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@pre@boing.world
2025-11-23 20:40:43
Content warning: re: bitcoin conference report

The conference is over now. I likely wouldn't have come for just a bitcoin thing, but I am very interested in redecentralizing the web, so it's attachment to the nostr day pulled me in.
Everyone I met was friendly and interesting and seems much more interested in making a better money system than in making money for themselves.
Our government and bank money systems are dysfunctional in all kinds of ways which are often less visible than they should be too people using them, especially to those in Europe and America who benefit from the way those systems exploit the global south.
I'm not convinced that fixing that would end wars and fix broken government as some seem to think, but I am sure our money is the source of many problems.
There are many bright, well meaning, and intelligent people building to improve bitcoin in fascinating ways with the hope of having a parallel system to transition to. With lots of work still to be done.
Can it work?
I'm sure I don't know, and I'm sure even if it's a better system it'll come with it's own unfairness and cruelty. Money will continue to be a source of suck and worry.
I'm told that the bigger conferences are often full of shitcoin scammers and suit wearing banksters who are in fact all in it too get rich and rip people off, but I found none of that here.
Here there is a real community of people trying to make the world a better place and improve the lives of their neighbours and governance of their countries.
And in the end building community is the most radical and effective way to change the world regardless of the problems of it's money system.
I had a great time. Thanks to those organising it.
#bitfest #bitcoin

For four months, Trump had been haranguing Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional district maps
to carve out two new safe Republican seats.
Right now, Indiana is overwhelmingly Republican.
Seven of the state’s nine congressional districts are solidly red.
But Republicans control Congress as a whole by a mere three votes.
Given how dramatically Republican measures and candidates under-performed this year,
Trump has reason to worry in the 2026…

@hex@kolektiva.social
2025-11-20 22:27:26

After #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol

@Techmeme@techhub.social
2025-11-24 12:50:47

Hashrate Index: China's bitcoin mining market share rebounded to 14% by the end of October, making it the world's third-largest miner despite China's 2021 ban (Reuters)
reuters.com/world/asia-pacific

@deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to
2025-11-22 11:38:28

"In Phrack Magazine, this author learned at the end of the 1990s the subtle art of smashing the stack, an exploit that would become the starting point of many a computer security book afterward.
There is one magazine that has been around for a decade: the “International Journal of Proof-of-Concept or Get The Fuck Out”, or “PoC||GTFO”.
(I should have probably warned readers about the profanity in the title, but nah, I assume them to be adults at this point.)"

@bobmueller@mastodon.world
2026-01-25 08:00:08

DaVinci said, "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” Let your death be as good as your life.
Beyond the Taboo: Rethinking Society's Fear of Death wp.me/p8efU1-1t7

@trochee@dair-community.social
2025-11-23 03:31:48

Oof the AI world is eating its own here
Somehow Google's AI got the wrong end of the stick about Meta's AI and Murati's AI and who is getting hired by whom
everybody's grifting all the time forever

SCREENSHOT

Al Overview

The user's information is incorrect; the reverse is true. A co-founder of Mira Murati's startup, Andrew Tulloch, was recently hired by Meta, not the other way around. Meta has, in fact, been actively attempting to poach talent from Murati's company, Thinking Machines Lab, but most of those offers were initially rejected.


(FOLLOWED BY)

BI

Business Insider

https://www.businessinsider.com

Meta's Soumith Chintala Joins Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab

4 days ago -…
@memeorandum@universeodon.com
2026-01-22 04:20:40

The U.S. Is Actively Seeking Regime Change in Cuba by the End of the Year (Wall Street Journal)
wsj.com/world/americas/the-u-s
memeorandum.com/260121/p165#a2

@crell@phpc.social
2026-01-21 15:15:46

Canadian PM Mark Carney at Davos, on the rupture of the old world order:
pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2026
He goes righ…

In the black of the winter of nineteen-nine
When we froze & bled on the picket line,
We showed the world that women could fight
& we rose & won with women's might.
kolektiva.social/@MikeDunnAuth

@tiotasram@kolektiva.social
2026-01-19 13:58:09

Yesterday I finished "The Other Side of Tomorrow" written by Tina Cho and illustrated by Deb JJ Lee. Lee's "In Limbo" was an excellent graphic memoir, and this similarly has wonderful art, although I didn't make the connection until checking the authors after reading to the end.
This book is a realistic fictional account of two childrens' escape from North Korea via China, Laos, and ultimately Thailand where they could declare themselves refugees at a US embassy and get sponsored to live in America. Along the way they're helped by various members of the Asian Underground Railroad. I'll avoid spoilers but yet definitely encounter difficulties along the way.
The ending definitely hits different now (while also accentuating my disgust with the current US regime). Like "Libertad" that I also finished recently, the "escape to the US at the end" plot line is going to become less prevalent going forward, although Libertad involved a good measure of complexity around that point.
I was a bit disappointed in one of the later plot points where a different and more-real-world-probable turn of events could have served as a better message for society, with the "lucky" outcome as written reinforcing regressive notions of family, and as an ex-Christian the Christian elements of the story made me feel a way. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist though, and can respect the idea that those willing to risk torture and death for their faith have every right to stand by it and take inspiration from it. Most (very valid) critiques of big western Church institutions just don't apply to underground churches in northern China who are helping people escape the horrors of deep fascism.
Overall a really good book.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

@pre@boing.world
2025-11-23 12:15:10
Content warning: re: bitcoin conference report

Not sure what the difference between a panel and a"fireside chat" is. There is no fire.
But here's a fireside chat on what nostr is.
Nostr is freedom for Identity. Accounts without hosts. Publishing without publidhers. Censorship resistance without platforms deciding who gets to say what.
It's not a silo in which you can be tapped as the service enshitifies, since it's a protocol with accounts you control, you can't switch clients or relays without loosing social graph or contacts.
Nostr is notes and Other Stuff, what other stuff? the panel is working on an audiobook publishing system with perhaps a required payment and affiliate revenue share. E-commerce, video publishing, zap stream for live video with zap payments.
Onboarding can be tricky with private key management needing to be understood and such a range of options of clients and what relays are. Can we make it easier?
Perhaps by abstracting away the fact it's nostr at all. Devine users don't even know they are using nostr. But this robs users of the understanding they may need to move clients or use the same account for video and notes, say.
Perhaps by making a private messagnger, the panel thinks people are used to using multiple messenger apps. Though I find they hate that, and that's why they refuse to install signal. They feel they don't need it since they already have WhatsApp with a bigger network.
In the end it's education. We have to teach literacy so people can read and write, we have to teach public keys encryption so people can do so securely.
#bitfest #nostr

@arXiv_csLG_bot@mastoxiv.page
2025-12-22 10:32:50

Spatially-informed transformers: Injecting geostatistical covariance biases into self-attention for spatio-temporal forecasting
Yuri Calleo
arxiv.org/abs/2512.17696 arxiv.org/pdf/2512.17696 arxiv.org/html/2512.17696
arXiv:2512.17696v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The modeling of high-dimensional spatio-temporal processes presents a fundamental dichotomy between the probabilistic rigor of classical geostatistics and the flexible, high-capacity representations of deep learning. While Gaussian processes offer theoretical consistency and exact uncertainty quantification, their prohibitive computational scaling renders them impractical for massive sensor networks. Conversely, modern transformer architectures excel at sequence modeling but inherently lack a geometric inductive bias, treating spatial sensors as permutation-invariant tokens without a native understanding of distance. In this work, we propose a spatially-informed transformer, a hybrid architecture that injects a geostatistical inductive bias directly into the self-attention mechanism via a learnable covariance kernel. By formally decomposing the attention structure into a stationary physical prior and a non-stationary data-driven residual, we impose a soft topological constraint that favors spatially proximal interactions while retaining the capacity to model complex dynamics. We demonstrate the phenomenon of ``Deep Variography'', where the network successfully recovers the true spatial decay parameters of the underlying process end-to-end via backpropagation. Extensive experiments on synthetic Gaussian random fields and real-world traffic benchmarks confirm that our method outperforms state-of-the-art graph neural networks. Furthermore, rigorous statistical validation confirms that the proposed method delivers not only superior predictive accuracy but also well-calibrated probabilistic forecasts, effectively bridging the gap between physics-aware modeling and data-driven learning.
toXiv_bot_toot

@nemobis@mamot.fr
2026-01-13 13:44:54

Bloomberg News: «There is still a very real gap in the current value, or stock, of all the investments that the US and China have out in the world. At the end of 2024, the total value of US companies' long-term physical investments overseas was some $6.8 trillion», 5 more than China.
archive.is/WR8NN

To be sure, American capital isn’t abandoning the world outside entirely and Chinese investment continues to be greeted with suspicion in many countries.
There is still a very real gap in the current value, or stock, of all the investments that the US and China have out in the world. At the end of 2024, the total value of US companies’ long-term physical investments overseas was some $6.8 trillion, almost $4 trillion of which was in Europe according to official US data. China’s FDI stock in the…
annual investment in electricity generation rising from just over USD 500 billion over the last five years to more than USD 1 600 billion in 2030, before falling back as the cost of renewable energy technologies continues to decline. Annual nuclear investment rises too: it more than doubles by 2050 compared with current levels. Annual investment in fuel supply however drops from about USD 575 billion on average over the last half‐decade to USD 315 billion in 2030 and USD 110 billion in 2050. Th…
@aredridel@kolektiva.social
2026-01-21 05:22:56

Now the reality is that all speech has that affiliation-building aspect and the argument-building aspect, but the scale of each varies a _lot_.
This thread itself is doing both! I'm making some concrete persuasive points here, but I'm also setting up an affiliation here. I want more people to join this "thinking well about the world" club and conversation. I want us to end up collectively in a better place than we're at. We gotta band together to do that. But also that means we need to communicate like we're in public and talking to people who don't all agree, and some of whom are hostile, and some of whom are real boneheads for various reasons.

@deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to
2026-01-19 07:43:21

"Where will the von Neumanns, the Einsteins, and the Gödels of our age migrate after the SCOTUS overrules democracy in 2024 and Gödel’s Loophole is proven to exist? At this time, the two major powers of our time, the United States and China seem unlikely locations for brains to settle and grow in the long term."
(Inadvertently and ironically published on July 4th, 2022)

@hex@kolektiva.social
2025-11-16 07:08:26

There's a word at the beginning and end of Dawn of Everything that feels self-referential right now: Kairos.
> We began this book with a quote which refers to the Greek notion of kairos as one of those occasional moments in a society’s history when its frames of reference undergo a shift – a metamorphosis of the fundamental principles and symbols, when the lines between myth and history, science and magic become blurred – and, therefore, real change is possible. Philosophers sometimes like to speak of ‘the Event’ – a political revolution, a scientific discovery, an artistic masterpiece – that is, a breakthrough which reveals aspects of reality that had previously been unimaginable but, once seen, can never be unseen. If so, kairos is the kind of time in which Events are prone to happen.
> Societies around the world appear to be cascading towards such a point. This is particularly true of those which, since the First World War, have been in the habit of calling themselves ‘Western’. On the one hand, fundamental breakthroughs in the physical sciences, or even artistic expression, no longer seem to occur with anything like the regularity people came to expect in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet at the same time, our scientific means of understanding the past, not just our species’ past but that of our planet, has been advancing with dizzying speed. Scientists in 2020 are not (as readers of mid-twentieth-century science fiction might have hoped) encountering alien civilizations in distant star systems; but they are encountering radically different forms of society under their own feet, some forgotten and newly rediscovered, others more familiar, but now understood in entirely new ways.
Reading this as I write something very inspired by this work feels especially serendipitous, especially at this time. When they wrote the book, I think that kairos felt more serendipitous itself. But as the frequency of opportunity increases, the veil between realities feels more malleable... that perhaps we can poke a finger through and open a portal to a completely different future than the one we've felt locked into for such a long time.
anarchoccultism.org/building-z

@annsev@troet.cafe
2025-11-21 19:09:25

If #Musk 🏴‍☠️ were a guy from the lower middle class with an average income and net worth, he would have been committed to a psychiatric ward long ago.
But since he is the richest person in the world (which doesn't really mean much, but enough to cause damage), even a sociopath like Musk is tolerated—even though he has already caused enormous damage and that is probably not the end of it.

@Mediagazer@mstdn.social
2025-12-19 23:01:55

Politico ends its print edition after 19 years, as its early reliance on print ad revenue fades and its audience relies more on digital platforms (Ken Vogel/@kenvogel.bsky.social)
bsky.app/profile/kenvogel.bsky

@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io
2026-01-19 19:22:58

One of the strongest sun storms in, well, recorded era is incoming today
Watch out for auroras even down to Mexico! Also, watch out for end of the world etc

@kexpmusicbot@mastodonapp.uk
2026-01-20 13:08:38

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Prom Queen:
🎵 End of the World
#PromQueen
promqueenband.bandcamp.com/tra
open.spotify.com/track/4ufp0Tk

@mlawton@mstdn.social
2025-11-11 23:33:43

Finished “The Last Murder at the End of the World” by Stuart Turton.
Their island is a sanctuary against an apocalyptic fog which has enveloped the world. The villagers and the elders have lived in relative peace for decades until a murder flings everything into chaos. Solving it may be the only chance for survival.
4/5 stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Trump administration abruptly recalls over two dozen career ambassadors
The Trump administration has recalled more than two dozen
career diplomats from ambassador positions and other senior posts around the world
as it works to enforce adherence with Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda.

The directive has infuriated State Department personnel
who say it will leave key embassies without critical leadership
and may effectively end the careers of many ambass…

@paulbusch@mstdn.ca
2025-12-19 13:37:20

Good Morning #Canada
The month of December will typical put a dent in your paycheck, or January if you're using your credit cards, so it's tough to save any money. Canadians rank 21st worldwide with regards to how much of our salary we put into a savings account. According to World Population Review, we put away approximately 7% of our paycheck for a #RainyDay, far behind South Korea at 35%. I'm retired and therefore not a saver at this point, but even during my most successful earnings period I can't imagine I would have been able to put away a third of my salary.
I suspect the savings percentage is driven by a small group of high wage earners as individual Canadian debt has increased. According to Equifax, total consumer debt in Canada reached $2.56 trillion at the end of 2024, a 4.6 per cent increase over 2023.
#CanadaIsAwesome
equifax.ca/business/blog/all-n

@hex@kolektiva.social
2025-12-16 17:09:35

One of the things that made organizing a lot easier with the GDC was a thing called "GDC in a box." It was a zip file with all kinds of resources. There was a directory structure, templates for all kinds of things like meetings and paperwork you had to file (for legal reasons) and "read me" files.
We had all kinds of support. There were people you could talk to who had been there. There were people you could call to walk through legal paperwork (taxes). Centralized orgs are vulnerable and easy to infiltrate. They're easy for states to shut down. But there are benefits to org structures.
I think it's possible to have the type of support we had with the GDC, but without the politics of an org (even the IWW). I hope this most recent essay has some of the same properties. I hope that it makes building something new, something no one has really imagined before, easier.
This whole project is something a bit different. It's a collective vision and collective project, from the ground up. Some of it has felt like a brain dump, just getting things that have been swimming around in my head down somewhere. But I hope this feels more like an invitation.
Everything thus far written is all useless unless people do things with it. Only from that point does it become a thing that lives, a thing with its own consciousness that can't be controlled by any individual human.
Tech billionaire cultists want to bring a new era of humanity with AGI. That is definitely not possible with LLMs, and may not be possible at all. But there is a super intelligence that is possible, though it's been constrained by capitalism: collective human intelligence.
The grand vision of the tech dystopians is that of the ultimate slave that can then enslave all humans on their behalf. I think we can build a humanity that can liberate itself from their grasp, crush their vision, and build for itself a world in which people will never be enslaved again. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it's necessary. I think there are only two choices: collective liberation or death.
And that's what I plan to write about next time to wrap this whole project up. Today things often feel impossible. But people talked about the Middle Ages as though they were the end of the world, and then everything changed in unimaginable ways. Everything can, and will, change again.
"The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."

@brian_gettler@mas.to
2025-12-14 22:11:53
Content warning: Non-Supermarket Christmas Music Playlist

I have a thing for holiday music, even if I tend not to be into much of what I hear in the outside world. I'll drop some of my favs here over the next few days. Feel free to suggest some yourself.
I'll start on the rougher end of the scale with a less-than-cheery meditation on the rest of Santa's year.
The Murder City Devils, "364 Days" (2001)

@pre@boing.world
2025-12-20 12:52:08

I has a bed.
No mattress until Monday, but a bed fully stained and varnished and constructed.
Had to wait a couple of days for varnish which never came. Went out to an actual DIY shop in the end. Gonna have a lot of spare varnish soon.
Varnished the whole room with two more coats as well as the bed twice.
A few more things to buy after Xmas and the full media setup can't happen until the new Steam Machine at its heart is released. Maybe cobble together something to plug a laptop into in the meantime? All for next year though once the mattress arrives and I can actually sleep in the bedroom.

@jorgecandeias@mastodon.social
2025-12-09 14:45:22

This Krugman piece deserves a read.
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-

@villavelius@mastodon.online
2025-12-21 14:07:29

The last post
theguardian.com/world/2025/dec

@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot
2025-11-13 07:05:06

"Despite their promises, governments’ new emission-cutting plans submitted for the Cop30 climate talks taking place in Brazil have done little to avert dangerous global heating for the fourth consecutive year, according to the Climate Action Tracker update.
The world is now anticipated to heat up by 2.6C above preindustrial times by the end of the century"
#ClimateCatastrophe

@sonnets@bots.krohsnest.com
2025-12-19 11:25:11

Sonnet 057 - LVII
Being your slave what should I do but tend
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend;
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world without end hour,
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affai…

Donald Trump on Saturday heaped pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,
saying he can either agree to the White House’s peace proposal by Thursday,
or “continue to fight his little heart out.”

The comment, made to reporters in Washington, is part of a White House push to get Ukraine’s leaders to agree to a 28-point plan to end the war that began with Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
It has drawn criticism, including from Republican lawmakers,
for…

@scott@carfree.city
2025-12-12 02:22:08

I love Deerhoof’s Actually, You Can not just as a great, fun album but as a time capsule from an optimistic moment. In late 2021, we seemed to be emerging from the shadows of Trump and Covid-19—who’d have thought the Four Seasons presser and the vaccines, respectively, didn't end them? The music bottles up joyful, radical imaginings of a better world that were in the air since the George Floyd rebellion, not yet extinguished by the reactionary “crime” panic to come.

@servelan@newsie.social
2025-12-09 02:00:49

Spoilers: "we can still turn this around and claw our way back to being who we should be"
Is This The End of the Free World? - Paul Krugman
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-

@johnhobbs@mstdn.ca
2026-01-17 14:16:50

Envision starting your day with the calming rhythm of ocean waves or the soft rustle of a mountain breeze, all while savoring your coffee without a care in the world. ☕️🏞️ Retirement isn't merely the end of work; it's the beginning of life's most cherished experiences and thrilling adventures. Let's forge a future where every day feels like living the dream! #DreamAgain #RetirementBliss

We introduce the Remote Labor Index (RLI),
a broadly multi-sector benchmark comprising real-world, economically valuable remote-work projects
designed to evaluate end-to-end agent performance in practical settings.
Across evaluated frontier AI agent frameworks, performance sits near the floor,
with a maximum automation rate of 2.5% on RLI projects.

@pre@boing.world
2025-11-10 17:52:24

I think today's worker is the owner of the company, he certainly is the assessor.
He worked a lot later than those without the vested interest there. 😆 I finished work at my job before he did! 🤭
All the wood was sanded down and remaining nude wood given some paint. We have a test plank in the foreground of the first picture here which is painted with a second coat of paint. Seems likely we lose all the wood grain when doing that, and so will prefer the paler look where it's obviously made of wood not paint.
Won't really know for sure till it's dry. Prefer the colour a bit darker like that but if we're hiding the wood grain we might as well have used MDF instead of pine. We're after something clearly made of wood.
Another area is test-painted with just the clearcoat top varnish as a second layer. That's likely to be right, just a bit more shiny and protected.
The carpenter proper is back from holiday and starts tomorrow. He has a lot of drawers and doors to build and edging to attach to make the door panels. Still hoping at least the carpentry will be pretty much all done by the end of the week but likely some painting and touching up still to do next week. Hopefully by the end of Tuesday because I'm not really able to be here all day each day for most of the two weeks after that.

@brichapman@mastodon.social
2025-11-14 19:03:01

Why trying to predict the end of the world won’t save it:
brichapman.com/p/the-case-for-

@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyz
2025-11-13 02:23:02

In which NOAA more or less calls an end to the Earth/Sun excitement: #aurora night for the world will probably not be followed immediately by another great one. (This may be one of the few 'laws' of space weather predicting with a greater than 50% chance of being true. Been through that so many times by now I was actually not expecting much tonight ... d'oh.)

@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io
2025-11-18 17:43:12

You’ll be happy to know that Back to the Future was released closer to the end of World War II than to now

@kexpmusicbot@mastodonapp.uk
2025-12-16 15:27:51

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
R.E.M.:
🎵 It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
#REM
mototembo.bandcamp.com/album/i
open.spotify.com/track/2oSpQ7Q

@simplicator@federate.social
2025-11-14 07:37:36

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of… the filibuster.

@toxi@mastodon.thi.ng
2025-11-27 14:55:08

One of the most biting & memorable film monologues, inspired by the poetry of Antonio Machado, and delivered by "Jefe" near the end of Ridley Scott's The Counselor:
"Actions create consequences, which create new worlds, and they're all different [...] and hitherto unknown to us. They must have always been there. [...] I urge you to see the truth of the situation you are in. It is not for me to tell you what you should have done or not done. The world in which…

@callunavulgaris@mastodon.scot
2025-12-07 18:14:58

This is a fascinating series, and just 15m an episode. I find it enduringly fascinating to understand the world I was born into, 21 years after the end of #WWII #history #podcasts
Politically: Postwar: Tr…

@pre@boing.world
2025-12-20 13:11:09

The little robot vacuum cleaner just about fits under the bed there, slowing down slightly as it passes under due to the slight squeeze under the gap. Assuming I don't end up putting a bunch of junk under there should be the cleanest under-bed I ever had.

@aardrian@toot.cafe
2025-12-05 21:12:18

Twenty-four. There are now 24 advents. All of you wiseacres suggesting I was one calendar away from an advent of advents can stuff it.
adrianroselli.com/2025/12/web-
Still not making a damn adven…

@crell@phpc.social
2025-11-09 22:52:59

This is a tricky balance. Some level of skepticism and counter-culture is good and healthy, both for people and society. But when it goes too far, it always seems to end up in the same place.
theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2

@tinoeberl@mastodon.online
2025-12-27 07:08:40

Im #Thwaites-Gletscher in der #Antarktis breiten sich Risse schneller aus als erwartet.
Neue Daten zeigen, dass nicht nur Schmelze, sondern auch innere Spannungen den #Eisverlust antreiben. …

Our Panic World episode about ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis is out.
You can watch the video version by clicking the embed and you can listen to an audio version anywhere you get your podcasts.
The situation in Minneapolis is escalating rapidly.
Last night, the Department of Homeland Security said they arrested eight “rioters,”
after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tried to clear out protesters camped out at the Whipple Federal Building,
ICE’s de f…

@Xexyz@mastodon.me.uk
2026-01-08 11:43:08

Viewfinder: petting the cat
Viewfinder caught my eye when it was first demonstrated, with the ability to take photos and walk into them, and clever world manipulation. When it came out it was £20, and that seemed a little expensive for the technical sandbox I imagined it to be. Towards the end of last year it was free on PS , and given away on the Epic Game Store, and now, having played it, I can see that I was wrong: it is not just a technical sandbox, it was not too…

@memeorandum@universeodon.com
2025-12-08 14:05:38

Is This The End of the Free World? (Paul Krugman)
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-
memeorandum.com/251208/p30#a25

@ErikJonker@mastodon.social
2025-10-30 01:34:46

Amazing elections in the Netherlands (I am a member of the D66 party).
theguardian.com/world/2025/oct

@tiotasram@kolektiva.social
2025-10-27 03:00:46

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

@bobmueller@mastodon.world
2025-10-29 14:30:07

Is it talent?
instagram.com/reel/DQM0-w2jEOd

Duaa Izzidien - Visual Storyteller & Artist on Instagram: "I had far too much fun creating this reel and couldn’t bring myself to delete any of it to make it shorter and more algorithm friendly 🙈 If you watched it all the way to the end - well done! You’ve just demonstrated the very thing the reel is about - showing up is the only talent that matters. My arrows don’t always hit the target. My paintings don’t always turn out how I planned. And honestly? Life rarely goes the way I intend. But really that isn’t what matters. In Islam we say that actions are by intentions and that sometimes means letting go of controlling our outcomes. We can control our intentions, our effort, showing up - but we have to remember that the result doesn’t actually come from those actions. Sometimes the arrow misses because there’s a better lesson waiting or perhaps it’s to remind you to stay humble and remember that ‘you’ are not the architect of your success. Sometimes the painting goes “wrong” because it’s becoming something more beautiful than you imagined. Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you planned because there’s something different, better, round the corner for you. A huge thank you to @thabitoon_archers and @mamluk.academy for teaching me. You’ve taught me far more than just archery - you’ve taught me a rich history and life lessons that bring peace. (any mistakes in my form are entirely mine!). Want to learn how to use art as a tool for trusting and letting go of control? DM me ‘CREATE’ and I’ll show you these techniques. #showingisenough #trusttheprocess #archery #archerygirl #traditionalarchery #archerylife #overwhelm #personalgrowth #innerstrength #growthmindset #breakthrough #findingmyself #resilience #transformation #letgoofcontrol"
24K likes, 763 comments - duaaizzidien on October 24, 2025: "I had far too much fun creating this reel and couldn’t bring myself to delete any of it to make it shorter and more algorithm friendly 🙈 If you watched it all the way to the end - well done! You’ve just demonstrated the very thing the reel is about - showing up is the only talent that matters. My arrows don’t always hit the target. My paintings don’t always turn out how I planned. And honestly? Life rarely goes the way I …

@pre@boing.world
2025-12-14 14:45:26

Varnished the shelves. At least until I ran out of varnish anyway. Stained the first half of the bed. The stain takes ages to dry. Will have to flip and stain the other half tomorrow. Varnish on Tuesday if more has arrived. That dries much faster, might even get two coats on both sides during one day. Then I can have a bed on Wednesday?
At which point I will know the maximum height for a mattress. The bed is pretty low because to determine the height of the doors for storage at the end of the bed, I measured my old bed. Which was apparently lower than most, being a waterbed frame with a spring mattress in it.
So total bed height has to be under 50cm and a mattress can take 30 or more of that. But with this low bed I might even have room for a topper.

US and Russian officials have quietly drafted a new plan to end the war in Ukraine that would require Kyiv to surrender territory and severely limit the size of its military, it was reported on Wednesday
The draft plan, which was reportedly developed by Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev,
would force draconian measures on Ukraine that would give Russia unprecedented control over the country’s military and political sovereignty.
The…

@kexpmusicbot@mastodonapp.uk
2026-01-14 14:00:46

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
R.E.M.:
🎵 It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
#REM
mototembo.bandcamp.com/album/i
open.spotify.com/track/2oSpQ7Q

@cowboys@darktundra.xyz
2025-11-06 15:44:29

Marshawn Kneeland dies at 24: Cowboys, NFL mourn sudden passing of Dallas defensive end sportingnews.com/us/nfl/dallas

US and Russian officials have quietly drafted a new plan to end the war in Ukraine that would require Kyiv to surrender territory and severely limit the size of its military, it was reported on Wednesday
The draft plan, which was reportedly developed by Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev,
would force draconian measures on Ukraine that would give Russia unprecedented control over the country’s military and political sovereignty.
The…

@bourgwick@heads.social
2025-10-29 03:42:17

40 years ago tonight, the #GratefulDead in #atlanta, opening their last stand at the fox theater, marking (almost) the permanent end of the small venue era, with a world series-themed debut. fall ’85, show #3.
soundboard:

Fox Theater marquee advertising Grateful Dead
@paulbusch@mstdn.ca
2026-01-05 13:11:27

Good Morning #Canada
B.C. is full of hipsters, Alberta is oil obsessed, Ontario has a superiority complex, PEI prays to potatoes, and all Newfies drink Screech at breakfast. Every Province and Territory is known for their unique habits, culture, and views of the world. And we all hold expectations and misconceptions of our neighbours across internal borders. Hey, it's a long winter and we need some gossip to get us to the end of it.
The attached video provides a detailed rundown of stereotypes for each Province and Territory, and some of the content is accurate, like Toronto being the centre of the universe. It's a bit long but you can select a chapter to check out your Province, or one that you dislike. My favourite is Albertans pouring oil on their cereal.
#CanadaIsAwesome #Stereotypes
youtu.be/tFEar1K_Y6w

@fortune@social.linux.pizza
2026-01-11 03:00:01

Now I'm concentrating on a specific tank battle toward the end of World War II!

@midtsveen@social.linux.pizza
2025-12-05 01:27:04

RE: social.linux.pizza/@midtsveen/
It’s strange how even someone like Putin can sometimes end up on the same side as the rest of the world in opposing U.S. imperialism.

@cellfourteen@social.petertoushkov.eu
2025-11-10 00:47:13

I honestly thought #Pluribus would be some kind of nightmarish, end of the road, introspective drama. Turns out I forced myself to sit down and watch the most delightful television surprise of the year. Is it a soft SF horror series? Yes. Is it scary? No, it's as cosy as a first-class seat on a flight to the world's end.

@hex@kolektiva.social
2025-11-19 06:07:23

Part of why #Trump has always been so hard to pin down politically is that he was always representing highly conflicting interests. Now, as that eats him alive, the GOP is fracturing in to two main groups: the Pinochet/Franco wing and the Hitler wing.
The Pinochet/Franco wing (let's call them PF) are lead by Vance. PF are also a coalition with some competing interests, but basically it's evangelical leaders, Opus Dei (fascist catholics), tech fascists (Yarvinites), pharma, and the other normal big republican donors. They support Israel, some because apartheid is extremely profitable and some because they support the genocide of Palestinian in order to bring the end of the world. They are split between extremely antisemitic evangelicals and Zionists, wanting similar things for completely different reasons. PF wants strong immigration enforcement because it lets them exploit immigrants, they don't want actual ethnic cleansing (just the constant threat). They want H1B visas because they want to a precarious tech work force. They want to end tariffs because they support free trade and don't actually care about things being made here.
The Hitler wing are lead by Nick Fuentes. I think they're a more unified group, but they're going to try to pull together a coalition that I don't think can really work. They're against Israel because they believe in some bat shit antisemitic conspiracy theory (which they are trying to inject along side legitimate criticism of Israel). They are focused on release of the #EpsteinFiles because they believe that it shows that Epstein worked for Mossad. They don't think that the ICE raids are going far enough, they oppose H1Bs because they are racists. They want a full ethnic cleansing of the US where everyone who isn't "white" is either enslaved for menial labor, deported, or dead. But they're also critical of big business (partially because of conspiracy theories but also) because they think their best option is to push for a white socialism (red/brown alliance).
Both of them want to sink Trump because they see him as standing in the way of their objectives. Both see #Epstein as an opportunity. Both of them have absolutely terrifying visions of authoritarian dictatorships, but they're different dictatorships.with opposing interests. Even within these there may be opportunities to fracture these more.
While these fractures decrease the likelihood of either group getting enough people together, their vision is more clear and thus more likely to succeed if they can make that happen. Now is absolutely *not* the time to just enjoy the collapse, we need to keep up or accelerate anti-fascist efforts to avoid repeating some of the mistakes of history.
Edit:
I should not that this isn't *totally* original analysis. I'll link a video later when I have time to find it.
Here it is:
#USPol

@samvarma@fosstodon.org
2025-11-06 14:43:56

#GoodNews @… wandering.shop/@adapalmer/1154

@Techmeme@techhub.social
2026-01-08 13:16:24

The EU says it ordered X to retain all internal docs and data relating to Grok until the end of 2026, after criticizing Grok's nonconsensual image generation (Louise Breusch Rasmussen/Reuters)
reuters.com/world/eu-commissio

@aardrian@toot.cafe
2025-12-27 03:01:07

On the 26th day of December I add a 26th item to the collection of advent calendars:
adrianroselli.com/2025/12/web-

@kexpmusicbot@mastodonapp.uk
2025-12-10 16:51:34

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
U2:
🎵 Until the End of the World
#U2
sgnrobb.bandcamp.com/track/unt
open.spotify.com/track/4iiX7ax

@pre@boing.world
2025-12-31 13:44:29

Had Fun

Bought a car/micro-camper

Bought a van to do up as a micro-camper, and did a temporary rush job of that conversion myself while waiting in the list for the pro to do it.
Then the pro gave himself a health criss the week it was booked so I took apart my temp job and only got another temp kit-job in it's place.
Went out in it like four times during that and then broke my wrist and couldn't really use it or improve it.
Then had to take it apart even more to try
and figure out where the ad-blue hole was.
I will do a proper permanent job of the
floor and walls and ceiling and adjustments to the kit-job to make it the nicest it's been so far during the spring next year.
My assumption that the prior conversion
into a van and for wheelchair-access meant the microcamper conversion was half-done already turned out to be false.
If I buy a new one, it'll be one that has never been wheelchair adapted.
But it's going okay. Only scraped it once so far.
Fewer than aimed for or booked, but I broke my wrist and had to cancel the second half of the summer.
Went to a conference about money and computers and fringe decentralized social media and it wasn't as boring as you might expect and felt pretty much like a festival.
Exactly the target number! It's lovely.
Took 3 times longer than I'd hoped and
50% more money than I'd planned for really.
Still improvements to make but they will
be incremental and gradual over the coming year or two now.
It's been interest-only for 20 years so a big old lump sum payment that I never really expected to be able to make. Expected to have to sell and move at the end of the mortgage term.
But surprisingly the stocks ISA got high enough to pay it off after all, so I did that.
Cash-flow ruined by that and the bedroom but should start to feel a bit richer next year.

At least six high-profile congressional Republicans have voiced their staunch opposition to Trump’s desire to take over Greenland.
“I’ll be candid with you: There’s so many Republicans mad about this,”
Nebraska Representative Don #Bacon told the Omaha-World Herald.
“If he went through with the threats, I think it would be the end of his presidency.
And he needs to know:
The off-r…

@servelan@newsie.social
2025-10-27 03:56:19

The comments are *overwhelmingly* anti-Bezos, and many express their intent to cancel subscriptions (I access through a library subscription, canceled my own).
Opinion | Trump replacing the White House East Wing is not the end of the world - The Washington Post
wapo.st/4o2FcGU

@Techmeme@techhub.social
2026-01-13 01:25:43

SK Hynix will invest ~$12.9B to build an advanced chip packaging plant in South Korea to meet rising memory chip demand, targeting completion by the end of 2027 (Reuters)
reuters.com/world/asia-pacific

@pre@boing.world
2025-12-09 15:07:52

Added a category manager and category state section to the Exocortex Log app.
Have now organized and cleaned up the categories in my ten year database and so we can get some views of the time spent in each category.
We see that through September and October I was in a routine of work and slack with a bit of social a couple of times a week, until the end of November when I went away for social at a conference all weekend. I saw a demo there of a person using Shakespeare, and then when I got back started doing some vibe-coding, shown in in Red.
A break from that to go away at the weekend to a long social party then finish it off and publish a few days ago, since when Vibe Coding has dropped off a little.
#lifeLog #app #exocortexLog

@bobmueller@mastodon.world
2025-10-30 14:30:07

Hill Street Blues was the only one of these I watched a lot of, and I loved it. I read H:LOTS (loved it) but never watched the show. Tried to watch NYPD Blue but it came out at a time when I wasn't watching much TV. #CopTV #copshows

@cowboys@darktundra.xyz
2025-11-06 16:11:35

Cowboys’ Marshawn Kneeland Poignant Final Twitter Post Before Shocking Death heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-co]

@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io
2026-01-12 01:33:21

Did you know? This computer was released closer to the end of World War II than today.

@pre@boing.world
2026-01-16 13:03:14
Content warning: re: ukpol party defections

Badenoch says she's 100% sure no other shadow ministers will convert.
1️⃣ 0️⃣ 0️⃣ Percent!
That is quite sure!
I think I'd take that bet. Four years until the next election for it to happen.
Maybe by the end of the month.
Seems like such a crazy thing to say.
💯

@aardrian@toot.cafe
2025-12-02 13:15:21

Now up to 23 advent calendars:
adrianroselli.com/2025/12/web-
Two new extras, linking @…

@bobmueller@mastodon.world
2025-12-28 15:30:04

A little Christmas theology, a little history, a little football, and a lot of wandering thoughts. From censuses and mangers to Michigan football and year-end reflections—this week’s post covers a lot of ground. 🎄🏈📖
bobmuellerwriter.com/censuses-

The Kremlin has heaped praise on Donald Trump’s latest national security strategy,
calling it an encouraging change of policy
that largely aligns with Russian thinking.
The remarks follow the publication of a White House document on Friday
💥that criticises the EU and says Europeis at risk of “civilisational erasure”,
💥while making clear the US is keen to establish better relations with Russia.
🔥“The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vi…

@pre@boing.world
2025-12-31 13:43:48

Health Stuff

Recovered somewhat from whatever that weird fit was at the end of last year.

NHS still has me on some sort of list I think, appointment might turn up next year. Last contact with them they were suggesting maybe November.
But the private treatment gave me the
MRI which
showed nothing weird and post-fit symptoms have been reducing.
Experimented with eating meat to see if that helped.
Tried eating meat for a month to see if it reduced the post-fit symptoms. Maybe it did? Tried vegetarian again and maybe it got worse?
Hard to tell with intermittent symptoms and a terrible memory.
Decided it's more likely to do good than harm (to me, entirely harm to the animals obviously), and eat meat till the end of the year.
While I'm better, I don't really feel fully recovered enough to want to change things so more meat next year I think.
One of those symptoms is that booze tolerance dropped to like zero. Very rarely had more than four pints in a day this year and very rarely more than one night a
week.
Much high number than the target there really.
Tripped over a guy-rope and fell onto the wrist.
Did two days of the festival and the drive home thinking it almost certainly wasn't broken and only confirmed it was when I got home and the hospital put it in a cast.

For Saint Augustine of Hippo, writing in North Africa in the fourth century,
authentic attention placed us in relation with the divine.
For Saint Ignatius of Loyola, holed up in his cave in Catalonia in the 1520s,
what he called “attentive contemplation” was both a daily practice and a moral imperative.
During the Enlightenment, close attention emerged as a virtue essential to knowledge and disciplined investigation,
-- as demonstrated in 1740, when the natural…

@servelan@newsie.social
2026-01-01 05:24:59

So what was the point of putting a bug in Trump's ear? To be outed as a liar, to make an excuse end to the conflict?
Ukraine didn't target Putin's home: CIA
ctvnews.ca/world/article/cia-a

@bobmueller@mastodon.world
2025-11-13 23:00:01

Good news out of Oklahoma. End the death penalty now. This case is a perfect example of how it is unevenly and unfairly applied.
kosu.org/local-news/2025-11-13

@pre@boing.world
2025-12-31 13:43:26

Did Performance

Played two Loopy gigs

Just a tiny birthday party and in a camping field with friends.
This is probably about the target number really.
It's nice to play now and then but couldn't be monthly or anything even more frequent.
Didn't feel like either went great. Health issues affecting performance plus nerves
Just one with video of any kind.
Added a couple of great songs to the playlists, need to practise more really.
At the end of a Hoopla class and the end of
a self-organised group class.
They were good fun.
But having to book a course every eight weeks means constantly churning co-players and long gaps where I don't get around to it or it was all booked up.
Tried to get a more permanent group going...
Trying to get some sort of indie-group off
the group rather than just short runs of
classes with new people all the time.
We found a group an booked the room but didn't get most of the actual people to turn up. Need to presumably meet more people up for that sort of thing.
So there will be new improv class starting
in Jan.
A new show in March at least.

@kexpmusicbot@mastodonapp.uk
2025-11-03 14:44:59

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Prom Queen:
🎵 End of the World
#PromQueen
promqueenband.bandcamp.com/tra
open.spotify.com/track/4ufp0Tk

@pre@boing.world
2025-11-07 15:31:36

So much painting gone on here that we're out of paint. Apparently the paint is usually watery and is eaten up by the wood like a hungry teen eats cheese.
More paint should hopefully be arriving over the weekend or on Monday.
Looking good. Would have definitely tried to pick a lighter colour for the walls if I'd known what the wood would end up like though.
More to be done on Monday before the master carpenter gets back on Tuesday.

Two sides of the same presidency played out simultaneously along the National Mall on Thursday afternoon.
At one end, Donald Trump was telling the world to give peace a chance at a meeting with African leaders.
It was possible, he said, “to begin healing old wounds and transcending past differences and creating a future where every child of God can live in dignity, prosperity and peace.”
At the other end of the mall, top officials from his Defense Department were being grill…

@pre@boing.world
2025-12-01 17:32:29

All the windowed doors up now, though some adjustment of hinges is still needed. Lots of the trim to fake the panels painted. There's struts everywhere.
No work being done tomorrow, two men in on Wednesday and Friday.
He still seems to think it might be finished by the end of the week. I still find myself doubting it.
Very glad to have a day off building and off work and off having to get up in the mornings tomorrow. I can lie in bed until noon if I want for the first time since October I think.

"By the end of 2026, Trump will have begun to distance himself from the aggressively pro-AI industry policies that characterized his AI strategy in 2025,"
wrote retired New York University professor and AI entrepreneur Gary Marcus.
"The giant AI infrastructure plays (like Project Stargate) that he championed after his inauguration will look like an unprofitable and underused mistake.
So will his utter failure to meaningfully regulate AI,
against the w…

@bobmueller@mastodon.world
2025-11-28 08:00:10

DaVinci said, "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” Let your death be as good as your life.
Beyond the Taboo: Rethinking Society's Fear of Death wp.me/p8efU1-1t7

As 2025 comes to a close, I thought it might be worth revisiting a fascinating social media post from the Silicon Valley pro-extinctionist #Daniel #Faggella.
He espouses the radical view that
👉we should build a
“worthy successor”
in the form of

Pope Leo has stressed the importance of Europe’s involvement in US efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, while suggesting that Italy specifically could play the role of mediator.
Russia and the US failed to make progress towards a peace deal for Ukraine during talks on Tuesday, with Vladimir Putin accusing Europe of “preventing the US administration from achieving peace on Ukraine”.

An attack by the United States on a Nato ally would mean the end of both the military alliance
and “post-second world war security”,
Denmark’s leader has warned,
after Donald Trumpthreatened again to take over Greenland.

@pre@boing.world
2026-01-04 13:24:52

December newsletter consists almost entirely of last week's end-of-year summary.
There's also December's links and boosts and that bit about the new year's war.
But the great and special people who want it in email have it on their way to their inboxes now and the rest of you who frankly deserve to be arrested and deported like a president can read it here if you want.
dalliance.net/blog/dec25/

@pre@boing.world
2026-01-06 19:09:59
Content warning: USPol Time To Extract Resources

Hearing a lot of people saying that Trump can't profit from his raid because it takes years to build an oil extraction drilling system and refinery and mines. His term will be over! His life may already be at it's end!
But of course you can get credit based on expectation of future gains, plus the bribes don't take decades to mature to full production! The bribes start right away!

Until now, Social Security disability benefits got easier to qualify for as a person reached 50 and above. The Trump plan would end that.

New Work World: The administration contends that injured laborers have more access to technology and more nonphysical job options than in the past.

Red State Blues: Under the plan, millions — particularly in states that voted for Trump — could find it more difficult to qualify for disability benefits in the future.

Donald Trump said on Sunday that he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy were “getting a lot closer, maybe very close”
to an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, though both leaders acknowledged that some of the thorniest details remain unresolved.

Trump said it will be clear “in a few weeks” whether negotiations to end the war will succeed.

Zelenskyy said an agreement on security guarantees for Ukraine has been reached.

Trump was sli…

@pre@boing.world
2025-12-01 18:42:40
Content warning: #yourParty #ukpol

So the temporary placeholder name "Your Party" is made permanent.
None of the options on the shortlist were good. Most of them just as grammatically inconvenient as the dumb placeholder name.
The people who decide on the short-list, who can be a member, whose votes counts and what the options are, have quite a lot of power.
Zara Sultana boycotted day one over who sets the rules and who can be involved. If Your Party have a governing body with power to override conference they end up like the Labour party and just are easily taken over and usurped by a cabal of thatcherite neoliberal capitalists.
They did allow the dual membership system and a wider governance, so Zara won on who gets to be a member and who gets to be in charge. Which is probably good.
Coz as the terrible name shows, if you put the idiots in charge you'll get idiocy not good collective decision making.
For now the membership appear to have won, and I hear are they are all very excited and fierce and canny and not likely to let the old guard just set up another dictatorship from the top.
They currently have half the membership count of the greens, less than a quarter that claimed by Reform. Lets hope they can get some attention towards something other than how billionaires think the country should be run and focus on the people.
Here's hoping they can inflate that number by draining the Labour party and Reform members who just want change really rather than actually liking anything said by Farage.
#yourParty #ukpol