Yes, as the Trump admin clearly proves, they follow the law to the letter.

/s

Gotta insure Blackrock’s investment.

Reminds me a bit of the impromptu Christmas truce of the first winter of WWI.

The soldiers clambered out of their trenches, chatted, played football, and enjoyed life. The soldiers learned to see the other side as humans, just like them.

The following Christmases the soldiers were under strict orders to keep shooting on Christmas and not dare consort with the enemy.

The US made it illegal to cooperate with China on matters of space exploration and research years ago. China on the other hand welcomes collaboration from anyone.

The Android private DNS setting is just for a DNS-over-TLS resolver. The only thing about it that’s private is your queries are encrypted en route to the server (traditonal DNS is cleartext). There’s no filtering or blocking.

Some Android versions also have a hard coded DNS server set to Google, which based on my tinkering uses DNS-over-HTTPS. Not only is it annoying but I find it awfully insecure - even if you think you have stuff locked down it might just not be. I fixed that issue by blocking all DNS-over-HTTPS servers in my router, and also have all outgoing requests to port 53 redirected to my local resolvers (Pihole + Unbound).

Chancelllor Blackrock: hold my beer.

secure anonymous access

A VPN doesn’t provide this on its own. Nothing does.

“Better than a VPN” but it looks more like some decentralised social and content network. So not a replacement or alternative to a VPN in any way. It just preys on the people who already bought the “VPNs make you private online” marketing.

Looks like a silicon valley VC cash grab.

I use whichever editor is convienient at the moment and which I lile the UX of (Micro on a terminal, Pulsar on desktop, Markor on mobile), and commit the markdown files to a privately hosted git server (Forgejo). The git server is backed up regularly.

The editor doesn’t matter too much as long as it doesn’t have spyware and/or AI “features” like vscode.

When I’m on the go and need to read or write notes I have a clone of the repo on my phone, and if I absolutely need to pull/push to origin I connect via VPN.

I’m not sure how syncthing or similar work with merging different versions of files from different devices, so I’ve just stuck with git for that reason as well as version control (I make notes about homelab configs and issues so being able to go back is handy).

We already saw that as soon as Biden was elected. Any bit of skepticism with regards to loyally following the US under Trump went away overnight, when everything went “back to normal” in the White House.

Germany’s tax euros at work everyone.

Rules for thee and not for mee.

It was amazing watching the FDP not even have to think about approving the last €100B Schuldenbremse-excluded military gift basket.

Ah yes, because the last time Germany changed its constitution to pursue military aims it went so well for everyone.

One whistleblower who carried out benefits reassessments for a triple amputee recalled the claimant saying he felt he had to keep proving his limbs had not “grown back” to ensure his money was not cut.

This is already policy in Germany. Anyone with a disabled status has to regularly prove that they’re still disabled, even when it’s something as stupidly obvious as an amputated limb.

The threat of the AfD is going to be used as a cudgel with which to keep the left in line, even as the CDU (and inevitably the SPD) end up adopting pretty much exactly the AfD’s position on immigration thinking that this will win back AfD voters.

That’s exactly what we’ve already seen over the last ten years of the AfD getting ever stronger, and especially the last year or so after the Correctiv exposé on what the AfD says in private. The AfD even bragged that this is what’s happening and it’s what they want, but nobody paid attention to that part.

I’ll see if I can listen later today.

On first thought, this is proof of US influence. Sure the currently governing US capitalist faction (tech billionaires) likely won’t see their party of choice (AfD) in government, but the traditional Wall Street and MIC establishment will be very happy to see a hawkish Chancellor from Blackrock in Berlin.

But of course this result was made possible by older people voting CDU as they always have, regardless of the candidates, contemporary policies, and conditions. Younger people tended to vote for non-centrist alternatives, whether reactionary or nominally leftist.

Former Al Qaeda affiliate HTS

Sure

To your question, this was already really noticeable in his first term. By being brash and uncouth and calling things what they are, rather than using doublespeak or just doing things in the shadows, he made the contradictions of imperialism really uncomfortable for a lot of people. In being direct he created the beginnings of pushback from people who would otherwise be perfectly fine with kids in cages, seizing other countries’ natural reources, etc.

At this point that’s the only way Ukraine can pay even debt maintenance on all the “aid” they’ve been getting from the US and vassals.

Imperialists have been salivating over Ukraine’s natural riches for a while already.

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/09/16/senator-lindsey-graham-ukraine-trillion-minerals/