The US has once again changed the status of terrorists of its own creation to open allies with the head of Al Qaeda in Syria (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham aka Jabhat al-Nusra), Abu Mohammed al-Jolani (now “Ahmed al-Sharaa”) recent visit to the White House;

The new narrative includes US-al-Jolani cooperation to “fight” the so-called Islamic State, a pretext to maintain US military forces in Syria well into the future, ensuring the survival of the nascent terrorist-led client regime;

The narrative change reflects past US pivots where Al Qaeda was hailed as “heroes” during their war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s before being rebranded as terrorists turning them into a convenient, global pretext for US military interventions from Africa to Asia and everywhere in between (including Afghanistan);

Having used Al Qaeda and its subsidiaries/adjacent organizations including the so-called “Islamic State,” as both proxies and a pretext to invade, occupy, and overthrow both the Iraqi government from 2003-present and Syria from 2014-present, the organization and its leadership including al-Jolani, are being transformed into open allies of the US for use in a much larger campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran, and Iranian-friendly militias across Iraq;

The US also plans on employing its state-sponsored terrorists-turned-allies to export terrorism targeting Russia and China’s peripheries;

This includes thousands of Uyghur extremists the US exported to Syria and now plan on redeploying across Eurasia to target Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure as well as China itself;

Grenfell United and the TV architect George Clarke are calling on businesses and homeowners to take a “moral decision” and boycott the companies criticised in the Grenfell inquiry for “systematic dishonesty”.

Clarke, best known for his series George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, said he had made the decision not to use products from Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex, three companies that were heavily criticised in the findings of the Grenfell inquiry published last year and who have continued to deny wrongdoing.

He lives close to the tower block in west London where 72 people were killed by the 2017 blaze which was fuelled by combustible insulation and cladding that did not comply with regulations.

Inside a dim locker room at the Nablus municipal stadium, in the occupied West Bank, the television rarely goes dark, streaming day and night the relentless news from Gaza. Gathered in front of it are a group of men from Khan Younis. For more than two years, they have lived in this stadium converted into a refugee camp, their lives suspended between exile and the war they watched on a screen.

They are mostly construction workers who were in Israel on the morning of 7 October 2023 when Hamas launched its attack. As Israel rounded up Palestinians from Gaza, they fled to the West Bank, where they remain – cut off from wives and children living in makeshift tents inside the strip. With very few exceptions, civilians are not currently allowed in or out of Gaza.

“They killed my nephew and his two children,” says Baker Majjar, 37, who before the conflict split his time between a month in Gaza and a month working on construction sites in Tamra, in north-eastern Israel. “They were seeking food at an aid distribution point near Khan Younis. I’ve lost more than a hundred people – relatives and friends – to Israeli attacks since the war began. Then I stopped counting.”

European countries proposed a radical alternative Ukraine peace plan on Sunday that omits some of the pro-Russia points made in the original US-backed document and calls for Kyiv’s sovereignty to be respected.

The counter-proposal emerged as US, Ukrainian and international negotiators met in Switzerland. The 28-point US document leaked last week demands Ukraine hand over territory to Russia, limits the size of its army and agrees not to pursue the Kremlin for alleged war crimes.

Having been blindsided by Washington’s initiative, Ukraine’s European allies published their Kyiv-friendly plan on Sunday. It says negotiations over territory should take place after a ceasefire is agreed and should start from the line of contact – the existing frontline.

It says both parties would agree how any truce would be monitored “under US supervision”. Unlike the White House text, the European alternative does not call for Kyiv to withdraw from cities it controls in eastern Donbas. Nor does it rule out Ukraine’s membership of Nato, but points out there is no consensus over its membership.

• A recent study in Thailand finds that raising native tree seedlings inside repurposed bottle crates improves performance compared to standard methods in community-run nurseries.
• Saplings grown in bottle crates had better root formation and superior growth when planted out in a deforested site, thanks to better air circulation for the roots.
• Crating the saplings also saved on labor costs, which more than offset the cost of purchasing the crates.
• Adoption of the new method could improve the quality of saplings grown in community nurseries, a benefit for reforestation projects where sapling survival is key to success.

archived (Wayback Machine)

They bloom at night, this was the first one (on the full moon) and hand-pollinated since there aren't many pollinators at night. Looks like it worked since the fruit is developing.

https://amazonrestore.codeberg.page/volunteer/finca-del-soul/

(Selenicereus megalanthus)

Israel carried out an airstrike on a southern Beirut suburb on Sunday, saying it killed Hezbollah’s chief of staff Haytham Ali Tabtabai and warning the Iran-backed militant group not to rearm and rebuild a year after their latest war.

The strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed five people and wounded 25 others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.

Hezbollah did not immediately comment. Earlier, it said the strike, launched almost exactly a year after a ceasefire ended that Israel-Hezbollah war, threatened an escalation of attacks — just days before Pope Leo XIV is scheduled to visit Lebanon on his first foreign trip.

“We will continue to act forcefully to prevent any threat to the residents of the north and the state of Israel,” Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

In tweaking its chatbot to appeal to more people, OpenAI made it riskier for some of them. Now the company has made its chatbot safer. Will that undermine its quest for growth?

Grok is it true pirates drank grog?

I am playing TTRPG remotely. For this, I was using far.app, a js app, which permit to link Game Master and Players in order to share Character sheets, dice roles, some index cards (set up as a "scene").

Would you know an open-source software that I could self-host to basically have a board with multiple users at once.

Somebody told me that hand buzzers are ableist so I need to head to the joke store and stock up on something else. Should I get fake boogers?

just me and my pals tho I'm always looking for more friends

Hey all! I'm watching LA Kings play in a few days and I want to watch some old matches online so I can get used to how the matches play out. What are some good ones I can watch online?

While some were released in the ceasefire, Israel still holds 80 Palestinian medical workers without charge. Their families are demanding their freedom.