Dick Cheney was among the worst in an administration that disrespected human rights, international law, honesty, trustworthiness and set the US reputation as well as the fight against global warming way back.

Usually, that probably would have been my last thought of him.

Except, we have this crazy timeline. This timeline, in which he was able to stand out just by pointing out that he is still in favour of free elections. At least that was still a given in his time, even though the decision about the loss of Al Gore was considered controversial by some back then.

A low bar, a low bar indeed. But here we go, on this positive note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Nq9SpGzic

Great cat. But a little disappointed - I was expecting legendary mischief stories.

Could be even worse, look at what happened to Stauffenberg’s family.

Arguable whether he signed up for that.

Fight and die in defence of a NATO ally? Yes. Same as the aggressor, if the elected government decides so, such as in Iraq? Also yes.

Risk having his wife, children, grandchildren taken away and put in Sippenhaft (collective punishment) or put in a reeducation orphanage? Not sure there is a moral obligation to that. Safety for his family was one of the things he got out of all this.

His risks for resisting beyond what he already did are higher than they would be for the average citizen. On the other hand, he also could do more than the average citizen.

A tough call, and I would not judge.

A simple police operation done by the books is not newsworthy. That can give a skewed impression.

In my opinion, the overall image holds that the US police doesn’t do as good a job as police in countries with 2.5 - 3.5 years of training, different screening / application criteria and better pay.

Part of “fixing” the problems specific to the US would be to provide such training as well as a payment that makes it an attractive job for people who would also succeed in a different career. Only way to do that would be to raise taxes significantly for the 1 percent or 0.1 percent.

It would also be necessary to hold them accountable. A “few bad apples” are one thing, but when the system covers for them, it’s a systematic problem, regardless of the number. There need to be real consequences for criminal behaviour on the job, all while having a measured response (retraining, warning, …) for faulty actions that can happen to anyone in the heat of the moment.

There is absolutely no legitimate reason to implement “cloud” storage or backup in a way that does not encrypt on the client side, with open, verifiable standard if not open source for the client software, in such a way that it can’t be read by the provider.

I remember when I got PGP mid 90s and thought: Wow, in 6 months, everybody will use it! Yet it never caught on. User stupidity, elitism or a bit of both?

At the height of pre-encryption WhatsApp I remember talking about PGP to some younger relatives about the problem of intercepted messages, and they had a hard time believing that we had “access to that kind of technology” in the 90s.

Somehow, they managed to normalise sending your stuff out there based entirely on trust in corporations and governments, although the problem was solved technically long ago.

Problem is: They fight back by introducing “convenience” that only works in clouds they can access, such as “AI” in Google or Apple Images. E. g. you can enter “cat” and it will show all your cat photos.

But I got to admit that I TALK a lot about a switching to a self-hosted image solution such as PhotoPrism, but lack in execution, other than putting it on my todo-list.

Yes, it’ll all be about “unity” and “healing”.

Note that even in Germany post WW II, where a real effort was made and at least the official line was uncompromising, the large majority of Nazis and their ideas in politics, society, law, industry GOs and NGOs died slowly of old age over the next 50 years. Without that effort, even a future Democratic president (if even possible) would just be a waiting game for the next Trump.

It does feel delightfully lazy to pick a recipe and send the settings with one tap. But the forced rate-or-skip spoils much of the fun.

Also basically, it’s time and temperature. It’s not like a Fallout-style robot that cooks complex meals for me. Could do without.

PHILIPS HD9880/90 Airfryer Combi XXL. I can select a recipe in the app and send it, so the settings are perfect for that.

But the downside is that it goes off like a smoke detector and blocks all controls and display until I rate the recipe or select “skip”, on the air fryer display.

But if it’s voluntary, it’s not smart to sound like “you are an idiot and I don’t like you”. Especially people with mental or legal problems might avoid a situation where they are being confronted about their faults.

I didn’t doubt it; it was just so odd.

Why does it look like previous generation generative AI, where everybody looked the same?

I’m a huge fan of Amazon’s user experience, how well the product selection, checkout and everything works. For some people with ADHD, seniors, the impatient etc. it’s particularly tempting.

As things got worse, in terms of politics and workers’ rights, I checked out alternatives more. And in many cases, it was about just as convenient. Even small shops, such as buying directly from the manufacturer, often have a simple PayPal or similar checkout which is equally convenient, and it’s not rare that it’s cheaper. Even if they don’t have that, browser support to enter the address and credit card details makes a 1-time purchase less of a hassle than it used to be.

The big national alternatives, e. g. in Germany Otto, Alternate, Thalia for books … are more often than not pretty good too, as they had Amazon as a competitor for years and survived.

Not sure what kind of “together” we can have. Working with anti-MAGA conservatives is supposedly wrong, working with (even anti Netanyahu) Israel supporters is supposedly wrong - won’t get a majority that way.

Remember the mealteam six on some kind of electric scooter that they “deployed” during I-don’t-remember-which Trump insanity? I think they never figured out whether it was some kind of agency, or just organised Trump fans, but how did they find a whole group of fat people with the same kind of scooter?

Edit: might have been segways, now that some memory comes back

The image is really misleading into exactly that.

Like the end of the SA leadership: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

I thought: Certainly referring to terrorists, not immigrants in general?

It seems that the original post has been deleted for violating the TOS of X (quite an achievement!). Screenshots of it show “This is cheaper than deportation”, which I can’t verify, since it’s not on archive.org. If true, this post would be correct.

She reposted later with the text: “This is cheaper than deportation. Public executions for rapists and murderers.” and a slightly different picture from the same set.

Which is not true; death penalty is really expensive. Could only make it cheaper than deportation without due process, possibly implying that intentionally.

Well, probably not this thing specifically; it’s highly inefficient on so many levels to use several POTS landlines in one household.

But the home computer waste is so insane in general. In 2012, I bought a state-of-the-art system for a little over 2k, because my old one had gotten too slow for professional backend development. It was very nice, and, well, I still have it to this day. Right now I’m doing stick-boots to try if I can run Linux with a mix of Nvidia and Radeon GPUs after Win10 support ends.

I think that the computer game industry is a scam, and only retro-gaming makes sense. Why? It diverts the question. The actual question is: Are newer games more fun? And I think the answer is no, not just for myself, but for pretty much everyone. Did the people playing vanilla WoW have less fun, or the people playing PS-1…Wii with their friends? I doubt it. Why not? Because the fun does not increase even one bit when the graphics is more realistic. We already have realistic graphics in the real world, or we can look at a photograph, watch a show; there is 0 gain from having it also in our games. It’s just a 1-time “woa Dude” effect. Advertisement creates an artificial need which cleverly checks several boxes. Just to name a few: Gaming PC / Console as a symbol of status, working towards a goal and then attaining it. And the ones who see through it are pulled in anyway, because their online games are being abandoned.

Also depends on the community. Some would be like: OMG, obviously, the mattress cover has not been ironed!

Seemed odd about his own testimony, as quoted in this article, that he keeps avoiding to mention HOW he was sitting and whether he complied when told to stop it. Makes me picture one of these assholes who put their dirty shoes on a second seat in a full train.

His odd avoidance of the core of the issue made me search for other sources. Not surprising that a quick search supports most of this. Also, he refused to stop doing that, which he also does not deny as far as the quotes from this article go.

Then, he tries to use his celebrity status to order cops to harass an elderly woman, whose statement is irrelevant because apparently there are plenty of witnesses, including the train personnel and his own confession.

Then, he seriously tries to pull the race card.

And this is the hero of Lemmy?

Hat off the elderly woman and the police, though! Wish this kind of justice would happen when I’m on the train.

This has become a cesspool of disinformation. All the out of context Kirk quotes from the past few days (was still somewhere between nonsense and disgusting in context, but an entirely different statement), and another post claims that every day 0.25 % of the US population gets shot, and this lie somehow supports the trans agenda.

Disclaimer: Judging the situation as presented in available articles, as I don’t know what really happened.