I feel for anyone who feels unsafe in their homes and communities. I can't imagine the weight of the decision to uproot yourself and your family to emigrate to another country for reasons beyond your control, especially discrimination.

It's worth noting, though, that this article seemingly goes out of its way to obfuscate what qualifies as anti-semitic acts.

"This kind of expression is no longer coming only from the extreme right, but also by the far left — and while it’s doubtful that it’s always antisemitic, anyone sensitive can feel that it’s never far away in certain discourse,” warns Wieviorka.

Palestinian solidarity is not anti-semitism, and there are abundant indicators (from this article and its links) they're being conflated in France.

If I were predisposed toward conspiracies I would definitely be convinced by now that every medium-to-large business owner in the country was part of a secret cabal who made a pact to demand return to office for whatever terrible reason sounded good to them.

My own workplace is mandating a hybrid model for any employees within 30 miles of an office after "much research, discussion, and debate with employees." They've typically been very reasonable and generous to their workforce, and I just don't understand what they're thinking, honestly.

I read this more as "Heads of 3 top US colleges refuse to trap themselves in what was likely to be a performative thread of anti-Palestinian questions from one of Congress's most shameless clown-people (Elise Stefanik)."

To be clear, from the article itself:

The university leaders all personally criticized anti-Israel activism.

On second thought, it may not have even been anti-Palestinian per se, but rather more careless exploitation in pursuit of CRT-adjacent nonsense.

Some Republicans sought to paint campus antisemitism as a product of universities embracing “the race-based ideology of the radical left,”

Just before the vote was about to begin, Max Miller of Ohio, one of Santos' Republican colleagues, sent an email to the full Republican conference, writing that he and his mother were victims of credit card fraud tied to Santos' campaign and that he would be voting to remove Santos.

"Neither my Mother nor I approved these charges or were aware of them," Miller wrote in the email obtained by NPR. "We have spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees in the resulting follow up."

Can't imagine a more appropriate way to miss the point.

Funniest:

“Once you’ve had one baby, that one needs a friend! Then that next one needs an enemy, which means you’ll need a fourth to be a peacemaker, unless the first one steps up to the task.”

Saddest:

“The more children we have in schools, the greater your chance someone else’s kid will get shot.”

As a relatively elder millennial (1987), I'd concede the title of last true pre-internet generation to Gen X. My family got AOL dial-up when I was in 6th grade, which was a little behind the curve compared to my peers, but not much. So I certainly lived through a seminal transition period as the internet developed and became...what it is today.

But the hallmark experiences of the pre-internet times, payphones, paper maps, coordinating with others, I only did so in my limited capacity as a child. I had a cell phone by...10th grade, I could at least print out MapQuest directions, etc.

I remember a lot, but didn't truly interact with most of it.

I am a total ignoramus about law, but this sounds more like a legislative failure than a judicial one.

But the appellate judge ruled Tuesday that the interception and recording of mobile phone activity did not meet the Washington Privacy Act’s standard that a plaintiff must prove that “his or her business, his or her person, or his or her reputation” has been threatened.

If we had comprehensive federal data privacy law, then we wouldn't have to challenge these practices against wet-noodle state laws that weren't actually designed for it, right?

Comcast said it “promptly patched and mitigated its systems,” it said it later discovered that prior to the repair operation, between Oct. 16 and Oct. 19, “there was unauthorized access to some of (its) internal systems that (it) concluded was a result of this vulnerability,”

Where "promptly" means at least 9 days later. I understand patching production systems isn't just a point and click operation, but vulnerability and patch management is a competency that Comcast is responsible for. The fact that they're not named as a defendant in the suit is really, really weird.

All your sources rely on the same primary source: the interior ministry. And I don't see a breakdown of the acts. In a number of articles, graffiti of stars of David across buildings in France was categorized as anti-Semitic, which seems really weird to me because they weren't defaced or altered in any way, just stars of David. On its face I would think that was...pro-semitic.

Either way, I'm not denying there has been an uptick in anti-Semitism and that any and all anti-semitism is indefensible. But there also seems to be a deliberate effort to embellish the narrative by treating anti-Israeli or pro-Paletinian acts as anti-Semitic. Then people react to that narrative with fear, and their fear is used to further credit the narrative.

The insidious part is that these stories treat the narrative as support for Israel's ongoing aggression.

I don't think so. The article claims Firefox lost some of its lead developers to Google when it started developing Chrome and then took a long time to regain its footing around 2017. That sounds about right to my recollection. I had admittedly switched to Chrome myself for a while (I'm not terribly tech-savvy, maybe a little more than average) but switched back to Firefox last year. I am still pretty deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem though in other ways.

I don't know who Spike Laurie is, but I don't trust him.

Hiro Capital partner Spike Laurie believes you can trace the current wave(s) of layoffs to one in particular: Elon Musk cutting 50% of Twitter's workforce in November 2022.

"[Elon Musk] had figured out from people's electronic passes that there were more people serving food in the cafeteria than actually there to eat it," he says. "This was the impetus other business leaders needed in order to start looking carefully at the size of their companies and start making judicious cuts."

This sounded suspect so I looked it up. The claim was posted to Twitter by Musk himself, completely unsubstantiated, and directly contested by Twitter's former VP of real estate. If I had to choose between this being the actual impetus for other businesses making judicious cuts or the empty claims of a Musk fanboy, I'm betting fanboy.

Neutral party here, I read it naturally as a supplement to your comment, not an opposition. I don't detect an argumentative tone personally.

I struggle to imagine how the House could actually get worse, but I also know unequivocally that it is going to get way, way worse.

"Tracking protection" sounds more like "alternative tracking."

Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative, just like its name implies, was designed to be an alternative to cookies that will allow advertisers to serve users ads while also protecting their privacy. It assigns users to groups according to their interests, based on their recent browsing activities, and advertisers can use that information to match them with relevant ads.

Lot of time, money, and effort toward a moderate improvement rather than just not perceiving users as products. But...improvement is improvement.

What's the downside?

Me? Not at all. I actually posted this out of concern because, as I've said elsewhere, I'm a Firefox user, and my layman's impression was that its reputation has been improving over the past couple years. I assumed its user base was doing the same as people grew increasingly concerned with Google's intentions.

Apparently ZDnet has some reputational issues itself I was unaware of.

Being in a union,” Schrager complains, “costs money.” Even beyond membership dues, “unions work by compressing wages (and often the terms of advancement) in negotiations on behalf of all employees.” This, she says, hurts more “productive” workers by dragging their wages down to a level closer to that of their “unproductive” fellow workers.

Ceilings for thee but not for me. Libertarian ideology insists that there are select, exceptional people--extraordinarily innovative or productive Randian heroes--who must be rewarded limitlessly at the expense of the plebeians. Unfortunately for them, you really have to believe yourself to be one of those exceptional people to buy into that belief system, and unions by their nature are a repudiation of it.

This type of commentary is frustrating, but the labor momentum despite this "traditional wisdom" and other factors detailed in the article is a sight to behold.

Non-paywalled article from ABC

"Under the law, it is a doctor who must decide that a woman is suffering from a life-threatening condition during a pregnancy, raising the necessity for an abortion to save her life or to prevent impairment of a major bodily function,” the opinion read. "The law leaves to physicians—not judges—both the discretion and the responsibility to exercise their reasonable medical judgment, given the unique facts and circumstances of each patient."

What a ridiculous acknowledgement in a decision that overturned a doctor's judgment. Just appalling across the board.

Pretty sure they're arguing that charging parents won't help children. We have a fentanyl problem so severe that children are dying at unprecedented rates, because the drug is so deadly is only takes an amount equivalent to the weight of a mosquito to be lethal.

And we are choosing to address that problem, as we have for 40 years, through stricter prison sentencing, which has never improved or otherwise addressed the root causes of addiction. Punishing addicts makes everyone feel better, because...children dying is fucking devastating and we need someone held accountable, and the parents do bear at least some responsibility.

But just because it makes us feel better doesn't mean it is effective.

Detectives testified that when Waite found her daughter unresponsive she rushed to a pharmacy to buy naloxone, a drug used to reverse an opioid overdose. The couple did not call 911 until hours later when Allison started having trouble breathing.

These parents made a pretty disgusting choice, but they did it because they thought they had a chance of keeping their child. If we could set aside our impotent outrage and acknowledge that offering support and oversight to parents in these situations, rather than the heavy hammer of "justice", this little girl might still be alive. Our appetite for vengeance would be unsated, but we would save more children and help people improve their lives.

There are many other things that need doing--many, many things--to make a dent in America's drug epidemic, and headlines like this are frustrating because we keep pulling out the same useless tool.

You know those visual gags about someone about to engage in a duel choosing between an assortment of weapons and they pick something silly like a banana? This is the banana, and the joke is so, so old.

Vehicle missions and airdrops – endless dynamic events

I have never liked this in any game ever. Just map and notification bloat.

Yeah, that's fair, I did not have that context originally. I should have quoted the article I linked, because the salient parts point out that it was strange the graffiti evoked the Israeli flag, which I had noticed originally:

Also the message in the medium was confusing. Conceivably a blue Israeli flag, or what immediately evokes it, could be seen as a pro-Jewish sign. Surely any genuine antisemite would have found a clearer way of expressing their hate.

I'm inclined to agree with the BBC's conclusion:

As for the purpose of Operation Star of David, like all dezinformatsiya it seems to have been to sow confusion and anxiety. The fact that the symbol could be either pro- or anti-Israeli made it all the more interesting: that way both sides would be suspicious.

I notice the Times of Israel doesn't consider this months-old information when continuing to reference it as evidence of anti-semitism.

I think I read Wagner forces number about 25,000? Can anyone contextualize how big a headache this will be for Russia?

Cox's fetus was diagnosed on Nov. 27 with trisomy 18, a genetic abnormality that usually results in miscarriage, stillbirth or death soon after birth. Cox, who is about 20 weeks pregnant, said in her lawsuit that she would need to undergo her third Caesarian section if she continues the pregnancy. That could jeopardize her ability to have more children, which she said she and her husband wanted.

I know the answer, but the question deserves to be asked anyway: what the fuck does Ken Paxton gain by drawing a line here?? It's just dumb and cruel. There's no spinning this, I'm just...still in shock whenever conservatives reveal so transparently how much this is about control over preservation of life, an illusion they used to make at least some effort to maintain.

"The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability, is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice," said Guerra Gamble in Austin, Texas, state court, at Thursday's hearing.

It's heartening to hear someone in authority speak some sense, but the fact Ms. Cox or any other person like her was ever in this position to begin with...I just can't stomach it.

This is such a absurd statement I'm inclined to agree about the trolling.

Maybe you love the characters, maybe you love the world, or maybe you love the character creator. That’s all well and good, but the fact of the matter is that all of those things—and a good many other aspects that Baldur’s Gate 3 has been praised for—are poor measurements of evaluating a game. If these subjectivities were the most important aspects of games, then we could say that chess or soccer are bad games. And I don’t think I need to explain how absurd that statement would be.

The company claims that fully complying with the state law would put it in breach of its contract to operate the facility, raising the prospect of $160 million in lost revenue. GEO also says that complying with HB 1470 would require building upgrades estimated to cost over $3 million, including a complete redesign of the heating, cooling and ventilation system at the detention center.

Fucking. Yikes.

There's a PlayStation community I was subscribed to whose main mod posted a gamergatey rant over the weekend with a number of factual inaccuracies. I wanted desperately to assume they were just benignly uninformed, but it didn't turn out that way.

I'm not interested in subscribing to a community at risk of being affected by that kind of toxicity, so I had to leave. Which is a bummer because I liked having PS-specific news in my feed.

I thought I'd heard one defense that goes if it's theoretically possible to simulate an entire universe, which I understand it is, then it's just statistically waaaaaay more likely that we're in a simulated universe. There's only one real one (excepting multiverse stuff), and potentially infinite simulated ones.

I don't remember where I heard this though, and I am a self-admitted idiot, so it's extremely possible I'm extremely wrong.

Marking buildings with Stars of David is how the Nazis marked Jewish homes and properties.

But that's unlikely to be what happened here: BBC

I am impressed by your resilience that you didn't immediately swoon over his intelligence, diligence, and confidence, which is what I would strongly presume was his actual expectation.

"The plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case, Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, are a white couple living in Texas who want to adopt a now 4-year-old girl whose birth mother is Navajo. The couple had already adopted the girl’s brother, who shares the same birth mother, and when the girl was born in 2018 and fostered by another family, the couple filed for custody of her, too.

But ICWA establishes that children in foster care who are eligible for tribal membership should be placed with extended family, another member of their tribe or another Native American family whenever possible. And a relative — a great-aunt who lives in the Navajo Nation in Arizona and visits regularly with the children’s older siblings — also wants to adopt the girl."

I'm sad for the children caught in the middle of this fight, though I doubt their case is unique. But trying to tank the entire ICWA, which would have apparently opened the door to question other sovereign rights of indigenous tribes, is such a gross overextension. Glad to hear this news.

https://religionnews.com/2022/11/09/religion-plays-a-role-in-native-american-adoption-case-before-supreme-court/

This is the side I'm on. My initial reaction was alarm, but the most exciting thing for me when I first came over here from reddit was the prospect of higher-quality community participation. Negativity, generalizations, and just general unoriginality were so commonplace over there and it had been bothering me for a while well before the API drama.

I don't want this to be an approximation of reddit, I want it to be better. And I think taking decisive action like this, like you said, works toward that goal, at least until Lemmy provides greater moderation control and the admins here can refine their approach.

This doesn't strike me as a bad move on their part. From the way the responses are worded, this feels very much like it's intended to counterbalance negative impressions specifically for potential buyers who might otherwise be swayed by negative comments.

If I'm on the fence about something, I can be pretty easily swayed by a negative review that enumerates things that I'm specifically on the lookout for. Like if I saw one of those reviews that said bad story and boring gameplay, I would find myself think "sounds like the Bethesda formula hasn't updated enough for me," but I could be swayed back then other way by a dev response that enthusiastically mentions the exploration and crafting. "Maybe there's enough here for me that I don't need to bother with the story."

Is it underhanded? Maybe. But it seems like a no-lose scenario either way for Bethesda.

then maybe laying on so thick on how the player, and solely the player, is at fault for pushing it to the end, is if anything counterproductive to that.

This is the argument I've seen many other creators make that I've never bought into. No one's going to stop playing a game they purchased just because the game is accusing you of being responsible for the actions of the characters within it.

The argument that this creator is making, I think, is an assumption that if you are playing this game, then it's intrinsically because you're entertained by war shooters. Now that only really applies through a certain time period. Eleven years on from it's original release, the only people playing it for the past few years are likely doing so because of its reputation as a meta-critical narrative. But it was released into an environment saturated with similar games based on real locations and real conflict involving real people. And I don't think the intent was to target the player exclusively or even specifically for criticism, but rather that environment as a whole. Why was the industry uncritically making games glorifying violence inspired by real events (and Games as Literature does point out that the catalyst for this genre--MW4--was more cynical about its violence than the later games it inspired), and why were we enjoying them? And the response doesn't need to be, and really shouldn't be, "I should feel bad about this." The argument is that the response the developers seemed to be aiming for is something like "Am I being mindful about the way my enjoyment of this entertainment reflects or maybe even shapes my view of and interaction with the real world," if that applies to you. In other words: Do you feel like a hero?

With this interpretation, I disagree that the developers believed the issue "is all in the players' agency and mindset." You're not being scolded for playing through this war shooter, you're being urged to reflect on why people play through these kinds of war shooters, especially when the violence (as is common for the genre) becomes increasingly militaristic and (arguably) carelessly nationalistic. I concede there's an argument to be made it's too heavy-handed with that message or too accusatory in the wrong direction, but that's just a risk for this type of art and is ultimately a subjective response.

Seems fair, in reference to Kagi:

Unrelatedly: I’m concerned about the company’s biases, as it seems happy to use Brave’s commercial API (allowing blatant homophobia in the comments) and allow its results to recommend suicide methods without intervention. I reject the idea that avoiding an option that may seem politically biased is the same as being unbiased if such a decision has real political implications.

This is the first I've heard anyone suggest that Musk's changes at Twitter somehow improved "the actual experience of what it's supposed to do." Although the "x through the administrative state" line proves this is pure, gutless pandering.

So as usual, he's not actually as stupid as he sounds, just opportunistic and immoral.

Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the company that owns Pornhub to force compliance with the state’s age verification law and threatened millions of dollars in civil penalties.

My brain has actually defaulted to thinking of Ken Paxton as a particularly vile time traveling pilgrim, whose immediate response to arriving in the present day was outrage that the world had changed and a divine conviction that it was his purpose to revert the world to the puritanical Christian dominance that made him feel warm and safe in his own time.

That's easier for me to comprehend than that an actual 21st century person has this many stupid, hateful ideas he's willing to happily tie his name to.

Seems nothing has changed in the past 2 years: Take Two Is Being a Dick

Neat idea, seems kinda useless unfortunately. Since it's entirely crowdsourced (I assume from my brief visit), you're getting very anecdotal information, and I think it'll be biased towards people who've had bad experiences with products. Feels like you'd need a huge community of pretty dedicated contributors to make this work, and I'm skeptical that can be built from the ground up for this narrow purpose.

I've been using Kiss My Face olive oil bar soap for showers for like...a decade, but switched to Dr. Bronners bar soap this week cause Kiss My Face was out of stock. My partner's been using Dr. Bronners liquid soap for years, but I never got on board just cause I prefer bar soap.

Long story short, I think the change will be permanent. The bar soap on its own somehow smells like a grandparent's basement, but it seems suspiciously effective.

That came as a surprise to me too. 2.5% is just so little.

What's a claustrophobic vignette?