Yup. You just made me think of an excellent BBC doc about the topic, would highly recommend if you haven’t seen it:

Power of Nightmares

Thank you for taking the time to write out such a well reasoned rebuttal. I’m always on mobile and simply don’t have the stamina, but I appreciate all the points you’ve laid out.

I am always sad when I see the left wing criticisms of the “both sides” argument on Lemmy. Like, I don’t necessarily disagree, but I find the whole premise of one side vs another as some of the worst tendencies in democracy at work. I refuse to equate left vs. right == democracy. It’s bigger than that.

And speaking of democracy, I think it’s really important that everyone be unbiased around what constitutes a threat to democracy. Yes, J6 was objectively bad, and I don’t trust Trump to put his big boy pants on in round two. But I’m also alarmed at the lengths to which this legitimate fear is used as a justification for antidemocratic strategy from the DNC.

No matter their political ideology, when people start letting fear inform every decision - and justify their worse impulses - I get reeaaaalll nervous, as should we all.

Hell no to Harris, she has negative charm every interview I’ve seen, like she has utter contempt for anyone else.

There were 4 opeds in the NYT over the weekend talking about Biden’s age, which felt remarkably candid for the elite rag it is. One of them in particular was an “interesting” idea where Biden is swapped out before the convention, but after the primaries / delegates are assigned. Democracy FTW (/s)

Now that I think about it though, why would the aides actually running the white house want a real leader? Seems like they have it pretty good as it is.

Yup, the same dynamic as the right and immigration. More to gain using as a political football instead. The tactics are from the same, cynical playbook, and partisans are happy to play along when it’s their team.

Some companies end their fiscal year at the end of January, i.e. FY23 ends January 31, 2024.

Mission Accomplished?

/s

Great call out, I’ve been keeping up with that saga and it seems things never change when it comes to the US state department.

I’m beginning to feel that the instability caused by US hegemony is a feature, not a bug.

This rhetoric is insane and imaginary considering a number of constraints - army mobilization force, their failure to “eliminate” Hamas, escalating and fighting actual armies like Hezbollah. Even the prison ghetto policy obviously failed on October 7th, so what is the substance of their proposed policy here?

Although I suppose if all they need to do is be “parking lot” security guards it could be pretty quiet.

I really hope the US isn’t dumb enough to volunteer our service members to be their new police force.

Years of Saudi air strikes with US weapons systems ended in a victory for the Houthis. Not to mention causing one of the worst humanitarian situations of the 21st century.

WTF does the US think it’s gonna do other than escalate the situation (and continue the next record breaking humanitarian crisis)?

Ahh, interesting to read about the technique, thanks for the link. For anyone else curious, here’s a TLDR quote:

In 2021, researchers at Germany’s Technical University of Darmstadt reported that they had devised practical ways to crack what Apple calls the identity hashes used to conceal identities while AirDrop determines if a nearby person is in the contacts of another. One of the researchers’ attack methods relies on rainbow tables.

Why would China announce their zero day exploit to the Internet? FUDD.

“You can’t trust those iPhones, only trust Chinese company phones”. – CCP, probably

Great power competition / military industrial complex . AI is a pretty vague term, but practically it could be used to describe drone swarming technology, cyber warfare, etc.

Ahh, that makes sense. I was wondering, “Why the hell are they announcing their zero day to the Internet?”

I’ve used ente on a family plan for the last year and really like it. Although I have the aptitude to run a NAS, the last thing I want to do in my free time is look at a terminal. So for me, ente has been great - pretty plug and play.

Most people have. I was hopeful that the extension on FISA / section 702 would get removed from the NDAA today but it looks like that failed 65-35. I suppose some hope still remains as it works it’s way through the house, and / or the extension ends.

Not holding my breath, though.

Finally. The concept of war crimes being fairly applied, rather than used as a political tool, is easily dismissed when looking at a career like that of Kissinger.

I really enjoyed Behind the Bastard’s six part series on the man, would highly recommend for anyone interested in learning more.

Just came to the Iain Banks reference, damn these robots are my people!

Dude, thanks so much for posting this! The first one and the VR version are some of my favorite games ever. I had some bare awareness they were working on this, but forgot and prob would haven’t noticed for a bit. I’ve been kinda burned out gaming-wise lately, TBH.

10 or so hours in and it’s such a perfect sequel. Art design is incredible, and everything from voices to character writing is really good. Great blend of puzzle concepts old and new. I’m enjoying the philosophical nature, like the first one, but find the ideas a little more accessible, at least on their face.

Certainly a monumental piece of art, all said.

Agreed on all of this. There was a time that I was more worried about “the government” but the reality is that if a state level actor wants to fuck with me I’m probably screwed. I’ve also gotten older and realized there isn’t anything about me that would be interesting for people like that, so that’s not who I worry about with privacy.

These days I’m more concerned about scammers and more garden variety cyber criminals. Having a broader online presence presents more of an attack surface, a place to build out an initial profile for a planned social engineering or spear phishing campaign.

Thanks for sharing. I appreciate the coverage of actual diplomatic motions and communications. We are certainly moving out of the pax Americana and into a new multi-polar global order. At this point, I’ll be happy as long as it doesn’t end in nuclear confrontation / apocalypse.