All of this—doling out relatively cheap dress shoes to a group of people disproportionately populated by billionaires, signing the boxes, inspiring fear of reprisal for wearing your own wingtips instead—is strange enough. Stranger still, though, is that the shoes (in some cases, very obviously) do not fit.

I'm all of the above (gay, bi, trans, gnome)

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/7731699

Archived version

Days of tension grip the Mediterranean, where an environmental disaster looms. In the Sicily Channel, the Russian methane tanker Arctic Metagaz drifts helplessly: a 277-meter colossus carrying over 60,000 tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and, according to reports, 900 tons of diesel fuel.

A genuine ticking time bomb that, if it were to explode, would cause a catastrophe. The vessel currently sits about 26 nautical miles from Linosa and roughly 39 from Lampedusa.

...

The Arctic Metagaz methane tanker, which departed February 24 from Murmansk, Russia, was struck in the Mediterranean by a series of explosions occurring between March 3 and 4. Maltese authorities intervened promptly to rescue the crew of about 30 people, but the damaged cargo vessel remained without control.

...

The Arctic Metagaz is reportedly part of the so-called “Russian shadow fleet,” a network of oil and methane tankers (operating through shell companies) used to transport Russian hydrocarbons while circumventing Western sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine.

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As confirmed by Lampedusa and Linosa Mayor Filippo Mannino, the Italian Navy is monitoring the drifting cargo ship’s situation along with an anti-pollution vessel and a tugboat. Meanwhile, Maltese authorities have issued a navigation warning, recommending that vessels maintain at least a 5-mile distance from the drifting Arctic Metagaz.

In the event of a spill of 60,000 tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and 900 tons of diesel fuel, the scenario would be dramatic for the Mediterranean ecosystem, already compromised by plastic pollution and global warming. It would be extremely difficult to truly contain the damage from an environmental disaster of this magnitude.

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Twenty-one people, including a 60-year-old British tourist, have been charged under the United Arab Emirates’ cybercrime laws for filming and sharing videos of Iranian missile and drone attacks, according to an organization that provides legal assistance to those arrested in the UAE.

Send this to all your baby leftist friends that insist this is Israel's war.

Today I was scrolling through the Reddit and I saw a lot of posts about how democrats are the best socialistic party and centrism is the best ideology. What should we do to achieve leftism through democrat centrism?

this is the promise of socialism

The defense secretary has disparaged restrictive rules for opening fire that are aimed at reducing the risk of mistakes and civilian casualties.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made contempt for what he calls “stupid rules of engagement” — limits meant to reduce risks to civilians — central to his political identity, and has boasted that he unleashed the military to use “maximum authorities on the battlefield” in the Iran war.

“Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly,” Mr. Hegseth said at a briefing four days after the war started. “Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it.”

This and similar statements are now the backdrop to a body of evidence that the destruction of an Iranian elementary school during the opening hours of the war was likely caused by an American missile strike. The preliminary finding of an ongoing military investigation has determined that the United States was responsible, The New York Times has reported.

The destruction of the school, which coincided with an attack on an adjacent Iranian naval base, killed about 175 civilians, most of them children, according to Iranian officials.

MBFC
[Archive] (soon, fingers crossed)

🎁 gift link article.

Restaurants in India are suffering the consequences of disruptions to supplies of cooking gas caused by the war in the Middle East. Two restaurant owners describe the mounting challenges of operating under the crisis and the measures they’re taking to adapt.

As Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has effectively drawn Ukraine into his domestic fight for reelection, his main competitor has found himself in a tricky situation.

Peter Magyar, a 44-year-old former insider in Orban's Fidesz party, has pledged to mend ties with European partners, ending an era of obstructionism that has often hampered assistance to Ukraine.

His Tisza party has also taken aim at the Hungarian government's tilt toward Moscow and vowed to undo the growing dependence on Russian energy.

When it comes to Ukraine, however, Magyar has been walking a fine line, promising constructive relations, yet criticizing President Volodymyr Zelensky's jabs directed at Orban and the country's desire for a fast-track EU accession.

MBFC
Archive

German chancellor says decision is wrong and that pressure on Putin over Ukraine war should be increased

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has issued a sharp rebuke to the US government over its decision to temporarily lift sanctions on the sale of Russian oil in the wake of sharply rising energy prices, saying the decision was wrong.

He was reacting to Washington’s decision to temporarily waive sanctions on Russian oil stranded at sea as Trump administration officials attempt to reverse a surge in prices that is causing mounting apprehension about global supplies.

“We believe it is wrong to ease the sanctions,” Merz said on Friday morning.

“Unfortunately, Russia continues to show no willingness to negotiate. We will therefore, and must, further increase the pressure on Moscow.”

Merz insisted that support for Ukraine should continue despite the conflict in the Middle East, saying: “We will not allow ourselves to be deterred or distracted from this by the war with Iran.”

MBFC
Archive

..."This is what we call Agentic Blabbering: the AI Browser exposing what it sees, what it believes is happening, what it plans to do next, and what signals it considers suspicious or safe."

By intercepting this traffic between the browser and the AI services running on the vendor's servers and feeding it as input to a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), Guardio said it was able to make Perplexity's Comet AI browser fall victim to a phishing scam in under four minutes.

. . .

"If you can observe what the agent flags as suspicious, hesitates on, and more importantly, what it thinks and blabbers about the page, you can use that as a training signal," Chen explained. "The scam evolves until the AI Browser reliably walks into the trap another AI set for it."

saving the world instead of like me one patient at a time.