Japan lifts ban on lethal weapons exports in major shift of pacifist policy
Japan could soon sell weapons overseas, including fighter jets, in a shift from its decades-old pacifist policy.
I learned that the Environment #Canada Weather Radio Service went offline on March 16th.
They're directing people toward their web site (which they do control) and their mobile app (where the distribution is controlled by American companies).
During COVID lockdowns, when we really had no idea what was going on, I had my weather radio set to alert on emergency broadcasts, and I considered it an important part of our safety strategy.
This shutdown seems like a bad plan.
https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/weatheradio/find-your-network.html
"Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff. Ding-dong, ding-dong. The little train rumbled over the tracks," you giggle to yourself as you pull away from the station. It's official. You're on vacation.
You've never traveled by rail before and are buzzing with the romance of it all. The ambiance may not exactly be giving Orient Express, but you've got a roomette, a view, and you don't have to drive. Budget luxury!
The scenery is still too familiar to be interesting. You decide to explore the train.
| Dining Car -- food! | |
| Lounge Car -- beverages! | |
| Observation Car -- panoramic windows! | |
| Passenger Cars -- talk to strangers! |
‘“I have run a hedge fund, I am starting another one, and it is not nearly as regulated,” [w]eev stated, having separately referenced “a meeting with Peter Thiel’s right hand this week”.
'In the same exchange, he spoke warmly of the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who played a central role in PayPal’s creation alongside Thiel: “I’ve met Pierre, I like Pierre, and he’s a friend of a close friend.”’
Barrett Brown connects dots on white supremacy.
https://bylinetimes.com/2026/04/14/the-neo-nazi-enforcer-who-helped-build-peter-thiels-online-influence-empire/
#EpsteinFiles #broligarchy
GenX early adopters (represent) were the first people to have this, and now it's so ubiquitous I don't think anyone even recognizes there was a time that it Wasn't, but - BBS, IRC, SMS, Matrix, Discord, Whateversapp, Telegram, Signal, who cares about the tech layer, it doesn't matter - I'm convinced the invention of The Group Chat is _the_ most important new thing in social communication in the last century.
A conversation that goes on unbothered by time and distance is a miracle.
DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) attack against BlueSky a few days ago: The whole network goes down.
DDoS against mastodon.social today: Lots of users on that instance impacted, the rest of the Fediverse keeps on running, my instance doesn't really notice, messages will be queued up until mastodon.social is reachable again.
Both networks claim to be decentralised and federated. You decide :)