earlier this week I released a new video, check it out: bsky.app/profile/juli...
RE: bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jegl5…
it's been super-fucking frustrating lately that cis ppl en masse are op-eding & podcasting & pontificating about trans ppl amongst themselves with little to no input from us. I wanted to write about that, but realized I already did back in 2003. here is that piece: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ7T...
Everyone should take 3 minutes and run this Cover Your Tracks tool!
Ran it on Android Chrome browser and failed miserably: "You are not protected..."
Ran it once on vanilla Firefox and got a middling result: "You have some protection..."
Added Privacy Badger, and uBock Origen, extensions to Firefox and passed with flying colors: "You have strong protection..."
So take a few minutes and cover your tracks!
EDIT: Edited to remove AdHuard due to recommendation below.
Number of active instances: 11 462
Number of users: 9 241 874
Number of statuses: 1 150 830 602
Number of users last 4h: 341
Number of statuses last 4h: 46 030
#Fediverse
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Ukrainian forces successfully attacked Russian positions using only ground and first person view (FPV) drones
-- instead of infantry, an army spokesperson claimed on Dec. 20.
Speaking on national TV, Sergeant Volodymyr Dehtiarov,
spokesperson for the Khartiia Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, said
“dozens of units of robotic and unmanned equipment”
supported by surveillance drones
were used in the assault near the village of Lyptsi, north of Kharkiv.
Dehtiarov said the drones included ground systems equipped with machine guns, and kamikaze FPV drones.
Commenting on the reports, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said
the attack highlighted the difference in attitude towards front line troops shown by Moscow and Kyiv.
"Ukrainian officials have repeatedly highlighted Ukraine's efforts to utilise technological innovations and asymmetric strike capabilities
to offset Ukraine's manpower limitations
-- in contrast with Russia's willingness to accept unsustainable casualty rates for marginal territorial gains," the ISW said.
Russian military losses in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine have exceeded 750,000 Russian soldiers,
and are expected to surpass 1 million Russian troops within six months,
U.K. Under-Secretary of Defense Luke Pollard said on Dec. 19.
The U.K.'s latest estimate is in line with figures from Ukraine's General Staff,
which, as of Dec. 19, sits at 768,220 troops lost since the start of the war.
The figures do not specify killed or wounded, though the overall consensus is that it includes dead, wounded, missing, and captured.
"It is highly likely that they have sustained significant combat casualties,
whilst only achieving limited tactical gains," Pollard told British parliamentarians on Dec. 19.
Russia has gained ground in eastern Ukraine and Kursk Oblast in recent months
but at the cost of heavy casualties.
Russian losses reached record highs in November and December,
with a daily high of 2,030 troops lost in November,
marking the highest daily loss since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
Russian losses exceeded 45,000 troops and $3 billion worth of equipment in November.
👉 Ukraine is developing numerous new types of drone systems.
Military tech developers created a new unmanned ground vehicle (UGV)
with the ability to carry explosives and drive under armored vehicles,
the project's spokesperson, Viktoriia Kovalchuk, told Business Insider on Oct. 25.
The UGV, named Ratel S or "Honey Badger",
was developed as part of the #Brave1 government initiative.
The initiative was launched in April to invest in defense tech innovations
that can be utilized by the Ukrainian military,
as well as serve as a platform to connect the industry's stakeholders.
"The main idea is that the robot (Ratel S) is used as
a mobile warhead
that carries anti-tank mines or other explosive devices,"
said Kovalchuk,
adding that it can run for 40–50 minutes at an average speed
or for up to two hours at a slower speed.
kyivindependent.com/for-first-…
bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3ldtdhzu37c2v
i think it is very cool that the political press was basically uninterested in the fact that vance is openly adjacent to/pals around with far-right and Nazi-sympathetic maniacs [contains quote post or other embedded content]
Israel’s War on Gaza Is a War on Children
Israel’s War on Gaza Is a War on Children | Truthout
Children in Gaza are not merely collateral damage; they are often actively being targeted.Merula Furtado (Truthout)
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bsky.app/profile/rikiwilchins.bsky.social/post/3ldtcy2v6os2v
As SPLC's Project CAPTAIN and a recent study by Joanna Wuest & Briana Last found, 4 moving parts in the Trans Disinformation Complex: 1) disaffected anti-gay clinicians + current fringe anti-GAC MDs; 2) Christian pseudo-medical grp; 3) TERF parent groups;…
Billionaires want you to know they could have done physics
- YouTube
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.www.youtube.com
Japan Is So Desperate to Increase Its Birth Rate That Tokyo Is Trying Out a New Idea: Free Daycare
Japan Is So Desperate to Increase Its Birth Rate That Tokyo Is Trying Out a New Idea: Free Daycare
Japan has been grappling with its demographic statistics with a sense of urgency, particularly regarding its declining birth rate. In 2023, the country...Carlos Prego (Xataka On)
Also...loosen immigration laws?
I know it's a very closed off nation with deep cultural roots that is very weary of outsiders...
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Dessalines likes this.
Now this is a racist idea I can agree with.
(Although, I actually bet aliens are shit as well at the equivalent stage of development)
I don't mind finding work in Japan...
...if it wasn't so hostile to workers
So far, Japan is near the bottom of my list for western countries to work at, and I would much rather find a job in Korea instead
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Japan is near the bottom of my list for western countries
Japan is an Eastern country. In fact, it's the farthest East county possible.
I think the words you were looking for were "first world countries".
Japan is an Eastern country. In fact, it's the farthest East county possible.
No love for New Zealand huh?
I know it’s a very closed off nation with deep cultural roots that is very weary of outsiders…
Europe doesn't get to use that excuse, and neither should they. I don't care how different whale meat shashimi seems from foi gras, or bonsai from tulip arrangements.
Low birth rates are obviously not sustainable
Please explain why this is obvious. Less people seems more sustainable, not less.
Maybe this ponzi. Unfunded state pensions use workers contributions to pay current pensioners.
Less workers = less pensions.
Hey, cost of living, without rent. I'm talking about rent though.
2 rooms flats start at around CHF 1300, if you're lucky.
Edit: ah, you meant Japan side is rent and living.
Old people can’t work and need someone to pay for their retirement.
If there are more old people than young people (population pyramid wrong way round) every young person needs to pay a crapton of taxes so that old folks don’t starve to death
Because Japan doesn’t do that.
There is an -ism they’re pretty big on, it starts with R
We have machines that can do the work of 100 people in the past
I'm sure that we could make it work without killing anyone
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"Unsustainable Society" No matter your opinion on current governments, humanity has been around for an awful long time, and it will likely continue to be around for significantly longer into the future of the universe. In my opinion, that's pretty cool.
In the grand scheme of things, just looking back over the past couple hundred years, the vast majority of humanity is in a better spot than we were, no matter how bad things may seem on a small time scale.
The two biggest issues off the top of my head are rural towns in Japan will continue to lose population and completely disappear, and there won't be enough young working people paying into health care and social funds to support the old non-working population. I think there are a lot of other major negative impacts Japan will face as a country but I'm just not that knowledgable on the subject.
I assume we just have fundamentally different views on this topic because I really wish humanity would change to a more scientific and explorative approach entirely, where we expand outward into space and become a multi-planetary species, which will need a huge sustained population growth to support. I assume you don't support that.
"Has almost made the planet uninhabitable" The Earth is definitely worse off since we have proliferated, but this is such a clickbaity untrue statement.
Humanity has and will continue to cause changes to the world that are negative, I agree, and that sucks. But like it or not, humanity is good at adapting and surviving, and we will be fine, even with the worldwide population overall continuing to grow for a very long time into the future.
I just disagree on the infinite growth being unsustainable thing. Humanity, in my opinion, is destined to expand to the stars where we will continue to grow Indefinitely on a time scale that actually matters to you and me.
Obviously, that could not happen if we somehow all die, but despite all the doom and gloom, I really don't think that's likely.
LoL. You think we’re gonna grow gills or something? How do you think we’ll adapt to food chain collapse?
I’m sure that life will adapt in some form, but most life in the history of this planet has not been human. And we would not be this planet’s first mass extinction event.
I think it actually fits quite well.
A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.
Meanwhile, the current pension system in most countries depend on a growing population to spread out the payments for pensioners over multiple workers.
Ponzi schemes collapse when there aren't enough investors to sustain the dividends to be paid to the existing investors. Most countries' pensions rely on an increasing amount of working age inhabitants to pay retirees and are now having issues paying out pensions due to the shift in demographics, that's why many countries have been increasing the retirement age recently.
There are 2 solutions to this.
1. Increasing birth rates, this option is not sustainable in the long term but is commonly preferred for reasons mentioned below.
2. Migration. There are currently plenty of countries with a large working-age population and a weak economy. Letting those migrate would solve the demographic issue, but is political suicide.
While the alternative is everyone who is unable to wotk is killed anyway by the apathy of the system?
We are doing what you are describing already, in the system we currently live in.
I will never have a child if they have to work 5/7ths of their life away just to scrape by like me.
That's no way to live.
Who will work in the program if they have a worker shortage?
I don't think you guys thought this out.
We need to inhabit at least one other plant on a continuous basis before we encourage exponential population growth.
We are going to be resource constrained on this planet long before we expand to others.
Of course I understand that the money that is put in is invested, but that doesn't mean the problem goes away when the system relies on the "pot" growing at a certain rate.
EDIT:
Mismanagement/poorly built systems are not the same as Ponzi schemes. Unless you think, I don’t know, US Social Security is also a Ponzi scheme?
I'm not implying that it's the same, just that the comparison fits better than you might expect.
Mismanagement/poorly built systems are not the same as Ponzi schemes
"Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and I'll have my wife's brother arrested"
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how these funds work.
This misunderstanding is on your side. There is a method of funding pensions refered to as pay as you go (PAYG).
The goal is not to pay people with the money from new people paying into the pot.
This is exactly how many unfunded, state sponsored pension schemes function. No pot of money exists. Only the ability to collect taxes.
They invest the money and then the pot grows and that money is used to pay out.
This is true for private pension schemes run by companies and individual pension schemes. Funded pension schemes are (usually) not ponzis.
Why should it?
That's asinine, you're treating periphery countries like they're glorified breeding-stock for the developed world's work-force.
Edit: To make my point more clear, the whole reason why developing nations have higher birthrates than developed ones is because they're developing/underdeveloped. They lack access to contraceptives, and substantive access to women's healthcare; and they also oftentimes have economies that still rely to some extent, or a large extent on non-mechanized smallholder, or subsistence agriculture. That, or they otherwise have social institutions that allow for, or require children to enter the workforce. This means that having children in those countries is often an economic boon to a family (because they can contribute to household incomes through work), and avoiding having them can be very difficult for women.
If you solve their problem of being underdeveloped, & hyper-exploited (which you should be doing if you're a "queermunist"), then that means that they are likely also going to be in a position where they have declining birthrates because there will no longer be an object material incentive to have children, and women who don't want to would be able to prevent it.
The idea of shoring up a declining population "through immigration" only works so long as you have an underdeveloped periphery of peoples who want to come flock to the West, or to developed nations in search of higher wages & a higher standard of living (or just avoiding Imperialist political meddling), rather than staying at home.
You need people who can actually do work to take care of all the old people & sustain human society. "Less People" is not by-default "more sustainable" especially not if it happens all at once; that was in fact a huge problem with cyclical famines & political turmoil in the days before mechanized agriculture.
If some asshole went around raiding hamlets for plunder, or whatever reason, yeah that would mean fewer mouths to feed in that particular area, but it also means fewer hands to bring food to harvest. Which means other regions have to contribute larger proportions of their own food-stock to sustain the needed intake of urban centers. Which means that they have less food to eat for themselves, and less to replant for the next harvest. Which pushes people on the margins of the the agricultural economy into banditry to sustain themselves, which causes us to return to the beginning of our story.
Eventually this cycle of regional depopulation leading to productivity shortfalls, leading to further regional depopulation becomes self-reinforcing & before you know it you have a country-wide catastrophe on your hand & the total implosion of existing society.
Now we aren't dependent on mass manual agriculture these days, so famine specifically is an unlikely cause of cyclical societal collapse, but the modern world still requires that a shitload of manual physical labor get done in order to maintain the basic infrastructure that gets everything from where it is, to where it needs to be in order for us to all not die. If you don't have people to fill those positions, then that's work that needs to get done, that isn't being done.
Hm. There is a difference.
Once crapitalists run out of "new horizons" to "expand" into, they start cannibalizing their current workforce and raise prices while lowering quality for customers.
Do not be fooled. Quality is going down because profits are going up.
You do understand that just dumping a bag of produce at grandmas door isn’t enough?
She needs to pay rent, get medical treatment and maybe even help around the house because she isn’t as nimble as before
otherwise the system will fall apart and the people at the bottom will suffer.
Don't you mean "suffer more"?
Well, no, birth rates are low because the reproduction of labor is unpaid labor. Yes, development is associated with lower birthrates, but only because no developed country has ever seriously tried to make reproductive labor a real job. Doing so would decrease the size of the workforce for production of commodities.
Now you're totally right that the people migrating from the Global South are fleeing underdevelopment from imperialism, and that this is itself a factor of underdevelopment. What you haven't considered is why the imperial core limits migration.
Racism is part of it, but only part of the larger structural base. If they allowed unlimited migration the imperial core would be filled with people from the periphery as they flee underdevelopment. This would at once reduce the availability of labor in the periphery and raise the contradictions of imperialism by making peripheral concerns into domestic concerns.
Migrants influence the society they're part of, causing agitation against imperialism. This would, ultimately, destabilize the core and allow for development to resume without imperial meddling.
And not get molested the whole way home by some guy that thinks he's in the old boy's club. And not get fired because they're a married woman now, and need to stay home (literally normal there).
Like, people are losing interest in kids everywhere, but in the core Western countries nobody's nervous to get married because they get socially demoted in the process. That's a theme I've definitely heard from women over there, and probably why it's happening faster.
Early ~~investors~~ pensioners are paid off with money put in by later ones.
Sounds like a ponzi to me.
I specifically didn't mention SS and somehow you still bring the US into it in a thread about Japan.
I meant most of the world in general which is why I didn't name any such programs by name.
Your misunderstanding of the process and confusion with private pensions doesn't make it false.
PAYG funded State pensions fit the definition of a ponzi. Therefore they are a ponzi. The fact it is government approved and transparent does not negate the fact that current investors are directly paying early investors.
It has two sources of funding
Taxes is the same source of funding. Workers.
there isn’t a middle man skimming a cut
Er. The government.
The entire point of a Ponzi scheme is you are pretending there is money being generated that isn’t.
Exactly. State Pensions are promised but there is no money held aside for them.
It is literally not a Ponzi scheme by definition.
I've already given you the Ponzi literature, and shown that PAYG pensions satisfy the description.
I’m done man.
Cos, like your PAYG error, you just can't admit being wrong.
US State Dept gives nod to $5bn in potential arms sales for Egypt
US State Dept gives nod to $5bn in potential arms sales for Egypt
Huge sale likely to go through despite ongoing concerns over Egyptian government’s human rights breaches,Al Jazeera
bsky.app/profile/rikiwilchins.bsky.social/post/3ldtd4zrnss26
1) clinicians produce bogus studies & cross-cite each other to give appearance of a valid prof debate; 2) Christian med grps publish/promote bogus studies; 3) TERF websites provide moving parent stories of harm to kids; 4) prof “detransitioners” insulate…
☆✭★ คץ☠️ɭเ xD ★✭☆
Unknown parent • • •LaetSgo
Unknown parent • • •c'est un welsh
ça se voit
y'a du cheddar qui dégouline