Candelestine

Simplifies your wardrobe a lot, that's probably my favorite thing about mono-season climates.

Pandaplomacy is absolutely a thing. That said, much like in the Cold War, it's good for nuclear superpowers with big armies to have a certain degree of open communication and, if not warm, at least cordial relations. Helps defuse potential problems early, before they turn into news articles.

So, I welcome the move on that basis alone.

On top of that, the move does have symbolic power, as the panda occupies a similar place in China as bald eagles do here in the US. Anything that warms feelings between Chinese and American citizens themselves is probably a good thing.

What a good time to donate to the Katie Porter campaign. Or even volunteer, if you live in Cali and have the time.

That's a sacrifice to create a triple fork. Queen takes bishop, knight takes c7 pawn, forking the king, queen and rook.

It's forced, since the queen is pinned initially. Also leaves the knight on that cosy b5 square when you're finished.

edit: Coming back to this one, I think you're right actually. Though white does have Qf5 in response, inviting the queen trade. This opens a few different lines, two of which do look good for white if black declines, kinda approaching a potential mate if black queen returns to d8, which seems strongest to me. I can't find the finish though. If black trades, white is still in a decent position, since the knight fork is open then, and the center file opens up a little.

Neat puzzle.

Large and powerful, yes. But powerful enough? Let's find out.

Personally I prefer a system with robust checks and balances that prevent idiots from using it to enhance their own glory at the expense of their people.

Very likely. Those are not secure in the long-run either though, hence the need for an overabundance. No single online service should be genuinely fully trusted. You need a lot of duplication for any kind of real future-proofing.

Vice did a lot of very good, and generally in-moderate-depth reporting over the years. Hope an overabundance of people scrape that shit while we still have an opportunity. Once its hosted somewhere safe, you could probably even dump access to it somewhere like ... the fediverse.

Yea, there is. We called it WW2.

Don't start shit and there won't be shit. That part is unbiased.

One of the big disadvantages we have is that we're still somewhat under-developed, due to being newish still, alongside not having corporate-levels of resources to pour into development.

This leaves us open to things like the recent spam flood. These things will get ironed out over time, but until they do, they'll inevitably harm the platform's growth.

In just the past 6 months though, apps have rolled out and steadily improved, some security issues have been addressed, and larger communities have built-out their admin capacity. So, we're approaching being primed for growth, but that recent spam flood took me aback for a second.

You want to make a strong first impression, since it carries a lot of influence and you only get one shot. So, before we really do heavy campaigning to try to draw people, we want to make sure they'll have a good experience while they're here. I think we're close, but not quite there yet.

Progress has been steady and overall positive though. One thing I think that gets underestimated is the importance of the size of our body of old content, and how much it helps to grow that. The meme communities having pages and pages of memes to scroll, the news communities having articles on everything in triplicate, the tech communities having thousands of interesting old convos to look at, the art communities being crammed full of art, etc etc.

That body of old stuff ends up being a kind of bedrock that future users will be more interested in building off of. Then the niche communities will start to pop more imo.

Something, something, technology indistinguishable from magic, something, education funding, something, something.

It's actually not, since they are a military ally, and in a war. If we stab them in the back mid-war, that makes our alliances worth less.

This is the big reason we keep vetoing the ones that are only words. Weakens our alliances, and for nothing except some shame. When Netanyahu is shameless.

But, if there was a mechanism, it might be worth it.

How about a one week time window before consequences kick in, starting with mild economic sanctions and slowly scaling up over time until a ceasefire is reached?