This picture was taken a few days ago.

This summer, for the first time, Seattle banned cars in Pike Place:

https://www.knkx.org/transportation/2025-05-08/seattle-pike-place-market-tests-car-ban-pilot-downtown-overlook-walk-flowers-vendors

Last year, some politicians claimed no one will shop here anymore if it's pedestrianized :

https://publicola.com/2024/04/02/dont-open-pike-place-to-pedestrians-council-member-urges/

What a shitty thing to do on the USA's birthday, as if it will do any help to the USA's already ravaged tourism industry. It's sad since compared to the rest of the functioning world, the National Park System is the ONLY good thing going for the USA. And yet Trump wants to jeopardize that!

Dear rest of the world, please visit North America but definitely consider changing your US itineraries to Canada so you won't directly give any money to Trump's USA or fear being jailed if something is wrong with your paperwork.

The first American academics fleeing Donald Trump's America for France have arrived.

Aix-Marseille University last week introduced eight U.S.-based researchers who were in the final stage of joining the institution's “Safe Place for Science" program, which aims to woo researchers who have experienced or fear funding cuts under the Trump administration. AMU offers the promise of a brighter future in the sun-drenched Mediterranean port city.

While both France and the European Union have launched multimillion-euro plans to woo researchers across the pond since Trump assumed the U.S. presidency in January, AMU's initiative was the first of its kind in the country — meaning the eight researchers who were welcomed are the first academic refugees planning to trade the United States for France.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat that Beijing can’t accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine as this could allow the United States to turn its full attention to China, an official briefed on the talks said, contradicting Beijing’s public position of neutrality in the conflict.

The admission came during what the official said was a four-hour meeting with EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas on Wednesday in Brussels that “featured tough but respectful exchanges, covering a broad range of issues from cyber security, rare earths to trade imbalances, Taiwan and Middle East.”

The official said Wang’s private remarks suggested Beijing might prefer a protracted war in Ukraine that keeps the United States from focusing on its rivalry with China. They echo concerns of critics of China’s policy that Beijing has geopolitically much more at stake in the Ukrainian conflict than its admitted position of neutrality.

It was not Trump voters who earned us our future, but the billionaires who made the Democrats so shit that fascism seemed like a good idea. The rich have all the power, and thus, all of the responsibility.

The move blindsided the State Department, Ukraine, European allies and members of Congress, who demanded an explanation from the Pentagon.

The Defense Department held up a shipment of U.S. weapons for Ukraine this week over what officials said were concerns about its low stockpiles. But an analysis by senior military officers found that the aid package would not jeopardize the American military’s own ammunition supplies, according to three U.S. officials.

The move to halt the weapons shipment blindsided the State Department, members of Congress, officials in Kyiv and European allies, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.

Critics of the decision included Republicans and Democrats who support aiding Ukraine’s fight against Russia. A leading House Democrat, Adam Smith of Washington, said it was disingenuous of the Pentagon to use military readiness to justify halting aid when the real reason appears to be simply to pursue an agenda of cutting off American aid to Ukraine.

A group of Florida Democratic state lawmakers was blocked from entering the Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention facility in the Everglades Thursday, despite citing legal authority for an official legislative site visit.

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried issued a statement following the incident, saying, "Lawmakers on the ground were just blocked from entering a state-funded detention site because of so-called 'safety concerns.' This is a taxpayer-funded facility, run by the State of Florida. Our elected officials have every legal right to walk through those gates."

Fried added, "What are Ron DeSantis and his administration trying to hide? If it's unsafe for lawmakers to visit, how is it safe for anyone inside?"

The disclosure statement from the article:

Laurent Borzillo is secretary general of the French association Forum de défense et de stratégie. He was awarded the FRQ's PBEEE postdoctoral fellowship (2023-2024) and, in recent years, has been a co-recipient with various colleagues of grants from the French, German (DAAD), and Canadian governments for various projects on the politicization of defense issues, disinformation, elections in Europe, and the transatlantic security architecture.

The article touches on some history, terminology, and wider discussion. I didn't pull out any parts for this one since it felt important to read in full and excerpts ended up losing context

Study: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03773-w

It's fucking 3 in the afternoon on the 4th you fucking losers. HATE it.

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/132230947

Hello Friendos

I'm a security / cloud engineer and I've had this lab for about 6 months now. In the last few weeks I've decided to start using it to self host some "production" services for me and my loved ones (extended family of 15) Mainly a next cloud instance that serves as our "picture vault"

The hardware is a poweredge R430 with twin ES-2620's and 128 GBs. It has 8x1TB 2.5

HDDs

This thing ended up being really overpowered for what I use it and I feel like by now I have explored everything I wanted to in this hardware. I was thinking about laterally scaling to R230s so I could play with load balancing and HA.

However these servers only have 2-4 drive bays, and I have no experience with DAS.

Can you guys help with some links? I'm researching DAS enclosures. I understand that any server with a PCI slot can take a SAS card, and any SAS enclosure is compatible.

Can you guys foresee any issue with a server as small as an R230 connecting to a SAS DAS?

I see that DAS enclosures have multiple connections per module, would I be able to connect multiple servers to the same module? or is it one server per connection and it can't be shared?

If I have to share the connection, I would have to host a NAS (I probably should anyways) and will have to upgrade my switch from gigabit to 10G

Would also appreciate some other recommendations for small form factor servers that can be bought for cheap. (18 inches or shorter)

Pic of current setup for attention ... don't judge my PC case :) 3U chassis for it is on the mail.