Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Without Southern cotton, the British textile industry would be brought to its knees.

And that would force the British Empire- with the world's most powerful navy- to help the US South in its fight for "freedom."

At least, that's what cotton plantation owners THOUGHT would happen.

"Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working better and smarter and production organised more efficiently. "https://www.uk.coop/resources/what-do-we-really-know-about-worker-co-operatives
Where to start? Here:
https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/2024-02/Retrofit%20report%20%28final%20draft%29.pdf ...the net zero retrofit for UK housing
#netzero #coop #economics

US farmers are saying they "just need temporary help, until things get better."

Here's the thing. US farm exports- which are mostly soy- CANNOT get better.

Other countries expanded their soy industries to fill China's demand.

We've walled ourselves out of the global market, folks. This is it.

From the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker:

Three journalists were assaulted by federal officers while reporting outside the immigration court at NYC’s Federal Plaza this morning.

One of the journalists, L. Vural Elibol of Anadolu Agency, struck his head and has been hospitalized.

https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/turkish-journalist-hospitalized-after-assault-at-nyc-immigration-court/

Discover the story of Poison Girls, radical punk visionaries who created something extraordinary. Support the new book and seven CD box set celebrating their music, art, and politics. Back the Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ww3/poisongirls

Ed Zitron with a very good explanation for why so many CEOs think they can replace their workers with chatbots.#LLM #AI

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-against-generative-ai/

Britain's policing minister punts facial recog nationwide - https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/30/britains_policing_minister_talks_up/ if only the police could access a db of all UK faces - like the one the #DigitalID card will create...

Despite being n the Daily Mail, this is a pretty on-point finance article - my only quibble is that gov-debt-to-GDP ratios don't matter for currency issuing countries - it's household and business debt levels rising that is the real red flag.

In fifty years as a City writer, I've never felt so worried a terrible financial crash is coming. The warning signs are EVERYWHERE, writes ALEX BRUMMER
https://archive.is/PCyp9
(this link was not accessible from a South African VPN proxy 4 reasons unknown)

I put together a few facts.

NVIDIA GB200 is $70,000 each. Enough to employ one intern or new college grad for a year.

AI companies need 100s of billions of dollars in investment unlike regular software startups that need a handful of millions.

AI companies are eating up all the venture capital. We could've had a 1000 startups funded instead, but it's all used up by NVIDIA chips, their data centers and operating costs.

---

Yes, AI took our software jobs, but not by replacing programmers.

When people speak of traveling to the past, they worry about radically changing the present by doing something small, but barely anyone in the present thinks they can radically change the future by doing something small.

Barbara R. Nelson

The EU is once again trying to push a dangerous legislative proposal that undermines encrypted communication and obliterates our rights to private conversations. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/09/chat-control-back-menu-eu-it-still-must-be-stopped-0

Apparently Stephen Miller, Trump’s unelected chief of staff, is behind the assaults on the Venezuelan boats.

Those bombings have killed 17 people.

A man who no one voted for is making life and death decisions.

The one silver lining? He has no Presidential immunity.

He can (and should) be prosecuted for his crimes against humanity.

#uspol #fascism #stephenmiller #trump #venezuela

Governor Pritzker just announced that Homeland Security has directed the Department of War to deploy 100 military troops to Illinois.

Why?

To protect ICE agents and facilities from a problem of their own making.

They could stop terrorizing communities. They could stop disappearing people.

They would rather declare war on their own soil.

“Why should my taxes pay for YOUR healthcare?”

Because you live in a society. Part of being in society means contributing to ensure everyone is taken care of

I wish more people would realize the tax dollars they would spend on Universal healthcare would be far less than private insurance premiums

Newsletter: Democratic lawmakers sound corruption alarms while crypto PACs gear up for the midterms

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-93/

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpolitics #USpol

Someone should probably inform the White House's "AI & Crypto Czar" that no one is forcing AI companies to train their models on Wikipedia

You would think the obvious solution to "the volunteer-powered project we all train our AI models on for free isn't adequately twisting reality to our political views" would be "... and so we stopped training on it" and not "... and so we will force the volunteers to bend to our will"

#Wikipedia #AI

This is magnificent and harrowing: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qGXcDz8PU4A or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGXcDz8PU4A I've long thought we need to break the taboo about questioning what our peers do for work, and what 'markets' corporations choose to fulfil. And, to be clear, BigTech is just another head of the white military industrial complex hydra.

The Mexican government wants to pass an indiscriminate, dangerously vague surveillance rule granting authorities real-time access to data digital platforms have in their systems. RD3mx and ARTICLE 19 México y Centroamérica urged Congress to reject the proposal.👇 🧵 https://articulo19.org/reforma-al-codigo-fiscal-pretende-acceso-permanente-a-datos-de-plataformas-digitales/

The National Security Agency ‘expedited’ a FOIA request — then took 1,827 days to process it.

The Defense Department ‘expedited’ another — it took 1,119 days.

The list goes on.

Now, Trump wants requesters to pay $50k if a court expedites a FOIA lawsuit?

No way.

https://freedom.press/the-classifieds/expedite-a-foia-lawsuit-trump-administration-wants-50k-first/