#fz_currentAffairs

[ferdifz]

On the left: Alexey Navalny making a 'Heart' sign with his hands in court in 2nd February 2021. On the right: Me making a 'Heart' sign at the voting station in Jakarta on 14th February 2024.

Just a coincidence. But kinda nice, I think.

[ferdifz]

Yes the Palestine Ministry of Health reports 40,000 dead, but death rate in Susan is at 10.000 per day and it's been ongoing for almost a year (since April 23, 2023).

[ferdifz]

Fuck Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

I peeked into Twitter and Elon's X keeps telling me to vote for RFK Jr., lol x")) Fuck that antivaxxer conspiracy-grifter. As I've said before, I personally think Ms Harris is still a great choice though.

(Much, much better than a convicted felon and wannabe autocrat, anyway.)

For one I am glad the DNC chose to nominate someone other than a half-an-onion in a plastic bag.

(Though yeah, as I've said before, if I had to & if I could, I would've voted for the onion anyway, too.)

Anyways, while you still legally can: Vote.

[ferdifz]

US senate UFO hearings, July 2023

The US Senate UAP/UFO hearings featuring 'whistleblower' David Gursh-whatsisname this morning kinda made me wanna paint my own original digital drawing, commenting how the hearings themselves hurt my brain cells.

…But unfortunately I have shirts to design for friends (read: more important things to do) so I'm settling for some quick n' dirty meme image macros.

To quote one of the replies under one of the article shares on Twitter/Threads/Mastodon:

I'm surprised the Flat-Earth Hearing didn't immediately follow this one.

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I mean like, if you've got new concrete evidence and some actually valid new avenues of investigation then sure, present them and please make your case.

But if you're just going to rehash decades old theories and claim 2nd-hand witness from unwilling sources then the burden of proof is on you. (And the burden of proof, as far as I'm concerned in this particular moment in time, has not been satisfied.)

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An explainer roundup-article I personally trust from The Guardian:

Grusch has not seen the alien craft himself, but said in an interview with the Debrief that his claims are based on “extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials”.

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Instead of "chaos grifters" I had thought of instead labeling that second one "cryptofascists". But I didn't go that route because I'm thinking the crypto/blockchain/NFT/generative art crowd would take away the wrong message, and it would lead to unnecessary & distracting debate.

When I say "cryptofascists" I'm thinking of all the cryptically dogpiling culture-war grifters like Milos Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, whomever Q really was, all the trolls at 4chan/b/ and 4chan/pol, and all those who spout cryptic messages for the purpose of gaslighting society into believing that everything is meaningless and there is no truth. Cryptofascism is a societally toxic international ideology and I firmly stand against it.

Cryptofascism includes those who peddle flat-earth, climate change denial, anti-vaxx, protocols of the elders of zion and all such similar brain-melting conspiracy theories for the purposes of sowing chaos or just for t3h lulz.

Many of them, if not all of them, driven by personal vendetta for a world that they feel have "wronged" them or "cheated" them.

Their fuel is attention & "engagement", many of them grifting from supplement-pill hustles and oils and such to swindle billions of dollars from the depressed and lonely. I curse every keyboard & screen these cryptofasicsts touch.

[/rant]

Sorry for that firebrand just now I got myself a bit too worked up thinking about all this. 🙏🙏🙏

[ferdifz]

"Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead" (conceptual sarcastic illustration) — March 13th, 2024

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Context: John Barnett, a former Boeing employee who had reportedly raised concerns about the company's production issues, was found dead of an 'apparent suicide' with a 'self-inflicted' gun-shot wound, according to authorities in South Carolina on March 13, 2024.

Barnett at the time was testifying in court against his former employer on various safety issues and catastrophic failures that has been playing the jet plane manufacturing company for the past few years. The circumstances surrounding the death have been unavoidably controversial and suspicious.

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A previous version of the drawing:

Also:

"Whistle" — March 13th, 2024

[ferdifz]

Slava Ukraini! Glory to Ukraine & Glory to the Heroes! ✊🇺🇦

liels paldies to latvia for its hilarious but effective method of providing cars for the ukrainian army 🇱🇻🫶

[ferdifz]

I know of Akira Toriyama's work, but I don't know Akira Toriyama the person. I have no reason to otherwise believe though that Akira Toriyama was a great person.

Apologies for the off-tone post. But I've just been seeing so many, so many praises of Akira Toriyama on the Internet this past two days. I just need to screw my head back on straight again.

No disrespect to Akira Toriyama. And also no disrespect to all those heaping heaps and heaps of very deserving eulogic praise on Akira Toriyama.

Artwork by Akira Toriyama and ig:octi_lfc

The Ringer: Dragonball creater Akira Toriyama had an unrivaled impact on anime

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the many faces of Akira Toriyama:

artwork-collage from some Japanese magazine in the '80s or something...

[ferdifz]

Thoughts on the missing OceanGate Titan submersible

So much "eat the rich" energy surrounding the social media comments around this story...

Meanwhile explorer Paul Henry Nargeolet is not a billionaire.

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IwriteOK on Twitter:

folks complaining that the government or whoever isn't doing enough to rescue the deathsub may not realize that rescuing human beings submerged anywhere near the depth this thing was supposed to be at would be harder than putting a man on the moon

Not quite harder than putting a man on the moon, but hard enough still.

...as in: Each single trip to the moon requires months — if not a whole year or more — of preparation. This rescue needs to be done within the next like 48 hour or so, or not at all.

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And how goes the Ukrainian counter-offensive? How goes the Myanmar coup-detat? How goes the Iranian women's-rights rebellion?

All things that continue to cost very real human lives.

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Hope this one Tumblr post will be enough to sate my hunger to commentate. And then I can let go of commenting on this issue anymore going forward.

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Update, about an hour after original post: US Coast Guard says 'underwater noises' have been detected in search for missing Titanic-tour submarine.

🐦 [Spectator Index] [AFP News-Agency] [the Associated Press]

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Update, a few more hours later: Although yeah to be fair (via Eric Feigl-Ding on Twitter) :

My god—Oceangate, operator of missing submarine exploring the Titanic wreckage, had a viewport (window) certified only to 1300 meters, as whistleblower complained in a lawsuit, but was fired. So what’s the Titanic wreckage depth? ➡️4000 meters. 🔥

Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Depths It Could Safely Travel To (The New Republic, June 20, 2023)

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Update, June 23rd:  "Tail cone of Titan sub found" - US Coast Guard press conference - via BBC News live update web-page

June 24th: Canadian and US officials have indicated there will be investigations into the Titan deaths. Other government agencies are may join in, but it is unclear at this stage which agency will lead the investigation.

June 28th: Pieces of derbris confirmed to be former OceanGate Titan submersible recovered; suspected human remains among the wreckage. (the Guardian)

[ferdifz]

Infighting among Russian elites continue...

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In real terms: tonight after more than 24 hours after Prigozhin had his Wagner troops stand down, public badmouthing among Russian elites continue to the point where one of them continue to demand the literal hanging of the other.

Like really, you don't kill more than 15 highly trained airborne personnel and destroy several million rubels worth of equipment, and expect all parties to let bygones be bygones afterwards. Blood has been spilled. The wolves will continue to be at each others' throats.

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Post-insurrection statements by both Putin & Prigozhin, a few hours ago. On Telegram/socmed & on Russian national TV.

So is Putin going to have Pringo killed in Belarus? How about Gerasimov and Shoigu, any of them getting hanged? Or are all three going to gang-up and have Putin defenestrated? Who knows. 🙃🍿

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a theory:

Okay I’m going to throw out a crazy theory: the Wagner mutiny was ended by a Secret Third Thing, and both Prigozhin and Putin “lost” What could that be? Maybe a cabal within MoD/FSB that wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to Prigozhin, and knew Putin couldn’t fully retain control? Does this seem likely? No Does literally any other story seem likely? Also no. Here’s one specific version of my theory:

> This is what we know:   > > 1. Putin felt he needed to negotiate   > > 2. When Prigozhin was offered a guarantee of safety, Prigozhin felt he could trust that guarantee. But he wouldn't trust the guarantee if that guarantee was coming from Putin. So the guarantee had to come from someone that Prigozhin trusted.   > > So only one theory really makes sense:There is a powerful faction in the FSB that wanted to extract a concession from Putin. (More...)

[ferdifz]

Yes. Relevant today.

...Or this week.

What have you.

State of the Union

So, here’s a question: do State of the Union addresses matter?  Well, umm, not really.

Here’s why they’re supposed to matter: they provide a president with a forum to explain his program to the American people, who are then supposed to rally around the president and pressure the Congress and the other branches of government to pass the president’s agenda.  It’s called “going public,” and State of the Union addresses are one of many ways presidents can try to use their public prominence to do an end run around Congress to get what they want.

But here’s the thing: it doesn’t usually work.  Presidential poll numbers might go up slightly, but this rarely translates into support for the president’s plans.  W was fairly successful at this after 9/11, but by the end of his presidency he was ignored.  Remember how we were going to Mars?  Neither does anyone else.

So the speech last night was well done, and depending on which side of the political universe you stand on you liked it–or didn’t.  But that’s the point: in a highly partisan period like this, there is no way one speech will rally sufficient support to change the party gridlock.  That takes several elections and an American people which has decided to try a new way of doing business.  And it seems to me, I am sad to say, we’re not there yet.  Which will be a post for another day!

[ferdifz]

Was the TikTok Ban part of the bill designed to hide the fact that the US just approved sending some long-range ballistic missiles to Ukraine?

Anyways I continue hoping Putin & his Kremlin gets decommisioned as quickly as possible.

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[ferdifz]

H-min-1 menuju Pemilu 2024. Semoga semua lancar dan jangan rusuh-rusuh, amin… 🙏🙏

Mohon cinta jangan terlalu cinta, benci jangan terlalu benci. Gunakan hak pilih sewajarnya dan jangan malah jadi memusuhi tetangga apalagi keluarga. Nggak worth-it, lah….

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Update, 17 Februari: Cukup lancar sih. Tapi lagi ada beberapa yang baper gara-gara quick count hehe...

[ferdifz]

Canon Nanoimprint Lithography

Update, 2 days later: And of course Asianometry had already made an hour-long deep-dive video into the microchip-fabricating technology, which will in short quite possibly challenge TSMC's global near-monopoly on the industry.

[ferdifz]

Interesting & not easy to not notice

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Oh and yes I know I know: the current "X-formerly-known-as-Twitter" logo is actually a Unicode character:

"Unicode character U+1D54F (����) was added to Unicode in 2001 and has been used in mathematical text books since the 70s. I'm looking forward to Twitter attempting and failing to trademark their new logo"

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Also: Tumblr to rebrand as 'q':

A joke, obviously.

Obviously!!11!11

[ferdifz]

New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern won’t run for reelection

Massive Respect for Jacinda Ardern. May New Zealand continue to progress & prosper, and be an exemplary beacon of progressive & egalitarian values going forward.

No nation is perfect. No leader is perfect. But I for one would prefer to be lead by Ardern than by Agent Orange or the Amazon Destroyer or Emperor Genocider the Pooh et cetera. But I'm not. So that's that, and still my salutations to Ardern.

BBC News breaking coverage: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64327224