Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

@stephen Wellington Women’s House! It is also included of trans women. They provide wrap-around support and have amazing staff. https://wwh.org.nz/

NBC News: "Trump campaign paid law firm employing RFK Jr. weeks after he endorsed Trump"

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-campaign-paid-law-firm-employing-rfk-endorsement-rcna183266

Services rendered...

For folks interested in taking part in our monthly '#FOSS' (#libre software & related topics), we're moving our monthly meetings to a new platform as of our next meeting, tomorrow (Tue 10 Dec) at 20:00, to https://meeting.iridescent.nz - that URL will redirect you to the right place each month!

Here's what we discuss: https://nzoss.nz/online-meetups-now-happen-httpsmeetingiridescentnz Hope to see some of you there!

Note: hosting infrastructure is sponsored by https://catalystcloud.nz!!

Watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Dust Bowl, I am struck by how the history of the United States can be traced through a sequence of epic speculations, scams, and crashes.

This country is so much more, but it is forever scamming, forever being scammed, and forever trying to remediate the consequences. The hope and optimism that make us so capable and future-thinking also make us endlessly vulnerable.

“Censorship was both a consequence of and a building block of the Apartheid system. There was no real freedom of expression,” says Anriette Esterhuysen about growing up in South Africa. Learn more in her Speaking Freely interview: https://www.eff.org/pages/speaking-freely-anriette-esterhuysen

If you need to give your peeps reasons not to join #Bluesky this great piece by @davetroy should do the trick.

He notes that Bluesky was initially seeded by #JackDorsey with a libertarian vision of a decentralized network that wouldn't require moderation. Troy expresses concerns about the platform's funding sources and potential vulnerabilities, urging users to critically assess the platforms they engage with, especially those backed by venture capital.

https://america2.news/without-sky-social-media-and-the-end-of-reality

@harris @dynamic Allow me to take a second crack at this and refine my point:

The calls to make improvements/changes to mastodon should be decoupled from concerns about competing with BlueSky because:

(1) As a causal story it rings hollow. (Vibes/marketing/momentum has overtaken whatever initial equal marketplace there may have been.)

(2) It's a poor lodestone for design & cultural choices. (I don't think I actually want growth that is mostly essentially broadcast/follower relationships.)

Which, again, doesn't mean I wouldn't love to see some changes here. There are both technical changes & cultural shifts I would love to see. But the "we need to do X to compete with BlueSky" narratives aren't doing it for me.

If you need something to do, if you are wondering how we will get past this moment, if you are tired of feeling helpless, let us offer these tools as tangible solutions that can create pretty quick results toward connection and finding people with similar values in your community.

https://geo.coop/articles/commons-economy-reloaded

Support REI workers in the Soho NYC store in demanding a well-ventilated and safe work space this winter https://actionnetwork.org/letters/rei-soho-ski-shop-letter?source=direct_link&
#REIUnion #rei #nyc

Police unlawfully storing images of innocent people for #facialrecognition - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/08/police-unlawfully-storing-images-of-innocent-people-for-facial-recognition "#Privacy fears raised as report warns photographs of arrested people who are then released are being retained" we did warn about this slippery slope

‘My right side was paralysed, I was so sick’: the #pesticide poisonings in #Brazil that lead back to the UK - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/08/pesticide-poisonings-brazil-chemicals-diquat-banned-uk-health-problems "Investigation uncovers how chemicals like diquat, banned in the UK but legal to export, are causing health problems in the global south"

My bank uses phone SMS as its standard "2-factor authentication" -- better than nothing at all but GROSSLY insecure compared to encrypted messaging that it refuses to supply.

I paid extra for an RSA dongle, but when I log in there's an option to use SMS, which makes the dongle completely pointless.

Crap security is standard in the banking industry -- because contrary to pious words, it doesn't give a damn about your financial privacy.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/make-sure-texts-calls-are-encrypted-fbi-security-warning-rcna182810

The fall of Bashar Al-Assad shows that no amount of force can freeze history forever. Every autocratic regime will fall.

But will they be succeeded by other authoritarian regimes? That will be determined by how they fall.

This is the reason to build multiethnic, horizontal revolutionary movements that can play a role in the changes ahead.

The more that ordinary Syrians from all backgrounds and walks of life participate in the next phase of the revolution—the less that it is dictated by money, weapons, and agendas outside of Syria—the less bloody it will likely be.

As the millions of refugees who were forced to flee Syria make their way home, we hope that they will play a part in this.

Tonight, we give thanks for every soldier who deserted rather than fighting for a dictator. May their refusals inspire others, in turn, not to kill or die for things that are unworthy of humanity.

Burn every prison.

Topple every oppressor.

Some background on the situation:

https://crimethinc.com/Syria2024

Thousands of prisoners have been liberated from Sednaya Prison, Assad's main torture and extermination camp on the outskirts of Damascus. What a historic moment for humanity, and all those who love freedom.

The billionaires who will make up the majority of (nominated) Trump cabinet are (like the boss) walking, talking conflicts of interest.

Which is, of course, one of the reasons they were invited to join. They'll cash in, and as in any gangster operation, a cut of the loot will find its way to Dear Leader and his family.
1/2

The burden of catching malware or adware should not be placed on the consumer. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/11/one-down-many-go-pre-installed-malware-android

If you're a "senior associate scientist" at a large Pharma company, you can now afford to live with your siblings. In other news, the economy is great.

https://archive.ph/3zNx8

"Grant and Dylan Gechtman, 25, share a rented three-bedroom home in Fremont, Calif. They do almost everything else together too. They work as senior associate scientists at the same pharmaceutical company, share a Mazda CX-5, and even joined the same Jewish fraternity in college."

Latest comic: Experts explain why America voted for plague

#cartoon #comic #politics #uspol #media #journalism #election #authoritarianism

We can discus pros/cons/features/implementation/culture all we want … but have y’all considered that most folks aren’t making a well considered choice after thorough research? At most they’re going off the vibes, and more likely they haven’t even heard of mastodon. BlueSky is just a lot bigger and well known. Addressing much needed changes around here is important, but “people won’t join mastodon until…” just doesn’t feel like a real thing to me.

(This is separate from whether aspiring to have more people / replace Twitter is the best goal, which gets into social vs the social-but-actually-broadcast media that twitter became and many people seem to want and then the algorithm amplified because it mistakes engagement for wanting.)

Daraya is free!

"Daraya was a star before the revolution and a star during. What the young men and women of the city built took immense efforts and resulted in a small exemplary model for the future of Syria, the one we dream of."
https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2016/08/26/daraya/