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Three universities in North America and Europe turned down a bust to a Chinese human rights activist before it went to Ireland
  • it is notable that three universities in North America and Europe turned down the offer of a gift of a cast of this bust of Liu before it was accepted by the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the University of Galway.

    One university cited “security concerns” in relation to protecting the artwork. Another claimed that it did not accept busts of “political figures”, when there were already several such busts on its campus. A third said it didn’t have “space” for the bust.

    It would be nice if we were actually told which three universities these were. Literally all we're told is that there's three of them in total that were offered but declined.

  • US announces nearly $8 billion military aid package for Ukraine
  • The new tranche will include an additional Patriot air defense battery, unmanned aerial systems, and air-to-ground munitions, as well as funds to strengthen Ukraine’s defense industrial base and support its maintenance and sustainment requirements.

    Washington will also provide Kyiv with the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) munition "to enhance Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities," Biden said.

    The U.S. president also announced the expansion of training for Ukrainian F-16 pilots by supporting the training of an additional 18 next year.

  • Which do you like better: Windows or Ubuntu?
  • If I had to pick, Ubuntu.

    What I'd actually pick: Fedora

    Workstation Edition (Gnome) or Plasma Edition (KDE Plasma), whatever your UX preference, with Gnome being more polished, minimalist, distraction-free, and Plasma being like Windows out of the box but much more powerful and customisable.

    The name unfortunately conjures images of the tips fedora/m'lady meme, but the name predates that, and it's a solid and well-supported distro that gets better with every update.

    I don't really dislike Ubuntu; they certainly get a lot right. But they have also made a few choices that I'm not really into. Most of all, the direction of Ubuntu is somewhat unpredictable, because Canonical is a for-profit business that has changing priorities.

  • Trump declines to meet with Zelensky to discuss Ukraine’s ‘victory plan’ against Russia
  • Is that the law? I don't think there's a law that forbids politicians from talking to foreign ones, even if they aren't currently in government.

    Various countries had meetings with Kier Starmer and other UK Labour politicians before their recent election victory. They of course couldn't do anything official, but it did aid in quickly signing some pacts with Germany quickly after Starmer entered government.

  • Students Stumble Upon a Message in a Bottle Written by a French Archaeologist 200 Years Ago
  • Every time I read news of people finding old messages in bottles I find it fascinating.

    But then at the same time I wonder how many people it prompts to dump their own bottles into the sea (i.e. littering) anytime one of these headlines blow up

    E: sorry I'm apprehensive about dumping plastic in our oceans. Damn. Didn't realise this was a pro-pollution community...

  • 2023 vs 2024 Points After Round 18
  • Nuts that last year the Mercedes was, depending on the track, the 3rd to 6th best car on the grid, and yet Lewis for a good while was battling for 2nd in the WDC, against someone in literally the most dominant F1 car of all time.

  • Don’t ever hand your phone to the cops
  • I'm going to preface this by saying the whole Americanised ACAB stuff is silly. Not everywhere has a shitty, militarised police force like theirs. Where I am, my experience with the police has been pretty positive, even with me being an immigrant with darker skin.

    But man, no.

    If police want your data, they can ask you politely, and if you say no, then that should be it. End of discussion. People have the right to privacy.

    Maybe the officer wouldn't do anything nefarious. But then again, maybe they will. You have no way of knowing what type of person that officer is. Even good police forces have plenty of shitty employees, so police powers should be limited to avoid them just doing whatever they want.

    If there's a genuine reason to have your data, say you're implicated in some criminal investigation, then they can go through the proper channels and get a warrant.

    Police absolutely should not have the power to just do whatever they like. If you let them, have that, it leads to shitty police forces like they have in the US and elsewhere.

  • InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)TH
    TheGrandNagus @lemmy.world
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