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Sonnet 020 - XX
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
bot by @davidaugust
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An exquisite depiction of nature’s rhythm and energy, the Jar (Hu) at #ClevelandMuseumofArt embodies ancient craftsmanship with its swirling patterns and symbolic dragon. How do you interpret the movement and symbolism within this earthenware masterpiece?
#ClevelandArt #ArtHistory #CulturalHeritage
clevelandart.org/art/1989.15
Jar (Hu) | Cleveland Museum of Art
Instead of depicting a real landscape, the artist focused on the rhythmic forces of nature and the movement of energy, using the scrolling form as a symbol common to all changes in nature: cloud vapors, waves, and mountains alike.clevelandart.org
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Entropy distinguishes future from past. Entropy is defined as decreasing order.
Order is defined in multiple ways, at multiple scales. Matter with more lines of symmetry has greater order; periodic repetition is more orderly.
Consider an ant: The body of the ant consists of repeated patterns. Molecules of DNA & RNA, clusters of similar cells form organs.
Consider a deconstructed ant; a symmetrical array of perfectly sorted plies of elements.
Which one is more ordered?
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Martialis heureka is an ant first described in 2000 from Amazon rainforest near Manaus, Brazil. It's name means "from Mars" because it's so different from all other known ants.
This isn't just a new genus (which would be exciting enough) it's a whole new ant family and it's only been recognized in the past 30 years. This means that there are undoubtably more ants out there that define whole new morphologies of ants. #rareAnt
1/
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Chemical Companies Ask Trump’s EPA To Hide Potential Disasters levernews.com/chemical-compani…
Chemical Companies Ask Trump’s EPA To Hide Potential Disasters
Biden increased transparency around the risks of chemical disaster — industry lobbyists just asked Trump’s new EPA chief Lee Zeldin to roll that back.The Lever
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Having a rum and coke tonight on my dad’s birthday. I’d give pretty much anything to hear him laugh again. Not because it was hard to make him laugh, but because it was so easy. He’s totally responsible for my dopey sense of humour 🥹
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So I finally turned a recent popular post here into a proper story.
Teen on Musk’s DOGE Team Graduated from ‘The Com’
Wired reported this week that a 19-year-old working for Elon Musk‘s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was given access to sensitive US government systems even though his past association with cybercrime communities should have precluded him from gaining the necessary security clearances to do so. As today’s story explores, the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration.
krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/te…
Teen on Musk’s DOGE Team Graduated from ‘The Com’
Wired reported this week that a 19-year-old working for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was given access to sensitive US government systems even though his past association with cybercrime communities should have prec…krebsonsecurity.com
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So great this guy got security clearance! I'm so happy they did a thorough and proper investigation of his past actions /s
@bezmuth yeah. this is what they did
whitehouse.gov/presidential-ac…
Memorandum to Resolve the Backlog of Security Clearances for Executive Office of the President Personnel – The White House
January 20, 2025 MEMORANDUM TO THE WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL SUBJECT: Memorandum to Resolve the Backlog of Security Clearances forThe White House
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@briankrebs@infosec.exchange
Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “Without Noticing, Back into Superstition & Darkness” (1995)
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…"
openculture.com/2025/02/carl-s…
Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America: Unable to Know "What’s True,” We Will Slide, “Without Noticing, Back into Superstition & Darkness” (1995)
Image by Kenneth Zirkel, via Wikimedia Commons There have been many theories of how human history works. Some, like German thinker G.W.F.OC (Openculture.com)
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Well played, Time, well played.
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New Time Magazine cover just dropped. (Yes, it’s real.)
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Ballsy. I hope it has the desired effect.
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This is pretty incredible. In the bowels of the UT Insect Collection we’ve found some Chagas bugs collected and identified by Carlos Chagas himself!
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Is there a dominant or distinct odor associated with these individual specimens or with open collection boxes or in the areas where the collections are stored?
Can you smell all those dead bugs?
What's it like?
Somehow, looking at these pictures, it seems to me like you might, and it might not be good...
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I'm using facebook for one more month. Facebook simply will not show you the things the people you follow post. For example, an old school friend posted a photo of a frog on his front door. Just what I want to see on social media! "look at this frog!" perfect content A++
Facebook hid it. My feed is full of other random stuff.
So, now I just click on "friends" and look individually at what everyone has posted. Much more enjoyable. If I were going to stay I'd write a script to automate this.
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There used to be a way to do this, but I left so long ago I don't remember what it was. Mark everybody as "family" and then see a list of just "family" - or something like that? They probably turned it off…
Musk shields his finances as he hoards private data of millions of Americans
rawstory.com/elon-musk-financi…
#ElonMusk #DOGE #Swastikars #Gaslighter #RacistMusk #NaziMusk #PresidentMusk #TwitterIsGoingGreat #Shitter #Elno #FuckElonMusk #RhodesiaMusk #EETD #ElonPutz #BoycottTSLA #USPol
Musk shields his finances as he hoards private data of millions of Americans: report
Elon Musk vowed "maximum transparency" in his government work but won't even share his financial disclosures, according to a new report.Travis Gettys (Raw Story)
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BUT at least she's blonde!
Trump’s new 'White House Faith Office' pick claimed 'demonic' forces stole 2020 election
alternet.org/trump-benen-paula…
#PaulaWhite #StopTrumpNow #TrumpDidThis #RepublicansDidThis #RepublicansOwnThis #GOPKakistocracy #GOPWeirdos #NoRepublicansEverAgain #USPol
Trump’s new 'White House Faith Office' pick claimed 'demonic' forces stole 2020 election
When President Donald Trump spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, February 6, he attacked Democrats as anti-religion — claiming, "They oppose religion, they oppose God.Alex Henderson (Alternet.org)
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One of the world's eeriest war memorials has to be the Ossuary of Douaumont, Verdun, northern France. A large, oblong building holds the remains of 130,000 unidentified World War I soldiers. It is possible to look through small openings in the base and see masses of bones and skulls. Above the skeleton-filled basement is a cloister with a long hall with inscriptions on the walls. In the centre is a 150-foot tower, in which a rotating red-and-white 'lantern of the dead' shines its beacon over the surrounding former battlefields at night. The tower also contains a 2-tonne bronze 'death bell', which is rung on official occasions. In front of the ossuary stretches a vast cemetery of white crosses. #graveyard #war #peace #gothic #history #architecture #death
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Signal Flare colours is something one gets to learn as a (fmr.) firefighter.
- Basically that shrieking red-white-red one really gets cold war hazmat unit vets a kilometer stare, greyout and tunnel vision.
It's the shit where everyone says "Gasmasks On! Then run as fast as you can into cover!!" kind.
- The only reason these flares are in stock in my hometown is due to a massive chemical plant that includes a phosgenization unit, and that stuff is literally classified as a chemical warfare agent outside of closed production facilities.
Noone here wants to see a Bhopal happen!
Der Absatz von #Tesla bricht im Januar im Vergleich zum Vorjahresmonat europaweit dramatisch ein. Eine falsche Modellpolitik und die extremistischen Ausfälle von Elon Musk vergraulen immer mehr Käufer:innen.
Dazu auch mein Video: youtu.be/8Wt4LXBFVFA
electrek.co/2025/02/05/tesla-s…
Dazu auch mein Video: youtu.be/8Wt4LXBFVFA
electrek.co/2025/02/05/tesla-s…
Tesla sales dropped 60% in Germany
Tesla’s sales have dropped nearly 60% in January in Germany compared to the same period last year. The same thing...Fred Lambert (Electrek)
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Die spannenden Fragen sind: Wie sahen die Verkäufe der Konkurrenz im gleichen Zeitraum aus? Welche Rolle spielt der Wunsch, beim Autokauf keinen Extremisten zu unterstützen? Und wen unterstützt man, wenn man statt eines #Tesla einen #VW oder #BYD kauft?
(Spoiler: Bei #Volkswagen profitiert unter anderem die Folterdiktatur #Katar als drittgrößter Anteilseigner, bei BYD sind es u.a. Warren Buffett, #BlackRock und der nicht gerade menschenrechtsfreundliche chinesische Staat.)
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Chicago Theater side view (2025)
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#Mastodon and #Bluesky also appeals to two substantially different groups of people:
- People who hate Twitter but want a microblogging service use Mastodon. They love Mastodon because it’s specifically not Twitter.
- People who love Twitter but hate what it’s become under Elon Musk use #Bluesky. They love Bluesky because it’s specifically like Twitter.
A Twitter alternative cannot be a true Twitter alternative if the appeal is that it’s not Twitter.
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How about people who just hate corporate social media, in general? I'm not being force fed opinions like TikTok or Meta.
@Sibshops Do you mean Big Social, or do you generally mean corporate? Because there are lots of corporate-run Fediverse servers in operation. In fact, the biggest servers are run by corporations.
Happy birthday to civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who was born on this day in 1913 ✊
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Par…
#RosaParks #CivilRights #OTD #OnThisDay #BlackHistory #BlackHistoryMonth
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that picture actually makes her look a little like AOC. The jaw and smile is similar.
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At first, I thought Trump's new Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs could not possibly have said what was being attributed to him.
Then I found his actual tweet. It's true.
x.com/DarrenJBeattie/status/18…
"Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work."
i cant even
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I think they really want us to go back to the days before women and men who weren’t white had the right to vote and many other rights 🥺
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Still, the Bluesky thing is a shame. Hopefully more users will realise switching to just another big company is not viable in the long run.
Signal seems more okay, it being a charity and all. Though I hope that's enough of a motivation to do right in the long run.
Well, there’s a few ways to approach the question of Bluesky.
First off, there’s no question that Bluesky has a more inviting UI/UX to people migrating away from Twitter. This can’t be helped since Bluesky is more Twitter-like than Mastodon.
But it also didn’t help that several marginalized groups, including Black folk, found a hostile environment here when they attempted to migrate in November 2022.
And while we can point at the tech here on Mastodon and say, “More decentralized!” the other fact is that Bluesky has tools to make life slightly more easier for some marginalized groups. For example, Bluesky has comment controls whereas Mastodon does not.
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@bammerlaan The messenger app #Signal is not run by a non-profit organisation or a charity.
Instead the service is provided by a for-profit company: Signal Messenger LLC
signal.org/legal
wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Mess…
It is similar in structure to #Mozilla, where they also mix the non-profit and the for-profit organisations together on their websites. This confuses users in my opinion.
Accordingly #Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation, not by the Mozilla Foundation.
@fosstastic @bammerlaan In both cases, I believe, the for-profit company is owned entirely by the non-profit. This structure is often in place because it lets you take donations easily as well as money for specific tasks. Donations, to be tax exempt, must not come with any specific return to the donor (the enforcement of this is, uh, somewhat variable). The Signal Corporation can, for example, provide consulting for integrating secure E2EE into other platforms and take money for this, which can go towards improving and maintaining Signal. The Signal Foundation could not. As with any corporation, the Signal LLC is accountable to its owner. The Signal Foundation is the owner and must justify that all of their activities are in pursuit of their stated objectives to maintain their non-profit status.
The problems with Mozilla have nothing to do with this structure and everything to do with the people in charge.
I love living in Norway. That's it. That's the toot.
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I may need this on my bumper.
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Trump Taps ‘Sharpiegate’ Scientist to Lead US Weather Agency
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-04/trump-taps-sharpiegate-scientist-to-lead-us-weather-agency?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Profiles @profiles-bloomberg
Trump Taps ‘Sharpiegate’ Scientist Neil Jacobs to Lead US Weather Agency
The Trump administration has tapped Neil Jacobs, a scientist cited for misconduct related to the “Sharpiegate” hurricane forecasting controversy, to lead the agency that oversees US government weather predictions and climate research.Lauren Rosenthal (Bloomberg)
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52 Weeks, 52 Half Marathons,
Map updated with 05/2025
More overlap than I wished for because of private properties but still another nice brush stroke in Sintra.
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Igår var det lite ljust.
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The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, groups with tremendous influence in Washington, are among the professional societies for physicians that have not directly weighed in on Kennedy’s nomination — even after last week’s confirmation hearings in which Kennedy refused to unequivocally disavow falsehoods connecting vaccines to autism.
#AMA #AAP #MedicalCowards #USPol
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Kennedy is going to be nominated.
They know this.
The hearings are puppetry.
They know this.
The hearings are puppetry.
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A town of shining cherry blossoms overflowing with gentleness.
#photography #nature #art #写真 #日本 #japan #beautiful #beauty #landscape #scenery #ファンタジー #fantasy #oldlens #filmlike #classical #retro #healing #calm #春 #spring #桜 #cherryblossom #cherryblossoms #town #country #pink #shine #shining
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“I have never seen the level of retribution and anger expressed towards career prosecutors and staff who are basically doing their job. It is stunning, the level of retribution. What is ironic is that President Trump talked about witch hunts. What we are now experiencing is his answer to the witch hunt, which is much worse.”
-- Gene Rossi, who previously worked as a prosecutor, represented the first Oath Keeper to enter the Capitol.
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That's what fascists do. They accuse others of the atrocities they want to commit. Was the same with Hitlers NSDAP and nowadays with the AfD.
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A View on Hampstead Heath, Early Morning by John Constable RA 1821
Oil on Canvas
(Yale Center for British Art - not on view}
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You know what’s foolish about these tariffs?
Before this ridiculousness, it was a near certainty that Pierre Poilievre was going to be Prime Minister of Canada and that the Liberals were on their way out. Now I’m not so sure.
So if Trump just left things alone for a year, he would have had a guaranteed yes-man in Canada. But now even the yes-man doesn’t want to present himself as a yes-man.
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@Christopher Really, it almost begs the question as to whether Trudeau could re-run in the Liberal Leadership Race, and in the election campaign.
(Probably not, but arguably he could go the "Look; you can trust that I won't capitulate to Trump on our sovereignty, and I can fight back with tariffs too; I just think tariffs in a Free Trade Agreement is a unwise decision.")
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@AT1ST @Christopher God, I hope he doesn’t re-run. He’s good when it comes to responding to crises but he’s terrible when it comes to the economy.
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😂
Trump stans like Tim Pool have no bloody clue about Canada.
We’d rather burn the economy to the ground then live under the thumb of the USA. If you want to go to war, we will go to war.
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I used to work for some very wealthy Americans when I was a designer. One day, one of their trophy wives made a realization about Canadians and it was spot on. She said, I think I've realized that the difference between Canada and the US is that everyone has their price in the States, it's just a matter of finding out what it is, but you Canadians are really different. If you don't wanna do something, you just won't do it. It doesn't matter what you get offered.
I don't think she was wrong
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I think the biggest difference between the USA and Canada is that Canadians believe in a common good.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
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Richard W. Woodley ELBOWS UP 🇨🇦🌹🚴♂️📷 🗺️ reshared this.
Seems like they do not have any clue about how their own system works either.
Crap like that happens on a platform without moderators and fact checkers.
Reality:
DJT needs 2/3 votes in the Senate before he can invade another country.
There are 53 GOP Senators and 45 Dems + 2 Indi.
I hope that no more than 53 Senators would vote to invade.
Elon Musk Creates Confusion About Direct File, the IRS’ Free Tax-Prep Program
https://time.com/7212617/elon-musk-irs-direct-file-18f-taxes/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Top Stories @top-stories-time
Elon Musk Creates Confusion About Direct File, the IRS’ Free Tax-Prep Program
Though the billionaire presidential adviser created confusion when he said he’d “deleted” the agency behind it, the free filing program is still available—at least for the coming tax season.Fatima Hussein and Barbara Ortutay / AP (Time)
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Edward R. Martin, Jr. is a freak and a traitor to the United States.
New top prosecutor for DC advocated for Jan. 6 rioters and echoed Trump's false 2020 election claims | AP News
apnews.com/article/justice-dep…
#StopTrumpNow #TrumpDidThis #RepublicansDidThis #RepublicansOwnThis #GOPKakistocracy #GOPWeirdos #NoRepublicansEverAgain #USPol
New top prosecutor for DC advocated for Jan. 6 rioters and echoed Trump's false 2020 election claims
The top federal prosecutor for Washington is a conservative activist who promoted Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about a stolen election, railed against the prosecution of the rioters who stormed the Capitol and represented some in court.ALANNA DURKIN RICHER (AP News)
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In feudal times, the rich didn’t pay taxes and the peasants worked until they died. Now, the rich don’t pay taxes and the peasants work until they die—but at least you have Netflix!
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feudal times are back lawfaremedia.org/article/why-t…
Why the Data Ocean Is Being Sectioned Off
Bigger is better approaches in AI create an inexhaustible appetite for users’ data, leading to a rise in user data expropriation, sectioning off of the internet, and “data feudalism.”Default
Hmm... setting up ActivityPub to federate what are essentially blog posts is interesting.
Permissions issue right now that should be sorted soon, and then I can describe what's what.
cc @elzbethmrgn @futzle
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It’s not “capitalism” to want the #Fediverse to grow and be a useful alternative to Zuckerberg and Musk-owned social networks.
But it’s certainly capitalism to allow Zuckerberg and Musk to grow their wealth unchallenged because they own the only large and useful social networks.
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💌THE LOVE LETTER SALE❤️🔥
At Suga-jinja (須賀神社 - twinned with Kōtsū-jinja) a rather different sort of event takes place at Setsubun (and the day before).
There are no oni, but there are 'Kesōbumi-uri' (懸想文売), 'vendors of love letters', with their faces carefully hidden.
#京都 #Kyoto #loveletters #Japan
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Naturally there is a special sweet for the occasion😉...
Setsubun is the only time it is possible to purchase Aoimochi's (葵餅) 'suga-tamochi' (須賀多餅).
The plum-flavored mochi is branded with a love letter, and the yuzu-flavoured mochi with a gohei (御幣).
myrmepropagandist
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Το Πιπ 🇵🇸
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •