absamma

absamma, 7 months ago to Israel

There are lots of folks online prattling about being Jewish, condemning Hamas' killings (a first for them) yet not standing with Israel, then saying one can hold both views. IMHO that's like a colleague of mine telling me one can be a medical doctor and not believe in vaccinations. These arguments can only exist based on bad faith premises. Once the premises are defeated, they cannot stand anymore. Israel's legitimacy is ironclad. These arguments are not. #Israel

absamma, 7 months ago to Israel

People are moving South in Gaza and as a result, water is now flowing through to southern Gaza. Meanwhile, Fatah is being prepared to become the new authorities in Gaza (which is why they're cooperating so well with everyone else). This can all end sooner rather than later. The region will see a vast improvement once Hamas and its allies are removed. #Israel

absamma, 7 months ago to Israel

European news outlets have been claiming a strike on a civilian convoy moving to South Gaza. Here's the video of the attack. No missile strike seen up close. It looks more like a roadside bomb, which is Hamas' speciality. They have every incentive to stop the convoy. They need those human shields. BBC Verify is really trying hard to pin this on the IDF (who weren't operating there at the time) but don't directly attribute it to IDF. They're hedging their hunch.

https://twitter.com/TheMossadIL/status/1713224556758880269?t=vDUI860DgzeYS9rUH7g3bA&s=19

#Israel

absamma, 7 months ago to random

There is a reason why France banned pro-Palestinian rallies. Not only are they an attractor for the worst antisemites, they endanger people when they inevitably turn violent. Now British Jews and lone Israeli supporters are being mobbed by these pro-Palestinian rallies. How can British authorities expect people to be safe in these circumstances? It's best to restrict protests over this matter until this is all over. #Israel

absamma, 7 months ago to China

Laos is on the brink of complete economic collapse thanks to the debts it has incurred shoring up failing Chinese infrastructure projects. The debt trap is real and with #China's economy in turmoil, projects it runs around the world are slowly coming apart with devastating effects. Laos is uncannily similar to my home country of Tanzania in Africa in terms of situation & repression. I fear this debt trap will spring soon in Africa if it hasn't already. China's sweet lie is that debt == wealth 🤥

absamma, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to Ukraine

‘In case I die, I need to publish this paper’: scientist who left the lab to fight in Ukraine

A Ukrainian scientist and soldier tells the world about how war has shaped his perspective on science and war: they cannot be separate. They're inextricably linked. Which is why Russia targets Ukrainian academic centres. I would add that this can extend to every part of the civilian sector. This is what total war looks like. #Ukraine

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03044-z

absamma, 7 months ago to space

The US has issued its first fine for space junk to a company: Dish Network inc. We need this framework in place or we will lose access to space. #space

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66993647

absamma, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to twitter

The contrast between the Voxmedia code conference interviews with Lina Yaccarino and Yoel Roth is funny as hell. Brilliant journalism, and it illustrates so well the kind of clowns currently running Twitter (I will not call it X 😤). I pity Linda. Elon didn't even see the need to inform her that he's thinking about putting all of Twitter behind a paywall. Product staff don't even report to her. She should be asking herself, what am I even doing here? #twitter

absamma, 7 months ago to China

#China's empty real estate is the poster child of wasteful spending. Nothing else comes close I think. To quote China's bureau of statistics, they've got somewhere between 1-3 billion unoccupied houses/units that they'll never be able to sell and that even their entire population cannot fill. That's.... staggering. That's 5 trillion dollars of value thrown into a black hole. Something will have to give. The financial market abhors a vacuum this big.

absamma, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

Brilliant video on how the invention of the clock eroded workers' leisure time, and how the pocket watch empowered workers to discover how their bosses were tampering with the clocks to make people work more for less. This is an example of how technological innovation can enable tyranny. We must learn from history. Share this with your boss and union 😉

Work. https://youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo&si=Rb715wJLTRBr7q3L

absamma, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

Here's a scary thought: is #Trump the Mule from the Foundation novels? #Foundation #scifi 😂

absamma, 8 months ago to opensource

What's the closest thing to an open source Twitter space service out there AND allows for federation via ActivityPub? Anyone? @boris? #opensource #fediverse

absamma, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to random

It's sad to admit but Nelson Mandela's dream of a rainbow 🌈 nation died with him. Xenophobia is now the order of the day. South Africans are already romanticising the good old days of apartheid which is insane! As Mandela's party loses support over extreme inequality, a xenophobic movement is slowly becoming another centre of power. I fear the worst for the future...

I guess Neill Blomkamp's District 9 warning has come to haunt us in our reality.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-66808346

absamma, 8 months ago to webdev

What are web components good for? Design systems for big companies for starters. Plus, more websites seem to use web components more than Reactjs by some counts which is surprising. #webdev #webcomponents #React

Use web components for what they’re good at | Read the Tea Leaves https://nolanlawson.com/2023/08/23/use-web-components-for-what-theyre-good-at/

absamma, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to news

While the saner parts of the world rightly scoff at the "alien" spectacle shown off at Mexico's Congress, this spectacle is being powered by something far more sinister: grave robbing and tomb desecration in Peru. It's inhumane and grotesque and it must stop. Demand for so called "alien" evidence must stop. There are no aliens, only an illegal and unethical capitalist pipeline for rearranged body parts you fools! 😡 #news #capitalism

https://www.livescience.com/62045-alien-mummies-explained.html

absamma, 8 months ago to space

"Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realised, it becomes commonplace."

-Goddard #space #rocket

The New York Times mocked this scientist in 1920. His discoveries could now take us to Mars - ABC News https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-16/robert-goddard-s-space-legacy-moon-race/102849484

absamma, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to random

Libya is a case study for countries when it comes to climate change. Think about it: a country divided and ravaged by internal conflict into a perpetual state of apathy due to degrading or nonexistent institutions, and here comes a medicane storm powered by a warmer than usual Mediterranean sea and planet to kill tens of thousands of people at a go. That's just one storm feeding a cycle of misery. If this happens to us all it'll be a slow but painful slide into extinction. #ClimateCatastrophe

absamma, 8 months ago to science

I don't know why but we've really managed to instill an unhealthy fear of negative results in the sciences. Journals are to blame here too. Thankfully, some are noticing the error of that thinking. #science

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02876-z?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=nature&utm_source=Twitter&s=09#Echobox=1694509194

absamma, 8 months ago to Ukraine

You can't understand anything in this Starlink #Ukraine debacle when you read Elon's tweets (or are they X's, who knows). One minute he says they didn't deactivate Starlink then next he says he did it to ostensibly de-escalate something something. Absolutely laughable given that the Russians continue to pummel Ukrainian cities and citizens and this act literally sabotaged an act of defense. Like I said, libertarians like Elon and Paul Graham can be dangerously naïve.

absamma, 8 months ago to privacy

Guys, your cars are collecting data on your sexual activity. You all consented to this and more (or as some people like to say, you got EULA roofied). How is this even a thing?? How will our sexual activity help improve the performance of the car or the car maker's services? Doesn't matter if it's a Nissan or a Tesla. Tesla employees are literally turning your camera recordings into internal company intranet memes! This timeline keeps getting worse and worse. #privacy #surveillance #capitalism

absamma, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to BurningMan

Those who've decided to remain at Burning man to keep the party going despite their predicament are a perfect analogy of our world today in this #ClimateCatastrophe #burningman

Addendum: tragically, a death has happened at the event. This is no longer funny.

absamma, 8 months ago to random

Here's the thing: the "original waterfall methodology paper" (which does not even use the word Waterfall) advocated for an iterative approach to software development. Unfortunately, nobody got past figure 2 of 10 and the DOD compounded the problem by turning the misconception into a standard. In other words, Agile is nothing new. It is a rediscovery borne out of not practicing RTFM. #agile #waterfall #softwaredevelopment

http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/waterfall.html

absamma, 8 months ago to China

What's happening in #China wrt #deflation is pretty simple: people there were using the housing market as a replacement for banks assuming that prices will always continue to go up. They didn't, and now they're poorer, so they're holding on to their remaining cash. Hence deflation. How do you correct this when the property market makes up a third of China's wealth? Absolutely nuts! #economics

absamma, 8 months ago to random

Sometimes I wonder if we're heading right into a Horizon Zero Dawn timeline given the chaos around the world right now. It sure feels like it. #horizonzerodawn

absamma, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to random

To put #Fukushima into context, the concentration of tritium in your drinking water is way more than in the water they're discharging into the ocean. The issue has been so politicised it's ridiculous.

Conversely, the Japanese government has not really done any meaningful consultations with its citizens hence the angst. See more context in this thread🧵: https://fedibird.com/