Lemdro.id

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/63271897

Hello everyone, I've felt like showing my face.

I've been happy with my hair color, my new glasses, my new dress (finally one that fits, I have 3 too small for me yet 🥲). Anyway I'm happier since HRT and feel better in body. The future looks less cloudy (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)

In 2 days, 1st appointment for laser to get that beard removed, I'm excited.

Anyway, shoutout to Brooke and Nikki inspiring me to show my face, you girls rock!

Hope your week-end has been great and I'm gonna enjoy my week-off taking care of myself ☺️.

Hello everyone, I've felt like showing my face.

I've been happy with my hair color, my new glasses, my new dress (finally one that fits, I have 3 too small for me yet 🥲). Anyway I'm happier since HRT and feel better in body. The future looks less cloudy (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)

In 2 days, 1st appointment for laser to get that beard removed, I'm excited.

Anyway, shoutout to Brooke and Nikki inspiring me to show my face, you girls rock!

Hope your week-end has been great and I'm gonna enjoy my week-off taking care of myself ☺️.

Biologist Colin Domnauer is reopening an old case that Chinese health officials seem to have stopped caring about. Every summer, residents of the Yunnan province check into hospitals with complaints that they’re hallucinating tiny elflike people. They would see the little dudes marching under their doors, scaling their walls, and clinging to their furniture.

Health officials used to care about it. They looked into it some years back and found that the cause was Lanmaoa asiatica, a mushroom that’s been eaten in Yunnan for years. It’s supposedly got a rich, umami flavor, and locals know that you have to cook it thoroughly, not to bring out that flavor, but to kill off the mushroom’s hallucinogenic properties.

Scientists call these “lilliputian hallucinations,” a rare phenomenon involving miniature human or fantasy figures. If you’ve seen the Adult Swim show Common Side Effects, you may be familiar with the surreal trippiness of this apparently very real form of mushroom-based hallucination. What makes this particular hallucinatory mushroom so unusual is that it causes the same kind of hallucinations in different people, across cultures.

It’s always the little elf dudes. This Mushroom Causes People to Experience the Same Hallucination

The BBC reports that similar cases emerged in China in the early 1990s and even earlier in Papua New Guinea. That’s where researchers investigating “mushroom madness” ultimately dismissed the accounts as cultural myth after chemical tests turned up nothing. Makes sense since the species wasn’t formally described until 2015.

Domnauer visited Yunnan’s mushroom markets and asked vendors which of these mushrooms is the one that’s making people see little people? All the vendors said L. asiatica. Genetic testing confirmed its identity, and lab studies showed that extracts cause dramatic behavioral changes in mice. Domnauer later found the same species in the Philippines, despite its different appearance, meaning the mushroom and its effects are more widespread than anyone realized.

What’s fascinating is the active compound isn’t psilocybin, the hallucinatory chemical found in shrooms people take recreationally or therapeutically. The hallucinations take 12 to 24 hours. to begin and can last for a long time, sometimes long enough to require hospitalization and careful observation. The trip can last so long that it’s impractical as a recreational drug, which is why no culture seems to use the mushroom intentionally as a psychedelic. Not yet, at least.

Still a lot to understand how this fungus produces such reliable, consistent hallucinatory visions across the world, across cultures. Finding those answers might unlock new insights into brain disorders and human consciousness, while offering researchers a whole new realm of fungal chemicals to toy around with.

The 4th EEAS report on foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) [shows] that Russia continues to dominate the landscape, while China's growing institutional awareness signals that Beijing’s FIMI activities require distinct analytical attention and tailored response.

The entire report to download: 4th EEAS Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Threat (pdf)

In 2025, the European External Action Service (EEAS) alone detected 540 FIMI incidents globally, mobilizing over 10,500 social media channels and websites. Russia accounted for 29 percent of the attributable incidents, China for 6 percent, with the remaining 65 percent unattributed, but presenting indicators of coordination with Russian or Chinese infrastructure.

These figures, however, possibly underestimate Beijing’s actual operational scope. As the report emphasizes, the vast majority of FIMI infrastructure – over 90 percent of mapped channels – operates covertly, designed to obscure its origins and complicate attribution.

...

What is more, China’s FIMI profile differs fundamentally from Russia’s. Where Moscow’s strategic objective leans toward distortion and division – reframing events and deepening societal fractures – Beijing primarily seeks to dismiss criticism and promote its own narratives.

The EEAS’ analysis of China’s strategic objectives throughout 2025 confirms a dominant pattern of dismissive tactics: arguing that criticism of China is biased or ideologically motivated, while projecting an image of a peaceful, reliable, and technologically advanced global power. This aligns with our recent research on Chinese messaging in Europe, which increasingly focuses on contrasting a supposedly stagnant EU with a dynamic, future-oriented China.

...

Perhaps even more important than the EEAS report itself is the fact that the EU and several of its member states are now moving beyond diagnosis and toward concrete institutional and political responses to FIMI.

...

Germany, the 4th most-targeted country in 2025 with 71 recorded FIMI incidents, experienced a particularly bruising confrontation with Russian operations around its February 2025 federal election. Soon thereafter, as part of the “Zeitenwende 2.0,” Berlin established a National Security Council, summoned the Russian ambassador over confirmed election interference, and included explicit FIMI-tackling provisions in its coalition agreement. The German government declared that the deliberate dissemination of false factual claims falls outside the protection of free expression – a significant normative shift for a country traditionally liberal on these issues.

Poland, targeted during its presidential election in 2025, activated the National Research Institute (NASK) as a frontline counter-FIMI body. NASK’s Disinformation Analysis Center monitored thousands of domains and accounts, reported over 46,000 cases of disinformation to social media platforms, and flagged potentially foreign-funded political advertisements to relevant state institutions. Importantly, NASK also employs dedicated Chinese-language analytical capacity, reflecting its understanding that the FIMI threat extends beyond Russia.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron articulated what could be Europe’s defining position on information threats. Speaking in New Delhi in February this year, he argued that defending “free speech” without algorithmic transparency is meaningless – or “bullshit,” in his blunt phrasing. He said it amounts to nothing if nobody understands how users are guided through content by opaque algorithms. This framing rightly reorients the debate away from a false binary of “censorship versus freedom of speech” and toward a more fundamental question: how the infrastructure underpinning public discourse is controlled – and who ultimately sets its terms.

...

The EU and its member states appear to be waking up from what could be characterized as an overly liberal and somewhat naive approach to the information domain – one rooted in the assumption that information environments are inherently self-correcting and that education is an all-encompasing answer to growing disinformation threats and societal polarization. The past decade suggests otherwise.

...

But a purely defensive posture remains insufficient. As the EEAS report itself acknowledges, influence campaigns succeed not because individual claims go unchallenged in a given moment, but because they fill narrative vacuums over longer periods of time. Chinese messaging gains traction in Europe not only because of its sophistication, but because it often occupies discursive spaces that European actors have left empty – particularly around technological progress, economic dynamism, and visions of the future.

...

The tools exist, the foundations are laid, and the awareness is growing ... Neither Beijing nor Moscow can prevent [the EU] from competing on platforms where narratives are shaped, or projecting a confident vision of its future. What they may be counting on is that the EU will choose not to do so – paralyzed by internal divisions, bureaucratic lethargy, or the fear of upsetting the member states’ governments. But if the EU can – seemingly against all odds – summon the necessary creativity to develop its own stories, the courage to act, and the determination to sustain that effort, it can move beyond defending the information space to actively shaping it – a shift Europe can no longer afford to delay.

...

Artist: Silvertsuki | pixiv | twitter | danbooru

Full quality: .webp 12 MB (1973 × 4168)

Boats from the Global Sumud Flotilla set sail on Sunday from the Italian island of Sicily as part of the 2026 Spring Mission, in a move aimed at breaking the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip and delivering humanitarian aid to its residents.

The flotilla’s vessels had departed from Barcelona on 12 April before arriving in Sicily on 23 April, where they were joined by additional boats and activists from Italy via the cities of Syracuse and Augusta.

The number of participating boats rose to 65 at Augusta Yacht Harbour before completing the necessary departure procedures. The boats then sailed gradually across the Mediterranean Sea according to a set organisational plan.

[...]

Deutsche Spitzenpolitikerinnen seien Opfer einer Attacke geworden, hieß es da: Zuerst fiel der Name von Bundestagspräsidentin Julia Klöckner (CDU), es folgten Bildungsministerin Karin Prien (CDU) und Bauministerin Verena Hubertz (SPD). Es gibt Hunderte weitere Betroffene.

Ihre Chats konnten seit dem Vorfall mitgelesen werden, und auch alles, was sie in den 45 Tagen zuvor geschrieben und gesendet hatten.

[...]

Stattdessen koppelten die Angreifer einfach einen Computer mit den Signal-Accounts der Politiker. Diese Funktion erlaubt es, Chatnachrichten bequem am Laptop einzugeben anstatt umständlich an der Handytastatur. Auf dem Computer ist dann alles zu sehen, was auch in der Signal-App auf dem Handy zu sehen ist.

Die Funktion ist eigentlich sehr sicher. Denn jede Kopplung muss auf dem Handy bestätigt werden – aber genau das haben Klöckner, Prien und Hubertz offensichtlich getan. Sie ließen sich unter Druck setzen von einem Nutzer, der sich „Signal-Support“ nannte.

[...]

Artist: Rynn | pixiv | twitter | danbooru

@politics @ml @emselimahmed in the recently concluded general elections, a major political party was banned from contesting, and then the elections were conducted. Bangladesh was born because of the blood that was given by this political party. Yet it was banned from seeking the opinion of the people.

What sort of a #democracy is #Bangladesh ??🤔🤔🤔

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Hey everyone, friendly reminder that the submission period for Lemmyvision 3 will end at the end of the week on May 3rd (hard cutoff date is Monday 4th of May at 01:00 morning CET).

The event rules are available on the main announcement post https://jlai.lu/post/35451902 but don't hesitate if you have questions!

Do not be afraid; hating yourself is so much worse than being hated.