Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

@lwriemen I'm very aware privilege (my own and others), and lack thereof. Totally agree about 'where you start'. That said, I think it's pretty easy to see the difference between jobs taken out of need vs. jobs taken by choice. I'd say few people take a departmental manager or VP role at Microsoft out of desperation. Working in the canteen or acting as a janitor, yeah, maybe. I see culpability as proportional to decision-making power/influence.

Now out, a piece co-written with @Dahlialith, and given a terrific headline by Jeremy Stahl: “Let’s Stop Pretending Clarence Thomas Can Read the Framers’ Minds."

We explain that *nothing* about historical analogy requires the Supreme Court to allow domestic abusers, among others, to have guns.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/gun-laws-bruen-clarence-thomas-framers-domestic-abuse.html

#GunViolence #2A #Guns #Bruen #Heller #Rahimi #DomesticViolence #LawFedi

binance has produced a survey that found that buying crypto will totally help you get girls

This Guardian investigation is shocking, or should be. Massive online manipulation of elections by Israeli company. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/revealed-disinformation-team-jorge-claim-meddling-elections-tal-hanan?CMP=share_btn_tw

Why are government software systems so expensive?

Well, the agency publishes an RFI, and vendors respond saying how much they think the system should cost. Agencies take those responses, average them, and tell their legislature or a federal grant-maker “it’s gonna cost $50M.” So $50M is given to the agency—as a matter of public record—and the agency issues an RFP. The quotes are all going to be for real close to…$50M. And where did that price tag come from? The very vendors who are bidding.

😳

Google employees, many of them high profile, are showing up on the Fediverse.

@methode is a case in point.

His Mastodon bio describes him as "Chief of Sunshine and Happiness at Google".

Translation: webmaster trends analyst.

SEO folks are paying close attention.

I *know* that the Fediverse is on Google's corporate radar.

@fediversenews

Love it. Uber drivers in New Zealand are unionising.

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU2302/S00139/nz-uber-drivers-initiate-bargaining-for-first-ever-collective-agreement.htm

Yes, geckos and skinks (the other family of NZ-native lizards) sacrifice their tails when attacked, but they don't grow back the same (no bones & not the same nerves for starters, so they're far less useful), and it takes a huge toll on their future fitness, so it's pretty messed up when it happens.

A remarkably small number of them are responsible for the majority of damage done to our planet in terms of 'externalities' like pollution, social division and inequity, wanton destruction of biodiversity, and the existential threats to the biosphere due to climate change, a canonical example of which Aotearoa is weathering as I write.. Their existence is incompatible with humanity's chance for a prosperous future (i.e. a future *without* growth).

3/3

Periodic reminder: public listed corporations are not our friend. They have a single directive: maximise returns for shareholders, and are legally bound to do anything they can get away with to achieve that. They exist to concentrate the means of the many in the hands of the few They are fundamentally 'engines of inequity'. Because of their single incentive, they are in a race to the ethical bottom. Their structure is that of an autocracy. A few of them are... 1/3

@lightweight @ByronCinNZ @alcinnz @downey @skyfaller FWIW, I don't feel that questioning my motives given my affiliation is an ad hominem attack.

If someone said I was morally corrupt for working at a company like Amazon (I don't think that was said), I might feel a bit different...