Infosec.Pub

Hey everyone! In case you haven't noticed, this is a new community focused on NonPolitical Comics (NPCs), which essentially means no gloom and doom of the day stuff.

If you like the idea, we need help! Check out the pinned post on the community.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/58902873

Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.

Think about where this is leading. One possibility, anticipated this morning by financial markets, is a damaging trade war. Another is an American military occupation of Greenland. Try to imagine it: The U.S. Marines arrive in Nuuk, the island’s capital. Perhaps they kill some Danes; perhaps some American soldiers die too. And then what? If the invaders were Russians, they would arrest all of the politicians, put gangsters in charge, shoot people on the street for speaking Danish, change school curricula, and carry out a fake referendum to rubber-stamp the conquest. Is that the American plan too? If not, then what is it? This would not be the occupation of Iraq, which was difficult enough. U.S. troops would need to force Greenlanders, citizens of a treaty ally, to become American against their will.

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What began as a joke on social media has snowballed into one of the most talked-about political satire campaigns in Europe this year. More than 200,000 Danish citizens have now signed a viral petition proposing that Denmark buy the U.S. state of California, a tongue-in-cheek response to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s past interest in acquiring Greenland.

Under the fictional proposal, Californians would be welcomed into the Kingdom of Denmark with a package of benefits that reads like a parody of Nordic governance. The petition promises “rule of law, universal health care, and fact-based politics” as immediate perks of Danish administration.

To underscore the absurdity, the organizers also pledge a lifetime supply of Danish pastries for all 39 million residents of the state. The petition’s website jokingly notes that while Denmark cannot solve every problem, “we are very confident about pastries.”

The satirical plan goes further, outlining a full cultural “Denmarkification” of the West Coast. Los Angeles would be rechristened “Løs Ångeles,” while Danish-style cycling infrastructure would spread across cities more famous for traffic jams than bicycles.

Even California’s most iconic institutions are not spared. Disneyland would be rebranded as “Hans Christian Andersenland,” a nod to Denmark’s most famous storyteller, Hans Christian Andersen. The petition cheerfully asks readers to imagine fairy tales replacing cartoon mascots, and even suggests that Viking helmets might become standard park attire.

^Usernames^ ^removed^ ^to^ ^prevent^ ^brigading^

https://www.reddit.com/r/mangapiracy/comments/1qh1ptd/official_confirmation_that_the_batoto_site_is_gone/

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Shannon Bream that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not, nor are they planning to, investigate Jonathan Ross—the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Renée Nicole Good in her car in Minneapolis earlier this month.

“We don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody or putting his life in danger,” Blanche, formerly Donald Trump’s personal attorney, said. The Trump administration began asserting immediately after the killing that Good was a “rioter” who committed an “act of domestic terrorism,” continuing a long pattern of responding to deadly tragedies by making baseless and false claims.

“We investigate when it’s appropriate to investigate and that is not the case here, it wasn’t the case when it happened, and it’s not the case today,” Blanche insisted. “If circumstances change, and there’s something that we do need to investigate around that shooting or any other shooting, we will,” he said, adding, “but we are not going to bow to pressure from the media, bow to pressure from politicians.”

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Russian authorities have detained an Indigenous climate advocate, accusing her of participating in a terrorist organization in what international observers are calling “retribution” for her United Nations advocacy on behalf of Indigenous peoples.

Daria Egereva, an Indigenous Selkup woman from the city of Tomsk in western Siberia, has been involved in international advocacy at the United Nations for several years and has been a co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change since 2023—an official forum that facilitates the participation of Indigenous peoples in UN meetings and gatherings, including the annual Conference of the Parties climate change conventions. During COP30 in Brazil, Egereva advocated for the inclusion of Indigenous women in climate negotiations. “If we don’t protect women, we don’t have a future,” she said in a video published on social media on November 21.

According to the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, on December 17, Russian authorities searched Egereva’s home, confiscated her digital devices, and arrested her, in what the organization called “a direct retaliation for her Indigenous rights advocacy,” which included her work at COP30.

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A carnivorous power is one that struggles to curb its appetite and recognize its own limitations. Since the start of 2026, almost one year after he returned to the White House, Donald Trump has sought to seize Venezuela's oil, launch ground operations against drug cartels, notably in Mexico, decapitate the Iranian regime, and, finally, acquire Greenland, whether through persuasion or by force. He has pursued all these goals, all while more extensively deploying the United States military on the domestic front to help police hunt for undocumented migrants, especially in Minnesota. This dizzying display of power has even alarmed his own base, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, not for reasons of principle or legality, but because he has dispersed his efforts and shown a lack of focus on Americans' everyday lives.

US public opinion has overwhelmingly rejected the ambitions expressed by the White House regarding Greenland. According to a CBS-YouGov poll, 86% of Americans surveyed, including 70% of Republicans, opposed using force to take control of the autonomous territory, which falls under Danish sovereignty, and 70% also objected to the idea of purchasing it. Nevertheless, Trump opted to escalate tariff measures on Saturday, January 17, in an effort to twist the Europeans' arm.

Europe has, so far, not been the US's primary target in its use of tariffs as a tool for punishment. At the end of August 2025, Trump decided to impose an additional 25% tariff on India, raising the total levy on goods exported to the US to 50%, because India was buying Russian oil. The measure caused lasting damage to the US's bilateral relationship with New Delhi, and while it led India to reduce its Russian oil purchases, it fell far short of completely stopping the flow, the outcome Trump had wanted. Meanwhile, the case of the eight European countries targeted is more serious, given that they are US allies and members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Furthermore, the United Kingdom is, thanks to its supposed "special relationship" with Washington, one of the few countries to have concluded a bilateral trade deal with the Trump administration. Now, that deal is under threat too.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/45811590

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/45810913

Cows are not usually credited with thinking on the hoof. They eat, they chew, they stand in fields performing an activity that may look like contemplation but is generally written off as digestion.

They are not typically thought to plan, let alone solve problems. A new study suggests we may have underestimated them.

The research describes what experts claim is the first documented case of flexible, multi-purpose tool use in cattle, observed in a cow named Veronika.

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Veronika is a Swiss brown cow kept not for milk or meat but as a pet by Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and baker in Austria. More than a decade ago he noticed her using a long-handled brush, holding it in her mouth to scratch awkward parts of her body.

When video footage of this behaviour reached Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, it struck her as unusual, largely because Veronika used the brush in different ways to scratch different parts of her body.

“It was immediately clear that this was not accidental,” Auersperg said. “This was a meaningful example of tool use in a species that is rarely considered from a cognitive perspective.”

Auersperg and her colleague Antonio Osuna-Mascaró conducted a series of trials. They placed a long-handled brush on the ground and recorded how Veronika used it.

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When scratching broad, thick-skinned regions such as her back or rump, Veronika tended to use the bristled end, applying it with sweeping, forceful movements. When targeting softer, more sensitive areas of her lower body, she switched to using the handle to scratch herself, moving more slowly.

Because Veronika directs tools at her own body, researchers describe this as egocentric tool use, which is usually regarded as less complex than tool use aimed at external objects. Even so, flexible, multi-purpose use of a single tool is rare. Outside humans, it has previously been demonstrated convincingly only in chimpanzees, the researchers say in their paper.

They wrote in a study published in the journal Current Biology that the findings “invite a reassessment of livestock cognition”.

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The researchers suspect that Veronika’s life circumstances have played a role in the emergence of this behaviour. Most cows do not reach her age and they are rarely given the opportunity to interact with a variety of potentially useful objects.

Her long lifespan, daily contact with humans, and access to a rich physical landscape probably created favorable conditions, they said. If that is true, there may be nothing very exceptional about Veronika, other than the opportunities she has been given to exercise her brain.

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