cmccabe's recent activity
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Comment on Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - May 25 in ~news
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Comment on Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - May 25 in ~news
cmccabe LinkChina Pushes European Countries to Accept Captured Ukrainian Territories as Russian archived https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-pushing-ukraine-cease-fire-gets-cool-reception-in-europe-614774ddChina Pushes European Countries to Accept Captured Ukrainian Territories as Russian archived
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-pushing-ukraine-cease-fire-gets-cool-reception-in-europe-614774ddThe Chinese envoy dispatched to push Beijing’s peace plan for Ukraine carried a clear message: U.S. allies in Europe should assert their autonomy and urge an immediate cease-fire, leaving Russia in possession of the parts of its smaller neighbor that it now occupies, according to Western officials familiar with talks in capitals across the continent.
Diplomat Li Hui, who has visited Kyiv, Warsaw, Berlin, Paris and Brussels this month, urged European governments to view China as an economic alternative to Washington and said they should move quickly to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine before it spreads, those officials said. Li was due to travel to Moscow on Friday.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of May 22 in ~news
cmccabe LinkThe latest book ban target: Amanda Gorman’s poem from the Biden inauguration https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/24/23736215/florida-book-ban-amanda-gorman-the-hill-we-climb transcript of The Hill...The latest book ban target: Amanda Gorman’s poem from the Biden inauguration
https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/24/23736215/florida-book-ban-amanda-gorman-the-hill-we-climbLast month, a Miami-Dade County school removed Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb” from its elementary school collection following a complaint filed by a parent, according to a report by the Miami Herald. Gorman, who was 22 during the inauguration, was the country’s national youth poet laureate at the time. Her poem, which she wrote shortly after the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, laid out an optimistic vision of how the country could move forward and attempt to bridge its divides.
Republican lawmakers have increasingly turned to book bans as a way to push an “ideologically slanted vision of what children should learn about American culture, society, and history.” In many cases, like the Florida laws, these bans have specifically focused on curbing information about systemic racism, LGBTQ identity, and the contributions of marginalized groups to American society. Educational experts emphasize that these bans mean students are exposed to a narrower range of ideas and that many may not see themselves represented in the literature they read.
The complaint about Gorman’s poem [...] came from a parent who also raised concerns about other books focused on Black history and Cuba including titles The ABCs of Black History, Love to Langston, and Cuban Kids. The parent argued that Gorman’s poem would “cause confusion” and “indoctrinate students.”
transcript of The Hill We Climb, as read at Biden's inauguration
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Comment on Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - May 18 in ~news
cmccabe Link ParentThis is the first time I've looked at that sub and I probably won't look back often. But I must say, I liked the meme of Putin saying "I need a ride, not ammo."/r/noncredibledefense is having a blast right now
This is the first time I've looked at that sub and I probably won't look back often. But I must say, I liked the meme of Putin saying "I need a ride, not ammo."
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Comment on Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - May 18 in ~news
cmccabe Link ParentThat sounds like a pretty reasonable assumption to me. Or, they might have intentionally set out that way so they had some wiggle room later if needed. Either way, I can imagine a few choice words...I guess that accounting "error" got inconvenient when they tried to squeeze more aid into an existing budget, huh?
That sounds like a pretty reasonable assumption to me. Or, they might have intentionally set out that way so they had some wiggle room later if needed. Either way, I can imagine a few choice words emanating from the Kremlin when this headline hit.
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Comment on Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - May 18 in ~news
cmccabe LinkPentagon Says Accounting Mistake Leaves U.S. With $3 Billion More in Arms for Ukraine archived...Pentagon Says Accounting Mistake Leaves U.S. With $3 Billion More in Arms for Ukraine archived
https://www.wsj.com/articles/accounting-error-leaves-pentagon-with-3-billion-more-in-arms-for-ukraine-u-s-says-6d6f4576The Pentagon has overcounted the value of the weaponry it has sent to Ukraine by at least $3 billion, an error that could eliminate the need to ask Congress for more money to keep Kyiv in the fight this spring, people familiar with the situation said.
The military services inadvertently used a higher value for at least some of the weaponry the Pentagon sent to Ukraine, using valuations for new equipment instead of the older gear pulled out of U.S. stockpiles, the people said.
An internal audit identified the difference in March, and now the Biden administration may not need to seek additional funding from Congress for next year, the people said. The Pentagon has sent nearly $40 billion in military aid to help Ukraine defend itself since Russia invaded in February 2022.
Accounting used in announcements of military aid since the error was discovered have all been correct, Pentagon officials said. Military officials are reviewing past announcements of assistance to ensure they didn’t miss anything else. The overall value of the accounting error could grow, officials said.
Happy little accident.
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Comment on Who here is a homeowner? in ~life
cmccabe LinkOne tip that helped my wife and I (third time home owners): Shop around a lot and find a mortgage loan officer that will be your partner. We lucked out big time and have refinanced many times over...One tip that helped my wife and I (third time home owners): Shop around a lot and find a mortgage loan officer that will be your partner. We lucked out big time and have refinanced many times over our nearby 15 years of home ownership whenever the loan officer has found lower rates. She doesn’t charge us a fee, so we have nothing to lose other than the hassle of signing a million documents at refi time and digging up a ton of bank/finance statements to satisfy the lender’s approval requirements. Obviously rates have been going up in the past year, but for years previously, we were refinancing once or twice a year and consistently lowering our mortgage rate. I’m not sure how easy it is to find a loan officer that doesn’t charge a fee, but it’s worth looking for.
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Comment on Tildes Video Thread in ~misc
cmccabe LinkSome time back, someone on Tildes posted about a Lithuanian daredevil urban explorer named Shiey. I really enjoyed some of his long distance train hopping videos and have watched several more...Some time back, someone on Tildes posted about a Lithuanian daredevil urban explorer named Shiey. I really enjoyed some of his long distance train hopping videos and have watched several more since. More recently I found the channel of an old school train hopper who goes by the name Hobo Shoestring. He’s been living the transient, train hopping life for more than three decades and has an amazing knowledge of the US rails network and familiarity with train yard operations and track scheduling. His love of trains and the untethered hobo lifestyle makes his videos a really unique watch. Has anyone else here watched his videos? Here’s his channel: https://youtube.com/@TheHoboShoestring He has posted a lot of videos.
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Comment on Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway sells entire stake in TSMC in ~finance
cmccabe LinkIn a Monday filing, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) disclosed that it was no longer holding a stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM) as of the end of the first quarter.
In recent weeks, Buffett had repeatedly expressed concerns over the future of Taiwan, the self-governed democratic island where TSMC is based. China’s Communist leadership has long claimed Taiwan as part of its territory, despite having never ruled over it.
Asked to explain his decision on an analyst call this month, the billionaire said: “I don’t like its location, and I’ve reevaluated that.”
“I feel better about the capital that we’ve got deployed in Japan than in Taiwan,” the Berkshire Hathaway chairman added. “I wish it weren’t sold, but I think that’s a reality.”
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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway sells entire stake in TSMC
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Comment on Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - May 11 in ~news
cmccabe LinkAccording to the Kyiv Independent, Russia is on the cusp of 200,000 troop losses in the war.According to the Kyiv Independent, Russia is on the cusp of 200,000 troop losses in the war.
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Comment on Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - May 4 in ~news
cmccabe LinkBritain has delivered long-range ‘Storm Shadow’ cruise missiles to Ukraine ahead of expected counteroffensive https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/uk-storm-shadow-cruise-missiles-ukraineBritain has delivered long-range ‘Storm Shadow’ cruise missiles to Ukraine ahead of expected counteroffensive
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/uk-storm-shadow-cruise-missiles-ukraineThe United Kingdom has supplied Ukraine with multiple Storm Shadow cruise missiles, giving Ukrainian forces a new long-range strike capability in advance of a highly anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces, multiple senior Western officials told CNN.
The Storm Shadow is a long-range cruise missile with stealth capabilities, jointly developed by the UK and France, which is typically launched from the air. With a firing range in excess of 250km, or 155 miles, it is just short of the 185-mile range capability of the US-made surface-to-surface Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, that Ukraine has long asked for.
Critically, the Storm Shadow has the range to strike deep into Russian-held territory in Eastern Ukraine. A Western official told CNN that the UK has received assurances from the Ukrainian government that these missiles will be used only within Ukrainian sovereign territory and not inside Russia. UK officials have made frequent public statements identifying Crimea as Ukrainian sovereign territory, describing it as “illegally annexed.”
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of May 8 in ~news
cmccabe LinkRep. George Santos pleads not guilty to 13 counts of financial crimes https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/05/10/george-santos-charges/Rep. George Santos pleads not guilty to 13 counts of financial crimes
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/05/10/george-santos-charges/Freshman lawmaker accused of money laundering, misleading donors, falsely claiming unemployment benefits
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Comment on Japan is in talks to open a NATO office in ~news
cmccabe LinkJapan is in talks to open a NATO liaison office, the first of its kind in Asia, the country’s foreign minister told CNN in an exclusive interview on Wednesday, saying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made the world less stable.
Hayashi specifically cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year as an event with repercussions far beyond Europe’s borders that forced Japan to rethink regional security.
“The reason why we are discussing about this is that since the aggression by Russia to Ukraine, the world (has) become more unstable,” he said.
The opening of a NATO liaison office in Japan would mark a significant development for the Western alliance amid deepening geopolitical fault lines, and is likely to attract criticism from the Chinese government, which has previously warned against such a move.
NATO has similar liaison offices in other places including Ukraine and Vienna. The liaison office in Japan will enable discussions with NATO’s security partners, such as South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, on geopolitical challenges, emerging and disruptive technologies, and cyber threats, Nikkei reported last week.
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Japan is in talks to open a NATO office
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Comment on Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - May 4 in ~news
cmccabe LinkPutin’s embarrassing one-tank parade hints at catastrophic losses in Ukraine...Putin’s embarrassing one-tank parade hints at catastrophic losses in Ukraine
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-embarrassing-one-tank-parade-hints-at-catastrophic-losses-in-ukraine/It would be hard to image a more fitting symbol of Russia’s declining military fortunes than the sight of a solitary Stalin-era tank trundling across Red Square during the country’s traditional Victory Day celebrations on May 9. For the past two decades, Vladimir Putin has used Victory Day to showcase modern Russia’s resurgence as a military superpower, with dozens of the very latest tanks typically taking part in each annual parade. This year, however, the only tank on display was a T-34 model dating back to World War II.
Inevitably, the embarrassing absence of tanks at this year’s Victory Day parade has been widely interpreted as further evidence of Russia’s catastrophic losses in Ukraine. Social media was soon buzzing with posts poking fun at the Kremlin. “Modern Russian military equipment can be found much more easily at Ukrainian military trophy exhibitions than at the Victory Parade in Moscow,” noted the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s official Twitter account. Others were less subtle. “There was one tank at the parade in Moscow! We laugh all over Ukraine,” posted Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko. “There are farmers in Ukraine with more tanks than that,” quipped another Twitter user.
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Comment on The Vietnamese military has a troll army and Facebook is its weapon in ~tech
cmccabe LinkOn Christmas Day 2017, Vietnam’s defense ministry announced a military group devoted to policing the country’s internet, called Force 47. In the five years since, pro-government trolls have been a persistent presence on the side of the regime, operating more or less freely across major platforms like Facebook and YouTube. As speech laws tighten in countries like India, Turkey, and Thailand — and platforms lose interest in pushing back — the trolls consistently and successfully harass activists and journalists posting on Vietnamese Facebook, providing a troubling model for how censorship can flourish within social media, even reaching beyond national borders.
In Vietnam, the fight has taken place largely outside the usual channels of law enforcement requests and court orders. In the first half of 2022, Facebook reported just under 1,000 takedowns based on local laws in Vietnam — above average, but still far fewer than neighbors like Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia. Over the same period, Facebook reported only one government request for user data within the country. By conventional measures, the Vietnamese government is not doing that much to restrict its citizens on Facebook.
But according to local opposition groups, activists and reporters, these numbers conceal a far more aggressive campaign of mass reporting of any groups that question or critique the government. Michel Tran Duc, the advocacy director for the reform group Viet Tan, told Rest of World he has to dispute a community standards violation on Facebook at least once a month. Duc is then forced to appeal the decision through Facebook — a slow and difficult process.
The trolls that weaponize Facebook community standards show the versatility and adaptivity of Vietnam’s domestic digital security unit Force 47, as it attempts to assert its grip over online spaces, in addition to the physical world, said Nguyen The Phuong, an expert on Vietnam’s defense and maritime security. Force 47 is hard to trace because its realm is social media, where users can make fake profiles and inflate or obscure their credentials, but Phuong and other researchers have seen evidence of coordinated attempts to spread pro-government content to manipulate the online dialogue, as well as target dissidents on social media – as they seem to do with community standard violations.
“We pushed back on demands to silence peaceful political speech in Vietnam for several years, and explored every option to ensure people could still express themselves as freely as possible,” Meta said in an email to Rest of World. “However, as we shared in 2020, if we continued to push back on these requests, it is highly likely our platforms would be blocked in their entirety.”
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The Vietnamese military has a troll army and Facebook is its weapon
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Comment on Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - May 4 in ~news
cmccabe LinkWhy Pope Francis Isn’t With the West on Ukraine (archived) https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/05/ukraine-war-pope-francis-position-vatican-geopolitics/673955/Why Pope Francis Isn’t With the West on Ukraine (archived)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/05/ukraine-war-pope-francis-position-vatican-geopolitics/673955/The best way to make sense of Francis, then, isn’t in terms of left versus right, or even East versus West, but North versus South. Across the global South, the conflict in Ukraine is seen largely as a European affair, one without an obvious hero or villain. The pope’s call for a halt to arms transfers, an end to the fighting, and negotiations that all sides could support coincides with the majority sentiment among Catholics who don’t live in NATO member states.
The Catholic Church is not a democracy. But Western critics have for centuries demanded that it become more responsive to the will of the people over whose souls it claims jurisdiction. Perhaps, therefore, observers jarred by Pope Francis’s position on Ukraine might pause for a moment to consider whether Francis is simply reflecting the instincts and desires of his base, to use the political jargon.
For better or worse, the worldviews of his constituents will move further and further from the conventional political wisdom of the West. Should we be surprised when he rejects it?
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Comment on Billionaire Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas. The Justice didn’t disclose the deal. in ~news
cmccabe LinkIt almost seems like Clarence and Gini Thomas are going to need their own mega-thread. Judicial activist directed fees to Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no mention of Ginni’...It almost seems like Clarence and Gini Thomas are going to need their own mega-thread.
Judicial activist directed fees to Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no mention of Ginni’
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/judicial-activist-directed-fees-to-clarence-thomas-s-wife-urged-no-mention-of-ginni/ar-AA1aL642
Adding this re-quote as a separate comment. I don't know if that was a veiled threat but it sure sounds pretty ominous.