Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

JD Vance vows to represent fellow 'losers' and 'suckers' in White House

"If elected, Vance would break ground as both the first Marine and the first person born entirely without a spine, to serve in the role."

https://www.duffelblog.com/p/jd-vance-vows-to-represent-fellow

@dynamic @scott That’s legit! I appreciate the distinction.
I also do think we need to support the actual humans doing that work, tho. That doesn’t mean not critiquing them, I think, but I know that the government can become very isolating. Our worthy desires for transparency & accountability can manifest as worker surveillance & antagonism in a way that is damaging.
But you’re right: not all are in a position to actually support the human, and so issues are a better fit

She was probably under incredible pressure to do these things, and risked career-destroying opposition if she did not. Any mayor would face such pressures. Office holders are not really equally free to do all of the possible things formally within their powers.

Strategies for making change should therefore not bet too much on simply electing good people and then sitting back and letting them do their thing

Meanwhile, back home Private Equity is eating what's left of the healthcare system (after the insurers had their way with it) while feigning ignorance about what could possibly be driving prices up.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07/pitchbook-report-attempting-to-defend-private-equity-role-in-healthcare-suffers-from-fundamental-fatal-analytical-flaw.html

A friend has been suffering from some serious back problems, and recently made a trip to Colombia to have it checked out (his wife is Colombian). Several MRIs, many appointments with specialists over the course of three weeks. Total bill: $500.

Our medical system is a disgrace.

@rwg @giovannamas having just been asked to review for a TF journal, no thanks: "Given the recent decision of T&F to exploit their authors by signing over their rights to an AI company, I cannot in good conscience perform free services for this publisher until the situation is resolved."
#TaylorFrancis #generativeAI

Reporting of the latest UBI test programme is ignoring the key finding, obvious to anyone who knows low income people, that their first impulse was to spread the wealth to others.
This thinking is so alien to economists and financial types that they barely discuss it. https://www.openresearchlab.org/findings/key-findings-spending

Schumer plans to have a floor vote on the very, very problematic KOSA bill (and COPPA 2.0) this week... The bill is very problematic. Not as problematic as it was originally... but still extremely problematic, especially if Trump wins the election, as it's his FTC that will enforce...

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:vdabazxnghujbebpi2ektqgi/post/3kxxcq4tdgp2y

Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source https://www.zdnet.com/article/switzerland-now-requires-all-government-software-to-be-open-source/ by @sjvn

Switzerland is one of the world's leading #opensource countries; now, if only the United States could follow its lead!

Wild, true story from the security awareness and training company KnowBe4 that details how they inadvertently hired a North Korean hacker who was posing as a Western tech worker.

Kudos to them for publishing this. If it can happen to a security awareness company, it can happen to anyone (full disclosure: they've been an advertiser on my site for ages).

https://blog.knowbe4.com/how-a-north-korean-fake-it-worker-tried-to-infiltrate-us

Here’s what parenting can look like.

When I told my dad I was trans, my dad’s response was, “Oh! I can send you jewelry now!” (He was retired and made jewelry as a hobby).

Two days latter, I had a letter in the mail addressed to Joelle, the first time “Joelle” ever got mail, with a necklace in it. Later he made me this one. He told me, “I hope I got the colors right, I looked it up online.”

You don’t have to mourn a child transitioning. You can be the first to do so many affirming things.

They had the signs printed in advanced. Hired a graphic designer. (Wow he did a good job.) Handed them out. Waved them proudly on television. Like they say "Lower Taxes" or something.

There is no neutral way to read this sign. It's about getting rid of people because of who they are. There is no gray area. No fig leaf. Just eliminationism.

It doesn't even say WHO or WHY.

How to Survive Jail - Strategies from a Stop Cop City forest defender facing domestic terrorism and RICO charges by Priscilla Grim in Hammer and Hope: https://hammerandhope.org/article/jail-cop-city-forest-defender

I just submitted this bug report on the very cool Immich project which I promoted yesterday: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/11325 Will be interesting to see how that project lead responds.

We on the Fediverse need to nicely ask the coordinators of every 'open' project which it's not on the Fediverse but is on Facebook or Twitter... or which it's not using Matrix but is using Discord or Slack. If we don't ask, we'll never help people in open communities realise that the tools they choose *do* matter. https://davelane.nz/notslack

Exactly what I had in mind too.

In my mind, part of the problem of corporations is that it's designed specifically to make sure they can be super big and mitigate the stuff that can limit the size of businesses. I mean, the guy who started Cloudstrike was in charge of Mcaffee when that company took down half the Internet in 2010. If you were in charge of two enterprises that did such a thing, why are you still allowed to have your fingers in half the Internet? Because everything is set up to be compartmentalized enough legally that everyone can avoid consequences even when the worst possible outcome occurs.

In the US, there's been a lot of talk & concern about foreign investors buying up US farmland.

And there is, in fact, a tech startup that helps them do that! It's like Robin Hood for buying US farmland.

And who's one of its key investors, profiting off of every sale?

J.D. Vance.

Who Trump recently chose as his VP to "represent rural America."

Microsoft now blaming the EU for the crowdstrike issue, because the EU made them open their APIs to third party developers in 2009 is hilarious.

If your APIs had any kind of gracious error handling, this wouldn’t be an issue. Fix your bad code, Microsoft, stop pointing fingers.

REDALERT: The Senate is likely to vote on the Kids Online Safety Act (#KOSA) this week. This internet censorship bill will impact everyone who uses social media. Tell your representatives to vote no today. #THREAD https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/congress-amended-kosa-its-still-censorship-bill

When will these human rights atrocities committed in service to the IOC end, The New Yorker?