My kneejerk reaction was “it’s not going to do much” too, but I’ve kind of mulled it over and I’m kind of inclined to feel more charitable towards the Portland stuff.

What did the Trump administration want when it was sending National Guard out? Images of conflict, material that they could use to show that there was some dire threat and dangerous criminality that the administration was handling. They got footage of a frog air-humping and some nude bicyclists that’s basically useless for that.

Looking at Fox News’s front page, they have:

• Emergency flights diverted from Portland hospital amid ‘laser party’ threats at ICE facility: report

and

• Portland mayor orders removal of police tape despite federal demand for perimeter at ICE facility, report says

Which I think even the most die-hard MAGA fan is going to have a hard time getting too worked up over.

And it did accomplish some of the goals that a protest in that it helped build make visible that there were people who did object to what was going on.

I’m not sure that it was the absolute, optimal thing to do, but it might have been reasonably-canny.

This shit should really be illegal.

I suspect that if you mandated human support for unpaid services that the Threadiverse wouldn’t exist.

Scrap metal was commonly used as a raw material by PMT, according to the Indonesian outlet Antara News. It’s unclear how it may have become contaminated with cesium-137. Biegalski, whose area of expertise includes nuclear forensics, told CR that the “easiest explanation” is that a medical or industrial device containing cesium-137 was inadvertently reprocessed as scrap metal

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

The Goiânia accident [ɡoˈjɐ̃njə] was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, in Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil, after an unsecured radiotherapy source was stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths. About 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination and 249 of them were found to have been contaminated.[1][2]

The radiation source in the Goiânia accident was a small capsule containing about 93 grams (3.3 oz) of highly radioactive caesium chloride (a caesium salt) made with the radioactive isotope caesium-137, and encased in a shielding canister made of lead and steel.

On September 13, 1987, the guard tasked with protecting the site did not show up for work. Roberto dos Santos Alves and Wagner Mota Pereira illegally entered the partially demolished IGR site.[7] They partially disassembled the teletherapy unit and placed the source assembly in a wheelbarrow to later take to Roberto’s home. They thought they might get some scrap value for the unit.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Juárez_cobalt-60_contamination_incident

A radioactive contamination incident occurred in 1984 in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, originating from a radiation therapy unit purchased by a private medical company and subsequently dismantled for lack of personnel to operate it. The radioactive material, cobalt-60, ended up in a junkyard, where it was sold to foundries that inadvertently melted it with other metals and produced about 6,000 tons of contaminated rebar.[1] These were distributed in 17 Mexican states and several cities in the United States. It is estimated that 4,000 people were exposed to radiation as a result of this incident.[1]

Detection of radioactive material

On January 16, 1984, a radiation detector at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S. state of New Mexico detected the presence of radioactivity in the vicinity. The detector went on because a truck carrying rebar produced by Achisa had taken an accidental detour and passed through the entrance and exit gate of the laboratory’s LAMPF technical area.

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

A radiation accident occurred in Samut Prakan Province, Thailand in January–February 2000. The accident happened when an insecurely stored unlicensed cobalt-60 radiation source was recovered by scrap metal collectors who, together with a scrapyard worker, subsequently dismantled the container, unknowingly exposing themselves and others nearby to ionizing radiation. Over the following weeks, those exposed developed symptoms of radiation sickness and eventually sought medical attention. The Office of Atomic Energy for Peace (OAEP), Thailand’s nuclear regulatory agency, was notified when doctors came to suspect radiation injury, some 17 days after the initial exposure. The OAEP sent an emergency response team to locate and contain the radiation source, which was estimated to have an activity of 15.7 terabecquerels (420 Ci), and was eventually traced to its owner. Investigations found failure to ensure secure storage of the radiation source to be the root cause of the accident, which resulted in ten people being hospitalized for radiation injury, three of whom died, as well as the potentially significant exposure of 1,872 people.[1]

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

The theft of radioactive material in Tammiku, often called the Tammiku nuclear accident, took place in 1994. Three brothers in Tammiku, Männiku, Saku Parish (Harju County), Estonia, who were scrap metal scavengers, entered a fenced area in the woods and broke into a small shed that was seemingly abandoned (after having had no success with entering a larger building inside the area), with stairs leading to an underground hall. The brothers did not know that the buildings were nuclear waste storage facilities (although there were signs at the gate, they did not see them because they had climbed over the fence elsewhere). One of the brothers, Ivan, suffered a crush injury when a drum fell onto him. The brothers placed some pieces of metal into their pockets and went home, planning to return later. Ivan placed a metal cylinder in his pocket, not knowing that it was a strong caesium-137 radioactive source that was released from a container broken by the falling drum.[1] He received a 4,000 rad whole-body dose and died 12 days later.[2] Only after Ivan’s family’s dog died, and Ivan’s stepson showed radiation burn of his hands (as a result of briefly touching the cylinder), was the cause of Ivan’s death identified. The delay in information was due to the brothers’ reluctance to admitting to the break-in.[3]

While we’ve often — not always — managed to label radiation sources, in general, people scrapping metal stuff, often stealing it, haven’t done the best job of understanding or following related rules.

The pharmaceutical variant has a strictly controlled presence of DEG, if any, unlike the cheaper commercial kind, which has far higher levels of the compound, making it unfit for human consumption. Manufacturers, knowingly or unknowingly, use commercial-grade PG when making cough syrups to cut costs.

Known as the “pharmacy of the world”, India accounted for 3 per cent of the world’s total pharmaceutical exports in 2023. It is particularly known for exporting affordable drugs, especially to Africa and other developing regions.

In May 2023, following the scandals abroad, the CDSCO mandated a testing protocol for cough syrups in designated Indian laboratories before export.

But no such testing was mandated for the domestic market, which has many small manufacturers producing low-cost medicines. It has now asked all state governments to submit a list of cough syrup manufacturers, while initiating a joint audit of these companies.

The failure to prevent repeated cough syrup scandals has also brought up a whiff of alleged corruption. Mr Sukesh Khajuria, a public health activist who has been helping families of the 2019-20 victims in and around Jammu seek justice, alleged that the Indian government had failed to rein in corruption within the country’s drug regulatory set-up.

“Pharma companies have hidden partnerships with the party in power,” he claimed.

A 2024 report published on Scroll, an Indian online news website, said that 35 pharmaceutical companies in India had contributed nearly 10 billion rupees (S$146.4 million) to political parties. Of these, at least seven companies were being investigated for poor-quality drugs when they made their contributions.

Well. If the state doesn’t fix it from a licensing side, I guess it’d be possible for a company to fill the gap. Like, certify drug manufacturers.

The difference between certification and licensing is that a certifier can’t prohibit a company from doing business if it isn’t certified. But…it does mean that a purchaser, at least as long as they know what certification to look for, can look for a given certification.

You can make a certification company that places any restrictions it wants to certify a product or company, so that eliminates roadblocks to getting that side of things moving. 'course, the certifier has to build reputation for the certification to mean much.

I mean, yelling at UPS seems kind of unreasonable. Trump put the new system into place without a lead time for getting shippers to set up a system to handle all this, and I saw plenty of parties saying that this was going to lead to chaos. Sure enough…

I remember reading some articles about people waiting for their Framework Desktop machines shipped via Fedex getting frustrated at them being held up in customs too.

Ehhhh. I mean, I broadly agree that tariffs are not a good idea, and for China, even untargeted tariffs. And end of the day, this is bullshit political theater.

However, it’s not crazy to decouple from China, particularly for a number of important goods. It’s probably not a wildly-unreasonable expectation that economic pressure will be used more in future conflicts than in the past, given the global nature of the economies and the longer supply chains. Like, concerns over that aren’t something that Trump just pulled up.

All that being said, if he actually goes through with this and holds this in place, I think that it’s going to be interesting to see how well the public takes it. These are effectively large consumption taxes. Sure, that’s great if you’re wealthy, because those are regressive, but they’re going to suck if you’re poor, and a major part of the reason that the public voted for Trump was because of upset over inflation under Biden.

So, this is from a couple months back, talking about his earlier tariff packages:

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/15/nx-s1-5467331/trump-tariffs-low-income-households

President Trump has argued that his “America First” trade policy is intended to balance what he feels is an unfair global trade scheme that hurts U.S. workers.

As things stand, there’s a 10% tariff on almost everything the U.S. imports, though there are some exceptions. On goods from China, there’s a 30% tariff rate. Last year, China was the third largest source of imported goods to the U.S.

Tariffs are a kind of tax that hit poorer households more than higher earning ones

Tedeschi said most U.S. taxes, especially federal taxes, are progressive.

“That means that they pinch higher income families more than they do lower income families,” Tedeschi said. “Our income tax is a great example of that. When we run the numbers on tariffs, we find that that’s the opposite.”

According to the Budget Lab’s analysis of Trump’s tariffs, prices would rise by more than 2%. Tedeschi said that could lead to an almost 4% drop in purchasing power of lower-income families, costing them about $1,500 annually.

I mean, you ramp tariffs up, you’re ramping up taxes on the poor. Okay, sure, Trump has worked at framing this as “China paying taxes, not you” or “standing up for America”. But you can’t hide the prices that people wind up paying in stores.

And I’m pretty sure that consumer good prices are — though not obviously linked to taxes — pretty visible, because we look at them a lot. Like why gasoline prices matter a lot, because there are signs with them all over. If you pay a tax at the end of the year, you see a number once. If prices are up, you’re constantly looking at higher price tags.

I kind of suspect that it’s not safety driving his concern — this isn’t exactly something that would warrant state-level concern — but I do think that it’s a bad precedent to be modifying street markings for political reasons.

• I doubt that this particular incident is likely all that risky, but if it becomes normalized to modify street markings, someone sooner or later is going to do something that they think is clever and really does muck up drivers.

• This stuff goes both ways. If you have the left modifying street markings and it’s let stand, it’s not as if streets are some sort of left-exclusive forum. You can be pretty sure that if this sort of thing is let stand, then the right is going to do so too. I’m pretty confident that if someone started painting anti-LGBTQ markings on streets, plenty of people here would be pretty unhappy. I don’t really want political discourse to wind up being who is willing to throw more graffiti down.

It should be possible to find plenty of places in Austin that are okay with putting up signs or murals — things that aren’t street markings — that are pro-LGBT messages. That avoids the whole issue that they’re arguing over.

kagis

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/08/inclusive-church-turns-hateful-graffiti-into-pride-mural-we-make-beautiful-things-out-of-the-dust/

After an LGBTQ±inclusive church in Austin, Texas, was vandalized on Thursday, the community came together to transform the act of hate into something beautiful.

The vandals tore down the Pride flag at Life in the City UMC and graffitied “Pride was the 1st sin” on the front of the building. Afterward, volunteers joined the church for a “creative restoration project” to transform the graffiti into a mural featuring two Progress Pride flags flanking the church doorway.

I really think that this is a better approach if one wants to put out a message.

EDIT: Also, on purely-pragmatic grounds, I suspect that the road surface is probably about the most wear-heavy place to paint something. Like, paint something on a wall, and it doesn’t have vehicle tires tearing it up and requiring frequent repainting to look decent.

EDIT2: You can even see a mural on a building about ten feet behind the rainbow crosswalk in the article’s picture. Which one looks in better condition to you, the crosswalk or the mural?

Hmm. I think that it’s hard to find games that really stand up on their own, and haven’t had been outclassed in the intervening 35 years. I can think of a lot of games that I enjoyed then, but that’s when they were competing against 1980s games and technology. Honestly, you got some of the ones that I’d have suggested, like Tetris and Pac-Man, and even there…I mean, original Tetris is perfectly playable, but I’d probably recommend Tetris Effect: Connected to a new player. Might as well have the extra glitz.

considers

Shmups have generally gotten more fast-moving and bullet-hell oriented. If you prefer slower shmups, you might enjoy playing 1942 or 1943: The Battle of Midway.

I agree with @emb@lemmy.world that Super Mario Brothers 3 for the NES is pretty decent, though I’ve never played fully through the game. Side-view platformers really did have their heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s, and that was a strong game.

kagis

These guys show marketshare of video game genres by year; platformers were really big in the 1980s:

https://savvystatistics.com/video-game-genres-by-year-1980-2016/

The arcade Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989) is probably fun if you can get some friends together. Probably need to emulate it with MAME or similar. I don’t think that the beat-em-up genre has changed all that much or seen many entrants since.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jLO1upcd8w

The Simpsons would be a stronger arcade beat-em-up recommend, but that’s 1991, a bit out of your timeframe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNpuIHbK3-I

Arcades really peaked in the 1980s, before home console systems and computers started cutting into them. There were some things that arcade games were better at than computers and consoles, like having custom-to-a-game input hardware. If you are willing to get ahold of some arcade-style hardware, like an arcade-style joystick (US-style Happ, or Japanese-style Sanwa), you could play some games that were designed around having a full-size arcade joystick.

There are trackball and spinner games as well.

I think that light gun games are out, unless you’re willing to obtain a CRT. Maybe someone’s made something that can deal with LCD/LED displays.

kagis

Apparently so: https://sindenlightgun.com/

There were a number from the 1980s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_light-gun_games

You’d still need to turn it on if it’s in hibernate. Well, you might not need to push the power button, might have a laptop that can, while off, key off the lid switch. But the laptop’s still off when it’s hibernated.

Be interesting to see whether they manufactured stuff going to Ukraine. If it turns out that this is Russian intelligence, this has considerable shitstorm potential.

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

The Black Tom explosion was an act of arson by field agents of the Office of Naval Intelligence of the German Empire, to destroy U.S.-made munitions that were about to be shipped to the Allies during World War I. The explosions occurred on July 30, 1916, in New York Harbor, killing at least 7 people and wounding hundreds more.[1] It also caused damage of military goods worth some $20,000,000 ($580 million in 2024 dollars).[2][3] This incident, which happened prior to U.S. entry into World War I, also damaged the Statue of Liberty.[4] It is one of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions in history.

This attack was one of many during the German sabotage campaign against the neutral United States, and it is notable for its contribution to the shift of public opinion against Germany, which eventually resulted in American approval for participating with World War I.[4]

They appear to make military explosives.

TRINITROTOLUENE (TNT): A VERSATILE ENERGETIC COMPOUND

At Accurate Energetic Systems, LLC (AES), we specialize in the manufacture and supply of Trinitrotoluene, commonly known as TNT. Renowned for its stability and reliability, TNT is one of the most widely used explosives in both military and commercial sectors. Our high-quality TNT formulations meet stringent safety and performance standards, making them ideal for a variety of applications, from demolition to munitions.

TNT’S ROLE IN AEROSPACE AND DEFENSE

TNT has been a staple in the aerospace and defense industries due to its excellent balance of explosive power and safety. It is frequently used in munitions such as artillery shells, bombs, and grenades. At AES, we provide pure TNT as well as advanced compositions, including Tritonal and Torpex, which combine TNT with other materials to enhance blast effects and performance characteristics.

looks further

Yup. They made 155 mm artillery shell filler.

https://www.aesys.biz/supplementary-charges

Accurate Energetic Systems, LLC (AES), a prime contractor to the US Government, specializes in the production of high-grade supplementary charges for military applications. Our extensive experience and advanced manufacturing capabilities allow us to supply top-quality explosive products, including TNT and PBXN-9 Supplementary Charges, primarily used in 155 mm artillery systems.

EDIT2: I’m going to cross-post this to a few other potentially-relevant communities.

EDIT3: Cross-posted to !ukraine@sopuli.xyz and !europe@feddit.org. Note that Russian intelligence did blow up munitions storage depots back in 2014 in Czechia that were being used to ship munitions to Ukraine, but if this is them hitting a production facility in the US, it’d be a pretty serious expansion.

"With respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” the Massachusetts Institute of Technology president wrote in a letter.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WithDueRespect

With Due Respect

“Why is it that whenever someone says ‘with all due respect’, they really mean ‘kiss my ass’?”

— Ashley Williams, Mass Effect 1

Currently near the top of !nottheonion@lemmy.world:

Alabama senator wants anyone practicing sharia law immediately deported.

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

Sharia is a main source of Qatari legislation, according to Qatar’s constitution.[7][8] Sharia is applied to statutes pertaining to family law, inheritance, and several criminal acts (including adultery, robbery and murder). In some cases in Sharia-based family courts, a woman’s testimony is worth half a man’s and in some cases a female and male testimony is not accepted at all if the witness is not deemed reliable.

https://patch.com/idaho/boise/idaho-most-hateful-state-us-analysis-hate-map-shows

Idaho Most Hateful State In US, Analysis Of Hate Map Shows

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2018 Hate Map shows growth in alt-right white supremacy and anti-Muslim groups.

I can but imagine the delightful interactions to come.

EDIT: Well, maybe the people in question will stay on-base. Germany had some facility at another USAF base that they used for training that IIRC they shut down due to military spending cuts a few years back. I dunno if the people there stayed on-base or what. If you figure that Qatar will probably do something similar, maybe give some idea of the model.

kagis

A facility at Holloman AFB, in New Mexico. Germany closed their facility in 2019, and another at Fort Bliss, from said military funding cuts.

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

In March 2013, it was announced that German Air Force units at Fort Bliss will transfer to Holloman later that same year; this was to end the German Air Force presence at Fort Bliss dating back to 1956.[19] In 2015, due to funding constraints on the planned new facilities in Europe, the German Air Force Air Defense school was to stay open at Fort Bliss until 2020.[20] On March 13, 2019, after 27 years in southern New Mexico, the German Luftwaffe ceased flight training at Holloman AFB.[3]

The apps don’t do anything useful if the government blocks connectivity to the servers that the software needs to talk to at the national network infrastructure level.

If you’re confident that a given company is overvalued by existing investors, you can sell it short, make money off that assessment.

That being said, if you’re wrong, you can lose money doing the same.

In the US, gun is the most-common route.

kagis

https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html

This says 55.33% of suicides in the US are with a firearm.

I once went digging through death statistics on suicides. In Japan, firearms are hard to get, but there are tall buildings all over. Firearms deaths are down, but deaths by falling are way up.

It’s very much a locational thing.

It doesn’t work with private DNS servers or forward DNS over VPN.

Like, you want to have it query some particular DNS server?

From man 5 resolved.conf:

   DNS=
       A space-separated list of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to
       use as system DNS servers. 

       For compatibility reasons, if
       this setting is not specified, the DNS servers listed
       in /etc/resolv.conf are used instead, if that file
       exists and any servers are configured in it.

If you specify your private server there, it should work. For VPN, I mean, whatever VPN software you’re using will need to plonk it in there. Maybe yours is not aware of systemd-resolved, is modifying /etc/resolv.conf after systemd-resolved has already started, and it doesn’t watch it for updates?

In my /etc/nsswitch.conf, I have:

hosts:          files myhostname mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] dns

I’m assuming that the “resolve” entry is for systemd-resolved.

kagis

https://www.procustodibus.com/blog/2022/03/wireguard-dns-config-for-systemd/

With systemd-resolved, however, instead of using that DNS setting, add the following PostUp command to the [Interface] section of your WireGuard config file:

PostUp = resolvectl dns %i 9.9.9.9#dns.quad9.net 149.112.112.112#dns.quad9.net; resolvectl domain %i ~.

When you start your WireGuard interface up, this command will direct systemd-resolved to use the DNS server at 9.9.9.9 (or at 149.112.112.112, if 9.9.9.9 is not available) to resolve queries for any domain name.

It’s been a long time, but IIRC Windows’s file dialog also remembers your recently-used files for quick access in the file dialog, and I assume that Explorer has a thumbnail cache.

It looks like GTK 3 has a toggle for recently-used files:

https://linux.debian.user.narkive.com/m7SeBwTP/recently-used-xbel

While the guy sounds kinda unhinged, I do think that he has a point — he doesn’t want activity dumping breadcrumbs everywhere, unbeknownst to him. That’s a legit ask. Firefox and Chrome added Incognito and Private Browsing mode because they recorded a bunch of state about what you were doing for History, and that’s awkward if it suddenly gets exposed. There should really be a straightforward way to globally disable this sort of thing, even if logged history can provide for convenient functionality.

Emacs has a lot of functionality, but I don’t think anything I use actually retains state. If emacs can manage that so can oyher stuff. Hmm. Oh, etags will store a cached TAGS file for a source tree.

thinks

Historically, bash defaulted to saving ~/.bash_history on disk. Don’t recall if that changed at any point.

There’s ccache, which caches binary objects from gcc compilations persistently.

Firefox can persistently cache data in the disk cache or for LocalStorage or cookies.

System logfiles might record some data baout the system though they generally get rotated out.

Most of the time though, I don’t have a lot of recorded persistent state floating around.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a lawsuit against the City of El Cajon, accusing its police department of repeatedly violating state law by sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with law enforcement agencies in more than two dozen states.

I mean, this was kind of guaranteed to happen once ALPRs rolled out. Legal or not. If you don’t want that information to get out, probably want to avoid having ALPRs.

DNS

There’s systemd-resolved. I don’t know if you mean that it has some kind of limitation.

You can use VoIP if you have a cell data connection.