Mastodawn

So honored to share this award with my good friend and #ScienceUnderSiege co-author @peterhotez.

Thanks @center4inquiry —means so much from you folks!

https://centerforinquiry.org/press_releases/science-under-siege-authors-michael-mann-and-peter-j-hotez-to-receive-the-2026-balles-prize-for-critical-thinking/

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 5h ago

elia ayoub 14h ago

Palantir put out the most cartoonishly evil statement possible. They’re so arrogant and self-confident they don’t seem to believe their fascistic plans can be opposed. We must get rid of Palantir altogether. twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

Because we get asked a lot. by...

Because we get asked a lot. by @PalantirTech(Palantir) | Twitter Thread Reader

Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska https://t.co/8igjazz1On

Twitter Thread Reader & Converter

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 5h ago

kim_harding ✅5h ago

Deform UK’s Richard Tice allegedly failed to pay £100,000 in corporation tax
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/apr/19/reform-uk-richard-tice-corporation-tax
Deputy leader ran shell companies that reportedly did not pay tax on profits from 2020 to 2022, during which time his firm donated £1.1m to party.

Reform UK’s Richard Tice allegedly failed to pay £100,000 in corporation tax

Deputy leader ran shell companies that reportedly did not pay tax on profits from 2020 to 2022, during which time his firm donated £1.1m to party

The Guardian

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 5h ago

Ivi Choc 11h ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@LillyHerself/116431225057644186

Xactly! #Nuclear is a really stupid idea -.- Not just because of the exorbitant costs and the resources. There is no such thing as a "safe" nucelar reactor. (Nobody, who did not study radiation physics AND simultaneously has not worked at least a few years as a radiation source operator, should have any say in this matter. I did both, I know first hand.)

#energy #renewables #renewableenergy

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 11h ago

kim_harding ✅11h ago

Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight
https://www.xda-developers.com/zip-drives-dominated-90s-vanished-almost-overnight/

I found one in a box about a year ago, plugged it in, and it still worked. Then put it back in the box and forgot about it...

Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

A major flaw brought this promising format to its end

XDA

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 11h ago

RE: https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission/116403495807724988

You're not energy independent so long as you use nuclear. Where does the uranium come from? Where is it processed?

(Nuclear technology and raw materials are one of Russia's biggest exports)

And where are you going to put the long-term radioactive waste?

And what about the increased risks to these highly dangerous and fragile power stations in the face of more severe weather events, sea level rise, invading forces or domestic terrorists?

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 11h ago

Aure Free Press

13h ago

Trump is Helping Putin

President Zelensky says Trump's rollback of Russian sanctions is funding the war against Ukraine.
#AureFreePress #News #press #headline #Ukraine #Russia #Putin #EU #NATO

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 11h ago

Apr 12

When you read about Bans of Social Media for Teens and Age Verification, you must remember what it truly means:

• Official identification of every adult using social media.

• Deanonymization of every account, endangering groups that often rely on pseudonymity for safety, such as victims of domestic violence, victims of stalkers, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people.

• Putting every adult at great danger of exploitation, fraud, and identity theft by forcing them to share their official ID with a for-profit third-party company with no incentive to protect it. Breaches have already happened.

• Constructing a system of mass surveillance to attach every comment on social media to a legal identity. Effectively allowing authoritarian governments to silence their critics and opposition.

• Potential for dystopian censorship and cutting off means of organization for groups of resistance to oppressive regime and organizations.

• Endangering children online by putting a clear identification beacon over every child or family with children online.

• Endangering the data of children who will inevitably try to pass as adults, and have their information collected by the third-party for-profit company.

• Diminishing the value of official identification due to the inevitable data breaches, eventually pushing the system to require even more intrusive identification techniques, such as iris scans and fingerprints.

• Installing a system of mass surveillance capable of attaching even more information to everyone's legal identity. With a potential to built list of people in certain groups, and scale-up state censorship and discrimination in unprecedented ways.

• The list goes on and on.

This isn't about protecting the children.
It never was.

Do not be duped by this excuse used to convince you to let go of your human rights. They are only trying to manipulate people lacking information.

Stay informed on the issues related to Age Verification, and push back for your rights to privacy and democracy.

The future depends on us.

#AgeVerification #Privacy #HumanRights #MassSurveillance #Authoritarianism

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 11h ago

Show thread

Raff Karva 14h ago

@2legged @ChrisMayLA6 @Pamela1960

“Nations would be terrified if they knew by what small men they were governed” – Talleyrand

I highly recommend the investigative journalism of Peter Jukes and Carole Cadwalladr.

Here's a great starting point:

https://bylinetimes.com/2025/02/13/russian-interference-british-politics-sergei-westminster-spy-ring/

The Truth About Russia's Campaign of Interference in British Democracy

The British people have been lied to and manipulated for years. It's time we learnt the whole truth, writes whistleblower Sergei Cristo

Byline Times

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 11h ago

Nando161 13h ago

The habit of questioning #authority is one of the most valuable gifts that a book, or a teacher, can give a young would-be scientist.

Richard Dawkins, Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist

#quote #quotes

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