@paulwermer@sfba.social2026-01-15 14:28:38
How ‘day zero’ water shortages in Iran are fuelling protests
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/15/how-day-zero-water-shortages-in-iran-are-fuelling-protests?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
@PaulWermer@sfba.social2026-01-15 14:28:38
How ‘day zero’ water shortages in Iran are fuelling protests
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/15/how-day-zero-water-shortages-in-iran-are-fuelling-protests?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-15 16:19:37
@castarco@hachyderm.io2025-11-16 12:05:17
I have the distinct impression that we could use most American "sci-fi" TV series (which seem to have a kink for post-apocalyptical scenographies) as a diagnostic tool for the autism spectrum.
For a moment, let's leave aside the tons of right-wing propaganda "hidden" in plain sight, and their excessive reliance on boring & worn out tropes (religious & cultish bullshit, irrational lack of communication & excess of anti-social behaviour, all vs all, ultra-low-iq characters*, psychotic & irrationally treacherous characters*, ultra-inconsistent character development used to justify "unexpected" plot twists, rampant anti-intellectualism...).
What could be used as a diagnosis tool is the incredible amount of strong inconsistencies that we can find in them**. It throws me out of the story every single time; and I suspect that it takes a certain kind of "uncommon personality" to feel that way about it, because otherwise these series wouldn't be so popular without real widespread criticism beyond cliches like "too slow", "it loses steam towards the end of the season", etc.
Many of those plots start in a gold mine of potentially powerful ideas... yet they consistently provide us with dirt & clay instead, while side-lining the "good stuff" as if it was too complicated for the populace.
Do you feel strongly about it? Do you feel like you can't verbalize it without being criticised as "too negative", or "too picky", or an "unbearable snob"? Do you wonder why it seems like nobody around shares your discomfort with these stories?
* : I feel this is a bit like the chicken & egg problem. Has the media conditioned part of American society to behave like dumb psychopaths as if it was something "natural", or is the media reflecting what was already there? Also, could we use other societies as models for these stories... just for a change? Please?
** : Just a tiny example: a "brilliant" engineer who builds a bridge out of fence parts and who doesn't bother to perform the most basic tests before trying it in a real setting and suffer the consequences: the bridge failing and her falling into the void. Bonus points for anyone who knows what I'm talking about.
@rasterweb@mastodon.social2025-12-16 15:26:26
Big thanks to the Fediverse Friends who wished me well or even just commiserated at the pain I've been going through.
I am feeling a lot better today, but I don't want to forget that pain, because I need to be mindful of the pain people are in every day. It's a struggle, it's a battle, and I wish we could all live pain-free lives.
@servelan@newsie.social2025-12-17 04:22:34
"The latest data showed that the economy created 64,000 net new jobs in November following a decline of 105,000 in October. The Journal's editors noted in a new editorial that the figure "sounds worse than it is because the net jobs decline was all in government jobs.""
'Some renaissance': WSJ editorial board roasts Trump's latest economic report - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/wall-street-journal-2674405810/
@metacurity@infosec.exchange2025-11-16 20:50:19
Inspections by Taiwan's National Security Bureau (NSB) of five Chinese generative AI apps -- Deepseek, Doubao (豆包), Yiyan (文心一言), Tongyi (通義千問), and Yuanbao (騰訊元寶) -- found violations of users' communication security across several indicators.
https://focustaiwan.tw/cross-strait/2025…
@finlaydag33k@social.linux.pizza2026-01-15 12:15:11
Great, my bank decided that it would release a new version of their app that isn't compatible with my phone...
Reason: They require "Google Play Integrity API" to pass before installing...
For those unfamiliar with it: the Integrity API is just a type of DRM to discourage people from using custom ROMs.
It is often cited to be "because of security" but when a phone that hasn't had any updates for 3 years passes it with flying colours, it's highl…
@mariyadelano@hachyderm.io2025-11-14 21:05:53
So I grew up next to #Chernobyl and this is, well, TERRIFYING.
A story for y’all: I’m from a city called Zhytomyr, 2 hours west of Kyiv in the North of #Ukraine. We were downwind of the Chernobyl #nuclear power plant when the 1986 disaster happened.
I wasn’t born for another 12 years, but my childhood was filled with stories and the aftermath of it all. Things like:
- My grandmother worked as a head doctor in a hospital and rehabilitation facility exclusively for children of Chernobyl victims to treat the extremely high prevalence of Tuberculosis and other severe health complications. (To specify: these were SECOND GENERATION of exposure).
- A lot of the kids in that facility were orphans, because their parents died young from health problems.
- My uncle’s wife was born in Pripyat. She was 1 year old when the disaster happened. Her parents were told to evacuate while given no information about what happened. They had to pack up their things and rush out to an unfamiliar city with their baby, never to see the rest of their belongings, apartment, or hometown again.
- When I was a kid, it became so common to see weirdly mutated animals and insects that even 2-3 year olds would make jokes about “Chernobyl mosquitos” and I wouldn’t even flinch seeing occasional giant bugs, dark frogs, weird-looking dogs.
- We’d frequently hear of nearby farms having issues with their animals being born too mutated to survive or random outbreaks from contaminated water / food. Crops would randomly fail. People would get poisoned on a regular basis. This all got less common as I grew up.
- My mother still remembers being a little girl, 10 years old, and looking outside from their balcony at the clouds blowing over from Chernobyl that day. People were told to not go outside and to shut all the windows, but not given an explanation as to why. My mother swears that the rain looked different. They weren’t able to go and buy more food for the kitchen for multiple days.
Anyway - nuclear safety isn’t a joke. I don’t understand how this level of carelessness can happen after Chernobyl and Fukushima.
https://www.404media.co/power-companies-are-using-ai-to-build-nuclear-power-plants/
@cdarwin@c.im2025-11-14 23:47:09
Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institutes of Health, says she has been put on paid leave following the end of the government shutdown.
"I was not given a reason for being put on leave, but I strongly suspect it is because I have been speaking up in my personal capacity about the harms that I have been witnessing inside the National Institutes of Health," she said in a video posted to TikTok.
The notice Norton received from human resources stated that the…