That rat is a lesbian btw

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/58895981

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/47258427

• The European Union is preparing options to embed Ukraine's membership in a future peace deal, including providing Kyiv with protection and access to membership rights.
• The bloc would give Ukraine a clear timeframe of steps to advance with the formal procedure, with other options including continuing along the existing accession path or introducing a transition period.
• A draft of Ukraine's peace plan anticipates EU membership in 2027, with Kyiv receiving some benefits of membership in the interim, as part of the discussion on a peace agreement.

...

The European Union is preparing a series of options to embed Ukraine’s membership in a future peace deal, according to people familiar with the matter.

The options under consideration include providing Kyiv up front with the protection that comes with EU accession as well as immediate access to some membership rights, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

At the same time, the bloc would give Ukraine a clear timeframe of steps that it needs to take to advance with the formal procedure, according to the people.

...

The EU is building on close links with candidate countries ahead of their accession. In the case of Ukraine, the bloc is already using such opportunities as part of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement, according to the spokesperson.

Kyiv was granted candidate status in 2022 after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and approval to begin accession talks at the end of 2023. Formal negotiations began in 2024 but the process has been stalled by Hungary which is blocking the opening of so-called negotiating chapters.

EU membership usually takes years and progress requires the backing of all member states.

...

As the Baltic News Network reports, the EU seeks to bypass Hungary's veto.

Archive link

[Edit for inserting the archived link.]

The European Parliament has given the green light to the first list of “safe countries of origin” whose citizens will no longer be able to seek asylum in the EU.

The list includes Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Kosovo, India, Morocco and Tunisia as well as EU candidate countries such as the Western Balkans nations, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.

Heineken currently has a global workforce of 87,000 and said last October that it would reorganise its Amsterdam headquarters with the loss of 400 jobs.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24577617

About 50 residents of a community outside Chile’s capital spent Saturday trying their best to power an entirely human-operated chatbot that could answer questions and make silly pictures on command, in a message to highlight the environmental toll of artificial intelligence data centers in the region.

Organizers say the 12-hour project fielded more than 25,000 requests from around the world.

Asking the Quili.AI website to generate an image of a “sloth playing in the snow” didn’t instantly produce an output, as ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini would. Instead, someone responded in Spanish to wait a few moments and reminded the user that a human was responding.

Then came a drawing about 10 minutes later: a penciled sketch of a cute and cartoonish sloth in a pile of snowballs, with its claws clutching one and about to throw it.

“The goal is to highlight the hidden water footprint behind AI prompting and encourage more responsible use,” said a statement from organizer Lorena Antiman of the environmental group Corporación NGEN.

Some Cubans say everyday life on the Caribbean island has reached a breaking point amid a fuel shortage brought about by the U.S. squeezing the country’s oil supply. Meanwhile, Canadian airlines suspended service to the island and are ferrying tourists back home.

"For me, any change for us will be better than what we are living through, because what we are experiencing is not humane," Isben Peralta told CBC News in a phone interview during a blackout.

"Some of us who have a little business have a bit to eat, but many, many, many people do not have it. It’s very, very bad."

Peralta lives in Ciego De Avila, in central Cuba, where he operates a small pizzeria out of his home. He says he's lucky — he still gets power a few hours per day, but says that's only because he lives near a location where fuel is delivered.

https://archive.is/ntaWE

Meanwhile, some of America’s close allies are distancing themselves from Trump. Already in 2026, the prime ministers of Canada and the UK have visited Beijing, seeking a hedge against an unpredictable US.

From within the Western camp, the starkest obituary for the pre-Trump world has come from Canada’s Mark Carney, who called the rules-based order a useful “fiction” that no longer works. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he said. “A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.”

the mush that I would get turned into by mommy GLaDOS

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50660303

China has built not only a military to coerce Taiwan, but an army of lawyers to intimidate and constrain it. In 2025, Beijing’s lawfare campaign shifted decisively from largely declaratory threats to active enforcement. The objective is not legal resolution but deterrence: raising the personal cost of engagement with Taiwan’s democracy and normalising coercion under the fig leaf of law.

Archived

According to Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, reported cases of Taiwanese citizens going missing, being detained for questioning, or having their personal freedom restricted rose from single-digit monthly figures in 2024 to double-digit figures throughout 2025. By late November, 221 cases had been reported to the Mainland Affairs Council and the Straits Exchange Foundation, compared with 55 across all of 2024.

[...]

This trend sits alongside a more overt legal escalation: Beijing’s move to ‘prosecute’ alleged Taiwanese ‘separatists’. Chinese authorities are increasingly simulating formal criminal process against named individuals outside their jurisdiction. This approach asserts an explicitly extraterritorial claim: that the Chinese Communist Party can investigate, list and punish Taiwanese citizens regardless of nationality, residence or international law. These actions are intended to chill political speech, constrain international engagement with Taiwan, and signal that support for Taiwanese democracy carries personal costs.

[...]

These actions are legally meaningless outside of China. But that is beside the point. As instruments of lawfare, they serve three purposes. First, they justify Beijing’s coercive measures under the guise of enforcing its own domestic laws. Second, they blur the boundary between lawful political expression and criminal behaviour thereby raising perceived legal risk for journalists, activists and influencers. Third, they reinforce Beijing’s narrative that Taiwan’s democracy itself is a hostile disinformation actor, rather than a legitimate political system.

For policymakers, the implication is clear. Lawfare is no longer a supporting domain of effort in Beijing’s Taiwan strategy; it is a central instrument of pressure. Recognising and responding to this shift, through clearer diplomatic signalling, coordinated responses to transnational repression, and support for Taiwan’s legal resilience, will be essential to managing cross-strait stability in the years ahead.

[...]

How efficient would it be to build gigantic dipping turkeys next to lakes and oceans for power? I am legitimately curious about what practical problems this proposal would have. Does the device just break apart at that scale?

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