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All members of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board announced their resignation on Wednesday, releasing a statement accusing Donald Trump's administration of political interference in the prestigious exchange program.
The 12-member board alleged the Trump administration "usurped the authority of the Board" by denying Fulbright awards to "a substantial number of individuals" who were selected for the 2025-2026 academic year.
The board also alleged the administration is currently "subjecting" an additional 1,200 international Fulbright recipients to "an unauthorized review process and could reject more."
Sends a message for one news article, an action like this does. Then they all get replaced by lackeys and the new Fulbright Scholarship board does whatever Trump wants.
I'd think it's better to advocate change from within and use your power to shed light on the bullshit through years of leaks to media, while doing your best to shield the organisation from the worst decisions, than to just quit in a huff of solidarity.
The problem is that it puts you in a lose-lose situation.
MAGA doesn't give up. Their entire method of takeover is to flood you in a sea of shit to either force you to quit or make your life miserable if you don't. If they're in a position to do that, that means they're likely already in the majority and you'll never be able to accomplish anything of substance during your tenure, and they'll just ignore or shout you down during any kind of official meeting until you just give up. And they're playing the long game. They'll wait.
So you get to choose a tenure of frustration as you accomplish exactly nothing and watch as your name gets attached to every bad committee meeting the MAGA morons make (because you're still a member of that committee), or you can quit and watch all of your accomplishments be hand-waived away by whatever up-and-coming MAGA cocksucker takes your seat. It's like asking if you want to be shot or stabbed.
Also, letting them put incompetent people in charge will make the entire house of cards collapse more quickly, which in turn will help spur change when people get sick of their shit, which will inevitably happen.
MAGA are patient, playing the long game, they'll wait? These are the guys that wear diapers to virtue signal they're Trumpers, and charge into the Capitol building when they lose an election.
They're neither intelligent nor patient - they just have NEAR ZERO pushback from all the people in institutions around them, everyone turning to the person next to them going, "gosh that's .. can you believe they're doing that - that's unconstitutional and definitely illegal".
I read the article, and even the outgoing Fulbright board just handball the problem to the next people.
[With] the board calling on Congress, the courts and future Fulbright Boards to "prevent the administration's efforts to degrade, dismantle, or even eliminate one of our nation's most respected and valuable programs."
Why the hell are they not doing that? It's cowardly and its essentially a strongly worded letter.
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Tickets for the event, which is to be held at the Rate Field stadium, home of the Chicago White Sox (the pontiff’s favorite team), are being sold online at $5 each
Is that meant to be making fun of Trump's accent? Cos I gotta be honest, it comes across to me more like a representation of how Irish people pronounce Ireland. At least, the way I pronounce "oireland" when I see it sounds to my ear much closer to how Irish people say Ireland than to how I say it.
Nah, that's how the Irish pronounce it. As they should, their accent (well, honestly, I think this about a looottt of accents) sounds pretty fucking sick.
I mean, to be fair, Italy isn't much of a military opponent. Did you see how they performed in WWII? People make fun of France (and rightfully so), but Italy is equally useless in war.
Maybe trump sees Italy as a country he can easily bully around. That's his whole thing. Just bullying.
Or maybe I'm giving him too much credit. Maybe he doesn't even HAVE a plan. Does he even have concepts of a plan? I mean after all, this is the same guy who just stumbles upwards, without consequence, for his whole life. He's never known what it's like to need a plan. He just says things, and does things, without a thought in his head or a care in the world. He has no idea how the world, or the economy works. He just does things, and expects everyone else around him to bow to him.
And is he wrong? People DO keep bowing to him. Him being elected president TWICE is proof of that. Him getting his full way with our government is proof of that.
I'm not defending him, nor his actions. I'm saying that he acts entitled, because we treat him as entitled. He says things like "Women let you use them as objects when you're a celebrity. They let you grab them by the pussy".
And is he wrong? I mean, morally, obviously he's wrong. But if everyone around him, regardless of gender, allows him to grab them by the pussy, is he wrong for thinking he can?
He's grabbed our government by the pussy, and our government is letting him do it. He's never faced any serious resistance. He may have the odd lawsuit here and there, but he's never had a fall. And I mean a true fall.
Look at alex jones. That motherfucker finally fell. Look at the pillow guy. He finally fell. Trump? He's been a blight on society for 40 years, and yet nothing hurts him.
Where's the resistance???
(Ok, I admit, this went from a genuine reply into full on rant mode. I'm sorry. I got sidetracked, and then pissed off. However, in my defense, I feel like the ONLY healthy reaction in 2025 IS to be pissed off. Because if you're seeing what's going on, and you're not pissed off, you lack empathy).
I'm going to skip the Italy bit and jump to Trump.
Trump has been a fake all his life. He took a real estate empire and managed to develop it into a smaller real estate empire.
He called the news under fake names to talk himself up. He convinced Forbes he was a billionaire to get the label, but it's very debatable if he ever got to that point
Until now. He is actually a billionaire now. He's also a convicted felon. He's the most powerful man in the world, but his brain is soup now, so he actually is just a voice for whoever spoke to him last
He wants to be feared and respected, but even at the climax of his power he's still being mocked to his face
Yes, Trump hasn't faced "justice", but justice was always a lie. From my perspective, he made a monkey paw wish. He's got everything he ever wanted, but I think it'll all taste like ashes in his mouth
Not like that helps the rest of us, but it is satisfying to watch up close
Not to be too cynical, but there are lot of Mexican Catholics that have lots of babies. Also, don't forget that the Vatican hired a Fox News dude to run their PR department. Not sure if he still works there, but I bet his legacy still exists if he doesn't.
fundamentally, anarchy should be a game of making temporary friends. so what if we don't agree? we don't have to live in the same house. but if there's some bastard trying to take over then we should ally with everyone who's willing to fight him and who doesn't want to take over
Eh, this had more troll potential when I still thought it was an in person event. The first American pope giving his first American soil address would have more power behind it.
I just hope he actually condemns Trump and doesn’t add fuel to the fire and encourage right wing Catholics. Trust me, they are there in the shadows already radicalized like the southern evangelists
The Trump administration claims to be fighting an existential battle against insurrectionary forces in Los Angeles. In truth, it created this cynical spectacle itself, deploying troops and inflaming tensions to distract from its policy failures.
It’s really funny to me because I live six miles from the area. Each day working from home I wonder if I would even realize there were protests had I no access to the internet or people telling me about them.
Come si diceva, un nuovo disco va assaporato lentamente, se poi il disco in questione è dei Radiohead, allora la regola va moltiplicata. The King of Limbs non è un disco facile, chi conosce e ama i Radiohead è preparato a questo. Molte loro uscite hanno spiazzato e anche The King of Limbs, in parte, mantiene questa promessa... Leggi e ascolta...
Come si diceva, un nuovo disco va assaporato lentamente, se poi il disco in questione è dei Radiohead, allora la regola va moltiplicata. The King of Limbs non è un disco facile, chi conosce e ama i Radiohead è preparato a questo. Molte loro uscite hanno spiazzato e anche The King of Limbs, in parte, mantiene questa promessa. Chiamiamole ricerche, esperimenti, poco cambia, il loro percorso sonoro è sempre all'insegna dell'innovazione e dello stile progressivo... (Continua a leggere... artesuono.blogspot.com/2014/07…)
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.
Eyes and Teeth are all pointing the correct direction, he doesn't have hotdog skin full of giant viens, and the text is easy to understand, this is not my RFK.
The United States Treasury Department has placed Switzerland on a watch list for currency and economic practices, along with eight other countries.
Switzerland and the eight other countries have a large trade surplus, according to a report by the US Treasury Department on the United States’ most important trading partners. The report was first reported by Swiss radio and television.
According to the report, Ireland and Switzerland are new additions to the list. Switzerland’s trade surplus with the US increased last year, according to the report. China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and Germany are also listed.
The aim of the ministry is to take action against unfair currency practices. Last year, however, no major US trading partner manipulated the exchange rate of its currency against the US dollar in order to gain a competitive advantage in international trade.
Do they.call them, "Ranchers" down there or is everyone a farmer? Legit question, because no one in the states would bat an eye at that ambiguation save for farmers and ranchers.
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Hong Kong authorities have warned their residents against downloading a Taiwan-made game called Reversed Front: Bonfire, which they're accusing of advocating...
For those wondering without wanting to click, the title is "Reversed Front: Bonfire". It's supposed to depict an independent Taiwan and Hong Kong which is what obviously pissed off the delicate sensibilities of the CCP.
Sadly a mobile game so it's not really worth your time as it has in app purchases.
But what could be worth your time is Devotion, a Taiwanese horror game which is not available on any store front (but their own) after an easter egg criticial of Xi Jinping was found.
Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male.
One unit-level message bluntly said "no fat soldiers."
"If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out," another note to troops said.
As President Donald Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom.
For this story, Military.com reached out to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's office as well as the Army and the 82nd Airborne Division directly with a series of questions that ranged from the optics of the event to social media posts showing the sale of Trump campaign merchandise on the base, to the apparent violation of Pentagon policies on political activity in uniform.
Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male.
One unit-level message bluntly said "no fat soldiers."
. . . Service officials declined to comment when asked about the extent to which troops were screened, whether soldiers displaying partisan cheers on television -- a violation of long-standing Pentagon rules -- would be disciplined or if soldiers who objected to participating in the event, citing disagreements with the administration, would be disciplined or admonished in any way.
"This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution," one commander at Fort Bragg told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. "This was shameful. I don't expect anything to come out of it, but I hope maybe we can learn from it long term."
The article is some great and ballsy reporting, and the other details are pretty shocking. The military is being rapidly corrupted to becoming a partisan force that serves Trump above America
The military has always been heavily populated by some of the shittiest people. The prospect of carrying a weapon and killing others or just wielding power over others, attracts a certain type of person. In the US since at least 9/11, there's been a disgusting amount of military propaganda that has certainly brought in some people that care and want to do the right thing (for the ignorant wrong reasons) but also the shits that are all in because they think they're tough shit.
Service people don't deserve any more respect than any other profession, and I'd argue in many cases, they deserve less respect. There's hasn't been a draft in a hot minute, so everyone currently in is voluntary. Some soldiers do wind to in life threatening situations, but it's far from the most dangerous job and to me, killing innocence in the middle east for no good reason doesn't earn you any valor in my book.
They're all a bunch of pawns, and I've seen about 2 out of all of them actually stand up and oppose the Trump admin and thousands of others bend over, take it, and ask for more. This article and LA further reenforces my belief that being in the military isn't something noble, but more akin to being in a gang where all of the members are brainwashed and have no spines.
I'm glad this came to light. It's not surprising; this is Trump's whole fake-it-till-you-make-it game with his presidency, from the moment he actually paid actors to cheer for him coming down the escalator in 2015. He's always, always focused on the appearance of things rather than the substance.
ON A PLANE OVER UPPER NILE STATE, South Sudan (AP) — Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sa...
He doesn't care about that, he cares that voters will blame Republicans.
It's why traditionally they give everyone tax breaks and then set the ones for the poors to expire when a Dem will likely be in office, and the ones for the wealthy never expire.
There's none of that now, shits going to get bad and there's no one to blame that doesn't have an R by their name.
Oh little buddy, it’s too late now. You’ve made your bed with Nazis, and it’s full of piss and shit, but now you have to lie in it.
If you’re not rich or powerful enough to float to the top – and you’re not – you’re going to have to deal with the Nazi filth. Too bad absolutely nobody warned you. Oh well.
Does the bill still have that clause that says judges are no longer allowed to try to limit the executive branch? Because that's the clause we should be campaigning against.
"If we don't watch out, people are going to get hurt, people are going to be upset. It's going to be the No. 1 thing on the nightly news all over the place," Justice, who served as West Virginia's governor for eight years before winning his Senate seat last year, told Politico.
Because, apparently, no one of any value has been hurt yet. He never figured it out, there’s just a personal consequence now. He looks old as shit, I hope hell claws him under the earth soon and cooks him for eternity.
All the comments from all cross posts on a single page is great. You can also add your own user flair like you could on Reddit, which lemmy doesn’t support. I haven’t messed with it much yet, but the ability to make lists of communities into feeds also seems really useful.
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.
The latest poll by Quinnipiac University had some grim numbers across the board for President Donald Trump, shocking CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten, who described it as "definitely one of Trump's worst polls."
Cults break down, a good example is something like Sinnanon where up until the authoritarian tendencies kicked in it managed to maintain a pretty decent size. Then they went full authoritarian and the cult started to bleed numbers.
Personally my bet is that Trump can go as low as 20 percent approval, though it'll require some specialized circumstances or shit just getting worse all around.
The historical benchmark I use is this: Nixon was at 31% when he resigned. I think GWB also hit a similar number, but he never was facing articles of impeachment.
Republican congressthings clearly have the same data on their internal polls, which is why they felt it safe to kill the dumpster-fire bill Trump tried to ram through.
On a totally unrelated note, I'm pretty sure he's going to a theatre to see a play at some point soon. Maybe tonight? I don't think it's a comedy, but there's an opportunity for somebody to do the funniest thing possible. Double funny if their name is Mario.
Maybe someone should write a play that is all about Christopher Columbus and Confederate generals who go hunting for fun at Maralago. Like a reverse Most Dangerous Game. Start a rumor that there's a nude scene of Ivanka Trump.
It is relevant. Congress is mostly going along with him because they are afraid of being primaried. If he dips much lower we might suddenly see unexpected people speaking truth to power.
"With Medicaid's future as a healthcare safety net for millions suddenly uncertain, voters make it clear they want the 60-year-old program for those in need to be handled with care," said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.
"I'm the most bigly popular King! Frankly, many people are saying I'm the greatest man who ever lived. And my parade will have YUGE ratings! Better than Barack Hussein's boring, very low energy speeches! Many men, many big tough men have said to me, with literal tears, they say 'Sir, Sir, please spend more of our money on bigly parades and tax cuts for billionaires, who are just born better than we are!' No one honors Trump like Trump, believe me."
But his disapproval rating is thru the roof! No, really he tossed the rating up there when he saw it. Yeah, it doesn't weight that much. Like a kid could through it higher.
Forty percent of voters have a favorable opinion of President Trump, while 53 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him, and 4 percent haven't heard enough about him.
WHO are these people that haven't heard enough about him? And WHY isn't there "I have heard way too much about him" option in the poll?
“Queer people know what it means to struggle against the government, know what it means to struggle against the status quo. And, most importantly, we're not as easily controlled…”
I'm more convinced that they're just taking all of the databases and putting them in an ai bot and asking it to construct a pro trump narrative and then immediately turning it all over to Palantir to fulfill more of their master searchable file on every single bit of information on everybody. For what reason? Who knows? Only Peter Thiel and the other vampires in charge.
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,\ Seven for the dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,\ Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,\ One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne,\ In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.\ One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,\ One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them\ In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
A lawsuit disputing the results of the 2024 election has moved forward after it was revealed that former Vice President Kamala Harris received no votes a New York county.
As President Donald Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom.
I'm genuinely curious to what extend the societal divide extends into the armed forces. How can can there be trust among soldiers in combat situations if they are diametrically opposed on fundamental things like this.
Hey it could be worse, you could be the jackass who named an area Mentone "beach" here in San Bernardino, fun fact it's not a fucken beach. Forest falls is more of a beach.
Opposite statements. Either they follow orders or they are loyal to the constitution. Can't do both right now.
I can't fathom the industrial amounts of pure propagandium that Americans must have been huffing to think the military will ever be on their side. Blind and unconditional obedience is literally the only way militaries can function properly and everything about them is organized to promote that.
US military apologists (even before Trump) will say "but soldiers are legally obligated to follow the constitution first and must refuse unlawful orders" like Abu Ghraib didn't happen in my lifetime. We all know that 90 % of soldiers will wipe themselves with the original copy of the declaration of independence if Trump orders them to. And those that refuse will be dishonorably discharged, or worse.
The divide absolutely exists. There is a lot of conditioning for following orders and working as a team. That doesn't erase conflicting ideologies, beliefs, or even personality conflict. At the extreme the military will remove outliers from the military, but at the individual level you learn who you trust and who you can rely on. Then you do what you can to mitigate those who you don't trust.
Militaries all over the world also have a long history of killing their own people for not fitting whatever the group around them wants. Sometimes for justifiable reasons, like incompetent leaders likely to get their subordinates killed. Other times for things like someone being uncomfortable with blatant war crimes.
There is nothing magical or special about the military. They just have more weapons. So the solutions are violent more often than the average office job.
I am more than mildly surprised at the amount of brown people in the above article's picture. I can almost understand a certain type of white person cheering for him, deluded as they may me.
However I can not fathom why a non white person would even think about it. They are not only traitors to their country, but also to their race AND to what their race has had to fight for for generations. It boggles the mind.
I watched some bit of this earlier in horror and while I was playing a hard game of "spot the differences between this and nazi speeches" I heard Trump mistaking WW1 for WW2. This is the lunatic in charge of the world's biggest army. We are so cooked...
There sure are fucking truck loads of them in that picture.
I remember when the French helped us beat some tyranny away from our borders, and although I wouldn't ask them to get their hands dirty when we start wrestling ourselves, I sure wish we could channel some of their energy into the people who "oppose" things like this.... From their couch.
I long to see French level of protesting here in the states.
Quite a stretch to call cheering the President traitorous, person could almost say that's the opposite of traitorous, cause, yknow, a non politician actually doing something about the president is one of the real definitions of traitor.
Cheering for a traitor is traitorous. The traitor in question being the president doesn't mitigate that in the slightest - to the contrary, that's the most damaging traitor we could be cursed with.
Their allegiance is supposed to be to The Constitution of the United States of America, not to a tyrant who is ineligible to be president and wipes his ass with The US Constitution. The military is also supposed to be above politics.
But you dont understand one protestor littered , meaning that it is now an illegal gathering and that the thousands of people gathered are a violent mob.
Having seen a couple of vids from folks on the ground it seemed akin to a proper French riot. Folks lobbing bricks, makeshift barricades, vehicles burning etc.
Yeah folks may feel justified an upset but it isn't exactly surprising when authorities crack down to restore order in such a situation.
How do you mean? Most authoritarian regimes are maintained with fear and violence. Even in democratic states that don't primarily rule through fear the government generally has a monopoly on using violence to enforce the law.
I mean that as we've seen cops are easy to start using pellets and gas, and when people respond throwing rocks, suddenly it's a 'violent insurrection'; that's why I said it's important to see who started it.
Just seven of 50 surveyed GOP lawmakers are planning to actually attend the president’s birthday festivities over the weekend, reported Politico. [...] Those sticking around include some of Trump’s most stalwart MAGA supporters: Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (who told Politico “of course” she’d be there), Byron Donalds, and Elise Stefanik are all planning to celebrate. Representatives Cory Mills, Rich McCormick, John McGuire, and Lisa McClain are also expected to be in attendance.
They could be busy with shit in their states, they could not want photos/videos/records of them attending the events to exist in the future.
When your opponents say you are trying to become a police state and trample peoples rights, you probably don't want to be featured standing next to a tank on civilian streets.
In 1-3 years when they believe they will be running for office during an election that will potentially have far more people fleeing the MAGA agenda as people see the results, they will want to distance themselves and appear to have maybe been a more "moderate" Republican candidate. Hard to do standing next to a military vehicle resembling those that you rolled into metropolitan cities and whatever ensued occured because of it.
I dunno, I think attending someone's party for themselves is pretty fucking cringe. They've already kissed the ring, I can't imagine it's fun for them to grovel. They just do it when they have to satisfy the crown and virtue signal to their base since they didn't vote for them as much as they did for a Trump green light. Nobody is twisting their arm in this case.
I don't know mate. Standing in front of a tank and shutting down down Fat Boy Hitler's farcical thuper duper birthday parade would be one for the history books. There's not a farts chance in a hurricane that this doesn't go down as a comical clusterfuck.
This whole parade is getting shut down, I promise you.
Major news outlets will not cover the protests. They will happily film the parade though. They will put forth an air of cautious optimism to endear dear leader to their outlet. The only way this gets any MAJOR public attention is if people stop the parade. It will be stopped, there will be a LOT of police action, which will prompt riots, which will prompt more attention. Trump may use it to enact martial law, but he'll do so at his own detriment. It will not look well at all, but the cancellation of his parade, plus the chaos that will be martial law will only spark more civil discourse throughout the nation.
Well that would be nice if everyone was on board. But even if the people that hate him don't turn up, the people that love him will. That would be enough for him.
Not so fun fact: Trump is actually a fan of the way China handled that. Here's the quote:
"Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength.That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak... as being spit on by the rest of the world."
"We'll rise together and say: We reject political violence. We reject fear as governance. We reject the myth that only some deserve freedom," wrote the coalition behind "No Kings" rallies planned for June 14.
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The Maghreb Resilience Convoy’s 300-vehicle caravan departed from Tunis on Monday morning, before crossing the Libyan border on Tuesday. It is expected to enter Egypt on Thursday and reach Rafah a few days later.
According to participating groups, “doctors, students, lawyers, and everyday people” are in the convoy, part of the Global March to Gaza scheduled for June 15, during which 2,500 activists from over 50 countries plan to march from El-Arish in Egypt to Rafah in Gaza.
The defense minister called the pro-Palestinians “jihadists,” saying they would also endanger the stability of the governing Egyptian regime and other moderate Arab governments in the region.
The State Department is preparing to order the departure of all nonessential personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad due to the potential for regional unrest
The State Department is preparing to order the departure of all nonessential personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad due to the potential for regional unrest, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.
The Baghdad embassy has already been on limited staffing, and the order will not affect a large number of personnel, but the department also is authorizing the departure of nonessential personnel and family members from Bahrain and Kuwait.
Note that we don't have diplomatic relations with Iran, so in the event of a military conflict with Iran, there wouldn't be anyone to evacuate there, just in nearby countries.
I created a secondary Pixelfed account to test the share functionality, but none of the posts I've shared from my main account are showing up in the new account’s feed.
Try again after following the account that post. Having someone from your instance following a remote user is the best way to insure proper federation of content in the fediverse.
if your two accounts are on a different instance, federation takes a while, your follow signals to your instance to synchronize the content from the other account, and it's not instantaneous, it's queued along the requests of everyone else on your instance.
Fediforum happened this week, porting your social graph cross-protocol with Bounce, Bonfire gets closer to release, a prominent Lemmy server shuts down, and much more.
I also run a weekly newsletter, where you get all the articles I published this week directly in your inbox, as well as additional analysis. You can sign up right here, and get the next edition this Friday!
FediForum and related announcements
The FediForum unconference was this week, with three days of sessions, keynotes and demos. The event was originally scheduled for April, but got cancelled at the last minute due to drama around transphobic statements made by one of the co-organisers. The individual in question left FediForum, and instead FediForum set up an advisory board with a number of community members. This edition of FediForum had keynotes for the first time, by ActivityPub co-creator Christine Lemmer-Webber, author Cory Doctorow, and Ian Forrester, who lead a Mastodon instance at the BBC. There were also a large number of demos (list here) and unconference sessions about a wide variety of subjects. I’ll write more about both the demos and the keynotes once the videos of them will become available online, likely next week.
Bounce is a newly-announced tool that allows people to migrate their social graph across protocols. It is made by A New Social, the organisation behind Bridgy Fed. The ability to port a social graph from AT Protocol to ActivityPub reshapes what is possible within the Open Social Web. For that reason, I think Bounce is a meaningful release, with its power mainly being in altering the shape of these networks. I wrote an essay on that this week that goes into the philosophical side of Bounce. For more practical information I can recommend this coverage by TechCrunch and The Verge. Meanwhile, A New Social’s CTO Ryan Barrett has shared all the updates and new features that have happened to Bridgy Fed over the recent months.
Music sharing platform Bandwagon shared more information during Fediforum on their development work, and how they are working on integrating album sales. A dev blog by Bandwagon recently shared their plans on adding a premium subscription, and how album sales work. During a Fediforum session, developer Ben Pate shared some screenshots on what this looks like. WeDistribute has a deep dive into Bandwagon and the current state of development based on the latest FediForum session.
Bonfire is an upcoming fediverse platform that has slowly been reaching the end of the line for development, and they announced the release candidate version of Bonfire 1.0. It is a framework and platform for building communities on the fediverse, and has a large variety of features and extensibility. One of the standout features is circles and boundaries. Circles allow users to define lists of accounts, and boundaries allows users to determine on a per-post basis to what circles each post gets shared. This creates a significant amount of flexibility on how to handle private posts, something which is in huge demand within the open social web. Bonfire also gives users a large amount of control over how they see and filter their feed. For more of a philosophical take on that, I recently wrote about how Bonfire’s approach on custom feeds compares to Bluesky’s approach. The developers are inviting people to install their own instance and experiment with the new features. It is unknown when Bonfire will be ready for a full 1.0 release. For another look at Bonfire, TechCrunch also covered the story.
Filmmaker and fediverse evangelist Elena Rossini has released her fediverse promotion video, which was highly anticipated by the community. The video can be viewed here, and tells the story of why the fediverse matters for a lay audience. The video is worth paying attention to for two reasons: first of all, it is a well-produced promo video for the fediverse that explains some of the core ideas in an accessible manner. Secondly, the video has gotten a huge amount of support from within the fediverse community, with a large number of prominent people within the community supporting Rossini’s work. One of the challenges of analysing a decentralised community is that there is no singular decentralised community, there are a wide variety of different groups and cultures. However, by seeing how and who responded positively to the video, it becomes clear that Rossini’s video does represent a dominant and popular understanding of what the fediverse is, and why it matters. In that way, analysing the video does provide good insight into the one of the more dominant and popular cultures of the fediverse.
Shutdown of Lemmy and opportunity for PieFed
Lemm.ee, one of the biggest Lemmy servers, is shutting down at the end of June. The team says: “The key reason is that we just don’t have enough people on the admin team to keep the place running. Most of the admin team has stepped down, mostly due to burnout, and finding replacements hasn’t worked out.” This has some significant impact on the wider Threadiverse community, as the lemm.ee hosted a significant number of popular communities. This makes server shutdowns on Threadiverse platforms signficantly more impactful, as they also impact people who do not have an account on the platform. Community migration is challenging, and there are no specific tools to help with a community with migrating to a different server.
The shutdown of the Lemm.ee server provides an opportunity for PieFed, a link-aggregator platform similar to Lemmy. PieFed is over a year old, that has seen significant development and new features beyond Lemmy, but has not managed to gain traction yet, with growth of users being slow. However, now that communities on the lemm.ee. server need to find a new place, PieFed is emerging as one of the main destinations. In turn, this is giving PieFed some much need promotion and awareness within the Threadiverse community, with PieFed doubling the number of accounts within a week. Lemmy clients are also starting to add support for PieFed, with the Lemmy client Interstellar already supporting PieFed. PieFed also uploaded two PeerTube video walking through all the moderation and administration features the platform has.
Platform updates
Ghost’s work on implementing ActivityPub is getting close to an official release. In their latest update, Ghost said that their ActivityPub integration will be part of the Ghost 6.0 release, which will come in ‘a few weeks’. The team has been working on ActivityPub for over a year, and have grown from 3 people to 8 people now working on their social web integration. For Ghost, the ActivityPub integration is more than just another connector, describing it as ‘a statement that the open web still matters’.
Mastodon is planning to release a new update, version 4.4, with the first beta now available. Some of the new features include the ability to set more feature content on user profiles, more list and follow management tools. For admins, there are better tools for setting legal frameworks, moderation tweaks and more. The biggest feature of the patch is that it will display quoted posts. The highly requested feature will only be fully available in version 4.5, which will include the ability for users to create quoted posts. Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput says that he expects version 4.4 to be released at the end of June, with version 4.5 scheduled a few months later in September of October. The organisation also shared their monthly engineering update for May.
PeerTube released their latest version, 7.2, with a new design for video management and publication pages. PeerTube also now has more features for handling sensitive content. Creators can now add an explanation of why the content is marked as sensitive. Users also have more flexibility with how they want sensitive content to be handled, with various different configurations between hiding, blurring or warning about a video with sensitive content. PeerTube is also running a crowdfunding campaign for the mobile app, which has now crossed the halfway mark at 35k EUR. This milestone is for video management from the mobile app, with the next milestone being for livestream support in-app. The PeerTube app developer also shared a blog post with his thoughts on the technical framework considerations for building the app.
Hollo is a single-user microblogging platform, and their latest release has a significant number of new features, including better OAuth and various upgrades to the UX. Developer Hong Minhee also announced that independent fediverse developer Emelia Smith will join as a co-maintainer for Hollo.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to get all my weekly updates via email, which gets you some interesting extra analysis as a bonus, that is not posted here on the website. You can subscribe below:
In this case that's exactly what we need, someone with more money than god that can set precedents to protect the authors and artists that need it the most.
It doesn’t matter it was the evil empire getting that result
It does if it only benefits evil empires. The open source tools can't afford the price which only leaves the big AI companies that can and Disney who holds the data.
All this will do is add a fat price tag and censorship. Artists will not get paid and AI will not go away, the jobs will still be lost. It's the worst of both worlds.
when disney wins there will be nothing left to sue, with the result that now the entertainment industry, which has the available training data, will also have the AI technology, and the only one who profits is disney - because in this situation all open source GenAI is fucked.
I dunno, we've seen corporations come at each other many times before.
Most of you people won't understand this, but copyright and patent laws aren't going to be around forever. They don't help the working class and it's only a matter of time before new generations rise above our tunnel vision and indoctrination.
I mean, just look at this case a prime example. Who is the one suing? Disney. Who stands to benefit? Disney.
Are the random joe's suing? No, they can't afford it. The laws do not exist to protect them. It's another reason why we never see big corporations challenge copyright and patent laws. They know they make more money with them.
I don't see the irony. They perceive AI as a loop hole and need to squash it to keep their grip on things. If anybody can just prompt a movie in ten years, their business is dead. If a small group of indie animators can make a fully fledged movie, their business is dead.
They made it fucked up in their favor, this lawsuit is a continuation of that.
Disney isn't fighting for the little guy. They will still agressively use it to cull their own workforce. They want to control who can use it and don't want to compete against an indie animation scene.
Show me where I can download Midjourneys full model to run it locally and then we can agree to call it "open weights". Unless their base model and training data is also available, it's not open source.
I'd say do it more... generate more star wars media until Disney gives it up as a golden goose to milk. Doesn't matter if it's ai or whatever fuck disney...
The Google-owned site has provided moderators with new guidelines and training on how to deal with inflammatory content that breaks YouTube's code of conduct, writes The New...
Well yes. You obviously still can’t say “le dollar bean” without getting nuked from orbit. YouTube is a goodly Christian corporation after all, can’t have such content.
Are you implying you don't use YT at all? Or you use it and choose to be unhappy with it?
Just curious, I often get mad because they need to censor words, but not to the degrees to say 'fuck this place" and move to the other (unborn) alternative.
Yes they are, some from the very conception of YouTube perhaps, but they are not real alternatives a real alternative would be one where all your subscriptions also upload the same content there, it is totally not YT based and you get the same or similar ecosystem Google provides, I don't think too many channels fit this.
I mean, if your requirement for a youtube alternative is that it's as big as YouTube, you're just guaranteeing that there will never be a YouTube alternative...
Yeah perhaps, we are here on Lemmy after all, which I consider a Reddit alternative, but with YouTube the thing is different because we follow individuals, and here we follow subjects, hopefully somebody can truly stand out against Google in the video field, a movement big enough to motivate content creators to check it out, the last thing I hear was about Odysee, which I think is a step in the right direction.
almost all the right wing contents get pushed to the front. there are some that are also rw that is buried by the algorithim, because they are loud mouths, i wonder if this will change for them too.,
Good. I don't really care about youtube, but less censorship is always a good thing.
How can you people say you respect science when you support silencing any criticism of it? That's not science. That's religion.
That said, this criteria clearly only exists to protect "influencers" who make youtube a proportional amount of money. If you have a channel with very little traffic and you say something controversial, you'd better believe your "freedom of expression value" will not be high enough to outweigh the corporation's perceived "harm risk."
youtube shadowbanning, demonitization and censorship is the most retarded shit that's ever happened to the internet. the whole website is videos and comments of people who cater to kids and commercial advertisers and cant say shit.
We will (still) allow children's cartoon characters to be mutilated and put into explicit situations and then push them as child friendly, but how dare you use a swear in the first 15 seconds of a video or say the work kill.
Intention: YouTubers can stop with the whole self censoring shit.
Example: Unaliving; PDF file; grape; etc.
Reality: Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and other right wing grifters receive zero censorship while YouTubers still have to self censor to receive monetization.
How long before Google locks YT down only to Chrome on Windows, Mac, ChromeOS, or Android, and blocks it from loading at all on non-Chrome browsers and on Linux or iOS, blocks it from loading at all if ad blockers, including hardware-based ad blockers ala PiHole, are implemented, and enforces hardware security measures ala TPM2 for authentication, and ensures that no one can download and re-upload YT vids, with DRM?
Basically, I wouldn't put it above them to ensure their video platform only runs on their browser, on hardware and OS platforms they deem worthy of running it, even down to somehow implementing a Vanguard-style rootkit.
A peaceful protest is underway against mega corporations attempting to impose DRM on the web, aiming to gain control over all content possible and making our lives worse.
They won't ever say it out loud but they have always removed videos for mentioning alternative frontends or other technology they view as direct threats to their revenue stream.
See the issue here is Google/Youtube still get to be the ones to decide what "may outweigh the harm risk". And the answer I bet will usually be whichever one serves their financial interests.
Which on one hand sure, it is their platform after all. But don't do me dry and claim you used lube.
I still wouldn't trust Google not to nuke my channel on a whim even in spite of those relaxed moderation rules. What's stopping a little bribe from the right company or political party from causing them to backpedal or even tighten their grip further?
This is why one should at least mirror their content to PeerTube or a similar alternative platform like that even if they're not going to just outright post future content to said alternative and give up on YT altogether.
I agree. We've seen enough times in the past where a creator would get a strike from a video several years old because the rules changes. Anyone legit should be careful.
Moderators were previously told to remove videos if one-quarter or more of the content violated YouTube policies. Now, that limit has been increased to half.
This seems like alien speak to me. They announce that shit, someone read it, and then repeated it in an article. But what does it mean?
Can you have 6 contents and make 2 really crazy? Can you tell people to commit violence for 5 minutes and then review a game for 6 minutes? Is there a dude with tvtropes open going through and marking the contents of content?
Great, now that 50% of a video can be a direct call for genocide, does that at LEAST mean I can use ONE instance of a "bad" word or speak of "icky" things like death and drug abuse without being demonized?
I like freedom of speech but it seems like it would be pretty difficult to weigh those things against one another. what is the metric that they have in common? I don't know that there is one
This morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on inflation confirming what many of us have felt at the register: grocery prices are rising again.
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‘Wildly underprepared’: National Guard troops sent by President Trump to Los Angeles amid immigration protests are seen sleeping on floors in exclusive photos
The protestors really need to get the CANG to switch sides and face off against the police. Low key convinced that’s a real possibility if orangeboi or Hesgeth tries to order them to do something really beyond the pale.
I empathize with the hope that the national guard would side with protesters in violation of their orders, but is there any historical precedent for that?
On the other hand, there have been plenty of historical confrontations where the national guard has engaged in violence against demonstrators.
Maybe it can be different this time, but I don't know.
squirrel
in reply to grant 🍞 • • •Awesome! Looking forward to it.
Adding this to the list of relevant links !canvas@toast.ooo
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