Coming home too damn tired to do anything else, even including chores, is top for me.

I have dishes lying around, laundry needing to be done at somepoint, some extra small tasks to do. But, trying to go 'above and beyond' for a shitty job just leaves you with nothing left to do them, having to waste time off to finally do them.

I'm in a building that's not my home, for 8 hours (used to have some days where it was 10 hours), a night. Where my company tries to tell me to treat their building that I work in, as a second home. Dealing with all of these tasks that ultimately mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. Dealing with people who conveniently forget a lot of the time, as to how to be a normal human being and they being at your expense.

And in addition to coming home too damn tired to do anything else, I'm sometimes worrying if what I'm making now for however many hours, is enough to cover everything I need to have or want to have.

Archived version

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has warned that Russia's "little green men" who try to cross the border with Estonia will be met with deadly force.

"Little Green Men" refers to Russian soldiers without insignia during Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, who wore green uniforms without insignia to conceal their official involvement, the Telegraph reports.

Commenting on recent border incidents with Russia - including one in October when Russians without insignia were seen at the border - Tsahkna told Polish media outlet o2.pl that Estonian troops would "shoot" them if they crossed the border.

"Let me say it bluntly: If the little green men ever cross our border, we will shoot them. These will be the consequences; there is no question about that. If Russia is not sure that we will really react, they can test us," Tsahkna said, as reported by another Polish media outlet, Onet.

...

Tsahkna also said that similar incidents were reported near Narva, a border settlement near Russia. "It wasn't the first time we saw them. We have been observing them constantly, for example, we have many different reports from Narva, which is a border town," he said.

...

The Narva River marks a narrow strip of land where the incursion took place, extending all the way to the eastern coast of Estonian territory. Estonia and Russia have long failed to ratify a formal border treaty, despite years of negotiations.

...

On December 17, Estonia's border protection agency said three Russian border guards briefly entered Estonian territory near the Narva River and stayed there for about 20 minutes.

...

In November, a Russian border guard ship flying the flag of the Wagner mercenary group was seen patrolling the Narva River.

In early 2025, Tallinn announced plans to establish a military base in Narva.

There's a faint outline around this dude and the fucking hair is anime IRL!

Just want to know I'm not crazy.

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?

Brazil's jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro used a hospital stay for surgery to formally endorse his son Flavio's 2026 presidential bid.

Brazil's jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday formally endorsed his son Flavio's bid for the 2026 presidential election, announcing his support from a hospital in Brasilia where he underwent hernia surgery.

In office from 2019 to 2022, Bolsonaro is a controversial figure, after pursuing hard‑right populist policies that his opponents claim undermined democratic institutions and targeted marginalized groups. He is currently in jail serving a 27‑year sentence for an attempted coup.

There is nothing uniquely special and legitimising about Jewishness. But these standard Western anti-Zionist tactics accept the notion, tacitly or otherwise, that there is.

Israel is inherently illegitimate due to its very nature, as a settler colonial project based on the replacement of the indigenous people and their society with a new society run by and for those considered to be a part of its settler in-group. In this case, that in-group happens to be Jews, but this does not meaningfully change anything about the dynamic. It would be the same if Palestine had been colonised by Aymara, or Filipinos, or Serbians, or Mormons, or any other group.

When the time comes to evict the Israeli settlers from the West Bank, will you laugh in the face of those framing it as an ethnic cleansing of poor, vulnerable, innately oppressed Jews and a Second Holocaust?

It’s doubtful that those who hold on to Jewish exceptionalism will be able to. It’s much more likely that they will turn against their own movement.

Israel would be illegitimate whether it had support of 100% of Jews, 50% of them, or 10% of them. No group of people gets to hold a vote amongst themselves on whether or not they can do settler colonialism.

The reality of the situation is that Israel itself is full of Jews who would sooner die than give up the racial privileges they enjoy at the expense of the Palestinian people. And—as I will be elaborating on later in this article—they are supported in this endeavour by the vast majority of Jews worldwide. Any potential future that involves anything resembling just outcomes for the Palestinian people will involve a lot of coercive force against people who happen to be Jewish, and the propaganda against this will, as always, be entirely based around the supposed uniqueness, specialness, and innate vulnerability of Jews. If we uphold Jewish exceptionalism, it will work on us. Or worse: we won’t even get there in the first place, as Jewish exceptionalism primes people to abandon anti-Zionism and become liberal Zionists at the first sign of any real conflict with the interests of Jewish people. It’s easier to support liberation in the abstract rather than in reality, where it’s often very messy and necessitates that people among the oppressor group be harmed in some way.

We got a taste of this already on October 7th, 2023. The Jewish exceptionalist groups who dominate the Western pro-Palestine movement did not meet the moment, instead allowing themselves to be pressured into making both-sides statements, denouncing the resistance and expressing their horror at the suffering of the poor, innocent, Jewish, Israeli settler-victims, with scarcely even a fight.

The topic has been debated since April, when the EU Commission first unveiled "ProtectEU," a strategy aiming to create a roadmap for "lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement." The Commission then presented the Roadmap in June, which outlined an intent to decrypt citizens' private data by 2030.

Most member states argue that simply knowing who owns an account isn't enough. Instead, they want a new legal baseline where companies are forced to log exactly when and where a user was online, as well as the IP addresses they used to connect.

As AdGuard VPN's Chief Product Officer, Denis Vyazovoy, told TechRadar back in April: "A legal framework that forces VPNs to retain user metadata – potentially for a prolonged period – could make such services untenable, leading to the withdrawal of VPN providers from the EU."

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.

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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.

...

At this rate, finding the last digit is probably just a few years down the road.

Israeli police arrested a Palestinian man dressed as Santa Claus during a raid on a Christmas party in Haifa, a civil rights monitor has said.

Israeli officers closed an event celebrating Christmas on Sunday, confiscating equipment, and arresting the Palestinian Santa Claus, as well as a DJ and a street vendor. In a video, police can be seen pushing the men to the ground and handcuffing them as bystanders watched.

The Israeli police said in a statement that the man wearing the Santa Claus costume resisted arrest and assaulted an officer.

The Mossawa Center, a rights groups that advocates for Palestinian citizens of Israel, said police used excess force on the men and that the raid on the music hall was done without legal authority.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44327937

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, China did not distance itself from Moscow, but turned Russia into its raw material appendage. This was stated on Telegram by Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (CPD), UNN reports.

According to him, Russia's role in the Chinese vision of Europe is instrumental: Russia is not a partner of the EU or US level for China, but it is a useful factor of strategic pressure.

"Moscow creates constant security instability for Europe, which forces the EU to concentrate resources on containment, not on global competition with China," Kovalenko believes.

...

In 20 years, in Chinese logic, Europe should remain economically significant, but politically fragmented. The collapse of the EU may be beneficial. But Europe, in Beijing's vision, should not become weak, but only slow. Not hostile, but cautious. It is such a Europe that allows China to balance between the US and the EU, using the difference in interests between European countries. And all of Beijing's actions towards Europe over the past 10-15 years only confirm this logic.

He adds that individual countries should become dependent on Chinese money, and Russia, as an element of pressure, will continue to play this role, as Beijing's raw material appendage.

...

Ukraine is preparing a number of sanctions decisions against Russian entities and those who assist the aggression, including individuals from China, by the end of the year.

...

Web archive link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47914524

• Chinese media platform NetEase ran a Dec. 14 article urging Beijing to “prepare for the worst” if Russia fractures, arguing the Russian Far East’s 7 million square kilometers should not be “lost.”

• The piece frames the region as a resource treasure for China and a burden for Moscow, then outlines an annexation by stealth” playbook: deepen investment, move people and money in, lock long contracts, promote pro-China local elites, introduce the yuan, and finance infrastructure with loans that create dependence.

• It also cites “unequal treaties” from 1858–1860 to revive territorial claims as Russian security officials quietly warn Beijing is encroaching.

Archived

[...]

For more than 25 years, the great fear of many Russian national security strategists has been the increasing vulnerability Moscow faces vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nowhere is that anxiety more pronounced than in the Russian Far East and Pacific coast regions.

[...]

That region is home to a number of strategic industries, including the massive Komsomolsk-na-Amure aviation production plant that manufactures the most advanced Sukhoi fighter aircraft, most notably the Su-35 and Su-57.

The PRC has already purchased the first of those two models. The second is loaded with technologies and on-board systems that Beijing would like to have.

Therefore, Moscow’s “China nightmare” has been, for years, that as Russia’s population in the East continues to decline and its economic prowess declines, the combined weakness could prompt the PRC to begin seizing some of the most valuable areas of that territory. According to a classified document leaked from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) earlier this year, even Russian President Vladimir Putin fears that Beijing is already “trying to encroach” on this territory.

[...]

[Russia's] nightmare is now coming close to becoming a reality—a very bad daydream.

On December 14, NetEase, one of China’s largest media platforms and officially listed with hundreds of millions of users, published an article with a headline that telegraphed intentions Russia has long feared. “China Must Prepare for the Worst: If Russia Collapses, This 7 Million Square Kilometer Territory Must Not Be Lost” is the title of the Chinese-language article.

The subject, of course, is Russia’s Far East. The irony is that the PRC is the very nation that Putin so defiantly “pivoted” to in the wake of Western sanctions after his invasion of Ukraine.

[...]

And it is that same nation he was counting on to evade Western sanctions that is now talking openly about beginning to devour one of the most strategically important regions that he rules over.

The Chinese authors do not even attempt to clothe Beijing’s ambitions in any diplomatic or circuitous language. The Far East is like a “chicken rib” for Russia, they write, an enormous but useless region, because “there’s no money for development, no people, and the war in the west is draining the last resources.”

For China, however, it’s a “treasure”—teeming with gold, diamonds, oil, gas, and timber. In other words, everything Beijing desperately needs.

[...]

The Chinese language article reads:

“One should not attempt to seize it by force; this would lead to global encirclement, as happened with Crimea. The smart approach is to be more accommodating, continue investing money and human resources, sign long-term contracts, and support pro-Chinese forces in the region. Nominally independent, but practically dependent on Chinese support."

As a Russian commentator points out, this plan is not some conspiracy theory or wild speculation. It’s a direct quote from Chinese media. One step after another is spelled out: create economic dependence, introduce the Chinese currency (the yuan) as a local legal tender; build infrastructure, bind the locals to Beijing with loans (that are used to pay for the infrastructure), and wait for the “political landscape to change.”

[...]

The Chinese could also give the Russians lessons on historical grievances and how to play the victimization card. Like Putin in a Tucker Carlson interview, the article reaches back more than a century and a half to remind readers that, in 1858, Russia used the Treaty of Aigun to annex 600,000 square kilometers north of the Amur from a weakened and corrupt Qing Empire.

[...]

For China, these territories being part of Russia are the consequence of “unequal treaties”, the term that Beijing officially uses to describe these 19th-century agreements. In China’s eyes, the agreements are not binding, Russia still “owes” this territory back to the PRC, and the debt remains unpaid.

Chinese intent is clear. When Russia collapses from the strains caused by the Ukraine war, this issue will be dealt with.

[...]

Russia is bogged down in this war, write the authors, and now its GDP is “smaller than a single Chinese province,” and thanks to that war [in Ukraine], Russia now has fewer than “50,000 troops remaining in the Far East—essentially an empty shell”, as Chinese media openly writes.

[...]

Source Le Monde article

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44330313

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44329196

...

The university’s joint venture campus in China maintains partnerships and close links with entities sanctioned by Britain, the US, EU and others for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and assisting China’s military modernisation and human rights violations, an investigation by the Australian Strategic Research Institute (ASPI) has found.

The previously unreported links to sanctions highlight the risks posed by foreign science, technology and academic partnerships in China in a period of heightened geopolitical rivalry, intensifying technological competition and deepening China-Russia cooperation. The joint venture campus’s partnerships cover a range of areas but centre on critical technologies, many with both military and civilian applications.

These partnerships include a new China-Russia cooperation centre whose Russian co-director is affiliated with a sanctioned Russian government agency; a formal new initiative with a leading Chinese government supercomputing centre that was placed on the US federal entity list in 2021 for involvement in China’s military modernisation efforts; and a chips school co-founded by a US-sanctioned Chinese government semiconductor research institute. Top staff in China have said the joint campus aims to design and manufacture its own semiconductors.

...

The joint venture campus, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), was established in 2006 by the University of Liverpool and its partner institution, Xi’an Jiaotong University, a leading Chinese defence university that has supplied the Rocket Force of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and is supervised by China’s defence-industry ministry. Located in Suzhou, a city in Jiangsu province, XJTLU is the largest foreign joint venture university in China and one of many such joint campuses and institutes that have been formed in China with US, European, British, Australian and other foreign partners in recent decades.

...

The University of Liverpool is one of Britain’s top research universities. It is a member of the country’s prestigious Russell Group of research-intensive universities and receives defence, security and intelligence funding from Western governments. In September 2024, for example, the defence ministers of the US, Britain and Australia announced in an official AUKUS communique that the University of Liverpool was an inaugural winner of the AUKUS Electronic Warfare Innovation Prize Challenge.

...

XJTLU has become a research powerhouse, with around 25,000 students and 1,000 academic staff members. It houses several provincial and municipal key research institutes, including a national supercomputing centre, a robotics research institute, and an advanced semiconductor research institute that partners with smart-city company China Huaxin.

In 2024, XJTLU received funding from the PLA’s National University of Defense Technology for a research project called ‘Deep Learning-based Adversarial Sample Defense Technology for Communication Signal Modulation Recognition’. In 2025, an XJTLU research team set a new global record in an international competition in quantum-resistant cryptography. Researchers from the University of Liverpool also collaborate with XJTLU researchers on topics such as radar and autonomous driving.

...

In April 2025, XJTLU launched a research partnership with the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, one of seven Chinese supercomputing groups added to the US federal entity list in 2021 due to their involvement in China’s military modernisation efforts.

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XJTLU’s School of CHIPS, which focuses on research and development for advanced computing chips, was co-founded in 2019 by a Chinese government research institute, the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, that was placed on the US federal entity list in 2024 for acting against US national security and foreign policy interests. The dean of the XJTLU School of CHIPS, Wei Chen, said in 2024 his goal was for XJTLU to design and manufacture its own semiconductors.

...

Sugon, a Chinese supercomputer manufacturer that co-established XJTLU’s School of AI and Advanced Computing in 2018, was added to the US federal entity list in 2019 due to the ‘publicly acknowledged’ military end uses of its high-performance computers.

...

XJTLU also hosts a joint lab with iFlytek, a Chinese technology company added to the US federal entity list in 2019 for its role in the Chinese government’s high-tech surveillance regime targeting Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang region.

...

The University of Liverpool website, which has a dedicated page for the XJTLU partnership and related news, does not mention the China-Russia centre, XJTLU’s joint lab with iFlytek, XJTLU’s new partnership with the supercomputing centre in Wuxi, or the school’s aspirations to make its own semiconductors in China.

...

Britain itself has a range of sanctions targeting Russia, including some that prohibit the provision of professional and business services ‘to a person connected with Russia’ and which apply to ‘any UK persons anywhere.’ The British government also placed research and innovation sanctions on Russia in 2022. This included pausing British public funds being spent on projects ‘with a Russian dimension’ and ceasing collaborative projects with Russia. At that time the British government also commissioned an assessment to ‘isolate and freeze activities which benefit the Russian regime’.

...

In addition to its success in winning an inaugural AUKUS electronic-warfare innovation prize, the University of Liverpool has active grants from the European Commission and US government, including grants from the US Air Force and FBI.

...

The XJTLU China-Russia centre’s Russian co-director, Artem Semenov, is an adviser to the Moscow regional government and a member of the public advisory council of Rossotrudnichestvo, a humanitarian and cultural agency under the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The EU sanctioned Rossotrudnichestvo in 2022, describing it as ‘the main state agency projecting the Kremlin’s soft power and hybrid influence,’ adding that it acted as an ‘umbrella organization for a network of Russian compatriots and agents of influence, and it funds various public diplomacy and propaganda projects, consolidating the activities of pro-Russian players and disseminating the Kremlin’s narratives.’

...

A former Russian senator and current adviser to the Moscow regional government, Olga Zabralova, led the Russian government delegation that attended the centre’s launch. Zabralova is sanctioned by Britain, the US, the EU, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand and Monaco. She was a member of the Russian Federation Council that ratified the government’s decision to annex parts of occupied Ukraine. XJTLU hosted Zabralova and her delegation at X-Bar, the student activity and recreation centre.

...

In a written response to questions from ASPI, a University of Liverpool spokesperson said, ‘The University of Liverpool has no involvement in XJTLU’s Centre for China-Russia Humanitarian Cooperation and Development, nor with the companies mentioned ...’

...

Web archive link

France's DGSI counter-espionage agency ... took over a probe into a cyberattack on the national postal service after a pro-Russian group of hackers claimed responsibility, prosecutors said.

The attack ... disrupted several of La Poste's online services – including consumer banking and tracking registered mail – during the busy Christmas week.

La Poste said it was still delivering parcels and letters, but that, while things had improved slightly on Tuesday, "the situation remains unstable".

The cyberattack was claimed by Noname057(16), a pro-Russian group of hackers that has previously targeted Ukrainian media websites and government and corporate websites in countries including Poland, Sweden and Germany.

...

Still love the truck tho