tal

Kids and their chats today have it easy, man.

https://home.nps.gov/people/hettie-ogle.htm

Hettie moved to Johnstown on 1869 to manage the Western Union telegraph office where she was employed on the day of the flood. Her residence was 110 Washington Street, next to the Cambria County Library. This also served as the Western Union office. Unlike many other telegraph operators associated with messaging on the day of the flood, Hettie was not employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad. She was a commercial operator. Three women were employed by Hettie; Grace Garman, Mary Jane Waktins and her daughter Minnie. They all died in the flood including Hettie.

A timeline of Hettie's activity on May 31, 1889:
7:44 a.m. -She sent a river reading. The water level was 14 feet.
10:44 a.m. -The river level was 20 feet.
11:00 a.m. -She wired the following message to Pittsburgh. "Rain gauge carried away."
12:30 p.m. -She wired "Water higher than ever known. Can't give exact measurement" to Pittsburgh.
1:00 p.m. -Hettie moved to the second floor of her home due to the rising water.
3:00 p.m. -Hettie alerted Pittsburgh about the dam after receiving a warning from South Fork that the dam "may possibly go." She wired "this is my last message." The water was grounding her wires. A piece of sheet music titled "My Last Message" was published after the flood.

Hettie's house on Washington Street was struck by the flood wave shortly after 4:00 p.m.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

The death toll could have been worse had it not been for the self-sacrifice of an Intercolonial Railway dispatcher, Patrick Vincent (Vince) Coleman, operating at the railyard about 230 metres (750 ft) from Pier 6, where the explosion occurred. He and his co-worker, William Lovett, learned of the dangerous cargo aboard the burning Mont-Blanc from a sailor and began to flee. Coleman remembered that an incoming passenger train from Saint John, New Brunswick, was due to arrive at the railyard within minutes. He returned to his post alone and continued to send out urgent telegraph messages to stop the train. Several variations of the message have been reported, among them this from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic: "Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys." Coleman's message was responsible for bringing all incoming trains around Halifax to a halt. It was heard by other stations all along the Intercolonial Railway, helping railway officials to respond immediately.[71][72] Passenger Train No. 10, the overnight train from Saint John, is believed to have heeded the warning and stopped a safe distance from the blast at Rockingham, saving the lives of about 300 railway passengers. Coleman was killed at his post.[71]

If you count the telegraph as online communication, It'd go back to the mid-1800s.

I'm pretty sure that I still don't know everything I need to know about online discourse.

What the fuck is wrong with that dude?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon

There were apparently several comic book series done in the Firefly universe. I don't know whether they're considered canon or what. I have not read them.

kagis

Apparently yes.

Wikipedia: Serenity (comics)

Serenity is a line of comic books published by Dark Horse Comics from 2005 to 2017. It is a canonical continuation of Joss Whedon's Firefly television series and the 2005 film Serenity, which are all part of the Firefly media franchise.[1] It was not an ongoing series; rather, it consisted of a number of miniseries and one-shots, released sporadically.

Starting in 2018, Boom! Studios began publishing its own line of Firefly comics.

Wikipedia: Firefly (Boom! Studios comics)

Firefly was an ongoing line of comic books published by Boom! Studios from 2018, set in the universe of the Firefly media Franchise. Written by Greg Pak and illustrated by Dan McDaid, this series submerges into the themes of family, loyalty, identity, and redemption focusing on the early experiences of Malcom Reynolds during the war that shaped his future as captain of the Serenity.[1] It is a canonical continuation of Joss Whedon's Firefly television series, the 2005 film Serenity, and Dark Horse Comics' Serenity comics, which are all part of the Firefly media franchise.[2]

That might provide more canon material, if you're on the hunt for some.

Have you actually tested it? I'd think that it would work. Unless some Lemmy instance is actively going out of its way to identify and block Tor nodes, I don't see why it wouldn't.

checks

lemmy.today looks fine to me on it.

Hmm. Sorry about that. I can see it in Firefox via your home instance's Web UI, but it's possible that there's some other frontend or client that can't handle it.

EDIT: The vanilla Web UI for Lemmy and PieFed can handle it. Eternity (Android), Interstellar (Android), mlmym (Web), Photon (Web), Voyager (Web), and Alexandrite (Web) cannot. Mbin (using fedia.io) is missing a ton of comments in this thread, including that one, for whatever reason.

The War Zone coverage:

https://www.twz.com/air/germany-considers-split-from-france-on-next-generation-fighter

IIRC, COVID-19 policy and remote schooling policy was found to be pretty harmful for student performance. We lost some educational time because our schools weren't operating as effectively. I remember discussion at the time that this would have some amount of lasting negative impact. It also hurt other countries. I don't know how much of this is due to that, but we expected a fall.

kagis

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10266495/

Some snippets:

A Policy Analysis for California Education report found that by the time students completed interim winter assessments in the 2020–21 school year, they had experienced a learning lag of approximately 2.6 months in English language arts (ELA) and 2.5 months in math (Pier et al., 2021). Moreover, economically disadvantaged students, English learners, and students of color experienced a more significant learning lag than students not in these groups (Goldhaber et al., 2022, Pier et al., 2021).

Engzell et al. analyzed performance in reading and comprehension of factual and literary subjects among 350,000 primary school students in national exams before and after an 8-week lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic (Engzell et al., 2020). The results revealed a post-pandemic decrease in reading performance of more than 3 % compared with pre-pandemic test results (Engzell et al., 2020). Similar unfavorable results were reported by Rose et al.’s study in England during the spring and summer of 2020 (Rose et al., 2021), which followed 6000 pupils for two years and evaluated learning performance using National Foundation for Educational Research standardized tests. The results revealed significantly lower reading performance in 2020 compared with a 2017 sample, with 5.2 % of students scoring two marks fewer. Moreover, reading assessments revealed a 7-month progress delay in 2020, compared with a 2019 sample (Rose et al., 2021).

As I recall from past reading, in general, the US runs up the least deficit during periods when control of the government is split. That is, the Democrats block some of the things that the Republicans want to do with funds, and the Republicans block some of the things that the Democrats want to do with funds. Tax cuts, spending, whatever.

Right now, the Republicans hold a trifecta, control all of the Presidency, House, and Senate, so my expectation is that they will probably tend to adopt policy that runs up more deficit than the norm, since they're unchecked.

Assuming that the Democrats take the House in the midterms, though, the GOP will need to compromise on new policy after that.

I mean, I'm not saying that it's a good policy. My kneejerk take is that it's probably not a good policy. I'm just saying that I don't think that there necessarily has to be a more-elaborate motive than trying to pull in more tax from alternate sources.

EDIT: Also, a lot of these are multinationals. So in terms of the companies involved, they can probably shift workers for whom the tax would be fatal for visa prospects to foreign offices somewhere, as long as the workers are still willing to work for the companies on those terms. That could keep them working for the company. That will kill the path to US citizenship for the workers, though, which an H1-B permits for. In general, I'm skeptical that discouraging highly-skilled workers from becoming US citizens is a great idea for the US.

EDIT2: I'd add that Trump's been on record as making statements about his H1-B policy that are extremely inconsistent. Back when campaigning for his first term, IIRC he claimed that he would expand them, slash them, and leave them alone, partly depending upon who he was talking to. Just last year, he was talking about how they were just fine:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/elon-musk-vows-war-over-h-1b-visa-program-amid-rift-with-some-trump-supporters-2024-12-28/

Trump sides with Elon Musk in H-1B visa debate, says he's always been in favor of the program

So it might also be wise to take pronouncements from Trump on the matter with a grain of salt. I don't know how serious this is from the article.

And, as those people who keep posting the rainbow colored "Lets talk about the Epstein files" memes keep pointing out, Trump has had a pretty long history of doing outrageous things to try to direct public attention away from other things that he doesn't want discussed.

Maybe. Could be just needing to offset tax cuts. The present administration and Congress has has cut taxes on the wealthy. Either they find new sources of revenue to fill the hole, or they run up deficit.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/what-we-know-about-the-us-h-1b-visa-program/

The number of H-1B applications approved in recent years has climbed. Nearly 400,000 were approved in fiscal year 2024, most of which were applications to renew employment. Rejection rates of H-1B applications spiked during Trump’s first term but fell under former President Joe Biden.

Computer-related jobs have been the most common occupation for H-1B workers for more than a decade. Since fiscal 2012, about 60% or more of H-1B workers approved each year have held a computer-related job. In 2023, the share was 65%, and these workers reported a median annual salary of $123,600.

India is the top country of birth for H-1B workers. Roughly three-quarters (73%) of H-1B workers whose applications were approved in fiscal 2023 were born in India.

This would amount to a tax, mostly on the tech industry employing skilled workers out of India, of about $40B/year.

Pew has a list of top employers. Amazon would take the single largest share, at over $1B/year.

On the other hand, Trump also eliminated the de minimis tariff exemption, which was a move that I would guess is probably very advantageous to Amazon (it let foreign e-retailers sell to American consumers while rarely paying tariffs, since they sold product imported in small quantities, whereas domestic e-retailers selling product tended to import in larger quantity and paid tariff).

kagis

https://communicationsdaily.com/article/2025/05/20/cbo-no-de-minimis-would-mean-52-b-in-revenue-first-full-year-2505200047?BC=bc_674b2b83cff7b

If de minimis ends for all imports in July 2027, as proposed in the tax bill currently being considered in the House of Representatives, the U.S. Treasury would collect an additional $5.2 billion in the first full fiscal year after the change, mostly in tariffs, but including $231 million in customs user fees.

So if you figure that Trump effectively levied a tax that principally hit Amazon's foreign competitors like Shein and Temu with that move, I expect that that partially offsets how hard this hits Amazon.

That being said, a lot of other tech firms are gonna get hurt, and aren't e-retailers. I doubt that this is a good move in terms of US tech strength.