Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Whether Harris loses, or squeaks through with a narrow victory, the message for the Democrats is clear. Especially when read in combination with their results in 2016 and 2020. All of which were campaigns they could have won by a landslide. Had they not picked such weak and deeply unpopular candidates, every time, as a sop to the corporatist rump of the party.

(3/?)

Europe can come and take Aotearoa New Zealand's hedgehogs back, where they are thriving at the expense of native species. One of the most destructive animals introduced to the country, they are a primary threat to the keystone insect species Weta, eat endangered native lizards, cause ground nesting birds to abandon their nests, and eat their eggs.

#conservation #extinction #aotearoa #nz

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/28/hedgehogs-near-threatened-red-list-decline-over-past-decade

The worst part of Big Journalism's political coverage malpractice is that so many Americans have no real idea of what will happen to the nation if Trump gets back in the White House.

Until very recently (like last week), our major news organizations downplayed what a fascist government would do. They've quoted Trump rather than explaining what he plans.

One of my post-election goals, no matter what happens, is to do what I can to replace Big Journalism, from the ground up, with the real thing.

A student reached out to me to ask if they should have their profile picture on LinkedIn. Yes, they work in security.

As I was writing the response about how it's mostly for people to know if you're a "legit person", it occurred to me that it's probably a huge discrimination vector.

A glance will reveal to employers all sorts of things they can make snap judgements on, including visibly transitioning, being non-white, or having a face they dislike. All without a paper trail!

Thanks, LinkedIn!

Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal has now replied with a threat:

#Coinbase #crypto #cryptocurrency #USpolitics #USpol

Trump's corrupt Supreme Court just gave Virginia's Trumpist governor the right to cancel the voting registrations of people who are absolutely legal, eligible voters. They're collateral damage in a war on essentially nonexistent non-citizen voting.

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/u-s-supreme-court-agrees-to-reinstate-virginias-voter-purge-program/?utm_source=Democracy+Docket+Newsletters&utm_campaign=e852b0c1c4-20241030_DailyDocket_LF&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-9812d8a903-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&mc_cid=e852b0c1c4

If you hate protesters blocking roads in the name of taking immediate #ClimateAction, you’re going to really hate how Climate Change itself blocks roads.

A picture today from Valencia, Spain where they received 500mm of rain, a year’s worth, in one day on Tuesday.
#ClimateEmergency #ClimateChange

@lwriemen And for anyone reading who's not an econ 🤓 , the Labor Share of Income is the percentage of income taken home by wage and salary workers, as opposed to income derived from stock, bond, or property ownership. This percentage has been in long-term decline as long as you've been alive, unless you were born in the 1940s. It's basically another way of looking the productivity vs. wages chart that shows a big divergence after about 1974, though this makes the longer term pattern clearer, imo

@lwriemen The point for me (and of the article) is that it's been moving in one direction for all of our lives. This never gets mentioned (or almost never) in discussions of wealth inequality, but if we're serious about addressing said inequality, we need to take a long hard look at why that graph looks the way it does...and then we need to reverse it. We get celebrate minor victories, but all the while we're losing the (class) war - under every administration.

Big Lies and Little Progress: Reviewing Four Years of Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class”

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/10/big-lies-and-little-progress-biden-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivans-foreign-policy-for-the-middle-class.html

Labor share of national income - United States - 1950-2024

I miss @Teri Kanefield's sanity-inducing posts.  Sounds like she's having fun though?

Whatever happens with the U.S. election, this is a useful document to keep around:
#^https://terikanefield.com/things-to-do/

Her blog is great too, though it hasn't been updated in a bit.

if bill gates or mark cuban or even jeff bezos gave a shit about anything besides themselves, they would give away 99.99% of their own wealth to climate orgs etc, they would break up their own monopolies, and they would fight like hell to tax billionaires out of existence

they actually have the power to shore up democracy and possibly reduce the scale of climate chaos faced by future generations, but its testament to the nature of billionairism that not one will go for broke and use it

Thus far, my experience learning Hubzilla has been, largely:

Me: Hmm... I feel like there ought to be a way to do X.
Me: [posting to Hubzilla Support Forum] "How do I do X?"
Helpful people on Hubzilla Support Forum: "Like this."

In summary, extremely powerful software with a ton of features that are hard to find.  But the community is awesome ; )

“Arresting journalists for reporting on protests has always been a constitutional nonstarter,” writes Seth Stern. “Police and prosecutors nationwide need to better educate themselves about the First Amendment so this doesn’t keep happening.”

https://freedom.press/issues/prosecutors-must-drop-case-against-indian-time-journalist/

Here’s the problem: The Department of Justice has repeatedly said that under the First Amendment, police dispersing protesters can’t also disperse journalists covering the protests, because how police respond to protests is news.

We wrote about this earlier this month.

https://freedom.press/issues/heed-doj-guidance-drop-cases-against-journalists-arrested-at-protests/

“My dream for 2025 is that the co-operative organizations will come together and truly cooperate."

https://geo.coop/articles/co-operatives-are-pivotal-point

Here's the Brookings Institution way back in '06 recommending what appears to me to be current US strategy regarding Iran and Israel, as shown by the above headlines. Curious.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdf

@dynamic_hubzilla

I know I often make non-CW'd posts that some would prefer to have under a content warning, and I accept that this fact may limit my audience.

I instead is to use my own assessment of what is and isn't "too much" to post without a warning.  I also try to make my content warnings descriptive enough for people to make informed decisions about whether or not to read more.

I realize this is not what everyone wants, but it's what I do.