tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

🧵 My sense of justice was triggered by #Palantir corporate gaslighting two Swiss investigative journalists on LinkedIn.

This is something most people won’t even see, but I was angry, so I looked while my kid was still asleep.

Here’s what it looks like when tech bros attack journalists while you and I have too much food over Christmas.

Two Swiss journalists spent a year filing 59 #FOIA requests to document Palantir’s 7-year campaign to sell surveillance software to Swiss authorities (army and health services in particular).

📄: https://www.republik.ch/2025/12/09/warum-palantir-zum-risiko-fuer-die-schweiz-wird

The Swiss army’s internal report concluded they couldn’t rule out US intelligence accessing data through Palantir systems, despite reassurances.

Their story hit The Guardian, and #UK MPs are now questioning £825M in Palantir contracts.

📄: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/22/mps-question-uk-palantir-contracts-security-concerns-investigation

The journalists were rejoicing on LinkedIn. It’s a big deal to have your story picked up by mainstream UK media, especially after a year of hard work.

This is where it gets ugly.

More than 75 US cities have announced protests today.

Check for your local action here:

https://www.answercoalition.org/venezuela

#NoWarOnVenezuela #USPolitics

There are a million things wrong with the Trump regime's attack on Venezuela. I'm helping to organize this:

🚨 U.S. Out of Venezuela. Emergency protest TONIGHT, 1/3, 6:30 Santa Fe Plaza. Sponsored by Indivisible Santa Fe. Please bring flashlights to hold up. We will have a banner.

#Indivisible #SantaFe #NewMexico #Venezuela

cc @indivisibleteam

I still can’t get used to Marjorie Taylor Greene being the person in Congress that’s most meeting the moment.

During the Iraq war I let people gaslight me into thinking I didn't know enough about "foreign policy" and "global politics" to say the war was a bad idea.

I would hesitate because, I'm not an expert on those things.

But I was right then and I'm right now.

You don't need to be an expert, it's not "so complex and best left to high level people." You know enough to see this makes no sense.

Very tricky spot for the EU. Foreign policy a national competence but Ukraine has forced a mostly united position in at least one direction. Hard to see how 27 navigates this with competing interests versus how involved EU as a body wants to be

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:iriguxga3a3ngc4ezfk56knk/post/3mbj7wduyfc2b

A defining moment for Europe. If it endorses/fails to condemn this flagrant breach of international law, it will have surrendered its core justification for opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xjc7mkotpenvhh6ffewkdpyn/post/3mbj3pcee2s27

Je ne vois aucun précédent de ce type. Noriega a bien été capturé par les Etats-Unis en 1990 mais les deux pays étaient en guerre ouverte. Pinochet a été aidé par la CIA pour prendre le pouvoir et assassiner Allende au Chili mais les Etats-Unis ne sont pas intervenus directement. Là, c'est une opération unilatérale, sans aucune justification politique, judiciaire ou militaire. Aucune réaction des chancelleries européennes...

#Politique #Trump #Venezuela #Maduro #Narcotrafic #Diplomatie

Whatever you might think of Maduro, the seizure and kidnapping of a head of state takes us to a very dark place. Vast, arbitrary, extra-legal power, which could be exercised almost anywhere, regardless of the character of the target government.

Twitter’s Grok AI is now being used by people to undress women, as verified by the BBC. Twitter refused to reply, simply saying “legacy media lies”. It isn’t a lie.

In the UK it is illegal to create or share non-consensual intimate images, including via AI. The UK gov say they are investigating.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98p1r4e6m8o

Chunts til noonfall.

By Extra Fabulous.

Bulgaria's banks and shops report a smooth euro transition.

Most large retailers reopened on 2 January, after trading on New Year’s Day was largely limited to small local shops.

The switch to the euro has so far been orderly.

Within a day of Bulgaria joining the Eurozone, banks had restored most online and mobile services, and many cash machines were already dispensing euro notes.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20260102-bulgarias-banks-and-shops-report-a-smooth-euro-transition?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

#Bulgaria #Euro #Eurozone #Retail #Banks #EU

Iceland had its hottest Christmas Eve ever with a temperature of 19.8C.

Record temperatures of almost 20C were reached in Iceland on Christmas Eve, the local meteorological office has confirmed.

Seyðisfjörður, a small town in the east of Iceland, hit 19.8C on 24 December.

Average December temperatures in Iceland are between -1C and 4C.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20251230-iceland-had-its-hottest-christmas-eve-ever-with-a-temperature-of-198c?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

#Iceland #Meteorology #ExtremeWeather #Environment #ClimateCrisis

Internal docs reveal Meta's tactics to fend off pressure to crack down on scammers, including efforts to make scam ads "not findable" for regulators and others (Jeff Horwitz/Reuters)

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-created-playbook-fend-off-pressure-crack-down-scammers-documents-show-2025-12-31/
http://mediagazer.com/251231/p6#a251231p6

Please remember: when an officer stops somebody based on racial profiling to challenge their immigration status, the correct and proper term for that is a “Kavanaugh stop.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/12/brett-kavanaugh-stops-immigration-racial-profiling-ice.html

MongoDB have a blog out about #MongoBleed

Notably:

- Internal find at MongoDB

- they notified customers of the issue and patch availability on December 23rd

- A security vendor published technical details on December 24th, Christmas Eve

- Somebody at Elastic, a direct competitor, published an exploit with full secret extraction feature on December 25th, Christmas Day

That was an impossible situation for orgs - the security industry poured fire on them and set their own customers on fire.

#Korea

Climate change on the Korean Peninsula is accelerating. Due to global warming, temperatures rose by 1.9 degrees Celsius over 100 years from the 1910s to the 2010s, but increased by 0.9 degrees during the 2020s (2020–2024). This means temperatures rose in five years by an amount equivalent to 50 years

https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/12/31/L6HCDDH3XJGXTN3ZWJERULD5BY/

#ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #UpheavalClimate #MassAtrocity #pollution #ecology #environment #climate

Only two more days till we get to live on Mars, y’all!!

We may not be able to control the shocks and stresses to come, but we can, to some extent at least, try to increase our coping capacity by investing in things that add water to the coping bucket, and avoiding things that drain it.