Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

‼️ANNOUNCING two new Tom the Dancing Bug books:
👾 Tom the Dancing Bug: Secret Origins; and
🎸 Sex, Tom the Dancing Bug, & Rock 'n' Roll!
Sign up on the Kickstarter launch page to be informed when they can be purchased!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cloverpress/tom-the-dancing-bug-pulitzer-nomed-strip-by-ruben-bolling?ref=c26o5g

The official US econ statistics were already a methodological sh*tshow, but that doesn't mean they can't get worse.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/07/how-much-longer-can-we-trust-our-economic-statistics.html

A recent report about the Trump administration abusing its surveillance powers to spy on James Comey’s cellphone location data raises red flags for journalists and sources.

https://freedom.press/issues/emergency-tracking-of-comey-cellphone-location-points-to-privacy-erosion/

More than 100 aid organisations warn of 'mass #starvation' in #Gaza - https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/jul/23/israel-gaza-war-aid-benjamin-netanyahu-hamas-middle-east-latest-news-updates?page=with%3Ablock-688084458f086020c423e7fa#block-688084458f086020c423e7fa "Israeli forces had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food aid since the US- and #Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started operations in late May"

Fediverse Report – #126

The News

Bandwagon is a fediverse platform for artists to share their music, similar to platforms like Bandcamp. Artists can now use Bandwagon to sell their music albums with the latest update. Bandwagon has added support for Stripe, and does not charge a payment fee for albums sold via the platform. Selling albums via Bandwagon will not be completely free however: once Bandwagon Premier launches at the end of the year, selling albums will only be available for this premium subscription tier of $10/month. Bandwagon promises the platform will always be available for free for artists to upload and share their albums. Another new feature for Bandwagon is Circles, which allows users to share content with specific people. When you add accounts to a circle, you can create content that will only be visible to people within that circle, similar to how Bonfire’s boundaries system works. What is different about Bandwagon’s circles is that access to a circle can be put behind a paywall, where people can pay a monthly subscription fee for continued inclusion in that circle and to see exclusive content by the artist.

The upcoming premium subscription will give paying members the ability to sell albums, sell access to circles/memberships, and get higher quality streaming. Some further thoughts:

With circles, Bandwagon is placing itself in competition with Patreon. It is not the first project to try to put fediverse content behind a paywall: sub.club tried to make this work last year and had to shut down due to a limited uptake. Sub.club focused on microblogging and Mastodon, will targeting the music sector make a difference for Bandwagon?
Platforms on the fediverse has historically struggled with becoming financially sustainable, with most relying on donations, grants and volunteer labour. Bandwagon has a clear story on how it plans to become a financially sustainable platform. The big question is: can they pull it off?
One of the major challenges in building a new social network is in getting critical mass on the community size to made sure there is enough interesting content to keep users interested in visiting. Projects like Radio Free Fedi show that the fediverse has a dedicated community of musicians and other artists on the fediverse. Bandwagon also already has over 200 artists who are sharing their music on the platform. It indicates that music and artists might be a worthwhile direction to look for when building critical mass in communities.
How much will the connection to the fediverse matter for artists on Bandwagon? Bandwagon is open-source and encourages self-hosting, and that it uses ActivityPub provides clear value for creating a network of interoperable Bandwagon servers. But will people use the native connections with the rest of the fediverse as well? For artists, having a wider reach is beneficial, especially if they are selling albums. But will people use the interoperability of microblogging platforms like Mastodon to follow artists on Bandcamp, or will these interoperable networks stay mostly separate in practice?

Bonfire is an upcoming modular social networking platofrm that the team is working on getting ready for an official release. In the launch version (‘Bonfire Social’) the platform focuses on features that are more familiar to microblogging and long-form writing, but the platform is highly extendable and customisable: Bonfire is also experimenting with adding geodata and Mosaic, a bridge to connect other datasets to the platform. Bonfire also reported that they have their first organisation that will build their community on Bonfire: CrowdInBlue is a platform that wants to “connect water projects with funding sources”, and they will build this platform using Bonfire.

The Links

“The upside is that moderation gives me some control. Watching a fascist autocracy unfold before your eyes is terrifying. Everything is collapsing on a massive scale in myriad ways. It’s enough to make a person feel helpless. While it’s not monumental, I do get to curb some of that fascism through moderation. I get to push buttons with labels that read “delete post” and “suspend.” When some ignorant sociopath is harassing people, I get to wave a magic wand and make them disappear. At least from our corner of Mastodon. That’s empowering. And meaningful. It does make a difference because I get to silence them. I can’t begin to describe how good that feels. Just a little tiny bit of justice.”

An excellent writeup of what it’s like to be a moderator for Mastodon. It explains what the day-to-day experience of being a moderator on Mastodon is like, and what some of the main challenges are, such as dealing with targeted harassment and getting exposed to traumatic content. The quote above highlights why people put up with these challenges, and indicates the value of a social network that gives people agency.

Being a Mastodon Moderator – Mark Writes

“I don’t know how to run a community forum in this future. I do not have the time or emotional energy to screen out regular attacks by Large Language Models, with the knowledge that making the wrong decision costs a real human being their connection to a niche community. I do not know how to determine whether someone’s post about their new bicycle is genuine enthusiasm or automated astroturf. I don’t know how to foster trust and genuine interaction in a world of widespread text and image synthesis—in a world where, as one friend related this week, newbies can ask an LLM for advice on exploring their kinks, and the machine tells them to try solo breath play. In this world I think woof.group, and many forums like it, will collapse.“

A worrying account of how LLMs make the current systems of keeping spam out of closed social networks unfeasible. There are communities who need some form of anonymity of their members to function, such as the queer kink community woof.group. These communities ask for some form of applications by new members. The ability of LLMs to cheaply generate bullshit on a grand scale is being used spammers to join these private communities and use it for spam. There is a clear need for new ways to build and maintain communities while keeping spammers out, and it is currently unclear how such a system would look like.

The Future of Forums is Lies, I Guess – Aphyr

“My goals now are more modest: planting seeds in people’s minds that another way to interact online is possible. And when people ARE READY and willing, help them set up an account on the Fediverse software best suited for their needs, helping them out and acclimatizing them to the culture of this place.“

Elena Rossini writes about how her thoughts on the fediverse and growth have shifted, and her plans for the next year of her blog. It echoes a trend I wrote recently about as well: the previous conceptualisation of growth for the new social networks does not hold up anymore, and we need new stories on how these networks can be used to build new communication structures.

The Future is Federated: Year 2 – Elena Rossini

And some more links:

Trunk & Tidbits, June 2025 – Mastodon
Community Spotlight: Mastodon – Geeks for Social Change Community
Privacy and Security on Mastodon – Privacyguides.org
How to Install and Set Up Castopod for Your Podcast – Randy Black
This week’s fediverse software updates.
ActivityPub Explorer is a tool that takes any ActivityPub content like a profile or post, and shows the entire underlying ActivityPub structure.

https://connectedplaces.online/reports/fediverse-report-126/

Last year I got officially reprimanded for posting a link to an article on the Greyzone, because a lot of liberals don't like leftists calling them out, and some liberal blacklist site accused GZ of publishing "misinformation". At the time I pointed out that 1) the story I linked to was factual; and 2) the NYT prints a ton of misinfo, but no one will ever get a finger-wag for posting a link to an NYT piece. More evidence for my assertion:

https://archive.is/nPY9m

#Trump demands Kennedy Center Opera House be named after his current wife, or lose all federal funding - https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/07/trump-demands-kennedy-center-opera-house-be-named-after-his-current-wife-or-lose-all-federal-funding this blackmail is not just shameless, it is utterly tacky, as you'd expect for #epstein's close friend...

#Amazon acquires Bee, the #AI wearable that #records everything you say - https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/22/amazon-acquires-bee-the-ai-wearable-that-records-everything-you-say/ "In the past, Amazon shared footage with law enforcement from people’s personal Ring security cameras, with neither the owner’s consent, nor a warrant. " so there's that... #privacy #surveillance

DuckDuckGo Is Hoping to Win Over #AI-Hating Searchers - https://gizmodo.com/duckduckgo-is-hoping-to-win-over-ai-hating-searchers-2000632816 likely to become an important approach

We have completed the upgrade to Forgejo v12. Please report all (new) issues you might encounter to https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/

Have fun!

#IanHislop calls arrest of man holding #PrivateEye cartoon at #Gaza protest ‘mind-boggling’ | #Protest | The Guardian

So much for non-violent freedom of expression in Britiain.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/23/private-eye-cartoon-arrest-ian-hislop-protest

#UK #Politics

We are scheduling an upgrade to Forgejo v11 tomorrow/today (Wednesday) within 10.00 - 14.00 CEST (08.00 - 12.00 UTC).

There will be a short period of scheduled downtime (about 10 minutes), affecting all Codeberg services. However, please be prepared that there might be unexpected stability issues, new bugs or even downtime in worst case during the whole day.

You can learn more about Forgejo v12 at https://forgejo.org/2025-07-release-v12-0/

Starmer under pressure from cabinet to recognise Palestinian statehood - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/22/starmer-under-pressure-from-cabinet-to-recognise-palestinian-statehood "Exclusive: Wes Streeting among ministers pushing for action after calling Israeli attacks on aid sites ‘intolerable’" well, that's good #palestine #gazagenocide

Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals - https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/22/whofi_wifi_identifier/ "Observers could therefore track a person as they pass through signals sent by different Wi-Fi networks – even if they’re not carrying a phone." #surveillance #privacy

Also, it's really weird how this conversation in the US always revolves around "Making farm jobs good enough for Americans."

Farm jobs should be good jobs no matter who's doing them.

Even a lot of self-described progressives seem to have a hard time getting that!

knock it off it's weird

I just deleted my entire social media presence before visiting the US – and I'm a citizen - https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/column_social_media_entrapment/ "Remember the year: 2025 was when it all changed. When socials transformed from self-expression to entrapment." important point

I’m witnessing the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s children – why is the world letting it happen? - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/22/gaza-israel-deliberate-starvation-ceasefire-aid "my third time in Gaza since December 2023 as a volunteer surgeon with Medical Aid for Palestinians. I experienced mass casualty events and raised the alarm about malnutrition back in January 2024. But nothing has prepared me for the sheer horror I’m witnessing now: the weaponisation of starvation against an entire population." #gazagenocide #israel

🚀 New on #TheFutureIsFederated 👩‍🚀

"The Future is Federated: Year 2" - where I take a look back at a year of posts (and some cringy early ones), argue that the #Fediverse is collectivist in nature (as opposed to the individualism of Big Tech platforms) and discuss my plans for the future of this blog series... and what success for the Fediverse looks like to me (spoiler alert: slow organic growth and sustainability)

🔗 : https://news.elenarossini.com/the-future-is-federated-year-2/

#tech #activism #BigTech #SocialMedia #FOSS #blog

What the UK needs are *mass protests* with hundreds of thousands of people holding those “I OPPOSE GENOCIDE – I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION” signs.

They can arrest 50.

They can arrest 100.

They cannot arrest 100,000.

They cannot arrest a million.

#Palestine #PalestineAction #FreePalestine #UK #protest #israel #genocide #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism #StopIsrael #StopArmingIsrael #StopTheGenocide #YourGovernmentHasFailed #powerToThePeople

Mike #Johnson Quit Work Early to Give #Trump “Space” to Deal with His Jeffrey #Epstein Problem - https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/07/22/mike-johnson-quit-work-early-to-give-trump-space-to-deal-with-his-jeffrey-epstein-problem/ "

This is a Big Fucking Deal.

Because Trump is running scared, the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein has — however temporarily — deprived Trump of his majority in the House."