“Sadness is a weapon of bourgeoisie” -Iosef Lilianovich Dros

Thanks - I’ve seen Winboat mentioned several times in the comments, I’m going to try that first.

All Cuba has ever wanted, for decades, is for the US leave it alone and be allowed to trade with the rest of the world. Cuba has no means to fight back, so of course Trump and Rubio will pick on them.

This is Rubio, I think. Toppling Cuba has been his #1 goal his entire political career.

There really are little to no economic concessions Cuba can make, given the status of the blockade on the country. If the “deal” was just to let Trump build his own hotels on the island or something, Cuba might even accept that. Given this and who is in Trump’s cabinet, I think it’s reasonable to assume the only “deal” on the table is to accept being governed as US colony with Rubio as the viceroy.

As brutal as cutting off oil from Venezuela will be, the Cuban people got through the Special Period, I think they will survive Trump.

I haven’t heard of WinBoat before, I will check that out thank you.

It’s been a few years since I tried making my Zune work on Linux, I should give it another try, thanks.

It really is a great little device. I believe there has to be a market out there for a Linux device similar to it, something just for music / radio / podcasts.

Respectfully, the two things you are trying to compare are not really comparable in any meaningful way.

Edit: If I am being as generous as possible, I suppose you could stretch the definition of “colonialism” to include Tsarist Russia and Siberia (not sure I would agree, but let’s call it that). But even then, by the time you get to the USSR I don’t see how you could call it that, as opposed to the USSR literally just developing part of the Union.

These comparisons feel like people trying to compare Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth and asking which was the better athlete.

The source data shows that while active users are down, the number of posts and comments are near all-time highs. While you need new users to help counteract churn, I think the higher post/comments count points to what I think a lot of people feel here: that quality seems to keep getting better and better.

Regarding how to bring more people in, I personally like how different lemmy servers have slightly different characteristics but each seems to appeal to larger groups. I see a future where there’s probably a small-ish number of large servers that cover broad groups of people.

Because once the news broke of the Ellisons buying US TikTok (and their transparent reasons for doing so), it became clear to me that for the free and open internet, “winter is coming”.

Oct 7th and the global outpouring of support for Palestinians (and trashing of the reputation of Israel) was a huge wake-up call to the ruling classes. I think until then, they were largely content with controlling the narratives via traditional media spaces. The aftermath of Oct 7 taught them that social media and the internet cannot be ignored and in fact must controlled. It’s not like anyone under 65 is watching Fox News or CNN, and not many reading the NYT. All of the actions we have seen in the last 2 years - making sure Facebook / Google / Twitter / Reddit and now TikTok have tightly controlled messaging, requiring IDs and verification, etc - are pointing towards a future where free expression online is severely limited. I don’t want to be a part of that.

And I do believe that it’s important to get out there and discuss things that are important to me with others (Palestinian and indigenous liberation, communism, online privacy). I’m not happy to just retreat into my own bubble. That is ultimately the reason I joined (I was of course already included to using the fediverse as I’ve long appreciated FOSS and decentralized systems and non-commercialized things in general).

It should be possible for a people to say “We would like our autonomy” and expect other nations to say in response, “Understood, and we will ally with you to defend such a notion.”

It should. But then again, the people of Gaza wanted to not be genocided and the world stood by and let it happen. While I fully agree with your sentiment, the specifics of the world right now might require a less than ideal approach.

Europe should say that, of course. But their weak talk so far suggests they probably won’t defend Greenlanders even if they are a part of Denmark; and if so if Greenland were independent at the moment there’s no reason to think that would somehow give them more of a spine.

I understand and agree with the sentiment that Greenland is a colonized place that should be independent. I also understand that telling colonized people “not right now” and “it’s too dangerous” are the lines the colonizers always use. But that might actually be the case in this moment. The reality is that the US/Israel axis is acting as if the world is theirs. It feels like we really are in 1939, only the US/Israel axis has far more relative power than the Germany/Italy axis ever did.

They know just how bad it will look and how unpopular it will be if they just take Greenland by force. They’re trying to convince the Danes to sell it under duress to give it a veneer of legitimacy.

“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication,” Nadella wrote in a rambling post flagged by Windows Central, arguing that humanity needs to learn to accept AI as the “new equilibrium” of human nature.

I’m starting to notice a recent trend in tech CEOs. They seem to be saying “yes, we know you hate it but too bad get used to it”.

For countries like Spain, Portugal, Ireland, et al… what’s the motivation to remain in NATO in the first place? I know it’s a joke to call it a purely “defensive” alliance but those countries do not face a credible military threat from anyone. Meanwhile they are rules falling into place that will require members to really pay up and increase military budgets at the expense of social programs.

The DPRK is showing that, despite global condemnation, they were 1,000% correct to pursue a nuclear programme.

I think the whole “we’re taking over Venezuela” is just your typical Trump bravado. I believe user xiaohongshu on Hexbear has the correct angle:

I think everyone is too fixated on the empire getting into a long war but I don’t think that’s the goal here.

Just like Trump’s B-2 stunt on Iran’s Fordow back in June, the US operation was a quick in, quick out operation. Nothing seems to have significantly changed on the surface, but the message has been sent. The US is sowing political instability in the region, and it scares away foreign investments especially China’s.

Just look at China-Iran trade numbers, it’s plunging by 20% this year. Chinese investors are pulling away because they cannot see profitable return in Iran and the surrounding regions. This worsens the economic condition in Iran, and months later, we see the Iranians protesting as a result.

The same play is being replicated in Venezuela here against Latin America. The US has no interest in getting dragged into a long war. It wants to demonstrate how easily it can upset the political balance in Latin America. Do you seriously think that Chinese investors will still want to invest billions on Venezuela seeing how easily the leadership can be kidnapped?

The investment’s gone, and the US simply has to sit back and wait for the situation to deteriorate even further, and the regime change opportunity will present itself. But it’s not even about Venezuela, it’s about the US dominance over Latin America.

I will be honest, I was expecting the US to do IOF / Palantir type actions and try to take out government and civilian leadership several levels deep. While taking out a single leader rarely does anything, removing an entire leadership structure in an already unstable situation can be devastating. The fact that, for now, the US is stopping at “just” Maduro encourages me that the Bolivarian Revolution will continue on, now with even more support from the people.

I think now it will be a battle of how much the Trump admin can do in the face of international condemnation (outside of US vassal states, that is) and likely increased support of Venezuela from its neighbors. Trump will almost certainly dig in on sanctions until Venezuela hands over their oil. But I don’t see that happening, so I don’t know what happens.

America is truly an evil country.

Whenever I see those crazy, deranged Israeli settlers in the West Bank, I can’t help but think about how the people who colonized North America were just as horrible. Cut from the exact same cloth.