yes and no. israel's and us' agendas conflict but also overlap. don't buy the whole "the tail wags the dog" and "netanyahu is the root of all evil" narrative, that's just another distraction. both netanyahu and trump are tools in the hands of the western financial cartel and this actually extends to us and israel themselves, and everything inside and inbetween. if they're tools that means that once used they can be expended, rebuilt or repurposed and the loss is already factored in. for the greater good, money has no homeland.

that's a date floated around in speeches and memos. yes, it seems way to soon, and it's probably wishful thinking.

let's connect a few dots:

venezuela / cut cooperation and crude imports from china
gulf/iran / cut china from gulf oil (about 50% of their crude imports)
indonesia / control malacca straight (another vital trade route for china)
azerbaijan/zangezur corridor / deny belt and road

and suddenly the ongoing lng projects in alaska become profitable, who would have thunk.

the whole thing is about isolating china, cutting their oil supply and disrupting their trade routes, and at the same time propping up us power and economy via energy dependency.

cutting germany from russian energy (ukraine, nord-stream) also makes germany dependent on us lng.
the war in ukraine was about crippling russia and then using it in turn to contain china, which has failed
which is why it is necessary now to militarily prop up germany to go to war against russia. projected 2030

it's complicated. in theory us would benefit from huge energy exports (paid in dollars, which offsets trade imbalance, debt servicing) and relative increase in power by creating disruption and dependency abroad in general. this will ofc create huge problems (inflation/depression) domestically too, but ofc elites wouldn't care less, and if need be they got ... well, tools like ice to manage it. this is how capitalism becomes fascism.

plans aren't quite working as expected. the eu is fucked for the foreseeable future, indeed. russia has proven to be way more resilient than expected, iran just threw the whole chessboard around, russia-china-iran has become a quite solid and motivated coalition (out of sheer necessity). china has immense oil reserves (they have been seeing this coming a while ago) and has leapfrogged in clean energy (and in tech and military) much more than expected and can get by without us/eu markets.

i just don't see that cults have to be necessarily exploitative, so i would go with "not all religions are cults that abuse or exploit", and i'm maybe spliting hairs but i'm not sure that this is the exclusive meaning (although it is often implied), there are many groups we call "cults" in casual speech that aren't, some groups are called cults because their beliefs are extreme, but that doesn't necessarily imply abuse or exploitation. which is why i said "all religions embody some form of mind control".

again mind control need not be pejorative, and need not be enforced, but conform a minimal set of values and/or beliefs that are simply expected to be shared, wether enshrined in tradition, preached, written in a manifesto or just tacitly assumed, this communion is a way of molding minds to conform to the group, and will have an effect on individual minds and behaviors. which is essentially mind control, positive or negative is another issue. then again if none of those are spiritual in nature then we wouldn't be really talking about a religious group either. aaaaand, i know for sure you wouldn't call that a cult.

sorry if i'm being pedantic, i guess my point is that this whole classification (religion, cult, sect) is pretty fuzzy and subjective.

good observation. i had to tuck "cult" in there somehow :-)

then again note that even bite doesn't limit "cult" (mind control) to religions. many cults will use some god concept or faith as a channel or pretext, but mind control is actually a separate thing from religion and happens in many contexts. you'll notice that many of their listed characteristics apply perfectly well to other entities, like governments, ideologies, lobby groups ... i like their definition: "manipulative groups".

i would say not all cults are religions but definitely every religion embodies some form of mind control, by definition. for good or worse, that's another matter. i guess the threshold is in "to exploit or abuse", but there are again many nuances to that!

most religious congregations use ruses to fund themselves. i don't think the particular way to do this is a defining characteristic of "not-a-religion". it is indeed gross, but it's also quite in sync with modern capitalist mentality, and it's not very different from paying indulgences to ensure fast-track access to end-game content (aka heaven), a practice employed for centuries by one of the most extended and recognized religions in the world.

i mean, i get your point, i'm not defending scientology by any means, just being rational about the "actual religion" trope. that's a rabbit hole and there are far more interesting aspects to objectively and comparatively consider about individual religions in general (and yours is a good one). i would start by assuming they're all "actual religions", which is just a coaarse definition, and get that out of the way. there are even religions that don't need any recognition, any governing body or even a name.

religion is a quite fuzzy term, there is no consensus on what a religion is and we don't even know the exact etymology of the word.

you mean like angels, miracles, resurrections, prophecies, afterlife (with virgins!), halls of the slain, flying spaghetti, spiritual machines?

i don't know of any religion that doesn't have a "cult" to be followed, that is, a set of rites or norms expected to be observed, and a set of followers. those ofc vary greatly. and most religions also expect offerings and use part of them to run their own bureaucracy or management, the more succesful ones having become extremely wealthy (some, cough, obscenely so).

you haven't pointed to a single characteristic which could uniquely define a "religion" as "real" in a way in which scientology would not qualify. yet you demand proof from others! are you going to provide some, or do i have to take your word for it, surrender and embrace the truth of the holy anonymous, the chosen coward praised be his absence of a name?

it happened weeks ago but you're probably watching epstein media ... so a whole lot has happened that you don't know. but don't worry, if trump doesn't back off soon you will definitely know.

likely!

according to this communication, you won't have to: it's all opt in, which is the sane way to go about it. i don't need these features either, and i don't see myself letting "agents" doing stuff by themselves on my system anytime soon, but "ai" is very relevant tech today and it's good news that distros start considering support, as long as user choice and privacy are considered. otoh it is evolving so fast that i don't really see it as something that should be integrated at the os level yet. then again ubuntu's strongest point is precisely being a popular distro accessible to casual users, and this has driven them to screw ups in the past just to compete for attention, so wait and see. for now this doesn't look like the usual slap on "because it's trendy" nor a path to the proverbial spyware, though. roasting and hysteria is ofc always quick and free!

i don't mind and i have spent that and then some, for years, just not on an overhyped luxury gadget but on the box to run any of the existing well performing and competitively priced vr headsets.

there's another group of people that doesn't mind and it's clearly, sorry to say, apple fanbois. apple cashed in big time just for their brand with the first iteration, and could have stopped there. they very likely actually did stop investing at that point as the improvements since have been laughable, they have been selling reprints with minor tweaks until the market saturated and dried up, and openly discontinuing the product just after the scam would have been quite bad for image even by fanboi standards.

the founders (and ceo) are chinese nationals, have been long barred from leaving china because of this deal, it's mostly chinese capital and it's a chinese company so it falls squarely on chinese jurisdiction. chinese law allows the government to block transfers or technology exports that carry strategic or security risk to the nation. there is no need for any bombastic coercion, this is just the rule of law.

meta (no less) taking over obviously is a security risk, so this is actually a sensible move given the context and far less intrusive than the hysterical and often nonsensical moves routinely made by the us in the opposite direction, but don't really mind manus, 2 billion is spare cash and this isn't about them at all. it's about setting the record straight and sending a clear signal that the ruse of relocating to singapore to infiltrate/exfiltrate tech companies is a no go. nice try but suck it up, buttercup, and find another way.

unlike in the west, the chinese government (and russia's, btw) controls its oligarchs, not vice-versa, which is why they're not slipping into decadence (again, unlike the west) and can actually manage their national interests and long term strategy for real, without constant histrionism and boasting about it in public while selling their country to said oligarchs in back room deals to dig the hole even deeper.

the fecking leds, probably.

apparently that's no showstopper for a slashvertisement.

if we were to crowdproduce a contest to hail the most asinine shark-jumping slashvertisement (the shlarkdot award!) this one would be a good nominee for 2026. just saying and moving on ...

because social media is about the only medium where that works both ways, which is exactly why control is so urgent, moreso since it is progressively replacing traditional (mainstream) media which has been already captive for decades.

it's also not only to silence opinions, they already can do that to a considerable extent (banning, shadowbanning, exclusion, bots, influencers). personal identification would also allow swift action on individuals (mind, they already do that too, but only to people who expose themselves, the eu alone currently subjects 69 eu citizens to extrajudicial sanctions or "financial death" for no other crime than their opinions or merely sharing information, and the list includes 2700 individuals worldwide). i expect that list to grow substantially once the e-wallet is in place, for chilling effect.

they are conflating two very different issues: safety and mental health.

- safety is addressable by access restriction, but:
-- success and risk depend on tech implementation and regulation
-- risk of false sense of security
-- it's all or nothing, meaning it also restricts access that is potentially positive
-- it's common knowledge that the vast majority of child sexual abuse happens in family circles

- mental health is not really addressable by access restriction
-- it's mainly addresable by parenting, education and habits
-- false sense of security may even worsen this aspect
-- lots of social media/content is public/anonymous by default
-- even if the content is policed (ymmv), the noxious habits are the same

personally, i think the whole thing is a red herring to control public opinion and discourse, the intended target being adult citizens and control over population in general. this is specially worrying given the current warmongering context. child safety is a reasonable card to play in that scheme but the mental health angle is complete bullshit by itself. doesn't make any fucking sense.

some curiosity about the '"overwhelming" demand from the public': this is the archive of the consultation:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.regjeringen.no%2Fno%2F...

i don't read norwegian but asked llm a to summarize contributions and highlight main points by source (companies, institutions, individuals, youth):

total contributions: about 8000 (norway's population over 13 is around 5mill).
Individual Citizens ~95% of total responses Strongly Pro-Limit (Focus on safety and mental health).
State Institutions 1% (but high weight) Cautious Support (Focus on privacy and child rights).
Youth Orgs ~1% (high weight) Critical (Focus on social exclusion and practicality).
Media/Tech 1% Opposed (Focus on legal proportionality and free speech).

overwhelming my ass :-)