"In Washington, many in the policy community have not fully acknowledged that Europeans do not consider the current administration an aberration. Instead, many on the continent see it as a wake-up call to more fundamentally and permanently reduce their reliance on the US"

Russian troll bot trying to post in Finnish: RUSSIA BOVINE IT THERE!! Some troll farmer must be yearning for the meat grinder!

Simply put, Ukraine has the most battle-tested armed forces in Europe, with experience in the modern battle space on land and sea. It should be no surprise that they regular defeat NATO forces in war games - they have much to teach us.

"... the AI answers sound sure: they don’t equivocate, and even provide “sources” for the original image... ... Follow the thread to examine those, however, and you’ll begin to hit dead ends: either the image doesn’t appear at all, or the link provided is to a news report that doesn’t exist."

We live in the spoof timeline. No respectable screenwriter would ever write this into a movie villain's characterization because it would be too absurd and juvenile to be credible for anything else than a spoof.

"They [grand movements] flourish in moments of collective grievance, when the rhetoric of unity is powerful and the costs of solidarity remain low. But they fracture once a real crisis forces governments to choose between the collective cause and their own national interests."

"Contrary to popular belief, rules of engagement are not some legal or ethical nicety (although crafting effective rules of engagement lean on both disciplines). Rather, rules of engagement are first and foremost an expression of strategy."

Actually, Americans are just like you. ~20-30% of them genuinely support fascism, as in ~every 🇪🇺 country. You are just more fortunate to have political institutions & a multiparty system that prevent that 20-30% from fully capturing the center-right party, becoming 51%, & controlling the government.

"Reaching net zero would cost about £4bn a year, the CCC found, or close to £100bn by 2050, which was roughly equivalent to the energy-related costs of the fossil fuel shocks that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine."

This particular judge aptly summarizes the common results of using AI: "At best this is chronic sloppiness."

Just as Putin’s arrogance blinded him to the risks of war in Ukraine, Trump’s construction of an echo chamber in the executive branch has warped his judgment.

Real estate agents in nuclear negotiations.

A study of social media content 18-24-year olds see in #Finland, #France and #Romania shows that algorithms overwhelmingly feed them right-wing political content - whether or not the users are interested. Three country average for right wing content was 58% - in Finland, 67%! yle.fi/a/74-20214134

If one has to choose, maybe it's better to look at the actions rather than listen to the words.

Many videos I have seen portray ICE agents as amateurish when they are arresting someone. This explains it; many ARE amateurs who never received proper training.

When everybody is digging for gold, It’s good to be in the pick and shovel business: "A lot of the AI investment that we’re seeing in the U.S. adds to Taiwanese GDP, and it adds to Korean GDP but not really that much to U.S. GDP"

Donald Trump aims to achieve energy ’dominance’ by growing the fossil fuel, nuclear and critical minerals sectors to fill domestic markets and lead global ones. Renewables are pushed aside.

Small developments are happening on many fronts. This alone doesn't probably mean much in the short term, but these things tend to accumulate over time and eventually become significant. www.businessinsider.com/treasury-bon...

If someone wants a GREAT example of structural corruption in a developed country, look no further than the regulation of mining in Finland. Regulatory capture almost fails to describe it, and revolving door is used so hard that its bearings must be glowing red with heat.

I've been seeing a lot of people disparaging democracy as a failure. It has not failed us. We however as a nation have been failing it. For it to succeed, it needs an engaged and informed populace. Which is why those who want power but not responsibility, attack Free speech and public education

I'm gonna be real with you "common knowledge" that scammers are purposely idiots just to screen out the smart people from wasting their time always struck me as entirely horseshit, but I think they're doing it for real now. I spent lots of time their English really was that bad, before LLM's.

An important aspect when considering how fast Finland should reduce the budget imbalance.

The real lesson of Gaullism we in the Eastern Flank *must* learn is not “USA bad, France good” but “would [a distant power] risk [its capital] for [one of our capitals]? We. Need. Independent. Deterrent.

The X factor for durably shifting political views www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"For much of the country, AI has come to mean ChatGPT, Google’s AI overviews, and the slop that now clogs social-media feeds. Meanwhile, tech hobbyists are becoming radicalized by bots that can work for hours on end, collapsing months of work into weeks, or weeks into an afternoon."

Why might have reached a point where it's newsworthy when some current development is, against all odds, something that was not previously a Black Mirror episode.

"The Ministry of the Interior wants to give the Emergency Response Centre Agency's 112 Suomi smartphone app the ability to issue alerts about airborne threats." The special treats for living next to Russia. yle.fi/a/74-2021053...

#ITeachPhysics another relative velocity video for you

What does Europe do when an ally is "disappearing people into prisons where they are subject to torture and held incommunicado, or to internally disappear them into U.S. detention centers where their whereabouts can be vanished from the ICE database at will"? www.inquirer.com/opinion/ice-...

A feminist text, but the future it paints impacts everyone: "... contemporary venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says that the goal of AI development is to “crash” human wages". -- But then people have no income and cannot buy things, which kills SMEs in particular, and stagnates the progress.

"Ajatellaan, että yksilö sortuu työkuorman alle, koska hän on heikko. Olen hoitanut työuupuneita parikymmentä vuotta, eikä se vastaa todellisuutta. ... Mikään jumppa tai jooga tai vihersmoothie ei auta. Ongelma on se, että työn hallinta katoaa." yle.fi/a/74-20208542

disconnect.blog/getting-off-... wanna get off US tech? It’s hard I know. But bit by bit is the way to go. This guide by @parismarx.com is excellent. One to bookmark and implement slowly

PwC somehow more lucid on AI and education than most university leaders these days

This one is about tricking users more than AI, but expect to see more attacks on older tools as AI and online features are added to them. Especially because often the LLMs handles both the instructions and data together, which allows malicious content to poison the workflow.

"People can have different political opinions about immigration policy. Political differences are fine, healthy for a democracy. But if you’re okay with this, that’s not a political opinion. That is a moral failing."

"His collaborators are beginning to realize that they succumbed to irrational exuberance and made a huge bet on a lame horse."

TL;DR: Probably not. Worth reading, though.

So I just learned about the 1986 airplane hijacking attempt in #Oulu, #Finland, and now you too are going to. Because I burst out laughing in a train reading about it. It has: ✔️beer (lots)! ✔️hijinks! ✔️weird occult Nazis! ✔️✔️✔️"HYPNOTIC-MAGNETIC GAZE!" Why oh why this isn't a movie yet! (a THREAD.)

Hopefully nobody needs this information, but there it is... TL;DR: Use clean water, plenty of it.

A more nuanced look at potential Nordic nuclear weapons acquisition amid the early stages of the nuclear proliferation era.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

I suspect that the echo chamber of Truth Social and conservative media, along with X becoming a safe space for racism and extremism under Musk, has given our Republican leaders a deeply skewed idea of what ordinary Americans find acceptable www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

European countries are going to have to recognize the reality that over the next 3 years the US govt is going to operate like Russia - engaging in systematic efforts to tamper in their elections to elect far-right parties & candidates. It will be worse if Vance becomes president.

A #defence tidbit. After #Finland joined #NATO, we've noted that many foreign #military professionals have problems understanding our reserve-based (or cadre) system. They tend to believe "conscripts" are poorly trained and unmotivated. Then they learn they've been working with reservists. 1/

We've had two orders this year which is frankly unsustainable from a business and income standpoint 😅 So uh, check out all our cool products like gelly cube soaps (with full dice set inside) at www.tabletoptinkering.com Free UK shipping over £30! #smallbusiness #ttrpg #dice #dnd

Contrary to popular belief, there are still people in the United States who are able to examine facts and think independently, and who have the power to draw lines for those who may not be able to do so themselves.

CNN's take on how Trump's government might attempt to discredit the next U.S. elections. edition.cnn.com/2026/02/03/p...

A staple of authoritarian states: using their executive power to arbitrarily revoke privileges & selectively punish political opponents, in this case for peaceful and lawful behaviour. The courts are failing under this broad assault on the rule of law.