The exact proposals have been kept under wraps. But three people familiar with the discussions said they include specific attempts to drive down apartment rental fees and utility costs and compel businesses to be more transparent about pricing. Other suggestions include dusting off a little-used 1960s price-gouging statute and policing new protections for food delivery workers.

Ms. Khan and her team have also studied a 1969 consumer protection law meant to prohibit “unconscionable” business tactics, to potentially target hospitals and sports stadiums where consumers typically have little choice but to pay high prices for products that are cheaper elsewhere, as Semafor previously reported.

They have looked at whether food delivery companies, which wield significant power in the city, are complying with laws that protect their drivers, and whether landlords are complying with a newly enacted law barring many real estate brokers from collecting thousands of dollars in fees.

Source Le Monde article

cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/37056794

i tend to be a bit of a yapper, very loud (theres an interesting reverse-masking thing going on there, which if anyones interested, lmk and ill explain) and tend to be quite rude.

really inside, im a quiet person, but i tend to impulsively speak and be loud, and say things i dont really want to say, e.g. being rude.

these are things i really want to deal with. when i talk less, and be quieter like i am inside, i tend to be much happier. does anyone have any tips?

i tend to be a bit of a yapper, very loud (theres an interesting reverse-masking thing going on there, which if anyones interested, lmk and ill explain) and tend to be quite rude.

really inside, im a quiet person, but i tend to impulsively speak and be loud, and say things i dont really want to say, e.g. being rude.

these are things i really want to deal with. when i talk less, and be quieter like i am inside, i tend to be much happier. does anyone have any tips?

More classic Christmas webcomic art:

CW Misogyny

1. The signatories affirm that Ukraine is a sovereign state.

2. The document constitutes a full and unquestionable non-aggression agreement between Russia and Ukraine. A monitoring mechanism will be set up to oversee the conflict line using satellite-based unmanned surveillance, ensuring early detection of violations.

3. Ukraine will receive security guarantees.

4. The size of Ukraine’s Armed Forces will remain at 800,000 personnel during peacetime.

5. The U.S., NATO, and European signatory states will provide Ukraine with “Article 5–like" guarantees. Following points apply:

A) If Russia invades Ukraine, a coordinated military response will be launched, and all global sanctions against Russia will be reinstated.

B) If Ukraine invades Russia or opens fire at Russian territory without provocation, the security guarantees will be considered void. If Russia opens fire on Ukraine, the security guarantees will come into effect.

C) The U.S. will receive compensation for providing security guarantees. (This provision has been removed.)

D) Previously signed bilateral security agreements between Ukraine and around 30 countries will remain in place.

6. Russia will formalize its non-aggression stance towards Europe and Ukraine in all necessary laws and documents, ratifying them by Russia's State Duma.

7. Ukraine will become an EU member at a clearly designated time and will receive a short-term preferential access to the European market.

"As of today, the timing of Ukraine’s accession is a bilateral discussion between the United States and Ukraine, without European confirmation for now," Zelensky said.

"Membership in the European Union is also our security guarantee, and therefore we want to set a date — when this will happen. For example, 2027 or 2028."

8. Ukraine will receive a global development package, detailed in a separate agreement, covering various economic areas:

A) A development fund will be created for investing in fast-growing industries, including technology, data centers, and artificial intelligence.

B) The U.S. and U.S. companies will work with Ukraine to jointly invest in the restoration, modernization, and operation of Ukraine's gas infrastructure, including pipelines and storage facilities.

C) Joint efforts will be made to rebuild war-torn areas, focusing on restoring and modernizing cities and residential neighborhoods.

D) Infrastructure development will be prioritized.

E) Extraction of minerals and natural resources will be expanded.

F) The World Bank will provide a special funding package to support the acceleration of these efforts.

G) A high-level working group will be established, including the appointment of a leading global financial expert as the prosperity administrator to oversee the implementation of the strategic recovery plan and future prosperity.

9. The creation of several funds to address the restoration of the Ukrainian economy, the reconstruction of damaged areas and regions, and humanitarian issues will be established. The aim is to mobilize $800 billion, the estimated cost of the damage from the Russian war.

10. Ukraine will accelerate the process of negotiating a free trade agreement with the U.S.

11. Ukraine reaffirms its commitment to remaining a non-nuclear state, in accordance with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

12. Control over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and the restoration of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant.

13. Ukraine and Russia will introduce school courses that promote understanding and tolerance of different cultures, fight racism and prejudice. Ukraine will approve EU rules on religious tolerance and minority language protection.

14. In Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts, the line of military positions on the date of signing will be recognized as the de facto front line.

A) To determine troop movements needed to end the war and set up potential "free economic zones," with Russia withdrawing its troops from these areas.

B) Russia must withdraw its troops from occupied parts of Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv oblasts for the agreement to take effect.

C) International forces will be placed along the front line to monitor the agreement's implementation.

D) The parties agree to follow the rules and obligations imposed by the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols, including universal human rights.

15. Russia and Ukraine commit to refraining from using force to alter territorial arrangements and will resolve any disputes through diplomatic means.

16. Russia will not obstruct Ukraine’s use of the Dnipro River and the Black Sea for commercial purposes. A separate maritime agreement will ensure freedom of navigation and transport, with the Russian-occupied Kinburn Spit being demilitarized.

17. Establishment of a humanitarian committee that will ensure the following:

A) All-for-all prisoner exchange.

B) All detained civilians, including children and political prisoners, will be freed.

C) Actions will be taken to address the problems and alleviate the suffering of conflict victims.

18. Ukraine must hold presidential elections as soon as possible after the deal is signed.

19. The deal will be legally binding. Its implementation will be monitored by the Peace Council, chaired by U.S. President Donald Trump. Ukraine, Europe, NATO, Russia, and the U.S. will be part of this process. Violations will lead to sanctions.

20. The ceasefire will take effect immediately once all parties agree to the deal.

Archived link

...

For its entire existence, Ireland’s military intelligence service has operated in the shadows. Its leaders are known as the men without faces, whose identities are a guarded secret. Now for the first time, one of its leaders has been authorised to talk candidly about how it protects Ireland in a rapidly changing world.

...

[The] interviewee is one of the senior leaders in the Irish Military Intelligence Service (IMIS) ... He is among those who brief the government on national security and can authorise covert operations.

...

The scale and complexity of the threats facing Ireland were impossible to overstate. Hybrid warfare practised by hostile states, which can involve espionage, disinformation and influence campaigns, are very real. He said: “They are weaponising the state, I won’t say against itself, but certainly influencing the debate. We are being portrayed as the weak underbelly of Europe, which is not the case.”

...

“Russia would be one hostile state actor we have a key concern about. China is another. We have a huge relationship with China, economically the EU [trades] with them, but there is also the Chinese Communist Party’s concept for One China 2049 [which includes national rejuvenation and reintegration with Taiwan]. If you look at that, and how that fits into the rest of the world, that would be a concern we are interested in."

...

IMIS is constantly finding and monitoring foreign agents that are then discreetly forced to “pack their bags” and leave without the need for an arrest. “They don’t necessarily know we’ve been in the background, but we have had a lot of success doing that,” the man said.

...

It is almost impossible to overstate how the Russians’ full invasion of Ukraine affected Irish military doctrine and security thinking. It caused the Defence Forces to look at every conceivable threat to the state and also its own integrity. Counter-intelligence and internal security have become the priority.

“We have counter-intelligence that looks into the Defence Forces. We’ve had soldiers in Lebanon approached by various nations looking for information or trying to recruit them, and we’ve worked against them because the soldier involved declared what happened,” he said.

...

To fulfil its mission, IMIS works in conjunction with Europe’s intelligence services including Germany’s BND and France’s DGSE. In Ireland, it liaises with Garda Headquarters. Which agency takes responsibility for a specific operation is sometimes complicated because of the ever-evolving nature of threats. “Look at GRU [Russian military intelligence] activities all over Europe, if it’s proxy-based or if it’s overt. If it’s via a defence attacker crew, we have an expertise in it but we would alert the gardai as appropriate. If it’s not appropriate, we don’t.”

...

The threat posed to Ireland by Russia is continually escalating. Ireland has already fallen victim to the Kremlin’s hybrid efforts. He points to the deployment of a Russian tactical group of warships off the south coast four years ago and Moscow’s engagement with Irish fishermen. The event, he says, was organised to embarrass Ireland. “The area they chose had cables underneath it, hugely valuable and important to a variety of multinationals,” he said.

“They were undermining the government, ridiculing the Defence Forces, creating the impression we can’t do anything. The Russian embassy involved itself, they met fishermen and suggested they saved the day. If you remember, the former chief of staff had met the Russian defence attaché at the time and they published his photo online. The net result was a media outcry about how the navy can do nothing.

...

The train used in back to the future 3 was the same train that was used in the tv show petticoat junction.

As Torvalds pointed out in 2019, is that while some major hardware vendors do sell Linux PCs – Dell, for example, with Ubuntu – none of them make it easy. There are also great specialist Linux PC vendors, such as System76, Germany's TUXEDO Computers, and the UK-based Star Labs, but they tend to market to people who are already into Linux, not disgruntled Windows users. No, one big reason why Linux hasn't taken off is that there are no major PC OEMs strongly backing it. To Torvalds, Chromebooks "are the path toward the desktop."

I mean as in Spy x Family. Everyone has a secret they hide from everyone else, even their closest people.

Do you think real life is like that?

Hamas has called on Israel to allow an impartial international investigation into its attack on 7 October 2023 and has rejected that it killed civilians or committed atrocities.

“The resistance did not target any hospital, school, or house of worship; it did not kill a single journalist or any member of ambulance crews. We challenge [Israel] to prove otherwise,” it said.

In the new document, Hamas said that “Western media and Zionist lobby groups” had launched a disinformation campaign about the events of the attack.

“The Israeli entity promoted a series of lies and fallacies about killing children and raping women, paving the way to proceed with an all-out genocide project that was pre-planned and aimed to erase Gaza from existence,” it said.

Palestinian group rejects accusations it committed atrocities and lays out motivation for attack two years ago in 42-page document

...

Hamas repeated previous assertions that killing civilians was against its “religion, morality and education; and we avoid it whenever we can”.

“The resistance did not target any hospital, school, or house of worship; it did not kill a single journalist or any member of ambulance crews. We challenge [Israel] to prove otherwise,” it said.

It added that media reports, including from Israeli outlets, have revealed that Israel’s military bombed areas in southern Israel where Israeli civilians were intermixed with Hamas fighters, in what Hamas said was an example of the Hannibal Directive.

Hamas called for an impartial investigation into civilian deaths on 7 October, as well as one into crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians, including the war on Gaza.

Founding father Benjamin Franklin secured the alliance with France that led to victory in the Revolutionary War, negotiated the Treaty of Paris ending said war, signed the Declaration of Independence and the U.S Constitution, discovered that lightning was electrical, invented bifocal glasses, wrote the famous Poor Richard’s Almanac, and ran newspapers.

He also had some thoughts on farting.

A survey of export firms published on Friday by the Finnish Chamber of Commerce indicates that most have high hopes for next year.

Nearly two-thirds of companies that responded to the poll expect exports to grow in 2026. That's up by six percentage points from a year ago, when six out of 10 said so. Expectations for the coming year are the most positive since 2022, when the question was first included in an annual corporate survey.

Last year, 11 percent of companies forecast that exports would decline, while now the corresponding figure was seven percent.

...

In particular, firms expect that Germany's planned 500-billion-euro investments in infrastructure, digitalisation and defence will drive exports in Finland as well. Last week, Germany launched an additional 30-billion-euro initiative to boost private investments, Reuters reports.

Some 44 percent of respondents said they expect to benefit from those investments.

"In particular, companies feel that their prospects are brightened by investments in the defence sector and the green transition," Päivi Pohjanheimo, Director of International Affairs at the Central Chamber of Commerce, said in a press release on Friday.

"The construction and defence sectors particularly believe that they will benefit from German investments," she added.

...

Hardly any firms said that they have moved operations or production to the United States as a result of President Donald Trump's tariffs policy. Instead, 80 percent of respondents said they are more interested in the EU market, with many expanding their European business due to the tariff policy.

...

"The answers clearly reflect the current geopolitical situation: the unpredictability of the United States is worrying export companies. Instead, respondents see the EU and Nordic countries as safe and increasingly important trading partners," said Pohjanheimo.

...

Me at the family dinner

Intro ML reading list

Stolen from r/MarxismMemes