@mlawton@mstdn.social2025-12-06 19:43:53
Everyone focused on the amount spent on Wirtz & Isak, but the real story was the last minute jilting from Crystal Palace on Guehi while having sold Quansah to afford offensive firepower. Any stability whatsoever on defense would have the team in such a better place. Is that now 3 or 4 games with points dropped in stoppage time?
It’s not just Konate, but he’s a massive liability. Gomez should start instead, at least temporarily, but now Bradley’s suspension means more disruption.
@larsfosdal@mastodon.social2025-12-05 08:42:53
How many characters do you recognize from this massive animation of comics, cartoons, tv-series, movies, etc?
#animation
https://floor796.com/
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-30 10:05:59
The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net2025-10-28 16:25:53
Series C, Episode 07 - Children of Auron
SERVALAN: Manual only, I'm afraid.
PILOT FOUR-ZERO: I'll manage.
DERAL: With reduced power?
PILOT FOUR-ZERO: Auron isn't so far off. Can you supply me with the course coordinates.?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/307/48 B7B4…
@cdarwin@c.im2025-10-27 14:18:42
Donald Trump has bizarrely claimed he didn’t approve of the massive ICE raid of a Hyundai manufacturing plant in Georgia.
“I was very much opposed,”
the MAGA leader told reporters aboard Air Force One,
en route to Japan as part of his wider diplomatic tour of Asia.
Hyundai is a major South Korean car manufacturer.
On Oct. 29, Trump will meet with its President, Lee Jae Myung, who has previously blasted the raid.
She warned the action would have severe con…
@BBC3MusicBot@mastodonapp.uk2025-12-14 09:00:43
🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBCRadio3:
#SundayMorning
- Three Hours of Classical Sparkle
Sarah Walker with three hours of classical music to reflect, restore and refresh, whether you’re putting up your Christmas decorations or relaxing with a mince pie.
Relisten now 👇
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002n8jp
@michabbb@social.vivaldi.net2025-11-15 18:39:45
🔬 Seeing "post-quantum key exchange" warnings in your SSH sessions?
Here's what it actually means and whether you should worry about it.
Modern #SSH connections use #encryption that could theoretically be broken by future
@arXiv_hepph_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-10-07 10:49:32
Integral of the double-emission eikonal function for two massive emitters at an arbitrary angle
Ming-Ming Long, Kirill Melnikov, Andrey Pikelner
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04778
@arXiv_astrophGA_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-10-14 08:53:28
MaNGA AGN dwarf galaxies (MAD) -- IV. Revealing hidden AGN in dwarf galaxies with radio observations
I. Flores, M. Mezcua, V. Rodr\'iguez Morales
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09754
@arXiv_csNI_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-10-14 09:25:48
Zephyrus: Scaling Gateways Beyond the Petabit-Era with DPU-Augmented Hierarchical Co-Offloading
Yuemeng Xu, Haoran Chen, Jiarui Guo, Mingwei Cui, Qiuheng Yin, Cheng Dong, Daxiang Kang, Xian Wu, Chenmin Sun, Peng He, Yang Gao, Lirong Lai, Kai Wang, Hongyu Wu, Tong Yang, Xiyun Xu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11043
