PhilipTheBucket

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[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 1 points 1 week ago

Definitely I recommend to host your instance outside of places with the shitty laws. Not sure how much that'll do for you, but it'll at least buy you some time.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hm... maybe I am wrong. It's definitely not just a conservative talking point, it was how historians looked at early modern cities for a while, I thought. But it seems like modern historians aren't sure that's the case:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2598176

With just a quick look around, I couldn't find anything that seemed definitive in the other direction, but also, the little preview that shows of that paper seems like it does a pretty good job of saying "Yo the reasons they said this is true are incredibly weak when you dig into them." So maybe it was just premodern science from the leeches-and-ECT days.

There's also this. Deaths are exceeding births in almost half the US, now:

https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/deaths-exceeded-births-nearly-half-us-counties-last-year

(And, of course, it's mostly in the rural areas)

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 34 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Wait until it's all gone...

Not just whales, not just corals, but whole jungles, whole biomes, whole fields of the crops we depend on to eat, just crumbled and dead, unable to breathe in the heat.

Silent dead forests, sterile anoxic oceans or ones choked with algae and muck, starving people in desperate mobs a million strong, with no one to bury them when they fall. Hurricanes and dust storms over abandoned cities. Whole species, whole categories of life that can't survive the pace of change and harsh conditions that are coming. It's not a movie, it's not a story. There are people already alive today who will see it unless something massive changes. Probably even if it does.

What did you do? I didn't do anything today to stop it. We should be.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The justification is "What the fuck are you going to do about it?"

The normal process is born out of an awareness that people can bite back sometimes, and so "they" will take seriously trying to justify their actions. After a while, things get quiescent, and some of "they" start fooling themselves that it is impossible that the people not on top would ever bite back, and they stop bothering themselves with worrying about it.

For some reason (as with pretty much any other "what the fuck are you doing to do about it" situation), when people do do something about it, it's all of a sudden an outrageous betrayal, an offense against decency that no one could have seen coming.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 7 points 1 week ago (4 children)

This is the way it used to be. Cities didn't used to be able to sustain themselves through the birthrate alone; they were so toxic and dangerous that they would eat the populations within them, and needed a continuous flow of people from the countryside to sustain the population. Who would then, as the years went by, get fed into the maw and replaced in their turn.

Doing the whole country that way hasn't been tried before to my knowledge, but what the hell, we might as well be the first to give it a shot.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Like I say, other people might have other wordings or summaries. Honestly hair-splitting about it just pisses me off. A court proved that, by the normal-human definitions of these words, he's guilty of rape. How's that?

That's not to mention the many, many allegations of rape, sexual assault, and child rape that other people have credibly raised. That's just the time that it's been proven in court with him having every opportunity to vigorously defend himself against the allegation, and failing.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 10 points 1 week ago (4 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J._Trump

renewing her claim of defamation and adding a claim of battery under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law allowing sexual-assault victims to file civil suits beyond expired statutes of limitations

A jury verdict in May 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, and ordered him to pay US$5 million in damages.

Regarding the jury verdict, the judge asked the jury to find if the preponderance of the evidence suggested that Trump raped Carroll under New York's narrow legal definition of rape at that time, denoting forcible penetration with the penis, as alleged by the plaintiff;[d] the jury did not find Trump liable for rape and instead found him liable for a lesser degree of sexual abuse. In July 2023, Judge Kaplan said that the verdict found that Trump had raped Carroll according to the common definition of the word, i.e. not necessarily implying penile penetration.[e] In August 2023, Kaplan dismissed a countersuit and wrote that Carroll's accusation of rape is "substantially true".

The official finding of the jury was that he was "liable" for sexual assault. The rest of it, I think pretty much speaks for itself. I would summarize that as him being proven in court to be guilty of rape, other people might have other wordings or summaries. Whatever.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 8 points 1 week ago

The man don'tbe corporealanymore center

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Sounds like someone needs a visit to the MDC

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 52 points 1 week ago (8 children)

He was literally proven in court guilty of rape, in the defamation case.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 1 points 1 week ago

OK, so Biden made things better across the board. he could have made some things even more better, but wasn't able to. and he at least didn't make anything worse.

is that an accurate summary of what you're claiming?

Mostly. I wouldn't agree with "he didn't make anything worse," because US immigration post-2001 is a terrifying hell run by horrible people, and it would be hard for anyone to lay hands on it in any way without making something worse in the process. But yes, aside from that, it's accurate.

because if so, we need to get back to those details you claimed I don't care about. the ones you've never actually responded to on their substance:

Because I'm not interested. I already laid out what I thought about this: Looking at the whole of his impact on immigration is a way better way to analyze his overall impact on immigration than extensive Lemmy bickering, and I think you're focusing in on details as a way to distract from the idea of looking at the overall.

because if you actually read what I said, notice I phrased it as "you seem to be arguing". that was intentional. I'm listening to what you're saying, and trying to tell you "here's what your argument is coming across as" because I do actually care whether I'm understanding you correctly or not.

Okay, fair enough. That previous paragraph is what I'm saying.

 

One week after Delta announced it is expanding a test using artificial intelligence to charge different prices based on customers' personal data—which critics fear could end cheap flights forever—Democratic lawmakers have moved to ban what they consider predatory surveillance pricing.

In a press release, Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) announced the Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act. The law directly bans companies from using "surveillance-based" price or wage setting to increase their profit margins.

If passed, the law would allow anyone to sue companies found unfairly using AI, lawmakers explained in what's called a "one-sheet." That could mean charging customers higher prices—based on "how desperate a customer is for a product and the maximum amount a customer is willing to pay"—or paying employees lower wages—based on "their financial status, personal associations, and demographics."

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Russian drones are actively attacking the access roads to Kherson, in particular, the Mykolaiv–Kherson highway, trying to encircle the city with drones.

Source:journalist from Kherson Ivan Antypenko

Details: He said that throughout July, Russian drones have systematically attacked several sections of the road. A truck has already been destroyed, and several civilian cars have been damaged. Burned vehicles hit by drones have been recorded on the Kherson–Mykolaiv highway.

Quote: "The enemy clearly wants to take control of this road, since a large section of the Marianske–Beryslav road or the road to Snihurivka is already under their control. This means we are effectively losing a significant part of the right bank. I mean civilian activity, which still seemed possible in 2023."

The situation is further complicated by constant strikes on Kherson itself and the surrounding villages. There are no districts in the city untouched by FPV drones.

Due to attacks, farmers have been unable to harvest crops, and both fields and equipment have been destroyed. As the journalist said, the city and roads lack basic protection – even the simplest measures, such as nets against FPV drones, have not been installed.

Quote: "We had more than a year to react and calculate a possible scenario where the enemy would expand the UAV attack zone. Yes, there are EW systems, and there are mobile units that shoot down drones. They are doing a lot. But it turned out to be not enough. The Russians attack from the air every day. Today, Kherson is effectively being taken into a drone encirclement, and entering, exiting, and staying in it is becoming increasingly dangerous."

Background: On 24 July, the Russian army dropped four guided aerial bombs on the central part of Kherson. As a result of the attack, civilian infrastructure was damaged, and one person was injured.

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Russia is preparing to implement a more stringent gasoline export ban in the coming days, three industry sources familiar with the plans told Reuters on July 24. This measure is expected to include fuel producers, as the government seeks to combat rising domestic prices.

Currently, export restrictions apply only to a small segment of gasoline sales by resellers, with major oil companies still permitted to sell fuel abroad. The impending changes would broaden these limitations significantly.

"It's all been decided (with the ban). For now, it's for August and September," one of the industry sources told Reuters. Another source suggested the official announcement of the ban could come as early as July 28.

The planned restrictions will not affect supplies to the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union, a bloc comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia itself. Additionally, countries like Mongolia, with which Russia maintains intergovernmental agreements on fuel supplies, will also be exempt from the ban, according to the sources.

The Russian government has resorted to temporary gasoline export bans multiple times over the past two years, typically to address domestic fuel shortages and alleviate high prices. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak had indicated earlier this month that the government was actively studying the fuel market to determine if further restrictions were necessary.

Wholesale gasoline prices on the St. Petersburg commodities exchange have seen a consistent upward trend since the beginning of last week. The price of the widely used Ai-95 grade recently hit an all-time high, reaching 76,293 roubles (approximately $962.69) per metric ton.

Russia boasts an annual gasoline production exceeding 40 million metric tons. Its primary importers of refined fuel are Egypt and Turkey. According to the industry sources, Russia significantly increased its gasoline exports during the first five months of 2025, with volumes rising by approximately 25% year-on-year to about 2.51 million tons.

Read also: Ukraine war latest: China covertly supplying drone engines to Russia despite sanctions, Reuters reports

 

To the casual observer, cybercriminals can look like swashbuckling geniuses.

They possess technical skills formidable enough to penetrate the networks of the biggest companies on the planet.

They cover their tracks using technology that is arcane to most people—VPNs, encrypted chat apps, onion routing, aliases in dark web forums.

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When I came to Kyiv in 2013 to study journalism, nearly every conversation about the future among my fellow young Ukrainians eventually came down to one question: How to leave the country for a chance of a better life.

Back then, there was no war, no daily attacks or funerals of friends killed by Russia. And yet I remember that time as more hopeless.

It was the era of pro-Russian, autocrat-aspiring President Viktor Yanukovych, marked by widespread corruption and impunity poisoning the country. For young people with their whole life ahead of them, it was hard to see anything worth staying for.

Soon, everything changed. It got even worse.

On Nov. 21, 2013, Yanukovych shattered the last glimmer of hope for Ukrainian youth by refusing to sign an association agreement with the European Union, steering the country away from its Western-oriented democratic path and back toward authoritarian Russia.

For young Ukrainians like myself, that decision was like a punch in the gut.

So in the best tradition of Ukrainian resistance, in the evening of that same day, several hundred people, many of them very young, gathered on Kyiv’s main Independence Square, or Maidan Nezalezhnosti, in protest of Yanukovych’s decision.

When my peers and I arrived at our dormitory after classes that day, we were overwhelmed with excitement, following every development on social media. And then, one of us finally said, “Should we go, too?”

We jumped into a taxi and spent the rest of the night in central Kyiv, under rain, with a group of people who cared. It started to feel like hope.

Students hold placards and flags during a pro-European rally in Lviv, Ukraine, on Nov. 27, 2013.Students during the EuroMaidan Revolution in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Nov. 26, 2013, the third day of protests against the government’s decision to scrap a key pact with the European Union. (Vasily Maximov / AFP via Getty Images)Students hold placards during a rally in Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Dec. 19, 2013.

Students hold placards during the EuroMaidan Revolution at the Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Dec. 19, 2013. (Yuriy Dyachyshyn / AFP via Getty Images)

That was the beginning of the EuroMaidan Revolution, which would in the ensuing months prove to be the most consequential event in the history of independent Ukraine.

It was also one of the most consequential events for me personally.

I attended protests on most of the days throughout the three-month revolution. I skipped classes and instead headed to the protest camp to make sandwiches for protesters in the freezing cold.

I kept going back, first and foremost, because I wanted to be part of a historic movement standing up for democratic values and against tyranny.

But I also simply liked being there.

The protest camp felt like an island of some utopian Ukrainian future. It was surrounded by a makeshift fence but it wasn’t only the physical barrier that separated it from the rest of central Kyiv. As soon as you entered, it felt like a different world — with its own rules, culture, and atmosphere.

Most people there spoke Ukrainian when many, if not most Ukrainians elsewhere in Kyiv spoke Russian — courtesy of centuries of Moscow’s oppressive policies. “Excuse me” and “Thank you” were heard everywhere — in a country still shedding the Soviet habit of yelling at strangers. There was a common understanding of everyone’s personal responsibility to keep the area clean. Despite the constant threats of riot police raids, I felt safe there — because I knew I was around my people — united by one purpose and all sacrificing for it. It was a better Ukraine in all senses.

It was the EuroMaidan Revolution that made me want to stay in Ukraine and be part of the generation that makes it a better place. And I wasn’t alone.

The revolution culminated in extreme violence, with law enforcement firing at unarmed protesters and killing over a hundred people. The bloodshed prompted parliament — including members of Yanukovych's own party — to condemn the crackdown, forcing him to flee hastily to Russia.

What followed were years of Ukraine’s transformation — rediscovering our identity as a nation, experiencing a true cultural renaissance after centuries of oppression, launching anti-corruption reforms and new mechanisms to hold authorities accountable, digitizing a wide range of services to make people’s lives easier, and cultivating a civil society where civic duty is an everyday responsibility, not a once-in-a-decade event.

In less than a decade, Ukraine went from a country many wanted to escape to one full of opportunity and hope.

“Together and till the end” — and it gave me chills, just like it did a decade ago.

Things weren’t perfect. Anti-corruption institutions were still very young. The key reform of the judicial system kept being dragged. There was still corruption and those in power seeking opportunity for revenge. A lot of work was still ahead. But what I experienced at the revolution’s protest camp didn’t seem so utopian anymore.

When Russia's full-scale invasion started in 2022, priorities shifted and everything but the struggle against Russian aggression had to be put on pause. It was the right thing to do because the entire existence of our country as an independent state was — and still is — at stake.

So in more than 3.5 years of the full-scale war, even when reforms stalled, even when injustice was clear, even when those in power abused it, the Ukrainian society chose to not exercise its protesting muscle. It remained focused on unity, on resisting Russia together, and maintaining the picture-perfect image of a resilient Ukraine for our supporters abroad.

They remain key priorities. But this week, another one was added to the list: reminding the Ukrainian government that Ukraine’s democratic aspirations — won in blood during the EuroMaidan Revolution — haven’t gone anywhere.

On July 22, Ukraine’s parliament passed a bill destroying the independence of Ukraine’s key anti-corruption institutions. The very institutions that were established as part of the country’s transformation following the revolution.

President Volodymyr Zelensky answers journalists’ questions during a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 4, 2025. (Ihor Kuznietsov / Novyny LIVE / Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

The scenes in the parliament during voting — with cheers and applause as reforms were being destroyed — reminded me of the ugliest days of Yanukovych’s era.

What happened next revealed a habit many Ukrainians weren’t sure they still had: that same evening, people — most of them very young — gathered in central Kyiv for a peaceful protest against the decision.

As I approached the square sitting almost next to the Presidential Office, I saw vibrant young people rushing to join the protest. I couldn’t help but compare it to my own experience 12 years ago. Then I heard the chant that had endured from those days — “Together and till the end” — and it gave me chills, just like it did a decade ago.

There are many parallels I can draw between these protests, but there are also some important distinctions.

Protesters hold placards during a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 23, 2025

Protesters hold placards during a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 23, 2025, against a law that destroys the independence of Ukraine's key anti-corruption institutions. (Arsen Dzodzaiev / Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Protesters hold placards and turn on flashlights during a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 22, 2025. (Dan Bashakov / Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Unlike in November 2013, it wasn’t hundreds but thousands of angry Ukrainians who took to the streets on the first day this time. They were way more organized and better prepared — carrying Ukrainian flags and witty signs. They know better than to give center stage to opposition politicians looking to capitalize on the demonstrations.

Seeing this evolution of Ukrainian society made me emotional and very proud. All these years of standing up on squares and then on the battlefield weren’t for nothing if this is what Ukraine is now.

That same day, right after the first protest, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the controversial bill — which the protesters had urged him to veto — into law.

The next day, July 23, the demonstration happened again — this time with about three times more people joining. Today, July 24, people will gather once more. And something tells me they won’t stop demonstrating until they are truly heard.

On July 24, Zelensky finally backed down. He submitted a new draft law claiming to restore the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies.

I don’t know whether the bill will ultimately pass, whether any new contentious amendments will be made, but what I do know is that the path Ukraine set upon during the EuroMaidan Revolution — and the sacrifices it has made and continues to make for it — isn’t something any president can pause or reverse.

Power in Ukraine belongs to its people. That’s what our Constitution says. That’s what 18-year-olds are proving in squares across the country today.

The last time I checked, the Ukrainian people have made their choice to grow into a full-blown democracy very clear — time and again. And if anyone in the President’s Office has forgotten that, they only need to look out the window for a reminder.

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