eta: this question came up in the work group chat and I noticed the gay guys responded more favorably to vegetables so I'm just curious if it's an actual thing or just anecdotal
Former security leaders warn major threat going ignored Former Defence chief Chris Barrie said Australia needed to reorder its foreign policy priorities, with traditional geopolitical risks set to be displaced by climate change.
Australia has put all its eggs in the AUKUS basket, risking entanglement in a war with China, while the far greater threat to Australians' security is being ignored," he said.
Which is essentially what The Greens Nick Minchin said last year and was poo poohed for not understaning "defence". I wonder if his detractors will say the same thing of Admiral Barrie (retired) ?
Id like lemmings take on how they would actually reduce emissions on a level that actually makes a difference (assuming we can still stop it, which is likely false by now, but let's ignore that)
I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.
Bonus points if you can think of any solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
Joy. That joy you got when renting a game at blockbuster or getting that cd you’ve been looking for. That feeling of having a crush on a girl in school and feeling like the world was big with endless possibilities.
Pedestrians, cyclists and drivers are at increased risk as the rapid rise in monster US pick-up trucks on Europe’s roads is set to accelerate after the…
a deep dive into the messy substrate and coordination layers below decentralised networks, and how authoritarian thinkers like peter thiel view this substrate as a way to capture networks
SocialHub and the Substrate of Decentralised Networks
SocialHub is one of the primary forum where fediverse developers can talk about ActivityPub, how to implement the protocol, and have conversations about how the technical interoperability can be improved with Fediverse Enhancement Proposals. The forum has been searching for new ownership, but making decisions on how to move forward has been challening. Most developers aren’t interested in taking responsibility of community management, while the current admin will only hand over control to a team of people who can not only do the technical administration but can also manage the community. There is also no shared vision for what SocialHub should become, and multiple developers openly wonder if it is even worth it to continue with the forum. Most crucially, nobody has clear authority to make final decisions, making it incredible hard to move past the phase of ‘making a forum post with some ideas and suggestions’.
One of the core challenges with building a decentralised network is that decentralisation is about building alternative power structures, where no single actor has control over the entire network. But power is hard to diffuse: when you build a system that spreads out power, from one control point to many nodes, often this means that new places of gatekeeping and centralisation pop up. The result is often a kind of governance vacuum where important decisions get stuck in endless discussion loops, or where informal power structures emerge that aren’t accountable to the broader community.
Building a decentralised network like the fediverse thus means not only building a social network that spreads out over many different nodes, but also building an infrastructure for the network to run on that is itself decentralised. What’s happening to SocialHub is symptomatic of this broader tension, where these decentralised systems promise to distribute power, but they still need coordination mechanisms to function.
Hobart and decentralised substrates
In an essay titled The Promise and Paradox of Decentralization, tech writer Byrne Hobart wrote about decentralised networks, and how one of their paradoxes is that they require centralised substrates. One quote from the article regularly pops up, where Hobart writes: “Any decentralized order requires a centralized substrate, and the more decentralized the approach is the more important it is that you can count on the underlying system.”
With this, Hobart means that decentralised systems require a shared agreement on how to communicate with the system, usually via a set of agreed-upon protocols. For a decentralised system to work well, people have to agree to a single method of interaction. The internet cannot function if every website implements their own incompatible version of HTTPS, for example.
This leads Hobart to the observation that open networks are prone to being captured by companies that figure out an onramp to the network, writing: “these onramps are built on an open system, but part of their function is to close off some of it. And the better they do that, the more value they can capture.” Twitter and Facebook, but also crypto companies like Coinbase are examples for Hobart of this dynamic.
He writes: “This pattern raises a question: is centralization just a natural tendency of all networks? Are we destined to have a ‘decentralization sandwich,’ where there’s a hard-to-change set of protocols, something open built on top of that, and a series of closed systems built on top of that, which are the only ones the average person interacts with?”
On a surface-level reading, it feels straightforward enough: the fediverse is a decentralised network, and its technical function depends on the ActivityPub protocol. You can view the ActivityPub protocol as the centralised substrate to the decentralised network.
But when you start looking more closely, the picture that emerges is significantly more complicated.
The technological substrate
When you start looking more closely at how the fediverse operates in practice, the picture that emerges is significantly more complicated than Hobart’s centralised substrate theory suggests. Rather than a single protocol that serves as the foundation for a decentralised network, there is fragmentation at multiple levels. Moreover, the more this network pushes towards decentralisation, the more fragmented it becomes.
On a protocol level, there is no singular ActivityPub. The ActivityPub protocol as maintained by the W3C is the official canon version of the protocol, but most platforms don’t implement the full ActivityPub spec, instead opting for a combination of ActivityPub’s Server to Server protocol in combination with the Mastodon API. This means that the ‘centralised’ substrate is already fragmented in practice. While it is possible to make a case that developer adoption would go smoother if ActivityPub implementations were more standardised, the current fragmentation is a result of the network consisting of independent actors that coordinate with each other only to a limited extend.
Quote posts provide a concrete example of how this fragmentation plays out in practice. There are multiple different ways to implement quote posts. Misskey notably has a different method than the method that Mastodon is now using to implement quote posts. When Threads decided to implement quote posts, they decided on supporting both implementation methods for quote posts. This would seem like a good example of the value of a centralised substrate to a decentralised network: things would go smoother if everyone had agreed upon a singular implementation method of quote posts. So when a new fediverse platform that wants to be fully interoperable with other platforms would only have to implement one method, and know exactly in advance which one to use. But the reality shows that even basic features resist standardisation.
What the fediverse shows is that a decentralised network tends to split up into multiple different subnetworks. These networks themselves are also decentralised, and while technically part of the larger fediverse supernetwork, they are often quite separated. For example: The collection of Misskey servers are largely catering towards the Japanese audience. They are technically interoperable with the ‘Threadiverse’, a set of link-aggregator platforms (Reddit-likes, basically), but in practice interoperability and connections between these two sub-networks of the fediverse is negligible. Streaming software Owncast is seen as part of the fediverse, but the ActivityPub-enabled interactions between Owncast streamers and the Mastodon-verse are arguably even more limited.
What’s seen as ‘the fediverse’ turns out to contain more protocols that are interoperable with each other to a certain degree, such as Hubzilla’s Nomad protocol. And if we expand our perspective to look at the open social web as a set of decentralised social networks that are all interoperable with each other, we see even more protocols, such as ATProto and Nostr. At this level, the idea of a single centralised substrate becomes even more tenuous.
So what this means is that the more decentralised a network becomes, the network tends to split into subnetworks, where each cluster of this supernetwork becomes more distinct from each other. Interoperability and connections between these clusters is possible and happens occasionally, but for social and cultural reasons can be fairly limited.
From a technical perspective, Hobarts claim that “the more the decentralized the approach is the more important it is that you can count on the underlying system” turns out to be recursive: the more decentralised approach means that networks start to fragment into subnetworks, each with slightly different technological substrates, and it becomes more important that you can count of the underlying substrate of the subnetwork.
The social substrate
Hobart’s centralised substrate theory assumes that decentralised networks require centralised governance of their foundational protocols. But examining how the fediverse actually governs itself reveals multiple, overlapping authority structures that challenge this assumption. Rather than a single centralised point of control, there are competing forms of governance, spread out over multiple places and communities.
The W3C, the organisation that governs ActivityPub, usually focuses on protocol governance via W3C members, where these members are often required to be organisations. This represents the closest thing to Hobart’s “centralised substrate” – a formal institution with official authority over the protocol specification.
The SocialHub forum is one of the main places for structured long-form communications about ActivityPub. It is also the main place for conversations about Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEP). A FEP is a document that gives structured information about ActivityPub and the fediverse, with the goal of improving interoperability and well-being of fediverse applications. Anyone can submit a FEP, and conversations about them on places like SocialHub is how they get legitimacy and buy-in for other projects to implement the proposals.
The grassroots system of the FEPs, in which the SocialHub plays a major part, shows that a single protocol can be used in a manner that is highly decentralized: there is no central authority that can mandate implementation of FEPs, yet they gain legitimacy through community discussion and voluntary adoption.
Conversations about ActivityPub and the fediverse are spread out fairly wide, over a variety of places on the network. Some of the notable places for conversation are the SocialHub forum and the Fedidev matrix channel. The SocialCG of the W3C has various places for discussion, including an email list, GitHub discussion boards and regular meetings. Other places include discussions on microblogging feeds, various (semi)private chat groups and Lemmy communities. Notably, each of these places for conversation only has a small subset of fediverse developers that are participating, and developers are spread out over all these places. This indicates that the ‘social substrate’ of the fediverse development is decentralised as well, there is no single place that owns or controls the conversations about protocol development.
Decentralisation and political power
Hobart is not the only one who has thought and written about how decentralised networks relate to the (potentially centralised) governance of the protocols that powers them, as well as how they are vulnerable to capture. But Hobart’s alignment with the tech-right political wing makes his writing relevant to me, specifically because I strongly disagree with his political views, and the people he aligns himself with. Understanding why this thesis appeals to certain political actors helps makes it all the more important to challenge this way of thinking.
Hobart is a techno-optimist, and his mode of thinking is illustrative of a wider thinking on technology and culture in Silicon Valley. His latest book, on why bubbles are actually good, got a foreword by Peter Thiel. This connection is not incidental, as Hobart represents a particular worldview about how technology, power, and governance should intersect.
Thiel fits well with the line of thinking of Hobart, both on the wider points of techno-optimism, as well as on the aformentioned quote, that decentralised networks require a centralised substrate. Thiel’s beliefs can be understood as techno-feudalism, where he wants to move power away from the political domain to domain of corporate tech, where power is held by a few corporate elites, not by a democracy. Decentralised networks in itself are an antithesis to the worldview of Thiel’s authoritarianism. The decentralisation of a network means divesting power away from the few corporate elites, and spreading it out over many individuals instead.
The line of thinking that decentralised networks often have a centralised substrate, and are vulnerable to being captured by building closed systems on top of the open systems, can be read as either a warning or as an instruction manual. And for noted democracy-hater Peter Thiel, whom Hobart seems to align himself with, it is much more likely that Thiel views this as an instruction manual on how to deal with open and decentralised systems.
The idea that a decentralised network still can have a single central point, namely the technological substrate that powers the network, is thus an attractive idea to an authoritarian figure. You might not be able to control a decentralised network directly, but by controlling or influencing the protocol that powers it, a chokepoint arises that the authoritarian feudalist overlord can leverage to extract rent.
Meta’s approach to the fediverse demonstrates the substrate capture strategy in action. By joining ActivityPub governance discussions while simultaneously building Threads as a massive onramp to the network, Meta places itself into a position to influence both the protocol, as well as to function as a primary gateway to the network. This follows the format of the “decentralization sandwich” that Hobart describes. Their sponsorship of the Social Web Foundation further embeds them in the governance substrate of the fediverse network.
In this context, Hobart’s quote takes on a new meaning. Hobart’s message resonates with the people and organisations who are building today’s social networks of extraction. They have built social networks where they are the gatekeepers, and with their gatekeeping power they have become richer than god. While decentralised networks might pose a threat to centralised networks, promising to take their gatekeeping power away, Hobart’s description points to a new place where they can extract rent. This is why it matters to understand how decentralised networks function matters: it also indicates that the substrates of decentralised network can be decentralised, and points to ways how corporate capture can be resisted.
Reframing decentralisation
Hobart’s statement that decentralised systems depend on centralised substrate makes it appealing to authoritarians, since it provides a guidebook on how to gain forms of centralised control over decentralised systems. But while the idea seems to fit well with a surface-level analysis, a closer look at how the fediverse operates in practice also shows that the substrate of the network is, and has the potential to be, a lot more decentralised than first might be assumed.
From a technological side, the assumption of ‘the fediverse is the decentralised network’, with ‘ActivityPub being the centralised substrate’ turns out to be a whole lot more complicated in practice. What’s seen as ‘the fediverse’ turns out to contain more protocols that are interoperable with each other to a certain degree. The ActivityPub protocol also turns out to contain multiple sub-protocols: most platforms don’t implement the full ActivityPub spec, instead opting for a combination of ActivityPub’s Server to Server protocol in combination with the Mastodon API.
On the social side, ‘decentralisation’ is both a technical description of a network architecture, as well as a more general description of the distribution of authority in a network. The grassroots system of the FEPs shows that a single protocol can be worked on in a manner that is highly decentralised.
This intertwining of technical and social decentralisation reveals why Hobart’s thinking on decentralisation and substrate s fails to capture the reality of how these networks actually operate in practice. At the same time, Hobart’s thinking does provide a good way of understanding how authoritarian-minded people and organisations might approach decentralised systems, and how they think about capturing and controlling such networks. It is this dual combination that makes Hobart’s thinking interesting to me, specifically because I disagree with it on multiple levels.
As for the SocialHub: after a period of uncertainty, Pavilion, the organisation that also build the Discourse plugin which connects the forum software to the fediverse over ActivityPub, will become the new admins of the community.
Threads has entered the fediverse! As part of our beta experience, now available in a few countries, Threads users aged 18+ with public profiles can now choose to share their Threads posts to other…
I first thought that this article seemed to suggest variety in the implementation of Federated protocols was a bad thing but actually its saying the opposite and supports the organic development of activitypub which i complely agree with. Variety, experminentation and dare I say it diversity are strenghts. Uniformity is boring and weak. It gives us choice, the opportunity to try things out without completely starting anew and has sonfar meant we have an amazing choice ofnservers, clients, features and options.
The next time I'm about to moan and complain about how nobody directly implements activitypub apis "the standard way", I'll remember this article and be mollified.
I didn't realize it was a thing in North America. Despite the infamously high gun ownership in NA, I usually connect celebratory gunfire with Balkans, Turkey and Arab cultures.
I associate it with any holiday that also has fireworks and professional sports victories. I guess there is more that joins us than separates us when it comes to irresponsible firearm usage.
I used to live in both too and I heard it a lot in Houston during the holidays and when the Astros won the world series. I heard random gunfire so much in New Orleans I stopped calling the cops. One time I saw a guy shoot at a group outside a bar I was working at and the cops didn't come for like 40 minutes. No one was hit but if they would have stopped and talked to us we could have told them who it was. Things were wild there for a few years after Katrina compared to before.
In St. Louis, celebratory gunfire is common every New Years and 4th of July. So much that people die from falling bullets pretty much every time, and it also leads to a lot of property damage to roofs and whatnot.
Ive never heard it anywhere else personally, but I would imagine it happens to some extent in other large cities
Houston, New Orleans, SWLA. I never heard it in the other 5 states I've stayed in but I try to live rurally when my situation permits so I can't speak to the large cities of those other states.
"Immediately when I saw the comments on my stories and on my videos… I knew that this is not something I stand with,"
Trash human.
I should be thankful that public shaming has worked, but imagine only changing your mind on human trafficking and sex slavery because your Insta audience started saying nasty things to you...
Israel justified its murder of Al Jazeera’s crew on the grounds that one among them, Anas al-Sharif, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, was secretly a “Hamas terrorist”.
Sharif, we are told, similarly found time between breaks from his 22-month, frantic reporting schedule - much of it on camera - to serve as a Hamas commander “directing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians”.
We now know exactly where this ridiculous story originated: from something Israel calls its “Legitimisation Cell”. The intelligence unit’s name, which was surely never supposed to come to light, is the give-away. Its job has been to legitimise Israel’s atrocities with stories vilifying its victims and thereby making the genocide more palatable to Israeli and western audiences.
The Israeli news website +972 exposed the cell within days of Sharif’s killing this month, reporting that it was formed after 7 October 2023 - the day Hamas and other groups broke out of their Gaza prison camp, spreading carnage, following 17 years of a brutal siege.
But while Israeli mendacity is entirely to be expected - after all, it is the whole purpose of its official hasbara industry - what astonishes most is the western media’s continuing connivance in promoting Israel’s litany of lies.
Germany’s most popular paper, Bild, published a front page that might as well have been written by the Israeli military: “Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.” No claim, no quote marks. Just a statement of fact.
The UK media was little better, with most outlets prominently featuring Israel’s unevidenced “legitimisation” smears of Sharif in headlines and coverage. Astonishingly, BBC coverage on its flagship News at Ten swallowed whole Israel’s framing of Sharif as a legitimate target - as well as uncritically peddling the presumption that Israel was targeting him and him alone.
The context that has been missing from western coverage is this: Israel has killed more than 240 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past two years - more than all the journalists killed in both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the Afghanistan War combined.
This is a pattern - a glaring one - but seemingly one to which western journalists are entirely blind, even as Israel continues to bar them from reporting in Gaza, nearly two years into its genocide.
Israel's intent to annihilate Gaza would have been clear much sooner had we listened to Palestinian journalists, rather than the evasions and equivocations of the BBC
They are so obviously and transparently bullshitting us and the west is NOT CALLING THEM OUT ON THEIR BULLSHIT ffs, this is blood-boiling to say the least!
Lets be real. The Israeli lobby has tons of money. They buy out the politicians and wield power to silence critics. Everything that challenges their power becomes 'antisemitic'.
the day Hamas and other groups broke out of their Gaza prison camp, spreading carnage, following 17 years of a brutal siege.
Sounds like an excuse to a terror attack with almost exclusively civilian targets. Why is it so hard for advocates of the Palestinian cause to condemn this attack??
You mean> 90% military targets according to Western standards, of which more than 33% on active military duty?
Just look at the West Bank and find out what non violent resistance leads to.
You must not be used to being provided with the actual context of October 7. Very shocking to learn that Palestinians were actually in a concentration camp for 17 years and broke out. I wonder why that part of the both sides story never gets reported.
Because the music festival was in between the path to a military base and should have already ended by that day.
Why did they attack more than 5 military bases around Gaza responsible for their concentration camp you ask? Or did the Western media not tell you about that?
They could have walked around it. The festival wasn’t the only massacre of civilians that day. This was not a military maneuver, it was directly targeted at civilians, specifically women and Jews.
There were armed soldiers at the festival and it was next to a military base. Not sure what you think 'walking around it' means. Also "women and Jews" lol.
Israel shouldn't put a "music festival" next to a military base guarding a concentration camp. And especially not have armed active duty IDF soldiers using the festival as human shields.
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.
military service is mandatory for most Jewish Israelis. So yeah, buddy, I was right, stop trying to fucking gaslight people online, Israel is paying you enough?
Your article doesn't provide any evidence or your claim. Nor does it debunk the article itself.
It would be very cool if Qatar was the only country doing actual journalism about Gaza, but from my reading of MEE I severely doubt it's Qatar running the operation.
MEE writes plenty of critical reports about Qatar. They do almost always go very soft on one specific country though. And it's not the one you named.
Actual journalists won't say someone is a murderer even if there's a video of the person shooting a guy pulling out their ID and showing it to the camera and say "my name is ___ and I murdered this person".
When the person is charged then they will be termed "alleged murderer". Before there's charges they're termed something like "shooter" not murderer. Only once someone is convicted of the crime will they be called "murderer".
Genocide is a much greater crime than murder. It's not responsible journalism to make accusations like this. If a body like the ICJ convicted Israel's leadership on charges, or maybe id the country the media organization is based in made a declaration, then a journalist will start using the word genocide.
"Alternative media" have no journalistic standards and will say such things to lead their audiences to conclusions. If you're reading articles that are telling you how to think about a story, it's not actually journalism. Real journalism is about telling people what's happening, not telling people how they're supposed to think about, and definitely not about making accusations in an effort support activist causes.
Egypt is training potential Palestinian recruits at military academies; most come from the Palestinian Authority’s security services, and some Fatah members, Hamas’ rival, join from Gaza as well
A security force for the terrorist state so zionists can keep stealing more land in the west bank with zero resistance and like usual israel will act like they resist the idea while supporting it deep down
In the US, our president is putting to the test how corrupt you can be when you don't face a credible opposition. As awful as corruption is, getting caught stealing from your citizens doesn't threaten one's power unless there's an appealing political alternative.
There is none, the only opposition is the kirchnerismo that is facing a power vacuum after the leader, Cristina Kirchner, was forbidden to participate in further elections due to corruption. Her son and the governor of the biggest province are duking it out with no end in sight.
A smear is normally "hey this guy looks shady and HATES children", not "we evidence of your sister (the secretary general) on tape routinely accepting kickbacks for government contracts".
FYI his sister is a government official because Milei specifically removed a law that barred family members from being appointed to such positions.
I'm not getting too excited yet. All class action lawsuits I've heard of end up netting individual members only a few bucks each. Unless the settlement specifically grants authors right to opt out of AI scraping, it's only a small victory. Hopefully settlement details will come out soon.
I've been part of a class action suite that netted me several hundred dollars, but it was a rarity, most others I've participated in ended up with me receiving between $1-20.
Most of the ones I've been a part of I've had to provide information that proves that I was negatively affected, but there have been a couple that I didn't have to do that. Generally I think the ones where you have to provide proof lean towards being higher in the amount of money you get, but that's only my personal experience.
Very true, the websites are usually pretty good about detailing what level of information is needed.
The no proof ones are usually like 5-$25, but if adds up. I just point it out because most people don't realize that there is always a couple class actions that they can add their name to for payouts.
If every author in the class filed a claim, industry advocates warned, it would "financially ruin" the entire AI industry.
Journalists need to stop this shit. Yes, it would financially ruin them. It'd ruin them the same way drug dealers would be financially ruined if you confiscated their drugs.
Israeli Colonel Jacques Neriah, a former intelligence official and a special analyst for the Middle East, warned on Sunday of an impending “second round” of war against Iran as Tehran weighs a revenge attack on Tel Aviv.
“There is a sense that a war is coming, that Iranian revenge is in the works. The Iranians will not be able to live with this humiliation for long,” Neriah told Udi Segal and Anat Davidov on 103FM.
“Israel must launch a preemptive strike against Iran in its present state, as a large part of its military capabilities is paralyzed,” he added.
I can't help but laugh. "If we don't attack Iran, they'll attack us," has now turned into, "Now that we've attacked Iran they're definitely going to attack us!" There are no limits to their justifications for warmongering.
Then we need to stop antagonizing them and giving them a reason to get nukes. At this point they have enough institutional knowledge and resources to make one so them not doing it is more them not wanting to, ie. The ayatollahs fatwa against them.
If Israel and the US keep bombing them though and make them think the only path to safety is through nukes then maybe that fatwa goes away.
The French don't get enough criticism about what they've done and continue to do globally. USA is rightfully considered the bad guy globally but 250 years of war and theft are nothing compared to the 400 - 600 years of rape and pillaging the French have done
I'm sure this has changed a bit since the old (very popular) king died, but back then you would probably rather go to prison than face the angry mob that would summon if you insulted the king.
I’m sure this has changed a bit since the old (very popular) king died
Sort of a chicken-egg situation. Is the king so popular that nobody bothers to criticize him? Or is the king's light touch less likely to stir the pot and provoke criticism that results in prosecution?
you would probably rather go to prison than face the angry mob
This sounds like using a Jim Crow era lynch mob to explain the popularity of a Segregationist governor.
In Israel, thousands of protesters have blocked roads around the country, including a major highway in Tel Aviv, burning tires, calling for the return of the hostages still held in Gaza and an end to Israel’s war on the besieged strip. The protests were led by families of hostages, and part of a nationwide “Day of Disruption.”
"Meanwhile, Israel’s military chief clashed with far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir about Israel’s Gaza City operation, with Smotrich reportedly saying, “Whoever doesn’t evacuate, don’t let them. No water, no electricity, they can die of hunger or surrender.”
I bet those 2 pieces of shit still act offended if you call this genocide genocide
Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on most US imports from India, making good on a threat to punish one of the world’s largest economies over its purchases of discounted Russian oil.
The tariffs, which came into effect just after midnight on Wednesday in Washington, risk inflicting significant damage on the Indian economy and further disrupting global supply chains.
US tariffs of 25% on Indian goods went into force earlier this month, but Trump announced plans to double the rate, citing New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil, which the White House has argued is indirectly funding Russia’s war against Ukraine.
S Jaishankar, the external affairs minister, called Washington’s demand that New Delhi stop buying Russian crude “unjustified and unreasonable” and accused the west of hypocrisy, noting that Europe trades far more with Russia. To avoid the extra US tariff, India would have to replace about 42% of its oil imports.
The 42% figure needs some contextualisation. I believe the figure was significantly less (single digits?) before the beginning of the full scale invasion.
How much of all this tariff stuff is performative? With all the exclusions, that top line number will apply to very few actual goods. I don't think anyone is naive enough to believe Trump has anything against Russian interests.
Given the gifts Trump has handed to Russia so far, he's likely using Russian oil as a mere justification to impose more tariffs on India. Tariffs that are unlikely to stop India from using Russian oil. Not an actual attempt to hurt Russia.
Just scrolling through random photos. Old hi-bay light reflector, a cheap metal screw auger, some old pipe and a random drill I had. ESP controlled with some customised firmware. Silly chickens also have an automated door, heater, light... hooked into home assistant.
They're not even my chickens, they just rocked up one day and started trying to sleep on my hot water cylinder... nekkminnit I've been tricked into building them a house!
Getting anything out is already almost impossible. I moved sway from 3rd party cloud storage a couple years back. I had to get 500gb from onedrive and it was refusing to download at anything more than 50kb/s (my internet was significantly better than that)
If you're in the EU, you can apply for a GDPR request to get sent a copy of all your data in their cloud, same for iCloud. Takes about 48 hours in my experience.
Free office suite – the evolution of OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx. Updated regularly, community powered.
I second this. There's a little bit of a learning curve on some of the functionality, but it's not bad at all. And most of the functionality is very easy to find. I moved over to Libre Office several years ago and it's been great.
This is very true. I hadn’t used Microsoft Office since 2007 and at my new workplace everyone’s using it. It’s really hard and I don’t find anything. Yesterday I was working with tables but I gave up and had IT install libreoffice instead.
Libreoffice their latest blogpost is from the 20th of August 2025. There have been a few releases in the past few months as well.
Openoffice their latest ( Apache Openoffice 4.1.15 ) was released almost 2 years ago ( December 2023 ).
Libreoffice seems like a more recent, better supported tool over Openoffice which hasn't seen any updates since 2023 according to their own website.
I'm on my phone, so I didn't search extensively. But I think that also plays a role in why there's a much larger fanbase for libreoffice rather than Openoffice.
I've no recent experience with either so I can't comment on how well either works.
Edit: I looked up the wrong one. My statement remains correct w.r.t. Openoffice, but they mentioned Onlyoffice which is a different product.
openoffice is an apache project, created when oracle gave them the code and rights to the openoffice project. ibm later donated symphony to them. anyone familiar with apache knows they do things their own way, and usually slowly.
libreoffice originated from a fork when openoffice's status under oracle was in doubt. it progresses faster than apache, as most developers also switched.
onlyoffice is an entirely different application. decent enough, but with its own quirks. it can also be slow on lower-spec systems due to the heavy reliance on js. originally a latvian-russian project, it was reorganized (via new corporate entities in uk and sg) to hide the russian ties for 'reasons'.
Ah I see. Thanks for the information. I use both LibreOffice and OnlyOffice and generally am happy with both. I kind of just bounce around back and forth.
Man, wouldn't it be nice if both of our counties didn't have ridiculous propaganda and fascism so that we could just cooperate on shit like this without having to worry as much about maliciousness on a state level?
OnlyOffice is Russian-owned, via a holding company in Singapore. When Russia invaded Ukraine and sanctions threatened the business, they obfuscated this, but it's still Lev Bannov's product.
The importance you attach to this is up to you, but they try quite hard to hide it.
Yes Ms is secretly stealing from users across the world and yet not a single security researcher has found it. AND ALEXA IS LISTENING TO ME 24X365 DAYS A YEAR!
until your computer force reboots itself in the middle of the day to do updates it didn't tell you about, and you log back in and later that night find it uploaded all your shit to the cloud and just for good measure deleted some of it too as a fuck you
tip: do not write about the revolution, short stories, hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, or your teenage angst and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.
tip: Only write about the revolution, short stories about your hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, your teenage angst, and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.
Let's say this huge breach of security and privacy is okay.
How are Microsoft ensuring these sensitive documents are not being transferred via or stored on servers located in hostile countries with lax data laws (such as foreign nations like the USA?).
Microsoft has already said it doesn't matter where your data is stored, it isn't safe from the United States.
But you can change this behaviour in settings, it's just the default for now.
So, if you don't trust Microsoft to handle your documents, but still somehow use MS Word and OneDrive, for the moment you can still stop it from saving your Word documents to their servers.
Ms office 2016 install still going strong with zero cloud function. That day I lose it is the day LibreOffice copies itself from the laptop to the desktop. Aint paying for O365
No for most it's customers and an option for them all. MS is very clear in its policies. Any AI services you use, isn't sent back for training. The policy is very clearly explained and one of the clearer ones.
Business or enterprise users data isn't trained and individuals data can opt out
I remember when facebook had a policy to require users to opt-in to having third parties scrape users data, but then it turned out a "bug" caused FB to sell everyones data anyway and they made billions more money than they would have.
I have no doubt a similar "bug" will make its way to the MS servers if one hasnt already.
A lie is an assertion that is believed to be false, typically used with the purpose of deceiving or misleading someone.[1][2][3] The practice of communicating lies is called lying. A person who communicates a lie may be termed a liar.
I actually appreciate this. The only place I use Word is at work, and nothing I create in Word at work is 'mine'. I do not care at all about the security of things I do at work (that's for our IT Security team to care about), and all this means is that if I accidentally screw up, or if my computer just up and dies on me... all of my work files should be 'safe'.
My employer has been going very hard towards ensuring that our work computers can ONLY be used for work purposes. Once I accepted this and embraced it I found that I'm now 100% free of Microsoft for anything personal, and it is amazing.
there is a reaching hand that goes further than just using it for work.
lets say you open libreoffice writer and write a party invite. you send this party invite to a friend - they are invited to your party.
your friend opens it in MSWord, its uploaded to the cloud and scraped for all of your personal data to train their AI and to be sold to the lowest bidder.
you had and want nothing to do with microsoft, but they are still harvesting your data.
i have been trying to understand what information i send to people and how i send it in an attempt to try and get as lottle data into msrecall as possible.
im not quite there yet (and probably wont be before the oct cutoff) because my mother still uses windows & emails me sometimes, and a few of my friends on discord use windows. its really difficult because i have no control over my data being scraped by products i do not use and have never accepted a eula for. its...... aggravating 🙁
The unfortunate fact is if a user who views what you post is using a windows machine, the likelihood of the information on their screen being captured by Microsoft is overwhelmingly high.
I guess you may have to approach the issue how you would the public-facing internet at large: if you cannot verify who and how people are viewing your material, do not post any material that can be accessed by windows. If you must, post it through a trusted circle of users who also understand the issue.
I agree, however you're never going to be able to fully control things that you've sent out for other people. Even this post can, and likely will, end up as training data for AI. 'The only winning move is not to play' applies to a lot of things in life, and if you truly want to protect your data then the best move is to not create any data. The second best move is to not share any data that you've created.
I mean, I'm in the same boat. This doesn't effect me except for work stuff. But here's the thing, all of my documents are already backed up to the cloud via OneDrive settings. So this is redundant at best.
At the end of the day, one of the reasons I hate the MS experience is because they push things on you. Its not your PC, its theirs. Hey, you want to use OneDrive? No? Are you sure? No? Are you really sure? No? Why don't I just turn it on for you so you can see how great it is. You must have turned it off by accident, let me turn it back on. OK, OK I get it you really don't want to use onedrive. Oh, I forgot that fact once our annual update came out and undid that setting. You straight out uninstalled onedirve and altered your registry? Ok, how about we just upload Word documents for you.
Part of why I still hate it at work; work knows almost everything about me. People with poor understanding of PII have my personal information, and use MS products. Microsoft knows all of that, and everything that I type, the notes I make, the phrases I use, inferences on my interests, and can combine that with other profiles. It helps put together a much more complete picture and profile of me and why I interface with. And I can't opt out, can't use Linux, and can't just go somewhere else to avoid it.
Munoz backs up the decision with half a dozen advantages for saving documents to the cloud. From never losing progress and access anywhere to easy collaboration and increased security and compliance.
Munoz kept out the little details where nobody wants this and this is only a good thing for Microsoft
I don't get it, does Microsoft WANT everyone to stop using their products? First they fuck up their OSes, then they start planting shady shit in their OSes, and now it's down to every single goddamned piece of software they poop out! What in the fuck are they even doing!
I'm pretty sure most regular users will not even notice the charge, and find it useful down the line. Cause one day they will mess something up, complain to MS that they "lost their work", will be pointed to the cloud where everything was synced, and rejoice. Most users don't really care about the implications that their documents are in the cloud.
Silence! The great Microsoft has decreed that from this day forward your documents belong to them! No dissension!
Proceed to the payment portal to pay your offerings immediately. Only those worthy enough to pay for the Extra^TM^ and Premium^TM^ tiers will be allowed to use the File menu.
Free office suite – the evolution of OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx. Updated regularly, community powered.
I think it they are based in Latvia now which is in Europe. They did originally start in Russia and still supply the Russian government. Though it is free and open source. So where it is based does not really matter.
OnlyOffice is one of the few open source applications which actually puts effort into its UI. LibreOffice looks straight from 1990. I really would not recommend LibreOffice to anyone who is not technical, whereas OnlyOffice provides a great UI experience.
With the entire West supporting a livestreamed genocide the whole moral highground schtick does not really land for me anymore either.
Of the installs I've done in the past year, none were absolutely flawless. One had an error that I just hit "retry" and it worked. One required some serious googling but I found the fix on reddit (rip). One didn't work at all, and I switched to a different distro that did work.
I'm not going to lie and sugarcoat it, but once I got past the install everything has been fine. Hopefully things will continue to improve
It's on per default when signed in to OneDrive. Actually a really nice feature tbh. However, you will be promoted to hell and back if you aren't signed in to OneDrive. I like the feature for work but I don't like the idea of it being the default setting.
I have a Word document saved into my ‘personal account vault’ which is for personal thoughts (like a diary). Does this mean, they’ll automatically upload this too into their cloud?
If that’s the case, not sure what to do. Tempted to go back to old school diary but risk the chance of my family finding it.
Markdown is great for that. There also are some WYSIWYG and a lot of side-view editors. If you still want Word-alike, there's lots of office suites aside from Office 365. Or is it about saving notes to cloud? Even more solutions just for that, aside from plain file-sync clouds.
No, that’s not it. I just want a Word-alike thing that allows me to put a password on it and use it as a ‘modern diary’ (like how you can make chapters and such in Word).
Not sure if I explained it well, English isn’t my native language. So wasn’t sure how to explain it
Siu Mit USA De Fa Si Si Zu Yi The Only Good Fa Xi Si Zu Yi Ze Hai Sei Zo Ge
(Destroy fascism in the USA The only good fascist is a dead one)
Now just need to transpose that and replace some characters. Of course, making it offline would greatly reduce government/corporate surveillance threats. As long as your family aren't cryptographers, they won't be able to decrypt it.
(Its Tri-Lingual. Cantonese Jyutping, Mandarin Pinyin, and English of course. Romanization of characters makes it harder to guess words especially when it gets transposed with a bunch of others.)
No big corporation or state institution handling vast amounts of customer data will not allow this. Also really bad for regular consumer too. Microsoft servers will become treasure trove for hackers.
I'm not exactly s power user in Microsoft office, but I found using libre office to be very similar. Never had issues using it for school back in the day and I'm sure it's better now.
My only problem is how Libre Office handles their style system. It's forced use for things like Footers, and very hard to manipulate and turn off unlike Word.
My own way to bypass it was to replace a new document text into an old converted word text that had the correct footer pages from Word.
I really hate page and Style guides because they always want to propagate everything through entire documents, instead of only changing things on a page by page basis. Adding things to previous pages when you change something isn't helpful.
I’ve been using it for over a decade now and have only rarely come across broken documents due to proprietary features. If you’re making docs for yourself, I’d say it’s pretty much a 100% replacement. Things can get a bit more fucky if you’re having exchanges where you edit with Libre and someone else edits with Word. But other than that, they’re pretty darn close.
Another user just linked some resources. Incredible the bullshit going on these days. So much going on it's hard for me to keep up with it all but I'm glad to be enlightened.
Wow thanks for the resources! I appreciate you dropping links I had no idea this was going on. Of course Google and Amazon are involved too, could have figured as much. Appears the only way do avoid the military industrial complex is to cease using anything provided from our oligarch overlords. What an age we live in.
I'm 99% of the way on LibreOffice. Gave it a solid go, but the main thing I use in excel is too cumbersome in Libre. I think it's a great option for many people though.
You're thinking as an individual. Excel in the business is what keeps Office afloat. There simply is no substitute. Even if you want to go with another spreadsheet, who's going to trust that to faithfully import Excel data?
LOL, Excel doesn't mangle shit. It's best-in-class spreadsheet software for a dozen reasons. #1 being that it never changes. It's solid, no other software like it. Business won't risk fucking around with anything else.
SOURCE: Sysadmin for several companies, and one that mainly used Google for Business. Accounting still had to have Excel.
Well, no? It would be ridiculous to expect me to be a power user over all the software I've administrated. I judge what people need according to business demands and orders from on high. My judgement is that, yes, some business units require Excel.
That’s not what the claim was though, was it. Someone said Excel also mangles files and your counter seems to be that no it doesn’t because you’ve got users who use it. But the one thing does not automatically follow from the other.
How many individuals care about what businesses do though? Usually they provide the hardware too, so it's whatever when it comes to what the company chooses to use.
These are more individual concerns for personal hardware. So long live LibreOffice.
Not really. What software and hardware a corporation chooses to use for their workforce is something that employees will not have much control over if they aren't in a high enough position.
Anything provided by a company is company property anyways. What matters more to me is what is used for personal use than a work computer or work phone or work etc.
So discussion wasn't off track. You were seeing things from the company perspective assuming the person was seeing it from a corporate position. I'm seeing it from a personal usage perspective and not corporate, which most employees have little control over and it's not their devices anyways.
LibreOffice does everything I need except that their version of Power Point (forgot the name lol) is a mess to work with in terms of making the slide deck visual appealing. Automatic guide lines, snapping and smartart, to name a few.
Thinking about onlyoffice but I'm not sure if I can trust them since I read about then trying to hide their ties to Russia.
How will this work for (for example) cibersecurity companies that have reports full of client's vulnerabilities and can't have them hosted in third parties?
I'm unclear on the differences between OpenOffice (which I genuinely thought was retired, didn't realize it was still a thing) and LibreOffice. If it ever gives you trouble, do make the switch.
It's still being kept barely alive for whatever reason. But it hasn't gotten any reasonable updates (I think not even including security updates as of recently, see libreoffice.org/discover/libre… ).
Today marks 20 years since the source code to OpenOffice was released. And today we say: LibreOffice is the future of OpenOffice. Let’s all get behind it! It’s great to have a rich and diverse set of free and open source software projects.
OnlyOffice, not OpenOffice. This is a different suite entirely. Might be better for people coming from MS Office, since it looks practically identical. Also supports opening multiple files as tabs.
ONLYOFFICE offers a secure online office suite highly compatible with MS Office formats. Connect it to your web platform for document editing and collaboration or use as a part of ONLYOFFICE Workspace.
which I genuinely thought was retired, didn’t realize it was still a thing
It's not gone. It's still around. Libre is forked from OpenOffice. When Libre was forked, everyone moved to Libre because Open has a lot of issues, which is why Libre was forked.
This is why Microsoft is making it damn near impossible to set up a new computer without logging into a Microsoft account. Luckily the OOBE trick still works (for now).
Office 365 requires an account to validate the license. Potentially it might work differently for the long term licensed versions (which features released to O365 now wouldn't reach until the next LTSC release), but I've not performed the initial install and licensing of those for clients yet
Or for home users who aren't already invested in a Microsoft ecosystem your best bet is to just use Libre Office
Edit: I accidentally made Office exclusive to leap years!
I love LibreOffice, but I wish there was an Android app. I've even considered learning more app development to try and help, but it's such a daunting task.
I've been writing all my college papers in LaTeX and it's been great. They look so professional, and it's easier to work on a collection of text files than one monolithic document.
I swear typesetting your papers is worth half a grade point at least. Then once you find Zotero and realize it will automagically handle your citations and you have auto biblios and cites working in LyX....life changing, absolutely.
It really depends on what you will use it for. Using it for plain text doesn't require much, some advanced layouts require a bit more digging, if you're including fancy graphics, equations, bibliography, footnotes, etc, you're going to look at managing the relevant libraries to gandle that (they are very well made and very convenient). All in all, it can be as complex as you want, but it can also be quite easy to use. Also LaTeX is way simpler than plain TeX.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea. Too many people are still not backing up their data, and the article says "...automatically save to OneDrive or your preferred cloud destination".
As long as they really give users full freedom to choose any cloud service, I consider that a win.
"If you don't have another cloud destination, don't worry... we'll automatically save it to your OneDrive account we FORCED you to get when you activated your operating system. Why no! You CAN'T turn it off! Also, we won't let you edit your files without internet connectivity. You can never be too safe!"
Literally the ONLY thing stopping this from happening is they don't think they can get away with it yet. I'm NOT going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
What you said is like saying "well, I need surgery, having the monkey from the forest come at me with a knife is better than nothing."
Microsoft has proven themselves over and over to be the last company you should trust with your data. Even recently they've been responsible for losing a life's worth of data because of OneDrive
They're already uploading people's data off of their computers to OneDrive without consent, then deleting the local copies.
Plus their tech work culture is lacking. When they screwed something up with Office 365 and Outlook wasn't available for over 18 hours (for basically the whole world), their response was a tweet that it's fixed.
Whereas CloudFlare messed up something for only an hour, they released a comprehensive breakdown on their blog of what happened, what the root cause was, and what they're going to do to prevent it from happening again.
I stopped at MS Word 2.0, when the Microsoft people agreed with me that it was pretty much broken for large files, and pointed me to an FTP site where there was a new version... which also was broken. Long story short, that's when I first installed Linux and ran LaTeX and Applixware.
They'd break SO MANY international and data security laws if they tried breaking into people's OneDrive, it'd be hilarious to see the number of lawsuits they'd lose by default.
they're probably already doing that to a smaller degree, and slightly protecting themselves with an obscure clause in their TOS. besides, you only lose lawsuits if you get caught - and churning things through AI is a great way to erase any fingerprints that identifies stolen data
because your phone/laptop doesn't have a global wi-fi connection, and you might want to open a document pause for dramatic effect outside of your home or work!
this has been goin on for like a year now. i have an offline profile with no onedrive on my machine, and tried the latest office. theres a slider saying autosave, but i was unable to use it. felt kinda weird that there is no autosave feature anymore. turns out autosave has been a cloud save option, and poor excel was not able to savemy private data to the onedrive datafarm. also the new excel is super slow compared to like the 2016 version, which indicates that theres more bloat under the hood.
Having switched many relatives to Linux recently too, Mint will be your best jumping off point for a familiar feel and pain free experience as someone new to Linux. If you love that and find yourself wanting more, then the world is your oyster! I started on Mint and ultimately settled on Fedora Plasma after trying out a half dozen different options.
Haven't had a need to open one the entire time I've been on the OS! Other than for my own development needs, but that's my own use case and nothing to do with operating the OS as a user.
Chinese property giant Evergrande's shares were taken off the Hong Kong stock market on Monday after more than a decade and a half of trading.
It marks a grim milestone for what was once China's biggest real estate firm, with a stock market valuation of more than $50bn (£37.1bn). That was before its spectacular collapse under the weight of the huge debts that had powered its meteoric rise.
Experts say the delisting was both inevitable and final.
This should be huge news, but I expect you'll barely see a ripple. A company with $45b in debt is being foreclosed on. This should have all kinds of knock on effects.
Banks in severe trouble because they won't get their loans repaid.
It's been pretty much party line that they want this to happen for some time now. Pooh bear famously made this houses are for living in speech and directly wanted to knock out speculation. They do not want to be the West and define themselves by asset prices rising with no relationship to productivity. What the West would view as a major crisis then is the CCP's intended effect. They specifically targeted these highly leveraged developers with the theory (correct in my opinion) that the loans themselves are what are driving this "growth" and it's largely creating a situation of extraction that's pricing out regular Chinese from housing. Even making noises in that direction would seriously spook Western housing prices. Harris's solution was famously increasing lending if you remember.
I'm not sure I follow what you're saying, but it sounds like...
The CCP plan was: - Drive growth of megacorporation through massive loans - Megacorporation builds properties - Megacorporation has massive losses and defaults on loans - profit???
...and the people who gave out the loans. That's where I'm expecting things to have an effect, much like 2008. A property company can crumble, but governments are much more protective of banks.
Seit das ZDF und ARTE vor acht Jahren mit der legendären Serie „Bad Banks“ europäische Maßstäbe gesetzt haben und, in zwei Staffeln, einen mit Preisen überhäuften und internationalen Erfolg feiern konnten, habe ich mich gefragt, ob, und wenn, dann wann und wie, so ein TV-Ereignis wohl zu wiederholen sein würde. Für all diese Fragen steht die Antwort auf dem brandneuen „ZDF-Portal“. Bei der Ausstrahlung im TV war das kein Quotenhit, dabei ist diese Serie aber ein öffentlich-rechtlicher Hammer! (ZDF)
Seit das ZDF und ARTE vor acht Jahren mit der legendären Serie "Bad Banks" europäische Maßstäbe gesetzt haben und, in zwei Staffeln, einen mit Preisen überhäuften und internationalen Erfolg feiern konnten, habe ich mich gefragt, ob, und wenn, dann wa…
Paris is suing the Australian platform for alleged negligence following the death of streamer Raphaël Graven, also known as Jean Pormanove, while on air.
People let those other people control resources, could it be because they shared the greed and thought they would benefit more from it by letting that happen?
Who would be able to take it away from them? They’ll do everything possible to keep them. Move it, buy politicians, etc.
A sufficient amount of people, it has happened a couple of time in history.
You mean trickle down and that bs?
Yes the belief in such thing. If we go back to early society, it could be agreeing to follow a leader because you believe you'll get more resources from working for his group than by yourself.
According to anthropologists, for the vast majority of human history, humans operated based on gift economies. Money is a much more recent invention. Capitalism is an even more recent invention.
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The autority should be held accountable too for knowing about the case and still let the abusers free and allowed them to continue streaming during the investigatiob
That's what gets me. This feels like an attempt to pass responsibility on and deflect away from the fact that the authorities were alerted and involved and did nothing to stop it.
The Danish foreign minister has summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen to explain a media report alleging that American nationals linked to Donald Trump are attempting to infiltrate Greenland and run covert influencing operations there.
to their credit, infiltratiing a population of 57000 people which are 90% Inuit isn't that easy, anyone new stands out like a sore thumb, and there aren't so many ways to get there either; i'd say the covert approach isn't gonna fly.
Especially finding allies in the population is pretty senseless. Whoever lives there does so because it's his home and he loves it as it is, i'd wager that there aren't so many people who WANT to live in Greenland when you aren't born there.
You can't bring freedom to a backwards and obviously oppressed people without putting the DJT signature on the bottom on the check. Freedom costs a buck o' five.
Here’s your answer: trump is a vile traitor cunt who’s putting on a show to satisfy his unbounded narcissism. Americans don’t want Greenland. We have enough land.
It is astounding how much Putin was able to damage this country by exploiting the vile republican filth.
USA is not an ally to anyone, just look at how they've behaved against Canada, a country that is generally considered USA's closest ally for decades. Denmark too has been one of the closest allies to USA for half a century. And USA could easily make defense agreements regarding Greenland with Greenland and Denmark. Yet they choose to behave like an enemy!!!
USA is behaving like an enemy, and behaving like an enemy, actually makes you one.
For Christ sake, stop the purchase from Denmark of F35!! What the fuck is our government thinking continuing that moronic program?
Edit: Yes yes yes I get it, I was wrong about Canada supporting USA in the revolution. I'd have preferred not to change the text so many people have already responded to, but I keep getting the same message over and over again.
I wouldn't say we've been their #1 supporter since the war of independence. On average over the last 300ish years, sure. They did invade us in 1812 though.
Oh yeah it was 100% them being hostile. Canada was basically the easy target to take out frustrations they had with the crown. Didn't work though they mostly just cost thousands of lives and got the white house burned down.
Fun fact, the US barely teaches anyone about the war of 1812 🙃 It's usually like, a page in a textbook for most people. It's rare for anyone in the US to actually know any details about it, or even what it was about.
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It’s been a while since I’ve been in a history class, but I wanna say France was typically considered the US’s closest ally during and after the revolutionary war. Not sure how close that relationship has stayed since, though.
At the outset of the American Revolutionary War, the American revolutionaries hoped the French Canadians in Quebec and the Colonists in Nova Scotia would join their rebellion. They were pre-approved for joining the United States in the Articles of Confederation. When northeastern Quebec was invaded, thousands joined the American cause
At the outset of the American Revolutionary War, the American revolutionaries hoped the French Canadians in Quebec and the Colonists in Nova Scotia would join their rebellion. They were pre-approved for joining the United States in the Articles of Confederation. When northeastern Quebec was invaded, thousands joined the American cause
I always thought Canada was with France, and supported USA in the American revolution. Anyways up until recently Canada was generally thought (AFAIK) to be USA's closest ally.
They basically ran up and said "Hey we are liberating ourselves from the British. How about we help you do the same and with the French too and then we can all be one happy family. The Canadians did a "nah, that's all right, thanks" and walked away.
Honestly I believe that the US would have been in a better place if we remained like Canada or Australia. We could have avoided hundreds of years of bullshit.
I absolutely understand why USA didn't want to be a colony under a king. Where all the profits go to the king, and Americans had zero influence. The idea of making a democracy is obviously better than a dictatorship. But unfortunately they designed a very flawed democracy, in an attempt to maintain efficiency in governance. I understand they didn't know better at the time. But why didn't USA reform their democracy already back in the 70's? Of course it's because it worked reasonably well back then, and it was impossible to predict the rapid decline that started with Reagan. The flawed democracy only worked as long as both sides respected and protected it, but Republicans began clearly disrespecting it already with Reagan, and it's only gotten worse since.
So now USA is in a situation where they are very near to require a new revolution to become a functional democracy.
The funny part is that there was a lot of propaganda. Example: no taxation without representation was actually false. The population in the UK was much higher than in the colonies, and since the colonies had members in parliament, they actually had a higher level of representation than other citizens.
But even back then, the UK was a democracy. The US took a look back at ancient Greece and combined that with a lot of 18th century philosophy to make the government we see today.
Canada was still Loyalist British territory. Canada would have been on the opposite side of US and France.
Canada was also not a sovereign nation at that point, It was still multiple colonial territories. What became of Canada was essentially the territory that remained loyalist during the revolution, or territory the rebels americans failed to take.
so in other words, Canada didnt exist back then, it was just Loyalist Colonials and the British vs Rebel Colonials and the French. amongst other minor participants german mercenaries, dutch, natives etc
You thought Canada...a British colony... Was siding with France against it's own owner in support of the the US in breaking away from Britain, but decided not to secede itself?!
Yeah, Canada is literally the only country that has ever razed our capitol. They literally burned down the white house. I mean technically they were British at the time but they were the great great grandparents of today's Canadians. As an American it feels really intensely stupid saber rattling at them when they're friends by default.
That's not quite true. The people who burned down the White House were British, full stop. It was mostly Canadians that fought off the American invasion and won the war, but the burning was done by fleet of ships carrying British troops that had been stationed in Bermuda at the time.
At the outset of the American Revolutionary War, the American revolutionaries hoped the French Canadians in Quebec and the Colonists in Nova Scotia would join their rebellion. They were pre-approved for joining the United States in the Articles of Confederation. When northeastern Quebec was invaded, thousands joined the American cause
Canadian here. your statement is categorically false.
America was our enemy up until around the 1900s. the colonies that became Canada were loyalist, IE, opposed to the secessionist revolution. And we were also invaded by America in 1812. There may have also been plans for a second invasion in the 1860/1870 after the Civil War.
It wasn't until about the first world war that we were even remotely allied. and even then, Canada went to war first in both world wars. only to be joined by America 2-3 years later. We were not formal allies until we founded NATO together.
"We can ascertain that there are continuously foreign actors showing interest in Greenland and its current position within the kingdom. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise if, in the near future, we see foreign attempts to influence the kingdom's future," > "Any attempt at interference in the internal affairs of the kingdom will, of course, be unacceptable," he said.
DR had reported that at least three Americans with close connections to Trump were involved in the influencing operations, citing eight anonymous sources in both Denmark and the U.S., including government officials.
Polling of Greenlanders indicates little appetite on the island for being absorbed into the U.S.
I mean, it's not. Greenland has self-rule and parliamentary representation, and a generous bag of cash for running an arctic society delivered every year.
What they don't get a lot of is respect, which is unfortunate.
Denmark has absolutely done many awful things in Greenland, and I am the first to argue for actual equality and reparations for transgressions.
But they are not, politically, a colony at all. And reducing the question to be about a currency unit (which is pegged to the euro btw), is simplistic and disrespectful to everyone involved.
And, no, the Euro is a tool of financial imperialism that allows the metropoles to dominate the rest of the Eurozone and prevent the spread of communism. That's it, that's what it's for. There is no sovereignty without currency sovereignity.
The riches thought to lie beneath Greenland's icy terrain have been coveted for more than a century. But how easy are they to access, and will climate change make any difference?
Imagine being part of a society so backward and morally warped that it would inflict pain on two humans for showing affection to each other. Oh wait my society is like that too.
Arabia hasn't been closely involved for a long time. Actually, I don't know if it ever was or the someone like the Mughals were an intermediary, off the top of my head. It's far away from the Middle East.
Religious conservatives gonna religious conservative. If you go back to ancient history sometimes they were fine with homosexuality, or even expected some amount, but that died out along the way. Because of the European empires, but only because they were more successful, so I wouldn't blame Europe either.
this occurred in Aceh which is a gigantic island, but it's known as the "crazy muslim conservative island". They're locally governed and don't represent Indonesia as a whole.
The really successful religions and eventually empires just happened to be homophobic, so anyone conservative globally is likely to be homophobic.
It's actually a pretty LGBT friendly region anyway, it's legal in most of Indonesia, even, but they border Malaysia where gay stuff gets hard prison time.
Edit: As in, SE Asia is a relatively gay-friendly region, for whatever reason. It's not because social conservatism is out of style.
Indonesia itself is meh. Better than Malaysia, worse than Thailand. And the Muslim part will cane you for it, per the article.
Indonesia being in any way LGBT friendly is quite incorrect. No, there is no national law outlawing LGBTQ, however, there is a lot of discrimination, prejudice, hate crimes, etc. Yeah, there are some waria there, in some areas, but in general, it's not a place you would want to be LGBTQ. Source: Lived there for years, have family there.
To clarify, I meant SE Asia as the region, and I was mentally comparing against Africa or the rest of Asia. It's not the West, but Thailand and Singapore have legal gay marriage now.
USA is not an ally to anyone, just look at how they've behaved against Canada, a country that supported the US fight for independence, and has been their #1 ally ever since. Denmark too has been one of the closest allies to USA for half a century. And USA could easily make defense agreements regarding Greenland with Greenland and Denmark. Yet they choose to behave like an enemy!!!
USA is behaving like an enemy, and behaving like an enemy, actually makes you one.
For Christ sake, stop the purchase from Denmark of F35!! What the fuck is our government thinking continuing that moronic program?
Canada, a country that supported the US fight for independence
I do have to question this idea, because the defining feature that kept Canada as Canada, rather than yet another part of the US, is that the Canadian colonies famously did not support independence.
The US even tried to "liberate" Quebec during the war, and the locals were very much not fans of that idea.
Yeah, over a long enough timescale every country's relations have their ups and downs. Recent generations have been quite close, though - Canada spent a lot of military lives supporting America's misadventure in Afghanistan, for example. So it's still quite the massive stab in the back as far as the currently living Canadians are concerned.
At the outset of the American Revolutionary War, the American revolutionaries hoped the French Canadians in Quebec and the Colonists in Nova Scotia would join their rebellion. They were pre-approved for joining the United States in the Articles of Confederation. When northeastern Quebec was invaded, thousands joined the American cause
It's not about "realizing;" they're knowingly betraying their own people to cling onto power. The PA as an engine for Palestinian resistance died with Yasser Arafat.
Raoul Duke
in reply to JandroDelSol • • •