Do you know the TV series Game of Thrones? The nun lady walking by the naked queen in there in one of its most famous scenes is yelling "shame" and ringing her bell to underscore the shame of the naked queen on her walk from the palace. As if being walked down naked wasn't indicative enough of that.

That's a massive miscalculation though. This strategy is based in red team/blue team thinking and would only work on red who protect their own no matter what. The majority of blue team would happily send Bill on his naked shame walk from the palace to the citadel. That's because they want all people in the files guilty of crimes brought in front of a jury.

I think Monica Lewinsky in a blue dress should get to walk alongside Bill with the bell and yell shame right into his ear until she got hoarse.

What they are saying ≠ what they are doing. I'm my book, this is a half-assed, poorly thought through, unadvised military campaign. Trying to grasp it with logic is as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike.

After 9/11 W was flown around a long time in Air Force One to keep him secure. After just having their old dear leader blown up, it's highly likely they have stepped up security on junior. So junior will be moved around or hidden in bunkers and caves or moved around between various bunkers and caves, thus making a hit harder.

I don't think the author likes mastodon dot social...

I couldn't get through all of this blog post because it's repeating the same point 500 times. I get the theoretical threat scenario they are painting; what's missing are the receipts. Is moderation on that instance actually getting worse? Have we talked with admins on the record how they don't dare defederate from that alleged wretched hive of scum and villainy? And two other angles are missing: (1) a name brand instance might be a good starting point on the fediverse. It's still better than Xwitter. And (2) people are not donating enough to their instances, who are then run on dedication and held together by duct tape. The fear of having one's instance shut down because the admin is out of money and duct tape makes people gravitate towards the bigger instances.

I'm not opposed to recommending people to find other, smaller instances - that is a good idea. It's just this blog post reads more like a hit piece.

... apparently a lot of English people have at least 25% Scandinavian DNA,...

In the 9th century the Vikings invaded and occupied a huge chunk of England (mostly). They blended in with the Anglo Saxons after a while, who, btw, also originally came from Northern Europe.

A bunch of Vikings also went to set up shop in Normandy, France. That sounds very French today but when you look at it, it sounds surprisingly like "northman"-dy. These Normans also invaded England in the 11th century, stayed, and fucked around like their Viking cousins of old.

We are all blends of DNA. People moved around, also to North America. Including people from the Iberian peninsula. That's why it shouldn't be that inexplicable that you have some of their DNA in yours.

He'll be found guilty in a civil lawsuit and then much later gets attested in Vegas while trying to get back some of his memorabilia at gunpoint. For which he will be getting an unusually high sentence. All the while he will write books claiming he will find the guy who really did it.

As far as I'm concerned it was never racist. It was Chinese internet users looking at a picture of Xi and Obama at a summit and compared them in stature, aptly I might add, to Winnie and Tigger. It never stuck with Obama and Xi evidently took it with no sense of humor.

Outside of China the majority of people will not be aware of this meme or have forgotten all about it.

When reached for comment, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told the Daily Beast in a statement, “It’s sad that Daily Beast interns cannot grasp the concept of pro-growth policies that create jobs. Their minds are clearly warped after cheering on Joe Biden as he wrecked our economy for four years.”

The pettiness is unreal.

I say we stop listening to the opinion of people who are heavily invested in this industry for future prognoses.

Yes, you must have missed it. And so it begins.

Google is moving to make Android less open source. I'm not sure more devs following suit is going be good for them or their users. The G doesn't give an F.

What we need is an OS fork that gets maintained. If not that, some other workaround that fools the Google servers. Because you can bet money that nobody made from flesh and blood is going to look at this inside Google.

Maybe devs can band together and form Middle Finger Corp. and designate one willing person as their contact to serve as registered dev for a gazillion apps. Follow the letter of the law, not the misguided spirit of it, in a manner of speaking.

If you are sitting on a mobile OS and you were afraid to fail like Windows, maybe now is the time to give it a go?

Yes, we are. Please stop masturbating. Thanks.

If you want to know where it is going in the short-term, have a look at Orban's Hungary. Rightwing populist voted in and then got to work at dismantling the state. Control judges appointments, curb the power of the judicial branch, silence critical media, pick a group to scapegoat, buddy of Putin. The list goes on. Democracy only works if people defend it and from my outside POV there aren't enough people doing that just yet. It's worse in Trump 2.0 because this time he came prepared.

There are already horror stories about people being caught up wrongly in the deportation efforts. That's using very mild language for very traumatic events here. It's come to a point where erstwhile allies of the US are advising their citizens not to travel to the US. Because they have lost faith in the rule of law there. Take a minute to let that sink in.

If you're a US citizen, resist. The free state is under threat. If you're an immigrant, be careful.