@deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to"And quite an adventure the life of Margittai Neumann Janos Lajos was. A child prodigy, he published his first paper in mathematics before age 20. He was the indisputable champion of applied mathematics in the 20th century. His work yielded groundbreaking advances in theoretical mathematics, quantum mechanics, game theory, economics, fluid dynamics, artificial intelligence, electrodynamics, meteorology, and computing."
@pre@boing.worldDear Emily Thornberry,
I don't usually bother to write to you on most issues because I figure there is pretty much no point communicating with a whipped MP in a safe seat under first past the post. Such an MP has no reason to listen to their constituents at all, and is entirely a tool of the party leadership.
I make an exception today since I hear your government is about to classify Palestine Action as a terrorist group. Despite them being peaceful, non-violent, and dedicated entirely to preventing the greater crime of the ongoing genocide of Gazan Palestinians.
This is obviously a gross overreaction and a completely unjustifiable act designed not to prevent domestic terrorism but to cover up British forces and UK government involvement and collaboration with the genocide in Gaza.
If we are taking suggestions for groups to ban as terrorists even though they aren't terrorists, I would like to suggest the Labour Party! The party has helped facilitate a genocide abroad, and continues to supply the perpetrators with arms and intelligence to aid their actions.
I don't expect you to take that suggestion seriously, but maybe Reform will take it seriously when they get elected in a few years and I suggest it again to them. After all, a precedent will have been set that groups which aren't terrorists can be banned under anti-terror legislation anyway. Democracy will have already been eroded.
I was ready to be disappointed by this Labour government, but I confess that the level of gut-wrenching visceral disgust I am experiencing at them surpassed all my wildest expectations. Taking money from the disabled to buy new war-planes from a fascist US president while abetting a genocide in Gaza makes me wonder if Reform wouldn't be better in the end anyway. At least they might do electoral reform and nationalize the water companies.
Labour's only hope, the country's only hope, is to remove Starmer. I wish you had won that leadership election instead of him.
Anyway, as I say, I don't expect it to make any difference at all because under this election system even MPs in safe seats are nothing but tools of the party leadership and the party leadership seems determined. But I thought I'd let you know that I see you. I see what you are doing.
I support Palestine Action more than I support this government. Let me know where I should hand myself in for my "crime".
Yours sincerely,
Adam
@seav@en.osm.townI rarely leave my neighborhood these days, so when the opportunity came last weekend to visit a town about 80 km from my home, I took a little detour to visit and take photos of the town’s only national historical marker.
(Those who have been following me long enough know that documenting historical markers in #Wikidata and
@cdarwin@c.imThe Trump administration is pushing nations around the world, including ones at war, to take people expelled by the U.S. government who are not citizens of those countries.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/us/poli…
@wraithe@mastodon.social
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.caAnother passenger plane is lost in Russia.
This is the third since the war began. The other two were the Malaysia Airlines plane shot down over Ukraine and the Azerbaijan Airlines plane shot full of shrapnel over Grozny.
Can’t imagine why today’s plane would have been shot at considering it was in the Far East… but we’ll see.
Not sure why anyone would take the risk to fly to a Russian airport these days.
#russiaUkraineWar #russia #airtravel
https://www.khaleejtimes.com/world/russian-rescuers-find-missing-plane
@benb@osintua.euUkrainian fencer Vlada Kharkova wins gold in 2025 World Championship: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/24/ukrainian-fencer-vlada-kharkova-wins.html
@Tuxramus@social.linux.pizzaToday on 3D Printing Adventures Penguin Style!: We're building an AT-AT - Star Wars Plant Pot! Because nothing says "gardening" like a giant, four-legged war machine. May the force (and the filament) be with us! https://www.twitch.tv/tuxramus
@ErikJonker@mastodon.social
@Sustainable2050@mastodon.energyStarve-attract-shoot-kill-repeat.
Western governments: "Israel has the right to defend itself."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/officials-say-73-palestinians-killed-in-gaza-while-…
@pre@boing.world
Confusing episode. Let me clear it all up.
The world is sinking into the doubt needed to rescue Omega, remember, and The Doctor is falling with a balcony that's separated from the building.
How does he get out of that?
Well, saved by a literal magic door that pops out of nowhere, leading back to the time hotel. 🤨
Anita, who he spent a year with once a couple of Christmases ago, has been popping around the Doctor's entire long life, peeping on him with the Daleks and stuff. Trying to find him on the Earth's last day. Today.
And now he's rescued, today turns into a groundhog day. Same day over and over again. 😆
There's another woman that's been stalking him through time lately, Mrs Flood. She was following him everywhere, but she had Xmas off she reckons, so didn't see the Time Hotel bit. Thus the element of surprise in the deus ex machina rescue. 😀
The Doctor is broken free of the wish spell now anyway, popped his conditioning, and can use the time hotel's door to recall Unit and break them all out of the wish too.
The Rani pops in to say hi and explain her plans. 😝
How did the Rani survive the end of the Timelords? She flipped her DNA to sidestep the genetic bomb apparently? Well that makes no sense, but nor does anything else so no time to ponder.
The end of the Time Lords made them all Barons... No, made them barren. There can be no more children of the time-lords.
She's popping Omega back out of the underworld for his DNA because the timelords are all barren and she wants to recreate Galifrey.
But wait a minute: Poppy is the Doctor's kid in wish world! So she should have Timelord DNA too! Maybe that could work?
No. The Rani is a nazi, don't like the kid's contaminated blood. She's got human all over her DNA. Eww.
Rani pops off back to her Bone Palace, and makes the bone beasts attack.
The Doctor explains that the Giant dinosaur skeletons are beasts that pop in to clean up the world when there's a reality flux, and the Rani has turned them on Unit HQ.
So the UNIT HQ turns into some kinda ship? Like the Crimson Permanent Insurance. Lol. It's blasting lasers at the bone beasts and turning around, and has a steering wheel like pirate ship now. 🤣
During the battle, the Doctor pops out to take a ride on the sky-bike, looking like something from Flash Gordon, and crashes into the Bone Palace.
Too late though! Omega is pretty much here now. He's a giant boney CGI zombie, become his own legend. Looks great but doesn't really seem like Omega, who ought to be held together by pure will.
Omega eats the Rani! One of the Ranis anyway. Mrs Flood avoids being eaten. She pops off with the time bracelet. "So much for the Two Rani's. It's a goodnight from me!" as she disappears off into time. Great gag. 😁
The Doctor just shoots Omega to get him back into his box. Pops a rifle off the wall. The Vindicator has apparently also got a built in laser as well as locator beacons. So that's handy. The Doctor doesn't use guns but some of his devices work like one. 🔫
So all is well! The day is saved and the wish is over and baby Poppy survives in a time box! 🍻
They're going to take the space baby off to do space adventures. Ruby is jealous of seeing The Doctor and Belinda vibing like that, as they plan a life in space with the space baby. Aww. Poor Ruby. 😭
But then Poppy pops off! Disappears entirely, and everyone other than Ruby forgets. Ruby remembers because she's disappeared from time herself in the past they say.
Okay: to save his child and on Ruby's word alone, the Doctor will sacrifice himself to turn reality one degree.
He goes off to commit suicide by Regeneration, but Thirteen is here! She's popped out of her timeline to stop him! Or maybe to help, with a motivational chat instead. Gives him a pep talk then pops back off again.
The Doctor zaps reality with his Tardis, dying but holding off on the actual regeneration for a few moments to go check on the kid.
The kid is safe! But isn't his own kid any more. Poppy has popped all her Timelord DNA and is just all human now. Poppy's pop isn't the doc, it's someone called Richie.
And Belinda has been so keen to get home all this time in order to get back to her Baby! Who isn't a timelord, and definitely didn't exist until she was wished into being.
This may not be the most ethical action The Doctor has ever taken: To bend the whole universe in order to recreate a baby that was accidentally wished into being out of nothing. Twisting time to give a child to a nurse who didn't previously have a child, or even remember the wish. Then it's not even the same child that disappeared, coz this one is all human. 🤷
But the doc is popping off to regenerate with Joy in the stars, and... Turns blonde: "oh. Hello?" 🤯
It's Rose! Billie Piper is back? Fantastic!
Is Rose doing a David Tennant Impression there?
Billie playing the Doctor, doing a Tennant impression as Bad Wolf? Amazing. Can't wait.
#doctorWho
@cdarwin@c.imCongo’s public prosecutor on Friday asked for the death penalty for former President Joseph Kabila,
who is being tried in absentia in a treason case that includes war crimes charges related to his ties to the M23 rebel group.
Kabila, who led Congo from 2001 to 2019, has been on trial since July,
charged with war crimes, murder and rape.
He took office at the age of 29
— after his father and former President Laurent Kabila was assassinated
— and extended his…
@karlauerbach@sfba.socialThe actions of the cheeto-king's government ministers are making me reconsider my opposition to the death penalty.
If - and to me it is a big "if" - the US can recover from our present era of facism - we will need something akin to what was called "De-Baathification" in Iraq, "Denazification" in post WW-II Germany, etc. Under those programs some people were executed after being found guilty at trials.
The ministers of our present government - pa…
@roelgrif@mstdn.socialAh, dus *de* manier om Iran te dwingen een oorlog te beëindigen is zelf die oorlog te starten?
@rberger@hachyderm.iohttps://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/aug/05/trump-taskforce-los-angeles-olympics
"For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics. Softpedaling its antisemitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime exploited the Games to bedazzle many foreign spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany.
Having rejected a proposed boycott of the 1936 Olympics, the sponsoring athletic and Olympic organizations of the United States and other western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand that—some observers at the time claimed—might have given Hitler pause and bolstered international resistance to Nazi tyranny.
With the conclusion of the Games, Germany's expansionist policies and the persecution of Jews and other "enemies of the state" accelerated, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust.” - https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-olympics-berlin-1936
@cdarwin@c.imA senior Iranian official has told Reuters that Tehran’s retaliatory strikes will continue.
The official added that Iran has the “necessary rationality” to begin efforts at diplomacy after it had punished “the aggressor”.
https://www.
@Sustainable2050@mastodon.energyBelgium's King Filip speaks up for Gaza where "innocent citizens, jailed in their enclave, die from starvation and succumb to the bombs. This is a shame for humanity."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/officia
@benb@osintua.euWhat Russia stole, these Crimean Tatar authors endeavor to reclaim with literature: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/22/what-russia-stole-these-crimean.html
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries C, Episode 06 - City at the Edge of the World
DAYNA: You should have killed them.
AVON: Probably.
CALLY: They could sleep through a war.
TARRANT: That's good, because if it is Bayban down there, a war is what we'll have.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/306/416
@mapto@qoto.orgWe need people like Matthew Cassel and Kyri Evangelou that are able to stand with a straight face when being in the middle of this. But what face can the rest of us afford to have?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2025/…
@fremandolasse@mastodon.social"Goethe immortalised the shaming of German women 200 years ago – we’re still at it"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2025/jul/19/germany-goethe-shaming-women-abortion?CMP=share_btn_url
@Carwil@mastodon.onlineUS bombs killed 60 African migrants in Yemen strike in April. The victims faced war at home, Saudi gunfire if they attempted to seek asylum to their north, Houthi imprisonment where they stood
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/world/m
@tokensane@mastodon.me.ukI first read "Mother Earth, Mother Board" by Neal Stephenson around 15 years ago. It included a visit to the Telegraph Museum (now PK Porthcurno Museum of Global Communications) at Porthcurno in Cornwall, and I finally got to go there. One of the things that Stephenson describes is a collection of faulty cables. And its still on display.
@nelson@tech.lgbtCalamus 26 We two boys together clinging
This is one of the gayest of the Calamus poems, a fantasy of two men against the world, full of life and ardor. I should be all over this in my gay reading!
Instead I see a darker form of Americanism here. "Power enjoying ... Armed and fearless ... No law less than ourselves". It's classic American individualism fantasy, a repudiation of community and law. Armed, at that.
On top of that I trip over the "North and South" part every time I read this. In 1860 when this was published we were just steps away from a Civil War after 10 years of enormous tension. I don't blame Whitman for wanting unity, his whole program in Leaves of Grass is American unity. All I can think is how there's no moral equivalence between the North and South. But Whitman wasn't an abolitionist and this poem reflects that.
Sorry for not reveling in the gay, maybe it's the ICE and California National Guard news affecting my reading today.
@cdarwin@c.imIsrael is counting on Trump to join the operation against Iran, now that the risks of failure and downed planes have been minimised.
“The whole operation is premised on the fact that the US will join at some point,” an Israeli official told CNN.
“We are waiting for the decision of the president,” another senior official told the network.
Israel has yet to attack Iran’s most secure enrichment facility, at Fordow, which is built into a mountain with up to 100 metres of rock abo…
@sperbsen@discuss.systemsOur trip down Müller's play started over a decade ago, with rehearsals finally starting a year before the pandemic. The script has so many facets, it's imperative to give a production a unique focus. It took us until 2024 to find ours: Amidst all the brutality and perversion, it's a love story.
https://chao…
@cdarwin@c.imEven more than usual, the path ahead isn’t clear.
Still, there was barely any reaction in market prices. -- Nor has anything else seriously disrupted major markets.
That’s noteworthy, when you consider the crises that are looming:
the highest tariffs in decades;
a contentious crackdown on immigration
and a swelling budget deficit in the United States;
and, in the Middle East, an escalating war between Israel and Iran that could sharply reduce global o…
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzDallas Cowboys kick off Heroes Appreciation Day with World War 2 aircraft flyover https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/dallas-cowboys-kick-off-heroes-appreciation-day-world-war-2-aircraft-flyover
@wraithe@mastodon.socialAnother eclectic collection of books has been dropped off at the local “Little Free Library” with their “please don’t sell me” stamps and QR codes to the various books pages at https://Bookwyrm.social (Fedi GR alt) & @thestorygraph.com (Black owned GR alt) so that people can read about/review the books.
@adamhotep@infosec.exchangeToday's episode of #DemocracyNow is important. #MsRachel, heralded as a modern Mr. Rogers, has opened millions of apolitical eyes to the tragedy in #Gaza. If you can spare an hour, you won't regre…
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.caThe average undergrad tuition fee in the 1974/75 academic year in Canada, across all disciplines, was $547 ($3445 adjusted to 2025)
Fees 50 years later in 2024/25 were $7360 ($7496 adjusted)
That is more than double. 117%.
And I *know* from personal experience this is a low ball average. If I could find a breakdown by discipline or by length of study for today, some would be even more obscene.
What has changed? Any occupation outside a minimum wage paying job demands a 2-4yr undergraduate diploma or degree, if not more.
Think about the 1970s and how common it was for people to get good paying jobs, leading to careers, without even high school education. Our free education stops with high school.
My family is a good example.
Mom and Step Dad: teacher college/degree. One got a Masters mid career.
Dad: didn’t complete HS
Father in law: didn’t complete HS
Mother in law: completed HS mid-career
Leadership positions and full careers demand a Masters or PhD requiring 5-10 years of study after HS!
Add in the cost of food and housing and the massive cuts happening at all colleges and universities because of the loss of international student tuition and I am going to go out on a limb and say our students today are going to pay double the price for a far worse experience than possibly any time since the Second World War.
Public education should be free.
Food and Housing should be controlled.
If the only thing government cares about is the economy, then they are setting us up for failure, and have been for decades.
(Don’t get me started on the kinds of “values” Canadian governments demonstrate when International student tuitions are 5x more than domestic students, let alone the inherent revenue risk in that funding strategy that has now come home to roost)
#canpoli #cdnpoli #education #university #college #canada
(
74/75 Source Stats Can: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3710015001&pickMembers[0]=1.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=1972 / 1973&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2006 / 2007&referencePeriods=19720101,20060101
24/25 source stats can: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3710004501
cc: @… @…
@benb@osintua.euUkrainian boxer Usyk defeats Dubois, retains world heavyweight championship: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/20/ukrainian-boxer-usyk-defeats-dubois.html
@pre@boing.worldIn summary then: Pop goes the timeline.
Madness. So many lose ends, so much barely making sense. Great epic adventure though.
So farewell then to Nchuti. He has been great, sad to see him go. Probably he left because who knows if there'll even be a show next year. Actors can't be refusing work to be on a series that might not even happen.
Except Billie I guess? Maybe she's not otherwise busy.
No more episodes till maybe xmas 2026 they say? Or maybe some specials next year? Please god we don't have to wait until spring 2027 to know what's happening here?!
Meanwhile the fans are all like, "oh it says 'and introducing' instead of 'as the doctor'". Heh. They want it to be a switcheroo of some kind and she's not really The Doctor, but I want to see Billie's Tennant impression for at least a three year stretch.
She's likely just be staring in a couple of specials in the gap to a proper new season I'd expect. Probably regenerate again before there's a full series. Excited to see her David Tenant impression though. 😆
@cdarwin@c.imIn Little Tokyo, a five-block neighborhood east of downtown Los Angeles that is among the country’s largest Japanese American enclaves,
news often gets delivered and shared at the century-old koban.
It’s a community security office similar to those in Japan,
housed in a former police substation and named after a local hero from World War II.
Brian Kito stood on the sidewalk outside the koban Wednesday,
surveying the street that’s become a hot spot of activity a…
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.caThe genocidal war criminals in the Israeli Government just double-tapped a hospital in order to kill journalists and first-responders in addition to the injured civilians and medical workers they killed with the first bombing run.
The ‘western world' frets about calling a spade a spade... and cowers at US and Israeli pressure to continue turning a blind eye and re-arming the genocidal army.
I am embarrassed and shocked as both a Canadian and Spanish citizen at our flacid response to blatant murder of innocents.
#Israel #Hamas #Palestine #Genocide #Famine #WarCrimes #Gaza
@cdarwin@c.imUkraine’s military said on Sunday it had attacked a Russian drone factory about 1099 kilometers from Ukraine
-- in the city of Yelabuga in Russia’s Tatarstan region.
The Ukrainian military general staff said the factory produced, tested, and launched drones at Ukraine,
in particular against energy and civil infrastructure.
Videos on social media showed an explosion said to be at the factory in Yelabuga, also known as Alabuga,
which builds Iranian-design…
@cdarwin@c.imDonald Trump’s attempt to take credit for the additional weapons headed to Ukraine at Europe’s expense has created some friction in EU-US relations.
“If we pay for these weapons, it’s our support,”
said Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, on Wednesday.
“So it’s European support,
and we are doing as much as we can to help Ukraine …
If you promise to give the weapons but say that somebody else is going to pay for it,
it’s not really given by …
@pre@boing.worldVoting in the UK Green party elections is half over. Too late to join the party and vote, and sounds like Zack is very likely to win.
Which is good. I voted for him.
I think the job-share rule is important and that any job should be possible to share between workers. But in the case of the "leader", which is literally the face of the party, having two faces is difficult in the public hive mind. Even with a united front, it's litterally two faced.
But mostly my vote was just for Zack, and would have likely voted for him in a job-share too.
He's very personable and seems to know how to talk to the public and express not just environmental issues but other green issues like inequality and war and how your enemy is not a boat of refugees but the concentration of power in the hands of maniacs both political and corporate.
I confess I gave up trying to read anything about the candidates and cast a vote about half way down all the other jobs being elected. I'm just adding noise. I dunno who any of these people are or even what the job entails most of the time and there's too many all at once. Should stagger them weekly or something.
Anyway here's Zack on Mark Steel's sweary podcast being brilliant on the issues and how to explain them better than I can.
I love Mark Steel too. Miss the sketches things it used to have in the newish revised entirely-an-interview format.
🤞
In two parts
#podcast #green #uk #ZackPolanski #listening
@cdarwin@c.imOn the orders of the Donald Trump administration, National Park Service employees hung two highly controversial signs this week at Manzanar National Historic Site, a museum examining the property’s former role as a prison where the U.S. government incarcerated more than 10,000 Japanese Americans during World War Two
Displayed on a site where American citizens were held against their will for more than three years,
the signs encourage visitors to report any depictions of U.S. his…
@cdarwin@c.imTrump said on Thursday that a phone call earlier in the day with Vladimir Putin
resulted in "no progress at all"
on efforts to end the war in Ukraine,
while a Kremlin aide said the Russian president reiterated that Moscow would keep pushing to solve the conflict’s “root causes.”
– Russian shorthand for the issue of Nato enlargement and western support for Ukraine.
The two leaders did not discuss a recent pause in some US weapons shipments to K…
@cdarwin@c.imOlmert was stunned to see Netanyahu,
a man who has an arrest warrant for war crimes from the international criminal court,
nominating Donald Trumpfor a Nobel peace prize.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.caOn CBC's World Report this morning they reported on Iran launching a missile at an “Israel intelligence” location beside an Israeli hospital, causing massive damage to the hospital.
They reported that Israel called it a 'war crime’ and then the CBC astutely pointed out that Israel had used “identical” justifications for their destruction of hospitals in Gaza.
I wonder how many "anti-semitic" complaints the CRTC will be getting for CBC reporting with actual factual balance today.
#Israel #Iran #WarCrimes #Gaza #HumanRights #Genocide
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gel0dd5y9o
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca“Even after the war ended, the atomic bomb brought invisible terror," survivor Hiroshi Nishioka, 93, said in his speech at the memorial, “Never use nuclear weapons again”
#Nagasaki #NuclearWeapons #Nuclear #Japan #USA #Russia #War #CanPoli
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/japan-hiroshima-80th-anniversary-august-9-1.7605183
