Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Naw, I figured it out; they absolutely don't care if AI doesn't work.

They really don't. They're pot-committed; these dudes aren't tech pioneers, they're money muppets playing the bubble game. They are invested in increasing the valuation of their investments and cashing out, it's literally a massive scam. Reading a bunch of stuff by Amy Castor and David Gerard finally got me there in terms of understanding it's not real and they don't care. From there it was pretty easy to apply a historical analysis of the last 10 bubbles, who profited, at which point in the cycle, and where the real money was made.

The plan is more or less to foist AI on establishment actors who don't know their ass from their elbow, causing investment valuations to soar, and then cash the fuck out before anyone really realizes it's total gibberish and unlikely to get better at the rate and speed they were promised.

Particularly in the media, it's all about adoption and cashing out, not actually replacing media. Nobody making decisions and investments here, particularly wants an informed populace, after all.

I read this article as #JosephBruchac admitting a couple of times has no evidence of Abenaki ancestry or relations. He also uses a not-well-thought out black belt analogy to claim Abenaki "cultural membership can be learned and earned with hard work and sincere attention." This is a settler replacement narrative. Bruchac and the reporter demonstrate clearly in this article Bruchac's appropriator positionality. #Pretendianism

https://www.timesunion.com/churchill/article/churchill-joseph-bruchac-truly-abenaki-18391772.php?IPID=Times-Union-Capital-Region-spotlight

Latest comic on a certain pundit's infamous $78 airport meal

(For those outside the US, the commentator David Brooks has made a career out of piously trolling liberals for their supposed decadence and lack of morals.)

#uspol #economy #journalism #media #socialmedia

Proposal for a Cooperative Model for Digital Infrastructure and Recommendations to Adopt It.

https://infraestructura.digital/index-en.html

-- d1, just signal boosting interesting report

#Coops

We're still here, and we have a rare announcement of a new blog post! https://blog.snowdrift.coop/state-of-the-snowdrift-2023/

It mentions progress updates, challenges, and links to recent #sustainoss podcast interview, and #fossy presentation video (and older 2022 #libreplanet presentation) with updated, clearer explanations of the economics of #publicgoods and discussion of #cooperation and #collectiveaction dilemmas.

Ebook pledge aims to protect libraries and authors from publishers’ growing abuse of #copyright - https://walledculture.org/ebook-pledge-aims-to-protect-libraries-and-authors-from-publishers-growing-abuse-of-copyright/

Awesome, informative article from @luxalptraum about why online ID check laws are bad for the adult industry -- and everyone else, too. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/age-verification-laws-and-the-existential-fight-over-porn.html

I’ve signed an agreement to write a book about ActivityPub for O’Reilly Media. ActivityPub is the protocol for connecting social networks across the Web; it’s what currently underpins Mastodon and will be used by Threads.net. The book should be available sometime after summer 2024.

The book will be a developer guide that will help programmers connect existing software to the social web, as well as making brand new social applications. Currently, developers depend on reading the specifications themselves, forum posts, wiki pages, blog posts, and other content spread across the Web. I hope that a single book with practical step-by-step information will make learning about and building with ActivityPub easier.

O’Reilly is the best programming book publisher, hands down. I have a dozen O’Reilly titles on my shelf, all with the famous engraved animal covers, and I use them regularly. I appreciate that the O’Reilly team sees the potential for an ActivityPub book. I have had a great experience with the editors so far.

I’ll update my progress here. I have a pretty tight schedule, but I’ve rearranged some of my commitments like graduate school to accommodate the work. (I’ll be getting credits from Georgia Tech towards my CS degree for doing this book — a nice bonus!) This is the first book I’ve written, and it’s going to require working code for examples, so there will be a lot of learning and work to do. But I’m confident this will be a step forward.

https://evanp.me/2023/09/07/activitypub-book-for-oreilly-media/

When in doubt, just accuse your opponent of doing all the stuff that you're doing.

https://archive.ph/0D9JQ#selection-2231.0-2249.217

If you haven't listened to the Blowback podcast yet, you should. You wanna' understand America and what contemporary imperialist practice looks like? Check these guys out: https://blowback.supportingcast.fm/

How am I only now finding out about this? Looks cool af.

https://www.coopnwj.org/groundwork/arise/

Free software pioneer Richard Stallman is battling cancer - https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/29/richard_stallman_cancer/ poor chap, let's hope his treatment is effective... #RMS

The strain on scientific publishing 📄:

The publishing sector has a problem. Scientists are overwhelmed, editors are overworked, special issue invitations are constant, research paper mills, article retractions, journal delistings… JUST WHAT IS GOING ON!?

Myself, pablo, @paolocrosetto and Dan have spent the last few months investigating just that.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.15884

A thread🧵1/n

#AcademicChatter #PublishOrPerish #Elsevier #Springer #MDPI #Wiley #Frontiers #PhDAdvice #PhDChat #SciComm

Looking for a list of online bookshops that sell DRM-free ebooks, digital comics, magazines, and RPGs?

Got you covered!

#DRMfree #ebooks #DigitalComics

https://libreture.com/bookshops/

I can't help but think that the general apathy and concerted lack of action (i.e. tacit acceptance) to counter of our future digital hell-scape mirrors our denial of the physical one that #ClimateChange is wreaking. So I'm desperately sad and frustrated on both real and virtual fronts these days. *big sigh*

Every day, when I interact with people who think that Microsoft+Google+Amazon+Facebook+Apple = computing, I'm reminded of How To Train Your Dragon: "everything we think we know about dragons... is wrong". Except, we substitute "digital existence" for dragons.

One of the things that drives me nuts about the modern Web is that you could write a plain text file, save it as "index.html", and it will display just fine. And everyone seems to have forgotten this.

A new report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board shedding light on abuses of Section 702 surveillance make the demands of civil liberties groups for reform even more pressing. The government simply shouldn't be able to access Americans' communications collected under 702 and other intelligence authorities without a warrant. https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/PCLOB%20Section%20702%20report%20coalition%20statement%20928%20final.pdf