Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

If you hate protesters blocking roads in the name of taking immediate #ClimateAction, you’re going to really hate how Climate Change itself blocks roads.

A picture today from Valencia, Spain where they received 500mm of rain, a year’s worth, in one day on Tuesday.
#ClimateEmergency #ClimateChange

@lwriemen And for anyone reading who's not an econ 🤓 , the Labor Share of Income is the percentage of income taken home by wage and salary workers, as opposed to income derived from stock, bond, or property ownership. This percentage has been in long-term decline as long as you've been alive, unless you were born in the 1940s. It's basically another way of looking the productivity vs. wages chart that shows a big divergence after about 1974, though this makes the longer term pattern clearer, imo

@lwriemen The point for me (and of the article) is that it's been moving in one direction for all of our lives. This never gets mentioned (or almost never) in discussions of wealth inequality, but if we're serious about addressing said inequality, we need to take a long hard look at why that graph looks the way it does...and then we need to reverse it. We get celebrate minor victories, but all the while we're losing the (class) war - under every administration.

Big Lies and Little Progress: Reviewing Four Years of Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class”

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/10/big-lies-and-little-progress-biden-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivans-foreign-policy-for-the-middle-class.html

Labor share of national income - United States - 1950-2024

I miss @Teri Kanefield's sanity-inducing posts.  Sounds like she's having fun though?

Whatever happens with the U.S. election, this is a useful document to keep around:
#^https://terikanefield.com/things-to-do/

Her blog is great too, though it hasn't been updated in a bit.

if bill gates or mark cuban or even jeff bezos gave a shit about anything besides themselves, they would give away 99.99% of their own wealth to climate orgs etc, they would break up their own monopolies, and they would fight like hell to tax billionaires out of existence

they actually have the power to shore up democracy and possibly reduce the scale of climate chaos faced by future generations, but its testament to the nature of billionairism that not one will go for broke and use it

Thus far, my experience learning Hubzilla has been, largely:

Me: Hmm... I feel like there ought to be a way to do X.
Me: [posting to Hubzilla Support Forum] "How do I do X?"
Helpful people on Hubzilla Support Forum: "Like this."

In summary, extremely powerful software with a ton of features that are hard to find.  But the community is awesome ; )

“Arresting journalists for reporting on protests has always been a constitutional nonstarter,” writes Seth Stern. “Police and prosecutors nationwide need to better educate themselves about the First Amendment so this doesn’t keep happening.”

https://freedom.press/issues/prosecutors-must-drop-case-against-indian-time-journalist/

Here’s the problem: The Department of Justice has repeatedly said that under the First Amendment, police dispersing protesters can’t also disperse journalists covering the protests, because how police respond to protests is news.

We wrote about this earlier this month.

https://freedom.press/issues/heed-doj-guidance-drop-cases-against-journalists-arrested-at-protests/

“My dream for 2025 is that the co-operative organizations will come together and truly cooperate."

https://geo.coop/articles/co-operatives-are-pivotal-point

Here's the Brookings Institution way back in '06 recommending what appears to me to be current US strategy regarding Iran and Israel, as shown by the above headlines. Curious.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdf

@dynamic_hubzilla

I know I often make non-CW'd posts that some would prefer to have under a content warning, and I accept that this fact may limit my audience.

I instead is to use my own assessment of what is and isn't "too much" to post without a warning.  I also try to make my content warnings descriptive enough for people to make informed decisions about whether or not to read more.

I realize this is not what everyone wants, but it's what I do.

@dynamic_hubzilla

Tangentially, the wide range of different types of posts that can be classified as political is a big part of why I've never been super comfy with content warnings of "politics", "ukpol", "uspol" etc.  It's really hard to know from that descriptor alone what kind of post is hidden by the warning.

There's a specific category of political posts that has started to really bother me: those that mock or laugh at other people's speech, beliefs, or behavior.  I think these posts edge into the space of bullying, and I hope the people making them know this and are aware of what they are doing.  "Punching down" is particularly insidious, but there's also a nastiness to a "sideways" punch if you know that those targeted feel scared or vulnerable.

It seems useful to think about this when posting.

There are different kinds of posts about politics, e.g.:
* Discussions of issues (reproductive rights, international relations, tax policy, local urban planning, etc.)
* Endorsements of specific candidates
* "Horse race" updates on polling data
* High level discussion of systems of government
* Commentary *about* discourse on any or all of the above

I'm sure there are others.

Tone can also vary: descriptive vs. prescriptive, general vs. specific, emotional vs. detached, personal vs. impersonal.

Surely, one of these headlines must be mistaken. It can't be the case that the US is both funding 70% of Israel's widening war, but also doesn't have influence over Israel. I wonder which one is wrong? 🤔

In today's Help Desk, Mark finally shows up to a meeting.

https://www.eviscerati.org/comics/hd/2024/10/orwellian-technology/

And for anyone who's not sure: each race on your ballot is a separate thing. You can vote for different parties in different races and/or leave some of them blank, and your ballot will still be counted. So check what all is going to be on the ballot in your town before deciding whether/for whom to vote! The president isn't the only thing that matters (especially if, like most US citizens, you're not in a swing state)

To make the point with some data. In 2016, Clinton got 57 endorsements from major newspapers, including the WaPo and NYT, while Trump got 2. I don't think newspaper editorial board endorsements are nearly as important as people seem to think. Sure, media professionals are very interested in the endorsements (or lack of) from other media pros, but it doesn't seem like most people give a shit. More evidence of the unseriousness of our political dialogue, imo.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/2016-general-election-editorial-endorsements-major-newspapers