Futurology Today

Sony Xperia Pro-I, in "Basic" mode (camera selected its own settings). f/2.0, 1/640, 6.64mm, ISO100.

The flower will fully close within an hour or two and remain shut for the rest of the day, reopening in the morning.

We BBQ these once ripe, cut into 1cm slices with olive oil and Tajin (Mexican-style spice blend).

Court records show that the Trump administration has agreed to spare from deportation a key witness in the federal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in exchange for his cooperation in the case.

Within hours of the ruling, which curbs nationwide injunctions, challengers filed new court papers seeking to block Trump's plan via a different legal avenue.

Almost as soon as the Supreme Court released its ruling limiting the ability of judges to block Donald Trump's plan to end birthright citizenship, challengers brought new legal claims seeking the same result by a different means.

While the court on Friday said judges cannot issue sweeping "universal injunctions" that can apply nationwide in many cases, it left open the option of plaintiffs seeking broad relief via class action lawsuits.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed such a lawsuit in New Hampshire on behalf of immigrants whose children may not obtain U.S. citizenship at birth if Trump's order were to go into effect.

In a separate case in Maryland, in which groups had obtained a nationwide injunction, lawyers filed an amended complaint seeking similar class-wide relief for anyone affected by Trump's plan within hours of the ruling written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Hi there,

I have an Asus Zenfone 10 on Android 15. In this release of android a new feature named mobile security settings became available which are supposed to signal and protect against surveillance on the mobile network side, like at a protest.

When I try to enable these settings on my device they are off again when I reenter these settings. Do these settings have some kind of prerequisite? Are they working on your device?

Thanks!

Hi All,

I've moved Nerdcore from lemm.ee to !Nerdcore@lemmy.zip (via trusty copy and paste...) It would be awesome if you find your way over there. We got some nice nerdy lyrics on a variety of music genres.

Fun Fact: MC Frontalot coined the term “nerdcore” in the early 2000s :)

See you on !Nerdcore@lemmy.zip

Cheers, peet

Prosecutor says the bodies in Ciudad Juarez had not been cremated, and that relatives of the dead have been given ‘other material’

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/30/mexico-crematorium-police-381-bodies-ciudad-juarez-ntwnfb

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Journal publication referenced in video:

• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.03.013

Sarah J. Frick, Deborah Fletcher, Austin C. Smith, Pirate and chill: The effect of netflix on illegal streaming, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 209, 2023, Pages 334-347, ISSN 0167-2681, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.03.013. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268123000793) Abstract: Over 188 million people in the United States use a subscription video streaming service, yet digital piracy remains prevalent and costs the U.S. economy an estimated $29.2 billion annually. This paper investigates the relationship between a movie's availability on Netflix, the largest video subscription service, and intent to illegally stream the movie. We leverage a contract dispute that caused Epix (a cable network company) to move all its movies from Netflix to Hulu, representing a substantial decrease in the legal streaming availability of these movies. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that reducing legal streaming access via the removal of Epix movies from Netflix results in a 20% increase in piracy intent relative to movies that remained on Netflix, as measured by Google search volume. This study contributes to the understanding of the substitution between legal streaming services and movie piracy and has implications for content owners deciding what platform to offer their movie on. Keywords: Piracy; Online streaming; Digital goods; Netflix; Google searches

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/217472

Russian ruler Vladimir Putin has stated that the Kremlin plans to reduce defence spending, the share of which in the national budget has reached record levels not seen since the Soviet era.

Source: The Moscow Times, an independent Amsterdam-based news outlet

Details: Putin said current military expenditures amount to RUB 13.5 trillion (US$150 billion), with Russia’s GDP standing at RUB 223 trillion (US$2.5 trillion), which equals 6.3% of GDP.

Quote from Putin: "We are planning to reduce defence spending. For next year, and the year after that and so on – for the next three years – we are planning, although there is not yet a final agreement between the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development, but overall everyone is thinking in that direction."

Details: He stressed that the increase in military spending has led to inflation, which the government continues to battle. Putin said that Russia’s GDP growth this year will slow compared to previous years, when the economy was growing by more than 4% annually.

Putin stated that the slowdown is a deliberate measure to fight inflation. Meanwhile, he mentioned NATO’s plans to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035.

Other top officials have also pointed to problems in the Russian economy. Russia’s Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov stated that the country is already "on the brink" of economic recession. Elvira Nabiullina, Governor of the Central Bank of Russia, warned of depleted resources that had previously supported growth amid warfare and sanctions. She said Russia has run out of spare labour, idle industrial capacity and reserves from the National Wealth Fund, two-thirds of whose liquid assets have already been spent.

Alexander Shokhin, Chairman of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, said that many companies are on the verge of default. Alexey Mordashov, the main shareholder of Severstal, which is one of Russia’s largest steel and mining companies, warned of a risk of large-scale bankruptcies due to high interest rates and falling demand. Businessman Arkady Rotenberg noted that businesses are struggling to survive under expensive loans, calling the current situation "not a very good factor for business".

Background:

Russia is gradually exhausting its macroeconomic reserves, in particular the Russian National Wealth Fund (NWF), but its potential to further finance the war remains.Earlier, Russian analysts predicted that the liquid part of the National Wealth Fund could be completely exhausted by early 2026. These estimates were made against the backdrop of falling oil and gas prices.

Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!

From Ukrainska Pravda via this RSS feed

Does Pixellmator^TM^ do most of what PhotoShop^TM^ does?

How would you recommend going about that given these constraints?

Facebook users opting into “cloud processing” are inadvertently giving Meta AI access to their entire camera roll.

Hong Kong (AFP) – One of Hong Kong's last remaining opposition parties has officially disbanded, its leader announced Sunday, citing "immense political pressure" as Beijing's years-long crackdown on dissent transforms the semi-autonomous Chinese city.

The League of Social Democrats (LSD), founded in 2006, championed democratisation and grassroots issues in Hong Kong's legislature and on the streets.

Its lawmakers were known for their colourful heckling and symbolic protests in legislative sessions, which included lobbing bananas and fish sandwiches.

It is the latest opposition party to cease operating after Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020 to end democracy protests that had brought the financial hub to a standstill.

"In the face of immense political pressure and after careful deliberation -- particularly with regard to the consequences for our members and comrades -- we have made the difficult decision to disband," LSD said in a statement.

Party chair Chan Po-ying said the decision had been unanimous as the group had "no other choice".

Asked if pressure had come from Beijing's middlemen, Chan declined to elaborate.

At the height of its popularity in 2008, LSD held just three seats, but it was responsible for helping mainstream a more radical pro-democracy agenda.

After the imposition of the national security law, the city's political opposition dwindled, with most democracy campaigners jailed or overseas. The Civic Party closed in 2023 and in February, the Democratic Party began winding down.

Regina Ip, convenor of the Hong Kong government's cabinet, told AFP last week that it was a "good thing" that these opposition parties were disbanding.

"All these parties have done great damage to Hong Kong and to the proper functioning of (the Legislative Council)," she said.

Authorities have since overhauled the electoral system to ensure only Beijing loyalists can hold office.

Chan said she had no "false hope" of liberalisation.

"I don't think Hong Kong will go forward to the democratic system in the near future," she said.

According to the party, its bank accounts were closed in 2023, adding to operational difficulties.

Six party members have been jailed over the past five years, including Chan's husband and one of LSD's founding members, "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung. He remains behind bars after being found guilty of subversion last year in Hong Kong's largest national security trial.

Another LSD member jailed in the same case, Jimmy Sham, was released from prison last month.

At the press conference, he described the group as Hong Kong's first political party to adopt LGBTQ equality as part of its core platform.

"I sincerely hope that in the future, there will still be voices in society that speak out for the marginalised," Sham added.

In recent years, LSD had limited its public activities to a Sunday street booth in a shopping district where a handful of activists handed out flyers while filmed by police.

Vice-chairperson Dickson Chau recalled that some passersby would make small signs of support, such as offering him a friendly nod or a beverage.

But operating in the current political environment has taken a personal toll.

"These four years, I constantly worry about someone (knocking on) my door to arrest me or do a house search... and when I just walk around the streets, I need to worry, is it a sensitive date?"

Chan warned of a "domino effect", saying that her group would not be the last to fold.

She urged the public "on the one hand to survive, and on the other hand to try to exercise our rights as citizens".

Blood-sucking ticks that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite are exploding in number and spreading across the US, to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country and infect millions of people, experts have warned.

Lone star ticks have taken advantage of rising temperatures by the human-caused climate crisis to expand from their heartland in the south-east US to areas previously too cold for them, in recent years marching as far north as New York and even Maine, as well as pushing westwards.

The ticks are known to be unusually aggressive and can provoke an allergy in bitten people whereby they cannot eat red meat without enduring a severe reaction, such as breaking out in hives and even the risk of heart attacks. The condition, known as alpha-gal syndrome, has proliferated from just a few dozen known cases in 2009 to as many as 450,000 now.

That's one way to reduce meat consumption, I guess.