Nestor (9to5Linux)
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"Uh I really have to try out the new features of 4.0 soon!"
The Surreal and Sublime Photography of Graciela Iturbide
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).
Greens become first UK party to acknowledge IDF as terrorist organisation
cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/53077985
cross-posted from: ibbit.at/post/77471
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.
Under the Starmer regime’s ‘lawfare’ war on UK citizens’ free speech and protest rights, to protect Israel from action and scrutiny, the UK state has been misusing proscription against non-violent anti-genocide activists, leading to the arrests of thousands of peaceful protesters demonstrating against the proscription, which is normally applied to violent groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda.
Meanwhile…
Despite those two groups appearing in the government’s list of proscribed groups and the new Syrian regime’s strong links to both, the UK military – along with those of the US and Israel – was repeatedly deployed to assist the terrorists against the previous Syrian government, as well as continuing to provide intel and military support to the Israeli occupation in its slaughter of almost 700,000 civilians in Gaza. Starmer has also invited the new regime’s president, a former senior member of both terror groups, to visit the UK.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.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
From Canary via this RSS feed
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duckduckgo.com/?t=fpas&q=dahiy…
euromedmonitor.org/en/article/…
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.
_ /\ _
Israel’s brutality in Gaza surpasses all recent forms of terrorism
thousands of crimes committed by Israeli forces, constituting overwhelming evidence of mass atrocitiesEuro-Med Human Rights Monitor
Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services
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.
We are sharing data with participants of the Social Web ISAC, and we issued a public advisory along with a list of observed usernames.
We are aware of accounts hosted on abandoned or unmanaged services, we may issue a Limit recommendation for those domains at a later date.
If you provide or can link to tools that may benefit administrators in identifying and/or managing these accounts, please let us know.
Further Reading:
- PORTAL KOMBAT A structured and coordinated pro-Russian propaganda network
- PORTAL KOMBAT A structured and coordinated pro-Russian propaganda network (Part 2)
- “Pravda” Network: Worldwide Expansion and LLM, Wikipedia Pollution
- Russian propaganda may be flooding AI models
NEW REPORT: Russian propaganda may be flooding AI models
Click here to read the report. Click here to read the press release. Click here to access the database.JP (The American Sunlight Project)
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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".
bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39…
The rise of left-wing, anti-Trump fake news
Following the results of the US presidential race, has fake news from the left seen a surge in popularity?BBC Trending (BBC News)
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Oh you think they just stopped? Did you bother to verify for yourself?
Over 2 million tweets from these accounts were collected from 24 February 2021 to 31 January 2023Russian influence operations are weaponizing Canada's far right and the far left
Primary sources tend to disagree
Here's a study from 2019 about it that backs up my assertion that more is conservative academic.oup.com/joc/article/6…
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.
Primary sources tend to agree
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.11…
Might it be that you're commenting based on what you want to be true?
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.
Your article doesn't seem to mention Russia once.
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.
Your article doesn't seem to mention Russia once.
Feel free to read any other article that does, if you somehow have managed to avoid learning about russian influence campaigns over the last decade.
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.
This is the third time I post this paper in this thread: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.11…
There are plenty more. You spent more time writing your post than it takes to find them.
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.
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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.
Tankies have literally adopted the same rhetoric as MAGA.
The wild claims you made.
.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.
You don't have to be aware that you are a Russian asset/propagandist to be one. A couple useful definitions
You've ignored whatever I said to drop a one-line generalized response, not an organic one, and didn't elaborate why it relates to what I said.
Isn't that a behavior of a useful tool you alert others against? I don't assume you are one. But I get some vibes you don't act in a good faith there.
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.
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"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."
True, the existence of US propaganda means Russian propaganda doesn't exist.
GOOD point
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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.
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Most effortless and effective blame offloading "news" of the century.
I guess I'm ruzzian now.
The world's oldest president seeks an eighth term in Cameroon as youth grumble
The world's oldest president seeks an eighth term in Cameroon as youth grumble
Cameroon's Paul Biya is the world's oldest president at age 92NALOVA AKUA Associated Press (ABC News)
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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
Dumb people everywhere
A deep dive into the rss feed reader landscape
Lighthouse - The feed reader for finding actionable content
A reimagined RSS feed reader, optimized for people who are serious, intentional, and proactive about their content consumption.lighthouseapp.io
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 is a nice idea. Unfortunately too many websites want you to use email "newsletters" instead.
Even Ghost has no mechanism to add an RSS link. You have to inspect the page code or use a dedicated extension.
How to convert any newsletter into a personal RSS feed?
In a world dominated by algorithmic content, RSS feeds offer a way to reclaim control over your digital consumption.Piotrek Bodera (Nerd on Tour)
Am I the only person to find it easier just to go to the site than reading hacked-up versions in some archaic email-wannabe dedicated client?
I have never understood the appeal of RSS.
Sounds like you tried one bad feed. All the sites on my feed render perfectly fine.
AP, NPR, Political Wire, Al Jazeera, Ars Technical to name just a few.
The sites can be full of cookie popups, slower rendering, ads, etc.
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
is there a solution to this?
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.
Pro-Palestinian protest threat racks up tension for Italy's World Cup qualifier with Israel
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.
Pro-Palestinian protest threat racks up tension for Italy's World Cup qualifier with Israel
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.France 24 (FRANCE 24)
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How Israel denies the right to play for Palestinian children (25min Video)
How Israel denies the right to play for Palestinian children
We look at Palestinian children's right to play in war-ravaged Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.Al Jazeera
The Surreal and Sublime Photography of Graciela Iturbide
cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/55463313
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).
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