Communick News

I don’t have a license or car. A friend of mine posted a story on IG driving at 300 km/h on the highway. I know it’s fast, but just how fast in terms of driving?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23108496

What was your best "I must sacrifice you that I might live" moment spoken reassuringly?

I remember tossing a sibling into a bob-omb fire in Smash saying "I was the guardian" and then let him know it was okay and didnt make them less of a dude to cry tears of joy cuz he was finally going home 🎊

The resulting explosion was totes fyre 🤙 and I like to think he wound up in a better place, all the for it

Where were you when they took the economy down with tariffs, when they took the economy down by threatening it so consumer confidence drops. Where were you?”

“How many things are going on before we answer the question, as it says in Hebrew, hineni. Hineni. Behold, Lord, here I am,” he said.

Shortly afterward, Booker invited a comment from Sen. Jacky Rosen, who is Jewish and represents Nevada, where his mother lives. Booker praised Rosen as having had “one of the hardest jobs in all of the United States, which is to be president of a shul,” before listening to her comment.

After hearing from her, he added a yellow ribbon pin symbolizing the plight of the Israeli hostages in Gaza to his lapel.

Marit Stiles🟧 on Bluesky

President Trump is calling today Liberation Day. But his tariffs won't liberate anyone—they'll hurt American workers, American families, and the American economy.

Until his threats are off the table, we will be united and stand strong to protect Ontario.

I'm reminded of a statistic I once heard that one's first drunk-driving arrest usually happens after having done so for so many times, that one eventually runs out of luck. I don't remember the exact figure, but 20 other Signal chats to get caught once seems about the same.

Bhutila Karpoche🟧 on Bluesky

We're Canadians, of course we knock on doors in the snow!

Local organizers say they have less of a chance at making climate reforms in the majority Black city than Musk does at imposing environmental harms

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23108496

What was your best "I must sacrifice you that I might live" moment delivered reassuringly or sweetly to someone else?

I remember tossing a sibling into a bob-omb fire in Smash saying "I was the guardian" and then let him know it was okay and didnt make them less of a dude to cry tears of joy cuz he was finally going home 🎊

The resulting explosion was totes fyre 🤙 and I like to think he wound up in a better place, all the for it

Instead of the sane approach of specifying 5, 9, 12, 15, and/or 20 volts and the amperages, products insist on listing every model of device in existence instead.

Most will do 12V, but I always want to make sure it'll power my laptop (20V) as well.

A big thank you to reviewers who post images of the actual products where it shows the relevant info in one short line on the labels:

e.g. PD Output: 5V=3A, 9V=3A, 12V=3A, 15V=3A, 20V=3A

Summary:

Lawmakers are calling on the Social Security Administration chief to resign after internal emails revealed that the administration shut Maine off from the late-age insurance program in retaliation for publicly defying the MAGA agenda.

Representative Gerry Connolly called Tuesday for the resignation of Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner of social security. In a release, Connolly’s office shared emails sent by Dudek in which the DOGE acolyte inquired to his staff about which contracts Maine had with his agency and ultimately chose to cancel them, despite being aware that doing so would increase fraud and waste.

“Despite reinstating the contracts on March 7, 2025, and claiming that he did not intend to harm the people of Maine, the emails obtained by the Committee show that Acting Commissioner Dudek knew of the negative impacts of cancelling the programs and was willing to hurt the people of Maine and waste taxpayer money to avenge President Trump,” Connolly’s office wrote.

• In the stratosphere, ozone acts as a protective layer. But in the troposphere, at ground level, this colorless gas is incredibly harmful to human health and the environment in ways scientists are still working to fully understand. The problem exists worldwide, but may become especially bad in tropical nations this century.
• Ground-level ozone is a major air pollutant that shortens human lives and kills thousands each year, resulting in major economic impacts. It is formed when methane, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (released from vehicles, industry, power plants and crops) react in the presence of sunlight.
• Climate change worsens tropospheric ozone, with higher temperatures accelerating the chemical reaction that creates it, and because stalled weather systems (especially heat domes) allow buildup of ozone in stagnant polluted air. Ozone pollution not only impacts urban area, but also rural agricultural areas.
• Ozone impacts on biodiversity are significant and growing — harming pollinators, reducing crop yields and limiting forest growth, with global implications for food security and humanity’s reliance on forests as carbon sinks. Effectively tackling climate change and reducing ozone precursors are major solutions.

One of the most common refrains now, extending from liberals to conservatives, is the reference to “agency” and its supposed denial by anyone who brings attention to imperialism and the acts of Western states. “Oh, you’re pointing to the CIA’s influence in that coup? Well have you considered you’re denying the AGENCY of the people of that country when you say that? CHECKMATE!”

There’s this implication that you’re somehow nefarious, racist, xenophobic, chauvinist when you deny this “agency”, a brilliant reversal of the pro-imperialist’s position. You see, they’re not engaged in denying “agency” and all the bad things that come with it, no it’s you who are doing so.

There is no singular “agency” at play in any event, at any given time, in any given society. There is a wide variety of “agencies” at play, and when someone says you’re denying it in this or that case, they’re obfuscating the fact that they’re picking and choosing which particular “agency” they believe is most important and ought to be focused on (this is the normative claim) by presenting it as some universal, objective, valid position that everyone should accept at face value.

So take the case of a coup orchestrated by the CIA in some Latin American country. When you’re talking about this and someone says you’re “denying the agency of the people of that country” when you do so, what is the actual claim being made? It’s that you are somehow denying that the people of that country were capable of making their own decisions free from the influence of a foreign entity, the CIA in this case. It has the appearance of a profoundly moral claim, right? Who wants to deny that people are capable of carving out a path for themselves, and having the ability to pursue it? Are you saying they’re too weak or stupid to do so, and are instead in thrall of foreign powers and entities? Aren’t you just repeating the same racist/xenophobic/chauvinist/Western supremacist attitudes of the colonial masters who believed natives were pliant and weak and incapable of resisting?

It is exactly because of all this implied baggage that the term has gained such currency among supposed “leftists”, and has turned them into willful or ignorant dupes of imperialism and Western chauvinism, while imagining they’re in fact valiantly battling against it by invoking that magical word, “AGENCY!”.

Here is a basic fact: ten people, of about equal ability, are able to accomplish more tasks than one person of the same level of ability. They have more “agency”. A hundred people even more so. A thousand doesn’t even get close. How about if you introduce some other elements into this calculus: say you have ten people who are part of a well-organized, resourced, highly trained institution? So they have access to modern technology, vast funding, advanced weapons, ability to form narratives through their connections to high ranking political and media personalities, etc. etc. Do these ten people have more of an ability to affect reality than a hundred people chosen at random who lack all this? About a thousand? It seems like those ten people have more power, more “agency”, than the latter, right? If you deny this, and instead ludicrously assert that all those forms of agency enhancing capabilities those ten people embody and have access to as members of a particular institution are irrelevant, then you’re basically invalidating any kind of systemic, social analysis of power relations. If one billionaire has the same “agency” as a thousand poverty-stricken people, meaning “agency” is solely defined by numerical value, then what the fuck is the point of the concept except to justify the most grotesque inequalities and power imbalances under the pretense of being morally superior?

And that’s exactly what those who justify imperialism like so much about the term. It allows them, in the eyes of the ignorant (willful or otherwise) to play the part of paragons of virtue when in fact they’re the exact opposite.

The United States is the most powerful state in the world. It has the most wealth, it has the most advanced weaponry, it has the most well-funded intelligence services and army, navy and air force, and it extends its empire across the globe. The notion that they have the same “agency”, the same ability to affect things in the world as a poverty-stricken small country, is frankly deranged. It’s as absurd as the notion that a billionaire has the same ability to affect things as a homeless person, and obscures the very real destructive things that this power imbalance results in, which is why those on the left want to redress these imbalances.

This denial of power imbalances and preventing the doing of any kind of systemic analysis (which in turn prevents any notion of a politics that is aimed at systemic change, hence why liberals and those who imagine themselves to be radical love the term so much), is a fatal flaw that by itself invalidates the use of “agency” by anyone who seeks to justify and deflect away from the reality of imperialism.

But there are other flaws equally fatal. I mentioned in passing already the question of the vagueness and ambiguity of the term whenever it’s used while there’s a pretense that it’s in fact highly specific and concrete. But whose agency are you talking about? Societies are complex, and the larger they are the more complex they are. There are many forces at play, from political parties to unions to business organizations to obviously the state and its armed components (police, military, intelligence services). Charismatic leaders on whatever side play an outsized role. People who are incredibly wealthy. And all this is just internal. Then you have the wide variety of external forces: competing countries, business interests, foreign agents, NGOs, all the money that’s sloshing around in various organizations and among various people. Corruption, or as it’s called in the West, lobbying. All this complexity is reduced to a simplistic picture of Good versus Evil, where the person who employs “agency” is obviously on the side of the former and the one whom it’s being used against is on the side of the latter.

Ambiguity and vagueness masquerading as profundity and virtue. But you’ve already taken sides without acknowledging it. You’ve chosen which forces in this complex whole are the solely legitimate holders of “agency”, and which are totally irrelevant and don’t enter into your calculations (namely, Western forces and those internal who are aligned with them).

Those who cry “AGENCY!” in situations like these reveal just how hollow that phrase really is. There is no serious analysis or understanding, only cheap moralism hiding behind a thin veil of profundity and clarity. Lumumba, Allende and Árbenz were overthrown because they and the mass movements they represented were too weak, incompetent, stupid to understand the “agency” they had. Because after all, the only “agency” that exists is that of the supposed all-powerful monolithic “natives” who should act and behave on the side of the Good as defined by the user of the phrase. And if they don’t, it’s their fault and their fault alone. That is the actual claim being made, and it’s a profoundly depraved one.

Related articles:

• Once more on agency
• Ezra Klein and the liberal Zionist laundering of the ongoing genocide through "agency"

(Not taking Hormones yet actually, I want to but I also don't want to grow boobs)

In mid-March, Google announced that it was paying the staggering sum of $32 billion for the acquisition of the Israeli cloud-computing security company Wiz. The acquisition, pending regulatory approval, will be the largest ever of an Israeli firm.

What was left unsaid in Google’s announcement, however, were the personal backgrounds of its four founders. The co-founders of Wiz—Yinon Costica, Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik—are all veterans of Unit 8200, the signals intelligence division of the Israeli military, which is playing a key role in helping to carry out Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Unit 8200 is an elite unit in the Israeli military tasked with intelligence gathering, surveillance, codebreaking, as well as cybersecurity operations and hacking. In addition to its role collecting information for intelligence reports, the unit has also been accused by former veterans of carrying out mass surveillance of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories for the purpose of “political persecution,” as well as providing information used for targeted killings, sometimes based on over-broad interpretations of surveillance data.

It seems odd to me that it's not banned outside of medically necessary situations or for when the person has informed consent.