Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Most sickening email of the day starts, "I'm Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Medicare program, and I'm excited to introduce my new email series to help you stay healthy. "

The U.S. is in deep, deep trouble.

The best book I've read -- by far -- about technology and the "AI" bubble is Karen Hao's "Empire of AI".

It's deeply researched, tough, fair, and written with non-techie readers in mind -- and exposes the colonial-style corruption of the predatory tech giants. Read it.

https://karendhao.com/

The CSA is calling for universal respirator use in healthcare settings to reduce the spread of airborne disease!

This is huge, and if accepted would make healthcare much safer for all.

They’ve allowing for public comment between now and August 9th at the link below.

Please leave a comment and let’s make sure our voices are heard.

This will no doubt face opposition from the anti-mask crowd and we desperately need masks back in healthcare.

https://publicreview.csa.ca/Account/Login?ReturnUrl=%2fHome%2fView%2f2256677

#maskup #maskswork #COVIDisAirborne #covidisnotover #disability #ableism #n95

Indian Time, a newspaper that served the Mohawk Nation, informed readers for over 40 years. Then, it vanished.

To understand the demise of one of America’s oldest Indigenous newspapers, we spoke with Marjorie Skidders, Isaac White, and Stephanie Sugars.

https://freedom.press/issues/radio-silence-on-the-reservation/

Baltimore Shows You Can Bring Down Murder Rates Without Throwing More Cops At The Problem - https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/25/baltimore-shows-you-can-bring-down-murder-rates-without-throwing-more-cops-at-the-problem/ "giving Baltimore kids safe, enjoyable options to take advantage of. The end result was hundreds of kids doing actual kid stuff — pool parties, summer camp, spring break activities — rather than just watching criminals do criminal stuff while cops did cop stuff. "

The results are in:

- mostly brown on top
- mostly gray on the sides
- somewhat missing in front

time to get the clippers and get this bothersome stuff off my head!

🔵 This week's Tom the Dancing Bug!
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Did Epstein break the...
😎 MAGA GOGGLES?
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Brought to you by the mighty Inner Hive, including long-time member Danville Mel and new member Matt Sayler.
✍️ Join, you monsters! https://tomdbug.wpcomstaging.com/the-inner-hive/
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READ THE COMIC RIGHT HERE👇

Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data #sovereignty - https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/microsoft_admits_it_cannot_guarantee/ "Under oath in French Senate, exec says it would be compelled – however unlikely – to pass local customer info to US admin" and there we have it... #trump

"Were labor leaders in the days of violence against unions (the persistence and savagery of corporate opposition to labor has been airbrushed out of the most histories), rely on happy talk as a major motivating strategy? Did people fighting for causes they thought would not be won in their life, like abolitionists and the early suffragettes, rely on optimism to get them through the day? What you need is tenacity."

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/07/a-pox-on-optimism.html

@mook Not having a union is punishment for our original sin of "but I'll be different!"

The bro culture and fuck-you-I-got-mine attitude that many techies won't admit they secretly feel are so pervasive as to make collective action nearly impossible.

The bosses have each of us convinced that we've got it better than average, so we all stand to lose from unionizing. That, or we're one great idea away from being one of the bosses (we're not; even if you do pull off a unicorn exit you've just traded one master for another, more insidious one) and we wouldn't want to have to deal with a union then, would we?

For a group of people specifically hired for being smart, we sure have a lot to learn about cognitive biases.

I am now being required by my day job to use an AI assistant to write code. I have also been informed that my usage of AI assistants will be monitored and decisions about my career will be based on those metrics.

I gave it an honest shot today, using it as responsibly as I know how: only use it for stuff I already know how to do, so that I can easily verify its output. That part went ok, though I found it much harder to context switch between thinking about code structure and trying to herd a bullshit generator into writing correct code.

One thing I didn't expect, though, is how fucking disruptive it's suggestion feature would be. It's like trying to compose a symphony while someone is relentlessly playing a kazoo in your ear. It flustered me really quickly, to the point where I wasn't able to figure out how to turn that "feature" off. I'm noticing physical symptoms of an anxiety attack as a result.

I stopped work early when I noticed I was completely spent. I don't know if I wrote more code today than I would have normally. I don't think I wrote better code, as the vigilance required is extremely hard for my particular brand of neurospicy to maintain.

As far as the "write this function for me" aspect, I've noticed that I tend to use the mental downtime of typing out a function I've designed to let my brain percolate on the solution and internalize it so I have it in my working memory. This doesn't happen when I'm simply reviewing code written by something else. Reviewing code and writing it are completely separate activities for me. But there's nothing to keep my fingers and thoughts busy while I'm coming up with what to write next.

I didn't think we were meant to live like this.

#Forgejo 12.0.1 was just released!

We recommend that all installations are upgraded to the latest version.

Check out the release notes and download it at https://forgejo.org/releases/. If you experience any issues with this release, please report to https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues.

#forgejorelease

🧪 "Have a GTK app with no tests? No problem!"
with Federico Mena Quintero at #GUADEC2025
📅 25 July 🕒 14:20 CEST 📍 Brescia

🛠️ Federico shows how to refactor messy GTK codebases so you can finally test them—without rewriting from scratch.

🔗 https://events.gnome.org/event/259/contributions/1212/

#GTK #GNOME #Testing #Refactoring #FOSS

I noticed something upsetting(?) in my search results yesterday. Search engine listings for a Wiktionary article had some weird text sort-of-summarizing the page. This text is *not* present in the page itself.

Is this from an LLM? If so, which party is generating the summary?

I don't *think* it's DDG, or Wiktionary. (More in thread.)

It says a lot that comedians who work for the quisling media companies are showing more courage in the face of Trump's war on free speech than most of the journalists who work for major news organizations.

Oh dear... I just got a big email from our boys' high school about the upcoming school board elections - which are going to be 'Electronic Elections'. Ho boy. There's a link in the email with a link to 'learn more about electronic elections'. It send me to a site with an invalid SSL certificate. This is exactly what I would've expected from this sort of numpty approach.

Reminder: Many bsky links require a sign-in, and are, hence, useless to anyone who is not on bluesky.

I am not on bluesky. I have reasons not to be, that I won't bother rehashing for you.

If you want to share things on mastodon, you might want to consider using links that are usable by people who are on mastodon.

I’m looking for anyone in my circles who:

• is a front-end web developer
• has some design sense
• understands the allure of buying a Linux computer
• is open to paid work

A Linux computer company reached out asking if I was available for paid work on their website and while I would love to, I’m just not able to find the time right now. But they’re a great company and I would love to connect them with someone!

#Linux #OpenSource #WebDesign #WebDev

A straight white guy friend was complaining about not being able to find any gaming groups for WoW that weren't full of MAGA assholes. He said he keeps joining guilds with older (60+) casual gamers like himself because he can't keep up with the kids, and he'll start to make friends, but then they will reveal themselves to be Trump-lovers. He asked, "What am I doing wrong?"

I said, "First of all, your screen name is Russian. Leftys are gonna be wary of that, and the Alt-right loves it.
Second, you should put some social signals in your bio, like pronouns."

"Okay, but how do I tell people I'm cool, but I'm not gay or trans?"
I explained to him what "cis" and "ally" mean. He had never heard of this before, which showed me what kind of online spaces he was landing in.

Next, I said, "Look for the furries."
"But, I'm not a furry?"
"Yes, but the presence of furries are like lichen. They are a sign of a healthy ecosystem."

This was about 3 months ago. Now, he tells me he joined a guild labeled as LGBTQ-friendly and has made several new cool friends. He says, "I thought they would be talking about sex all the time but it's just a regular group." He mentioned that there are many women and PoC in the group too, and "Everyone's so nice on dungeon runs, telling people they did a good job and being supportive, sharing loot."

I didn't tell him that this is what the whole world would be like without patriarchal toxic masculinity, because I think he figured it out himself.