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Venezuela Announces Capture of Alleged DEA Agent With Massive Drug Shipment


According to Cabello, the detainees confessed the shipment was part of a "false flag operation" designed to incriminate Venezuela in international drug trafficking and justify external aggression. "The four detainees are saying they work for the DEA," Cabello told state television, calling the alleged plan a "maneuver for destabilization."

Authorities said the boat originated in Colombia's Guajira region and was connected to a trafficking group called "Los Orientales," allegedly led by Gersio Parra Machado. Cabello argued that the operation demonstrated Venezuela's commitment to combating narcotics without resorting to lethal force. "We don't apply the death penalty," he said, drawing a contrast with U.S. military strikes on alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean.




Fetterman denies Gaza genocide, claims it’s a “just war”


Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania continued the Democrats’ piling on against Palestinians this past Sunday.

Fetterman asserted to CNN’s Manu Raju: “There’s no ethnic cleansing. It’s not a genocide. This is a just war.”

Asked by Raju if Israel was using “starvation as a weapon,” he claimed: “No. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Israel is not deliberately starving people, absolutely.”

He added: “Those conditions are miserable there. And it is hell on earth. Why? Some people blame Israel for that? I blame Hamas and Iran for that thing.”

This continues most Democrats’ failure to recognize the Gaza genocide, even walking back the genocide assertion in the recent case of Congresswoman Katherine Clark, a top leader in the House of Representatives.



Four people arrested in Washington after alleged hate crime attack on trans woman


in reply to Powderhorn

This is horrible. Just let her be. What is wrong with people?
in reply to Powderhorn

does not surprise me that this happened in renton, this is the only place people have ever shouted insults at me from passing cars instead of compliments


‘These results are sobering’: US high-school seniors’ reading and math scores plummet


in reply to Powderhorn

Fun fact; despite this, student's scores across the nation on standardized tests like the SAT and PSAT were higher than ever last year, with many students achieving perfect scores.

It's almost like the College Board lowered their testing standards to disguise just how terrible U.S. students are.

in reply to djsoren19

Within a couple years of my time taking the SAT (there wasn't even a writing portion yet), the College Board "recentered" scores, leading to inflation. 1600 used to be a unicorn score that was a golden ticket. I only got a 1450, and that was still enough to open doors. If everyone's getting perfect scores, what the fuck is the point of the test?
in reply to MelodiousFunk

You know, it's funny. In high school, the College Board felt like some prestigious sort of organization of academics ... I mean, College is right in their name!

Ah, to be young, dumb and able to get 59-cent tacos.

in reply to MelodiousFunk

Ding ding ding.

It's a shame that standardized testing got so corrupted for profit. While it's always had a bias towards wealth, a high score on a well crafted standardized test is something very studious students can achieve regardless of race, gender, or class. When a perfect or near-perfect score was something to seriously strive for, it provided an easy to understand route for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to still attend prestigious schools, oftentimes on academic scholarships. Fast forward to now, and you're seeing most of the prestigious schools in the U.S. start to refuse SAT scores because they know it's become such a racket.

in reply to djsoren19

I had a free ride to Arizona State on account of my PSAT score. But 18 years is enough of a sentence in Phoenix. Actually seeing clouds seemed like a nice change of pace.
in reply to djsoren19

More like a great deal of high school students simply don’t bother with sat/psat as the institutionalization of academia has made school so aversive they’re desperate to be done as soon as possible combined with a culture that glorifies anti-intellectualism.

Basically you’re seeing a selection bias. Quick web search shows about 16.8 million us high school students. In 2023 about 3.65 million took psat (lower bar, usually offered in school) and in the class of 2024 about 1.97 million took the sat at least once. So about 25% took psat and 12-13% took sat.

So basically it’s a representation more of a fairly small subset of privileged children who have access to things like supportive families that emphasize the importance of education, paid tutoring, private education in areas where public school are bad, public schools that are simply better funded, more affluent, etc




Disney+ cancellation page crashes as customers rush to quit after Kimmel suspension


The suspension triggered strong responses across social media and beyond. Hashtags like #CancelDisneyPlus and #CancelHulu trended as users shared screenshots of their canceled subscriptions.

With cancellations surging, many subscribers reported technical issues. On Reddit’s r/Fauxmoi, one post read, “The page to cancel your Hulu/Disney+ subscription keeps crashing.”

reshared this



Why mortgage rates are actually going up after the Fed cut interest rates


https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-mortgage-rates-are-actually-going-up-after-the-fed-cut-interest-rates-87c712bd

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to sp3ctr4l

in reply to Powderhorn

This entry was edited (1 month ago)


Returning objects in a collection vs. IDs


In another topic ([url=https://activitypub.space/topic/478b8e04-0562-47c1-a3a3-82e17b32f0aa/smithereen-0.11-is-out]#Smithereen 0.11 is out![/url]), [url=https://mastodon.social/@grishka]@grishka@mastodon.social[/url] says this: [quote]I have this convent
in reply to Gregory

Re: Returning objects in a collection vs. IDs


grishka@mastodon.social silverpill@mitra.social yes I had the same question.. I assumed this would only occur in a C2S context but even then the server is an intermediary and can verify.
in reply to julian

Here's en example:
{
  "type": "Create",
  "actor": "https://social.example/alice"
  "object": {
    "type": "Note",
    "attributedTo": "https://social.example/alice",
    "attachment": {
      "type": "Note",
      "attributedTo": "https://social.example/bob"
    }
  }
}

It contains an embedded Note that is attributed to another actor. There are many possible ways to embed an object, and malicious embedding could be difficult to detect for the origin server.
in reply to silverpill

this wouldn't be "malicious", it would be "unverified". anyone can say anything about anything. it'd be like if i said herman melville wrote moby dick, and you didn't trust me until you verified with herman melville himself that he wrote moby dick. it's just a statement that you can either accept or reject. maybe you don't trust alice to make claims about bob, or maybe you trust social.example to make claims on social.example
in reply to silverpill

ideally you would traverse everything and replace anything you don't understand with "id" references.

But anyway, I feel like we're getting too carried away about a very niche aspect of the whole thing. Almost like on that SocialHub forum.

In my own AP extensions I always just act like C2S doesn't exist because I've never seen it used in practice, and it's wildly impractical to use anyway.

in reply to Gregory

what does exist is publishing an AS2 resource on a web server, which you can do with any "api" you want -- ftp, rsync, ssh, anything that can get a file in a folder served by nginx with the appropriate headers. "c2s" is literally just an endpoint that you can POST some json to and it will publish that json and POST it to others. you can replace it with curl.
in reply to infinite love ⴳ

if I remember the spec correctly, that endpoint does have to do at least *some* interpretation of the json — for example, the spec explicitly says that Block activities that come into the inbox "MUST NOT" be exposed in the client's view of the inbox, but instead interpreted and acted upon by the server itself
in reply to Gregory

i think you're referring to how Block should not be sent to an inbox if posted to an outbox? but this is just a rule for outboxes. the user/agent can manually send whatever notifications they want. the user/agent can also follow those rules and just store the relevant json on any properly configured web server.
in reply to infinite love ⴳ

point being, you can completely upend a lot of fedi applications' trust models with just nginx and curl and subdirectories.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to infinite love ⴳ

I still wouldn't call that "upending". The actor objects — that reside on that server — contain public keys, which the entire security model of the entire fediverse relies on. So it follows, then, that since a server can serve any arbitrary public key for any of its actors, and the rest of the fediverse will unquestionably trust it, it can also be trusted with any other objects on the same domain.
in reply to infinite love ⴳ

it can in theory but no software currently in existence supports that
in reply to Gregory

but even if, the actor object is still the ultimate source of truth as it's the one which contains the key ID
in reply to Gregory

true but we are talking about mistakes. like taking the origin of the keyId on the http sig instead of following the link to the owner/controller. such assumptions might be true for monoliths, but not everything is a monolith



Dozens of workers disciplined after Charlie Kirk shooting, from journalists to Jimmy Kimmel


This is so fucking over the top. Kirk was not a political figure; he was a shit-stirrer.

Where was this outrage when the speaker of the Minnesota House was killed? She actually was a political figure, and yet ... crickets.

The sanewashing of Kirk and his positions is abhorrent and has no place in a civilized society. As far as I'm concerned, the world is a better place without him, but given how much shit is falling apart because he was killed, we might have been better with him living to be a racist asshole for quite some time.

Fucking airline pilots are being fired for tweets?

in reply to Powderhorn

Dear Leader issued a decree to his fascist dogs who destroyed peoples lives in response.
in reply to Powderhorn

Interesting that people have been canned for quoting him without context.


The Most Effective Method Discovered So Far to Boost the Human Brain:High-Speed English Oral Reading







New York and Other States Form Health Bloc as Answer to Trump’s Policies


New York and several other Northeastern states are forging a regional public health coalition to issue vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health efforts in a rebuke to the Trump administration’s shifts on health policy.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced New York’s involvement in the initiative on Thursday morning.

“By standing with our partners across the Northeast, we are ensuring that New Yorkers have the protection and the information they need to stay safe and healthy,” she said in a statement.

The effort is similar to the West Coast Health Alliance — a bloc of four Democratic-controlled Western states, including California — that issued its own vaccine guidance this week.

Both the Western and Northeastern regional coalitions reflect efforts to shore up public health efforts and give a government stamp of approval to vaccines at a time when federal public health institutions are in retreat.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/nyregion/northeast-public-health-collaborative-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.m08.d2I5.69wDrgi2ISEP



[OC] Connection Timeout: A Cyberpunk Novella About Mesh Networks, Hacker Culture, and Fighting Surveillance Capitalism (DRM-FREE




What is Sinclair Media and Nexstar? And why do we need to care?




shocked, shocked at all these *racists*


invertebrateinvert

amazing how much shittier it is to be in the rat community now that the racists won. before at least they were kinda coy about it and pretended to still have remotely good values instead of it all being yarvinslop.

invertebrateinvert

it would be nice to be able to ever invite rat friends to anything but half the time when I've done this in the last year they try selling people they just met on scientific racism!

in reply to Architeuthis

That seems so impractical, esp as we have (according to them) 2 years left, that they already wanted to do the eugenics and just were looking for a rationalization.
in reply to Soyweiser

@sneerclub Next step in rat ideology will be: we will ask our perfectly aligned sAI to invent a time machine so we can go back and [eugenics handwave] ourselves into transcendental intelligences who will be able to create a perfectly aligned sAI! Sparkly virtual unicorns for all!

(lolsob, this is all so predictable)



Texas State expels student for allegedly mocking Charlie Kirk shooting


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in reply to Powderhorn

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in reply to t3rmit3

If there's one answer we're finally getting, it's to "How did Hitler actually rise to power in a democracy?"


Scientists find that ice generates electricity when bent


More about 'Flexoelectricity' here:

nature.com/articles/s41567-025…

One more surprise in the 'ice' category ... which is now up to 19 forms. (Know of any other solids which float on their liquid form?)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_o…

"The details of the chemical nature of liquid water are not well understood; some theories suggest that its unusual behavior is due to the existence of two liquid states." - WP




Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) moved to subpoena four global banking giants to investigate their dealings with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.


The House Judiciary Committee will vote on Raskin's motion at the end of its oversight hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel, who has been hammered with questions about his handling of the Epstein case and whether evidence was being withheld about his relationship with President Donald Trump, reported Politico.

Only one Republican vote is need to adopt the motion, which would likely get support from all the panel's Democrats and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who has been leading congressional efforts to get the Epstein files into public view.



Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 21st September 2025




Rural Georgia hospital to close its labor and delivery unit, in part due to Medicaid cuts




Las Vegas mayor says the city is suffering from a serious drop in Canadian tourists: 'We need you, and we miss you' | Fortune


cross-posted from: slrpnk.net/post/27629015

Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley issued a heartfelt plea to Canadian visitors this week, acknowledging the city’s tourism-dependent economy is suffering from a dramatic decline in international visitors, particularly from Canada, which represents the city’s largest international market.

“As the mayor of Las Vegas, I’m telling everybody in Canada, please come. We love you, we need you, and we miss you,” Berkley said during a press conference this week, where she addressed the multiple challenges facing the entertainment capital’s tourism industry.

The mayor’s latest comments echo concerns she first raised in an August press conference, where she painted a stark picture of the tourism decline.

“International travel is way down. People are not coming to the United States,” Berkley said last month. “’

Great yet ?

https://archive.is/fUvZE

in reply to Hanrahan

If you don't have to come to the states for business, I don't see why anyone would. You could get detained at customs on your way in or on the way out. We're equal opportunity like that.
in reply to Hanrahan

Vegas is tied to a sinking ship. No one is their right mind who's paid any attention to the news of what the US does to foreigners, even from countries allied with us, would never come here.
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in reply to PhilipTheBucket

How low the bar has fallen. If you run into a gate, it's an act of terror?

What, are people going to stay away from that gate in the future because they're scared of future gate attacks?

Now, if you run into the gate with your car full of explosives and detonate them as your last act, we might have a starting point. But the concept of terrorism has gotten so increasingly muddied since 9/11 that people will believe anything is terrorism if told.

Well, except mass shootings. Those are just Second Amendment things. Nothing to see here.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Powderhorn

This was my thought exactly. Everything is an act of terror except actual terrorism, like ya know, mass shootings. Those are just homicides.
in reply to PhilipTheBucket

Act of terror? If it scared them that much then maybe they need to pick braver people to work at the FBI.


Minneapolis police say more than a dozen hurt in homeless encampment shootings


Being homeless means the opposite of "safety in numbers." I've only let one other vandweller know where I park. It's safe, well lit and has nearby businesses with washrooms, which is a pretty decent setup.

Locally, residents are also very aggressive to homeless camps. Thankfully, no shootings yet, but there's this pervasive belief that we're all addicts with machetes just waiting to snap or run into a busy street.

I get so sick of "the homeless are the problem, not soaring housing costs and a deteriorating job market that led to homelessness."

Minneapolis police have said over a dozen people have been hurt in two separate shootings at homeless encampments across the city on the same day.

The first shooting at a transit station wounded five people, and happened in an area that had seen two prior shootings in the past month.

Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara rued the shootings as disturbingly commonplace.

“Here we are yet again in the aftermath of a mass shooting. This is not normal,” O’Hara said.

in reply to Powderhorn

"I get so sick of “the homeless are the problem, not soaring housing costs and a deteriorating job market that led to homelessness.”

Where I live, a one bedroom apartment is about 1700. Renting a room goes for around a grand. There was a time when it wasn't hard to be poor and still keep some kind of roof over your head but that time is past.



Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield quits, accusing Unilever of silencing social mission


That missing comma in the original hed is rather unfortunate. I'm honestly surprised both Ben and Jerry are still alive!

Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield has stepped away from the ice-cream brand after nearly 50 years, according to a post by the other founder, Ben Cohen.

Cohen’s post shared what he said was a letter from Greenfield in which he called it one of the “hardest and most painful decisions” he had ever made.

Greenfield said the company had been silenced by Unilever and its independence to speak up on global issues was “gone”.

“If the company couldn’t stand up for the things we believed, then it wasn’t worth being a company at all,” Greenfield said.

in reply to Powderhorn

I guess he can cry himself to sleep on the giant pile of money that he sold out to Unilever for.
in reply to deadbeef79000

Sure, but this is also Unilever altering the deal, pray they alter it no further.

In 2000, Unilever struck a $326m deal to buy the business, a move that at the time reportedly did not please Greenfield, with stipulations including the creation of the brand’s own independent board to allow it to continue to take progressive stances on social and political issues and uphold its core values.
in reply to Powderhorn

This is disappointing to hear. B&J's has always been very outspoken about social issues, and it's something I was glad to see that they were able to do. It seems unlikely to be a coincidence that now is when they feel unable to continue doing so.



LimeWire acquires Fyre Festival, asking 'What Could Possibly Go Wrong?'


At least they have a sense of humour about it in the press release, but seriously, how does combining two dumpster fires improve the situation?

Also, TIL LimeWire still exists as an entity. Also also, what fucking assets does Fyre have to offer?

LimeWire, the filesharing service that set the internet ablaze in the 2000s before being shut down for copyright infringement, said Tuesday that is acquiring the rights to Fyre Festival.

And it appreciates the irony.

"LimeWire Acquires Fyre Festival Brand — What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" the company titled its news release.

LimeWire said it would “unveil a reimagined vision for Fyre — one that expands beyond the digital realm and taps into real-world experiences, community, and surprise.” The company offered no additional details about how the Fyre brand will be relaunched.

in reply to Archangel1313

Since Ryan Reynolds is behind much of the funding, I think this was intentional trolling that NBC picked up.





Robert Redford, giant of American cinema, dies aged 89


Robert Redford, star of Hollywood classics including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and All the President’s Men, has died aged 89.

In a statement to the New York Times, his publicist said the actor died in his sleep at his home in Utah.




𝐄𝐥 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐨, 𝐥𝐚 𝐛𝐚𝐧̃𝐞𝐫𝐚 𝐲 𝐞𝐥 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐪𝐮𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐬 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐩𝐬𝐨.




A return to coal