Notices by simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp), page 2
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 22-Mar-2025 23:21:10 JST 
simsa03
Niall Stanage, "Democrats, lawyers left reeling from Paul, Weiss firm’s Trump deal" https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5208538-trump-intimidates-law-firms/
«For all three legal firms — and for others eyeing these developments with alarm — there is a near-certainty that they would lose significant numbers of clients if they lose their security clearances. In the case of Perkins Coie, the Trump administration has signaled it will not do federal business with the firm’s clients — a massive pressure point that could call the firm’s existence into question.»
The crack down on the legal sphere – one of the few potentially effective aereas of opposition – is a main goal of the Trump regime. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 22-Mar-2025 22:41:15 JST
simsa03
Masha Gessen once wrote this on the mechanics of terror:
«It was not just this client [of psychoanalyst Arutyunyan] who was living in a state of constant anxiety: the entire country [i.e., Russia] was. It was the oldest trick in the book – a constant state of low-level dread made people easy to control, because it robbed them of the sense that they could control anything themselves. This was not the sort of anxiety that moved people to action and accomplishment. This was the sort of anxiety that exceeded human capacity. Like if your teenage daughter has not come home – by morning you have run out of logical explanations, you can no longer calm yourself by pretending […] and you are left alone with your fear. You can no longer sit still or reason. You regress, and after a while the only thing you can do is scream, like a helpless, terrified baby. You need an adult, a figure of authority. Almost anyone willing to take charge will do. And then, if that someone wants to remain in charge, he will have to make sure that you feel helpless.»
— Masha Gessen, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2017), p. 467 f.
The perfidy of this mechanism is that the person who instills the insecurity and anxiety poses as safeguard against it. And while people trust him to "restore" "stability", all he does, under the guise of stability, is create more instability. The war never ends and is not allowed to ever end. This is true of Putin as it is of Trump.
#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 22-Mar-2025 22:21:13 JST
simsa03
The cruel, erratic, and contradictory character of Trump's and his coterie's actions is intentional. It's "strongman", i.e., mobster behaviour, to keep opponents in a reactive mode. In its unpredictability it serves as Rorschach test for everybody's fears and anxiety. And people spend their time and energy on trying to make sense of it all and on reducing the cognitive dissonance put upon them. Become a Rorschach test seems to be the most effective tool in power plays, esp. when you didn't gain it fully yet. Sadly, mostly intelligent and knowledgeable people fall for it. In case of Trump this is his main base of opposition.
#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 22-Mar-2025 22:03:29 JST
simsa03
Without malicious intent, I think your post is a good example of how the actions of Trump and his coterie serve primarily as a Rorschach test for everybody's fears and anxiety. Become or be a Rorschach test looks to me to be the most effective tool in power plays. And it's mostly intelligent and knowledgable people who fall for it. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 21-Mar-2025 00:43:13 JST
simsa03
Alex Reisner, "The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem" https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/libgen-meta-openai/682093/?gift=iWa_iB9lkw4UuiWbIbrWGYDRoX8kfg3ZQZL6J-W0kQE -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 09:15:34 JST
simsa03
Just a reminder that Article 5 of the The North Atlantic Treaty (1949) simply doesn't oblige any member state to mobilise its armed forces. Each member state decides individually what it contributes to help reach the status quo ante. The support may include armed forces but it doesn't need to.
« Article 5
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security. »
That is: Even the proclamation of an Article 5 incident doesn't mean a military combat situation for each and every member state of NATO.
And so when Russia is said to be willing to test NATO in the near future for its readiness to adhere to Article 5, the supposition that this means Russia will be testing whether each and every member state is willing to engage militarily is an erroneous depiction of the situation.
Likewise, Russia's threat to reserve the use of nuclear weapons should this or that red line be crossed, which lead some European states (foremost Germany) to self-deter from support of Ukraine, displays an erroneous understanding.
Article 5 is way too "weak" to oblige any member state to contribute armed forces in a conflict with Russia. And that means that Russia cannot "test" the willingness of NATO to follow through on Article 5 simply by attacking a small city like Narva in Estonia with a considerable Russian minority. Every NATO member reaction would be an Article 5 contribution, and Russia cannot assess thereof what the NATO member states are furthermore willing to do to act in compliance with Article 5.
Thus these kind of war-gaming makes no sense for either party.
#Russia #NATO -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 07:12:19 JST
simsa03
Serbia's president Aleksandar Vučić has resigned!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67654166
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 04:31:17 JST
simsa03
Attention and respect may takes various forms. One is meaning. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 02:54:54 JST
simsa03
Protests in Serbia and Hungary, now in Turkey where Islamist autocrat Erdogan has put his main rival in the upcoming presidential elections, Ekrem Imamoglu under arrest, stripped him of his university degree. (To apply for candidacy, yevery presidential candiate needs a higher education degree.)
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 00:14:23 JST
simsa03
Don't worry. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 00:10:01 JST
simsa03
This is to me the best explanation so far of the Russian negotating strategy in the Trump-Putin-conversations on a ceasefire in Ukraine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXkuurLupY (after 2:15). English subtitles available.
(Christoph Wanner is a correspondet of the conservative German news outlet Welt. But he studied (perhaps even majored in) law and Slavonic studies before becoming a correspondent in Russia and now Ukraine. He has a balanced, nuanced approach, always telling when he is stating his own opinions or when an information he presents is not or only to an extent corroborated.) -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Mar-2025 23:49:37 JST
simsa03
Good idea. Thanks. I'll think about that. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Mar-2025 23:48:38 JST
simsa03
This may be a reason why to you the new visual impressions don't come across as steelish or bluish. I don't doubt that I will adapt but I muse about the impact on my thinking and perceiving. Will both get harsher, more either-or, this-or-that, clear-cut? Will ambiguities and vagueness, very important to me ("Let the complexity of the world be"), disappear and be replaced by dumb single-mindedness? I find that a scary possible long-term outcome. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Mar-2025 23:42:17 JST
simsa03
In Greek, καταρράκτης means "waterfall". The connection was already established long before Galen. The assumption was that in the development of a cataract substances run down behind the pupil – perhaps what we nowadays call floaters – and that the visual impression was like "seeing through a waterfall". -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Mar-2025 22:56:55 JST
simsa03
♪ Barry McGuire, "Eve of Destruction" (1965) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPIcwjFB1PY
Didn't listen to it for decades. I dimly remember that when I was a toddler the teenage nanny used to play it on the turntable, about the time of the first moon landing. It's even more up-to-date than I thought.
!listening -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Mar-2025 11:42:30 JST
simsa03
You give me my right eye, not my left. :-) Perhaps I skip the second surgery? -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Mar-2025 11:32:03 JST
simsa03
♪ Chicho Sanchez Ferlosio, "Gallo Rojo, Gallo Negro" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-41zdnkm4GA
!listening -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Mar-2025 11:26:50 JST
simsa03
♪ "¡Ay Carmela!" (Rolando Alarcon) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xanlmhjf1jc
!listening -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Mar-2025 11:22:20 JST
simsa03
Yes. And I can't help that I feel strongly the atmospheric difference that like effects my mood. It's almost as intensive as some odour in the air, flashing up memories from past and future.
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