They have the oil … uh… WMDs! Yes WMDs … No wait 'tis the drugs and the evil farmworkers!

We must go to war inside Venezuela because they refuse to name the gulf of Mexico to our rightful king!

I suspect he sneakily considers putting her on all fours…

Yeah uh the, now deposed, Chinese ceo used Nexperia funds to keep a different company in China afloat … on top of that he kept bringing up ideas to “move all Nexperia company assets & production to China”.

This all besides the other political stormclouds blowing in from the US.

All in all it was a good decision the Dutch government made, they will find a way to produce somewhere in Europe probably.

Corruption seeks corruption

He will have raged hard hearing the final results.
(Wasn’t eligible for “his” Gaza peace accord anyway, since that came after the decision was finalized early October … but I suspect he was crossing his fingers anyway, because well it’s always about him ofcourse)

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he does launch an invasion, or invasive action into Venezuela…
He can use the distraction to get people looking away from one of his new failures.

Kings and queens have legal tender with their face on it during their tenure…

When is the official coronation of trump scheduled? 2027?

I don’t even expect there ever to be a full self-rule for that gaza-strip … Israel will keep a tight reign on it and never let that go.

I strongly suspect trump’s world liberty financial coin will be the one glued to this…

And then the probing began.

It’s the now age old Trump-Tariff faux-paradox …

Country A has a package to ship to the US …

The US tells Country A: 'aha tariffs need to be paid"…

Country A says “okay, tell the recipient to pay the tariffs and give us the ok when they did so we can deliver it past your border”.

The US gets angry: “no no someone else pays tariffs not us! How dare you put the tariffs on us! Others are supposed to pay!”

Country A mumbles “ok, be that way”, returns the package to sender, sender might refund but keeps shipping costs… and the US customer loses out twice.

It’s not so much that they down- and upscale the video of shorts, their algorithm changes the look of people. It warps skin and does a strange sort of sharpening that makes things look quite unreal and almost plastic.

It is a filter that evens the look with images generated by, say, grok or one of the other AI filters.

In a year people will think that “AI-look” is a normal video look, and stuff generated with it is what humans can look like. We will see crazed AI-fashion looks popping up.

Bah, each time I want to do the manual upgrade from 23h2 I have to postpone it again due to some stupid bug or annoying feature that makes me reconsider doing it.

So, was the ‘bald eagle statue’ gift properly laced with listening devices? :-p

16th century? Huh I would have expected a far more accurate version would have been made and accepted long ago.

Especially since during all the centuries since then accurate navigation was needed, even around Afrika, and not make journeys last far longer by keeping an incorrect map.

…temporary… peace.

This was already known back then, but it is good to bring it to the front again.

I do kind of wonder if this is a “revenge” article against Musk for him firing up the epstein “debate” on his twitter posting spree.

The CCP is no longer what it was decades ago, it has morphed itself into a weird amalgamation between communism and capitalism… and seeing how it can change itself without great upheaval shows it has a lasting strength that should not be underestimated.

It’s current strategy is that of patience and time, slowly it will erode away resistant forces or laws in a territory it wants to incorporate.
For the ccp time is not a pressing factor in this period, nor are human lives and living years of their ruling populace.
They currently have what they need and what they covet is extra, there is nothing that they urgently require.

Likely the same strategy is playing out in Taiwan, already there is a big political party that wishes to tighten bonds with “the mainland”, in 5-10 years time there will be a loud voice, created through years long whispers and propaganda, to join China directly as a state-aparte … soon after, the merger will be completed and laws and freedoms will be eroded away until Taiwan is as much China as Hong Kong is now.

And, for now, it looks like the West will bow out, they will have build their own semiconductor facilities, both Europe and the US are already working on this.
Which causes Taiwan to have less value to keep under its wing at any cost.

Looking at Hong Kong, I don’t think the CCP would ever allow it to go its own way again, it is as it is with Tibet…

“Wearables” but they forget to mention it’s about government mandated trackers in a closed ecosystem.
They will track which bad (health or otherwise) groups of people one has come in contact with and make deductions based on that.

Ofcourse it’s also extra business for the ice teams. And the deluxe wearable also tracks payments.

The European Covid tracking app back then already was very scary in its early setup … and this mandated wearable idea will be far worse.