mozz

Oh shit

The plot thickens

Now I'm confused. Here's what Wikipedia says. The last ice age was 11,000 years ago, so presumably they should have spread back out northwards since then... or maybe they needed to evolve the ability to survive in the cold first, which they haven't had time to do? IDK.

I'll edit the title to be more accurate. I don't necessarily see a conflict between the fine details of what the article says / what Wikipedia says / what Smithsonian says, but my title is misleading and the careless way I read the article led me to totally misunderstand it.

I think you literally made 100% of the first half of this up

There are no earthworms that used to be here; read the article. Crazy worms do exactly the same thing (remove the layer of leaf litter that traditional NA boreal forests depend on), they just spread a little more quickly which makes it a little more of a problem. But the essential issue is the same. And I don't think killing either one of them makes any difference at all; humans will not encounter either one on anything even remotely similar to the scale that would make going after them on an individual level a useful thing to do.

Edit: Okay I am totally wrong; the article talks about northern forests only, and what I'm saying isn't true of the US / North America as a whole.

No, see, it'll be fine because we have a whole line of autonomous backhoes that we're going to release afterwards. To get rid of the sidewalks. It literally can't go wrong.

Yeah this is gonna be a whole measured and productive comments section

When I use a VPN, I very rarely imagine that the coffee shop / home internet that I'm hooked up to will have a malicious actor or compromised host physically inside it. I mean, maybe. But more likely is that I'm protecting against a malicious ISP, or effectively doing an extra level of authentication to my work network before I get access to non-world-visible elements of it (that shouldn't be exposed to anyone in the world that wants to poke at it). The "someone else at the cafe is malicious" case isn't un-heard of, but it's not the most common threat model. That's my point.

From the article:

When apps run on Linux there’s a setting that minimizes the effects, but even then TunnelVision can be used to exploit a side channel that can be used to de-anonymize destination traffic and perform targeted denial-of-service attacks.

"Deanonymize" and denial of service are very very different from hijacking the connection and rerouting destination traffic to a hostile device, which it sounds like are what's possible on iOS and Windows.

I don't really know the full details (e.g. what does it mean that "there's a setting", and is activating that setting starting this week any different in practice from applying the patch that will surely come this week for Windows and iOS). But it does sound fair to say that there's a serious level of vulnerability that's exclusive to Windows and iOS.

And, in particular, the animals that tend to give effective resistance to the humans' program of "hey I'm gonna trap / shoot / poison you or destroy your home because you're inconveniencing me", tend to get demonized as these crazy murder beasts when they'd probably be much happier living in the woods and doing their thing.

Human farmer eating chickens: Look, he went back to the land, so charming

Raccoon eating farmer's chickens: HE IS THE DEVIL

Animals do not exist in a moral universe. Humans do. And yet, somehow, when a conflict between them escalates, the animals are always the ones being psychopaths.

Soldier is not a designation of morality or legitimacy. It is a designation of association - namely, association with a state's military apparatus. Excluding paramilitaries, which are generally (though not always) referred to with other terms.

Yeah, I get that. My point is that this is part of a consistent pattern where the NYT uses one set of words for the "good guys" and a different set of words for the "bad guys," as part of a (fairly successful) effort to get their readers to look at the conflict within their chosen parameters (which diverge quite a bit from the reality).

The category of 'state terrorism' is contentious, I wouldn't reasonably expect it to be used in a reputable news source at this point in time

Yeah fully agreed. I don't think anyone should be obligated to describe Israel as a terrorist state in their news coverage. Just saying that, if the pro-Israel writers want to be super specific about reporting every action with the exactly correct chosen words, then okay sure I think it becomes fair to start exploring the exactly correct words that actually do describe better what's really going on.

1. Sounds like it requires that your DHCP server is hostile, which is actually a very small (though nonzero, yes) number of the attack scenarios that VPNs are designed for
2. "there are no ways to prevent such attacks except when the user's VPN runs on Linux or Android" is a very funny way of saying "in practice applies only to Windows and iOS".

I literally saw an article in the Israeli press talking about: Agreeing to a temporary truce would be a good idea because then we can use the pause to rearm, resupply, and rest, and then resume the killing having netted ourselves some goodwill on the world stage.

It literally is uncertain. Like, that's what this development has created for those of us observing.

My point is that what Hamas agreed to isn't uncertain (at least at this point). IDK, maybe there's some timestamp issue where NYT published the OP article before it was clear... but as of last night (after the timestamp on the Al Jazeera article laying out everything in detail), the NYT wrote "Hamas’s Offer to Hand Over 33 Hostages Includes Some Who Are Dead". I still haven't seen any NYT article that simply lays out what the basic agreement details are; they seem to have wanted, with the "dead hostages" article, to just seize on an I-guess-technically-accurate data point and present it to make Hamas sound duplicitous and deadly, and then call it a day, with their readers still uninformed on the broad factual details of what was happening with the cease-fire talks.

"Militants" is a common usage term in journalism for combatants who are not or may not be formally a part of a state apparatus. Considering large parts of Hamas are 'off the books' of the local government in Gaza and a good number of those fighting currently are likely not regular soldiers, it's not unreasonable to call them militants.

From Wordnik:

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• adjective Fighting or warring.
• adjective Having a combative character; aggressive, especially in the service of a cause.
• noun A fighting, warring, or aggressive person or party.

from The Century Dictionary.

• Fighting; warring; engaged in warfare; pertaining to warfare or conflict.
• Having a combative character or tendency; warlike.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• adjective disposed to warfare or hard-line policies
• adjective engaged in war
• noun a militant reformer
• adjective showing a fighting disposition

From Encyclopedia.com:

Militant, in contemporary academic, activist, and journalistic interpretations, refers to an individual (as a noun) or to a party, a struggle or a state (as an adjective), engaged in aggressive forms of social and political resistance.

My point is that by deciding that Hamas people with guns can't be "soldiers," but IDF people with guns can, the NYT is giving a subtle stamp of legitimacy to the IDF.

I get what you're saying -- it's not exactly a typical war. But I would argue that the IDF's conduct is also equally non-typical for a "normal" armed conflict between capable state actors. It's misleading to even call it a "war" -- it is, very literally, more of a terrorist operation by Israel, blowing up civilian infrastructure and killing innocent people to put pressure on the Gaza state apparatus (such as it even exists) to agree to political terms they otherwise would never accept, to stop the killing.

If we're calling Hamas "militants" out of pure desire for accuracy, can we start calling people who work for the IDF who blow up universities and snipe doctors "terrorists"? And mount a factual defense of that term, based on their conduct in the "war"? Because I think I could make a pretty good argument for why that term applies to them more accurately than "soldiers" and "war" for what's happening on the ground right now.

Al Jazeera: Here are all the details of what Hamas agreed to

Washington Post: Here's a quick overview of the plan, and details of what Israel doesn't like about it

BBC: Here's a quick overview and Israel's reaction

NYT: OMG who can even say what might be in this proposal. Like the flying dutchman, it is an elusive and mysterious beast, and we need to wait for the light of the full moon to even glimpse its outline. Plus you know, Hamas lies all the time.

Also NYT: the "armed group" (i.e. Hamas)

Also NYT: "As if to underscore that the fighting would continue, Hamas militants on Sunday launched rockets" (motherfucker the Israelis are "militants" and "fighting", too) ... "killing four Israeli soldiers" (oh, so they attacked the soldiers in Gaza attacking them? I see the problem -- they should have blown up an Israeli hospital or university; then apparently you'd be fine with it.)

I genuinely can't continue because I'm getting for real pissed off about it. But I think it's safe to assume the whole fucking article is written this way. I actually started paying again for a subscription to the NYT because I like journalism, but I think I may cancel it and send them a short note explaining why, like an angry middle-aged white woman storming out of a Starbucks.

It actually does take a lot more than one person.

• Pardoning federal prisoners, Biden can do all on his own, and already did. (Didn't do all that much because more people are in state prison for state charges. But, if you're one of those people who's now out of prison, it's pretty significant I think.)
• Rescheduling marijuana takes agreement from the DEA, who aren't exactly weed-radicals, and the value of doing it is a little limited in the first place. He requested to reschedule it years ago and they've been dragging their feet on it for whatever reason up until very very recently.
• A bill for decriminalization is where the real significant change can come. There were a couple of them that came along, of which probably the most serious effort was a bill for full legalization. It passed the house, but there was a little bit of Democratic opposition when it reached the senate, and of course all the Republicans voted against it, so it failed. So, quite literally, 50 people would have been needed in order to pass it, but we couldn't get the 50 together, which is why it's still federally illegal.