Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Saw some birds nest fungus while doing ivy work today! It's the first time I've seen it with the eggs

Its a little fungus that spreads its spores by having raindrops fall into the cup and bounce the eggs with the spores out.

#sporespondence

Folks, it’s encouraging to see more of you writing alternative text on images here so people who use screen readers can also take part but please make sure the text really is the equivalent of the image.

So, for example, if you’re posting a screenshot of some text, don’t just say “Excerpt of article” or “A tweet by so-and-so” but actually copy/paste the text from it (many platforms let you do this with images these days).

Folks who use screen readers have the right to hear what we see.

#a11y

Good job by NPR on this story detailing the way West Virginia's governor has used political power to undermine journalism about his sleazy behavior.

Maybe govt support of journalism is the right way to go, but it will be difficult if not impossible, over time, to prevent this kind of abuse no matter how cleverly subsidy programs are set up.

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/13/1153590012/west-virginia-public-journalist-dismissed-wvpb-political-interference

So called "private equity" is destroying America, industry by industry, and most of our political leaders couldn't care less. In this example, financial looters (aka "investors") are forcing emergency rooms to fire doctors. https://khn.org/news/article/doctors-are-disappearing-from-emergency-rooms-as-hospitals-look-to-cut-costs/

Musk and Murdoch together at the football game is a gathering of today's most powerful anti-democracy media barons. And it's a reminder that journalists who would never consider working for Murdoch's Fox "News" -- at least he pays for his content -- are still toiling for free to support Musk's rancid trollsite.

This a very important and powerful manifesto from peoples of the Global South demanding a just #ecosocial energy transition.

Especially recommend reading to those of us living in the Global North who are constantly bombarded by technology-driven "clean energy transitions" that are touted as "win-win".

#ClimateJustice #degrowth #DebtForClimate

https://fpif.org/manifesto-for-an-ecosocial-energy-transition-from-the-peoples-of-the-south/

"A handful of companies own the #patents on virtually every #seed planted in the US. Now, a new crop of unowned seeds is bringing #biodiversity back to #farming."
https://worldsensorium.com/open-source-seeds-loosen-big-ags-grip-on-farmers/

#agriculture #food #monopoly #ossi (Open Source Seed Initiative)

FYI, I link to two earlier reports on this problem (2017 and 2019) in a tweet from 2020.
https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1317831041055399936

All the respectable liberal media outlets doing their level best to stoke that good ol' war fever...over a balloon...in an era of satellites 🤦‍♂️

And people still take these outlets seriously? Is the populace really that stoked for WWIII? Because I'm seeing very few people pushing back on this. Thank gawd at least FAIR is still talking sense.

https://fair.org/home/media-spy-balloon-obsession-a-gift-to-china-hawks/

When a car is repaired after a crash, the GDP goes up.

When a fruit or vegetable is grown only to be thrown out by a supermarket as food waste, the GDP goes up.

When you replace a phone that still works because of planned obsolescence, the GDP goes up.

When you throw out a perfectly good coat because it's no longer fashionable, and buy a new one in this season's style, the GDP goes up.

When a bridge has to be replaced because it wasn't built right, the GDP goes up.

When a piece of packaging is manufactured only to be thrown away straight away, the GDP goes up.

When a site needs to be decontaminated because chemicals weren't stored correctly, the GDP goes up.

In each case, society has no more usable wealth than it would have had if the car didn't crash, the vegetable wasn't grown, the phone wasn't replaced, the old coat was still being worn, there was less packaging, or the chemicals were stored correctly. Yet the GDP goes up.

Meanwhile, most of the wealth that is generated ends up in the top one percent's pockets.

The truth is that GDP isn't a useful measurement. It's just a convenient one.

#economics #politics #gdp #auspol #ukpol

I don't think Heather is on Mastodon yet to tag, but this quote is on fire:

“I don’t really care about journalism, the industry that has a product for sale. That’s not what I care about saving or fixing. I care about journalism, a service to the public that requires quality news and information in order to navigate their lives. To me, that’s the only real journalism.”

https://medium.com/centerforcooperativemedia/q-a-heather-bryant-on-how-collaboration-empowers-small-local-news-startups-29f9f1641409

Well this is not good...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3pyvg/disgusting-nyc-scraps-co-op-internet-in-public-housing-so-big-telecom-can-move-in

I'm in a critical mood and it's not time to start real work yet, so let's pick apart some economic BS, shall we?

https://www.marketplace.org/2023/02/09/jobless-claims-remain-historically-low-amid-feds-efforts-to-slow-wage-growth/

First off, we are told that unemployment applications *rose* to 196k/wk. Remember that: unemployment is up.

Next, we are informed that the Fed is going to be "keeping close tabs on how much wages are rising," because they fear that "wage growth is going to feed into inflation." Not that it is, mind you, but that it might...in the future...sometime...

This seems about right to me. I've been continually astounded by the absolutely wild, and historically uninformed takes on the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine. The rush to blame Russia for the Nordstream strike was one of them.

Biden announced we were going to put an end to the pipeline, then the pipeline blew up, then a Polish MEP thanked the US for doing it...

So, of course, everybody goes, "hmmm...musta' been them Rooskies." 🤦‍♂️

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/02/sy-hersh-and-the-way-we-live-now/

In case anyone was so naive as to think the FBI was no longer infiltrating left-wing groups and attempting to sabotage them, check out this guy.

https://theintercept.com/2023/02/07/fbi-denver-racial-justice-protests-informant/

Which is why, when at any protest or other political action, you should always remember this saying:

THE FIRST ONE TO RECOMMEND VIOLENCE IS A COP!

V useful info in one place here about the datasets GPT3.5 is trained on. I knew this but it still takes your breath away:

"WebText2 is a private OpenAI dataset created by crawling links from Reddit that had three upvotes.

The idea is that these URLs are trustworthy and will contain quality content."

Have these ppl ever READ Reddit?!

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-block-chatgpt-from-using-your-website-content/478384/

These are some interesting stats: https://the-federation.info/ - I'm especially intrigued by the numbers of instances of other Fediverse services...