partial_accumen

I can't say I watch a lot of trump speaking (because I heard enough of that guy long ago). However, the few clips I've seen on trumps rambling feel like he's trying to gain resonance with his audience (and failing). You can see pieces of this that worked for him during the the 2016 run. He'd mention some side topic, pause and watch for audience reaction, and if they responded favorable, he'd double down with a followup remark on that same topic. It many times came off looked semi-planned that that was where he was going to take the speech anyway back then even if that wasn't the case.

These days it looks like he's fishing for an audience response, gets none, sometimes switches back to the original topic, doesn't get a response, fishing again, no response, fishing again, no response, repeat. Its like he blew threw his good material, and is grabbing desperately for something his audience will cheer for. Chasing a dopamine hit of people cheering for what he is saying...and not getting it. I think this is also why he'll occasionally bring up Obama or Hillary because those (in campaigns now long past) hit his crowd very well. Where now those old reference just confuse his audience because they're not relevant to any political discussions today, but trump isn't saying any of this for political effect, but just to hear a crowd cheer for him so that doesn't figure into his immediate thought process.

In modern parlance, this has been my working understanding too:

But yeah since computing came along disk has also been used more for magnetic media (hard disk) while disc has been used more for optical media (compact disc).

Optical:

• compact disc
• laser disc

Magnetic:

• 3.5" diskette
• 800GB hard disk drive

...and just to point out there is some disagreement

Magneto-Optical , such as Sony MiniDisc, is sometimes referred to Disc for its optical properties and sometimes as a MO Disk for its magnetic properties.

The photographer tastefully cropped out the now defiled mid-century modern sofa from the original picture. /s

They hopefully understand the need to increase the liquidity offer through swaps," said Andrei Kostin, CEO of second-largest lender VTB, stressing that exporters should sell more yuan as well.

If I'm reading this right, this is a call on companies that have yuan on their books from export sales to China are being asked to sell their yuan into domestic (russian) currency markets and presumably buy ruble. As in, are they asking private businesses to help out because the Central Bank has exhausted its resources?!

Gold is very near its all-time high. It just set a new all-time high about a week ago

But for russia to sell to someone else that requires trade with a heavily sanctioned country. That's a quick way to get on the "naughty list" and have sanctions applied to yourself too.

No… it’s pretty easy

Look into some history of India, as a sovereign nation, and how they were treated by the West for most of the 20th century. The Soviet Union was a much needed friend to India when the rest of the West turned their back after the British were kicked out. I don't blame India for some of the continued engagement with russia. However, Ukraine was also part of the nation (Soviet Union) that helped India, and I'm not seeing weigh positively for Ukraine. I say this as an American. The West (including the USA) has done some pretty messed up stuff to other nations in the 20th century.

The CCP plans to me seem to be the longest game ever played.

Look back a few decades and see what their previous policies were to be dissuaded of that idea. In the mid 50s the leader of China (Mao Zedong) lead a purge targeting the fields of education, science, literature and art, and medicine, where intellectuals were concentrated. Execution and imprisonment were what those groups faced.

In 1958 Mao ordered the killing of all sparrows to fight famine because he thought they ate too much grain in fields. The war on sparrows was successful in wiping out most of them, and then diseases started spreading because the sparrows weren't there to eat the insects spreading disease.

China, like most nations, is just lurching sometimes forward, sometimes backwards as ideas and global conditions shift from favorable to unfavorable and back again.

It wouldn’t surprise me if their plans for world domination were centuries long by design.

The last "centuries long" consistent leadership in China ending in 1911 with the end of the Qing Dynasty. Since thing its been wildly different leaderships (a couple of revolutions) with different goals. The last ~25 years or so looks very different than the previous direction of historically.

UA drone say "No loitering"

Only 4% of marketers overall think X ads provide “brand safety” — certainty that their ads won’t appear alongside extreme content —

The 4% may represent lumpy pillow manufacturers, sellers of freeze dried survival food, random cryptocurrency products, and Trump 2024 flag/tshirt providers.

The spokesperson added that X’s “brand safety rate is on average 99%, as validated by DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science,” companies that analyze the value of digital advertising placements.

"But that 1% remaining will have your products featured next to ads denying the holocaust, hate speech against LGBTQ+ communities, and ads discrediting proven science in favor of, oh I don't know, phrenology or something" -the spokesperson probably

It also encourages any other researchers and scientists to strongly commit to new projects for the state. /s

Overnight the most popular search on Yandex is "How to 'quiet quit' when you are a scientist"

"Victims of"? No.

"Beneficiaries of"? Yes.

I thought exactly the same thing. If they're not a 3D printed rocket company then they're just another of a field of rocket companies? Why would a customer choose them. The article enlightened me to who:

In a private letter to "investors, advisors, and friends" summarizing the company's operations after the first half of 2024, Relativity said it currently has a backlog of $2.6 billion in commercial launches and is in discussion or has signed a contract with many major megaconstellation providers (but not SpaceX). Ellis would not confirm this, but multiple people have told Ars that Relativity recently signed a deal for multiple launches with Amazon's Project Kuiper constellation.

There is at least $2.6 billion worth of customer that wants a SpaceX like launch product, but is unwilling to buy from an Elon Musk company. With how toxic Musk's behavior is these days, I could see that customer market growing. The US government is putting LOTS of payloads into orbit in SpaceX's Falcon 9 because there's nothing even close to it in price and performance. If Relativity can even get close to Falcon 9, they'll almost certainly pick up a large chunk of US payload contracts as the government doesn't like to have a single supplier for nation security reasons.