Beehaw

The official White House social media accounts on X, Instagram and Facebook soon quoted his post, all sharing a fake magazine cover depicting an illustration of Trump smiling in a suit — and wearing a bejeweled golden crown.

Weeee

There's a reason I'm networking instead of job searching.

Crazy how some old White guys still have decency.

Warning: flashing lights in video for those that are sensitive.

SOAD appreciation post:

Inevitably every February, I'm drawn to SOAD for their passionate and hard-hitting lyrics, vocals, and riffs. It's incredible to imagine how much this band has shaped my psyche over the years; their music is a constant reminder of ongoing atrocities around the world, yet for some reason, each song is a reassuring melody of steadfast solidarity and awareness of how connected we all are. I'm forever grateful for the impact their music continues to have on my life as I grow wiser to the world and myself.

Waxing poetic aside, I hope you enjoy their music as much as I do! And if you haven't heard them before, please allow me to introduce you to a band that never ceases to make me feel all the feels. Sending lots of love out to the fediverse... 🙏🏽

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/33073424

Hanoi (AFP) – Vietnam's parliament approved plans on Wednesday for an $8 billion rail link from its largest northern port city to the border with China, boosting links between the two communist-ruled countries and making trade easier.

The new rail line will run through some of Vietnam's key manufacturing hubs, home to Samsung, Foxconn, Pegatron and other global giants, many of whom rely on a regular flow of components from China.

The route will stretch 390 kilometres (240 miles) from the port city of Haiphong to the mountainous city of Lao Cai, which borders China's Yunnan province, and will also run through the capital Hanoi.

Construction of the railway was backed in a vote by 95 percent of parliamentarians in Vietnam's rubber-stamp National Assembly, an AFP journalist in the chamber said.

China will provide some funding through loans for the project, which is expected to cost more than $8 billion.

It is one of two railway lines to China that Vietnam plans as part of its "Two Corridors, One Belt" initiative, which connects to Beijing's Belt and Road global infrastructure programme.

A spokesperson for China's foreign ministry said on Wednesday the two countries were "working to expedite the construction of the connection line" between Lao Cai and the Chinese border city of Hekou.

Both sides had "held multiple discussions on advancing railway connectivity", Guo Jiakun told a regular news briefing but referred reporters to "relevant authorities" for details.

The approval comes just over a year after the neighbours pledged during a visit to Vietnam by President Xi Jinping to deepen ties as Beijing sought to counter growing US influence with Hanoi.

Vietnam's transport infrastructure is considered relatively weak, with a road network struggling to keep up with demand and an underdeveloped rail system.

The country is an increasingly favoured destination for foreign businesses looking for an alternative to China, but low-quality infrastructure is seen as holding back surging investment.

Dan Martin, international business adviser of Dezan Shira & Associates, said the new rail link could help smooth out bumps in international supply chains caused by the current reliance on slow and costly trucks that are "prone to border bottlenecks".

"China supplies much of the raw material that fuels Vietnam's manufacturing sector, and keeping that pipeline steady is critical," he told AFP.

"A modern rail link cuts through... inefficiencies, ensuring goods move smoothly whether they're flowing into Vietnam's factories or heading to global markets via Haiphong's port," he said.

Vietnam says a feasibility study for the Haiphong-Lao Cai railway will begin this year and it wants the line finished by 2030, although the country has a history of overruns on major infrastructure projects.

The line, spanning nine provinces and cities, will follow roughly the route of an existing rail track built during the French colonial period.

Trains can currently run on that rail at just 50 kilometres an hour (30 mph), but Vietnam says the new line will accommodate both passenger and freight cars with speeds of up to 160 kph.

Pham Thu Hang, spokesperson for the ministry of foreign affairs, said last week the rail link would "promote economic, trade, investment and tourism cooperation between the two countries as well as in the region".

It comes just three months after Vietnam approved plans for a $67 billion high-speed railway from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, another much-needed boost to infrastructure that is expected to drive growth.

That railway, which will stretch more than 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) from the capital in the north to Vietnam's business hub in the south, will reduce the current journey time by rail from 30 hours to around five.

The other line to China, which has not yet been approved by parliament, will connect Hanoi to Lang Son province, which borders China's Guangxi region, travelling through another area packed with global manufacturing facilities.

The two countries signed more than 30 agreements, including a pledge to develop rail links, during Xi's visit to Hanoi.

Vietnam has long pursued a "bamboo diplomacy" approach, striving to stay on good terms with both China and the United States.

It shares US concerns about Beijing's increasing assertiveness in the contested South China Sea but also has close economic ties with China.

Alt Title: How to take over the world using abandoned S3 Buckets

Watchtowr has moved on from using expired domains to assume authority over entire TLDs and instead is using blind trust in S3 addresses to infiltrate governments and militaries across the world.

The TL;DR is that this time, we ended up discovering ~150 Amazon S3 buckets that had previously been used across commercial and open source software products, governments, and infrastructure deployment/update pipelines - and then abandoned.

As for the research itself, it panned out progressively, with S3 buckets registered as they were discovered. It went rather quickly from “Haha, we could put our logo on this website” to “Uhhh, .mil, we should probably speak to someone”.

These S3 buckets received more than 8 million HTTP requests over a 2 month period for all sorts of things -

• Software updates,
• Pre-compiled (unsigned!) Windows, Linux and macOS binaries,
• Virtual machine images (?!),
• JavaScript files...

g4media.ro/the-trump-administr…

archive.is link

Last week, the words “transgender” and “queer” were deleted from the National Parks Service website for the Stonewall National Monument, to demonstrate compliance with one of Trump’s executive orders. A biographical note about legendary activist Sylvia Rivera was nonsensically edited to read “At a young age Sylvia began fighting for gay and rights,” with no effort to even replace the deleted, dreaded word “transgender” from where it had originally appeared (following “and”). Historic descriptions about why Stonewall mattered were hastily truncated to read: “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal”—missing the two letters that made up what had been “LGBTQ+.”

Within hours, queer and trans groups and activists organized a protest at Stonewall to condemn the erasure, with hundreds of people rallying to condemn the administration’s attempts to edit trans people out of the nation’s history. These sorts of protests are now following each new Trump decree, every agency Musk has ravaged. The sites are expanding: from DC sidewalks to Congressional offices, from Stonewall to Tesla dealerships. The day after the protest against trans erasure, a small group picketed the Manhattan Tesla dealership, one of a number of actions across the country that day, each organized autonomously to locate the fight with Musk in any city or town where Teslas were sold. The signs and chants varied, but all illustrated the collapse of Musk’s business interests into his government takeover, tying his “Swasticars” to the “broligarchy.” On Monday, they were still popping up outside Tesla properties. In San Francisco, a sign was spotted in the dealership’s upper window: “We Hate Him Too.”

On Monday, also known as President’s Day, another wave of the Reddit-organized 50501 protests hit dozens of cities. 50501 seems to be drawing out some people who have never organized a protest before. “I decided to pick the ball up and do it myself. And I learned a lot extremely quickly,” said one organizer in Pennsylvania. Indivisible is now running with the Tesla protest idea, urging people to plan their own “Tesla Town Halls” wherever they are. “If you’re in Texas or California,” their guide suggests, “consider a SpaceX facility or X (formerly Twitter) headquarters.”

Mere weeks ago, media outlets were still publishing pieces asking where the “resistance” was. It seems we are now well past that: Possibly, that’s because “the resistance” is bubbling up in too many places to track. When we look back on these weeks, we may see a broader narrative was emerging: The rolling protests everywhere may turn out to be more sustainable than the mass one-day turnouts by which many judge the strength of a movement.

archive link: https://archive.ph/4XuVz Long read so here's a summary:

The Ukraine War has revealed several surprises:

War returned to Europe despite expectations of permanent peace The conflict primarily involves the US and Russia rather than European powers Ukraine showed unexpected resilience Russia demonstrated economic resilience against sanctions Europe showed geopolitical and economic passivity

According to Todd, the European Union's problems stem from the Maastricht Treaty, which:

Led to deindustrialization Created a quasi-religious faith in the euro Resulted in loss of national sovereignty Produced political passivity and resignation among citizens Encouraged elites to reject nationalism in favor of "Europeanism"

On the United States, Todd argues:

America has transitioned from world's factory to world's largest consumer The US is losing its technological edge to China in several areas The dollar's global dominance may be threatened by BRICS expansion and de-dollarization efforts American education is declining, particularly in STEM fields The decline of Protestantism has removed the moral center of American power

Todd's analysis of Western decline includes several factors:

The rise of neoliberalism has led to destruction of industries and social structures Educational regression in the West Loss of industrial capacity Increasing inequality and social atomization Technology stagnation outside of IT

The reviewer notes that Todd's main weakness is excessive pessimism that may overlook possibilities for renewal and adaptation in an uncertain era. This 2024 book appears to synthesize Todd's long-standing contrarian views about Western decline, particularly focusing on how the Ukraine war has exposed underlying weaknesses in Western economic and political systems.

relevant study: A humanized NOVA1 splicing factor alters mouse vocal communications:

NOVA1, a neuronal RNA-binding protein expressed in the central nervous system, is essential for survival in mice and normal development in humans. A single amino acid change (I197V) in NOVA1’s second RNA binding domain is unique to modern humans. To study its physiological effects, we generated mice carrying the human-specific I197V variant (Nova1hu/hu) and analyzed the molecular and behavioral consequences. While the I197V substitution had minimal impact on NOVA1’s RNA binding capacity, it led to specific effects on alternative splicing, and CLIP revealed multiple binding peaks in mouse brain transcripts involved in vocalization. These molecular findings were associated with behavioral differences in vocalization patterns in Nova1hu/hu mice as pups and adults. Our findings suggest that this human-specific NOVA1 substitution may have been part of an ancient evolutionary selective sweep in a common ancestral population of Homo sapiens, possibly contributing to the development of spoken language through differential RNA regulation during brain development.

A new study links a particular gene to the ancient origins of spoken language, proposing that a protein variant found only in humans may have helped us communicate in a novel way. Speech allowed us to share information, coordinate activities and pass down knowledge, giving us an edge over extinct cousins like Neanderthals and Denisovans.

The new study is “a good first step to start looking at the specific genes” that may affect speech and language development, said Liza Finestack at the University of Minnesota, who was not involved with the research.

The genetic variant researchers were looking at was one of a variety of genes “that contributed to the emergence of Homo sapiens as the dominant species, which we are today” said Dr. Robert Darnell, an author of the study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Baby mice with the human variant squeaked differently than normal littermates when their mom came around. Adult male mice with the variant chirped differently than their normal counterparts when they saw a female in heat.

Both are settings where mice are motivated to speak, Darnell said, “and they spoke differently” with the human variant, illustrating its role in speech.

This isn’t the first time a gene has been linked to speech. In 2001, British scientists said they had discovered the first gene tied to a language and speech disorder.

By the time President Donald Trump retook office, lawmakers had announced nearly $700 billion in funding for infrastructure- and climate-related projects under two bills passed during Joe Biden’s administration — the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law. That money was promised to all sorts of community and local projects, from clean energy initiatives to water system upgrades.

Some of these projects have received their funding. Indeed, some have been completed. But in light of the Trump administration’s freeze on many forms of federal funding, the future of as-yet-undistributed money is unclear.

What kinds of climate and infrastructure projects have been announced in your community and across the country? Which ones may now be at risk? Now you can use your ZIP code to find out.

To understand the stakes of these signature pieces of legislation, Grist developed a tool that combines information across multiple datasets to reveal where more than $300 billion of the funds promised under the two pieces of legislation have been awarded across the United States. Enter a ZIP code, city name, or other location in the search box below to discover projects within any radius of your chosen area.