Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The entire journalism industry adopted the "hush money trial" framing, thereby downplaying Trump's corruption -- financial fraud aimed at tampering with an election -- to something that the Trump cult has used to convince itself that it could all be discounted.

Availability and ubiquity of surveillance technology doesn’t affect whether the government needs a warrant to use them against you, says the Alaska Supreme Court. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/05/alaska-supreme-court-takes-aerial-surveillances-threat-privacy-seriously-other #drones #surveillance

I love that a multi-billion-dollar corporation like RedHat/IBM can ship an operating system with a broken screen reader in 2024 (it’s not just them, it’s true for basically every major Linux distribution today) and, when you point it out, the response is “it’s no one’s fault… it’s all free labour… it’s FOSS, man”. And then: oh, and this charity is paying for one person to work on accessibility support to be implemented now… Anyone else see how fucked up that is?

#accessibility #foss #linux

Every election is the US is like, "Would you like to take the slow train to Hell, or the fast one?"

by multinational corporations. Nobody repays their IMF loans because the SAPs are the whole point of the exercise to begin with. We say the IMF is there to help struggling countries develop their economies, when in fact its purpose is to assist foreign investors in stripping assets from countries that are having financial difficulties.

Which is all to say that China would have to do A LOT of evil with their loan programs to catch up to what we've been doing since 1944.

https://daily.jstor.org/debt-trap-diplomacy/

dismal repayment rates in my international econ classes? It really screwed me up inside, as I knew there was something not right, but I figure out what...until years later when I heard John Perkins discuss his book 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman.' Then it all made sense. The IMF is simply running a loan sharking operation. The point is for the borrower to default, so the can be forced to sell their national assets & curtail social spending, making their populations ripe for exploitation 2/x

“The city’s ban on facial recognition technology, Chapter 19B, will not apply to SFPD’s use of the new public safety cameras.”
https://sfba.social/@MLNow/112527951080683342

Years ago, when I was an economics student, I wrote a paper on the IMF's structural adjustment programs (SAPs/ESAPs) - i.e. those policies that are forced on countries who fail to make their IMF loan payments on time.

I was baffled to discover that >95% of all IMF borrowers went into default (and so fell victim to SAPs). It made no sense to me - why would any finance person continually create unpayable loans? Were they just really bad at their job? And why didn't anyone ever mention their 1/x

I really don't understand why anyone working in a serious policy realm is talking about direct carbon dioxide removal at all.

Even if you have 100% faith in our ability to sustainably store it indefinitely, the thermodynamics of scrubbing it from the much higher CO2 exhaust from smokestacks is so much more favorable.

My next t-shirt

"Atlanta police have been carrying out around-the-clock surveillance in several neighborhoods for months, on people and houses linked to opposition against the police training center colloquially known as “Cop City”.

The surveillance in Georgia has included following people in cars, blasting sirens outside bedroom windows and shining headlights into houses at night, the Guardian has learned."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/29/atlanta-police-cop-city-surveillance

💥 Against the roll-back of critical environmental regulation in the EU that business interests and conservative politicians are lobbying for.

A coalition of organisations - incl. the Scientists for Future's Interdisciplinary Scientific Panel - have published a letter:

"Expression of Concern by Scientists: Rollback of EU environmental legislation and policies jeopardises the future of EU citizens"

Read the text here: https://zenodo.org/records/11373475
And the press release:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rtpsGRY7FpuWAbMY_dPK37Bar5aii4ha_CECBfyQV64

1/3

Many thanks to everyone who boosted my Josh Kraft piece yesterday! I appreciate yoir help countering the official story! If you missed it, check it out! https://brendanhalpin.com/who-is-josh-kraft

#boston #BosPoli #MAPoli

I raised a red flag about this a year or so ago, when I first heard of these a-holes. Here's Yves Smith breaking down why Private Equity all of a sudden getting on board with "employee ownership" is not, in fact, a good thing. When the devil offers you something, be assured it's not for your benefit.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/private-equity-seeks-to-foist-companies-it-cant-sell-on-employees.html

Biden has no red line. He is a war criminal. The ICC should issue an arrest warrant for him. Now. There should be no special privilege for him.

"Two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to immediately stop its assault on Rafah, Israeli warplanes began to drop bombs on refugee tent camps in what had previously been declared a "safe zone." At least 45 people, including children and infants, were killed in the bombing.

#Gaza #Genocide #WarCrimes
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f2aGbgMcVhY

Is there a consensus among #AI experts about whether #LLM models can reliably *summarize* specific text without introducing weird extraneous information?

My working assumption has been that the models can't really do this, and I can't imagine any way that they would be able to reliably avoid omitting important details, but I'm not sure I've seen much discussion of this aspect of what they can and can't do.

(boosts welcome)

Some might suggest that Microsoft's early history of dirty dealing and technical ineptitude is irrelevant to what it is today, but I'd call BS on that - it's core to the culture that the corporation (staff and shareholders!) have exhibited throughout its existence. There's nothing admirable there.

New Book Reveals How The U.S. Stole $600B From Black Americans Through Unfair Taxes Post-Slavery https://www.blackenterprise.com/new-book-600b-stolen-black-americans/

Bold, popular, and GREAT NEWS:

62% of US voters support legal action against oil and gas companies for "their contributions to climate change," including 84% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans.

49% support the filing of criminal charges.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/prosecute-big-oil?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=dd4b2c3d8e-Top+News%3A+Tues.+5%2F28%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-3b949b3e19-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
#Crime = #FossilFuels vs #Climate