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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Make sure you read to the end of that article. Nevalny himself (NPR interview, maybe?) admitted that he has courted the far right as well as the left in his bid to expose corruption within the Russian system and gain enough support to attempt to topple the Putin regime. He is unapologetic about it as he feels his intent (to clean up Russia and push for democracy) justifies his acceptance of all Russians as fellow countrymen. Like most people seeking power, his path is not pure and his antagonists will use that to poison any positive message he presents.



  • Don’t even need that. Meta crosses multiple platforms now - Instagram, FB, WhatsApp, etc. All you need is for someone you know to have you in their contacts list, and the hit the “allow access” a single time. All of that data is then scraped, cataloged, and cross referenced with everyone else. Name, address, phone numbers, birthday, work address - anything your contact felt it convenient to add about you in their phone. From there it’s just a matter of time until data mining of second and third level contact - or outright data leaks - fill in the rest of your profile and demographic information.









  • Their names are on the titles, they own the homes. Their banks - the mortgage lenders - hold a rights to a lien placed on the property, but they have no title to the property unless they enforce the terms of their lending contract in the event of default.

    The owners making 500k may very well be just a few months from foreclosure if they lose their job, but they likely have at least 20% (likely much more unless they bought at a premium two years ago) equity and can probably salvage at least half - even after fees - if they were to become “destitute” and undertook a regular sale of the property. 10% of a million dollars (or more), for most of the country, is still a healthy sum of money.





  • I think it doesn’t go far enough. Straight up, no one should be permitted to create or transmit the likeness of anyone [prior to, say, 20 years following their death] without their explicit, written permission. Make the fine $1,000,000 or 10% of the offender’s net worth, whichever is greater; same penalty and corporate revocation for any corporation involved. Everyone involved from the prompt writer to the work-for-hire people should be liable for the full penalty. I can’t think of a valid, non-entertainment (parody/humor), reason for non-consensual impersonation - and using it for humor or parody is a slippery slope to propaganda weaponization. There is no baby in this tub of bathwater.




  • Solid fuel for rockets burns relatively slowly at 1 atm and in solid form, much like a flare, though still faster than I would expect you’d want for a hot pot unless these were a hybrid (so no oxidizer in the pellets, just a solid fuel source like modified PVC, with a separate oxidizer like nitrous oxide). The water was replacing the jet fuel, which - assuming it was similar to Jet A - is basically kerosene. Though I’d be worried what modifiers or stabilizers were used for a green flame if I were cooking over it. I’ve made green flames with boric acid and methanol for Halloween decorations (outdoor, of course), but who knows what is causing it in their fuel.