lemy.lol

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Done this (lemy.lol)
submitted 57 minutes ago* (last edited 56 minutes ago) by CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al to c/memes@sopuli.xyz
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After floods devastate Congo, scientists say climate change is making heavier rains more likely and call for better data to better prepare

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Fancy cupcakes are 70% icing, really not that nice and a waste of money

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As the bells rang out across the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the priests began to sing a deep, low prayer. Heads bowed over candles, and escorted by people bearing aloft large gold crosses, they made their way to a platform at the heart of the ancient square.

The ceremony on Holy Thursday, in which the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem washes the feet of 12 monastic priests to commemorate the Last Supper, is one of many Easter rituals that have taken place in the Old City of Jerusalem for hundreds of years. For Christians, there is no holier place to commemorate Easter than here, the site where they believe Jesus Christ was crucified, buried and resurrected.

Yet the crowd that assembled outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Thursday morning was small and muted. International pilgrims jostled with dark-robed Greek Orthodox monks, but one group of native worshippers was noticeably absent.

For generations, the tens of thousands of Palestinian Christians living in Israeli-occupied West Bank villages and cities such as Ramallah, Bethlehem and Taybeh would travel to Jerusalem’s Old City at Easter to take part in the prayers, processions and rituals such as the Holy Fire ceremony. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself is in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel from Jordan in the six-day war of 1967 and unilaterally annexed in 1980.

A Greek Orthodox cleric during the Washing of the Feet ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Thursday. Photograph: Ammar Awad/Reuters

Yet centuries of tradition have been ruptured by Israel’s increasingly draconian control over Palestinian movement – which means any Palestinian in the West Bank living outside Jerusalem, must obtain a military permit if they want to enter the city. For years, Christians in Palestinian territories were regularly granted permits to visit Jerusalem around Easter but since the war with Hamas broke out on 7 October 2023, they have become almost impossible to obtain.

This Easter, the government announced it had issued 6,000 permits, though there are 50,000 Christians – mostly Catholic or Greek Orthodox – living in the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem. However, in reality, just 4,000 were given, according to Christian leaders, and often only to a few members of each family who applied.

These permits are valid for just one week and do not allow the Palestinian pilgrims to stay in Jerusalem overnight, meaning they have to make the gruelling journey back to the West Bank by bus or taxi – crossing a multitude of army checkpoints – every evening, limiting the festivities they can take part in. A group from the village of Taybeh said the Israeli military still did not allow them to cross over to Jerusalem for Palm Sunday even though they had valid permits.

The few who do make it to the Old City have been met with increased police brutality in recent years. In April 2023, Palestinian Christian worshipers and international pilgrims were beaten by Israeli police and armed forces as they attempted to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

“People are very afraid and many will not risk attending the Easter processions any more,” said Omar Haramy, who runs Sabeel, a Christian organisation based in Jerusalem. He said several staff were beaten last year as they tried to attend Easter festivities in the Old City, and Christians in the Old City regularly faced hostility outside churches or as they went about their daily lives.

One of the greatest sources of distress among the Christian community is the introduction of blockades and aggressive policing that prevented thousands of Christians being able to take part in the Holy Fire festivities that mark the resurrection on Easter Saturday afternoon, as they have done for hundreds of years in the Old City.

The sun shines through the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where tradition has it that Christ was crucified, buried and resurrected. Photograph: Debbie Hill/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock

While the restrictions have been justified in the name of safety, many Christians view them as another way for the Israeli state to exert dominance over the community.

“I will go to the celebrations on Holy Saturday because my family has been part of this tradition for thousands of years, but I’m not going to bring my kids, it’s too dangerous now, with the police violence,” Haramy said.

The spectre of Gaza also hangs over this year’s Easter festivities. Palestinian Christians are among the 51,000 people killed in Gaza since the war with Israel began and on Palm Sunday, an Israeli missile hit the only Christian-run hospital in the strip. There are about 500 Christians are sheltering in Holy Family church, one of only two left standing. Those contacted by the Guardian said they were too afraid to talk, fearful of anything that might make them a target of Israeli airstrikes.

For all its biblical significance and abundance of churches, convents and monasteries, Jerusalem’s Old City has become increasingly dangerous for all Christians, not just those from Arab backgrounds. Since the rise of Jewish ultranationalism in Israel, and the election of the most far-right government in the country’s history, extremist and settler Jewish movements – who want to claim all of Israel and Palestinian-controlled territories as a state only for Jews – have been emboldened in their actions against both Christians and Muslims.

Historically, the relationship between Christians and Jews has been fraught, because of the Christian church’s historic role in antisemitism and the persecution of Jews. The ongoing presence of proselytising evangelical Christians, many from the US, who travel to Israel with the sole purpose of converting Jews, has also been inflammatory, particularly among the Jewish Orthodox community.

But religious intolerance and antichristian sentiment has been made mainstream by Israeli political leadership – the ultra-hardline national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, described Israelis spitting on Christians as “an old Jewish tradition” – and old suspicions have escalated into brazen, all-out violence. There have also been growing incidences of settler groups attempting to seize Christian land in Jerusalem. In 2023, the Holy Land Roman Catholic patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa accused the government of establishing a “cultural and political atmosphere that can justify, or tolerate, actions against Christians”.

A recent report by the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue documented the steep rise in the scale and severity of attacks on Christians in Jerusalem and across Israel in 2024, ranging from spitting at priests and public hate speech to the desecration of graves, arson attacks and vandalising of churches.

“It’s usually young Israeli Jewish men who are conducting these attacks with impunity. They face very little punishment, if the police get involved at all,” said John Munayer, the director of international engagement at the Rossing Center.

“It’s a clear attempt by hardcore settler Zionists to Judaise the Old City of Jersualem and trying to make it unbearable for Christians who have been there for centuries.”

As he attended the Easter prayer ceremony on Thursday, Father Nikon Golovko, the deputy head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, said he had “really seen things change for the worse for Christians in the past nine years”.

Catholic clerics during the Washing of the Feet procession at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Thursday. Photograph: Léo Corrêa/AP

He said: “We receive a lot more hostility and even aggression from the Jewish community. They spit on priests, even when we are walking through the Christian quarter. It sends a message that the city belongs not to all communities but only to the Jews. It was not like this before.”

After an incident in which Orthodox Jews were caught on video spitting at Christians, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that Israel was “totally committed to safeguard the sacred right of worship and pilgrimage to the holy sites of all faiths”.

Xavier Abu Eid, a Palestinian Christian political analyst and the author of Rooted in Palestine: Palestinian Christians and the Struggle for National Liberation 1917-2004, said that despite the mounting harassment they faced, the diminishing numbers of Christians left in the West Bank and the unrelenting horrors of the war in Gaza, he still viewed Easter as a time of hope and “the timely message that life defeats death”.

“As Palestinian Christians, we know that this generation will either make it or break it,” said Abu Eid.

“So making clear to the Israeli occupation that we are going to stay, that we will celebrate the same religious events that we’ve been celebrating for centuries is both a national mandate and a religious mission that we have. Keeping our Christian traditions alive, praying – they have become an act of resistance.”

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There have been several high-profile cases of deportation of Korean adoptees from the United States. Prior to the passage of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, the adoptive parents of adoptees had to file for their child to naturalize before the age of 16. Many parents were unaware of this requirement, assuming that their adopted children automatically derived citizenship from them, and therefore did not apply. The Child Citizenship Act sought to remedy this issue by extending citizenship to all international adoptees who were under 18 at the time that the bill was passed, but did not apply retroactively. This left those adopted by American families prior to 1983 vulnerable to deportations.

From the 1950s through 1991, a plurality of international adoptees came from South Korea. Koreans are the largest group of adoptees in the U.S. It has been estimated that as many as 20% of adult Korean adoptees are at risk of deportation. Many of the vulnerable adoptees suffered from a lack of access to other resources American citizens have.

If deported, they also face major challenges adjusting to live in South Korea. If they have no known family or relations in their birth country and do not speak the language, as is often the case, it is incredibly difficult for them to meet their basic needs such as housing and employment. These factors contributed to the 2017 suicide of Philip Clay, a Korean adoptee who was deported.

The exact number of deported Korean adoptees is unknown and difficult to ascertain, but there are at least half a dozen known cases.

The Story of Philip Clay

Phillip Clay (Kim Sang-pil) was found abandoned in Seoul in 1981 and legally adopted into an American family in Philadelphia.

After a struggle with drug addiction and a run in with the law, Clay was deported back to Korea in 2012, despite no knowledge of the Korean language or customs, nor without a single contact in the country. Diagnosed in Korea with bipolar disorder, he was shuffled in and out of social agencies and hospitals who could not care for him due to a lack of English speaking staff. In 2017, Clay ended his life jumping from the 14th floor of a building in Seoul.

RIP Philip Clay 😢

The Story of Adam CrapserAdam Crapser was adopted from South Korea by United States citizens in 1979, then readopted by a second family years later. Both families were charged with child abuse, and Crapser was later left alone without United States citizenship. Crapser had run-ins with law, including 3 domestic violence incidents and a charge of contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor, that led to him not being eligible for a green card after years of searching for his proper adoption documentation.

Crapser filed a lawsuit against one of the biggest international adoption agencies, Holt Children's Services, for negligence in sending thousands of children to the United States and other countries without "accounting for their future citizenship.". In May 2023, the court found in Crapser's favor and ordered Holt to pay nearly $75,000 in damages. Crapser now lives in Mexico.

The Story of Hyebin Schreiber

Adopted by her uncle and aunt in Kansas, Hyebin Schreiber arrived in the United States in 2014 at 15 years of age from relatives who could not afford to care for her. Her uncle, retired Army Lt. Col. Patrick Schreiber spent much of 2013 and 2014 deployed to Afghanistan, and was unaware that he would need to formally apply for naturalization prior to her 16th birthday to qualify. After a protracted court battle, the United States 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2019 that she must return to Korea.

Very sad stories.

Even though I'm a Citizen and am not facing deportation issues (not yet, anyways 👀), I kinda feel what they went through.

I was born in Mainland China (PRC) and I immigrated to the US as a kid. As I grew up, I grew attachment to the principles of constitution: democracy, freedom, human rights. I'm more American than those far-right "patriots".

I had a small fight in highschool, it was self-defence btw, and the instigator probably movitivated by the hatred against Asian people during the height of the Covid pandemic (it was mere weeks before schools closed), so I got beaten by this fucking bully, then got arrested and faced false accusations of "assault with a deadly weapon" 🙄 (I was unarmed bro, wtf, ACAB). Charges got dropped. But that could've been trouble for me since USCIS still can see any charges even if dropped, and can make immigration decisions based on that. But luckily, the the law now is that children with Legal Permanent Resident status under 18 are automatically citizen if one of their parents become a citizen, and since my mom is a citizen, I'm fine.

Like, can you imagine the other timeline where I get deported for a fucking school fight? (again, don't jinx it ahem project 2025 ahem 👀)

I mean, if I had to go back to China, re-learning Mandarin and that difficult Chinese writing system is gonna make me kms. (Not to mention, it'd be harder to find foreign entertainment due to CCP censorship)

Me and CCP aren't exactly best-buds, I'd probably get jailed the moment I step foot in China for all the bad things I said about CCP.

(But probably don't need to worry about, now that we got CECOT instead 😖)

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A bunny is in a coin-op laundromat, with washers and dryers along the walls. in front of them is a hamper full of clothes, and another bunny sitting atop the laundry. The bunny on the hamper is floofy, having apparently just been through the dryer as well. There are unpaired socks and coins on the floor

Source: Bluesky

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For three years now, a select group of states have had a pilot program through the IRS for its Direct File program. For years and years, companies like Intuit had gotten away with all kinds of shady tactics designed to lure people in with the promise of free tax prep filing using online software, only to have aggressive or deceptive methods for turning them into paying customers when they never should have been. Intuit’s tactics were so bad that the FTC ruled the company can’t advertise its services the way it had been previously along with nine-figure paybacks to the customers it had deceived.

Direct File and these shady doings by the tax-prep industry are directly related. The IRS already has all the information needed to prepare returns for a huge percentage of Americans that file simple tax returns and are typically in lower income brackets. Nobody has heard of any significant negative reaction to the Direct File pilot program, which expanded this year to more states, other than by the tax preparation industry themselves. If there was a problem with the program, we would have heard about it by now. By all accounts, it has been entirely successful.

So, of course, the Trump administration is reportedly planning to do away with it.

“The program had been in limbo since the start of the Trump administration as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have slashed their way through the federal government,” the AP article said. “Musk posted in February on his social media site, X, that he had ‘deleted’ 18F, a government agency that worked on technology projects such as Direct File.”

The AP wrote that “two people familiar with the decision to end Direct File said its future became clear when the IRS staff assigned to the program were told in mid-March to stop working on its development for the 2026 tax filing season.” The IRS will lose about a third of its staff this year through layoffs and employees accepting resignation offers, The New York Times reported yesterday.

The House GOP, which pushed for this move, couched its request as combatting a conflict of interest at the IRS. Keep in mind as you read this that the IRS already has the information that is populating its Direct File returns.

As you know, during the last tax year, the IRS rolled out its Direct File pilot program in 12 states, through which taxpayers file their taxes directly to the IRS instead of through a trusted accountant or reputable third-party preparation service. Under the guise of offering a convenient “free-to-file” alternative preparation service, the IRS asserts itself as the tax assessor, collector, preparer, and enforcer—all in one—when the program is used. This is deeply concerning and a clear conflict of interest. The IRS has little incentive to ensure hardworking Americans do not pay more than they owe in taxes and may instead benefit from families and small businesses paying greater amounts than they are required by law. Furthermore, it is highly inappropriate for the IRS to serve as a tax preparer for taxpayers while also being the final enforcer of tax violations.

The letter goes on to complain that the Direct File program amounts to costing taxpayers roughly $800 per return based on the program’s budget. You should be able to see immediately how deeply silly this all is, but here are a couple of highlights.

Again, the government already has the information used in the Direct File returns. That’s how they’re created in the first place. The taxpayer then goes in and validates the information the IRS has, gets some input on the return itself, denotes either payment or refund information, and then they’re done. The IRS is already the enforcer of tax payments and would use the same information it has in any audit it was going to conduct. The letter from the GOP worries out loud about the IRS ramping up tax audits on individuals, which is very strange since the use of Direct File would eliminate any audits for those using it, since it’s all based on information the government already has. Whatever conflict of interest the GOP claims to have identified is entirely undiscoverable by this writer.

The letter goes on to complain about the national debt, which is very odd to include in the same letter that complains about there being too much enforcement around tax collection audits. In its complaint about the cost-per-return, it also entirely ignores the economy of scale the program would benefit from as it is rolled out to even more taxpayers. Were it to do so, the cost per return would almost certainly drop, and drop significantly, as much of what powers the service would already be in place as a sunk cost.

As for the trust the American people had in this program and the IRS after using it? Well, from the Treasury Departments own website

*90 percent of respondents ranked their overall experience as Excellent or Above Average.**90 percent of survey respondents who used customer support rated that experience as Excellent or Above Average.**When asked what they particularly liked, respondents most commonly cited Direct File’s ease of use, trustworthiness, and that it was free.*86 percent of respondents said that their experience with Direct File increased their trust in the IRS.

And so what Trump is reportedly planning to do is take an IRS program that people enjoyed using, and one which caused them to have more trust in the IRS and government, and one which is still in pilot and which would become more cost efficient with wider use… and eliminating it. Without, mind you, any stated good reason.

Somewhere, in some ivory tower, the Intuit board is certainly cheering.

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Harvard Living Wage Sit-In (2001)

Wed Apr 18, 2001

Image


On this day in 2001, 46 demonstrators at Harvard University, carrying sleeping bags, computers, and a week's supply of food, occupied Massachusetts Hall, refusing to budge until the school agreed to pay its workers a "living wage".

The protest was a culmination of years of activism at Harvard to try and get the richest university in the world to pay all of its workers a living wage.

The sit-in ended after 21 days (the longest in Harvard history) when Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine announced the formation of a University-wide committee to investigate the "principles and policies" regarding low paid and contract university workers.

No non-unionized or non-management workers served on the committee, however, and the workers that did were outnumbered 3-1 by faculty and students.


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Meme by MarxoidScissors

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Chinese scientists have achieved a milestone in clean energy technology by successfully adding fresh fuel to an operational thorium molten salt reactor, according to state media reports.

It marks the first long-term, stable operation of the technology, putting China at the forefront of a global race to harness thorium – considered a safer and more abundant alternative to uranium – for nuclear power.

The development was announced by the project’s chief scientist, Xu Hongjie, during a closed-door meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on April 8, the official Guangming Daily reported on Friday.

The experimental reactor, located in the Gobi Desert in China’s west, uses molten salt as the fuel carrier and coolant, and thorium – a radioactive element abundant in the Earth’s crust – as the fuel source. The reactor is reportedly designed to sustainably generate 2 megawatts of thermal power.

Some experts see the technology as the next energy revolution and claim that just one thorium-rich mine in Inner Mongolia could – theoretically – meet China’s energy needs for tens of thousands of years, while producing minimal radioactive waste.

A much bigger thorium molten salt reactor is already being built in China and is slated to achieve criticality by 2030. That research reactor is designed to produce 10 megawatts of electricity.

China’s state-owned shipbuilding industry has also unveiled a design for thorium-powered container ships that could potentially achieve emission-free maritime transport.

Meanwhile, US efforts to revive the development of a molten salt reactor remain on paper, despite bipartisan congressional support and Department of Energy initiatives.

Archive link

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Next floor is done.... except that I JUST realized upon looking at this picture that I forgot to paint the floor.

With everything on this floor except for the last wall done, there's one little addition I want to make...

ELEVATOR!

They are absolutely as awesome as they look. Coffee Stain REALLY outdid themselves. I don't think there's ever been a feature they've added that I didn't have at least SOME small criticism about, but not this one.

Last wall filled in.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/32891018

  • McMahon convicted for acting as Chinese agent without notifying U.S. attorney general
  • Biden administration targeted transnational repression by authoritarian adversaries
  • Republican lawmakers supported McMahon, urging leniency in sentencing
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Synology's telegraphed moves toward a contained ecosystem and seemingly vertical integration are certain to rankle some of its biggest fans, who likely enjoy doing their own system building, shopping, and assembly for the perfect amount of storage. "Pro-sumers," homelab enthusiasts, and those with just a lot of stuff to store at home, or in a small business, previously had a good reason to buy one Synology device every so many years, then stick into them whatever drives they happened to have or acquired at their desired prices. Synology's stated needs for efficient support of drive arrays may be more defensible at the enterprise level, but as it gets closer to the home level, it suggests a different kind of optimization.

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Загальні бойові втрати противника з 24.02.22 по 18.04.25 (орієнтовно)

#NOMERCY #stoprussia

| Підписатися ГШ ЗСУ |

t.me/GeneralStaffZSU/23222

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Does anyone else get a little uncomfortable and sad when they see that dead-eyed model pose? Is this a spicy take?

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“Democracy dies in darkness” (animistsramblings.substack.com)
submitted 11 minutes ago by eleitl@lemm.ee to c/collapse@lemm.ee
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When you think you have seen all possible variants of rather questionable scientific integrity and forms of ethical misconduct after reading this blog and others for years, someone will appear out of nowhere to surprise you: Zhanhu Guo, who is currently Professor of Mechanical & Construction Engineering at Northumbria University Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK (although Web of Science still lists his old affiliation in USA). According to Google Scholar, he has been cited a whopping 105.586 times (as of April 3rd 2025).

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