https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valonia_ventricosa

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trumps-sanctions-on-iccs-chief-prosecutor-have-halted-tribunals-work-officials-and-lawyers-say

a global wave of age-check laws threatens to chill speech

You’ve read your last free article.

There are things that cannot be communicated by reading alone.

Zen is said to be based on a "special transmission outside scriptures"

I suspect that actually looking at someone (preferably while you're together in the same room) lets you understand things better.

FDA officials concluded that the health risks from Zyn pouches are likely lower than potential risks from using snus (low toxicant smokeless tobacco) and the FDA has already concluded that some snus brands are significantly less harmful than cigarettes.

I don't consume any nicotine myself, but it seems that letting people use nicotine in a way that is less harmful to their health is a good idea.

There have been specific statements made that express that you shouldn't use nicotine:

"There is no safe tobacco product," the agency said. "Youth should not use tobacco products and adults who do not use tobacco products should not start."

Bluesky and ATProto are not meaningfully decentralized, and are not federated either.

This stuck out to me, and I didn't see it from this post or a comment:

Greenberg said the city stood to lose “hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants” with the “sanctuary city” designation. Those funds provide food, rental assistance and medical care to “our most vulnerable residents,” he said, adding, “I will not risk hurting them either.”

This was also interesting:

“This should set an example to other cities. Instead of forcing us to sue you — which we will, without hesitation — follow the law, get rid of sanctuary policies, and work with us to fix the illegal immigration crisis.”

“We do not want to see highly coordinated and often violent federal enforcement action here, especially in workplaces, residential areas, schools, places of worship, parks, and other areas where law-abiding people gather. We do not want the National Guard occupying the streets of Louisville. I will not risk the safety of our broader immigrant community,” Greenberg said.

https://vocalsynth.fandom.com/wiki/Zundamon

Dorsey's new open source messaging app, Bitchat Bluetooth-based

Does that already exist? https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/#briar I'm not sure how "decentralized" it is, but it is probably at least somewhat decentralized.

The balance of power shifted in February 2021 when New Ideas (Nuevas Ideas), the party Bukele had helped found in 2017, and allied members of GANA captured 56 seats in elections for the 84-seat legislature. That two-thirds majority meant that Bukele had the legislative support he needed to replace both the country’s attorney general and five of the Supreme Court’s justices. With some of the checks on his power minimized, Bukele began to take an increasingly authoritarian approach to addressing some of El Salvador’s pressing problems.

I suggest making some reforms to state institutions before someone else gains control of at least two thirds of the political power. Having support from two thirds of a legislative body is sufficient to completely rewrite a constitution in many cases, so the only question is whether a "supermajority" can reach some consensus.

I personally don't have a lot of hope for peaceful reform, given what I see from https://ballotpedia.org/Results_for_ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)_and_electoral_system_ballot_measures,_2024

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)

After Marconi sent wireless telegraphic signals across the Atlantic Ocean in 1901, the system began being used for regular communication including ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication.

People probably realized that they should preemptively describe where they were soon afterwards, so asking about that was surely not necessary very often.

I believe that it's unlikely that many people outside of Afghanistan will ever meet an Afghan that isn't a Muslim.

Almost the entire Afghan population is Muslim, with less than 1% being non-Muslim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Afghanistan#Religion

I think it's worth pointing out that I don't consider myself to be very dexterous, so I'd be able to produce a useful image by trying to use AI a lot more reliably and faster than by trying to use a pencil. However, I haven't tried to use AI to do that, and I generally don't find AI tools very useful.

It might also be relevant that I also don't consider myself to be very creative.

Things started earlier than that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dnp7lOObjU&t=3119s&list=PLG1NADbefbENzGtVrh_bh-W6sfSWfopqS

So I'm English. I'm poor, rich, middle; who cares? It doesn't matter. I get on a ship. I come to Virginia. If I'm free, they will deed me 40 acres of land (40 acres of land they don't own). There's a Native American family that owns it. I now have the deed to 40 acres of land that somebody else is using, that is farming. Because, right, we have this double think 1984 thing in our head: the Native Americans didn't know how to farm, Europeans did; the pilgrims arrive, they don't know how to farm, so Squanto finds them starving to death; he goes up to them he's like "dude, what's happening, why aren't you growing food" and they're like "we don't know how" so Squanto shows them how to do Agriculture, and you may have been in a play about this, and he's, like, planting fish in the ground to fix the nitrogen into the soil, and at the same time you hold these two contradictory beliefs: first that the Native Americans couldn't Farm because they're too dumb, and then second that the Native Americans taught the pilgrims how to farm, and it doesn't occur to you that they can't both be true! Anyway, turns out Squanto really did teach the dumb pilgrims how to farm because they were too stupid to grow their own food and were starving to death! So I walk out into Virginia; I got my blunderbuss. I'm walking out, and I see the family of Native Americans farming that land that's mine, and I take a shot at them. They hear the bang, they run, they fight; doesn't matter. The land will be mine; I will take it from them. There's a crop already in the field, which is great cuz then come harvest time I'm already set, and then I just continue to farm the land. Is that amazing? All I need to do is get across the Atlantic; the rest is free (well, except for the ammo). In other words, at some level, the colonial settler project that the British unleash in what will become the United States of America was a wealth transfer scheme. There is no greater asset on the planet than real estate, right? Not Bitcoin, not stamps, not coins, not gold—it's land! Land you can grow food, land you can build a house, land you can build a factory, land you can find gold, land you can find coal, you can find oil. Land, land, land, land! So to go from having none to suddenly having some with really nothing put into it other than you just happen to be English, and you had to commit a little act of violence, that's a remarkable, like, leap! That's a remarkable jump. But then, we added a layer to it. Tobacco is labor intensive. In other words, yeah, I can grow tobacco as a single person not farming, but I'm putting in a lot of hours. Now it turns out tobacco, at the time at least (I don't know if it's still true), the tobacco seed was worth more than its weight in gold, so this is going to make me a lot of money, but if I'm a single farmer out there doing this, it's not really going to make me a lot of money fast. It's better than growing yams, it's better than growing wheat, it's better than raising chickens for sure, but it's hard. As soon as I have enough money, what I'll do is I'll put in for a mail-order bride; once she comes over, she becomes part of my labor team. Now I'm producing even more tobacco, and then she'll incubate my next generation of labor; by the time it's 8 or 10 years old, I'll probably be able to get some work out of my children, and then once I have enough money, I'll buy a mule or ox or a horse or something, and then once I have enough money, I'll bring over an indentured servant, three, five year, seven-year contract. I have a conflict of interest with my indentured servant. In three, five, or seven years they're going to get their freedom; I have to give them a gift as I let them go. They have every incentive not to work hard for the time they're working for me, but I want to squeeze every ounce of labor out of them, so it's kind of a violent event, and eventually they just start to run away (becomes a nuisance), but once we've developed the level of sophistication that we can support this, we start bringing over slaves (which is almost right away; it did not take long before we're bringing over slaves).

I knew that this existed for a long time. I didn't know that you can use Venmo or PayPal now. It seems that wasn't possible in the past. I also knew that money you use for this purpose is probably tax deductible, though only in the same way that a gift to a charity would be: https://dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com/dont_mess_with_taxes/2010/04/voluntary-payments-to-the-ease-the-public-debt.html

https://www.fastcompany.com/91357784/what-is-a-micro-retirement-inside-the-latest-gen-z-trend

I see the source for this image at https://www.youtube.com/@RealEngineering/community and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR1IuLEqb6UEA_zQ81kwXfg/community?lb=UgkxxAVpoLKVjD1msYy9VPlS-genFSA9HjTi I didn't see comments that made it more clear what this is about under the relevant video

How was the embedded nickname "the Iron Kidney" established?

Consider your audience. "You are part of the problem" (meaning "I am the enemy of the person reading these words") is probably not what you wanted to communicate. "Collective Shout is part of the problem" (meaning "The person reading these words should help to neutralize Collective Shout") probably is. Addressing someone that you don't want to engage in "diplomacy" with is probably a bad idea. You might want to use words such that you address people who you want to cooperate with.