cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/16332720

Merry Creamyshits

Archive link

A satirical sculptor from Düsseldorf has expressed bewilderment after Russian prosecutors charged him in a Moscow court with criminally defaming the country’s army.

Jacques Tilly, 62, is Germany’s most prominent designer of carnival floats and has spent 40 years creating outsized and grotesque papier-mâché models of figures including President Trump, Angela Merkel and Baroness May of Maidenhead.

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, his floats have repeatedly mocked President Putin’s brutality.

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This year’s float for the Düsseldorf carnival depicted Trump and Putin shaking hands, with President Zelensky crushed in their grip and haemorrhaging blood, along with the caption: “Hitler-Stalin pact 2.0”.

Previous editions have shown Putin choking on a map of Ukraine and posing naked alongside Trump and President Xi of China, with a gigantically enlarged scrotum emblazoned with the words “Make Russia great again”.

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Merry Christmas all! I hope you all have a fantastic day, whether or not you celebrate.

Thanks to everyone working over Christmas, keeping us safe or feeding everyone.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55588932

In advance, I was not sure where to post this; OffMyChest, NoStupidQuestions or here. Decided to do it here because it is mainly a question. However, I thought it do be better explaining it a little as well.

When I was younger, I could not really get the luxuries I wanted. Just like many others, my parents did not have heaps of wealth to spend. I did not have it bad, got a roof above my head, education, food and such. Parents would spend on luxuries if they could. My siblings usually bought the more expensive things (Atari, Nintendo, PS1 and PS2 etc). My parents did purchase PS4 and a decent gaming pc for me back in the day. One time my father told me ‘’if you just show that you are seriously studying and if money allows, I will get you anything in luxury. However, money is the boss’’ (money is the boss as in, only if we got enough money to spent for it and not get into financial issues).

Because of that I have learnt to live kind of frugal in terms of money (for myself). I find it hard to spend money on expensive things. It took months to purchase a great gaming PC and a Steam Deck (loving the heck of it though). However, spending money on my parents (mostly my mother) is no issue. I do it without a thinking, as long as I know it makes them happy.

Now, I always wanted a MacBook since I was a teenager. I can afford to get one, I saved up for it and will not have any financial issues. I budget ever since getting my job, everything is already set (saving up for car stuff, emergency funds for both myself and parents, pension saving and even saved up for new glasses for whenever that’s needed). Yet with all of that, I still feel not comfortable paying a lot for something that’s ‘’not necessary’’ and that’s just a ‘’luxury product’’. I feel like the money, I would spent for the MacBook could better be saved towards either emergency funds or car stuff (car theory exam, the car itself etc).

Now, I’m curious if other people deal (or have dealt) with this and what is this called? How to be more at ease with spending for fun instead of always being on edge.

Note: I checked the rules and it said this is not a support community but that seemed more related to tech-stuff. If it was also meant for this kind of question. Apologies, I will ask in another community.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7133997

I'm not the OOP, Woodfunnybird from r/tankiethedeprogram is and I think he talks of a Chinese national in Seattle

Lately I’ve seen a Chinese internet meme called “美国/北美斩杀线”, which literally reads like “U.S./North America kill line.” It sounds violent, but it’s mostly a gaming metaphor: in games, an “execute threshold” is the HP line below which you can finish someone off easily.

A popular Bilibili creator (nicknamed “Lao A” by viewers) helped push this meme into the mainstream by using it as a one-sentence model for economic fragility in the U.S./Canada:

below a certain “buffer,” a single small shock can trigger a cascade.

The “cascade” he describes is roughly:

• a minor injury / illness / accident happens

• costs and downtime hit at the same time

• missing one payment snowballs into fees, credit problems, or housing instability

• and once you’re “below the line,” climbing back out is much harder

He also talks (in a very memey, simplified way) about how modern life can be “stacked”: bills, notices, addresses, fines, deadlines, credit scoring, insurance rules—lots of small frictions that are manageable when you have savings and stability, but dangerous when you don’t.

To be clear: this is a meme framework, not an official term, and it can be exaggerated or one-sided. But I’m curious how it lands with people who live in the U.S./Canada:

TL;DR: Chinese netizens use “U.S. kill line” as a gaming metaphor for a point where one mishap can snowball into a major life downturn. A Bilibili creator popularized the framing, and I’m asking whether it resonates and what’s missing.

I searched it up in baidu and it seems like a legit thing to know on their internet

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44154827

While interviewing Malian refugees about alleged abuses by Russia’s newly deployed Africa Corps military unit, West Africa correspondent Monika Pronczuk and freelancer Caitlin Kelly encountered a teenage girl lying on the ground in a tent, visibly ill and barely responsive. Her family said she had been raped by Africa Corps fighters — and hadn’t received medical care because they couldn’t afford it.

Pronczuk and Kelly immediately connected the family with a Doctors Without Borders clinic offering free treatment. The girl’s story became the emotional and narrative center of the second installment in AP’s investigation into Africa Corps, this time focusing on sexual violence in the conflict-ravaged region of Mali, where Russian forces and the Malian government continue to target al-Qaida-linked militants.

Their reporting revealed disturbing new details about how women and girls are suffering in silence in areas where few international observers are allowed. The team spoke with multiple survivors and documented accounts that painted a broader picture of abuse by all sides in the conflict — but with particular focus on the conduct of Russian-aligned troops now operating under direct Kremlin control.

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Web archive link

Flying in Europe, it is about a 50/50 chance as to whether you get on the plane from a jet bridge or you take a bus to the plane parked on the tarmac. In contrast, most US airports have jet bridges, even when the plane is small unless it is a very small airport.

Why?

For more than two weeks, Orlov’s death, first rumoured online on 9 December, was the subject of intense speculation and debate. Kremlin-linked Russian news websites and independent outlets soon reported that Orlov was not killed on the battlefield in Ukraine, but was ambushed and shot at his home in Russian-annexed Crimea by Moscow’s own security services.

On Monday, Astra, an anti-war outlet operating in exile, published CCTV footage that it said showed the moments before Orlov was killed, with a group of armed Russian servicemen arriving outside his house, followed by the sound of gunshots. Astra reported that an ambulance only arrived to collect Orlov’s body six hours later.

Analysts say Orlov’s death reflects a broader, increasingly visible crackdown by the Kremlin on renegade ultranationalist figures and semi-autonomous armed groups as a result of the Wagner mutiny.

For much of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, the Russian state tolerated – and at times encouraged – radical formations that could mobilise fighters quickly and project uncompromising zeal. Units such as Española were useful militarily and ideologically, embodying a raw, street-level patriotism that complemented official propaganda.

Covid did this to me... 🙃

Also I have family members that are just like sometimes don't wash their hands after using the bathroom... so yea that really just triggers me...

Honestly this is probably kinda makes me a bit suicidal...

Which is ironic because the fear of germs is a fear of death...

but sometimes this fear is just so big I can't deal with it...

wtf...

so i yes, espeak exists and still sounds terrible even worse than picoTTS (last update 4 yrs ago?). so what else is there? i look at mimic3 and it says they are dead and one should go for piper here: https://github.com/MycroftAI/mimic3 the link to piper followed I get: https://github.com/rhasspy/piper "This repository was archived by the owner on Oct 6, 2025. It is now read-only. "

ok, so coqui? https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS no update in over 12 months..how bad can it be? https://coqui.ai/ ...great it is a page for gambling now.

so, what are you using? gTTS is not offline.

A former Tory councillor has appeared in court charged with drugging and raping his former wife over a period of 13 years.

Philip Young, 49, and five other men have been accused of more than 60 rapes and sexual offences against Joanne Young, 48. She can be named as the alleged victim because she has waived her right to anonymity, which would otherwise apply in such cases.

Young, who was described by police as white British, appeared at Swindon magistrates court on Tuesday charged with 56 offences, including multiple counts of rape and administering a substance with intent to stupefy his former spouse.

He is also accused of voyeurism, possession of indecent images of children and possession of extreme images.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6270906

Archived version

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While Brussels champions policy initiatives and American tech giants market their own ‘sovereign’ solutions, a handful of public authorities in Austria, Germany, and France, alongside the International Criminal Court in The Hague, are taking concrete steps to regain control over their IT.

These cases provide a potential blueprint for a continent grappling with its technological autonomy, while simultaneously revealing the deep-seated legal and commercial challenges that make true independence so difficult to achieve.

The core of the problem lies in a direct and irreconcilable legal conflict. The US CLOUD Act of 2018 allows American authorities to compel US-based technology companies to provide requested data, regardless of where that data is stored globally. This places European organizations in a precarious position, as it directly clashes with Europe's own stringent privacy regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/23384142

More info on this at

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

The company was bought by E.ON and the project was killed. At that time, there were working 450 Kilowatt prototypes (see the video). 450 Kilowatt is a power volume that took wind power plants over three decades (about from 1970 to 2000) to achieve.

The technology was then apparently copied by a Chinese company.