Seconded; something funky today.
Had multiple searches today that either produced no results (just the little guy fishing), or just links to junk sites that contain massive word lists and nothing else. Bing came through; usually it is best for video and image searches, but at least it got me going today.
I hate that bing (and dependent sites like DDG) will not let you exclude results; if they would address that, they would be a more serious search competitor imo; days like today would make them compelling.
Musk has always been this way but was never really in the public eye so people only knew him as the mega rich dude that made futuristic stuff. The fame went to his head and now he won’t shut the hell up and his mouth has got him in a lot of trouble.
Did it all happen overnight? Was there a main trigger event or was it a gradual thing?
Most people point to Musk’s tweet calling a rescue diver who saved several children from a flooded cave a “pedo” for turning down his submarine idea. The idea was dumb and calling the guy who just rescued the lives of several children a “pedo” was incredibly bad taste. It was the first inkling that Musk might not be a Tony Stark styled billionaire genius and might just be a rich asshole.
What, exactly happened to twitter after his takeover
Firstly, Musk was forced to purchase Twitter or face a massive fine for stock market manipulation. I don’t think he ever actually wanted to purchase Twitter, but Musk has a habit of thinking the rules don’t apply to him because he has money.
After the purchase went through he essentially became the King of Twitter and made so many terrible decisions I can’t be bothered to list them all here. Just know that he once tweeted that he was walking around Twitter HQ and randomly unplugging servers to see what would happen and also got into arguments over Twitter about how Twitter’s systems work…with Twitter’s lead engineers…and then fired them for disagreeing with him…even though he was wrong. Oh he also said posting hate speech was fine.
is reddit truly a by-the-book carbon copy of his decisions with API changes?
In an interview, the Reddit CEO has stated that he’s using Musk’s Twitter decisions as a model for how to run Reddit. Which is terrible considering Twitter’s value has plummeted by tens of billions of dollars since Musk took over and has gotten in trouble with major advertisers as well as government organizations for being filled with hate speech, misinformation, and propaganda.
On the note of purchasing Twitter, he made a formal offer and entered into a purchase contract with the company. He tried to back out when the closing date got close, and Twitter had to sue him to complete the contract after all the damage he had done during the buying process.
He also waived his right to do due diligence, which fucked him when he was trying to avoid proceeding with the buyout claiming Twitter has inflated number of users.
Note: This is a developing story. My response will likely be edited as news comes out and the progression of events becomes clearer.
Last update: 6/26/23 @ 1650 EST
Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022 on what the world overwhelmingly believes are false pretenses. The arguments were that Ukraine was taken over by nazis and that the country was actually supposed to be part of Russia, not sovereign. The world thought it was going to be a quick war, but Ukraine fought really hard with economic, intelligence, and military-equipment support of the West. Russia severely overestimated its military might, particularly its training and logistics. What was expected to be a quick invasion turned into a long war of attrition.
To help with the war, Putin hired a group of mercenaries he had previously helped build into world prominence. This allowed Russia to commit military objectives and behaviors that would otherwise be considered illegal for the Russian government to accomplish. The mercenaries are called the Wagner Group and have been more effective at accomplishing military goals in Ukraine than the regular Russian military. The Wagner Group grew up to ~50k troops, with most leaders being skilled and experienced military veterans while lower-ranks had Russian prisoners fighting for their freedom. This group is known for committing horrible war crimes, and the leader of the group is widely accepted as a terrible person.
The leader of the Wagner Group is called Yevgeny Prigozhin. He has been vocal about the management of the invasion of Ukraine and at odds with Russia’s Ministry of Defense leadership, something that is in part a result of how Putin likes to run Russia: pinning his subordinates against each other. Another tactic that Putin uses is to place relatively powerless people in powerful positions. This make sit hard for the to topple him because they lack elite political connections to do so. Prigozhin was a criminal that started a hot dog street vending business, made a restaurant change out of it, and then became Putin’s chef. The person he assigned to Minister of Defense was a also of “low status” as a person from the countryside and minority ethnicity. In line with his approach, Putin pitted the Minister of Defense (Shoigu) and Prigozhin against each other to prevent military forces from toppling him. This, along with their “low status” history, ensured neither accumulated too much power because if one started getting too powerful, the other would take them down.
Back to the war and recent events, the Ukrainians make a stand at the Ukranian city of Bakhmut. Russia assigns Wagner to take the city. The ferocity of Ukrainian fighters caused Wagner to take heavy loses. During this battle, the Russian military coincidentally did not provide Wagner the supplies they were requesting, leaving them in need while fighting their battle. On at least one occasion, the Russian military promised to give him the supplies, to then not deliver them. Prigozhin, frustrated with the way he and his forces are being treated by the Russian military, trades the city of Bakhmut with Ukrine for intel on the locations of high-ranking Russian military officers. Towards the end of the battle, Russian forces attempted to swoop in and take partial victory for taking the city. Additionally, Prigozhin claims that his forces were purposefully attacked by Russian military, losing several men to the attack. Around or after the battle of Bakhmut in which Wagner loss a lot of men, Putin announced that the remaining Wagner Forces will be absorbed by the Russian military. Prigozhin objects to the deal and insists that he replace the Russian MoD (Shoigu). Putin declines the request, and the following happened within the last week, bit mostly over two days.
Prigozhin took Wagner forces out of Ukraine, abandoning their missions, and into Russia
Wagner Group invaded and took control of the Russian city Rostov-on-Don. This city is the hub from which Russian forces would support Ukraine invasion missions. Prigozhin seemed to have support from the city population, which was disseminated on media. Consequently, the Russian military lost their invasion hub.
Prigozhin went on media to tell the world, including the Russian civilian population, that the invasion of Ukraine was based on lies and that the Russian military is a clusterfudge. This indirectly but clearly and openly questioned Putin’s leadership. This also directly outed Putin as a liar since he is the one that has been promoting the reasons for the invasion of Ukraine.
Russian military forces also lit an oil depot on fire to prevent Wagner from getting more fuel. This means that Russians destroyed access to their own fuel supply.
Prigozhin charged at Moscow with ~5k troops at impressive pace. Throughout the way, he barely met any resistance from Russian military. In fact, some cheered him on. However, Wagner forces did shoot down ~7 Russian aircraft and killed ~12 Russian service members throughout this mutiny. Wagner forces had no difficulty overcoming the very minor Russian military resistance that occurred.
Putin poorly prepared Moscow for a siege by activating local police & military, shutting down internet, calling Monday a day off, and placing rudimentary military checkpoints outside of Moscow.
Putin went on national TV and called Wagner forces treasonous mutineers as enemy of the state and declared that they will be prosecuted.
Putin left Moscow for safety via plane, leaving the city to fend for itself and implying that it could not withstand the siege.
Putin called several country leaders for support, to include Iran, China, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. China and Kazakhstan both publicly declined support and stated that the issue was internal to Russia. The leader of Belarus brokered a deal between Prigozhin and Putin.
Wagner forces made it to 200 km outside of Moscow nearly completely unscathed.
Prigozhin then left to Belarus. As of 6/26/23 @ 1630 EST, no one has seen or heard from either Prigozhin or Putin since, though the Russian presidential airplane has back in Moscow since at least 6/25 @ 1500 EST.
The deal:
Prigozhin is exiled to Belarus with immunity.
Wagner forces that participated in the mutiny will have immunity from prosecution.
Wagner forces that did not participate in the mutiny will be absorbed by the Russian military.
Surely, there’s a lot that we don’t know
So, WTH? because this is wild!
Russia almost went into a civil war while it was invading Ukraine.
The premise for the war was outed as a lie by the most effective military leader of the war.
Said leader committed a mutiny using his troops and was charged on TV
The mercenary group was abandoned in Russia to be absorbed by the very military they were fighting with/against
Everyone saw Putin on TV scared and implicitly pleading for the mutiny to stop
Putin called several other countries begging for help, some of which declined to help. The one that did help is generally considered a puppet and ineffective, so Putin was saved by someone with a poor reputation and little to no international power.
Moscow was almost under siege by its own men.
Russia lost the organization of its most effective troops (Wagner Group)
Russia has been outed as being incredibly vulnerable to military attack
Russian troops heard that they are fighting for a lie and at the very least acquiesced to a mutiny
Everyone on the world stage is still waiting. This is something that will have severe repercussions for Russia and indirectly Ukraine and the world. It’s like a season finale of Game of Thrones. The big event just happened, and we got left on a cliffhanger. The resolution will likely be played out slowly over the next season, but expect crazy things to continue to happen though not as intense as the build up to a civil war in a nuclear power over 2 days.
The biggest problem I'm aware of is that the lead developers of Lemmy the software are also the administrators of Lemmygrad. Which makes separating the art from the artist very difficult.
Just my $0.02 Back in ~2020, the only Lemmy instances which had activity were the ones that people flocked to when their Subreddit was shutdown. It went something like:
1 - Group sets up a hateful Subreddit 2 - Group members begin to repeatedly violate Reddit’s TOS 3 - Reddit bans the Subreddit 4 - Some groups had enough cohesion to send their subscribers to a Lemmy instance to try and salvage the situation
As a result, when I joined the Mastadon Fediverse in 2021, I heard the rumors about “Lemmy is only used by people who were banned by reddit. That’s why it’s only Tankies there.”
Beehaw is meant to be a safe space, mitigating toxicity, while other instances, by having registration open to all without moderation, causes that.
By being federated, they can interact with one another. Beehaw defederated them in order to avoid that. The main argument being that the modding tools right now aren’t good enough to help them do it any other way.
That’s a bummer. I really liked Beehaw but wasn’t able to sign up for whatever reason, which is why I signed up here. Sucks that hateful jerks can ruin it for everyone.
Oh no time to cancel Lemmy bcz the founders believe in stupid things. Let's all move to the next thing until those founders are found out to believe in crazy shit. It's free and open source. So fork it.
I thought this place was for confusing topics that require context to understand, not cut and dry news stories like this. “Why are people freaking out about Microsoft buying Blizzard?” would be a great post for someone without tech/business knowledge.
This, though, is asking for a summary of a recent event. There is no deeper context needed to understand. It’s like standing next to a dictionary and saying you’re out of the loop on the definition of a word…just take 2 minutes and read it.
While I haven’t look into articles of this event. I do know a lot of American news sites slams the door in the face of any European trying to read them. Making it an absolute pain in the ass trying to read some articles, so asking an American to explain it for you, is definitely the easier option.
The top reply is literally a link to the story which, unsurprisingly, cleared the whole thing up for OP.
r/outoftheloop started strong with niche explanations from people in the know before it devolved into every top post being “What happened with [event]?” karma farm garbage. It seems we’re starting out that way here…
100 billion kWh of electricity are wasted on transmission losses each year in the US alone. That’s equivalent to 3 of our largest nuclear reactors running 24/7. Superconductivity enables lossless electricity transmission at high voltages and currents.
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