www.independent.co.uk Mount Etna live: Crater still smouldering after strongest volcanic blast in years
Footage shared on social media shows huge clouds of black smoke after the eruption
Yeah, isn't loading at the moment here either.
hits archive.org
Cape Town apparently decided to use desalination.
Permanent desalination is planned because seawater is available all the time, whether it rains or not, so it’s more reliable than any other water source. About 97% of water on Earth is in our oceans. We can make use of this huge resource through the process of desalination, which makes it drinkable and usable for us. Although desalination is the most expensive supply option and there are environmental issues that need to be well-managed (such as the salty ‘brine’ it produces as a waste product), it is an important part of the diversified water supply ‘mix’ going forward.
Says they start construction in 2026 and expect production starting in 2030.
Donald Trump: "Enemy of God"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20g1zvgj4do
'Anointed by God': The Christians who see Trump as their saviour
This timeline.
Probably have better luck working on making mines that self-disarm to bound the time that they're a danger. If states assess mines to be militarily-important --- and this war has shown them to be pretty useful --- they probably won't forego them.
Deleted
Drone "narco sub" — equipped with Starlink antenna — seized for the first time in the Caribbean
Also this legitimates the tech. Just like porn and VHS, the drug cartels endorse stardink.
"Hi there! I'm José Perez. Between 2025 and 2032, I ran over two thousand tons of cocaine into the United States. And when I needed reliable, high speed Internet access to safeguard my very valuable cargo, I knew that I couldn't settle for the second-best. I used Starlink™. Only Starlink™ gave me the peace of mind that my critical business operations would remain robust in the face of unexpected difficulties, be they hurricanes or US Coast Guard cutters. In today's fast-paced, competitive business world, whether you need a reliable video stream to a conference room in one of your branch offices or to a night-vision piloting camera on a semi-submersible smuggling platform, you can count on Starlink™!"
Why should the Pacific Ocean be named "the Pacific Ocean" when it could be "the American Ocean"?
US naval vessels themselves will become targets
They already have been the target of missiles launched by the Houthis provided by Iran. Thus far, missile defenses have stopped them.
I suppose that Iran probably has some ability to ramp up how many anti-ship missiles they're throwing, but the US also has the ability to drastically ramp up the number of bombs being dropped on Iran; I doubt that climbing the escalation ladder is going to be advantageous to Iran.
If the gas price skyrockets
We're a net oil exporter these days, thanks to hydrofracking.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/imports-and-exports.php
In 2020, the United States became a net exporter of petroleum for the first time since at least 1949.
If the gas price skyrockets, (a) if it becomes really serious, it's possible for the US to not export oil and (b) more US oil production will come online.
Loss of oil access was a potent lever against the US in the 1970s, but it isn't in 2025.
Oh good. Americans will die.
Trump will be fine.
I dunno. Iran got caught by American intelligence trying to assassinate Trump not long ago, under Biden.
Russia, China, and all their friends will sink arms and money into Iran like the West has for Ukraine.
Iran was sending arms to Russia to use against Ukraine not long ago, and now Iran and the US are fighting directly, if it makes you feel better.
Removed Deleted
According to the WSJ, Trump privately approved plans for an assault on Iran pending a final decision.
I don't know if this would be regime change or just destroying the nuclear stuff.
My guess would be the nuclear stuff. Hard to do regime change from the air.
Maybe this would be a good year for people in Japan to try out some exotic foreign cuisines based on other staple foods. Millet, wheat, corn, cassava, barley, etc.
Probably because it provides a battle damage assessment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_damage_assessment
Bomb damage assessment (BDA), also known as battle damage assessment, is the practice of assessing damage inflicted on a target from a stand-off weapon, most typically a bomb or air launched missile. It is part of the larger discipline of combat assessment. Assessment is performed using many techniques including footage from in-weapon cameras, gun cameras, forces on the ground near the target, satellite imagery and follow-up visits to the target. Preventing information on battle damage reaching the enemy is a key objective of military censorship.
Through his online pseudonym, “White Tiger,” the suspect preyed on desperate children in online forums, including those discussing suicide, dpa reported. Investigators believe he exploited their vulnerabilities, forcing them to create pornographic and violent recordings where they injured themselves to the point of bleeding during live chats.
The man made recordings of the acts to keep as trophies, investigators said, and used them as leverage against the victims by threatening to publish them unless the children committed even more self-harm on camera.
The man is suspected of committing 120 crimes against eight victims, ages 11 to 15, who were from Germany, England, Canada and the U.S. Another of the victims, a 14-year-old Canadian girl, attempted to take her own life.
I don't want to make any definitive statements until all the facts are in, but White Tiger seems like a bit of a dick.
Almost everyone in the US had an ancestor that immigrated not that long ago, and if people didn't do it within at most a couple generations, you wouldn't see anti-immigrant sentiment.
Puck political cartoon, January 11, 1893, "Looking Backwards":
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/3968c98b-d1ce-411d-9c96-7e8d9d81263f.jpeg
Caption:
They would close to the new-comer the bridge that brought them and their fathers over
The article says that it's most-likely just rhetoric from Iran.
Strait Of Hormuz: High Stakes, Low Odds
Hard-line media and several officials have again raised the possibility of closing the Strait of Hormuz -- a move that would threaten nearly a fifth of the world’s oil supply. But Gregory Brew, a senior Iran and oil analyst at the New York-based Eurasia Group, says it’s a threat Tehran is unlikely to carry out.
“Closing the strait is Iran's last big card to play,” Brew told RFE/RL. “It has the means of essentially blockading the waterway…by deploying short-range ballistic missiles, naval vessels, and mines.”
But attempting to blockade the strategic strait would have major ramifications, such as “immediately” triggering a response from the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
“If war with Israel is proving very damaging, war with the US (and the GCC) would be much worse,” Brew said.
I have ad blockers on, so I wouldn't know if it was. The same user also submitted a similar article on the same domain that looks like it's been mangled by an LLM that's a copy of a real article, like this submission. My guess that I put in a comment there was that maybe the aim is to get a bunch of links on link aggregators to the domain to boost its ranking, that the aim is maybe not spamming us but trying to exploit our reputability to spam search engine users down the line. Otherwise, why not have a "news-sounding" domain? Like, this is a domain name you'd choose if you were trying to spam people trying to buy something.
I think that this is some kind of badly AI-processed article, same as another article on the same site that the same user just also submitted:
https://lemmy.world/post/31432127
This appears to be the original article being copied here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lk55l9wpgo
The submitting user account is a day old.
I'm wondering if the aim might be some kind of SEO spam targeting search engines, getting link aggregators linking to the site a lot of times to boost the domain's ranking.
It's used through the whole article, not a one-off typo.
This appears to be the original BBC article that is being copied:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7808xvv737o
I can only imagine that it's some kind of AI summarizer gone badly wrong. Or maybe the thing got passed through an automatic translator to another language and then back.
"Findmystore.one"?