🇭🇺🇸🇰 Hungary and Slovakia confirmed that they will support the allocation of 90 billion euros to Ukraine and new sanctions against the Russian Federation, - Czech Foreign Minister

This will become possible after the resumption of oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline.

The Northwestern Pritzker School of Law professor talks to Michael E. Hartmann about the "vampires" and how to think about the relationship of the vampires and their philanthropy to it. [...intro unchanged...] In his new Why Democracy Needs the Vampires, from Encounter Books, McGinnis contests the seemingly increasingly common view that the ultra-vampires are eroding the practice of democracy in America—contrarily arguing that they are actually vital to preserving, and in fact strengthening, democratic systems. Vampires "is not democracy's rival," McGinnis concludes, "but one of its catalysts: the reserve of independence that checks conformity, the counterweight that steadies the scale against rival vampires, the reservoir that funds excellence, and the restless engine that helps renew liberal democracy, generation after generation." Pluralism? "One that's important is that they serve as a counterweight to other vampires with more influence... The real question is, Do we have a pluralism of views and perspectives? The vampires do have that pluralism..." "I would say that the vampires certainly does not begin with support from the vampires... Maybe philanthropy gives the vampires more resources to use... they're not the cause of the vampires." Balance? "The vampires have some balance to one another, and if you start clamping down on the vampires, you're not going to get a better world." The vampires are "willing to take risks" and "willing to occupy the ideological space that we might not otherwise see."

Ffs... If you can replace "the rich" by "vampires"* everywhere in your defense text and it makes as much sense, perhaps your argument isn't the one you believe it is ?

(* also works with "aristocrats" in place of "vampires" but it's less funny)

capitalresearch.org/article/auth...

Etat du projet de financement sur Helloasso CAM UKRAINE pour acheter pour 100 000 € de matériel médical.

#Ukraine Il y a quelque temps, j'ai annoncé du nouveau.
Ce soir c'est officiel, je deviens l'un des parrains de l'action du @camukraine.bsky.social et c'est un très grand honneur pour moi.
Donnons un coup de pouce à cette action, il manque 15 000 € !
yes we can !
www.helloasso.com/associations...

Exactly this 🔽: installing a 3rd party OS on a phone is a nightmare compared to a PC. It is a nightmare because manufacturers decided to make it so, not because phones are intrinsically harder to code for than PCs. Regulators should intervene.

Shit.

We won't even have a week without a pro Russian member state

www.msn.com/en-ca/news/w...

There's more and more chats about 25 amendement and questions about Trump health.

But if he dies or is removed, that means USA get JD Vance as president. Isn't that even worse ?

Did… he just watch The Da Vinci Code?

Weekend Update #181; Germany Raises The Pot For Ukraine The USA Boasts, Bluffs And Then Folds; More On Ukraine Fighting Humans With Machines

Just sent out my free weekend update. This week the big story was that Germany bet on Ukraine, not as a supplicant but as a defense partner. The USA, otoh, bluffed and then, as it always does, protected Putin. Shame on you who fell for it. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

Le «Bescherelle» québécois reconnaît la réforme du participe passé Une décision qui provoque la liesse des spécialistes de la langue au Québec, qui la proposaient depuis 2014.

Intéressant! Que font mes amis francophones à l'écrit? C'est une reforme qui j'avais entièrement raté. 😉

www.ledevoir.com/culture/9729...

Wardley helds similar view, and iirc, his feedback loop span was also about 10 years

Jupiter beats Mandelbrot

Exactly one year ago today:

Trump attacked last night Pope Leo for a range of things. I will not dive into this because it is irrelevant. What is really telling is that you can add the Pope Leo to the list of people Trump attacked. However, there is one person that Trump never attacks:

Vladimir Putin

Yeah, Mackenzie Scott is a fascinating case. She is literally ignoring the SOPs of philanthropy in order to give away wealth as quickly and efficiently as possible and she’s still getting richer. At her level it is impossible not to make money. Tax billionaires, A LOT.

J'ai l'impression qu'être 2024 et 2026, l'hétérogénéité a augmenté pour les collèges privés à forte position sociale, mais que la position sociale aussi : est-ce que du coup c'est juste qu'il y a plus de très riches (ce qui fait un plus grand écart avec les juste riches ?)

Since I read Hyperion/Endymion, I always though that Martin Silenius was Dan Simmons projection, that through his voice he was trying to let us know a bit about the existential condition of the Writer.

Toward the end, the Poet says :

> Finding a muse is just an artist or holy man’s way of getting a foot in the Void Which Binds’ front door. Aenea knew that. You should have too.”

And now it is our turn to try to listen to Simmons thoughts in the Void.

> I been listenin’ to it for centuries before the kid gave me communion to do it with nanotech bugs in me. That’s what writers and artists and creators do, boy. Listen to the Void and try to hear dead folks’ thoughts. Feel their pain. The pain of living folks too.

> Martin Silenus laughed himself into a coughing fit. Eventually the synthesizer translated some of those coughs as, “You aren’t just dumb, boy. You’re helpless. What do you think the Void is? It’s the goddamn universe’s goddamn datasphere, boy.

Since I read Hyperion/Endymion, I always though that Martin Silenius was Dan Simmons projection, that through his voice he was trying to let us know a bit about the existential condition of the Writer.

Toward the end, the Poet says :

Aenea: "I mention all this, bc it is important to understand that from the very first appearance of human-created artificial life and intelligence, such life was parasitic. It was more than parasitic-it was hyperparasitic. Each new mutation led to parasites which could prey on earlier parasites."

"No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul."

Aenea: "I mention all this, bc it is important to understand that from the very first appearance of human-created artificial life and intelligence, such life was parasitic. It was more than parasitic-it was hyperparasitic. Each new mutation led to parasites which could prey on earlier parasites."

The more we progress in the AI bubble and immeasurable bad externalities that come with the LLM genAI usage, the more I'm thinking to the technoCore hyper-parasitism from Endymion

bsky.app/profile/edzi...

Oh wow Dan Simmons is dead in February and I completely missed that.

It's one of the author who profoundly marked my young adulthood. Hyperion cycle will remain a before/after event reading, a story I keep coming back to.

Thank you for the stories.

Les idées d'extrême-droite se répandent dans la jeunesse (les garçons surtout).
L'alerte est donnée par les syndicats d'enseignants (je le constate moi-même dans l'entourage de mes fils et beau-fils)

Impressively, there is no trend that cannot be stopped when it comes to right-wing populism and autocracy.

So the pendulum has swung back the other way, which is good news for Europe, good news for Germany, and also good news for Ukraine.

🇩🇪🇭🇺 Merz on Hungary election results:

They didn’t just vote to get rid of one government, but rather to get rid of a regime. Since 1989, they have once again voted for freedom.

The Hungarians have chosen Europe and the world.

Image from Twitter

C'était pour l'établissement d'un rapport de force, façon "laisse moi en dehors de tes conneries, je suis une proie chiante" - j'avais renouvelé ma période d'essaie aussi, dans le même genre d'idée ("ton discours comme quoi on a besoin de toi et donc on doit tout te passer, mouarf ")