Lmst

"What’s true of men is also true of countries: the more they need to show off how strong they are, the #weaker they are. The weakness, rather than the #strength, is terrifying. Whoever is so scared and so needy as to need that parade is capable of anything. That goes for #Trump, and that goes for his country."
#thisIsAmerica
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/16/us-politics-violence-trump-parade-protests?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

3 Bloomberg: Stuart Kaiser, who runs Citigroup’s desk as head of #US #equitytrading strategy, also said he likes shares of #companies with #weaker #finances. #markets #stocks

Daniel J. Bernstein (#djb, to those who know and love him [1]) has a new blog entry about the NIST post-quantum #cryptography standardization process that's been ongoing for some years. Also, follow him @djb .

If you're not aware of some of the controversy about how NIST is running this process, it's a must-read.

https://blog.cr.yp.to/20250423-mceliece.html

My $0.02: it sure looks like NIST is backstopping an attempt by the NSA to get everyone to standardize on cryptography #standards that the #NSA knows how to break.

Again.

Yes, they did it before. If you read up on the Dual_EC calamity and its fallout, and how this time it was supposed to be different - open, transparent, secure - then prepare to be disappointed. NIST is playing #Calvinball with their rules for this contest, yanking the rug out from under contenders that appear to be more #secure and better understood, while pushing alternatives that are objectively worse (#weaker encryption, less studied, poorer #performance).

Frankly, I think organizations outside of the #USA would be foolish to trust anything that comes out of #NIST's current work. Well, those inside the USA too, but some of those may be forced by law to use whatever NIST certifies.

[1] Some people think djb is "prickly", not lovable. Oddly, it seems that the only people who say this are those who are wildly incorrect about code/algorithms and are being gently but publicly corrected about by djb at the time

#quantum #PostQuantum #PostQuantumCryptography

Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case

https://www.quantamagazine.org/is-dark-energy-getting-weaker-new-evidence-strengthens-the-case-20250319/

#HackerNews #DarkEnergy #Weaker #Evidence #Science #News #QuantumPhysics

The Anti-Social Century, #Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our #personalities, our #politics, and even our relationship to #reality. The shift to self-isolation is rewiring culture and politics, “making society #weaker, #meaner, and more #delusional #loneliness #isolation #socialmedia #food #delivery #cooking #eating #social #gatherings #communications #contact #talking #socializing #pandemic #covid #maga #trump https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/american-loneliness-personality-politics/681091/

#Trump now get's back all the #Mockery and #Assaults he spread for #Years over #Twitter and other Channels. From #JonStewart over #JimmyKimmel to just the #POTUS and much more #Celebs - everyone is shooting back, to give this human #Accident of #Nature back, what he deserves. He is getting #weaker and weaker and more #uncomfortable.
Must be #Hell for him in the #Courtroom. Just the #Beginning of a #downward #Spiral.

#magaidiotcult #trump #nomorerealdonald
#fucktrump #trumpnevermore
#maga

Strongman rule is a fantasy.
Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman.
He won't.
In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.
We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something.
But the vote you cast for him affirms your #irrelevance.
The whole point is that the strongman owes us #nothing.
We get abused and we get used to it.

Another illusion is that the strongman will unite the nation.
But an aspiring dictator will always claim that some belong and others don't.
He will define one group after another as the enemy.
This might feel good, so long as you feel that you are on the right side of the line.
But now #fear is the essence of life.
The politics of us-and-them, once begun, never ends.

We dream that a strongman will let us focus on America.
But dictatorship opens our country to the worst the world has to offer.
An American strongman will measure himself by the #wealth and #power of other dictators.
He will befriend them and compete with them.
From them he will learn new ways to #oppress and to #exploit his own people.

At least, the fantasy goes, the strongman will get things done.
But dictatorial power today is not about achieving anything positive.
It is about #preventing anyone else from achieving anything.
The strongman is really the weak man: his secret is that he makes everyone else #weaker.

Unaccountable to the law and to voters, the dictator has no reason to consider anything beyond his own personal interests.
In the twenty-first century, those are simple: 👉 dying in bed as a billionaire.
To #enrich himself and to stay out of #prison, the strongman dismantles the justice system and replaces civil servants with loyalists.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-strongman-fantasy

@djb

This less-than-transparent behaviour on the part of #NIST, when added to all their #machinations trying to obscure the deep involvement of the #NSA in the competition, instead attributing NSA's work to NIST itself, is troubling.

To a conspiratorially-minded person, Occam's Razor might suggest that it was NSA's #attempt to get the world to #standardize on #encryption that is much #weaker than claimed - i.e., encryption that they know they can already #break.

Shades of #Dual #EC #DRBG...