133arc585 @ 133arc585 @lemmy.ml

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Not surprising unfortunately. There's no accountability or transparency; they can deny any application they want for any reason, and don't have to tell you why. As long as they don't come out and say it's due to being a member of a protected class (which they can act on indirectly, just can't say it out loud), they can get away with any reasoning.

Oh it's vile.

Lots of people list a property, take loads of applications, each with a nonrefundable application fee (often $100+), then close the listing and pretend it was leased out. They wait a bit and repeat the play. They can rake in thousands of dollars for literally making a posting on a website, and repeat this often. And it's often desperate people victimized too: not only are these people renting so they're already in a vulnerable situation, the people willing to pay high application fees typically are desperate to get a lease.

I've also seen places that make you pay an application fee, and as part of the screening process they run a credit check; if they aren't satisfied with your credit score, they'll deny you and of course keep the application fee. What's more nefarious about this though is that they don't give you a score cutoff; you don't know if your score meets their criteria until after you've paid a nonrefundable fee.

$1k USD is over a year's wages for someone at the global poverty line.

Just because it's cheaper than other more expensive alternatives doesn't mean it's not expensive and extravagant. It's also a lot more polluting than some of your more expensive vacations you could compare it to; so in reality, it's not actually cheaper, it just externalizes some of the costs on to the environment (or, the rest of humanity).

Not quite.

For Biggs and Crane, unless I'm misinterpreting, the presence of "culture war issues" in the bill was itself a detractor,

Biggs and Crane posted a joint, 10-minute video explaining their “no” votes, citing U.S. support for the war in Ukraine, financial accountability at the Pentagon and culture war issues.

For Buck, the size of the budget was the stated concern,

Buck’s opposition to the measure rested in its price tag. The legislation sets an $866 billion budget for the country’s armed forces in fiscal year 2024. He said he could not “in good conscience” support the legislation.

I can't find anything from Massie specifically, but given his history of voting against any and all aid to Ukraine, it seems reasonable to assume that the provisions for military aid to Ukraine were enough of a reason to vote against it.

There's a new propaganda department at the Pentagon that's just been re-formed, the "Perception Management" office,

“Perception management” came to prominence during the Reagan administration[^1], which used the term to describe its propaganda efforts. [...] On March 1, 2022, the Pentagon established a new office with similar goals to the one once deemed too controversial to remain open. [...] its responsibilities include overseeing and coordinating the various counter-disinformation efforts being conducted by the military, which can include the U.S.’s own propaganda abroad.

In case you think the name is of no import, the Department of Defense's own official dictionary defines "perception management" as

[a]ctions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.

Let's look at a definition of "propaganda",

A concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people.

That looks about 100% on the nose, doesn't it?

They have a history of producing propaganda and misinformation (with the excuse being "to counter enemy disinformation"[^2]), and they weren't shy talking about it,

The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. [...] The military has faced these tough issues before. Nearly three years ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, under intense criticism, closed the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence, a short-lived operation to provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion. [...] Pentagon and military officials directly involved in the debate say that such a secret propaganda program, for example, could include planting news stories in the foreign press or creating false documents and Web sites translated into Arabic as an effort to discredit and undermine the influence of mosques and religious schools that preach anti-American principles. [...] However, a senior military officer said that without clear guidance from the Pentagon, the military's psychological operations, information operations and public affairs programs are "coming together on the battlefield like never before, and as such, the lines are blurred."

Mind you, I've only touched on some of their work in the very recent past. There's an even larger body of evidence of the USA's use of propaganda in the slightly more distant past. I only gave the Wikipedia page on propaganda in the United States a brief skim, but it at least touches on (and links out to) some of the big picture items; of note,

In the United States, propaganda is spread by both government and media entities.

[^{1]: "In the battle of perception management, where the enemy is clearly using the media to help manage perceptions of the general public, our job is not perception management but to counter the enemy's perception management," said the chief Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita. ([Source](https://archive.is/pPtan#selection-507.0-507.274)) [}2]: https://consortiumnews.com/2014/12/28/the-victory-of-perception-management/

As was the case with DADT and as looks to be the case now: they're rather them just stay closeted, they don't want them to leave. If they leave, they have one less expendable body to throw around.

Can you provide sources for this?

The source is that Russia murders its own oligarchs the second they fall out of Putin’s favor, and ships anyone who holds up a blank sign in protest of the regime gets shipped off to the front lines. No way that man would survive a second if he ever went against the party line. Which means he hasn’t done so.

A simple no would have been sufficient. I'm not interested in baseless speculation. I had hoped you had actual evidence, which would intrigue me greatly. As it is, I have someone's imagination put to paper.

If I were him, I’d get on the next plane to the US and happily spend the rest of my life in Leavenworth rather than allow myself to become a propaganda tool for a bunch of genocidal fascists.

He's not saying anything. He's not being a propaganda tool. You can make a rather weasily attempt to say his not denouncing something is in essence supporting it and thus being a propaganda tool, but that's a stretch and rather disingenuous.

I think you may be right actually. When I read this

In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.

from their statement, I made an assumption because I didn't look at how EDDM works. The way I read "not excluding names, but instead including names" was: We sent a list of names to the vendor; the vendor was supposed to exclude those names, and mail to everyone else in the ZIP, but instead, they mailed to only those names. It seems that's not an accurate understanding of the situation. I think the correct reading is: we said "no names" on our EDDM mailers but they acted as if we said "yes names" on our EDDM mailers.

From my original interpretation, that is essentially a customer list leak, or at least a 'localized' customer list leak, especially for anyone in a shared living environment where someone else may see the name printed on a Brave mailer and learn that that person is a Brave user.

Thanks for clearing it up though. Let me try to go back and edit a few previous comments where I've said this to clarify.

Let me quote myself,

If you have information on this specifically, please provide me sources (and not speculation) so that I can learn.

All you did was speculate. That's useless, to me and to you. You can speculate and imagine what the reality may be, but unless you can show that your imagination aligns with reality, it's not of any value.

If you want to just throw quips and gotchas, I won't converse with you, because it's not fruitful. If you'll notice, I made a well thought out comment with sources to back up my claims. I was clear when there was something I didn't know, and expressed the desire to learn. Compare that to your comments.

Edit: My comment below was based on a faulty understanding of how EDDM mailers worked and a faulty assumption I based on that ignorance. What they did in reality is little more than sending out spam mail, it was not a privacy violation.

Purely from a privacy standpoint, however, there has never been an indication they have violated users’ trust in that regard.

That's simply not true though.

They have sent out direct mailers that basically equated to a customer list leak.

In regards to the mailers, they messed up and passed blame,

In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.

I hope you consider a customer list leak to be a breach of privacy. And seeing how they didn't take responsibility but tried to pass blame, they didn't take such a mistake very seriously or respond in a manner that instills further trust.

Specifically,

The amendments pushed through by House Republicans included gutting diversity, equity and inclusion programmes at the Department of Defence. It banned flying pro-LGBTQ flags at military bases and ended funding for transgender-related medical services.

In perhaps the most telling reflection of the times, the bill also included a provision that would eliminate a Pentagon policy that offers time off and travel reimbursement to members of the military who must travel across states to receive an abortion.

Not being able to freely express yourself on military bases feels very Don't Ask Don't Tell: "you're allowed to be gay and serve, but you have to stay closeted to do so".

Edit: My comment below was originally based on a faulty understanding of how EDDM mailers worked and a faulty assumption I based on that ignorance. What they did in reality is little more than sending out spam mail, it was not a privacy violation. I've removed the mention of the EDDM mailers since they aren't relevant given this.

I'd take a peek at the wikipedia entry about their business model, which mentions some stuff that isn't the most savory:

... Brave earns revenue from ads by taking a 15% cut of publisher ads and a 30% cut of user ads. User ads are notification-style pop-ups, while publisher ads are viewed on or in association with publisher content.

On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users navigate to Binance

With regards to the CEO, he made a donation to an anti-LGBT cause when he was CEO of Mozilla in 2008. He lost his job at Mozilla due to his anti-LGBT stance. He also spreads COVID misinformation.

As others have pointed out, it's also Chromium based, and so it is just helping Google destroy the web more than they already have.

Accusing the US of escalation here when Russia violently invaded it’s peaceful neighbor?

Do you understand what escalation means? Escalation doesn't have anything to do with who started it. It's a relative action: it escalates from some state. The USA is committing troops where it previously hadn't (or, more pedantically, is increasing the number of committed troops). This is escalation.

You can complain about Russia starting this, but you should also complain about the USA escalating the situation.

You're right and I completely forgot about those somehow.

For pespective,

On average, Americans receive a radiation dose of about 0.62 rem (620 millirem) each year. Half of this dose comes from natural background radiation. Most of this background exposure comes from radon in the air, with smaller amounts from cosmic rays and the Earth itself.

So, cosmic rays contribute hardly (about 4%) any to the radiation we receive every day.

I'm no expert here, clearly, so I'm not sure how to compare these units of radiation with the ones being provided for the Fukushima water release; those numbers are provided in becquerel from the sources I found.

It's not the only instance of Ukraine using them. I didn't attempt to do a full inventory of their use. My point was they are using them when you claimed they aren't.

If you can find accurate claims of how much stock they have remaining, then sure, I very well could be wrong, but again it's curious: if they have a sizeable stockpile, why ask for more, and why the whole tone of "it'll change the trajectory of the war" and "it's necessary for Ukraine's defense" surrounding their delivery?

Snowden doesn’t make any public statements any more without express permission from the Russian government.

Can you provide sources for this?

It might make sense for him to self-censor to avoid angering one of the few places that are allowing him to stay but even that's not a given: if he felt something needed to be said badly enough, he's shown to be the type of person who would rather something be said and take the repercussions on the nose than to leave something unsaid.

Land in North Korea is widely known to be barely arable. So if they can't meet demand domestically, they must import food.

Climate, terrain, and soil conditions are not particularly favorable for farming, with a relatively short cropping season. Only about 17% of the total landmass, or approximately 20,000 km2, is arable, of which 14,000 km2 is well suited for cereal cultivation; the major portion of the country is rugged mountain terrain.^1

The weather varies markedly according to elevation, and lack of precipitation, along with infertile soil, makes land at elevations higher than 400 meters unsuitable for purposes other than grazing. Precipitation is geographically and seasonally irregular, and in most parts of the country as much as half the annual rainfall occurs in the three summer months. This pattern favors the cultivation of paddy rice in warmer regions that are outfitted with irrigation and flood control networks. Rice yields are 5.3 tonnes per hectare, close to international norms.^2

But, they have trouble importing food, because the USA has decided to sanction and blockade them. This affects not only direct trade with the USA, but because of the way sanctions work when issued by the USA, any country that also itself does trade with the USA is at risk themselves to be sanctioned by the USA for trading with North Korea.

So, you have a situation where they can't grow enough domestically, and foreign powers are preventing them from importing the food they need. And you want to say it's their fault that they have food shortages?

Of note, nearing 100% of North Korea's foreign trade is with China. Of that, food imports constitute a sizeable portion.

Now, I do not know why they do not import more food (enough to meet all demand) from China; I do not know if China is not allowing it, or if North Korea is not trying it, or if North Korea can not afford it, or what have you. If you have information on this specifically, please provide me sources (and not speculation) so that I can learn.

Additionally, Ukraine has NOT used their stockpile of cluster munitions, out of respect for this western ignorance that could be used by Russia against them.

Do you mean they haven't used all of their stockpile? If that's the case, why are they asking for more?

We know they've used some, so combine the fact that they've used some, with the fact that they're asking for more, and how can you conclude anything other than that they've used (most of if not all of) their stockpile?

• To Push Back Russians, Ukrainians Hit a Village With Cluster Munitions
• Ukraine used cluster munitions — which many countries have banned — to force Russian troops out of a village, report says

“Signal’s use luckily never caught on by the general public of China (or the Hong Kong Administrative region), whose government prefers autonomy, rather than letting US tech control its communication platforms, as most of the rest of the world naively allows.”

When you’re holding up China as an example for the world to follow for privacy

I interpret that quote to say that China doesn't trust US tech like the rest of the world does. It's not saying that China has more privacy and the rest of the world should follow, it's saying that the rest of the world also shouldn't be so naively trustworthy of US tech either.

However I can’t seem to turn off the telemetry at all…

Which telemetry, specifically? Anything you can't find in the standard settings menu can be found in about:config. There are plenty of articles with huge lists of settings to adjust in about:config with explanations on what different values do.