There’s something ironic about real bears being repatriated to a country run by a toy one.

They asked, and were refused, in 2012 according to this article: https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/germany-gold-reserves-us-storage-repatriation-concerns-13878824.html

Heck, it wasn’t even a Republican government at the time. That gold is gone.

Oh thank f–k. I don’t think I could have handled there being a war with the US over Greenland.

Now all I have to worry about is the Online “Safety” Act and the rise of authoritarianism and the far right in my country!

I bought a cheap USB Bluetooth dongle decades ago and while the interface has changed in Mint over the years, I’ve always been able to use it to communicate with my ancient flip-phone to get pictures off it. In fact I was able to use it with some very rough and ready software to pull the texts off it at one point.

It probably also worked on Windows, because I’ve had both since before I switched.

The phone’s camera got water damaged a while back and now all the pictures from it - not that I take many - have a literal watermark on them, but the Bluetooth still works both ways.

Can’t vouch for whether it would work with more heavy duty hardware like a headset or speakers, but I guess it must be luck of the draw with a lot of these things.

Strong odds he’s the next Prime Minister. Unfortunately at least 50% of my countrymen are (still) stupid enough to believe the lies.

Trump and his family have gladly accepted Russian money and one of the world leaders he most admires is Putin because of the way he “handles” his political opposition, so they’re very much influenced by what Putin says, does and asks them to do.

Frankly both Putin and Trump can get in the sea.

You sound like the sort of person who would say “it’s for their own good” if Russia did lean into its patently obvious expansionist plans and try to take land from other countries. “But Belarus is OK and that would be easy”. There’s a Russian puppet in charge there, just like there’s a Russian puppet in charge of the US.

I don’t think many countries have room to talk on that one.

Very much this. I took out a paragraph about it because what should have been a short comment was getting too long.

Much needed with the deprecation of ClamTK.

My only gripe is the choice of GNOME / GTK4 / Adwaita, because I really hate the direction GNOME have gone with all that. Anyway, I look forward to this being a standard package in Debians starting 2030 or so.

Trump has already called Canada the 51st. None of his yes-men would dare be caught altering the big man’s numbering. Even if they do appear to be trying to obtain 52 first. Edit: Or possibly 53. Got my wires crossed between Greenland and Iceland.

(Trump hasn’t quite grasped, or is refusing to acknowledge, that Canada is already split into state-like provinces, nor that those are split into counties in much the same way as US states are.)

doesn’t care how many die

He’d have to understand in order to care. I don’t think he’s capable of fully understanding the harm he does. Anything that doesn’t harm him is incomprehensible to him.

A large percentage of the world finds Donald Trump being president of the USA unacceptable.

I still think they should have bumped the version to 26. They have a yearly release schedule for version bumps, at least two other major pieces of software have already done this and it would have skipped any potential confusion with Windows 11.

FOMO and FOOPMO

(Fear of other people missing out (on what they have to say.))

As long as it’s not Kekistan.

One of my biggest shocks of recent years was when an Internet acquaintance in Trinidad came out as a Trump supporter.

I was like “You’re brown. He’d hate you.”

Except I didn’t actually say that. I did the internet equivalent of walking backwards slowly and carefully while smiling and quietly blocked them.

I guess my former acquaintance’s sentiments extend to the government there.

An elderly person I know got it in their head that the people coming across the Channel in boats were a serious problem.

“Thirty thousand a year!” they complained. “It’s an invasion!”

So I said “The population of Britain is 70 million people. At 40,000 a year for the next 25 years, ignoring all other increases in population by people already here, do you know what the population would be? 71 million. You don’t need to worry about it. And stop talking about an invasion. If it was an invasion, they’d have guns and we’d shoot them first. Most of them are trying to get away from guns.”

(This is not to say that there isn’t a heavy humanitarian and financial burden involved with dealing with those people, only that it’s not the problem some people think (or want us to believe) it is.)

“But they don’t live like we do.”

“I don’t live like you do. I eat foods you won’t touch and spend all my life on a computer. Where are you going to deport me to?”

Either I’m getting through to them or they know not to bring it up around me any more.

You really think there’s anywhere that’s far enough away?

Ah. There it is. The distinction you’re making that wasn’t clear. You don’t take what they say seriously, but you take them seriously otherwise.

Well, let me tell you, when a despot says they’re going to do something despicable, it doesn’t matter whether they’re wearing clown makeup when they do so.