Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Here is an excellent guide to buying (truly) handmade gifts. Including but not limited to members of @coopartisans

“We used to trust Etsy as our go-to shopping place for handmade. But with the sheer number of dropshippers and inauthentic resellers on the site, the Etsy platform no longer earns our automatic trust….We need a genuinely handmade shopping alternative. “

https://artisans.coop/blog/3-easy-ways-to-shop-actually-handmade/

Those "#OSS-loving" corporations *hate* software that uses a Copyleft license (e.g. the GPL, AGPL and other licenses with inheritance clauses) because they can't treat it like gratis R&D they can exploit. I believe proprietary software is ethically tainted (https://davelane.nz/proprietary) and so I have zero respect for those corporations. As a result, I have a substantially lower impression of institutions/orgs that identify with OSS rather than #FOSS.

When I see folks from organisations talking about #OSS (Open Source Software) rather than #FOSS, I assume they're aligned with Microsoft and 'corporate open source': software released under weak open source (not Copyleft) licenses that is amenable to being exploited by corporations who want to incorporate it (usually contributing little or nothing back to the dev community) into their proprietary services and sell it to their oblivious customers.

@foodatacollab Opportunity alert! seeking a freelance food systems #researcher for a short project helping develop a framework for a new connective infrastructure that will strengthen UK #agroecological food supply chains. Could it be you or someone you know?

Visit http://fooddatacollaboration.org.uk/call-for-expressions-of-interest-food-and-farming-enterprise-research-opportunity for all the details and be sure to submit your expression of interest by no later than Friday 7 January 2023.

#Agroecology #Foodsystems

Oh, that was a new one.

Got an email from PayPal about a suspicious payment request. I verified the email came from PayPal, but went into PayPal itself to check. Sure enough, suspicious request, and the note indicated it had been flagged, with a number to call.

I called.

And while I was on the call, went to the PayPal "Contact" link... and realized it was a different number.

The attacker was using the INVOICE NOTE to phish for details.

Hoping I didn't expose to much before I figured it out.

TIL

https://www.ethicalbooksearch.com/us

I love it. Not a new slogan, but the delivery is extraordinary.

I love how #Mastodon lists each time a post was edited, and will even show you what it said after each edit. #MediaWiki-level transparency.

This is my nearly year-long investigation into how Des Moines Public Schools got rid of cops in public schools, implemented restorative practices, and managed to weather a brutal media and anti-public education political storm. Please take a moment to read and share if you find it useful, and informative! Thanks.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-city-that-kicked-cops-out-of-schools-and-tried-restorative-practices-instead

When people talk about leaving Twitter for Substack I often ask if they would consider Ghost since it is a non-profit and doesn't have any of the problematic funding of JAQoff heterodox (but right wing or at the very least mostly right wing sympathetic) writers and complete grifters like Joe Mercola. Well now it turns out that Ghost has been powering Substack yet Substack is not only not contributing back despite their hundred million dollars of VC money (including from a16z) but they aren't even doing the bare minimum attribution. It's yet another reminder why if you are building website/webservices software you should use a copyleft license like AGPL. #substack #ghost #OpenSource rattibha.com/thread/1602330377…

And yes they are table scraps. Don't feel guilty for demanding more from corporate #OpenSource grifters.

Microsoft gross profits
2022: $135,620,000,000.00 (+17%)
2021: $118,560,000,000.00 (+20%)
2020: $96,937,000,000.00 (+17%)
Effective tax rate: 9.7% (2021)

Amazon gross profits
2021: $197,478,000,000.00 (+29%)
2020: $152,757,000,000.00 (+33%)
2019: $114,986,000,000.00 (+23%)
Effective tax rate: 6.1% (2021)

US families lost revenue & savings in 2021, with an average effective tax rate of 21%.

From @pluralistic:

"Earlier this year, many people with Argus optical implants – which allow blind people to see – lost their vision when the manufacturer, Second Sight, went bust.

"Nano Precision Medical, the company's new owners, aren't interested in maintaining the implants, so that's the end of the road for everyone with one of Argus's 'bionic' eyes. The $150,000 per eye that those people paid is gone, and they have failing hardware permanently wired into their nervous systems.

"Having a bricked eye implant doesn't just rob you of your sight – many Argus users experience crippling vertigo and other side effects of nonfunctional implants. The company has promised to 'do our best to provide virtual support' to people whose Argus implants fail – but no more parts and no more patches."

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/12/unsafe-at-any-speed/#this-is-literally-your-brain-on-capitalism

Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship.
-- Voltairine de Cleyre

#anarchism #quote #bot

#Copyright means poverty for creators and riches for corporations - https://www.buzzsprout.com/2047128/11780783 me blathering away...

Copyleft-licensed chess engine wins legal case against proprietary counterpart - https://fsfe.org/news/2022/news-20221212-01.en.html "Copyleft won. Stockfish secured numerous concessions from ChessBase to respect the GPL." #OpenSource #FreeSoftware

I expect to see some news coming out about this soon, but The New School part-time faculty union, UAW Local 7902, stuck to their guns and got what they needed in their contract. The longest adjunct strike ever got the goods! #solidarity

Left unmentioned in this article about the latest betrayal by the Biden administration is that PE returns have not been appreciably higher than public market returns for some time, especially when you take into account the increased risk of PE. So not only is this a gift to Wall Street, the supposedly higher returns in PE that workers will supposedly get haven't existed for 15 years.

https://jacobin.com/2022/02/joe-biden-policy-private-equity-blackstone-retirement-401k

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/06/private-equity-clearly-inferior-to-public-equity-delivers-same-returns-with-lower-liquidity.html

In 1974, a sovereign Kanien’kehà:ka (Mohawk) community was declared at an abandoned girl scout camp in the Adirondacks. After a tense 3-year stand off, New York State agreed to an unprecedented 600-acre land swap. To this day, Ganienkeh maintains its sovereignty. It isn't a reservation doesn't seek US recognition. It's one of the greatest #LandBack successes in recent history, and yet is also largely forgotten by settlers even locally.