Forum Log

I believe that European leaders sense that inaction in the face of Russia does not have a positive outcome. However, action without buy-in from the US is also not worth contemplating, so acquiring that buy-in is of primary importance. Recent reports of drone incursions into Poland and Romania have resulting in an NATO Article 4 invocation by Donald Tusk. Presentation in the media is amplified compared to similar incidents such as the errant Ukrainian missile in Poland in 2022, during which Article 4 invocation was also discussed. In a 2025 interview, Andrzej Duda, when asked if Zelenskyy had pressured him to say that the missile had been Russian, replied "you could say that". Various casi belli are continuously laid at the feet of the Western public in the hopes that they percolate up to Donald Trump, although it does not seem likely that he will give his blessing to such action. Perhaps soon, a casus belli will be found that makes war with Russia a moral imperative.

" … The territories of an empire, when the empire collapses, go through a long stage of social and political turmoil, dragged along by all manner of fragmenting tendencies that generate enormous conflict. […] Feudalism is the result of the fall of the Roman Empire - that is, of the failure of _the State_. Feudalism arises automatically whenever such a breakdown of the State occurs, for feudalism is nothing other than the search for personal alliances above the law. The world becomes too insecure to trust strangers. " Translation is my own. - Elvira Roca Barea, 'Imperiofobia y Leyenda Negra. Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos y El Imperio Español'. Chapter 7. (2016)

Yes. I think this is a useful model. Particularly the word "automatically". Relatedly, excerpts from an article I read today: --- In less than two years France has gone through five prime ministers ... The cost of servicing national debt this year is estimated to be €67 billion - it now consumes more money than all government departments except education and defence. Forecasts suggest that by the end of the decade it will outstrip even them, reaching €100 billion a year. ... According to Françoise Fressoz of Le Monde newspaper, "We have all become totally addicted to public spending. It's been the method used by every government for half a century – of left and right – to put out the fires of discontent and buy social peace. "Everyone can sense now that this system has run its course. We're at the end of the old welfare state. But no one wants to pay the price or face up to the reforms which need to be made." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9n6vr2eyo

https://hashatar.io/ Hashatar is an experimental project to represent information, such as bank numbers and crypto addresses, as small, easily comparable images for quick visual validation. A hashatar could be printed on an invoice, displayed in a banking app, or integrated into a crypto wallet to represent critical information. Like a hash, it doesn't reveal the underlying information, which could be sensitive, but it changes radically when small changes are made to the input. This shows mistakes in circumstances when data must be reproduced faithfully either by copy-pasting, or by entering data manually. The inspiration came from a recent attack on an NPM package, which substituted any crypto addresses it found for visually similar ones, attempting to trick users into sending crypto to the attacker's address. I see Hashatar as a new standard for sensitive data entry.

" These are the last days of social media as we know it. ... Social media was built on the romance of authenticity. Early platforms sold themselves as conduits for genuine connection: stuff you wanted to see, like your friend’s wedding and your cousin’s dog. Even influencer culture, for all its artifice, promised that behind the ring‑light stood an actual person. But the attention economy, and more recently, the generative AI-fueled late attention economy, have broken whatever social contract underpinned that illusion. The feed no longer feels crowded with people but crowded with content. ... The difference between human and synthetic content is becoming increasingly indistinguishable. Earlier this year, CEO Steve Huffman pledged to “keep Reddit human,” a tacit admission that floodwaters were already lapping at the last high ground. " https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media