Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

It used to be "your money or your life." Now, it's "your money and your life."

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/renting-your-life.html

Dumb food for you: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2024/5/17/2241122/-Cartoon-Stupid-food-revue

I remember reading somewhere that the pyramid visualization was first used by a business management writer in some book for bosses, which sounds about right.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – Is the pyramid a hoax?
https://drsaraheaton.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs/

And a huge thanks to my wife for making my Monday way better than most with the birthday gift that keeps giving all year long! On returning home from my pre-work dog walk (with Luna, the hound), I found a BeerHug box waiting for me by the front door! This month, a dozen Behemoth Beers to sup, sample, & savour! Whoop Whoop!!

Every day, I also think of the fact that the computer systems I run every day & through which I provide useful, gratis, non-exploitative services to many people (& make a reasonable living) are entirely dependent on code written by thousands of clever, generous, dedicated people - with a hugely disproportionate number of neuro-diverse and transgender folk compared to the mainstream - who've poured their hearts & souls into that work. Making it *way better* than stuff written purely for profit.

I believe that FRI's IT staff (who knew about my Linux use, because I set up a server for my colleagues at the U of Cant'y School of Forestry for $0 on weekends & after hours which made the systems at HQ in Rotorua look primitive & poorly supported - which they were) gleefully pushed the Lotus Notes migration at least partly to force me onto Windows. A couple years later, I got a phonecall from a former colleague begging me to return & revert the LN migration... I noped that. They were screwed.

EU threatens Microsoft with multibillion-dollar fine over Bing AI - published 20 May 2024 #ArtificialIntelligence #News #Microsoft #AI
https://grafa.com/news/eu-threatens-microsoft-with-multibillion-dollar-fine-over-bing-ai-223885?utm_source=mastodon&medium=social&campaign=223885

As El Niño and climate change bring drought to the northern Philippines, farmers say the value of local heirloom seeds shines through.

Farmers say these seeds, cultivated through generations, show greater resilience to drought and heat than commercial hybrid seeds promoted by the government.

A network of seed savers, spearheaded by rural women, is working to revitalize the traditional practices of saving seeds.

By Mavic Conde
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/05/for-drought-relief-cordilleran-women-in-the-philippines-rely-on-seed-saving/

#News #Conservation #Environment #Drought

#DonaldTrump floats idea of three-term presidency at NRA convention | #USElections2024 | The Guardian

The last #president to float the idea for #RonaldReagan; another would-be dictator.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/19/trump-nra-convention-dallas

#US #Politics

To those Americans getting offended that their president and country is being criticised for arming a genocide may I just remind you that there is something a tad more offensive than being criticised for arming a genocide which is arming a goddamn genocide. Get some fucking perspective.

Okay, so the interview with Euclides Mance is up and he hits a lot of hot topics -- I am eager to know what you make of it.

#floss #blockchain #Digital_Alternative_Currencies #solidarityeconomy #circulareconomy #globalsouth #popular_education #platformcoop #valueflows #cooperatives #alternatives_to_development

https://geo.coop/articles/liberation-economist-part-2

The guys running this shit show, ALL of the guys running this shitshow, mean to wax you and your family for five pennies on the share; what they're arguing about is when, and which types of people "deserve it." I'd say I'm sorry if you catch strays, but I'm not, because my aim has never changed and the reason you're in your feels is because sometimes when I criticize fascism and capitalist mass murder, it hits a little too close to home for your politics and your favorite killers.

Man, they got me one time. Literally one time and I ain't gonna be that much of a sucker again. I woke up and suddenly a bunch of libs in suits were like "yes it is fascism, yes they don't care about you, yes they're trying to fucking kill you" and for one brief moment I thought "okay, just maybe we can fight back."

Then y'all got elected, did shit fuck all to punish fascists, gave murderpigs billions of dollars and went right back to "the real enemy is the left and poor people."

We ova...

Via @waldoj

Virginia's governor vetoed bills that would support the right to contraceptives.

https://mastodon.social/@waldoj/112465190628995562

"...the Ministry for the Environment said it was 'cloud infrastructure agnostic' but expressed a preference in two tenders as the solution had to 'integrate' with what it already had from Microsoft or AWS."

#PhilPennington, 2024

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/495883/growing-government-reliance-on-offshore-cloud-services-has-security-experts-worried

This kind of lock-in is precisely why we don't want public agencies leasing hosting from foreign DataFarmers.

One of my talks for #GPN22 got accepted!

I'll talk about how "My files are a mess!", and how it will stay this way unless we achieve a collective enlightenment.

https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn22/talk/ZRKD3G/

Now I finally have an excuse to do the research on the topic XD

#gpn #ccc #filesystem #semantic #database #presentation #UX

Latest comic: The Great Regression

#cartoon #comic #fascism #race #abortion #lgbtq #democracy #uspol

I do have to hand it to the #AI developers out there: you all have managed to figure out how to simultaneously solve our plausible-sounding-bullshit-and-soulless-art shortage, while also addressing our oversupply of unpolluted air and water. Truly, you have killed two birds with one stone. Sure, your work may be directly contributing to our already massive economic inequalities, but at least it's also speeding up the end of life as we know it. Personally, I find that admirable.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/ssh-backdoor-has-infected-400000-linux-servers-over-15-years-and-keeps-on-spreading/

Kernel.org folks never provided the postmortem they promised in 2011 after finding their infrastructure had been rooted. They also didn't bother to respond to my email earlier this week seeking comment on new information that, in fact, their servers had been rooted 2 years earlier by a 2nd, even more sophisticated piece of malware.

While no one responded to me, here's Linux Foundation member Konstantin Ryabitsev responding elsewhere to my post that the breach was the subject of an FBI investigation, and later of a lawsuit. This says lots about the obligation kernel.org, an organization entrusted with huge responsibility, feels toward transparency. If Microsoft did this, people would be apoplectic.