I want to start with I'm very impressed by the new 1.3.0 update, and congratulations to everyone who put in the work to make that happen.

Small, nitpicky comment: I believe Amethyst was using a green color for the font before, and now has a very cool purple (I like!).

But for clicked links in dark mode, the purple is so dark that I can barely make out the words. I'm just wondering if this can be adjusted later. Light mode works just great though!

Fascist Israeli settlers have attacked a group of foreign journalists filming their assaults on the Palestinians in the West Bank, injuring five, two of them so badly they were hospitalised.

The journalists were, Ranin Sawafteh, Mohammed al-Atrash, Louay Saeed, Nasser Ishtayeh and Nael Bouaitel. Some reports say that Ms Sawafteh was shot as well as beaten:

Among the others wounded were Palestinian farmers, medics, and international activists.

Israel has killed hundreds in attacks in the West Bank since the start of the faux-ceasefire in Gaza, including children.

Israeli settler attacks are growing in frequency, while total impunity ensures the next one is only a matter of time.

Featured image via Eye On Palestine

By Skwawkbox

From Canary via this RSS feed

Skwawkbox, Author at Canary

Articles by Skwawkbox for Canary

^{Skwawkbox (The Canary)}

https://time.com/7332356/uber-lawsuit-sex-discrimination-lyft/

Hi everyone!

I have a few questions related to GOG.

Achievements:

Apparently they should work with Heroic through Comet. If I launch a GOG game in gaming mode as a non-steam game would it work as long as the checkbox about comet in Heroic is activated? Or do I have anything to do such as what’s decribed here github.com/imLinguin/comet/wik… or there reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comment… ? The explanations are a bit complex for me and contradictory.

Downloads:

Is there a way to download a GOG game in the background while playing a Steam game in gaming mode?

I really want to support GOG and these features are important. Of course I know that the Steam Deck is subsidized by Valve and that we can’t have everything, but I hope GOG will be more Linux friendly in the future.

Thanks a lot.

Usage

Open Source implementation of GOG Galaxy Communication Service for SDK bundled with GOG games. - imLinguin/comet

^GitHub

Well, get ready for everything to get even more expensive! I'm sick of the winning at this point. But at least I won't have to vote, right?

Magical thinking is indispensable to understanding Team Trump’s economic policymaking. The White House often seems to believe two opposing policies can work together while one policy can do two or three contradictory things.

A heavy dose of hocus pocus will be needed to make the administration’s dollar policy work in the interest of the United States, for it appears that they want to end the US dollar’s supremacy in global finance.

At least some part of it does. True, Donald Trump has warned countries not to replace the dollar, or else. And, reportedly, some members of the administration want to encourage more countries to adopt the dollar outright. But what is also true is that Stephen Miran, the president’s chief economic adviser, on leave to act as board member of the Federal Reserve, thinks the dollar’s position as the main reserve currency of the world is an undue burden for the US and a principal driver of the large trade deficit that Trump finds so odious.

“America runs large current account deficits not because it imports too much,” Miran wrote last year. Rather, it imports too much because it must export Treasury bonds to provide other countries with assets in which to park their reserves. This leads to “persistent dollar overvaluation that prevents the balancing of international trade.”

Trump’s dollar delusion: how trade war risks ending the US’s ‘exorbitant privilege’

Trump’s team flirts with weakening the dollar, threatening US influence, low borrowing costs and global stability

^{Eduardo Porter (The Guardian)}

White House is manipulating voting system, from redistricting to rule changes, to affect midterms

A year out from the 2026 midterms, with Republicans feeling the blows from a string of losses in this week’s elections, Donald Trump and his allies are mounting a multipronged attack on almost every aspect of voting in the United States and raising what experts say are troubling questions about the future of one of the world’s oldest democracies.

While Democratic leaders continue to invest their hopes in a “blue wave” to overturn Republican majorities in the House and Senate next year, Trump and some prominent supporters have sought to discredit the possibility that Republicans could lose in a fair fight and are using that premise to justify demands for a drastically different kind of electoral system.

This is not the first time Trump has questioned the credibility of US elections -- he did it almost as vigorously in 2016 and 2024, when he won his bids for the White House, as he did in 2020, when he did not -- but now the president's confidants are threatening emergency powers to seize control of a process over which presidents ordinarily have no control.

Trump falsely claims noncitizen voter fraud is widespread. Here are 5 facts.

Voter fraud by noncitizens is very rare and does not occur in numbers that could swing a federal election, studies show.

^{Laura Doan (CBS News)}

A year out from the 2026 midterms, with Republicans feeling the blows from a string of losses in this week’s elections, Donald Trump and his allies are mounting a multipronged attack on almost every aspect of voting in the United States and raising what experts say are troubling questions about the future of one of the world’s oldest democracies.

While Democratic leaders continue to invest their hopes in a “blue wave” to overturn Republican majorities in the House and Senate next year, Trump and some prominent supporters have sought to discredit the possibility that Republicans could lose in a fair fight and are using that premise to justify demands for a drastically different kind of electoral system.

This is not the first time Trump has questioned the credibility of US elections – he did it almost as vigorously in 2016 and 2024, when he won his bids for the White House, as he did in 2020, when he did not – but now the president’s confidants are threatening emergency powers to seize control of a process over which presidents ordinarily have no control.

Trump’s former chief political adviser, Steve Bannon, is urging him to get the elections “squared away” even before the voters have a chance to weigh in. Former legal advisers have suggested the electoral system is in itself an emergency justifying extraordinary intervention, possibly including federal agents and the military stationed outside polling stations.

If you can still afford a hat, hold onto it!

Trump’s assault on voting intensifies as midterms loom:‘a wholesale attack on free and fair elections’

White House is manipulating voting system, from redistricting to rule changes, to affect midterms

^{Andrew Gumbel (The Guardian)}

Or: How I made the single most flammable object in my flat.

Harry had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place. It was lit
by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in midair over four
long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting.

And while I would love to say that it was this line that inspired me, it was rather a friend of mine that had those 20$ plastic candles hanging from strings in her hallway. Waving a plastic wand around they not only turned on, but also left quite the impression on me. However, the more keen eyed might have already noticed: There are no candles on my photos. There's no wand either. This is not even about floating candles and I'm just about done with them. Now while I really liked the looks, I didn't like the thought of changing batteries every week (I never checked the runtime of those plastic candles you find everywhere, but I doubt it's anywhere near acceptable for me). Adding permanent wiring came to my mind, but this would require hiding cables and a transformer somewhere. Not that easy with the average ceiling, at least if you live in a rented flat and consider moving within the next 15 years. Luckily J.K. Rowling also came up with this whole indoor cloud thing, so I ended up with a build idea after all.

Now that you know how this idea came about, let me ramble about the build a little. Not that I think I'm the most qualified person to do this - you will be able to find plenty of images online where people did the same thing, arguably lots nicer than my own build. But no one tells you that you should not be doing this because it's annoying and sticky and fiber gets everywhere. Also it's not unlikely to catch fire and burn down my whole apartment with it. But starting from the start: I grabbed some cheap 20mm thick foam board, attached two wooden cross members to it and into those some hooks. This way I can hang the whole sheet to the ceiling and also got space for the cable bits. While still being cumbersome to hang, it allows for an undisturbed underside (where the cloud part is). And even more important: The cloud can be assembled on the living room floor (or any other floor you would like to cover in glue and fiberfill). Next were the LEDs, where I grabbed 8m of 60LEDs/m strip. With a fitting transformers and a ZigBee controller everything lights up and integrates into Home Assistant. Playing a little with the look I decided on a fairly dense layout, leaving only around 5cm between the rows of LEDs. The fiberfill does a good job of covering up whichever bad job you did laying out the LEDs and no one will be able to see that you bend the strips around the corners instead of doing a proper wiring job. Speaking of the fiberfill: You don't need much of it. If I had to guess, 500g would be plenty for my 120*60cm panel. I don't have an exact number here, but the reason is not that I seem to have no perception of how much 5kg of fiberfill are. So I totally don't have a human sized box of fiberfill sitting in my apartment that barely lost any weight. And even though it's not much weight you need for the cloud, it sure seems like a lot when it frees itself from the double sided tape and comes tumbling down. After being pissed at the tape and myself for being lazy, I did it 'right'. Hot glue and spray glue did a good job at fixing the fiberfill to the foam board, my hands and the floor. No more cloud fall so far.

All jokes aside: I tried to sneak a few actual numbers and useful information into my text, and yes it was annoying to build. On the other hand it's low effort in both tool requirements and cost. If you have a way of getting outside for the glue up, I'm certain that's a good idea. At least if you use spray glue. Also while the fiberfill did a great job at covering up the LEDs and making it look fluffy, it barely covered up the contour of my very rectangular board. I thought it would do more here, but it is what it is now. And regarding the fire hazard: Enclosing the strips in aluminium channels is certainly a good idea!

The whole looks is not for everyone and I'm fully prepared to take it
down in a year or two because it turned into a filthy rain cloud. But until
then it sure does give off some nice light and makes for an interesting piece
to look at.

I'm not sure how I landed here, so apologies if this is a repost. It's quite worth the read. If anyone still believes the NYT is worth the paper it's printed on, this is a great example of why it isn't.

It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a student there, who maybe resided only on the far periphery of your professional orbit, will become one or another kind of famous. At that point, out of the vast and silent ether, messages will come glowing into your inbox one after another. Do you remember this person? they will say. Was he your student? Did you work with him? We’re hoping for some insight—would it be possible for us to talk for a bit?

I taught at a place called Bowdoin College for 16 years, and during the last of those there was a student in attendance you’ve perhaps heard of. His name is Zohran Mamdani. And so, shortly after his startling, spirit-lifting victory in the primary last spring, the gentle flood of inquiries commenced. Word had gotten out not only that he went to Bowdoin—again, a very pricey, very wealthy, quite comprehensively the-thing-that-it-is small liberal arts college on the East Coast—but that, while there, he had majored in something called “Africana Studies.” You can probably see where this is going.

The first few messages wondered if I knew him (I don’t think I did, though I certainly had students who did, and do), if I taught him (possibly? but in truth not that I remembered), but mostly if I could say something about what he might have been reading and doing and studying, there in his time at this little college on the coast of Maine. More than once, the name “Frantz Fanon” was broached—which had the virtue of certain hand-showing clarity.

Emphasis mine. They started with framing that had to be met, no matter how wrong it was.

Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani

It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…

^{Literary Hub}

TL;DR: Fast charging over 2 years only degraded the battery an extra 0.5%, even on extremely fast charging Android phones using 120W.

And with that, hopefully we can put this argument to rest.