abff08f4813c

Good while Ukraine holds on to it. Worried about the safety of these international folks if Russia regains control… they don’t have a good record here, if the safety record of journalists in the area is anything to go by.

Hmm, but now they are denying it. I don’t know what to believe: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-polio-taliban-vaccination-deny-who/33122994.html

If they hadn’t denied it, then I would have imagined that the Taliban was so disorganized that they just discovered this - or at least, just realized the potential implications (just connected the dots). That might still be the case, and the denial is simply a false one with the purpose to not worsen their reputation on the world stage.

Still concerned that it’s fueling a lot of mistrust with the vaccination process though. One would hope that since it wasn’t through UN/WHO then any UN/WHO programs would remain trusted, but who knows?

That was Wagner, which at the time was technically separate from Russia’s regular military. (Think of it as being akin to a private military company.) And they were lead by the head of Wagner. I think the equivalent in the Russian military would be Putin himself - so I’m not sure if we can expect the same sort of thing nowadays, as a military leader below Putin wouldn’t be expected to command the same level of loyalty over Putin’s army that the head of Wagner did over the Wagner troops.

Shows how desperate the Russian side is if they’re willing to sacrifice such highly skilled individuals in a regular infantry assault. They are running out of manpower for their campaign.

The guy seems like a career specialist based on the article. Lots of regular conscripts have tried to surrender or run away but this guy fought in Russian proxy wars long before the Ukraine conflict. So he’s not the type to disobey an order like this.

But I’d add - if someone could draft this up and show me a working prototype, I might be easier to convince. It’s a lot easier to think about something when you can play with an idea.

I mean sure…but essentially you’re using the facts as they stand as justification that it will never work

More or less.

when my whole point is that these facts as they stand need to change because they will never work unless we change them.

I think to make that argument you’d have to first argue that this works elsewhere. But we see warnings like this, https://web.archive.org/web/20221104001618/https://old.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/comments/yljj15/swifties_be_warned_that_this_is_a_fake_account/ or like this, https://www.instagram.com/czaronline/p/CvAts_9MFDf/

then I’m not at all convinced that this is the case.

You can tweet at celebrities, and you can follow celebrities on instagram, and all the other services, but you generally can’t email them.

Perhaps it’s a generational thing? Back in the day you could. Bill Gates used to be reachable at bill.gates@microsoft.com and Jeff Bozos at jeff@amazon.com

On the flip side, just because a celebrity has a handle on a particular social media service doesn’t guarantee you can reach them. Taylor Swift has a tumblr but she hasn’t publicly used it in years.

People keep using email, and domains as reasons for why it’s not an issue, but there’s a reason celebrities aren’t known for their email.

What’s the reason? Two things come to my mind: first, Bill Gates supposedly said he had an entire team whose job was just to read and respond to his public email.

Second, email is direct contact, like a DM rather than a tweet (that everyone sees). The email equivalent would be a mailing list. If you want that, you can join Taylor Swift’s mailing list over at https://www.taylorswift.com/#mailing-list

you wouldn’t want a second abff08f4813c to exist.

I wouldn’t mind that much, tbh. Though considering the username in question, it’s very unlikely.

Even if you don’t use tiktok, you would want to make sure nobody else has the name abff08f4813c on tiktok.

Much harder with a name like Taylor Swift. How many other people have the same name? Even on twitter there’s a different taylorswift - so the famous singer is taylorswift13 there.

now suddenly 300 more abff08f4813c on 300 different instances all pop up.

My username is probably the wrong one to use for this example.

But more generally - does anyone want to be taylorswift@hotmail.com and taylorswift@gmail.com and taylorswift@outlook.com and taylorswift@yahoo.com all at once? (Well, okay, yes there probably is someone who wants that, with bad intentions, but practically speaking it’s kinda obvious that these aren’t all official email accounts by the singer.)

Because if you try to sue one person on one other instance that has abff08f4813c,

But Taylor Swift may not be able to sue the other person - she’s not the only one named Taylor Swift after all.

What I’m suggesting is, no matter which instance you’re on, if you search abff08f4813c, the search should find that username, and direct you to the profile that corrilates with you. And even though that profile is only on one instance, it would make it so if I tried to make abff08f4813c, on another instance, I would be told that username is already taken.

And then someone tries to be abffo8f4813c or abff08f48i3c.

I don’t see any celebrity who values their own brand on an international scale, be willing to publically announce they are on the fediverse,

uh … https://joinfediverse.wiki/Notable_Fediverse_accounts

and their fans can migrate to the fediverse to follow them.

I mean, there’s no accounting for the fans, sure. If anything, celebs seek out platforms that have lots of people to connect them with fans, rather than them bring fans to a platform, I’d guess.

From there, you could absolutely create an old twitter style verification system.

Sure, but it’s not a required step.

Mastodon.social could implement a mimic of the old twitter style verification system for folks who join that particular instance - and those joining another instance simply wouldn’t have the guarantee.

And then threads can implement the verification system for folks joining directly through threads - and again those joined on another instance simply wouldn’t have the guarantee.

And then Bluesky can …

I don’t really see anyone but a commercial company even trying to do this - it’d be a headache - and probably expensive - in terms of the requirements to protect the data used (such as identify card verification).

This is outrageous. Wonder if there are any grounds for a lawsuit - if that route is possible, then I’d expect the union to get their *** handed to them at the end of it.

As a temporary fix, instead of service systemd-resolved restart as per the article, you can try this, service systemd-resolved stop

Once the service is stopped the port should be free. You’ll have to do this on every reboot (though maybe you can try adding the command to /etc/rc.local to stop it on every reboot)

Yep, it might be enough to just add that file with the setting set to no and restart.

Didn’t the UK already reduce arms sales?

Maybe it’s time to reduce even more and for other countries to follow suit.

Seems to me that he’s trying to do the right thing, as per https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/us-to-demand-access-to-israels-investigation-of-slain-turkish-american-activist/3331943?amp=1 he’s pushing for more access to the investigation - likely to prevent the IDF from covering it up (and based on the timing this started after reports came in contradicting the IDF’s line).

It’s difficult to understand, but I can see why hasn’t spoken out about it publicly yet - on the one-in-a-million off chance that it turns out the IDF was right about it being an accident all along (yeah right), he doesn’t want to have to apologize to them (and really can you blame anyone for not wanting to apologize to the IDF?).

A silver lining, we can view the US folks who gain access and review as being more independent than the IDF themselves.

I’m partial to ecosia.org myself. Search while helping to plant more trees!

This is worrysome. India’s neutral stance and continued relations with Russia allowed it to successfully push to save its own people.

But the article points out,

Earlier media reports revealed various schemes to lure people from third-party countries, including India, to Russia under promises of lucrative jobs or other opportunities only to pressure them into enlisting.

So not just India. Are folks from places like Nepal still trapped after having gotten illegally impressed into the Russian Army?

Yeah, I think it should have been broken up at least with commas like so (or the appropriate pauses when spoken outloud),

Moscow agreed to discharge Indian nationals, who were illegally inducted into the Russian Armed Forces, during a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in July.

Although a minor rewrite would be better,

During a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in July, Moscow agreed to discharge Indian nationals who were illegally inducted into the Russian Armed Forces.

Amin Abed … in July … was attacked by Hamas security operatives, who covered his head and dragged him away before repeatedly striking him with hammers and metal bars.

Granted this might have been reported back in July when it happened and I missed it, but that was news to me.

And I think it’s important to spread the word on just how repressive and totalitarian the regime of Hamas has been, even to its own people - the ones that it purports to be protecting.

The problem is. Hamas wants nothing to do with that. They don’t want a two state solution
they won’t accept or recognize Israel at all.

Agree this is a problem. They caused Oct 7 and they need to be stopped.

The innocent Gazans unaffiliated with Hamas, and the PA and the folks living in the West Bank deserve to have their country and their rights respected, but none of that should read as saying Hamas should stay in power, or even be allowed to exist at all.

Then your problem is you blame their denial for a two state solution on Netanyahu.

This is a misreading of my argument. Hamas != State of Palestine

Or you expect him to give the terrorists sovereignty anyways.

Well, not to Hamas!

Why would he have complete supporte for their sovereignty given what his country has seen at their hand.

Again, not to Hamas! For the past twenty years the PA has kept peace with Israel - this is the model to follow.

The right answer to this is why do they need a military. They are surrounded by Muslim brothers.

Yeah… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_proxy_conflict

There are various countries today without a military force.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that magical wizards come in and fix everything. We end up with two states tied together by peace, with the violence behind them. (Model for this being the Troubles in Northern Ireland.) Or even a single Israel state with peace - for the sake of this argument, this detail doesn’t matter.

It’s a volatile area with lots of conflict between different countries, even if one excludes Hamas and related insurgents. Any country in that area would need a military just to defend its own existence.

The countries that don’t have any military forces - I imagine none of them are in this kind of situation.

I’m sure israel would offer their protection as well as allies near them.

In theory that could work. The problem in practice is that IDF has lost a lot of good will, and perhaps might be seen as occupiers instead of peacekeepers from a friendly allied country. Hence my suggestion for Malaysia to step in - Islamic troops from a far away neutral country - might be better perceived.

Heck, a lot of goodwill might be earned just by being fresh and new. Now that may not be entirely fair to the IDF, but politics is rarely fair.

Well, to be fair some folks might have moved in a time when there was a territory that went by the name of the British Mandate of Palestine. Anyways, semantics, mostly agreed.

I would agree on the bit regarding Hamas … but I think one shouldn’t conflate all Gazans and their beliefs with just Hamas. Remember that Hamas took power only after overthrowing a unity government that was under the Palestinian Authority (which does still support a two state solution).

Regarding Netanyahu, the article from CNN you cite kinda shows the problem. Netanyahu is not in favor of Palestinian sovereignty.

In fact, CNN makes it very clear,

Netanyahu has never been a full-throated supporter of a two-state solution

That said, the security concerns regarding Israel are indeed valid. I’m not sure what the right answer to that would be… perhaps in the beginning we’d need to have peacekeepers? But perhaps we could find a neutral islamic country (who? Perhaps Malaysia?) to fit that role. With fellow followers of Islam keeping the peace and IDF having withdrawn, perhaps then Israel can feel secure while a new Palestine is built?

If anything we want to encourage this.

I like the example of SAG AFTRA hosting their own instance to be official, for example. Celebs typically have their own domains and websites, so easy enough to hire a team to create and manage their own instance that supports the celeb but federates. And you know it’s legit just because it’s on the celeb’s own domain. Ditto for gov’t agencies having their own instances.