Since the Russian invasion in 2022, some of Ukraine’s local leaders and networks of their allies worldwide have discussed rebuilding in what would amount to two phases. First, everyday citizens would use democratic processes — from online tools to deliberative bodies like citizens’ assemblies — to make plans for their own localities. Second, reconstruction money would go directly to local governments, rather than via national governments and international aid groups, to enact those plans.
In a few months, I expect to see headlines about how this all collapses after CIA agents definitely local citizens sabotage their economy stage a successful campaign to liberate them from the evils of communism.
Holy shit. Robot Chicken and xkcd are modern day prophets.
Hello! I am a lemming clipping(?) a post that links to an "article" that is actually a podcast that quotes a CNN interview.
Here's the transcript and a link straight to the interview.
Josh Hawley (audio voiceover): Republicans now, thanks to Donald Trump, are the party of the working class, Manu. You referenced the returns from the last election. The big majority of working-class voters voted for the GOP. That means now the GOP needs to deliver for them. And we do that by giving them tax relief. We do that by bringing down their health care bills. We don’t do it by cutting Medicaid.
Manu Raju (audio voiceover): If this bill becomes law, are you concerned that Republicans could face a severe blowback in the elections next year?
Hawley (audio voiceover): This bill is not going to become law in its current form, not least because President Trump won’t sign it. Manu, I’ve talked to him about this personally multiple times. He has been crystal clear in public too—no Medicaid benefit cuts. We need to give a tax cut to working people, not raise their taxes when it comes to health care, not take away their health care benefits. I hope this bill will get refocused on delivering relief for working families. That’s what we ought to be doing.
I applaud the commitment to the bit.
Toei Animation said in some cases, the time spent on a background was reduced to one-sixth of its normal time.
How is creator compensation changing as a result of the introduction of AI?
Are they being paid one-sixth less? Are they working one-sixth less?
throw me in jail where you then have to feed me, give me proper climate control, give me a place to sleep
Hope you don't live in the United States. You might end up in a Salvadoran prison. Or, almost as bad, an American one.
AI is a venture capital money pit, and they are struggling to monetize before the hype dies out.
If the poison pills work as intended, investors will stop investing "creative" AI when the new models stop getting better (and sometimes get worse) because they're running out of clean content to steal.
I doubt we'll ever be offered a real opt-out option.
Instead I'm encouraged by the development of poison pills for the AI that are non-consensually harvesting human art (Glaze and Nightshade) and music (HarmonyCloak).


Original post from 2025-05-09.
I remember that movie not ending super well for him...
Just from your description, isn't the point of the de minimis exception to support small businesses and help them compete against larger companies that can bulk import?
Signal
Signal supports a manual backup and restore option. Basically, messages are not backed up to any cloud storage, and Signal cannot access them.
WhatsApp can optionally back up the contents of chats to either a Google Account on Android, or iCloud on iPhone, and you have a choice to back up with or without end-to-end encryption.
iMessage
[iMessage] backups... are not end-to-end encrypted by default. This is a loophole we’ve routinely demanded Apple close.
The good news is that with the release of the Advanced Data Protection feature, you can optionally turn on end-to-end encryption for almost everything stored in iCloud, including those backups (unless you’re in the U.K.).
Google Messages
You can optionally back up Google Messages to a Google Account, and as long as you have a passcode or lock screen password, the backup of the text of those conversations is end-to-end encrypted.
Just curious, why?
Are we expecting the original to get deleted?
Basically, don't invite either of them to queer Thanksgiving.
For people who want a real link to help them with Linux migration, end of 10 might be worth checking out.
Yea, several reviews basically say the cast looks diverse at first, but they turn out to be one-dimensional.
I wish we had more examples of authors writing something as ambitious (explicitly multicultural and incorporates real-world ethnicities) and actually succeeding.
I stand by my comment, time traveler.
I think the purpose of a parachute is so that it can be used in an emergency, yes.
If, like me, you were curious about what "disaster" is referring to, it's basically this:
The flight attendants are told to prioritize guard orders over prisoner safety (aka keep them in chains). And they have no evacuation protocols. If the plane crashes or people need to parachute out, the prisoners will be left for dead.
There's no way this happened after the year 2000.
Play inKONBINI: Prologue Demo! Step into Makoto’s shoes as she begins her work behind the counter at the Honki-Ponki konbini. Meet your first customer, ease into the quiet rhythm of the small-town store, and start to uncover the stories it holds.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29165490
The authors who manage to clear the low bar of incorporating characters/communities from diverse cultures into their fiction without cultural appropriation/stereotyping/racism... who are they and how do they do it?
I know many writers sidestep the difficulty altogether, either by creating a fictional universe with cultural proxies (fantasy stories/video games with Chinese, Japanese, and Russian analogues, I'm looking at you) or by writing in the distant future where the cultures have blended into new ones with flavors of the past (sci-fi does this a lot).
I've seen so very few authors do it well, but I do believe it's both possible and worth doing.
The authors who manage to clear the low bar of incorporating characters/communities from diverse cultures into their fiction without cultural appropriation/stereotyping/racism... who are they and how do they do it?
I know many writers sidestep the difficulty altogether, either by creating a fictional universe with cultural proxies (fantasy stories/video games with Chinese, Japanese, and Russian analogues, I'm looking at you) or by writing in the distant future where the cultures have blended into new ones with flavors of the past (sci-fi does this a lot).
I've seen so very few authors do it well, but I do believe it's both possible and worth doing.
I've heard some servers struggled or even had to shut down because of storage costs. But that was a while ago, so it may not even still be a thing anymore.
There's the option of posting images to third-party services (like imgur or whatever), but I've been frustrated with not being able to see third-party images when scrolling the feed in Lemmy apps.
What's the meta right now?