Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

I detest Trump & his incessant lies beyond words. He's a loser who knows he can't accomplish ANYthing w/o cheating.

Via Ron Filipkowski:

New campaign finance reports reveal #Trump paid $20k to stage a rally of fake striking #union auto workers last September, with non-union people holding up ‘Union Members for Trump’ signs. The truth always comes out in the financial disclosures. https://www.meidastouch.com/news/trump-campaign-paid-20k-to-fake-a-union-rally

Free tip: if you're concerned about using AnyDesk or TeamViewer to provide remote support to clients/friends/family because those apps are essentially malware/nagware & you can't trust their servers, consider https://rustdesk.com - it's #libre/#FOSS & you can easily host your own server.

2/ "If you’ve ever wondered how Tesla makes money on EVs when nobody else can, the fact that it has a free pass to violate every environmental law on the books while receiving unprecedented subsidies for its ostensibly positive environmental impact should clear up any confusion" https://niedermeyer.io/2024/02/02/its-the-impunity-stupid/

@lightweight @Daojoan AWS is awful, isnʼt it? Got moved there in the early 2010s by a friend who specializes in IT and it was basically IT prison. Couldnʼt do a damned thing without him since it was so poorly designed. Price doubled over a decade. Eventually we moved to Hetzner (literally took years to find people who could do it), and like you, saved 80 per cent, and now we can do stuff again, like set up PHP and MySql ourselves. Lots of OSS as a result.

Climate protest is not a crime.

Or at least it SHOULDN'T be a crime. But in our capitalist, neoliberal world, it is.

Greta Thunberg and four other climate activists were put on trial today after being arrested at a protest outside a gathering of fossil fuel bosses in London last October.

Speaking about this, Thunberg said...

"Even though we are the ones standing here, climate and human rights activists all over the world are being prosecuted, sometimes convicted, and given legal penalties for acting in line with science."

"We must remember who the real enemy is. What are we defending? Who are our laws meant to protect?”

See -- https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/01/greta-thunberg-to-appear-in-uk-court-after-arrest-at-london-fossil-fuel-conference

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction

Most voters get their news from this crowd. https://brianmcfadden.org/2024/01/25/influencers-to-avoid/

We are sitting in the #train to #FOSDEM. Wow, so many #Linux desktops in a public space!

#FreeSoftware #GNU #FOSDEM24

Anarchism is for Lovers.

This month, all books & e-Books on anarchism are 40% off with coupon code LOVERS until 3/1.

Explore the history, philosophy, action, and politics of anarchism from introductions to dense tomes... and fall in love all over again.

https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_list&c=135&sortby=num_sold:desc

Pretty disappointing to see ProPublica carrying water for the DEA.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/02/the-dea-once-again-takes-aim-at-mexicos-president-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador.html

https://www.propublica.org/article/mexico-amlo-lopez-obrador-campaign-drug-cartels

@Daojoan yuck, that sounds gross. We've got Matrix -> Forgejo (or Gitlab), with notes in QOwnNotes, projects in WeKan or NextCloud deck, with meetings in BigBlueButton or Jitsi (via Matrix)... All of it is 100% #Libre/#FOSS, we host it all ourselves, and it all costs us nothing except a bit of my time. Plus we control all the data. I think there might be an opportunity here. Single sign-on is via Authentik - see https://tech.oeru.org/updating-oer-foundation-web-services-february-2023 for a full list of the services we use (+ howtos)...

I'm at the point of begging my fellow academics:

Don't be so fucking gullible when it comes to tech companies and don't do their PR work for them

Your seminar on "using AI responsibly" is just volunteer PR work for a tech company

Your partnership with Meta is just volunteer PR work for a tech company

They are lying to you and manipulating you and it's embarrassing how bad you are at spotting this

For those wondering, here is the current statement about the Mastodon vulnerability: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/security/advisories/GHSA-3fjr-858r-92rw

In a nutshell what's the issue in this oligopoly?

4 publishers create ALL books + related material as 'education methods' prescribed for schools, 2 corporations do the distribution.

Their incentive is simple. An education method must be outdated asap, be as elaborate as possible for extra profits.

Whether these methods work? No one knows. No one checks. Sometimes we *know* they don't work but no one regulates. This problem exists decades, is not acted upon by anyone.

Free markets. Festering.

Ah, the glory of #Hypercapitalism 💰

Good reminder by Arjen Lubach on TV yesterday..

The Dutch finally fell from near top to rock bottom among other EU countries in teaching kids proper reading and writing skills.

Now prepare to go much further down the drain as the remaining 6 corporations that keep a tight Education oligopoly still see a lotta 🤑 📈 potential, and neoliberal 'regulators' will remain conveniently ineffective, complicit.

We need both #OpenSource education content and software.

Last call to save 40% on all books on Indigenous Resistance.

Use coupon code RESISTANCE until 2/1.

See all the books at https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_list&c=48&sortby=num_sold:desc

"The US two-party system functions like a ratchet, with the Republican Party steadily pulling public policy and discourse to the right while Democrats, seeking to acquire power by chasing the political center, serve as a mechanism that prevents policy and discourse from shifting back."

https://crimethinc.com/theratchet

We see this playing out right now as Republicans push for more authoritarian border policies with the collusion of various centrists.

Always nice to see this take coming from someone else besides me.

There is no such thing as unskilled labor. If you're calling it unskilled, it is simply because you don't understand what the work requires. The labor isn't unskilled, you're uninformed.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01/a-philosopher-looks-at-work-in-our-modern-world.html