Art by Sarah Andersen - https://bsky.app/profile/sarahseeandersen.bsky.social

Republicans decided to give billionaires a tax cut instead.

Archived

From the playbook of no shit sherlock.

China’s annual trade surplus in goods has topped $1 trillion for the first time, with plunging exports to the United States amid a tariff war more than compensated for by shipments to other markets, new data shows.

Alt text: Depicted, a crying Polnareff from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Text: "And that's how Stone Ocean ends. The homeless man that just asked me for cash:" alt text end.

Source (Qwantz.com)

Approximately 23,900 companies are expected to file for bankruptcy in 2025, an 8.3% increase from 2024 and the highest figure since 2014, according to a report by credit agency Creditreform.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/31155841

A woman who was recorded shouting racist slurs at a couple in Wisconsin has been fired from the Cinnabon franchise where the outburst occurred. Video showed the woman telling the couple — described in an online fundraiser as a “black Somali Muslim couple" — "I am racist" and directing the N-word at them. A TikTok user who uploaded the video said the interaction happened Friday at a Cinnabon location in Ashwaubenon, a suburb of Green Bay, and targeted her and her husband. On Sunday, a Cinnabon spokesperson called the video "deeply troubling." "The individual seen in the video was immediately terminated by the franchise owner," the spokesperson said. "Their actions and statements are completely unacceptable and in no way reflect the values of Cinnabon, our franchisees, or the welcoming environment we expect for every guest and team member." The company said it would remain committed to ensuring its customers are treated with respect and kindness. It said the confrontation took place at an independently owned and operated location at the Bay Park Square mall. The video does not show how the confrontation started. The TikTok user said it began after she asked the worker for more caramel on her cinnamon roll. The worker replied that “you could see me squeezing it through that witch craft bandana you’re wearing on the top of your head (basically referring to my hijab……)," according to a caption on the video. The video also showed the worker displaying two middle fingers at the couple and threatening to throw water on the woman recording. Cinnabon did not identify the worker. An online fundraiser allegedly set up to benefit her had raised nearly $100,000 as of Sunday night. Attempts to reach a woman believed to be the worker by phone were unsuccessful Sunday night. Attempts to reach the couple were not immediately successful. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/chevron7/p/480869/who-would-win-in-a-fight-de-aged-o-neill-or-de-aged-picard

A new joint assessment by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) aims to dispel any remaining scepticism among those who still fail to recognise the threat from Russia.

You can download the study here: No sense of safety under heaven

A must-read on the humanization of LLMs / chatbots

I shared a version of this guide earlier this year, but felt a website was needed to unpack the different options fully. So after an unreasonable number of hours, I put together the necessary data and website.

You can't see them, but there are three sea lions in the net feasting on the easy prey.

Ich weiß, krank heißt nicht, man darf nicht einkaufen, aber sie hat schon etwas verlegen geschaut.

We never got a Tim Curry appearance in Trek. Sad

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/54567014

*Open valve in heating system affects 300 to 400 items just weeks after a brazen jewel theft raised security concerns*

Web archive link

ATABLE OUTLINING AN internal Royal Canadian Air Force 2021 study on the F-35 fighter jet versus Sweden’s Gripen has magically shown up in the press at just the very moment it might most influence the choice about to be made. The confidential internal document lands as Ottawa continues to review its deal of purchasing the full contingent of eighty-eight American-built F-35s following United States president Donald Trump’s threats to Canadian sovereignty—a process now bogged down by concerns inside the RCAF that the purchase is becoming harder to justify.

IN FEBRUARY 2024, without warning, YouTube deleted the account of independent British journalist Robert Inlakesh.

IN HIS FIRST major guidance to the Air Force, the newly appointed Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach emphasized a need for the “recapitalization” of nuclear weapons — an apparent departure from decades of Air Force teaching that the United States maintains nuclear weapons solely for deterrence.

Israeli operatives are conducting widespread surveillance of US forces and allies stationed at a new US base in the country’s south, according to sources briefed on disputes about open and covert recordings of meetings and discussions.

I put up an owl box about a month ago. Yesterday I spotted this barred owl perched next to it. I'm hoping it's not a coincidence. Seems very quick for someone to find it and move in, though.

Joshua Wright says a yellow cedar tree he photographed last year was "incredible," the largest he'd ever seen in a decade of hiking around Vancouver Island.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/54563207

A man who spent a decade and a half working as a Chinese spy has shared details of some of his missions with Radio-Canada, including what he knows about a Chinese dissident who died in B.C. in 2022.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/54562583

The complaint alleges that Temu does much more than provide Arizonans access to cheap goods. Modeled after an earlier Chinese app, Pinduoduo, the Temu app is allegedly designed to harvest sensitive user data without users’ knowledge or consent and to evade detection.

Our recent research into Snapchat shows that its uses misleading notification. This is not legally allowed. Namely, the European Digital Services Act prohibits misleading and manipulative design on online platforms. The research serves as input for possible enforcement actions by the Dutch Authority for Consumer and Markets (Autoriteit Consument & Markt) and supports our advice to include the regulation of attention-grabbing notifications in the Digital Fairness Act.

TL;DR: Mozilla’s translation bot on Support Mozilla (that is currently overwriting user contributions is based on the closed source, copyright infringing LLM, Google Gemini. This is in spite of Mozilla claiming that they are at the forefront of open source AI, and belies their exhortations to choose to build open source AI and data sets. Although Mozilla has experience in attracting open contributions for data sets in projects like Common Voice, Mozilla is using a closed data set to overwrite open contributions. Since (paid) Gemini queries do not train the model, Mozillians can expect to correct errors every time the bot automatically updates an article.

From Brynda Ivan

We're finally benchmarking GPU performance in Linux, first using the Bazzite OS following thousands of community requests specifically for this operating system.

Here's an unlikely duo. We've got Africa's largest owl, and we've got one of the northern hemisphere's smallest. One is traditionally adorable, and the other has a one of a kind look. Let's get to know them a bit better!

From Doc's Veterinary Wildlife

Today is a day for very contrasting owls here at OotY.

Cities: Eugene and Springfield, OR

Japan has protested after Chinese fighter jets locked radars on Japanese aircraft as tensions between the two nations worsened.

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Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos met with Donald Trump to try and win him over ahead of the bidding war for Warner Bros.

The Open Rights Group warns the government's digital ID plan is a "surveillance infrastructure" leading to "unprecedented tracking." They point to the faulty eVisa scheme.

International Criminal Court [ICC] arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and five other Russians accused of war crimes in Ukraine will stay in place even if a blanket amnesty is approved during U.S.-led peace talks, ICC prosecutors said on Friday.

Today I learned about the existence of Glanzbilder in a post on [email protected]. I don’t think it’s ever been a thing in my country, but I might be wrong.

Maybe this is just me imagining things and is being completely wrong. I have just been thinking about this question and especially after watching Home Alone 2 in New York. It may just be that I think it looks more crowded in the movies because it actually is a set filled with people, but also there probably should be some truth to it as you now can do so much online that makes people able to stay inside instead of walk to a location.

Today's game is Mario Kart Wii. I was originally going to setup Retro Rewind to give it a try (it was suggested to me by @[email protected]). I ended up having some issues though, namely that the mod was downloading at 0.50 mbps and would take an hour. I tried to install it manually but that didn't really work out. So i decided to just play regular Wii, it's not like it's a bad game or anything.