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WesternInfidels

@ WesternInfidels @feddit.online

Posts
1
Comments
347
Joined
7 mo. ago

  • Trump threatens Strait of Hormuz blockade after US-Iran ceasefire talks end without agreement

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  • Everything he does makes sense, if you can accept that he sees the United States itself as an rival for the attention and praise that is rightly his. Commanding other people's attention, redirecting it to himself, has been the only trick behind his falling-up success, his whole life. This is what they mean when they say "all publicity is good publicity."

    Now we're not talking about Iran, we're not talking about America's future, we're talking about him.

  • Trump threatens Strait of Hormuz blockade after US-Iran ceasefire talks end without agreement

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  • I'm doing my part!

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  • Horror story towns

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  • Painesville is a real place

  • Progress

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  • I feel like this is ripe for an "Autotune The News" treatment. I'm thinking Eminem's "Without Me:"

    🎵

    I have two Microsoft Outlooks, OutlooksNeither of 'em worksNeither of 'em works

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  • Alex Jones says Melania "breaking with Trump" after Epstein statement

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  • I don't think the suggestion is that she's a victim. Just that what we're seeing is the fallout of a power struggle from behind the curtain.

    This Threads post tells a theory / story that's worthy of a soap opera. Spoiler: Everything comes back to Epstein, as it always seems to.

  • Alex Jones says Melania "breaking with Trump" after Epstein statement

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  • Robert Reich had some theories, including:

    1. Melania is pissed off at Trump for any number of things, and today’s news conference was a way of letting him know she’s capable of making his life miserable.

  • Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service

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  • The National Park Service is a different department. The Forest Service is part of the agriculture department, it's about managing forests as exploitable natural resources.

    So that's good news, in the bleakest way, I guess.

  • What's the cheapest you can afford buying (or already bought) that you consider as luxury?

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  • I have a Uni Kuru Toga mechanical pencil that I bought perhaps 20 years ago. For about $7. And it still works great.

    Somehow, it's still $7? How?

  • What is that one software that you are using for 10 years and still loving it?

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  • Sumatra PDF Reader is no-frills and distraction free. Even on my ancient PC, it's fast as heck. I have rather rudely installed it on other people's PCs, because their slow all-singing all-dancing PDF readers drove me up the wall.

    RawTherapee converts "RAW" files from digital cameras to friendlier image formats, and pretty often RawTherapee's edit is all I need. It's feature packed, it can do film simulations, image de-noising, tone-mapping, and now it has the ability to do some local adjustments, too. I have several "RAW" converters, including a commercial one, but I keep coming back to RawTherapee as the mainstay, the most productive for me.

    I've got foobar2000 set up as a pretty plain-looking, non-distracting music player. It's got great library features, it has a wildly customizable interface, it's got a plugin architecture to extend its abilities in many ways. It has stayed on my PC for years because of its quiet competence, always serving without demanding my time or attention.

    I used to keep my password file and other confidential stuff inside a TrueCrypt virtual volume. Now I use the successor, VeraCrypt. Both have always worked flawlessly; in fact, TrueCrypt is way smaller and I'm not aware of any security issues with it, it's just not actively developed anymore.

  • What useful unknown website do you wish more people knew about?

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  • VLC got to the moon before bitcoin or gamestop

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  • I am an American and I completely agree, the flag is everywhere. You would think it was required by law, like portraits of Dear Leader in communist totalitarian states, but no, the flag cult is voluntary. "Cringe" is exactly right. Some people just plaster the flag on things as a substitute for any sense of style or design. We've been indoctrinated into the flag cult throughout our childhoods, where there was a flag in every room in our schools, and a coordinated prayer-to-the-flag moment every morning.

    I went to Canada in the summer of 2025. In reaction to the insanity from Washington, Canada was experiencing a possibly-unprecedented wave of nationalism, businesses were advertising that they were proudly Canadian, there were even "flag stores" just like we have in the US, but with Canadian flags. In spite of this, Canada had something like 5% as many flags flying in public as the US does. It was possible to be out in public for many minutes at a time without seeing any flags at all. That doesn't happen in the US.

    Americans don't understand how propagandized they are.

    Edit: Cringe example: The Boulevard of 500 Flags. The notion that it's a memorial to 9/11 is a modern revision, the "Boulevard" actually dates back to the 90s. That is, this ridiculous array was built, by a large group of supposedly grown-up men, before the wave of post-9/11 nationalism.

  • Automatic registration for US military draft to begin in December

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  • Hey, could we automatically register everyone to vote at the same time?

    I'm kidding. I know the answer is "no."

  • VLC got to the moon before bitcoin or gamestop

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  • The way I see it: Corporate web apps (like Microsoft's) are evidence that the maker is putting administrative concerns ahead of user experience concerns. They're catering to the people who actually pay for this stuff, not to the users.

  • VLC got to the moon before bitcoin or gamestop

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  • Years ago I when I wrote software for a living, I had an argument with a colleague, and I tried to explain to him:

    The "supported" closed-source library he wanted to use was pretty popular because it was marketed by a huge company with a marketing department, or because it had a first-mover advantage, or because there were training events and books built around it, etc.

    The unsupported free open-source library I wanted to use was the most popular library of its kind in the whole world. And it got to that position without any of those advantages.

    What does that suggest about their relative usefulness? The world of open source is closer to being a real meritocracy. The number one app or library is probably number one for non-structural reasons.

  • AI Company Clones Musician’s Voice, Then Copyright-Strikes Her Own Songs

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  • If "Vydia" can get access to this mechanism, it can't be that hard, can it?

  • AI Company Clones Musician’s Voice, Then Copyright-Strikes Her Own Songs

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  • Given the current media, copyright, and business environment, why haven't we seen this kind of reverse-piracy pursued as a deliberate business model? Buy some IP rights cheap from YouTube "content creators" who have given up, use your AI-powered robot to find vaguely similar stuff from creators who are still working, and copyright-claim it all?

    It's pretty evident there would be no downside.

    Maybe small YouTubers should get together and create such a business, just to force the system to change. Make copyright claims against Paramount, CBS, etc. Make them barely plausible. Make thousands of them, from behind a rotating cast of shell companies. Make AI-powered, trust-the-claimant style copyright claims unworkable. Hey, it's just the free market regulating itself.

  • Yellow Paint

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  • I don't know about paint exactly, but

    • Control uses yellow markings, like tarps, in some places to offer some hints about which ledges the player can reach
    • Wolfenstein II uses yellow markings to indicate surfaces that can be destroyed
    • Doom (2016) uses distinctive lights (green in this case) to give the player a hint about which jumps are safe

    On one hand, I would guess the current talk is about newer games, but on the other hand, it's not a brand-new innovation, either.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • No one becomes a billionaire by accident. People who have an insatiable urge to dominate are hugely over-represented in the Epstein class, through their own efforts.