My kneejerk reaction was “it’s not going to do much” too, but I’ve kind of mulled it over and I’m kind of inclined to feel more charitable towards the Portland stuff.

What did the Trump administration want when it was sending National Guard out? Images of conflict, material that they could use to show that there was some dire threat and dangerous criminality that the administration was handling. They got footage of a frog air-humping and some nude bicyclists that’s basically useless for that.

Looking at Fox News’s front page, they have:

• Emergency flights diverted from Portland hospital amid ‘laser party’ threats at ICE facility: report

and

• Portland mayor orders removal of police tape despite federal demand for perimeter at ICE facility, report says

Which I think even the most die-hard MAGA fan is going to have a hard time getting too worked up over.

And it did accomplish some of the goals that a protest in that it helped build make visible that there were people who did object to what was going on.

I’m not sure that it was the absolute, optimal thing to do, but it might have been reasonably-canny.

The tech could represent the end of visual fact — the idea that video could serve as an objective record of reality — as we know it.

We already declared that with the advent of photoshop.

I think that this is “video” as in “moving images”. Photoshop isn’t a fantastic tool for fabricating video (though, given enough time and expense, I suppose that it’d be theoretically possible to do it, frame-by-frame). In the past, the limitations of software have made it much harder to doctor up — not impossible, as Hollywood creates imaginary worlds, but much harder, more expensive, and requiring more expertise — to falsify a video of someone than a single still image of them.

I don’t think that this is the “end of truth”. There was a world before photography and audio recordings. We had ways of dealing with that. Like, we’d have reputable organizations whose role it was to send someone to various events to attest to them, and place their reputation at stake. We can, if need be, return to that.

And it may very well be that we can create new forms of recording that are more-difficult to falsify. A while back, to help deal with widespread printing technology making counterfeiting easier, we rolled out holographic images, for example.

I can imagine an Internet-connected camera — as on a cell phone — that sends a hash of the image to a trusted server and obtains a timestamped, cryptographic signature. That doesn’t stop before-the-fact forgeries, but it does deal with things that are fabricated after-the-fact, stuff like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourist_guy

I mean, yelling at UPS seems kind of unreasonable. Trump put the new system into place without a lead time for getting shippers to set up a system to handle all this, and I saw plenty of parties saying that this was going to lead to chaos. Sure enough…

I remember reading some articles about people waiting for their Framework Desktop machines shipped via Fedex getting frustrated at them being held up in customs too.

Ehhhh. I mean, I broadly agree that tariffs are not a good idea, and for China, even untargeted tariffs. And end of the day, this is bullshit political theater.

However, it’s not crazy to decouple from China, particularly for a number of important goods. It’s probably not a wildly-unreasonable expectation that economic pressure will be used more in future conflicts than in the past, given the global nature of the economies and the longer supply chains. Like, concerns over that aren’t something that Trump just pulled up.

All that being said, if he actually goes through with this and holds this in place, I think that it’s going to be interesting to see how well the public takes it. These are effectively large consumption taxes. Sure, that’s great if you’re wealthy, because those are regressive, but they’re going to suck if you’re poor, and a major part of the reason that the public voted for Trump was because of upset over inflation under Biden.

So, this is from a couple months back, talking about his earlier tariff packages:

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/15/nx-s1-5467331/trump-tariffs-low-income-households

President Trump has argued that his “America First” trade policy is intended to balance what he feels is an unfair global trade scheme that hurts U.S. workers.

As things stand, there’s a 10% tariff on almost everything the U.S. imports, though there are some exceptions. On goods from China, there’s a 30% tariff rate. Last year, China was the third largest source of imported goods to the U.S.

Tariffs are a kind of tax that hit poorer households more than higher earning ones

Tedeschi said most U.S. taxes, especially federal taxes, are progressive.

“That means that they pinch higher income families more than they do lower income families,” Tedeschi said. “Our income tax is a great example of that. When we run the numbers on tariffs, we find that that’s the opposite.”

According to the Budget Lab’s analysis of Trump’s tariffs, prices would rise by more than 2%. Tedeschi said that could lead to an almost 4% drop in purchasing power of lower-income families, costing them about $1,500 annually.

I mean, you ramp tariffs up, you’re ramping up taxes on the poor. Okay, sure, Trump has worked at framing this as “China paying taxes, not you” or “standing up for America”. But you can’t hide the prices that people wind up paying in stores.

And I’m pretty sure that consumer good prices are — though not obviously linked to taxes — pretty visible, because we look at them a lot. Like why gasoline prices matter a lot, because there are signs with them all over. If you pay a tax at the end of the year, you see a number once. If prices are up, you’re constantly looking at higher price tags.

I kind of suspect that it’s not safety driving his concern — this isn’t exactly something that would warrant state-level concern — but I do think that it’s a bad precedent to be modifying street markings for political reasons.

• I doubt that this particular incident is likely all that risky, but if it becomes normalized to modify street markings, someone sooner or later is going to do something that they think is clever and really does muck up drivers.

• This stuff goes both ways. If you have the left modifying street markings and it’s let stand, it’s not as if streets are some sort of left-exclusive forum. You can be pretty sure that if this sort of thing is let stand, then the right is going to do so too. I’m pretty confident that if someone started painting anti-LGBTQ markings on streets, plenty of people here would be pretty unhappy. I don’t really want political discourse to wind up being who is willing to throw more graffiti down.

It should be possible to find plenty of places in Austin that are okay with putting up signs or murals — things that aren’t street markings — that are pro-LGBT messages. That avoids the whole issue that they’re arguing over.

kagis

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/08/inclusive-church-turns-hateful-graffiti-into-pride-mural-we-make-beautiful-things-out-of-the-dust/

After an LGBTQ±inclusive church in Austin, Texas, was vandalized on Thursday, the community came together to transform the act of hate into something beautiful.

The vandals tore down the Pride flag at Life in the City UMC and graffitied “Pride was the 1st sin” on the front of the building. Afterward, volunteers joined the church for a “creative restoration project” to transform the graffiti into a mural featuring two Progress Pride flags flanking the church doorway.

I really think that this is a better approach if one wants to put out a message.

EDIT: Also, on purely-pragmatic grounds, I suspect that the road surface is probably about the most wear-heavy place to paint something. Like, paint something on a wall, and it doesn’t have vehicle tires tearing it up and requiring frequent repainting to look decent.

EDIT2: You can even see a mural on a building about ten feet behind the rainbow crosswalk in the article’s picture. Which one looks in better condition to you, the crosswalk or the mural?

Be interesting to see whether they manufactured stuff going to Ukraine. If it turns out that this is Russian intelligence, this has considerable shitstorm potential.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Tom_explosion

The Black Tom explosion was an act of arson by field agents of the Office of Naval Intelligence of the German Empire, to destroy U.S.-made munitions that were about to be shipped to the Allies during World War I. The explosions occurred on July 30, 1916, in New York Harbor, killing at least 7 people and wounding hundreds more.[1] It also caused damage of military goods worth some $20,000,000 ($580 million in 2024 dollars).[2][3] This incident, which happened prior to U.S. entry into World War I, also damaged the Statue of Liberty.[4] It is one of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions in history.

This attack was one of many during the German sabotage campaign against the neutral United States, and it is notable for its contribution to the shift of public opinion against Germany, which eventually resulted in American approval for participating with World War I.[4]

They appear to make military explosives.

TRINITROTOLUENE (TNT): A VERSATILE ENERGETIC COMPOUND

At Accurate Energetic Systems, LLC (AES), we specialize in the manufacture and supply of Trinitrotoluene, commonly known as TNT. Renowned for its stability and reliability, TNT is one of the most widely used explosives in both military and commercial sectors. Our high-quality TNT formulations meet stringent safety and performance standards, making them ideal for a variety of applications, from demolition to munitions.

TNT’S ROLE IN AEROSPACE AND DEFENSE

TNT has been a staple in the aerospace and defense industries due to its excellent balance of explosive power and safety. It is frequently used in munitions such as artillery shells, bombs, and grenades. At AES, we provide pure TNT as well as advanced compositions, including Tritonal and Torpex, which combine TNT with other materials to enhance blast effects and performance characteristics.

looks further

Yup. They made 155 mm artillery shell filler.

https://www.aesys.biz/supplementary-charges

Accurate Energetic Systems, LLC (AES), a prime contractor to the US Government, specializes in the production of high-grade supplementary charges for military applications. Our extensive experience and advanced manufacturing capabilities allow us to supply top-quality explosive products, including TNT and PBXN-9 Supplementary Charges, primarily used in 155 mm artillery systems.

EDIT2: I’m going to cross-post this to a few other potentially-relevant communities.

EDIT3: Cross-posted to [email protected] and [email protected]. Note that Russian intelligence did blow up munitions storage depots back in 2014 in Czechia that were being used to ship munitions to Ukraine, but if this is them hitting a production facility in the US, it’d be a pretty serious expansion.

"With respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” the Massachusetts Institute of Technology president wrote in a letter.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WithDueRespect

With Due Respect

“Why is it that whenever someone says ‘with all due respect’, they really mean ‘kiss my ass’?”

— Ashley Williams, Mass Effect 1

Currently near the top of [email protected]:

Alabama senator wants anyone practicing sharia law immediately deported.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Qatar

Sharia is a main source of Qatari legislation, according to Qatar’s constitution.[7][8] Sharia is applied to statutes pertaining to family law, inheritance, and several criminal acts (including adultery, robbery and murder). In some cases in Sharia-based family courts, a woman’s testimony is worth half a man’s and in some cases a female and male testimony is not accepted at all if the witness is not deemed reliable.

https://patch.com/idaho/boise/idaho-most-hateful-state-us-analysis-hate-map-shows

Idaho Most Hateful State In US, Analysis Of Hate Map Shows

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2018 Hate Map shows growth in alt-right white supremacy and anti-Muslim groups.

I can but imagine the delightful interactions to come.

EDIT: Well, maybe the people in question will stay on-base. Germany had some facility at another USAF base that they used for training that IIRC they shut down due to military spending cuts a few years back. I dunno if the people there stayed on-base or what. If you figure that Qatar will probably do something similar, maybe give some idea of the model.

kagis

A facility at Holloman AFB, in New Mexico. Germany closed their facility in 2019, and another at Fort Bliss, from said military funding cuts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holloman_Air_Force_Base

In March 2013, it was announced that German Air Force units at Fort Bliss will transfer to Holloman later that same year; this was to end the German Air Force presence at Fort Bliss dating back to 1956.[19] In 2015, due to funding constraints on the planned new facilities in Europe, the German Air Force Air Defense school was to stay open at Fort Bliss until 2020.[20] On March 13, 2019, after 27 years in southern New Mexico, the German Luftwaffe ceased flight training at Holloman AFB.[3]

If you’re confident that a given company is overvalued by existing investors, you can sell it short, make money off that assessment.

That being said, if you’re wrong, you can lose money doing the same.

That depends on how you define the web

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)

The Gopher protocol (/ˈɡoʊfər/ ⓘ) is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative to the World Wide Web in its early stages, but ultimately fell into disfavor, yielding to Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The Gopher ecosystem is often regarded as the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web.[1]

gopher.floodgap.com is one of the last running Gopher servers, was the one that I usually used as a starting point when firing up a gopher client. It has a Web gateway up:

https://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/

Gopher is a well-known information access protocol that predates the World Wide Web, developed at the University of Minnesota during the early 1990s. What is Gopher? (Gopher-hosted, via the Public Proxy)

This proxy is for Gopher resources only – using it to access websites won’t work and is logged!

In the US, gun is the most-common route.

kagis

https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html

This says 55.33% of suicides in the US are with a firearm.

I once went digging through death statistics on suicides. In Japan, firearms are hard to get, but there are tall buildings all over. Firearms deaths are down, but deaths by falling are way up.

It’s very much a locational thing.

I questioned Reddit doing so, and now we’ve got it on the Threadiverse. There are privacy issues unless your home instance is proxying images for you.

How many of you out there are browsing the web using Gofer?

Gopher predated the Web.

I do agree that there have been pretty major changes in the way websites worked, though. I’m not hand-coding pages using a very light, Markdown-like syntax with <em></em>, <a href=""></a>, and <h1></h1> anymore, for example.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a lawsuit against the City of El Cajon, accusing its police department of repeatedly violating state law by sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with law enforcement agencies in more than two dozen states.

I mean, this was kind of guaranteed to happen once ALPRs rolled out. Legal or not. If you don’t want that information to get out, probably want to avoid having ALPRs.

Well…it depends.

First, I don’t know if she was under oath.

Second, there is executive privilege. That doesn’t mean that she can apply it in this case (or that she was even trying), but it’s not a blanket “Congress can demand all communications, period”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_privilege

Executive privilege is the right of the president of the United States and other members of the executive branch to maintain confidential communications under certain circumstances within the executive branch and to resist some subpoenas and other oversight by the legislative and judicial branches of government in pursuit of particular information or personnel relating to those confidential communications. The right comes into effect when revealing the information would impair governmental functions. Neither executive privilege nor the oversight power of Congress is explicitly mentioned in the United States Constitution.[1] However, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that executive privilege and congressional oversight each are a consequence of the doctrine of the separation of powers, derived from the supremacy of each branch in its area of constitutional activity.[2]

That being said, Congress is expected to perform oversight of the Executive Branch, and you don’t get to just invoke executive privilege every time they require you to provide information, either. I imagine that one could wind up with court cases and more case law finding the limits of the privilege if it comes up, especially if — as I assume will most-likely be the case — the Democrats take the House in the midterm elections and then start promptly use control of the House to start sticking their nose into everything Trump’s been doing.

I would guess that it’s probably not much by way of change — theoretically, maybe just a single line patch — to cause this check not to take place.

That’s actually a really interesting question.

I understand that Apple takes issue with packages that can themselves “take packages”. But historically, I don’t believe that Google has. Of course, Google also hasn’t done the registration thing historically, either.

I don’t see why it would need to be affected.

The constraint to require a valid signing isn’t something imposed by the license on the Android code. If you want to distribute a version of Android that doesn’t check for a registered signature, that should work fine.

I mean, the Graphene guys could impose that constraint. But they don’t have to do so.

I think that there’s a larger issue of practicality, though. Stuff like F-Droid works in part because you don’t need to install an alternative firmware on your phone — it’s not hard to install an alternate app store with the stock firmware. If suddenly using a package from a developer that isn’t registered with Google requires installing an alternate firmware, that’s going to severely limit the potential userbase for that package.

Even if you can handle installing the alternate firmware, a lot of developers probably just aren’t going to bother trying to develop software without being registered.

They may not be paid promptly, but I kind of suspect that if back pay is not forthcoming, there’s probably going to be a class-action lawsuit or similar, and they may wind up not just wages, but with with interest on said wages.

I wouldn’t put it entirely outside the realm of possibility, but I think that that’s probably unlikely.

The entire US only has about 161 million people working at the moment. In order for a 97 million shift to happen, you’d have to manage to transition most human-done work in the US to machines, using one particular technology, in 10 years.

Is that technically possible? I mean, theoretically.

I’m pretty sure that to do something like that, you’d need AGI. Then you’d need to build systems that leveraged it. Then you’d need to get it deployed.

What we have today is most-certainly not AGI. And I suspect that we’re still some ways from developing AGI. So we aren’t even at Step 1 on that three-part process, and I would not at all be surprised if AGI is a gradual development process, rather than a “Eureka” moment.