Spyke

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Uno reverse 🔁

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Facebook the product is still Facebook. The only name that changed was that of the company that owns Facebook, which makes sense as that holding company also runs other products like Instagram.

Google made a similar move in 2015 when it created Alphabet to hold the non Google parts of Google.

In both cases the renaming was on the coorporate side. They made no effort to loose the old trademark, and continue to operate under it today.

The only high profile case that comes to mind that is simmilar to Twitter is when Comcast rebranded itself as Xfinity in 2010. In that case, it worked because: A) Comcasts reputation was way worse than Twitters and B) people don't have that much of an option anyway. In the otherhand, the rebranding failed in the sense that everyone still knows them as Comcast.

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The golden years

I'm a college graduate with a successful career in my field of study. The hardest part of getting here was graduating college. To this day, I have never had a nightmare about college or work; but I still get them about high school.

At work, I have 1 boss. In highschool, I had 6 bosses. At work, my boss tells me what to peioritize. If I have multiple things to do, it is their job to tell me what to let slide. If we are behind schedule, it is management's fault, and they arrange an appropriate responce. Timelines are typically just guesses that are missed, and true deadlines are rare. In highschool, all of my bosses simply give me work, and I am responsible for getting it all done. All work is on a strict deadline, and slipping is highly penalized.

At work, I can simply do the work, and get occasional guidance where appropriate. In school, every piece of work I do is combed through for errors and reduced to a cold score.

As an adult, I would not put up with half the crap we make students go through as a matter of course.

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Hundreds dead in Israel and Gaza, thousands injured after Hamas launches rockets, Israel declares war

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There is only one country whose national religion is Judaism, but it is practiced in plenty of other places.

More to the point, the fact that there are other Islamic countries is of little comfort to the Palestinians. They do not live in those countries and those countries do not want them.

Some of those countries do provide varying levels of support for Hamas because they (accurately) see it as an indirect way to attack Israel.

By the same token, any blame you want to place on Israel for this conflict reflects on Isreal as whole, and not every individual living within it.

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Jewish Editor Fired for Sharing Onion Article on Gaza

I, for one, fully support Israel because it seems like you get in less trouble for that.

Some may call me a coward for this decision. To this, I can only say the following: If a coward is a person who avoids taking a difficult stance on topics for personal expediency, then “coward” is a badge I will gladly wear, again and again and again.

https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it-seems-like-yo-1850922505

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Half the Country Sues Trump for Using Shutdown to Slash SNAP Funding

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How the fuck is this actually permitted?

It's not. Those messages are a blatant violation of a law known as the Hatch Act.

In theory, this is enforced by the office of special counsel, which is an independent federal agency. In practice, Trump fired the head of the OSC back in February, and appointed one of his cabinet officials to the role.

In theory, this was completely unlawful, as the OSC was setup by Congress post Watergate [0] specifically to be independent of the President. Indeed a lower court ruled as such; but was overturned on appeal. The problem is that the Supreme Court has recently embraced a view of near unlimited presidential power, including explicit rulings against the constitutionality of laws preventing the president from firing heads of independent agencies. [1].

The court also ruled that the president has near complete immunity to commit crimes (Trump v US 2024). That ruling gives the president literally complete immunity for "core" acts such as issuing pardons. So, he could pardon everyone involved.

In theory, the recourse here is impeachment. But there isn't much stomach to impeach him again after his prior impeachments failed to remove him from office. Those impeachments being for: withholding military aid to Ukraine because they wouldn't investigate the son of his political opponents; and directing a violent insurrection on January 6 to try and remain in power despite loosing the election.

[0] Where then president Nixon directed a break in of the headquarters of his political opponents.

[1] Although, I will note, the Court has made a point of clarifying that the Federal reserve is fine. Undoubtedly because they care about the amount of money they would loose in the economic carnage of that particular agency loosing independence.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders calls for a Gaza ceasefire during DNC speech

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I have not listened to his DNC speach, but back in january he introduced a resolution that would have invoked the legal requirement that US assistance not be used to commit human rights violations. It failed 72-11.

Back in April, he spoke in the senate opposing the $8.9 billion offensive military aid to Israel; after having introduced amendments to cut those provisions out. (If you read 1 link from this post make it this one).

As early as October 11, he was calling for the US to force Israeli restraint, and explicitly calling Israel's responce a violation of international law

On October 25, he demanded information on how Israel was going to use the first aid package before it went to a vote in the senate, which was formally sent to Biden November 1.

At this point I stopped going through his press releases, because at this point, he just sounds like a Cassandra.

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Warnings of Iran Invasion Grow as US to Send Up to 5,000 Marines, Sailors to Middle East

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I'm pretty sure the window is already closed. This is our second war with Iran in under a year. Both of which were started by the US/Israel; while we were actively negotiating with Iran. After the first war, we bragged about how the negotiation was a genius move by us to catch Iran with a surprise attack. The last time we had a major treaty with Iran, we unilaterally tore it up; and none of the other signatories stepped up to try and make Iran whole.

The 12 day war ended when we decided to end it. Iran agreed because no one likes getting bombed, and they assumed we had done all we had the stomach to do. However, this type of stop-and-go conflict massively favors the US. Iran's strength lies in a sustained war of attrition. Deplete our air defense systems faster than we can resupply them. Disrupt the oil market long enough to cause global shortages. Draw us into a war against an insurgency. None of this is effective if they let us decide when the conflict pauses.

Their actions show this. Mining the straight of Hormuz and bombing oil fields are not the type of action you take for a conflict you don't plan on lasting. Appoint the son of the leader we assisinated as your new leader. Those are decisions that will take months to reverse.

Also, I should mention that the current leader of Iran just had his family killed by us. And Iran was just in the middle of an internal political crisis that conveniently goes away in the face of an external one.

I don't see how we get Iran to agree to end the war without us offering some major concessions.