Taxonomic metonymy

USA; MI➡️NC; EN, FR, ES, RU; ML; TME; over 30 🇱🇧 🇵🇸 Translator, nature photographer, gardener, and native plant enthusiast

[boschintegral-photo]

Tansy (Tanacetum Vulgare)

[nyantara]

Based on tanker-tracking data from Bloomberg and reports on discounts applied to Venezuelan crude, the estimated value of U.S.-controlled oil exports has increased from $600 million in January (about 380,000 barrels per day) to about $3.7 billion in April alone (about 1.1 million barrels per day). The largest recipients of Venezuelan oil since January 3 have been the United States (43 percent), India (26 percent), and Spain (8 percent) [...]

US. President Donald Trump appears satisfied with the arrangement and has praised Rodríguez for doing a “great job.” Rubio also told Congress that Venezuela has agreed to submit monthly budget requests for State Department approval to receive its share of oil revenue.[...]

The Trump administration has issued temporary sanctions relief in the form of waivers (general licenses) that authorize U.S. companies and individuals to do business in various aspects of Venezuela’s oil, mining, and financial sectors. These waivers can be revoked at any time and have been issued in a policy vacuum. [...]

Despite Rubio’s insistence before Congress that commodities trading companies Trafigura and Vitol were a “short-term fix” to quickly sell the first tranche of oil, both companies—each of which has a history of bribery schemes related to oil sales—remain involved in Venezuela five months later. A third trader, GE Warren, has since entered the picture, and the Trump administration has offered no explanation for their ongoing role. [...]

The system’s opacity is not limited to oil. The Trump administration is also controlling Venezuelan gold and other mineral exports. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, after leading a delegation of mining executives to Venezuela in March, indicated that he secured “$100 million of gold” and helped broker a deal for Venezuela to sell up to one thousand kilograms of gold to trader Trafigura. Based on the restrictions in the waivers published by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control related to gold and other minerals, export revenue is also going into U.S. Treasury accounts under the same opaque system as the oil funds.

The U.S. Took Over Venezuela’s Oil Industry. Where Has All the Money Gone? | Council on Foreign Relations

The American and Venezuelan people remain in the dark about how the Trump administration is controlling billions of dollars of Venezuelan oi

cw: written by democrat neoimperialists that later argues for continuing sanctions for even more regime change

[herpsandbirds]

Yellow-rumped Marshbird (Pseudoleistes guirahuro), family Icteridae, order Passeriformes, found in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay

photographs: Dario Sanches, Adrian Grilli, Lois Carlos Ramasotti, Walisson Registros

[hagiomoto]

Amnesty International backing down (hiding its report) when threatened with JKR's lawsuits just shows how weak the liberal human rights framework really is. It never seems to flinch when governments criticize it, but the moment an influential Westerner pushes back, it suddenly loses its nerve.

[hagiomoto]

Yes, this is the organisation that regularly condemns Palestinian armed resistance and also responsible for manufacturing consent for Libya etc

[herpsandbirds]

Golden-breasted Starling (Lamprotornis regius), family Sturnidae, order Passeriformes, Tanzania

photograph by Ben Knoot 

[wenbochenphoto]

Ledothamnus is a small genus in the heath family of Ericaceae and this (L. guianensis) is the type species. Compared to other heath plants which produce dense clusters of tiny bell flowers, this species features massive, open-faced single blooms.

[go-learn-esperanto]

Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.

They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.

Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.

You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.

This article specifically notes:

For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.

Microsoft admits Windows 11 has a GDID tracker with no off switch, first documented publicly in an FBI hacker complaint

GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.

Other important quotes:

What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.

Two things back that up:

There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.

Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.

[fus-mar-hoz]

is it "cruelty is the point" or does extreme reactionarism have greater motivations than those posed by psychoanalyzing the other

[fus-mar-hoz]

this kind of statement is the corollary to stating that your politics is "kindness". we are good and they are evil. you can read up more on this worldview through the works of Rebecca Sugar, Suzanne Collins and J. R. R. Tolkien

[hagiomoto]

Never forget what Saudi Arabia did to Yemen

[studentofetherium]

anti-AI attitudes are an excuse for people to hate children

[gotouhitori]

Also, kids get criticised for not being perfectly formally correct in their writing, then accused of cheating for being formally correct in their writing.

[studentofetherium]

such and such that they say about tall poppies

[exitwound]

interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume?

me: mhm so that’s called a lacuna. it refers to when manuscripts have missing parts, lost to time. for example, the epic of gilgamesh has

[occidentalist]

I keep seeing posts along the lines of “you can’t say nuke the US you have to say landback, when discussing the imperial core you have to make exemptions for indigenous Americans, etc.” And first off. Stop tone policing the primary targets of US imperialism, we will express our frustrations with your continued slaughter of our people and destruction of lands however we see fit. But also like. Ok. We must exempt indigenous Americans when talking about imperialism. Sure. Answer me this real quick though, have indigenous Americans, historically, exempt themselves from the crimes of empire? Actually you don’t have to answer, I already know. The answer is no. Native Americans have the highest per-capita military enlistment rate of any ethnic group in the United States. Close to one out of every five native Americans have served in the US army.

It is not unreasonable to extrapolate then that for many in my region, who have never been to the US, their only real-life encounters with indigenous Americans would have been whenever they’d come over wearing uniforms to slaughter/displace us and steal our resources. Just like European colonisers did to their ancestors. Identical in role and function to their non-indigenous counterparts. And such is pretty much true of all marginalised citizens of the imperial core! and it is a glaring contradiction to their histories of marginalisation/colonisation, but it is not on us to will that inconvenient reality away just because the idea of internationalist decolonial solidarity, one that has never really materially existed in any meaningfully capacity, is a prettier story to tell than what is actually going on. It is on you all to make that no longer the reality.

I think if you’re a USAmerican anti-imperialist, you should reconcile with those facts first—the complicity, however minor, of literally all communities and demographic groups living within the imperial core, including your own—and work on that before you start demanding exemptions from anything the people of the imperial periphery have found pertinent to include you in. God bless

[anarchopuppy]

Tesla has the highest rate of fatal accidents among all car brands, report shows

A new analysis of National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration auto crash data shows that Tesla has the highest rate of fatal a

holy shit

i knew teslas were bad but "literally twice as deadly as the average vehicle" is something else

[iridescent-wildlife]

White Ibis (Eudocimus albus) on the right. Family Threskiornithidae, order Pelecaniformes.

Brazoria, Texas, USA. April 2026.

[herpsandbirds]

Turquoise-browed Motmot (Eumomota superciliosa), family Momotidae, order Coraciiformes, Costa Rica

photograph by Leonardo Valverde

[faguscarolinensis]

Rehmannia elata / Chinese Foxglove at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC

[herpsandbirds]

Hieroglyphic Flat (Odina hieroglyphica ortina), family Hesperiidae, Singapore

photograph by Ben Yeo