Lemdro.id

From Paul Bannick

Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) Owls are often indicator species, whose presence attests to the health of an ecosystem. Most Northern Spotted Owls nest in trees that are at least 140-200 years old, require complex multi-canopied forest and require large territories. Unfortunately, these forest elements are in short supply and the invasive Barred Owl is threatening what populations remain.

Sovereign Tower on Steam (August 2026 Planned Release Date)

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) future is in limbo as Trump pushes for more budget cuts and his nominee to helm the research agency awaits Senate confirmation.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, the administration has canceled or suspended nearly 1,400 of the agency’s grants, citing changing policy priorities. A series of internal changes, including layoffs and a shifting funding focus, have also contributed to a reduction in the number of new grants issued by the NSF, which funds a quarter of basic scientific research across the country.

Former NSF directors and organizations representing grant recipients warn that the dismantling of the agency, which serves as a counterpart to the National Institutes of Health, will ultimately curtail American scientific innovation.

I have already a degoogled phone on /e/OS which works pretty fine but I have r​ed​ an article which said /e/OS is not actually very safe because it has very old security patches compared to ​AOSP which has is up-to-date.

/e/OS is the product of Murena company which is promoting their own stuff for profit.

Of course GrafeneOS would be better for privacy but I have a fairphone so it is not an option.

​What about CalyxOS ? It is more privacy o​riented but now releases are paused. Do you think I should install existing build of CalyxOS for FP5 or install LineageOS and find a good DNS/VPN to block ads and trackers. This is a tool I like on e/OS/​ to​ have a view on blocked trackers.

What alternative would you advice on AOSP ?

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/36736389

The inspiration for this poem is this mural and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron

As focus switches to renewable energy, pumped-storage hydropower project in Koh Kong province expected to be completed by 2029

It said the project was a “large-scale rechargeable battery system” with an installed capacity of one gigawatt.

I took some dirt from a nearby construction site and made one of those Japanese mud balls. It came out kind of mottled and with some irregularities that I'm sure could have been avoided with actual skill. Still, it came out much shinier and better than I expected. It's cool that you can make something like this out of dirt and now I have something to occupy my hands whenever I want because it can always use one more round of polishing.

Coming up in my garden right next to some forest (primarily oak mixed with beech, birch, maple) in southwest Sweden. Last year i dug the area out and removed (most) roots. Not much came up but this little sprout. I suppose it could be roots reaching in from the adjacent forest.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/50740383

"We were fighting over who had caught more fish, and then I saw my crewmate pushed overboard by the captain," Akbar Fitrian, 29, an Indonesian crewmember says as he recounts an incident aboard a Chinese-owned fishing vessel in 2022. "The ship then started to drive away as my crewmate tried to swim towards us. And then I don't know what happened. The captain never reported the incident."

...

There is the lawless nature of the seas, which has emboldened traffickers to exploit desperate fishermen and impoverished casual laborers. Then there are the geopolitical factors at play: In a race to dominate the seas, China and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia have all built outposts and bases on shoals, reefs and atolls. Fishing fleets — of which China has the largest in the world — are fast becoming more militarized as a result.

All of this has imposed a heavy cost on unique ecosystems and led to devastating socioeconomic impacts on artisanal and small-scale fishers.

...

The first time Donald Carmen [a fisherman from The Phlippines] was harassed by Chinese boats off the coast of Palawan was in December 2024. The following February, they harassed him and another fisherman again, getting close enough to hit their outriggers. "They forced us to move away and recorded us with cell phones and cameras. I have been fishing in this area since 2016, and back then, everyone was free to fish. I would catch 400-500 kilograms of fish in a night, about 60 nautical miles offshore. Now, because I don't dare venture out as far, I'm lucky if I catch 200-300 kilograms over three days," Carmen said as he steered his banca just weeks later, on the lookout for Chinese fishing boats and militia.

...

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is inextricably linked to the geopolitical struggle for maritime dominance in the South China Sea. Over the past two decades, China has rapidly scaled up its fishing militias in a race to assert control over a vast area while trying to meet the country's insatiable demand for seafood. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan have followed suit on a much smaller scale.

...

While Chinese aggression has persisted for years in areas off Zambales, a province of the Philippines, it has only recently affected waters off the coast of Rizal in Palawan, as China is believed to be building up its presence in the Sabina and Bombay shoals, much closer to the Filipino coast — encroaching on the Philippines' claim to the Kalayaan Island Group — from its original areas of claim like the Spratly Islands and the Scarborough Shoal. Among some of the tactics used by Chinese fishing militias to deter fishermen are water cannons, using swarming and encircling techniques, military-grade lasers and ramming fishing boats to intimidate and drive them from fishing grounds.

As countries in the region militarize their fishing fleets, the cost will ultimately be detrimental to ecological sustainability and geopolitical stability.

...

Labor rights activists at the Migrant Resource Center in Pemalang, Indonesia, fishermen and a widow of a woman still fighting for compensation after her husband's death say agencies in central Java are adept at recruiting Indonesian crew to work primarily on Chinese fishing vessels, entrapping them in a cycle of debt bondage and, in many cases, effectively enslaving them at sea.

...

"In order to work on the fishing vessel, which was Chinese-owned, I was given a loan of 4 million Rupiah," Akbar Fitrian, 29, a fisherman interviewed in Jakarta, explains. "1 million went to paying for fishing equipment, and then I had to work until I paid back the other 3 million. Sometimes, I had to keep borrowing more to continue working to pay off the initial loan. Sometimes I would only end up with enough salary to buy cigarettes. Sometimes I went into the red."

...

Overfishing occurs because high demand and global overconsumption for seafood far exceed the ocean's ability to replenish itself. Growing markets — especially in China, the European Union and North America — have transformed fish and fish products into a highly profitable global commodity. Exports from Southeast Asia alone amount to over $5 billion worth of fish products to the United States each year, illustrating the scale of international trade. This demand fuels industrial-scale fishing operations such as bottom trawlers and purse seiners, which sweep through vast areas of ocean indiscriminately. Supported by government subsidies, these fleets prioritize maximum yield, even when fish stocks are already severely depleted.

...

Web Archive link

cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/36012669

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/historyphotos/p/1994442/man-with-his-custom-made-bus-cobbled-together-from-a-soviet-helicopter-and-military-tru

Man with his custom-made bus, cobbled together from a Soviet helicopter and military truck, Afghanistan, late 1980s

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/historyphotos/p/1994442/man-with-his-custom-made-bus-cobbled-together-from-a-soviet-helicopter-and-military-tru

Man with his custom-made bus, cobbled together from a Soviet helicopter and military truck, Afghanistan, late 1980s

Starmer — On 17 April, it emerged that Peter Mandelson had failed vetting for the ambassador to the US position.

In one sense, this was unsurprising, because he was Peter Mandelson, and he literally should have failed the vetting process as soon as he entered his name.

On the other, it was really quite shocking, because it meant Starmer’s government was seemingly more lazy and corrupt than the Tories.

Since then, Starmer and his few remaining allies have tried to convince us that actually Number 10 knew nothing, and this whole affair is merely the grossest incompetence imaginable.

The problem is that this line of defence has failed to hold up to scrutiny, and now ministers are squirming on the telly when asked about it:

Liz Kendall is asked about David Maddox asking Number 10 about Mandelson failing the vetting months ago, despite the PM saying he only found out last week.

Kendall refuses to comment, saying she can't speak on behalf of number tens director of communications. https://t.co/DzX9KJxMMW pic.twitter.com/pDW1k0ytsc

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 19, 2026

Truth economics

In the clip above, host Trevor Phillips says to Kendall:

All right, on September the 11th last year, a journalist called David Maddox wrote to the director of communications at Number 10, Tim Allan, saying that he’d been told by two sources that Mandelson had not cleared vetting, asking for a comment. Here’s Allan’s reply. Basically, he says, vetting was done by the Foreign Office in a normal way. Was Allan being, as they say, economical with the truth, or did he just not know that there had been a problem with the vetting?

Kendall responded:

You will have to ask those questions to Tim Allan yourself. I’m not going to speak on behalf of him and I don’t think that’s fair that I do.

She’s literally doing the media round on the week of what may be Starmer’s biggest scandal; surely she could have come prepared? This is especially true given that Allan isn’t even in government anymore, so he probably won’t be answering any questions himself.

Phillips continued:

He was responding for the Prime Minister to a journalist. The Prime Minister is now saying he didn’t know anything about this vetting.

A somewhat panicked Kendall responded:

Let me go back to what I said. All ministers were told that he had got developed vetting status. We were not told… that the Foreign Office took that decision, whereas the UK security… advised against. We were not told that. We’re just coming back to the same issue here, Trevor.

And if we had known that, he wouldn’t have been appointed in the first place.

The problem, Liz, is that Starmer saw fit to appoint Mandelson before the vetting was even complete. So he would have been appointed. And this makes it look like Starmer wanted him in the role regardless of how the vetting process shook out.

It’s a problem other ministers have struggled to explain:

So we're being asked to believe that Starmer announced the appointment of Mandelson before the security vetting had been completed and didn't then enquire about the vetting at any point subsequently, and according to Darren Jones this means due process was followed at all times pic.twitter.com/WckCGE8rbC

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 17, 2026

It’s also a problem we knew before now, begging the question: why didn’t Starmer confirm if Mandelson was even vetted?

NEW: Peter Mandelson was given access to highly-classified Government briefings before he had completed formal vetting pic.twitter.com/M11hCPrjpm

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) March 11, 2026

Starmer in deeper

This problem goes back further than Maddox too:

Starmer's team were warned in 2023 that Peter Mandelson was a major security and vetting risk.https://t.co/4Ztk2ue5Tp

— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) April 19, 2026

Starmer had every reason to suspect that Mandelson wouldn’t pass vetting.

Now, we’re supposed to believe Mandelson was vetted, and no one even bothered to confirm if he’d passed?

As Paul Holden, author of The Fraud, wrote:

So Starmer’s team were briefed by ACTUAL security services about Mandelson risks in 2023/24, which they ignore. Simultaneously, Labour Together, (“provisional wing of Starmerism”) got private firms to investigate journalists and treat THOSE lunatic conspiracies seriously?

If accurate, looks like sec services pointed out potential concerns about Russia and Mandelson. That are ignored. But the mad inventions linking me and other legit investigate journalists to “pro-Kremlin” networks are treated to so seriously they’re reported to GCHQ.

So we know Starmer’s people were spying on journalists and also that they did a piss poor job vetting Mandelson (at the very least).

As such, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that the Starmer operation is a recklessly criminal enterprise.

We’re sure no one will face consequences, but clearly these things must be crimes, or the rule of law is a joke.

And this is how ridiculous the government looks when it tries to defend all this:

Liz Kendall denies that giving a top govt job to a man sacked from the cabinet twice, who was best pal with a billionaire paedophile, in any way put the UKs national security at risk. pic.twitter.com/U8zYjZ1bhQ

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 19, 2026

There’s more

As Saul Staniforth documented, Kendall had more shameless moments too:

Liz Kendall says Epsteins victims are being ignored in all of this

So #trevorphillips calls out Starmers hypocrisy – if the victims should be front & centre why did the PM appoint Mandelson originally?

Kendall tells us Starmer cares so much about violence against women & girls pic.twitter.com/HRsxTIoLN7

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 19, 2026

This is like saying we need to think about Jerry as you’re feeding him to Tom.

To end with some levity, Kendall also said:

Liz Kendall says Keir Starmer is a man of honesty and integrity. https://t.co/10b0kEIKss pic.twitter.com/sULBhDjaxO

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 19, 2026

What do you mean she wasn’t joking?

Featured image via BBC

By Willem Moore

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Migliaia di autori chiedono una parte del risarcimento per la violazione del copyright di Anthropic
@libri
https://www.illibraio.it/news/ebook-e-digitale/autori-chiedono-risarcimento-copyright-anthropic-1495799/
Sono quasi 120mila le autrici e gli autori che chiedono una parte del risarcimento (pari a 1,5 miliardi di dollari) ottenuto in una class action contro Anthropic per l'utilizzo non autorizzato dei loro libri (per l'addestramento dell'intelligenza artificiale) - I particolari