Reinis Ivanovs

Priecīgu praida mēnesi #🏳️‍🌈 #balticpride

Israel has extended its invasion of Lebanon beyond the Litani River up to the El Zahrani river, expelling over a million people within this area. Israel is effectively planning to invade and occupy 14% of Lebanon and the international community is allowing it. For proportional context, this is the equivalent of Wales and Northern Ireland (combined) being invaded and occupied in the UK... or Texas, California and Montana (combined) in the US.

The most important thing about this amazing Paris transformation is how fast it happened —how fast people on bikes “appeared” —once streets were transformed. You can’t write this off as “#Paris was always this way,” because it wasn’t. It took leadership.

france didn't spend €109 billion on AI to build chatbots. they went straight to what actually matters: the crêpebot 3000

MKBHD is right - and it won’t happen. YouTube Rewind 2018 hit 20 million dislikes in weeks. 86% of viewers downvoted it. The most disliked video in platform history, created by the platform itself. Three years later, YouTube removed public dislike counts. In January 2026, they made every Rewind video private. YouTube’s stated reason: protecting small creators from harassment. The actual math: YouTube generated $40.4 billion in ad revenue in 2025, more than Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery combined. That $40.4 billion comes from brands buying placement against content. Brands do not buy placement against content with a visible 86% disapproval rating. The dislike count was the single most efficient quality signal on the internet. One glance told you whether a tutorial actually worked, whether a product review was genuine, whether a news clip was credible. The Return YouTube Dislike extension still has millions of users four years later because the demand never went away. People are installing third-party software to restore a feature YouTube deliberately killed. YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim’s response to the removal was to change his only YouTube video’s title to ask why the dislike count was removed. He compared the announcement video to a hostage tape. The company’s own creator liaison looked, in Karim’s words, like someone being forced to deliver good news about a decision he knew was bad. This is the buyer versus user problem at $60 billion scale. YouTube sells to CMOs and media buyers. CMOs do not want their Superbowl spot sitting next to a dislike ratio that signals the audience hates it. The viewer who lands on a scam tutorial with 50,000 likes, no visible dislikes, and a comment section flooded with bots has no way to know. That viewer is not YouTube’s customer. The CMO is. MKBHD knows this. He said the same thing in 2021 when YouTube first removed it. The fact that he’s still saying it four years later tells you the creator community never accepted the change. But a $60 billion revenue machine does not restore a feature that costs it even 1% of ad sales. The math on that is $600 million annually. That’s why MKBHD said “if I were CEO” and not “when YouTube does this.” He already knows the answer.

I spent half an hour on Natalie Shehab’s Instagram last night. She is a stylist and boutique owner. Her IG looks like many other American influencers. She’s almost 28, beautiful and classy and has a talent for curating visually pleasing photos and videos. On Wednesday Israel murdered her husband of 5 years and her 3 year old daughter, using American bombs, and American tax dollars, under the cover of American diplomatic protection.

Landed in Tel Aviv tonight, to find myself surrounded - as is publicly visible - by US war planes. Under the law of armed conflict, civilian airports are, by their nature, civilian objects. The starting point is the general rule of distinction reflected in Article 52(1) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which provides that civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or reprisals. Indeed, the mere fact that the object belongs to a State that is party to an armed conflict does not alter its civilian character. As with all objects in armed conflict, however, the legal characterization depends not solely on the object’s nature but also on its use in the circumstances prevailing at the time. Civilian objects become military objectives when, by their nature, location, purpose, or use, they make an effective contribution to military action and when their destruction, capture, or neutralization offers a definite military advantage. A civilian airport that is used to host, service, refuel, arm, or dispatch military aircraft may therefore lose its civilian protection, at least in respect of the parts of the installation that are being used for military purposes. In such circumstances the object may qualify as a military objective by use. The transformation is functional rather than formal: it does not require the airport to be formally designated a military airbase. What matters is whether the facilities contribute effectively to military operations, for example by enabling combat aircraft to launch sorties or sustain military deployments in an international armed conflict.

She's doubling down on it, so I will, too: she has no mandate to speak for the EU on foreign policy, nor to pick which foreign policy that should be (eg regime change). No mandate means no staff or briefings, either, meaning she pulls her opinions out of thin air, and it shows.

Two days after declaring that "Europe can no longer be a custodian for the old world order", Ursula von der Leyen attempted to defuse the backlash by stressing her "unwavering" support for international law. The European President has overstepped her mandate - not for the first time. Her dangerous statement about the so-called "old world order" is also not the first time she buries international law. She has done so consistently throughout the last two years when it came to Israel. She has also failed repeatedly to protect the European political project - a project based on its history and grounded in the European Convention for Human Rights and the European Court. She has demonstrated time and time again her determination to ignore the lessons of history - of what happens when the power of guns silences and tramples on the power of the law. The world and Europe needs a strong Europe, prepared to resist the bullies in Russia, the US and China, not just through affirming commercial or defence sovereignty but by offering a vision predicated on international law and universal rights, a vision for the world which will take us away from the abyss created by Russia's aggression of Ukraine, Israel's genocide and US aggressions, and authoritarianism. She is unable to create this alternative path and lead Europe away from the abyss. euronews.com/my-europe/2026…

Kamēr Tartū, Viļņa un citas pilsētas attīsta koplietošanas velo, Rīgā vien ievieš birokrātiskus šķēršļus, kas iznīcina privātos operatorus un ierobežo iedzīvotāju pārvietošanās iespējas.

Journalists once again failing at understanding the very basic idea “Your job is to report accurately, not to try to look as ‘neutral’ as possible, because ‘neutrality’ in response to oppression is actually just complicity.”

yes, it is brilliant, as you say. changing this distinctive icon to a blunt stereotypical X -- (as in X-rated)--is akin to a boot brought down brainlessly on a butterfly.

Awesome bit of data that makes intuitive sense. “Finland cut VAT on haircuts in 2007 to see if cheaper prices would boost demand and jobs. But when the tax fell by €4, many salons lowered prices by only €2 and kept the rest as profit. When VAT rose again, prices jumped by the full €4, turning a temporary tax cut into a permanent price hike. It’s tax incidence in action: firms with pricing power pass on cuts partly, and hikes fully.” Source: buff.ly/9vkSfvn

Behold! A $100,000-dollar American missile, launched by a 20 million-dollar plane that flies at a cost of $6000 dollars/hour to kill people who live on less than $3 a day in Iran. Meanwhile in America, Republican lawmakers believe that a $6.20 daily SNAP benefit providing food to a needy person is wasteful spending, so A BIG BEAUTIFUL ACT of legislation was passed to remedy that in order to bolster the economy of the greatest nation in the world. ~Jacob Lassiter

Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war.  Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. They want relief from the affordability crisis. They want peace. I am focused on making sure that every New Yorker is safe. I have been in contact with our Police Commissioner and emergency management officials. We are taking proactive steps, including increasing coordination across agencies and enhancing patrols of sensitive locations out of an abundance of caution. Additionally, I want to speak directly to Iranian New Yorkers: you are part of the fabric of this city — you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers, and community leaders. You will be safe here.

The eeriest part of this all is how little the admin has tried to make a case for us intervention. They at least had to make a public campaign for attacking Iraq

It’s amazing how their faces light up when they can communicate

New ad by the Norwegian Consumer Council: "A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator"

This is how Israel was established and we're supposed to pretend it's super complicated and approach with nuance and understanding for the settler with the gun.

In 1953, Mexican photographer Nacho López conducted a documented street experiment in Mexico City.He asked 17-year-old actress Maty Huitrón to walk alone through a busy public street while he photographed people's reactions without their knowledge.The images show men staring, stopping, turning around, and commenting as she passed.These were not staged reactions.They were ordinary street behavior captured in real time. The photo series was published in Siempre! magazine as"When a Beautiful Woman Walks Down Madero Street."The intent was not to provoke shock. It was to record a social pattern most people ignored. This series is now considered one of the earliest visual documentations of public harassment in everyday life. Nothing dramatic happens in the images. That is what makes them disturbing.