Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The United States has dropped to fifty-fifth place on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, the country's lowest-ever rank.

https://progressive.org/magazine/the-way-democracy-crumbles-whitney-20240807/

"Large mural near the Delaware River to remember Ben Fletcher and his union, IWW’s Local 8..."

#IWW #BenFletcher #Delaware

Via @pmpress

I've started a free newsletter to showcase the best political journalism. No horse-race or both-sides BS. No poll stories, either.

It's journalism that illuminates what's at stake, what the candidates say they'll do, and who they are beyond the superficial gloss.

Here's yesterday's edition:

https://cornerstone.ghost.io/essentials-august-7-2024/

I need your help:

Send me links to journalism -- specific articles/videos etc -- that you think are right for this.

Please DM or use the Contact Me link in my bio here.

Your privacy, your control. Librem 5: The only smartphone designed to protect your digital rights. True security, no backdoors, no tracking. #LibremPhone #DigitalFreedom #PureOS #Librem5
https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

My cover for The Toxic Avenger #2—a full wrap around! Maximum mutant slop!

Issue #1 drops in comic shops October 10. Call up your local place and pre-order so you get a copy.

forget axe-throwing parlors, I'm going to make it big in the middle-class-catharsis-entertainment scene by starting a chain of carnival-style shooting galleries where the targets are all stock-photo faces you see on banking / financial / HR websites. For an extra challenge, your peashooter will continually need to be unlocked by two-factor authentication and your field of vision will be recurrently blocked by swinging signs saying "you have 200 unread notifications"

The one time #Harris had to deviate from her scripted speech, she ends up scolding those calling for a ceasefire. There is not an iota of doubt that #KamalaHarris will be a better President than Trump. She will likely be very good for America's middle class and maybe even the working class. However what is good for America need not be good for the rest of the world.

GOOD NEWS: Earlier this year the requirement for US hospitals to report key COVID data to the federal government ended.

Thousands of activists submitted public comments to CMS, and now hospitals will be required to report key COVID, flu, and RSV hospitalization data again outside of public health emergencies.

Advocacy works!

After a 3 year investigation, the federal government has acknowledged that it invested $23.3B (adjusted) on a boarding school system to break up #Indigenous families and communities, and destroy language and culture.

The report suggests that the US should invest that same amount of money in family reunification, language revitalization, and Indian education to help repair the havoc wreaked by 400 schools from 1871 to 1969, which killed at least 973 children.

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/30/nx-s1-5051912/interior-dept-report-indian-boarding-schools

In the 1980s, there were the "Atari Democrats," many of whom were ex-Republicans who gave up fighting in their party. In the 1990s, there were the neoliberals like former "Goldwater Girl" Hillary Clinton. Cable punditry and tony op-ed pages were overrun with them as well.

Fast forward to today and Democrats are being hounded constantly by whiners like David Brooks or Bret Stephens, commentators who represent no one and who have never been right about anything.

@siderea

Biden the man doesn't matter so much anymore. He's one of the most privileged people in the world, and is as likely as anyone to be able to age with dignity.

Seeing people say, literally, that "his brain doesn't work", using that exact phrase, and offering no evidence beyond his having mixed up names, does matter.

And it matters to me *personally* because it tells me what I can expect as my movement slows down and my hair gets grayer.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I still think it was shamefully ableist when everyone was gleefully declaring that Joe Biden's tendency to mess up word recall indicated that his "brain didn't work".

Poverty is a policy choice. Mass incarceration is a policy choice. Inequality is a policy choice. Insulin rationing is a policy choice. Climate disintegration is a policy choice. Billionaire tax loopholes are a policy choice.

Make no mistake: We have the power to change things.

So I’ve been using Microsoft Stream at work to auto-caption videos. Part of my job is quality assurance so I double-check the captions for errors.

One recent annoyance is that the captioning software censors some words, replacing them with asterisks. One word in particular that has been a thorn in my side is the word “nipple”. I have had to work on several BREASTFEEDING videos. Needless to say, I’ve been retyping in the word “nipple” a lot.

Come to today, I’m working on a video about transgender and non-binary folks. The speaker said, “There is no such thing as straight sex and gay sex.” Lo and behold Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided to censor the words “gay sex”. “Straight sex” is uncensored.

I’m fucking livid, but I have no real way to contact Microsoft on this. But, mark it down and spread the word, Microsoft are fucking homophobic prudes.

Description of my chapter "Smashing Whiteness: Race, Class, and Punk Culture in the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation" in "DIY OR DIE! Do-It-Yourself, Do-It-Together & Punk Anarchism," from Active Distribution, available in the US from @pmpress https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1756

#books #anarchism #punk #history

“Recent work on elite perceptions of public opinion shows that reelection-motivated politicians systematically misperceive the opinions of their constituents to be more conservative than they are.”

*looks around at SF politicians breathlessly praising the police*

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12833

The Ju/’hoansi protocol

Hunter-gatherer societies are highly expert in group deliberation and decision-making which respects both difference and unity

https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-ju-hoansi-can-tell-us-about-group-decision-making

Mozilla’s system only measures the success rate of ads—it doesn’t help companies target those ads—and it’s less susceptible to abuse, EFF’s Lena Cohen told @FastCompany. “It’s much more privacy-preserving than Google’s version of the same feature.” https://www.fastcompany.com/91167564/mozilla-wants-you-to-love-firefox-again

Jem Bendell - Breaking together Part 2

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/podcast42124/episodes/2024-08-02T11_07_49-07_00

My political statment for the day: If toilet paper is free in schools and elsewhere, tampons and sanitary napkins should be free.