An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian:
Mac Bauer is fast, but the city’s trams, weighing more than 100,000lbs and traveling at a maximum speed of nearly 45mph, should be far faster than him. And yet as of late December, in head-to-head races against streetcars, the 32-year-old remains undefeated in his quest to highlight how sluggish the trams, used by 230,000 people daily, truly are.
Some races have pushed him closer to his limits as a runner. On other occasions, the car has been so slow he’s had time to nip into a McDonald’s before it reaches the last station. “I don’t like winning. I really don’t. I really, really wish these streetcars were faster than me,” he said. “But they’re not. And this is the problem.” Bauer’s rise as a running celebrity and transit critic embodies the mounting frustration of a city beset by chronic delays, congested streets and decades of under-built transit.
“Streetcars just shouldn’t be stuck in traffic,” he said, adding the system also needed more “signal priority” which gives the streetcars lengthened green lights and shortened red lights. Bauer started racing transit vehicles roughly a year ago after he and his wife realized how long it took them to traverse the city. He posted videos of those races to Instagram and quickly transformed into a minor celebrity. Bauer describes his runs as a form of social activism, and his ability to lay bare the absurdities of Toronto’s beleaguered public transit system — a person can outrun a streetcar! — has struck a nerve with the tens of thousands of commuters who share his Instagram posts.
Two cybersecurity professionals who spent their careers defending organizations against ransomware attacks have pleaded guilty in a Florida federal court to using ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware to extort American businesses throughout 2023.
Ryan Goldberg, a 40-year-old incident response manager from Georgia, and Kevin Martin, a 36-year-old ransomware negotiator from Texas, admitted to conspiring to obstruct commerce through extortion. Between April and December 2023, Goldberg, Martin, and a third unnamed co-conspirator deployed the ransomware against multiple U.S. victims and agreed to pay ALPHV BlackCat’s operators a 20% cut of any ransoms received. They successfully extracted approximately $1.2 million in Bitcoin from one victim, splitting their 80% share three ways before laundering the proceeds. Both men face up to 20 years in prison and are scheduled for sentencing on March 12, 2026.
The Justice Department noted that all three conspirators possessed specialized skills in securing computer systems against the very attacks they carried out. ALPHV BlackCat has targeted more than 1,000 victims globally and was the subject of an FBI disruption operation in December 2023 that saved victims an estimated $99 million through a custom decryption tool.
You do not negotiate, just play it like your corporate facility just burned down. No exceptions, no payments, no more perpetuating the ransom business model.
Despite a Record Year, Airlines Are Grappling With Big Challenges
The global airline industry is on track to post an all-time profit high of nearly $40 billion in 2025, according to trade group IATA, surpassing the pre-pandemic 2019 figure of $26 billion, but carriers are still managing a net margin of just 4% — roughly $7.90 per passenger. Economist adds:
Not everything has been in the ascent. European and North American airlines, which account for three-fifths of the industry’s net profits, have had to contend with circuitous long-haul routes to avoid Russian airspace since the start of the war in Ukraine. This year parts of the Middle East became no-go zones after Israel’s strike on Iran in June. America’s airlines were hit by a government shutdown that stopped federal workers from travelling and kept unpaid air-traffic controllers at home, disrupting flights.
What is more, despite a drop in fuel prices, which account for 25-30% of airlines’ operating expenses, other costs have risen.
Airlines flew 4.8 billion passengers in 2024, beating the 2019 peak, and that figure likely reached 5 billion in 2025 as combined revenues topped $1 trillion for the first time and load factors hit a record of nearly 84%.
But the industry is flying older planes because Boeing and Airbus can’t deliver enough new ones. The duopoly shipped under 1,400 aircraft in 2025, well below the 2018 record of just over 1,600. Boeing has struggled since two fatal 737 MAX crashes in late 2018 and early 2019 led to a 20-month grounding, and a fuselage panel blew off another 737 MAX mid-flight in early 2024. Airbus cut its 2025 delivery target from 820 to 790 in early December due to a supplier’s production flaw, and Pratt & Whitney engine problems have grounded a third of the global A320neo fleet.
IATA estimates the aircraft shortage won’t resolve before 2031 at the earliest, and the global fleet’s average age has climbed to 15 years from 13 in 2019. Annual fuel efficiency gains have slowed from about 2% to 0.3% in 2025, and an IATA and Oliver Wyman report pegs the cost of aging fleets — extra fuel, repairs, spare parts — at over $11 billion in 2025.
Singapore Study Links Heavy Infant Screen Time To Teen Anxiety
A study by a Singapore government agency has found that children exposed to high levels of screen time before age two showed brain development changes linked to slower decision-making and higher anxiety in adolescence, adding to concerns about early digital exposure. From a report:
The study was conducted by a team within the country’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research and the National University of Singapore, and published in The Lancet’s eBioMedicine open access journal. It tracked 168 children for more than a decade, and conducted brain scans on them at three time points. Heavier screen exposure among very young children was associated with “accelerated maturation of brain networks” responsible for vision and cognitive control, the study found.
The researchers suggested this may have been the result of “intense sensory stimulation that screens provide.” They found that screen time measured at ages three and four, however, did not show the same effects. Those children with “altered brain networks” took longer to make decisions when they were 8.5, and also had higher anxiety symptoms at age 13, the study said.
How does it combine with single parent households?
It would be interesting to see the same research which takes into account household demographics, to see if there is more or less teen anxiety in a single parent mother household versus a two parent or father lead household.
The French government on Dec 30 postponed a ban on plastic throwaway cups by four years to 2030 because of difficulties finding alternatives. The ban was meant to start on Jan 1. But the Ministry for Ecological Transition said the “technical feasibility of eliminating plastic from cups” following a review in 2025 justified pushing back the deadline.
It said in an official decree that a new review would be carried out in 2028 of “progress made in replacing single-use plastic cups.” It added that the ban would now start Jan 1, 2030, when companies would have 12 months to get rid of their stock. France has gradually rolled out bans on single-use plastic products over the past decade as environmental campaigners have stepped up warnings about the impact on rivers and oceans.
After more than three decades of service, New York City’s iconic MetroCard is about to retire, as December 31, 2025 marks the final day commuters can purchase or refill the gold-hued plastic cards that replaced subway tokens back in 1994. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has been transitioning to OMNY, a contactless payment system introduced in 2019 that lets riders tap a credit card, phone or smart device at turnstiles.
More than 90% of subway and bus trips are now paid using the tap-and-go system, and the agency says the changeover saves at least $20 million annually in MetroCard-related costs. The new system also introduces automatic fare capping: riders get unlimited travel within a seven-day period after 12 paid rides, maxing out at $35 a week once fares rise to $3 in January. Riders who prefer not to link a credit card or phone can purchase reloadable OMNY cards.
Existing MetroCards will continue to work into 2026, allowing riders time to use up remaining balances. The MetroCard’s arrival in 1994 was itself a significant shift from the brass tokens that had been in use since 1953. London and Singapore have long operated similar contactless systems; San Francisco launched its own tap-to-pay system earlier this year, joining Chicago and other U.S. cities.
As the article says, if you don’t want to use your phone (or have the appropriate type of phone) or link your bank account, you can purchase an OMNY card.
Which is good for people who may visit NYC and not want to have another app they’ll never use again clogging their phone or, more importantly, not worrying about your bank account getting whacked when someone breaks into the system.
MetroCards were nice because if you were visiting for the day you could buy one with cash, use it, and either keep it as a memento or throw it away. They fit easily anywhere you could put a credit card and since they were so thin, no one knew if you had one. They were, in essence, a form of multipass.
I took my son to London and had a great time using the Underground and the bus system. Paying with contactless credit card was very convenient. And the payment cap per day was nice. But I was left wondering about one potential issue.
What do you do if one of you doesn’t have a credit card or smart device/phone with payment system? Fortunately, I had two credit cards (we didn’t have a data plan in London). So no real problem for us. It still left me wondering what would people do if they a payment method for each person? i.e what if you are riding more than a few times and hit the payment cap due to swiping multiple times per ride. Seems like either a chance to be accused of fraud. Or actual fraud.
What would happen to, say, a class field trip visiting NYC? I’m genuinely curious what people do in those edge cases.
I really dislike the move to “relationships” for everything, especially travel-related stuff. I understand why it happens, but it makes one-time-use a massive pain.
I had to drive around LA for work a couple months ago, and finding somewhere to park without preinstalling some application I didn’t know I’d need was a hassle.
Those applications are also generally super invasive, scraping every bit of data they can. (This bothers me less than it used to; I use a relatively blank phone when traveling now.)
I do not wish to enter into a relationship with your corporation, I need a fucking two hour parking spot.
What do you do if one of you doesn’t have a credit card or smart device/phone with payment system?
Kids in NYC get their own bus/train passes issued by the school. Also if you are a teacher in NYC you have ID, you can show the station agent and they let you all through or you can even get a form for your trip and schedule it so someone can meet you.
The consulting firm CVL Economics estimated last year that AI would disrupt more than 200,000 entertainment-industry jobs in the United States by 2026, but writer Nick Geisler argues in The Atlantic that the most consequential casualties may be the humble entry-level positions where aspiring artists have traditionally paid dues and learned their craft. Geisler, a screenwriter and WGA member who started out writing copy for a how-to website in the mid-2010s, notes that ChatGPT can now handle the kind of articles he once produced.
This pattern is visible today across creative industries: the AI software Eddie launched an update in September capable of producing first edits of films, and LinkedIn job listings increasingly seek people to train AI models rather than write original copy. The story adds:
The problem is that entry-level creative jobs are much more than grunt work. Working within established formulas and routines is how young artists develop their skills.
The historical record suggests those early rungs matter. Hunter S. Thompson began as a copy boy for Time magazine; Joan Didion was a research assistant at Vogue; directors Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, and Francis Ford Coppola shot cheap B movies for Roger Corman before their breakthrough work. Geisler himself landed his first Netflix screenplay commission through a producer he met while making rough cuts for a YouTube channel. The story adds:
Beyond the money, which is usually modest, low-level creative jobs offer practice time and pathways for mentorship that side gigs such as waiting tables and tending bar do not.
I’ve noticed a rather strong thread of disrespect in the ‘AI” culture with any profession other than their own.. it is, after all, one of the core appeals of machine learning. Anyway, the thing I am wondering here is if the people pushing to replace creative entry level positions with AI never actually filled those roles themselves, don’t understand them, and thus could not even evaluate if the output is correct. I have a much harder time picturing people who actually worked their way up the ranks by doing and understanding the grunt work thinking it is a good idea.
But MBAs, tech bros, and ‘owners’? yeah.. that I can see.
Working you way up the rungs is how you learn. No one knows what the exact steps are to do something in a work environment the moment you walk in the door. You don’t know what is or is not right until you get feedback. It’s why it’s called learning.
Take that learning away and how does someone know what to tell/direct an AI bot to do? If they’ve never done the steps before, how do they know what is right or wrong?
As a side note, many “manuals” that come with equipment fall into the last category. Clearly the people “writing” the manual have never done what they’re telling you to do. Had they done so, the numerous quirks and confusions wouldn’t be there.
And by big surprise, I mean it’s a big surprise that someone finally wrote an article pointing out the obvious. The public articles have mostly tried to ignore this part of the AI trend in favor of, “AI is great at everything,” messaging up to this point.
We’re seeing it here in podunk nowheresville US as well. We hire new programmers, they rely nearly 100% on AI assisted vibe coding to do the simple tasks we give them, and their skills are not improving at the rate they need to to climb into the bigger projects we have waiting for them as they work through the simple bug fixes and version transfers we need them to get through before taking on bigger projects. It’s honestly frightening how little these “programmers” are learning, as they let the AI do the coding, and for the most part, the bug fixing. Now, if that made them faster than the folks we used to hire a few years back, that’d be one thing. But it actually seems to slow them down, on top of the fact that they aren’t really building a knowledgebase themselves so much as sorting out how to prompt and reprompt the AI they use. And even then, they don’t always get the job done until we do a code review meeting where senior devs march them lockstep through what they’ve bungled thus far to get it functional.
And then we repeat that process over and over. It doesn’t seem they’re learning, just repeating the same prompt, reprompt, reprompt, have the seniors fix it in review pattern over and over. Where are we going to get solid coders for our next generation? I know the AI companies swear that if we just ignore the problem now they’ll get their systems up to par in time to take over the senior positions as we age out, but man, I’m just not seeing that kind of progress coming fast enough to catch us.
In short, as an old timer, I’m continually asking, when it comes to AI? Where’s the beef?
The World Health Organization’s latest annual malaria report paints a grim picture that’s about to get grimmer, as the United States — which has supplied 37% of global malaria funding since 2010 — pulls back its international health commitments under President Donald Trump. Malaria cases have been climbing since 2015, when progress against the mosquito-borne disease stalled due to insecticide resistance and chronic underfunding.
In 2024, the world recorded 282 million cases and 610,000 deaths, and African countries accounted for 95% of both figures. Children under 5 made up 75% of malaria-related deaths in Africa. Global spending on malaria reached $3.9 billion last year.
Trump’s decision to slash international public health funding and gut the US Agency for International Development has caused what the WHO calls “widespread disruption to health operations around the world.” The burden of these setbacks, the organization adds, is expected to fall disproportionately on children. Seventeen countries now offer malaria vaccines to younger populations, up from three countries the year before, but funding constraints mean many countries still can’t provide the shots.
In this case it has nothing to do with the current administration. It will get worse but to be clear it has been climbing since 2015. Time for a new approach to this issue.
Let’s not forget that it was also cut for nothing, the Federal budget went UP after USAID was cut.
They also did not prove any “fraud”, they took the programs, framed them in the worst possible way to feed their base and media machine to manufacture consent for cancelling and then just cut it and literally ran away and now pretend like they were never there to begin with.
Ask anyone to defend these cuts and you’ll get a bunch of emotional appeals about tax dollars and “those people” and not anything concrete. Could the program have used reform? Probably but that takes actual leadership and commitment to public service.
DDT had nothing to do with the health of birds. It had to do with them laying non-viable clutches of eggs due to egg shells being too thin, causing rapid population collapse.
The metabolic pathway causing it is well established, as well as the empirical stochastic effects.
A scheme to encourage climbers to bring their waste down from Mount Everest is being scrapped — with Nepalese authorities telling the BBC it has been a failure. From the report:
Climbers had been required to pay a deposit of $4,000, which they would only get back if they brought at least 8kg (18lbs) of waste back down with them. It was hoped it would begin to tackle the rubbish problem on the world’s highest peak, which is estimated to be covered in some 50 tonnes of waste. But after 11 years — and with the rubbish still piling up — the scheme is being shelved because it “failed to show a tangible result.”
You want compliance, try telling them that climbers who bring at least 8kg of waste with them get to come back down. Vastly more exciting than a $4k discount on a trip where the ultra-budget options are ~$35k and going north of $50k is pretty common and past 100k hardly unheard of.
to even attempt this climb - probably easily over $70K+ USD when all said-and-done. People easily pay $4000 to drop two pounds from their pack weight. This never made any sense to begin with.
1. They need to make the fee far more substantial and punitive. Everest climbers are spending tens of thousands of dollars to make the climb. A paltry $4k is an easy sacrifice to not have to schlep your shit. I’m surprised any of them brought anything at all back.
2. Nepal need to make the weight requirement at least 50% greater than the average waste generation rate. If the average climber generates 26lbs. of waste, then require them to bring back 38lbs. of waste.
Properly done, the climbers would clean up the mountain, or the Nepalese government would have enough money to send up garbage Sherpas.
or the Nepalese government would have enough money to send up garbage Sherpas.
Which is exactly what the new plan is about. The money would go to a dedicated fund which would then pay for sherpas to climb up and bring trash down.
As the article relates, most of what is brought down comes from the lower camp(s). It’s the ones higher up, where there’s less oxygen, that aren’t getting cleaned up. You’re already exhausted from being there or trying to make the ascent. The last thing you have energy for is to haul down your oxygen bottles or tents.
And this doesn’t take into consideration all the human bodily waste which keeps accumulating and can’t degrade because of the persistent freezing temperatures.
Camera Makers Went Weird in 2025 - and That’s Exactly What the Shrinking Industry Needed
The camera industry shipped 6.5 million interchangeable lens cameras last year — a 50% decline from 2010’s peak — yet 2025 may have been the most creatively ambitious year in nearly two decades of digital photography. DPReview’s Richard Butler argues that this year’s releases displayed “invention, experimentation and niche-tickling lunacy” not seen since digital’s earliest days.
Interchangeable lens shipments rose 11% in the first ten months of 2025 compared to last year, and fixed lens cameras climbed roughly 26%. The practical cameras arrived as expected: Panasonic’s S1 II, Canon’s EOS R6 III, and Sony’s a7 V all delivered performance that “can go toe-to-toe with the pro sports models of just a few years ago.” But the stranger releases drew attention.
Sony’s RX1R III faced criticism for being a “lazy update,” yet Butler found it “small, fun to use and the pictures look great.” Leica launched the Q3 Monochrom, a $7,800 fixed-lens full-frame compact that cannot capture color. Fujifilm’s X half targeted young buyers who might otherwise hunt for vintage compacts on eBay. The Sigma BF abandoned traditional camera design entirely — no viewfinder, one dial, intentionally stylized.
“Look at some of this year’s releases through a pragmatic lens of whether they’re the best tool for the job, and the conclusion you’d typically draw is ‘no,’" Butler wrote. These cameras “aren’t trying to be the best, the most flexible or the most practical. They’re intentionally, knowingly niche.”
These cameras “aren’t trying to be the best, the most flexible or the most practical. They’re intentionally, knowingly niche.” Or cheap… I don’t know much about cameras, but the mark-up must be quite high… I always thought the big cost items were the lenses… There’s no way a black and white only fixed lens camera is worth $7800 price tag.
It didn’t help the camera industry that an iPhone (or any good smartphone, really) can take pictures much better than any DSLR could 15 years ago.
Kinda. Not to detract from your point about smartphones satisfying the masses, but those pictures are invented from AI. Any 15 year old DSLR takes better pictures, the iPhone (or whatever cellphone generally) invents them.
In a year when print book sales have slipped 1% to 679 million copies through early December, according to Circana BookScan, audiobooks continue to carve out territory that once belonged exclusively to hardcovers, and in several notable cases this year, the audio versions have outright outsold their physical counterparts.
S.A. Cosby’s southern crime novel “King of Ashes” moved more copies as an audiobook than as a hardcover, according to publisher Macmillan Audio. The same is true for celebrity memoirs from Jeremy Renner, Alyson Stoner, and Brooke Shields — all narrated by the authors themselves. Karin Slaughter’s thriller “We Are All Guilty Here” and comedian Nate Bargatze’s “Big Dumb Eyes” also saw their audio editions outpace hardcover sales.
Digital audiobook revenue jumped nearly 24% in 2024 to $1.1 billion, per the Association of American Publishers, though growth has cooled to 1% through October this year, bringing in nearly $888 million. The format’s strength has professional narrators watching AI developments nervously. Emily Lawrence, who has narrated more than 600 audiobooks, said there’s “a lot of water cooler talk about people who haven’t had work in months.” Hachette Audio publisher Ana Maria Allessi said voice-cloning technology is becoming more sophisticated and could change how authors approach narration.
Japan’s demographic transformation is no longer a distant forecast but an accelerating reality, and the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research now estimates the country’s population will fall to roughly 100 million by 2050 — more than 20 million fewer people than today.
The share of residents aged 65 and over stood at 29.4% as of September and is expected to reach 37.1% by midcentury. The dependency ratio — children and older adults supported by every 100 working-age people — is projected to rise from 68.0 to 89.0, meaning each working-age person will effectively support one dependent.
Akita Prefecture is currently offering a preview of this future. Its population fell 1.93% year over year as of November 1, the steepest decline of any prefecture, and more than 40% of its residents are already 65 or older. By 2050, Akita’s population is projected to drop to around 560,000, roughly 60% of its current size. Japan’s total fertility rate fell for the ninth consecutive year in 2024, declining to 1.15 from 1.2. A health ministry survey found around 319,000 babies were born in the first half of 2025, more than 10,000 fewer than the same period last year — a pace that could put the full-year total at a record low.
It’s not inflation or housing costs causing birthrates to decline.
Housing in places like Akita Prefecture where birthrates are falling the fastest is super cheap. In rural areas, they will literally give you a free house. Japan as a whole has mostly experienced deflation over the last 30 years.
Re:Will they print money?
By Anonymous Coward • • Score: 5, Interesting• Thread
There are a few reasons for this.
1) Japan does not maintain a large military. They rely primarily on the US for protection.
2) Japan’s system of government is highly socialist. This allows the demographics to more easily adapt.
3) People in Japan are not as materialistic as what we are used to in the US. SImply put, they don’t need as much shit to be happy.
4) They have deflation, which keeps people happy regardless of macroeconomic foibles.
5) Japanese people are much more willing to live with multiple generations under a single roof.
Any welfare state? The places with the highest birthrates have no welfare state to speak of. The facts simply don’t conform to your ideologically driven preconceived notions.
The highest birthrates in the world are in countries like Chad and the Central African Republic (some of the poorest countries in the world). The people living in those countries receive no welfare or government support because their governments are not wealthy enough to provide welfare programs even if they wanted to. The most generous welfare states in the world are in Scandinavia and Middle Eastern petrostates where birthrates are below replacement.
The driver of birthrates is really quite simple: when people are given a choice, most choose to have fewer (or no) babies. I don’t care how much money you have- raising kids properly is hard and involves a lot of personal sacrifice. I’m well off. I can afford to have more kids, but I don’t want more than the two I have. Even if you gave me a billion dollars, that wouldn’t change things. I’d still have to do all the hard work of raising them if I actually want to be a good parent and not end up with kids raised by nannies who hate me.
The only places where birthrates remain high are so poor that they cannot afford birth control. As countries rise out of poverty, birthrates plummet. China used to have an extremely high birthrate, then it got wealthier and birthrates are now below replacement (even though the government pulled a total 180 from discouraging having children to actively encouraging it). Birthrates are also plummeting in India as extreme poverty has declined.
Japan’s government itself is not socialist. They have a corporatist economy, most prominently featured by Keiretsus. The other things you mentioned are true, and people there do live in a way that Americans aren’t used to - like the multiple generations under one roof. But the government - you have an emperor, who’s now a titular monarch, and an elected government, which may sometimes be Center-Left, sometimes Center-Right.
Also, on the military, Japan has not only been spending more, but they’ve also been more active outside their shores. They’ve been active in Quad - the 4 nation alliance of US, Japan, Australia and India, and some years ago, their navy was having joint naval exercises w/ India in the Indian Ocean. Actually, this alliance Quad is one where all 4 countries pull their weight in terms of providing defense firepower, as opposed to NATO, whose members have to be begged to spend >5% of their GDP on defense. Although Trump has needlessly soured relations w/ India in this alliance by a lot of things he did this year
The six-decade flow of highly skilled Indian immigrants to the United States — a migration pattern that produced some of the country’s highest-earning households, several Nobel laureates, and the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, and Pepsi — appears to be grinding to a halt amid rising anti-Indian rhetoric from Republican officials and chaos in the visa system, according to New York Times.
Indian student arrivals at American universities fell 44% this year, even as Indians had just become the largest contingent of foreign students the previous year. The decline comes as top Trump administration officials have publicly accused Indian immigrants of gaming the system. Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s immigration crackdown, declared on Fox News that Indians “engage in a lot of cheating on immigration policies that is very harmful to American workers.” Governor Ron DeSantis called the H-1B visa program “chain migration run amok.”
The hostility extends beyond policy circles. At a Hindu temple in Sugar Land, Texas, conservative Christian protesters gathered during the dedication of a 90-foot Hanuman statue, calling the deity “a demon god.” A U.S. Senate candidate wrote on social media: “Why are we allowing a false statue of a false Hindu God to be here in Texas? We are a CHRISTIAN nation.” Indian Americans’ median household income significantly outstrips that of white Americans, and about three-quarters hold at least a college degree. Foreign students have earned more engineering and computer science doctorates than American citizens and permanent residents for over two decades, according to the National Science Foundation. American tech giants have announced $67.5 billion in new investments in India in just the past few months.
I’m an Indian, but an “ABCD” (American Bord Confused Desi). I can’t read or understand Hindi anymore. I only ever had an “American” accent. I’ve had more than one girlfriend say I wasn’t Indian, but American.
It does suck because I see where the resentment comes from. At least when I started, the ratio of competent to incompetent Indians was about the same as anyone else (race or whatever). You’re always going to have good people and people who are idiots and shouldn’t be there. It’s always like a 50/50 split unless you’re in one of the high end super-competitive markets.
I don’t want to hate on my own people, but India as a nation has a deep seeded culture of corruption that needs to be dealt with domestically. America use to have one too (just look at E. H. Crump in Memphis back in the 40s), but today .. you don’t bribe cops. It usually won’t work. It’s still common in parts of India. Some of their regions have grown a lot as far as infrastructure and worth ethic. They don’t have tofu cities like China, but they also don’t have streamlines traffic like the US or safe trains like the EU.
America use to bring over Indians who would either assimilate or have kids that assimilated. They brought over people who saw the problems domestically and wanted to get away from that and create a better life for their children. Yes, a good amount kept their own culture and arranged match-making for their kids, but a considerable amount didn’t. It was a true culture mesh and they filled roles that were lacking in the markets. Today they’re just lowering the value of Americans, as are more immigrants in general in markets that have been down for 6+ years.
The anti-Indian sentiment hurts the ABCD, and even those fresh-of-the-plane immigrants who truly know their stuff and/or want to take part in western culture. But we also can’t just defend all Indians because we are Indians. That’s not good either … M. Night Shyamalan had one good movie and everything after has sucked ass!
I have repeatedly seen the Republican party working to integrate Indians into their political apparatus.
This was only ever going to be temporary much like the gains made with hispanic voters and like that is already falling apart because the Republican foundation now is from their further right elements which are deeply xenophobic. Those folks are rejecting Vance because he’s married to an Indian woman, they are turning against Vivek in his governors race.
“If you believe in normalizing hatred towards any ethnic group, you have no place in the conservative movement. If you believe in normalizing hatred against the Jews, blacks, whites, Indians, you have no place in the conservative movement”. He then adds “if you believe that Hitler or Stalin are cool, you have no place in the conservative movement”.”
That’s the statement Vivek made that has got a lot of the right-wing’s underpants in a kerfuffle. Let that one sink in.
Correct. I love to hear illiterate religious fantasists exclaiming that your nation is Christian when the founding fathers themselves wholly disagreed with that sentiment. Washington was a deist (not a Christian), Franklin mocked religious fervour in his writings, Adams wrote precisely in November 1796 that “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion”, and Jefferson’s famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association was clear as well … “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between a man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.” But fools gonna be fooled.
That’s how it’s always been. The first-generation immigrants are never 100% assimilated. Their children assimilate while retaining strong ties to the country of their parents. Their grandchildren have only a passing familiarity with the country of their grandparents. Beyond that, there is no meaningful connection left.
One of my great-great grandfathers on my father’s side immigrated from Germany in the late 19th century. He refused to learn English. Although he of course died long before my birth, my Grandfather told me that he was never really able to communicate with his grandfather due to the language barrier. My surname was originally very German sounding until WWI when the family anglicized it to avoid anti-German sentiment. Today, I have no meaningful connection to Germany and it is only one of many countries my ancestors originated from. Give it 100 years, and it will be the same for the great great grandchildren of today’s arrivals.
I think this is the third time in this thread I’ve had to correct someone who is using false “facts” to push a bigoted narrative.
The vast majority of majority Muslim countries allow freedom of religion. In fact, freedom of religion in Islam goes back all the way to Muhammed and is explicitly provided for in the Quran. “To you your religion, and to me mine” (Quran 109:6). The early Islamic states of the Middle Ages were far more tolerant of Jews and Christians than were Christian States in Europe during the same period. There were Christian communities operating freely during the Ottoman empire at the same time as the Spanish Inquisition.
It is true that theocracies like Iran and Afghanistan restrict freedom of religion, but these are a small minority of majority Muslim countries. Besides, Christianity also has a history of theocracies restricting freedom of religion. Even the Puritans of Massachusetts cracked down on freedom of religion, pushing out Catholics and other unfavored denominations. But go to Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, the UAE, Morocco, and any number of majority-Muslim countries (collectively making up more than 90% of the world’s Muslim population) and you will find freedom of religion. Nobody blinks an eye at a Christmas celebration in Istanbul. The idea of protesting a Christmas tree would be unthinkable in most Muslim countries. And yet here we are in the U.S. with “Christians” protesting the peaceful practice of other religions.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek:
Insurance giant Aflac is notifying roughly 22.65 million people that their personal information was stolen from its systems in June 2025. The company disclosed the intrusion on June 20, saying it had identified suspicious activity on its network in the US on June 12 and blaming it on a sophisticated cybercrime group. The company said it immediately contained the attack and engaged with third-party cybersecurity experts to help with incident response. Aflac’s operations were not affected, as file-encrypting ransomware was not deployed.
[…] The compromised information, the insurance giant says, includes names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, government ID numbers, medical and health insurance information, and other data. “The review of the potentially impacted files determined personal information associated with customers, beneficiaries, employees, agents, and other individuals related to Aflac was involved,” Aflac said in a notification (PDF) on its website. The company is providing the affected individuals with 24 months of free credit monitoring, identity theft protection, and medical fraud protection services.
Meta has agreed to acquire viral AI agent startup Manus, “a Singapore-based AI startup that’s become the talk of Silicon Valley since it materialized this spring with a demo video so slick it went instantly viral,” reports TechCrunch. “The clip showed an AI agent that could do things like screen job candidates, plan vacations, and analyze stock portfolios. Manus claimed at the time that it outperformed OpenAI’s Deep Research.” From the report:
By April, just weeks after launch, the early-stage firm Benchmark led a $75 million funding round that assigned Manus a post-money valuation of $500 million. General partner Chetan Puttagunta joined the board. Per Chinese media outlets, some other big-name backers had already invested in Manus at that point, including Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG (formerly known as Sequoia China) via an earlier $10 million round.
Though Bloomberg raised questions when Manus started charging $39 or $199 a month for access to its AI models (the outlet noted the pricing seemed "somewhat aggressive… for a membership service still in a testing phase,”) the company recently announced it had since signed up millions of users and crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. That’s when Meta started negotiating with Manus, according to the WSJ, which says Meta is paying $2 billion — the same valuation Manus was seeking for its next funding round.
For Zuckerberg, who has staked Meta’s future on AI, Manus represents something new: an AI product that’s actually making money (investors have grown increasingly twitchy about Meta’s $60 billion infrastructure spending spree). Meta says it’ll keep Manus running independently while weaving its agents into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, where Meta’s own chatbot, Meta AI, is already available to users.
A company named after a film considered one of the worst ever made? I hadn’t heard of them before today, so evidently not everyone is talking about them.
Two words
Grade separation.