Asidonhopo

Late Wednesday night, an email went out to members of the AFGE Local 3403 union representing employees at NSF collecting signatures for the so-called Alexandria Declaration, highlighting “catastrophic changes” to the agency “and the scientific enterprise of the United States over the last 6 months.”

“At this critical moment in our shared history, we hope to catalyze a level of public awareness and subsequent action that will preserve NSF and the values it upholds,” the email reads, noting that the effort was inspired by the Bethesda Declaration.

Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino is considering leaving his job after a heated confrontation with Attorney General Pam Bondi over his frustration with how the Justice Department has handled the Jeffrey Epstein files, according to a person who has spoken with Bongino and a source familiar with the interactions that Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel have had with Bondi.

“Bongino is out of control furious,” the person who has spoken with the deputy FBI director said. “This destroyed his career. He’s threatening to quit and torch Pam unless she’s fired.”

Bongino did not report to work Friday amid speculation about his whereabouts, said a source familiar with the perspectives of DOJ leaders who also believes that Bongino is considering leaving.

Senior State Department staffer Darren Beattie, a passionate Putin supporter behind the move to dismantle a key agency fighting Russian propaganda, is married to a Russian woman whose uncle is a longtime Kremlin ally, according to The Telegraph.

Yulia Kirillova grew up in Moscow, studied abroad in North America, and married Beattie in 2021 in Florida. She moved to D.C. in January. Her uncle Sergei Cherniko is a drinks magnate who had an estimated net worth of $150 million in 2005. That year, he served in Russia’s ministry of natural resources and was then deputy governor of Siberia’s Nenets region. Cherniko later served in Putin’s civic chamber from 2008 to 2010.

The relationship raises even greater scrutiny around Beattie’s April decision to eliminate the Global Engagement Center, a State Department office tasked with dealing with Russian disinformation campaigns. Beattie has been a staunch supporter of Putin, setting himself apart from the traditional conservative right in Bannon-esque fashion.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told All Rise News that Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has been “sitting on” a file that he provided with “actionable” information about Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship with Wall Street banks.

“I've handed the Trump administration a ready-made Epstein case involving a billionaire financier and Wall Street banks, and they have done nothing with it,” Wyden said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi recently backtracked on promises that she made early in her tenure about major revelations in the Epstein case, but Wyden calls it “ludicrous” to suggest there’s nothing more to investigate.

“I know for a fact that the Trump administration is sitting on an Epstein file that contains new actionable information,” Wyden said. “So I don't blame anybody for asking what's going on.”

Basically what it says in the title

I remember reading years ago in some chapter of what I think is a Kurt Vonnegut book, that the Germans have a word for someone you meet who represents who you could become, but would prefer not to, and how that person is significant as a symbol and drives you to become who you should be or want to be.

Did I dream this? What book was it and what was the word?

I never used Twitter but wanted to check out the new thing replacing it over on the edge of the Fediverse. Created an account with no bio or profile pic and followed a few dozen personalities that I recognized on there. Half a day later I have 18 followers.

I looked at some of them and they were obvious bots, usernames were random alphanumeric strings, or they were promoting onlyfans, or they were trying to build followings by reblogging popular posts but not contributing anything original or curating in any human way. Others seem more believable and have realistic bios and post somewhat engaging chatter.

Not knowing what the general user experience is, should I consider most random follows to be bots or is it common practice for users to see who follows pages you like and follow other people on that list? The somewhat convincing profiles have me a little queasy thinking of all the AI bots driving us increasingly toward a Dead Internet.

Not sure how long I'll continue but happy to test it out and follow personalities I know from other platforms and enjoy their content, while blocking all of my followers that I don't immediately recognize. Is that standard Twitter/Bluesky good practice or am I not "trusting the process" enough and allowing full access to randos? Closest to Twitter I came was Tumblr circa 2010-2016 and in that time I saw the bots increase dramatically in a way that sabotaged community trust and got quite stalkerish.

Interested in your thoughts even if they aren't directly applicable to my experience.

Disclaimer: The Great War caused immeasurable suffering and loss but also Gavrilo is handsome

I was going to go with wisehosting.com after Mumbo Jumbo promoted them with an ad in one of his videos but apparently they're in Estonia and my bank doesnt do business with that country.

I've never had a server in MC before, primarily playing solo but have been going on my friend's realm the past couple months and really enjoying it. My complaint mainly is that realms limits render distance to like 16 or so and I'd like to crank it up to 32 as long as client side lag isn't too bad, and I've been told servers don't have the same cap on render distance as realms. We do like to build largeish amateur xp farms and regular redstone contraptions but shouldn't need something huge that can run Minecraft-in-Minecraft or anything like that.

So yeah, nothing fancy, no mods. Maybe 10 total players most we've ever had online at once was 5. What options are popular and known, inexpensive and reasonably reliable? Figured I'd ask on here rather than troll through old redd*t threads looking for people promoting server hosting. Thanks!

Regardless of how you feel about AI, a lot of people have been posting videos about this so you might be interested in seeing it.

Worked on desktop on Chrome, some phones might run it but mine didn't.

I've read ten articles and tried a couple different searches but have only found a dozen or so songs listed anywhere online. Is the entire 250 song playlist recorded somewhere?

I found this aftershave I'd been looking for on Belgian Amazon (amazon.com.be) - they dont sell the same kind in the US anymore but it's apparently still available overseas. I was going to see about having some shipped to me in the US and couldn't figure out any way to do so. I know the US Amazon site has this AmazonGlobal program where people from dozens of countries can order from the US site and have it shipped to them but apparently the non-US sites dont have a similar service available. Am I missing something?