Thanks - I’ve seen Winboat mentioned several times in the comments, I’m going to try that first.

There really are little to no economic concessions Cuba can make, given the status of the blockade on the country. If the “deal” was just to let Trump build his own hotels on the island or something, Cuba might even accept that. Given this and who is in Trump’s cabinet, I think it’s reasonable to assume the only “deal” on the table is to accept being governed as US colony with Rubio as the viceroy.

As brutal as cutting off oil from Venezuela will be, the Cuban people got through the Special Period, I think they will survive Trump.

I haven’t heard of WinBoat before, I will check that out thank you.

It’s been a few years since I tried making my Zune work on Linux, I should give it another try, thanks.

It really is a great little device. I believe there has to be a market out there for a Linux device similar to it, something just for music / radio / podcasts.

It should be possible for a people to say “We would like our autonomy” and expect other nations to say in response, “Understood, and we will ally with you to defend such a notion.”

It should. But then again, the people of Gaza wanted to not be genocided and the world stood by and let it happen. While I fully agree with your sentiment, the specifics of the world right now might require a less than ideal approach.

Europe should say that, of course. But their weak talk so far suggests they probably won’t defend Greenlanders even if they are a part of Denmark; and if so if Greenland were independent at the moment there’s no reason to think that would somehow give them more of a spine.

I understand and agree with the sentiment that Greenland is a colonized place that should be independent. I also understand that telling colonized people “not right now” and “it’s too dangerous” are the lines the colonizers always use. But that might actually be the case in this moment. The reality is that the US/Israel axis is acting as if the world is theirs. It feels like we really are in 1939, only the US/Israel axis has far more relative power than the Germany/Italy axis ever did.

“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication,” Nadella wrote in a rambling post flagged by Windows Central, arguing that humanity needs to learn to accept AI as the “new equilibrium” of human nature.

I’m starting to notice a recent trend in tech CEOs. They seem to be saying “yes, we know you hate it but too bad get used to it”.

I think the whole “we’re taking over Venezuela” is just your typical Trump bravado. I believe user xiaohongshu on Hexbear has the correct angle:

I think everyone is too fixated on the empire getting into a long war but I don’t think that’s the goal here.

Just like Trump’s B-2 stunt on Iran’s Fordow back in June, the US operation was a quick in, quick out operation. Nothing seems to have significantly changed on the surface, but the message has been sent. The US is sowing political instability in the region, and it scares away foreign investments especially China’s.

Just look at China-Iran trade numbers, it’s plunging by 20% this year. Chinese investors are pulling away because they cannot see profitable return in Iran and the surrounding regions. This worsens the economic condition in Iran, and months later, we see the Iranians protesting as a result.

The same play is being replicated in Venezuela here against Latin America. The US has no interest in getting dragged into a long war. It wants to demonstrate how easily it can upset the political balance in Latin America. Do you seriously think that Chinese investors will still want to invest billions on Venezuela seeing how easily the leadership can be kidnapped?

The investment’s gone, and the US simply has to sit back and wait for the situation to deteriorate even further, and the regime change opportunity will present itself. But it’s not even about Venezuela, it’s about the US dominance over Latin America.