cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/61661402

China is moving to approve a sweeping law to promote what it calls “ethnic unity,” a measure that critics say would further erode the rights of some minority groups as authorities cement a push toward assimilation.

Academics and observers say the new provision represents a setback for the identity of ethnic minorities because it mandates the use of Mandarin Chinese in compulsory education, among other things.

I'm not asking about the ethics of lying, or whether lawyers may be justified in lying. That is beside the point. I am just asking: hypothetically, would it be possible for a lawyer to have a successful career while never uttering so much as a white lie?

Like, let's say the lawyer had some sort of spell cast on them, so they could never lie. If someone were to ask them a question, they'd either need to find a way to avoid answering or answer honestly. Would it be possible for a lawyer in such circumstances to still go on and have a successful career?

we’ve grown out of our infancy

We all know that states are formed by people, but relationships are different between people and states. When a bully shows up to your neighborhood, or you find yourself in a toxic relationship, or someone goes on a racist rant, you act to stop them. You're making a decision that is both moral and expedient. But states do not act this way.

We often try to explain why China doesn't intervene, or why Venezuela didn't fight back as fiercely as Iran is doing now, and we are mistakenly attributing to states what we would do as people. States are not moral actors, they seek expedience. Said another way, states should do what is pragmatic, what is in their interests. Whose interests? ''The people!'', many will exclaim. But what people? And that will give you the answer to whom operates and whom is served by the state. For states like China and Venezuela, their primary concern are their people, because their governments are operated by and serve them. But in the case of every state that adopts bourgeois democracy, the state serves capital, not their people.

When the West (from here meaning every bourgeois democracy) does anything, it thinks about shareholders, the next election cycle, and myopic minutiae, that are expedient to them. Their concerns are not with their people because often times there is no people, only a Thatcherite nightmare of individuals. These eldritch solipsists exist because of capital, and a small fraction of them, which owns the most capital, are the people of those states. That sanctimonious and nauseating phrase, ''We the people'', often expelled by hogs, is not referring to them, but to the pigsty owners. Everyone already knows who wrote that damned constitution that became the basis for many states in the West. That is what enshrines capital and condemns their peoples. Only those closest in proximity to the hallowed halls of capital are people, the rest are expendable and exist to serve them.

With the ''nature'' of Western states out of the way, I'll return to the main topic. When a state's prime directive, to tickle some trekkies in our community (I learned about this concept from the Star Ocean series, the UP3-Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact), is to do what is expedient for its people it may take actions that are questionable. I've seen 2 US secretaries visit Miraflores in Venezuela and the reopening of diplomatic relations after they were invaded, 100+ killed, and their president and his beloved wife, kidnapped. I am still pissed about this at a human level, but the state of Venezuela has to think about 2 things right now: returning Nico and Cilita, which requires diplomatic exchanges, and the continuation of the Bolivarian Republic. This is not what I would have done, nor you, but this is what a state has to do. To go out in flames of kamikaze glory, or save people from further harm. That was the calculus. If somebody broke into our house and kidnapped our loved ones, and then urged us to negotiate in their terms, I think many of us would go postal. The state can take the L's that we can't. It can think in terms of centuries, of battles it can ''lose'', but wars it can win. We don't have the benefit of transcendence that the state does, because we're immanent to it. But that very immanence means that the state continues to exist so long as its people do. That is why the preservation of people is essential to the state and why that decision was made in Venezuela.

In the CPC's case, their main concern is the development of their people. This will supersede superstructural differences that China might have with hellholes like isn'treal and the US. Because at a human level we would not trade nor have diplomatic relations with these assholes. Having said this, I will argue that the exchange lost from breaking relations with openly hostile entities at a state level is doable, if you're a self-reliant state like China. Because it would be both principled and expedient. It will serve humanity to cut ties with the West and allow those states to weaken or collapse as their peoples rise up, and it must be understood that all the oil and resources we sell to the West will be used against us in the Global South. So become self-reliant and unite, that will be our most peaceful form of resistance. I hope many are taking notes from Iran, and their magisterial strategic display. Long live the free peoples of the world.

Venceremos!

The Apple MacBook Neo's $599 starting price is a "shock" to the Windows PC industry, according to an Asus executive.

Hsu said he believes all the PC players—including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD—take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. "In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product," he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year.

Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop's 8GB of "unified memory," or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can't upgrade it.

Lack of public appearances prompted speculation about new leader’s mortality after multiple family members died

The confirmation that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was injured in the first wave of Israeli attacks underlines how desperate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (ICRG) was to ensure their wounded choice was elevated to high office, and how confident it is that the wartime machinery can operate almost on automatic pilot without him.

The full scale of Khamenei’s injuries and speed of his recovery remain unclear, but a broken leg and facial injuries are the minimum. It is not a medical bulletin on which the authorities are seeking to dwell, although Ali Larijani, the secretary of the supreme national security council, chose his words carefully in saying “his condition has not been reported as critical”, a phrasing that suggests he has not personally seen him.

Three cargo vessels have been hit by "unknown projectiles" in the Strait of Hormuz, maritime authorities say, as pressure intensifies on one of the world's most important shipping lanes.

Traffic through the strait - a vital corridor for oil - has fallen sharply since Israel and the US attacked Iran in late February, sending global energy prices soaring.

Iran said it unleashed another volley of retaliatory attacks across the Gulf on Wednesday, with targets including a major oilfield in Saudi Arabia and drones falling near Dubai International Airport.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/26942609

More info on the Queensland laws: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/mar/05/queensland-pro-palestinian-phrase-ban-river-to-sea-laws-ntwnfb

What is everyone's thoughts on holding parents liable for damages caused by a minor, in particular when committing a criminal act? I think it would give an incentive to know what their children are doing at night.

Everyone in tel-aviv talks like they just moved there from brooklyn

Update

Forgejo seemed to be the winning answer so I tried setting it up. Total setup time was less than 10 minutes. I pushed 10 repositories to test it out and so far it seems pretty good. Thank you everyone for the answers!

As the title states, I am looking to host maybe ~100 git repositories locally on my home network.

I'm not planning on doing anything too crazy with my repositories. The solution doesn't need to support like 1000s of contributors however it should support the most basic features such as being able to see individual commits, branches, diffs, maybe some PR related mechanism, a web GUI, etc.

I don't like to tinker too much. The solution should work and be stable. Stability is a hard requirement. I want to write code and not have to worry about losing it. Yes I will make backups.

Please let me know what some of the best options are at the moment. Thank you!

Now, 404 Media reports that Quittr leaked data about hundreds of thousands of users' masturbation habits as well as lied about its security issues.

In a sensational turn of events in the fight against Chat Control, a majority in the European Parliament voted today to end the untargeted mass scanning of private communications. In doing so, the Parliament firmly rejected the error-prone and unconstitutional surveillance practices of recent years. Pressure is now mounting on EU governments to respect the MEPs’ vote and bury untargeted mass surveillance in Europe once and for all.

Tens of thousands of residents and tourists have left UAE since the US and Israel started bombing Iran two weeks ago, leaving beach bars, malls and hotels eerily empty

Update: budget(200-600), the reason for the build is I found cheap 4tb drives for almost $10/Terabyte. So I want to use as much of them as I can

I am trying to build my final NAS build as a beginner.

I have a 6x4tb dell server, but it's not enough.

I am currently trying to build the final boss of my nasses. 4x16tb with truenas with raid

I am unsure of what parts to buy as I am a complete beginner.

I found a case that can hold all 14 drives.

I need a motherboard, CPU, ram, PSU

I am on a budget, kind of.

What motherboard do you recommend? Pulled from a workstations with CPU and ram? A server board? Normal consumer with normal consumer CPU? Motherboard should have some pcie slots for 2 sata cards and one 2.5 GB card.

What CPU to run all these drives?

What ram and how much? 16? 32? Ecc, non ecc? Ddr4? Ddr3?

Power supply: 850w or more?

All parts should be able to support the 16 drives with headroom...

I would appreciate any help on this build, I want to build this as soon as possible.

Thanks

Am I the only one that thinks it’s strange that the US hasn’t attacked Mojtaba Khamenei? I thought that they were threatening to remove any leader previously associated with the regime.

Am I missing something?

I think this is not directly politics but rather a discussion on nitrates so have posted here.

A selection of key quotes from the article:

Greenpeace is calling on the government to drastically cut the legal limit of nitrates in drinking water as the Danish government moves to drop its legal limit by almost 90 percent.

The Danish government plans to lower its limit to just over one milligram of nitrate-nitrogen per litre (mg/L) of drinking water, a steep drop from its current limit of 11.3mg/L.

New Zealand's current legal limit for nitrates in drinking water is 11.3 mg/L, but there was growing evidence of health impacts at levels as low as 1mg/L.

"The Danish government aren't operating off a secret playbook or anything, they don't know anything we don't know. They're just following the scientific evidence and choosing to prioritise people's health. Meanwhile, our government is burying its head in the sand," Appelbe said.

The panel's report quoted 2023 University of Copenhagen research, which found lowering nitrate contamination would save 2.2 billion Kroner ($580m NZD) by preventing approximately 127 cases of bowel cancer per year linked to the current nitrate levels.

Appelbe said the government was more concerned with protecting dairy industry profits than human health and he called for reductions in the size of the dairy herd, an end to ongoing dairy expansions and limits to the use of nitrate fertiliser.

Rural communities were disproportionately affected and faced considerable costs installing filters to make their water drinkable, he said.

"We need, as a country, to have a grown-up conversation about nitrate contamination in drinking water - the evidence is pretty overwhelming on what's causing it and there's a growing body of evidence that links risks to human health."

Appelbe said the current limit of 11.3mg/L is based on World Health Organisation guidance from the 1960s to avoid Blue Baby Syndrome, an acute illness that could affect babies.

A 2025 GNS Science research paper estimated there could be more than 21,200 people drinking water above the legal limit of 11.3 mg/L and 101,000 people drinking water above half that (5.65mg/L) across rural New Zealand.

The authors found Waikato, Canterbury and Southland were disproportionately affected by elevated levels of nitrate

Public health specialists had long advocated to lower the nitrate limit, primarily based on international research linking low levels of nitrate (5mg/L) with pre-term birth and colorectal cancer (0.87mg/L).

New research from Australia's Edith Cowan University and the Danish Cancer Research Institute found a link to early-onset dementia as low as 1.2mg/L with nitrates from processed meat and drinking water posing a higher risk, while nitrates from vegetables were associated with a lower risk.

Canterbury's dairy herd has increased by about 1000 percent since 1990 to well over a million cows.

Between 1990 and 2022, Southland's dairy herd increased by 1668 percent from 38,000 to 668,000 cows.