Rob Henderson on X - "The decline of the headphone jack has released an epidemic of braindead mouthbreathers playing videos in public spaces. Airpods are expensive but even if you manage to get them they're easy to lose (easier if you're dumb). So tech companies increase profits as people buy more of these miniature devices and the rest of us must endure shitty music and tik tok noise pollution."
Abraham Ash on X - "Reading Ottoman history is very jarring when you're mostly accustomed to European history. The institutional fratricide, the ease with which children were executed - it's just brutal in a way that Europe never was since the Roman Empire
Please read the tweet before responding something about WWII lol. This is talking about the institutional and routine kinslaying within the House of Osman, not doing mean things during war."
Seamus Nua on X - "You upset Turkish Twitter didn't you"
Abraham Ash on X - "It must be. Brain dead, functionally illiterate, fulminating at the smallest perceived slight... checks out"
Is Your Smartphone Listening to Your Conversations? - "the CDT alerted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to a technology called SilverPush. It uses audio beacons to track your activities across devices: Your TV emits a tone during a commercial break, a tone that’s inaudible to you, but your phone is listening for it. Now they can link the TV and phone as belonging to the same person. Advertisers have developed lots of techniques for device-matching, because the more accurately they can track your activities, the easier it is for them to advertise to you. But it’s not difficult to imagine other applications for this technology. Any government interested in who you are meeting with could play a tone through the TV and effectively ping all the phones in the room, identifying the whole group... “The big companies have a strong incentive to be mostly upfront about what they’re doing because the Federal Trade Commission and other government organizations would fine them if they were using deceptive practices,” suggests Hong. “There are also a lot of researchers analyzing these kinds of apps.”"
(20) Video | Facebook - "The X-Men Are Defeated"
Sentinel: "I attack with words"
A series of burns delivered to all the X-Xen
Thanks to living ‘skin,’ robots can now smile and make other unnerving faces - "Scientists at the University of Tokyo have developed a new nightmare technology using engineered living skin tissue and human-like ligaments, that they can now bind to the surface of robots to give them more human-like facial expressions, including smiles and frowns. This so-called "skin equivalent" adhesion method, still in its prototype stage, is sure to perturb. A GIF shared online alongside the study shows a small, pink, 2D face with glassy eyes pulled up into a smile, invoking memories of unsettling Claymation cartoons from the 1960s and '70s... While Takeuchi had previously developed "living" robot skin using collagen and human dermal fibroblasts, both found in human skin and connective tissue, these latest designs are set apart by how they hook to a robotic structure."
It isn't just Trudeau — western leadership saddled with duds - "The opening get-together in the annual summer summiteering season was titled G7 Italia, after the location at a posh resort on the Adriatic coast. It should rightly have been Dead Men Walking. Rarely if ever have so many unpopular, discredited, likely-to-be replaced national “leaders” gathered on a stage to be opped for a photo that would be out of date almost the moment they landed back in the countries that desperately want to be rid of them. Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau, Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz, Fumio Kishida… if any of them faced a vote tomorrow there’s an excellent chance they’d be ex-leaders the day after. Of the seven G countries, six are spoiling to kick out the incumbent. The only one still in good standing is Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who won office as a revolt against uninspiring opponents resembling Macron, Sunak, Trudeau and the others. Who elected leaders like this bunch? Who was foolish enough to trust national fortunes to such inadequate hands? Oh yeah … it was us... Polls indicate Sunak could be the first prime minister in UK history to lose his own seat, with Labour considered so certain to gain a massive majority that UK doctors have already addressed pay demands to Sir Keir Starmer on the assumption he’ll be prime minister within weeks... 68 per cent of Canadians want Trudeau to quit now rather than hang on until the next scheduled election in 2025. “This is as bad as we’ve seen it for Trudeau. It’s close to rock bottom,” said Ipsos chief executive Darrell Bricker. Fellow pollster Greg Lyle of Innovative Research Group is even blunter. “It’s over for Trudeau,” he told TV Ontario’s Steve Paikin, suggesting the only choice for embattled Liberals is whether the prime minister sticks around for a certain drubbing, or gives way for a successor to try their luck. Every leader faces difficult events. Sunak didn’t cause Brexit, though he supported it and is stuck with the results. Germany’s Scholz inherited a country that gambled the power grid on the good faith and trustworthiness of Vladimir Putin. Joe Biden’s first day on the job came 14 days after an angry mob attacked Congress looking to overturn his election. Tough as those challenges might have been, the group that gathered in Puglia has authored many of their own problems. They’ve shot themselves in the foot so many times it’s a wonder there’s a toe left among them. Almost the first thing Biden did as president was yank U.S. troops from Afghanistan in a colossally chaotic retreat. Only two weeks ago did he concede the true extent of the disarray on America’s southern border and order the sort of measures he’d been resisting for three years. He refuses to accept that millions in his own party feel he’s too old for a second term or that the voters who so strongly back Trump need to have their issues addressed, even if Democrats disagree with them. Sunak took over from Liz Truss, who took over from Boris Johnson and so quickly caused a financial crisis she was forced from office after just 50 days. Sunak’s judgment has proven so faulty — he bewilderingly skipped out early on D-Day’s 80th anniversary celebrations to give a campaign interview — a columnist at The Times wondered recently, “Is he even a politician?” Trudeau is now the longest serving leader in the G7 and has the mistakes to prove it. What’s peculiar is that he keeps making the same ones. Do shrewd politicians take freebie holidays at luxury resorts owned by millionaire pals, then jet home to raise taxes on cottage owners and small businesses, and portray them as greedy plutocrats when they object? In the midst of that imbroglio do they spend $223,000 on catering for a trip to Asia? Does a leader under fire for lavish spending expect his menus to include beef brisket with mashed parsley potatoes with truffle oil, pan fried beef tenderloin with port wine sauce, braised lamb shanks with steamed broccoli, and baked cheesecake with pistachio brittle? Trudeau’s tone deafness seems to be contagious. His foreign minister says she has no idea why Canada’s navy would visit Cuba while Russian warships were in port, and then lead a conga line through downtown Havana, but she’ll look into it. His defence minister complains he can’t convince cabinet colleagues Canada should honour its financing pledges to NATO, even as Ukraine is under assault and other NATO countries are sharply increasing their budgets, because “nobody knows what it means.” His finance minister insists taxes must be raised or future generations will be left with “an unfair burden” caused by too much borrowing, apparently forgetting the Trudeau government took a debt it took almost 150 years to amass, and doubled it in eight years."
Nakheel demands retrial as judge falls asleep - "Nakheel, the developer behind the Palm Jumeirah, yesterday demanded a retrial in a $15.5m (AED 57m) case in the Dubai World Tribunal as it accused one of the judges of falling asleep during legal proceedings... Chief Justice Michael Hwang was accused yesterday by Clifford Chance, the international law firm acting for Nakheel, of nodding off for six minutes at a hearing on May 9th in a dispute between the developer and Shokat Mohammad Dalal, an investor in The World project... Clifford Chance also asserted that the judge had been drowsy for about 40 minutes leading up to the period he was asleep. Sir Anthony Evans, Chief Justice of the Dubai International Financial Centre Courts and chairman of the Dubai World Tribunal, conceded that there had been a “breach of duty” and that Judge Hwang had been asleep. But he dismissed Nakheel’s claims on the grounds that the evidence in the six-minute period that the judge was sleeping was not relevant to the case... the tribunal had dismissed the Nakheel complaint because a full transcript of the hearing was available to Hwang, including a video, and that Clifford Chance was aware of the incident the morning after it had taken place, but delayed its complaint."
Meme - "WHAT MOTIVATES YOU?"
"MONEY"
"MY PASSION FOR MY CRAFT"
"I WANT TO BE A BETTER PERSON"
"PURE SPITE. I LIVE ONLY TO PROVE THE HATERS WRONG! I SUCCEED TO MAKE THEM SUFFER!"
Wokal Distance on X - "A man built a fence to keep wolves out. It worked, and there were no more wolves. With the wolves gone and forgotten, his wife became convinced that he built the fence to trap her at home, so she tore it down. She was promptly eaten by wolves. This is story about social norms."
The Chesterton Principle
Meme - *Venn Diagrams*
The Fulfilled Man: "Things you're good at. Things you enjoy doing. Things that make you money. Union - Purpose"
The Male Twitch Streamer: "Things you're good at. Things you enjoy doing"
The Female Twitch Streamer: "Things you enjoy doing. Things that make you money"
The Executive: "Things you're good at. Things that make you money"
The Retail Worker: "Things that make you money"
The Drug Addict: "Things you enjoy doing"
Most people nowadays don't know how Venn diagrams work
Meme - "Walked in to a bar, in Australia. Ordered a beer and then the bartender noticed i'm American. I asked, "was it the accent or my choice of Budweiser beer"? He said, "because ur the fattest fuck i have ever seen in my life mate""
Doughnuts: The Fried Treat That Conquered the Modern World - "For all the joy a doughnut brings, fried dough is something you make when you don't have anything better around."
Abba Bina - Wikipedia - "Abba Bina (died October 2012), best known as Mr. Shit, was a Papua New Guinean businessman and former celebrated political aspirant... Bina began operating a manure business in Port Moresby using the name Mr Shit in the early 1990s, with his slogan "Chicken shit, horse shit, cow shit -- but no bullshit" on his business card. Bina ran for the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea during the 1997 election. He was denied permission to use the name "Mr Shit", a factor used to explain his poor showing in the election"
Pet Playground: Animals at the Blizzard Campus — All News — Blizzard News - "Registered pets are also asked to place their pawprint on an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and refrain from passing along information about any secret games Blizzard is working on."
Meme - "Black truffles on a McDonalds double cheese burger."
NatCon conference resumes after Brussels court overturns closure order - "A radical right conference that was addressed by Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman as police arrived to close it down has resumed after a Brussels court overturned a local mayor’s attempt to stop it. Following moves condemned as “unacceptable” and “unconstitutional” by the Belgian prime minister, Alexander De Croo, organisers of the National Conservatism conference went to the conseil d’état, Belgium’s supreme administrative court. It ruled there was no evidence of a threat to public order from the event itself and that this claim seemed to be “derived purely from the reactions that its organisation might provoke among opponents”... Emir Kir, the local mayor who had issued the order to break up the conference, was defiant on Wednesday, saying the move was based on analysis by the Belgian state agency that monitors extremist threats. The court’s ruling, which was published by the Belgian prime minister on his X account, included details of Kir’s original claims about the conference. These included allegations that it had the potential to cause serious disturbances and that speakers included provocateurs, homophobes, others who had been under police protection in their own country and at least one author of a controversial work about “political Islam”. There was said to be a “medium” level of threat to participants, in the view of Belgian counter-terrorism officials. Kir’s claims that counter-terrorism officials had made the assessment were rejected as “bullshit” by Frank Furedi, a professor at the University of Kent and executive director of MCC Brussels... The conference was staged after two other venues pulled the plug under pressure from local mayors... The attempt to shut down the event was also criticised on the left, including by Keir Starmer, the leader of the UK’s Labour party. Starmer’s spokesperson said: “There were potentially operational decisions that we don’t know about but in principle, he believes in the principle of free speech.”"
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on X - "Hmm, so the police in Brussels have time to shut down NatCon, an international conservative conference where participants are there to peacefully and transparently share their views and experiences while they have no time to shut down the elaborate infrastructure of hard core Islamists who peddle in hatred of all who oppose them and Jewish people in particular!!! And then the EU and the Belgian government wonder why their populations don’t trust them. Go figure."
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on X - "The Brussels mayor in question who shut down the NatCon conference also denies the Armenian genocide and was expelled from the Socialist Party for inviting far right politicians from Turkey to Brussels. Is this all a coincidence?"
To live in Starmer's Britain, you need to learn Labour's bewildering catchphrases - "Under Sir Keir Starmer’s new regime, what was formerly the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is now to be known as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. In a way, I suppose we can’t really blame Labour. After all, levelling up sounds like an awful lot of hard work. Instead, the new Government clearly intends to pursue a much less strenuous course: levelling down. Hence its plan to impose 20 per cent VAT to private school fees, for example. And perhaps, in due course, raising taxes for savers, homeowners, pensioners, people who inherit money or property left to them by their late parents… In short: if you can’t make the poor richer, simply make the rich poorer. Equality achieved. Job done. At any rate, Angela Rayner – who is now in charge of what used to be the department for levelling up – sounds happy with the decision to bin Boris Johnson’s phrase. Under Labour, she declared, there will be “no more gimmicks and slogans”. Well, no more Tory gimmicks and slogans, anyway. Because, as is already clear, the new Government has numerous of its own."
If Starmer isn't careful, Blair could steal the Labour spotlight - "“We’ve got a curious relation with our past. One of the big mistakes we made since 2010 was distancing ourselves from the [previous] Labour government … a real category error. We wanted to correct that, and to Keir Starmer’s great credit he did correct that.”"
No wonder left wingers are disowning Starmer, because they rather have the ideal of revolution in opposition than take on the real task of government and doing actual work
Meme - "god created everything!"
"why would he create brain parasites?
"except that that was sin"
why did god create sin?
"he didn't create sin man created sin"
i thought we were made in gods image?
"ok let me start over. god creates all the GOOD things. everything else is the devil"
why did god create the devil?
"you're a stupid atheist. you might have read the bible but you didn't UNDERSTAND the bible and you can't understand it because you don't want to understand. woke fascist communist. you want to be an atheist so you can sin. you just hate god. you'll understand one day."
Meme - "YOU WIN A COMPETITION TO DESIGN YOUR IDEAL MAN CAVE BUT ONE HAS TO GO, CHOOSE. *pool table* *movie room* *weight room* *2 tied up women in lingerie (AJ Lynn and Jamie Lynn in Bondage for Friends and Family!)*"
A winner has emerged in the old rivalry between Singapore and Hong Kong - "Dinner-party conversations across Asia have often been animated by an old debate. In economic dynamism, the state of the urban fabric and the vibrancy of civic life, which city comes top: Hong Kong or Singapore? Until not long ago, it was obvious to Banyan, who spent a decade working there, that Hong Kong won hands down. But recently the balance shifted. There is clearly no contest anymore. It is game over in favour of Singapore. As a consequence, Banyan has moved there... The imposition of a draconian national-security law in 2020 marked the obvious break in Hong Kong’s trajectory. The law ended any prospect of more representative government and curtailed the space for civic expression. Dozens of activists, lawyers and politicians are in jail. Stringent pandemic travel restrictions compounded the sense of claustrophobia. Some 200,000 expatriates have left Hong Kong in the past three years, along with even more Hong Kongers. By contrast, in 2022 the number of foreign professionals in Singapore grew by 16%, Banyan among them. But a deeper divergence has occurred in economic performance, on which leaders in both places have always asked to be judged above all. In 1997, the year of Hong Kong’s return to China, the two cities’ GDP per person was remarkably similar ($26,376 in Singapore, $27,330 in Hong Kong). Today Singapore’s is 1.7 times higher than Hong Kong’s. Singapore’s economy has grown by one-seventh since 2017; Hong Kong’s not at all. In reality, Hong Kong was never as freewheeling as it claimed. Cartels or oligopolies operate in power, construction and supermarkets, among other sectors. Singapore’s economy is more innovative and diversified. Given China’s economic slowdown, Singapore is now in a more vibrant region. Yet the biggest divergence is in governance—defined by Donald Low at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, writing in Jom, a new Singaporean magazine, as “the capacity to anticipate, plan and prepare for the future”. By that test, Hong Kong fails dismally. The government’s answer to poor job prospects is to urge Hong Kong’s young to seek work across the border. Its strict “zero-covid” policy, mimicking mainland China, undermined its standing as an international financial centre. Like the mainland, Hong Kong bungled, failing to vaccinate the old quickly enough. Excess deaths per 100,000 people were nearly three times higher than in Singapore. Hong Kong is also a harder place to live in the literal sense. The presence of rich foreigners pushing up property prices calls for big public-housing programmes. Yet so strong is the grip of Hong Kong’s property tycoons that less than 50% of the population lives in public housing, for which there is a six-year wait. In Singapore, the figure is over 80%. Private rents, high in both places, are even steeper in Hong Kong, for worse flats. Singapore is no paradise. The pleasantness of its urban fabric is thanks mainly to the toil of the foreign migrant workers who make up nearly a third of the workforce. Their contribution is a curious blind spot. Meanwhile, politics is tightly constrained, as is civil society: you may be arrested for holding up a placard with a smiley face. The media is cloyingly tame, while foreign journalists, it is made clear, are here on sufferance. With nearly 500 executions in the past three decades, 70% of them for drug offences, Singapore’s use of capital punishment is grotesque. Still, a far brighter future beckons for Singapore’s young than for their counterparts in Hong Kong. They are slowly pushing at Singapore’s rigid boundaries. This month, in a first, a few hundred activists gathered on Labour Day to call for greater rights for, among others, foreign workers. The launch of Jom reflects a growing desire for independent voices. In Hong Kong, by contrast, a transport-news website promoting road safety, of all things, this week became the latest target of the authorities and was forced to close. Singapore is at a crossroads. Hong Kong has hit a dead end."
Meme - 𝕁. @inkedupjayy: "Charcuterie board but it's just 5 different types of pickles"
Meme - Lucas Gage @Lucas Gage_: "I'm am removing ALL JEWS from my life. I don't give a shit if they're "innocent" or not, anymore. Their silence is violence. No more Jewish doctors or Jewish friends; I can't risk it. If I I want Jews out of power, then I first must remove them from my life and lead by example."
Meme - Lucas Gage: "My wife just told me the jews are now sending us Chinese food. Keep exposing your demonic nature, you stupid rats."
It's crazy that if you change "Jew" to "Zionist", this flips to the "other" side of the political spectrum
Meme - Dull Men’s Club @BestOfDullMen: "I spent countless hours turning aluminum welding wire into this chainmail blanket. WHY? I like having weight on me when I sleep, and I like to be cool. The heat dissipating properties and weight of Aluminium are perfect for this."
Meme - Smash Baals @smashbaals: "Chris from Mr. Beast: Abandons his wife and child to pretend he’s a woman
Chandler from Mr. Beast: Becomes a Christian and does Bible studies on TikTok
Which way, Western man?"
Math Goes Pop! - The Futurama Theorem - "they seriously stepped their game up a notch, by featuring the proof of an original mathematical result as a central feature in the plot of the story. The mathematics evolves quite organically. In the show, Amy and Professor Farnsworth have created a mind-switching device, which can swap the minds of any two individuals. After a brief discussion, they decide it would be neat to swap their own brains: As you might expect, before long they decide they want to swap back. Unfortunately, due to the brain's natural immune response, they discover that once two people have switched minds once, they can never switch back (obviously). This raises a question: once two people have swapped minds, can they get back to their original bodies by means of a third party?... in the end it is discovered by 'Sweet' Clyde Dixon that by including no more than 2 new people in this mind swap game, everyone can always return to their original body. The proof is shown briefly, but for interested parties, here it is in all its glory (the proof was written up by writer Ken Keeler, who earned a Ph.D. in applied math from Harvard University)"
Thoughts for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review - " If you had been a security policy-maker in the world’s greatest power in 1900, you would have been a Brit, looking warily at your age-old enemy, France. By 1910, you would be allied with France and your enemy would be Germany. By 1920, World War I would have been fought and won, and you’d be engaged in a naval arms race with your erstwhile allies, the U.S. and Japan. By 1930, naval arms limitation treaties were in effect, the Great Depression was underway, and the defense planning standard said “no war for ten years.” Nine years later World War II had begun. By 1950, Britain no longer was the world’s greatest power, the Atomic Age had dawned, and a “police action” was underway in Korea. Ten years later the political focus was on the “missile gap,” the strategic paradigm was shifting from massive retaliation to flexible response, and few people had heard of Vietnam. By 1970, the peak of our involvement in Vietnam had come and gone, we were beginning détente with the Soviets, and we were anointing the Shah as our protégé in the Gulf region. By 1980, the Soviets were in Afghanistan, Iran was in the throes of revolution, there was talk of our “hollow forces” and a “window of vulnerability,” and the U.S. was the greatest creditor nation the world had ever seen. By 1990, the Soviet Union was within a year of dissolution, American forces in the Desert were on the verge of showing they were anything but hollow, the U.S. had become the greatest debtor nation the world had ever known, and almost no one had heard of the Internet. Ten years later, Warsaw was the capital of a NATO nation, asymmetric threats transcended geography, and the parallel revolutions of information, biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, and high density energy sources foreshadowed changes almost beyond forecasting. All of which is to say that I’m not sure what 2010 will look like, but I’m sure that it will be very little like we expect, so we should plan accordingly."
Norma Ibarra on X - "Anxiety is literally just conspiracy theories about yourself."
Meme - "Asian buildings are designed so that when evil spirits fall from the sky onto the roof, they are propelled back up towards the sky.
American houses are designed so that the evil spirits fall into your neighbor's lawn."