_djo_

I think it's also fair to say that the Biden pardons wouldn't have happened without Trump coming into office after, and telegraphing his intentions to abuse power and go after all of those who Biden ended up pardoning.

A bit disappointing that the article didn't mention that the record broken was previously held by the amateur team of Luke Bell and his father, from Cape Town.[0]

That amateurs are still competitive with corporations all the way past the 650 km/h barrier is notable on several levels, not least in that it means that designs like these will likely proliferate quickly across the world.

[0] https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/464800-fa...

Then he should justify that. When I read through the discussion though it seems that the stated reasons were arguably sufficient to justify the action taken.

Sanger has been given a lot more leeway over the years, because of his status as a co-founder, than anyone else would have been given.

While the merits of Sanger's banning are worth debating, Sanger is dishonestly representing the process here. The reasons, rather than being 'unstated', were stated repeatedly and were not unreasonable. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...

I didn’t intend it as a whataboutism, but as an indicator of progress. Not all that long ago the Ukrainian and Russian militaries were virtually indistinguishable, with the same doctrine, training, mindsets, and above all levels of corruption. There’s been a ton of work over the past 15-20 years to reform and modernise the Ukrainian military, especially since the war started.

Corruption is intensely damaging, especially in wartime, and shouldn’t be tolerated. That we’re not seeing many cases of corruption despite the intense scrutiny on the Ukrainian armed forces shows that things are both much improved and heading in the right direction.

That said, I’ve now spent enough time countering what was a low-effort throwaway comment from you in the first place, and which felt less like a valid complaint and more like an outdated belief. If you have any substantive evidence of large-scale corruption, worse than comparative forces, and being tolerated and ignored, I’ll re-engage.

The UK moved assets into the area in defence of its own bases and in defence of allies like Gulf countries. The war was telegraphed, being at least a little prepared was logical. Even then, they had to rush deploy other assets like ships once the fighting started.

Similarly, permission for US aircraft to use British bases was given conditionally, allowing only strikes on Iran’s missile and drone infrastructure being used to target other countries, and was given after the war had begun and after the drone strikes on Cyprus.

Those strikes on Cyprus involved Iranian-manufactured drones provided to Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps explicitly took credit for the strikes on Cyprus. So let’s not pretend this was some unrelated attack.

Notably, many other countries sent military forces to protect Cyprus too, including Greece, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy, with Ireland even offering to join. Several of those countries were strongly opposed to the war and had denied the use of their airspace and bases to the US. Were they all ‘acting in defense of aggressors’ too?

Once again, it’s possible to both condemn the actions of the US and Israel in their violations of international law while also condemning Iran for doing the same. The illegality of one does not justify the illegality of the other.

At this point you’re just making excuses for war crimes, inventing explanations that don’t match the facts.

None of the civilian structures and facilities hit by Iran in neighbouring Gulf countries were hosting US forces. Again, that might have been justifiable depending on proportionality and the selectivity of targeting, but it didn’t happen.

Nor did Iran disclaim the attacks as mistakes. It only did so in one case, claiming over-eager local commanders, but didn’t indicate what it had done to prevent a recurrence.

There was nothing wrong with Gulf states shooting down Iranian drones, planes, and missiles being launched at them, that’s basic self-defence. Similarly, the UAE launched strikes on Iranian launchers only after first being hit, which is also basic self-defence in terms of international law.

By excusing Iran’s own illegal actions and war crimes you’re no better than the cheerleaders of the US and Israel’s illegal actions and war crimes.

Iran hitting the region’s desalination plants would’ve been a nuclear option, which would almost certainly have invited a wider global response to it and resulted in the end of the regime.

If Iran had limited its strikes to US facilities in the Gulf I might have agreed with you. But it didn’t, it hit civilian targets too, all which had nothing to do with the American and Israeli campaign.

I see you snuck in ‘airports used for refuelling US tankers’ there, but Iran hit passenger terminals and other civilian-only parts of airports. That’s not permitted under international law.

Moreover, none of the Gulf countries allowed US forces to strike Iran from their territory, such as HIMARS firings, until after they were first attacked by Iran.

Being sceptical of US and Israeli motives is one thing, but that shouldn’t cause you to give Iran a free pass to break international law with impunity.

The UK was defending its allies who had not launched illegal strikes, but were themselves attacked by Iran in contravention of international law.

Iran attacked countries that played absolutely no role in the US and Israel’s attack on it, including some (like Oman) that have been fairly closely allied to the regime.

That goes far beyond what’s permissible in international law in response to an attack.

In my view the US and Israeli attacks on Iran were illegal, reprehensible, and deeply stupid. But that doesn’t mean Iran is allowed to do whatever it wants afterward, especially to countries not directly involved in hostilities. In this case Iran has also broken international law.

Nope. The UK only responded after its own territory had been struck, as had that of allies in the region who were not part of the US and Israel’s actions.

Its role has been entirely defensive, and legal under international law as part of the right to self-defence.

Much less than 5-10 years ago, and orders of magnitude less than the Russian military.

The pressures of fighting an existential war plus the demands of the public in a democracy have closed off most typical avenues for corruption, forcing a focus on battlefield results and effective supply to the front-line.

Nobody in the Ukrainian military is advocating for military spending for corrupt reasons, but for the country to remain independent in the face of a Russian military invasion.

I've seen that same policy in regular corporations. Giving any member of a team 5/5 meant a personal phone call with HR and your skip level to justify it, while the message was sent unofficially beforehand that having that meeting would be bad for a manager's career.

Meshtastic/MeshCore have nothing valuable to offer in terms of delivering bombs accurately. Moreover, militaries already have access to much more robust radio messaging hardware and protocols for data and location transmission.

The main reason both Meshtastic and MeshCore have location data as a part of the protocol is because they emerged from the Ham community which has always taken its role in search and rescue seriously, and because it also appealed early on for other off-grid uses like hiking.

Have not*

As I understand things, the only AI tool the Bluesky team has been pushing has been a feed generator/curator. They have been pushing for vibe coding their systems or for using AI to generate content on Bluesky.

That's inaccurate. Several journalists had both advance and real-time knowledge of the raid on Venezuela, but chose to hold off on reporting out of journalistic ethics. [0]

Given the detail and depth of reporting into the initial strikes on Iran that emerged very shortly after, I would expect the same was true in that case too.

Banning journalists from the Pentagon doesn't prevent them from getting scoops and being leaked to. That was always a false justification for this move.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2026/01/05/nx-s1-5667060/media-shows-res...

It’s likely some customer segmentation label generated through PCA or some other clustering approach.

The qualifying criteria is probably just having picked an offer for renewable-sourced energy in the past, indicating that it has some importance to you. So you will be given more green energy offers in future.

Every company segments its customer base this way for marketing. Sometimes it’s even useful.

Department of Defense*.

‘Department of War’ is merely an authorised second name for the department, but legally it remains the Department of Defense until/if Congress changes it.

Asking people to not use or develop specific types of apps is not asking for a stop to technological progress.

Developing and using apps like this is a choice, there’s no inherent force propelling them into existence other than people thinking it’s a good idea. I’m explaining why it’s not a good idea.

Please do not build apps that allow people to specify the locations of wild animals, even in parks. Poaching remains at extremely dangerous levels, and every wildlife park I know of in vulnerable areas specifically asks visitors not to use those kinds of apps or groups because it gives location information to poachers.

Some wildlife parks have ‘daily sightings’ maps at rest stops and lodges, but those are monitored by park officials who remove the most at-risk animals and are cleared at least daily.

Aside from that, apps like this encourage bad behaviour from visitors in parks that allow self-driving, as dozens of people rush to the next leopard, lion, etc sighting. That not only creates its own risks but ruins the experience for everyone else.

In short, don’t do this.

This was a ton of fun to play! I can recommend putting in the effort to figure out the puzzles, none are too difficult and the clues are just enough to get you moving if you get stuck.

The Dutch government has one approach to the email service issue, by having a website and app, Berichtenbox, where you can receive official communications. They're regularly extending it to include municipalities as well.

However it's one-way only at the moment, there's no way to use it for two-way communication.

If we’re talking about funding and supporting local groups, activists, and insurgents, then we’re going to have to cast the net far wider and include many similar actions by the USSR and then Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Israel, and many others.

That might be a worthwhile discussion to have, but it’s categorically not the same thing as invasion, occupation, and annexation.

The Monroe Doctrine from 1823?

Cuba I have addressed.

The US was invited into South Vietnam to help defend them against an invasion from North Vietnam. We can debate the morality of the resulting war, which was questionable, but it was not a US invasion.

The US invasion of Nicaragua was in 1912, long before the modern post-WWII era of stronger international law.

Chile was not invaded by the US.

If these are the examples you have, you don’t have a strong argument.

Nothing should or would happen.

The issue with Cuba was the stationing of nuclear missiles in Cuba, not merely its membership of a pact with the USSR.

The US didn’t invade Cuba, it assisted Cuban exiles to do so in the embarrassing Bay of Pigs disaster which took place before the naval blockade as part of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Naturally, Bay of Pigs should never have happened, and it’s one of the things that led to the CIA’s powers and freedom from oversight being drastically curtailed the following decade.

Furthermore, the world and international law has moved on since the 1960s. That sort of brinkmanship has been much reduced.

‘Not one inch eastward’, as Gorbachev himself made clear, was only about stationing troops in East Germany during the immediate Soviet withdrawal. It did not constrain the future unified Germany or NATO.

There was no such open invitation to Georgia and Ukraine, only vague promises. MAPs were still required.

The US would have no right to invade either Canada or Mexico if they were discussing joining a mutual defence pact with Russia, yes.

Excellent point. Ukraine, like any sovereign country, can join whatever alliances it wants too.

There is no right in international law that allows its neighbours to invade if it picks one they don’t like.

Add to that that it’s a mutual defence pact and the argument becomes more absurd.

There was no such promise. Everyone who was actually in the room during those talks, including Premier Gorbachev, has denied it.

Nor was Ukraine anywhere close to joining NATO. It’s application had effectively been frozen in 2008, and it was not even being offered a MAP which is about step 1 on a 20 step ladder of actions to take before joining.

It’s a red herring being used to justify Russia’s territorial and imperial ambitions.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/did-nato-promise-not-to-e...

https://hls.harvard.edu/today/there-was-no-promise-not-to-en...