• 158 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: October 4th, 2023
  • tal@lemmy.todaytoNews@lemmy.world•US alleges sanctioned Russian oligarch’s niece made payments for his $300M yacht.English
    5·
    3 hours ago

    Beyond the status symbol

    I’m pretty sure that that’s a large part of it. If it weren’t, the race to have the largest and most expensive yacht wouldn’t be such a thing.

    I guess it’s an isolated environment with controlled access, so you don’t have to deal with paparazzi or whatever.

    considers

    I guess you’re only subject to the laws of the flag state. I don’t suppose that that matters much for Russian oligarchs.

    There are a couple laws in the US where the US will still assert extraterritorial jurisdiction over its citizens, even if they’re in territory normally outside of US jurisdiction. One of those is child sex tourism – and it looks like a similar thing is done by the EU and UK – so you can’t just go out on your yacht and have sex with twelve-year-olds to your heart’s content. But for most other stuff, I believe that as long as you select your ship’s flag carefully, it’s probably more-or-less outside the law for most purposes. For some people, that might be rather significant.

  • tal@lemmy.todaytoNot The Onion@lemmy.world•Putin encourages Russians to have sex at work amid falling birth rateEnglish
    91·
    5 hours ago

    I’d also add that I don’t know if this is necessarily the best move the Kremlin could be making from a propaganda standpoint, given that this is wartime and soldiers are being sent to the front. Back during WW2, there was a substantial bit of sex-oriented propaganda that took the form of mostly-pornographic material trying to get soldiers worried that wives would be sleeping with other men back home while they were away (or sometimes with other soldiers from other allied countries). I’d wonder whether the Kremlin putting out material like this is liable to help recreate a similar psychological warfare push, just…on themselves.

    Obviously, NSFW images:

    https://www.psywarrior.com/sexandprop.html

    I won’t embed the images in this comment, but some extracts of text as an example.

    A second set of six see-through cards depicts French soldiers dying of wounds, with one soldier holding a photo of a woman. The initial printing was about 400,000 of each card and they were dropped from early May to early June 1940. The see-through sexual scenes depict a soldier and a nude woman sitting on a bed; a soldier and nude woman lying on a bed; a smiling soldier and a crying woman sitting on a bed, both partially clothed; a soldier sitting on a couch with a woman on his lap; a soldier standing and nude woman sitting in a salon; and a soldier, nude girl, and angry mother standing in a room.

    A third set of six German propaganda “see-through” cards for French troops were inscribed “Les mylords a l’etape” (“Gentlemen at rest ”), and depicted dead or dying French soldiers on the ground, with hidden pictures showing nude or partially nude women when held to the light. These cards were prepared but never disseminated.

    A fourth set of five “Les mylords a l’etape” see-through cards depicted three French soldiers crushed under rubble and the usual scenes of French women with British soldiers when held to the light. These cards were prepared but never disseminated. A sixth card might exist but has not been found as yet.

    Another “divide and conquer” leaflet depicts a British Army officer holding the breast of a semi-naked French woman while her husband is shown in a front-line trench peeping out from behind barbed wire. These leaflets were produced during the “Phony War” of 1940 in an attempt to convince the French that they were being sacrificed at the Front while the British vacationed with their women behind the lines.

    The Germans produced another two sets of see-through leaflets in 1940. The first consisted of seven cards and the text “Les mylords a l’etape,” (“Gentlemen at rest.”). Once again, the cards show dying French troops and British soldiers with French women. A second set of five cards shows three French soldiers crushed under rubble while the British officers play with the French women.

    The Germans used the same see-through propaganda once again in 1944 to divide the British from their American allies. The method was cruder. While in the earlier full-color cards they had cleverly placed one sheet on top of another to make a very clear picture when the light came through, this time they simply printed the front and the back so that when the light came through the two sides were combined. The cards were on a cheap paper sized about 4 x 6-inches. They printed four series of leaflets on a very thin paper with crude see-through images and text. They are AW33 through AW36, each we believe with additional leaflets with an added a-e. This would seem to indicate 24 leaflets in all, though we cannot be sure that the Germans used all the available codes. The leaflets of the first three series show a dead Tommy lying on his back, lying face down in barbed wire, or in the barbed wire staring wide-eyed at the viewer. The secret images show an American soldier raping a girl, fondling partially undressed women, or having sex with a nude woman on a bed. The messages are short. Examples are, “Your fight / his warfare,” “While you face death,” “Die! / to keep him living,” “Your allies are assisting you / on all fronts” and Where are your Yanks?” These leaflets were designed for Allied troops on the Western Front by the German Skorpion West propaganda organization. It is believed they were printed by the German propaganda company in Paris.

    All “The Girl you Left Behind” leaflets are crude drawing in a monotone. These leaflets told the story of the mythical Sam Levy; a Jew who was growing rich and enjoying the favors of a Christian girl while her boyfriend was fighting on the front lines.

    The final leaflet depicts seems to be the final one in the set. Vivian and Bill are in bed and Frank enters, cane in hand. Text on the front is:

    In walked a man in a soldier’s uniform…

    Text on the back is:

    BILL THE CONQUEROR. “It is better to have a high-paving defense job than to be torn to piece by an enemy shell,” thought home front warrior Bill Turner when he jauntily pocketed his fat paycheck. He couldn’t help laughing at how he had fooled the Draft Board. Besides, he had another good reason to be in a happy mood. Lovely Vivian Hope, the girl he adored, had hinted that she might accept him, when the other day he had asked her out of a clear sky to marry him. Vivian was working in the same plant as stenographer. and she and Bill Turner had been much together for some time. But between her and Bill stood Frank Merritt to whom she had promised herself. Two years ago - it seemed ages to Vivian - Frank had been shipped overseas to face shells and bullets and perhaps die for the cause of ambitious politicians and war profiteers. For over eight months, Vivian had not heard from Frank. Could he be among the missing? So many young chaps would never return. Perhaps it was a bit reckless of her to ask Bill up to her furnished room on her twenty-fourth birthday to a dainty little dinner she prepared herself. Bill was in good form that night. He had been reading so much in the papers about reconnoitering patrols, shock action, assaulting parties and combined operations that he felt the urge to vie with the best soldier at the front. And “his war” in the seclusion of a scented bedroom was so easy to conduct compared with the hardships and constant danger of death hundreds of thousands of his countrymen were facing every day. However, even the greatest strategists sometimes overlook a trifling but decisive precautionary measure. Bill had forgotten to lock the door. Suddenly it burst open and in walked a man in a soldier’s uniform. It was Frank Merritt, who badly wounded had been taken prisoner-of-war. For months, he had been lying in a hospital between life and death before being finally exchanged when his condition had improved. Frank came rushing home to surprise Vivian on her birthday - only to find all his happiness shattered to pieces by a draft dodger. have you seen the other pictures of “HOME FRONT WARRIORS”? AI-159-11-44.

    Another Propaganda-Abschnitts-Offizier leaflet depicts a smiling naked British girl rolling up her stocking while a U.S. Army Staff-sergeant fixes his tie nearby. Text on the front is:

    While you are away.

    The back depicts a disfigured British soldier dead on the battlefield. The text is:

    The Yanks are ‘lend-leasing’ your women. Their pockets full of cash and no work to do, the boys from overseas are having the time of their lives in Merry Old England. And what young woman, single or married, could resist such “handsome brute from the wide open spaces” to have dinner with, a cocktail at some nightclub, and afterwards… Anyway, so numerous have become the scandals that all England is talking about them now. Most of you are convinced that the war will be over in four months. Too bad if it should hit you in the last minute.

    This leaflet is actually rather clever. It mentions “Lend-lease,” a program where the United States sent weapons and materiel to Great Britain to be paid for after the war. It talks about pockets full of money, which would remind the British of their saying about the Yanks, “overpaid. oversexed, and over here.” Finally, the term “wide open spaces” reminds us that many Europeans believed that America was still the land where the “Cowboys and Indians” rode the open plains. The leaflet is coded AI-046-8-44.

    The Government of Japan attempted many times to alienate the allied forces protecting Australia. The Japanese aimed their “Divide and conquer” tactics at the Aussie Troops fighting in New Guinea and Papua.

    On one full-color anti-American leaflet, we find a slick American officer holding a young semi-exposed lady who is in the process of struggling for her freedom. We see some buttocks and cleavage. A ragged Australian soldier stands on a depiction of New Guinea. Text over him is, “Australia screams.” The Aussie: “What was that scream. Something up?” Meanwhile the American officer tries to quiet his victim and says, "The Yank: “Sh…Sh…Quiet Girlie, Calm yourself. He’ll be on the next casualty list. No worry.”

  • tal@lemmy.todaytoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Series: Do we have the technology to [genetically engineer real Blue Raspberries/flavor]?English
    21·
    8 hours ago

    We’ve genetically engineered other colored foods before, like golden rice.

    We’ve genetically-engineered many bioluminescent plants and animals.

    kagis

    We’ve genetically-engineered blue flowers:

    https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-genetically-engineer-world-s-first-blue-chrysanthemum

    We all think we’ve seen blue flowers before. And in some cases, it’s true. But according to the Royal Horticultural Society’s color scale—the gold standard for flowers—most “blues” are really violet or purple. Florists and gardeners are forever on the lookout for new colors and varieties of plants, however, but making popular ornamental and cut flowers, like roses, vibrant blue has proved quite difficult. “We’ve all been trying to do this for a long time and it’s never worked perfectly,” says Thomas Colquhoun, a plant biotechnologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville who was not involved with the work.

    True blue requires complex chemistry. Anthocyanins—pigment molecules in the petals, stem, and fruit—consist of rings that cause a flower to turn red, purple, or blue, depending on what sugars or other groups of atoms are attached. Conditions inside the plant cell also matter. So just transplanting an anthocyanin from a blue flower like a delphinium didn’t really work.

    Naonobu Noda, a plant biologist at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, tackled this problem by first putting a gene from a bluish flower called the Canterbury bell into a chrysanthemum. The gene’s protein modified the chrysanthemum’s anthocyanin to make the bloom appear purple instead of reddish. To get closer to blue, Noda and his colleagues then added a second gene, this one from the blue-flowering butterfly pea. This gene’s protein adds a sugar molecule to the anthocyanin. The scientists thought they would need to add a third gene, but the chrysanthemum flowers were blue with just the two genes, they report today in Science Advances.

    “That allowed them to get the best blue they could obtain,” says Neil Anderson, a horticultural scientist at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul who was not involved with the work.

    Chemical analyses showed that the blue color came about in just two steps because the chrysanthemums already had a colorless component that interacted with the modified anthocyanin to create the blue color. “It was a stroke of luck,” Colquhoun says. Until now, researchers had thought it would take many more genes to make a flower blue, Nakayama adds.

    The next step for Noda and his colleagues is to make blue chrysanthemums that can’t reproduce and spread into the environment, making it possible to commercialize the transgenic flower. But that approach could spell trouble in some parts of the world. “As long as GMO [genetically modified organism] continues to be a problem in Europe, blue [flowers] face a difficult economic future,” predicts Ronald Koes, a plant molecular biologist at the University of Amsterdam who was not involved with the work. But others think this new blue flower will prevail. “It’s certainly an advance for the retail florist,” Anderson says. “It would have a lot of market value worldwide.”

    I imagine that it’s quite possibly within the realm of what we could do.

  • tal@lemmy.todaytoNews@lemmy.world•Waffle House employee killed after customer becomes irate, police sayEnglish
    221·
    1 day ago

    I’d guess at least some chance of drugs being involved.

    I was just in a restaurant where some presumably meth head got a sandwich. Kept talking to the air, doing circuits around the place, couldn’t sit still for a minute, was getting himself agitated talking to the air.

    I remember watching Donut Operator – an ex-cop who used to be on a SWAT team and who does commentary on a bunch of YouTube videos. He’s said a number of times that the people that he least liked having to deal with when working as an officer were the meth addicts. Really unpredictable, could wind up becoming violent after acting normal a moment earlier.

  • tal@lemmy.todaytoNews@lemmy.world•FBI says there appeared to be an assassination attempt on Trump at his Florida golf courseEnglish
    139·
    1 day ago

    I don’t think that that’s grifting.

    Like, there’s no fraud or misleading material here. Trump’s campaign is (presumably) providing exactly what one would expect for the donation: trying to improve Trump’s chances at the White House. They’re maybe taking every chance to push for money, but constantly trying to sell stuff alone isn’t grifting.

    If it were trying to get people to invest in Trump Media & Technology Group or something, where I think that a lot of small investors have a rather-confused take on the company’s prospects, then I’d be more-inclined to agree.