Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Section 702 is up for renewal and now is our time to fight warrantless surveillance. Show your support and help EFF unplug big brother with one of our NSA Spying t-shirts: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/nsa-spying-shirts-are-back-just-time-tell-congress-reform-section-702

Solidarity continues for Peppy and Krystal.

Learn more about their case, donate if you can, and write to Peppy: freepeppyandkrystal.blackblogs.org

Free Peppy and Krystal! Free Em All!

This is a newspaper for conservatives who still want to be invited to big city parties. https://brianmcfadden.org/2024/02/15/americas-assignment-editor/

I literally lol'd when I read that sentence. This whole article is wild. It's like the children's picture book version of geo-politics. I wonder if this guy still believes in the tooth-fairy too. Since when has the US ever shied away from supporting dictators? Ever heard of Saudi Arabia? And thinking that politicians care about democracy is just 😂

https://archive.is/43oIx#selection-1641.175-1641.326

The Age of Immorality; Foreign Affairs.

Looking over the NPR website this morning, you would never know a genocide was on-going. You would know that the Palestinians and Israelis are fighting, but aid is being dropped to the Palestinians, and both sides are using the bodies of the dead as bargaining chips. Reminds me of a poll from a decade ago or so that found that the people in the US worst informed about current events were people who got their news from FOX...followed closely by the NPR audience.

Periodic Reminder: TechSoup is a horrible organisation that is laundering proprietary software 'donations' and is trying to hook not-for-profits on expensive proprietary software they neither need nor can afford. For example: https://email.connectingup.org/t/i-e-ahiqly-pyddlddiy-c/ (the Oceania franchise holder is 'Connecting Up'). My advice: shun them. Spread the word.

Guess what % of plastics have ever been #recycled? No prizes :(

And guess who knew about it all the time?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report

I found a reason to do a second edition of "PAM Mastery." #sysadmin

Are you a concerned citizen, a librarian, or a lawmaker who wants to support equitable contracts for libraries in your community? 🙋‍♀️ Check out E-Books for Us, a new advocacy hub from Library Futures for communities to support libraries 👉 https://ebooksforus.com

Fantastic -- if super-distressing -- article by Gisele Navarro about the horrible state of product reviews online

The tl;dr is that Google seems to overweight reviews from longstanding big journalism brands ...

... but many of those brands, like Popular Science, were long ago bought up by private equity or conglomerates, then hollowed out ...

... so they now produce crappy articles that are *probably* lying about their "test labs" to please Google

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

Read it! So good

"Demand for e-books is at an all-time high, but library collections are being hijacked by corporations."

"Love e-books? We do, too! Tap the comics to learn more, play games, and test your knowledge of e-book contracts."

go @libraryfutures !

https://www.ebooksforus.com/

“Paradoxically, what KOSA does is it removes the ability for teens and children to find information when they are experiencing the very sort of health problems and other problems that KOSA is trying to address,” EFF’s @aaronmackey told @NPR https://www.npr.org/2024/02/18/1232301930/how-tech-companies-would-be-affected-by-the-kids-online-safety-act

I'd call it a mask-off moment, if they hadn't already made it abundantly clear what kind of psychos they are.

https://www.aaronmate.net/p/for-biden-ending-israels-mass-murder

Wow, this proposed approach to drawing districts without gerrymandering is fascinating! In the spirit of "I cut you choose", the proposal is "One party defines 2N equal-population sub-districts, and the other party chooses pairs of adjacent sub-districts to combine, to form N districts."

The analysis in the body of the paper focuses on simulations of each party's optimal strategy in the context of some real-world maps of US voting precincts, while an appendix proves a few theorems giving bounds in the alternate context where the pairs of districts that get combined don't need to be geographically adjacent. (If this idea catches on, I'd bet someone will produce theoretical bounds in the presence of the geography constraint.)

A Partisan Solution to Partisan Gerrymandering: The Define–Combine Procedure

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/article/partisan-solution-to-partisan-gerrymandering-the-definecombine-procedure/B0792DD0A49332944F2AF5FF6828E275

My "device", I am told, might be "unverified"

There's a new trend of sites' CDNs inserting multi-second interstitials that distract you with a spinner to make you think they are doing something.

I find these vaguely threatening. They come with the...
https://jwz.org/b/ykNJ

I've got a new comic at In These Times on Alan Dershowitz https://inthesetimes.com/article/comics-dershowitz-nypd-cop28-wasteland

No More Presidents Day.

Art by @kleebenally / @indigenousaction (IG)

Keep the fire burning at @IndigenousAbolition (IG), @indigiabolition (TW) and at IndigenousAbolition.com

I have $1,000 in my wallet. My friend has $5. I pressure him into giving me a dollar so I can donate it to charity.

This is exactly how those appeals to donate the change at cash registers work.

Community colleges are underrated, easily one of the best parts about the US. Courses are typically a fraction of the $$$ of a 4-year school and the quality of education is at least as good if not better at the undergraduate course level. Go take a course. Never stop learning.