There’s an archive link at the bottom of the post.

BBC just reported that Iranian state media has confirmed their deaths:

President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several others are confirmed to have been killed in Sunday’s helicopter crash in north-western Iran, state TV says.

I think that’s one of the meanings. If a Russian loss led to the sudden collapse of the Russian state or a radical retraction of the Russian economy, who knows what the consequences would be?

I don’t think that’s a justification for not letting Russia lose, but it is a big bag of who-the-fuck-knows.

Netanyahu doesn’t need Gantz’s party to remain in power. They’d lose a more moderate voice in the war cabinet. The Unity government would probably lose legitimacy in the eyes of most Israelis. It would be very bad for Netanyahu politically. It would also probably be good for Gantz politically, as recent polling suggests that he might be starting to get some of Netanyahu’s stink on him.

It’s probably worth noting though that the only distro Valve officially supports is the latest Ubuntu LTS running KDE/Plasma, Gnome, or Unity. That doesn’t mean you’ll have problems on other distros – and you probably won’t! – but Ubuntu is the distro they’re testing on. Valve also maintains Ubuntu-specific troubleshooting resources as well.

The Good Guy Iran narrative is so bizarre. It’s like applauding someone for “showing restraint” because they hired a hitman instead of killing someone themselves.

I’m kinda confused. Just a few weeks ago, there was a report that they were enriching to 60% purity, short of the 90% required to be weapons-grade. Now they have enough weapons-grade uranium stockpiled for several weapons?

This is another one of these garbage bot-generated “news” sites.

This story has no author. This site has no editor. The “contact us” is just a generic form. Not even an email. They have no physical address. Not a single human being is willing to be accountable for what they publish.

I’m sure both the recognized Yemeni government and Saudi Arabia are absolutely stoked about this. It’s actually a bit weird how exuberant the Houthis seem about it all given how many people are sharpening knives in the background.

This blog seems to solely exist to launder Iranian propaganda through an unknown source.

This was originally published by Fars News Agency two months ago. Fars News Agency is an Iranian propaganda outlet.

MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
Reasoning: Government Propaganda, Conspiracy, Fake News

Overall, we rate Far News Questionable based on poor sourcing, reporting unproven or debunked conspiracy theories, promoting pro-Government propaganda, and publishing fake news stories.

This article is originally from here. It may be an intentional attempt to launder Iranian state propaganda through an unknown blog.

Reasoning: State Propaganda, Conspiracy, Poor Sourcing
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY

Overall, we rate Tasnim News Questionable based on the promotion of state propaganda and conspiracy theories as well as use of poor sources.

They should be banned. There’s isn’t a single person associated with that site and they’re publishing under fake bylines.

Sorry, I’m sure you’re sick to death of this and I promise I’ll leave it alone after this but… I took a moment to have a closer look at the content here and this does seem like the kind of grift I thought it was. EKB is not actually doing news gathering or even writing these articles, which explains why the writing quality is so much better than his.

This article was originally published a day earlier by The East African and copied word-for-word (including their links to background articles). The unattributed author is Agence France Presse, who have a great reputation. I checked every article currently on their front page and it’s the same for each one. In addition to the East African, he’s copied CNN, BBC, One Africa News Today, and Africa News verbatim. He then tacks on a video (filmed in a mall?) calling for investors to help him raise $14.5B to expand into a global media company. I love this guy! :)

This is really just a plagiarized/copyright-infringing news aggregator. It’s pretty low risk misinfo-wise since he seems to exclusively rip off very credible news organizations. The “ad” on the page is just a static image promoting his everything store that probably only exists on paper, so I don’t see how he’s even making money from this outside of donations. Again, a strange but fascinating man, our EKB.

Alright, leaving it there. Thanks again for the discussion. This was a fun little research project. Might start an EKB blog though cuz I can’t wait to see what he gets up to next! :)

Ukraine’s statehood could suffer an “irreparable blow” if the pattern of the war continued, and Russia would never be forced to abandon the gains it had made.

Fun fact: Ukraine has re-captured more than 50% of the territory Russia occupied since the last time Putin made this ridiculous threat.

Cool cool. Sounds reasonable enough to me :)

Thanks for talking about your reasoning in-thread!

Thanks for the fact check!

I reported this source for being weird, though “looks weird” is just scratching the surface of the weirdness, dear friends!

tl;dr this source is WEIRD.

First, “Have It Cheap Group International News Agency” is a weird name. I can’t figure out what Have It Cheap Group International actually does, but their website is dead (www.haveitcheap.com) and their name mostly appears in posts written by their president. The logo from their wordpress blog says:

Contact us for International Diplomacy, selling& [sic] buying of cars, Professional Website Designing [sic], Overseas Education/Medical Services, Precious, Minerals, Online Dating, Models, Actors & Actresses, VIP Appointments, Buying & Selling of Property, Events Management & Security, Solar Panels and much more.

So I guess they just do EVERYTHING. Where else can you one stop shop for an actress, two solar panels, and a negotiated agreement on Arctic sovereignty? Quit making me drive around for this stuff, people!

Their editor-in-chief, Earnest Kivumbi Benjamin, does seem to be the owner/president of both companies. He claims to be an award-winning journalist, though I can’t find a record of that either. He also claims to have been frequently covered by al-Jazeera and the BBC but I cannot find a single reference to him. He says that the UN named him one of the “Top 5” journalists in Uganda. I don’t think the UN actually does that! The African Centre for Media Excellence gives out awards, though, and guess what? He’s never been nominated for one. In fact, he doesn’t appear on any list of Ugandan journalists I’ve seen, including this one.

He announced his intention to run for President of Uganda in 2021, though he was definitely not a candidate and he’s considering running for President of Africa in 2027 which, to my knowledge, is not a real office. On his blog, where he refers to himself as “Africa’s Future President”, he speculates that Trump was made President by God to bring Christianity back to the US by re-criminalizing homosexuality and sodomy through the SCOTUS (May 3, 2022). So he’s a colourful guy.

He’s also the CEO of Heal The Planet Global Organization, another opaque, nebulous organization, that just seems to mostly host videos of him speaking. The topics are all over the map but here’s one of him thanking God for directing Putin to help Syria. Here’s one titled “Heal The Planet Letter to Obama Daughters Could Avert World War III” that’s just a silent photo montage of the Obamas.

At least some of the news agency content is purely self-promotional. This “Special Report” says that this - so far as I can tell - obscure man, E K Benjamin, is “on spotlight by key United States Agencies including CIA as a potential visionary young man to take on mantle of a continent”. Yowza.

Neither he nor the organization seem to have much reach. EKB’s Instagram account has about 1000 followers and almost none of his posts have even a single like or comment. The news organization has about 2100 Facebook followers, 2000 Twitter followers, and their highest view count on YouTube is 250. None of the people or entities involved have Wikipedia pages.

Moderation decisions aside (I’m fine with whatever), can we just acknowledge that that is a festive bowl of weird? It’s kind of impressive how weird it is. I don’t think there’s anything really sinister going on here, but I’m pretty confident this whole operation is the self-aggrandizing grift of one strange but fascinating man.

The article specifically addresses this:

Zisckind says she takes no issue with free speech on campuses.

"You can disagree with Israel, you can say there needs to be a ceasefire, those are things that are tantamount to free speech, but you cannot say we need to kill the Jews,” she explains.

personal injury lawyers

I don’t know if there’s anything to this litigation but their previous and current class action lawsuits seem non-frivolous. Their class action against Monsanto for Roundup causing cancer seems serious enough. A look at their list of current litigation shows them representing workers with non-paying employers (Amazon), victims of revenge porn, and victims of various privacy breaches (ex. 23andMe). The harms seem legitimate and there’s nothing you wouldn’t expect to be pursued as a class action.

Their timeline is gradual ActivityPub implementation over the next year.

Mosseri says the updates will roll out “in stages,” and he recognizes that the “better part of a year” timeline is a long one. “That’s a lot longer than I, or anybody on the team, wants, but it’s the reality given all the other work we need to be balance,” he says.