Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Today marks the anniversary of James Connolly’s execution in the fight for an Ireland free from empire and exploitation. A leader of the 1916 Easter Uprising, he saw the struggle for independence as inseparable from the struggle for workers’ rights. Today we remember him. To learn more about James Connolly, check out Songs of Freedom: The James Connolly Songbook here: https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=561

Get your tariff rations before they're in short supply too. https://www.gocomics.com/brian-mcfadden/2025/05/12

I'm a proud member of the "'hard no' movement against AI" that believes "there is something grotesque about these simulacra, the people who push them on us, this whole affair."

It's not just that genAI is a theftbot. Not just that it's being used to destroy *everything*. It is *deeply* anti-human.

Human Rights Watch increasingly feels compelled to look at abuses in the United States. Here's a powerful report on the grossly exploitive "gig worker" economy: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/05/12/us-major-companies-violate-gig-workers-rights

As the car pulls away, nudging into the thick crowd, the daughter shrieks another horrible horrible horrible shriek,
communicating the non-communicable
as the disappearers take another step toward disappearing her mother.

As the car breaks from the crowd she runs after it. 

A Worcester police officer, his voice frothing with anger, shouts,
“Arrest her right now. You are under arrest.”

And then four cops swarm her, grab her, throw her to the ground.

All the while she’s crying crying crying.
Her hair’s caught in her mouth and matted to her face, wet with spit and tears.

Four cops hold her pinned to the ground.

Then they march her away -- Her and another member of the community who had tried to intervene.

They take the pair away from the crowd.

I follow.

They have the daughter by both arms, same as the ICE agents had her mother.
I still don’t know either of their names.

Next to me is a TV reporter from a Spanish language station and her cameraman.

She yells out, “What’s your name?”
and the woman responds in Portuguese. I can’t make it out.

She asks her age and this one I catch: “dezesseis.”

Not a woman—a girl. 
A 16-year-old girl.
Now in custody for the crime of reacting in an unruly way to the sudden forceful disappearance of her mother.

I keep asking about the charges.
The only cop who doesn’t ignore me explains “I’m not the arresting officer.”

The arresting officers go on ignoring me.

We get to the spot where the wagon is set to arrive.

I ask again.
Eventually I get an answer,
and it’s the usual package job:
disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, unlawful assembly.

The charges they throw on anyone they want to arrest for the sake of arresting them,
knowing they’re unlikely to stick.
But sticking isn’t the goal.

The officer who tells me this has a tactical K9 Unit vest on.

He tells me the 16-year-old girl was interfering with police business.

“Worcester police business?” I ask.

What was the police business here exactly?

He looks at me like I’m a smart ass.
He doesn’t say anything.

I press him again:
“Kind of a grey area, huh?”

“Not really,” he says
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/ice-arrest-deportation-police-worcester-massachusetts/

Applying for a passport renewal...

Your photo must be:
unaltered by computer software
a jpg or jpeg file

Folks, I have startling news about JPEGs...

Digital erasure: How social media platforms are silencing Palestinians in 2024
https://globalvoices.org/2025/05/12/digital-erasure-how-social-media-platforms-are-silencing-palestinians-in-2024/

"No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States] shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

Maybe some parts of the Constitution are fuzzy or ambiguous. This isn't one of them. https://mas.to/@gleick/114489803866392093

Beware any industry that claims you need more of what it is selling to offset negative externalities generated by its unbridled use. This seems to be the pitch of the AI cheerleaders: If your systems are doing a poor job screening automated activity from AI, the real problem is you're not using enough AI, dumbass.

This is from the socials of Branden Spikes, a former DOGE guy and longtime Musk employee/lieutenant, in re an article on AI cheating in academia.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/03/who-is-the-doge-and-x-technician-branden-spikes/

This piece, from the founder of Ghost helps explain why it was an EASY decision to use this open-source project's software for my newsletter (resuming this week), rather than sign up with the odious Substack.

https://john.onolan.org/12/

Yo, journalists:

"A company you’ve probably never heard of is selling copies of every airline ticket issued by a travel agency in the US to...DHS and a plethora of other Federal law enforcement and immigration agencies — and who knows who else."

https://papersplease.org/wp/2025/05/08/arc-sells-airline-ticket-records-t o-ice-and-others/

Not generally a fan of Scott Galloway, but he'd on the nose in this blog post about United States' economic suicide: https://www.profgalloway.com/brain-drain/

This is self-evidently illegal: a $400 million gift to Trump rather than to the United States. Apparently laws no longer apply here.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-poised-accept-palace-sky-gift-trump/story?id=121680511

In all my years of making radical media, I rarely took the time to reflect on how these projects actually evolve over time. So it really meant a lot to hear the crew at @subMedia—who’ve been carrying the torch since I stepped away in 2019—dig into the history of the collective on @thebeautifulidea podcast.

https://itsgoingdown.org/a-discussion-on-interrebellium-with-submedia2/

What hit me hardest wasn’t just the trip down memory lane, but the depth of their reflections: why they make media, how they make decisions as a collective, and how they keep pushing forward without compromising their politics. Major props to the interviewer too—for once, someone asked real fucking questions.

And while we're on the topic—if you haven’t watched Interrebellion yet, get on that. The first episode dives into the uprising in Chile right before the pandemic, and it’s fire.

https://sub.media/interrebellium-01-the-estallido-social/

Leave it to Ezra Klein and his ilk to label oligarchy "abundance" smdh

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/abundance-agenda-democrats/

In a bid for survival, businesses are labeling #tariff costs on receipts to explain price hikes and retain customer trust - https://www.businessinsider.com/businesses-are-labeling-tariff-costs-on-receipts-bid-for-survival-2025-5 #trump will love that

I got lost trying to research it.

Geetech GT2560 exists but apparently it's compatible with Anet A10 rather than Prusa i3.

Einsy RAMBo is only in an old version on the #Prusa website.

There are some BigTreeTech offers but I read the firmware would become a project.

And I have no idea if all the connectors are standardized or not...

Help, fedi! My #3dprinter broke!

It's something on the mainboard and the bed is not heating any more. I don't think repairing is worth the time.

What's a good new mainboard compatible with Geeetech i3?

#AskFedi #electronics #3dprinting

Someone posted to our group chat a photo of their 'Welcome Home, Rumeysa' sign, hung on their #SomervilleMA front porch.

RUMEYSA IS RELEASED.

https://bsky.app/profile/jtforward2.bsky.social/post/3lordaj26js25

https://www.reddit.com/r/Somerville/comments/1kivkqe/rumeysa_ozturk_has_been_released/
🤞 🍉 🐘
#Boston #Somerville #RumeysaOzturk #Tufts #Porchfest #uspol #mapoli #Somerpoli

This week's comic: A dangerous invasion of warblers, orioles, and hummingbirds

#immigration #birds #cartoon #uspol #comic