Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

My comic is now up on the In These Times comics page. Also included is the first Matt Bors political cartoon in years.
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https://inthesetimes.com/article/mamdani-election-cheney-comics-zohran-ice

LISTEN: EFF’s Sarah Hamid joined KPFA Radio’s Law & Disorder on Tuesday to discuss how Flock Safety’s automated license plate readers are enabling warrantless, mass surveillance that threatens our privacy and civil rights. https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-november-4-2025/

As always, this week's comic is free on Patreon. Paid members get to see it as soon as I finish, which is helpful when every passing day features a decade's worth of news. https://www.patreon.com/posts/mike-johnsons-142514098

This is NOT a difficult situation to solve.

There is a really easy solution: keep recommending one server for people who don't like choice, but regularly rotate it so growth is spread out. The app could have a button saying "Join mas.to" instead of "Join mastodon.social", for example.

The app makers could choose a pool of reliable general servers with track records going back many years (some are listed here: https://fedi.garden/servers-sorted-by-founding-year) and recommend one of these on the front page of the app. They could then regularly change which one is recommended, so that each one in the reliable pool gradually gets a share of new signups.

3/4

We need to talk about Mastodon gGmbH. They are the main developers of Mastodon's server software & official mobile apps, they own mastodon.social and Mastodon's trademarks. Their behaviour is inexplicably going in two totally opposite directions.

A couple of years ago they started promoting mastodon.social from the official apps while hiding other servers, causing their server to grow while other servers shrank. Mastodon.social is currently about 28.7% of the active Fediverse and growing.

For comparison, another major server mas.to is just 1.2% of the active Fediverse. Mastodon.social is twenty-five times bigger.

🧵 1/4

FYI: How to Opt-Out of Airlines Selling Your Travel Data to the Government

https://www.404media.co/how-to-opt-out-of-airlines-selling-your-travel-data-to-the-government/

A gentle reminder: much like tech support, moderation is most visible when something goes wrong.

The vast majority of moderation work - unseen, unpaid, and often unacknowledged - quietly contributes to a safer, more welcoming experience for everyone.

There is no justification for careless or irresponsible moderation. At the same time, it is important to recognise that this network is sustained by thousands of volunteers who prevent the most harmful content from ever reaching you.

cont'd

I recently install #linuxmint (#linux) on the relatively new laptop of my SO, and after that (really totally frictionless) experience and the enthusiastic reaction to the new system, I am going to try and slip this to relatives as "Windows XE (Extra Edition)" and see whether I ever get caught out.

(My father has been using Linux for years now, installed by my brother-in-law and still hasn't gotten aware of it ...)

People, out there, don't let anybody tell you that "Linux is not mature for the desktop". It's just not preinstalled.

#linuxdesktop

It's great that you exited Spotify. That's a genuine win and a good thing all around.

But that quest for the "good" streaming service it put you on? That's a fool's errand. There are NO good streamers; streaming is simply not an equitable or sustainable model for music under capitalism.

Sorry.

They're ALL venture capital backed corporations. That means they're all on the same path: extracting maximum value from music at minimal cost and maximum profit to themselves.

"If you’re still telling yourself this Court “lost its way” recently, you’re living in a fantasy.

"The Supreme Court didn’t break under Trump. It was already broken — Trump just walked through the hole where accountability used to be.

"...Trump is not the cause of the crisis. He’s the expression of it. He didn’t hijack the system. He’s what the system produces after fifty years of abandoning the public."
www.americasundoing.com/p/is-this-rock-bottom

https://www.firefund.net/interrebellium02shutdowncanada

I'm sorry but this sounds like a bunch of spoiled rich kids complaining about being held to any kind of meaningful standard.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/30/students-react-grading-report/

Meet openly, host freely! 𝗕𝗶𝗴𝗕𝗹𝘂𝗲𝗕𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗻 is the open-source alternative for web conferencing—private, feature-rich, and no hidden costs. 🎤 #OpenSource #TeachMeetCollaborate
https://os-sci.com

‘We, the staff who produce the work that has earned ProPublica a place at the forefront of journalism, have raised concerns for more than two years, but management has largely ignored us. We are now calling on you, as stewards of our beloved institution, to direct senior leadership to change course and avoid further damage to the company’s reputation by agreeing to our reasonable proposals.’

https://www.propublicaguild.org/updates/to-the-propublica-board-we-need-a-fair-contract-now

#ProPublica #ProPublicaGuild #NewsGuild #journalism #nonprofit #labor

If your website only works in Chrome, you have fundamentally missed the point of the web. (And you certainly don't know its history, either.)

Teen Vogue -- a bastion of political journalism in the rancid Trump era -- is no more. It's being "folded into" Vogue, a fashion and lifestyle magazine, and has fired excellent staffers.

This sucks in every possible way.

Don't be fooled. Vogue + Teen Vogue = Vogue.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/conde-nast-teen-vogue-newsguild-1236417079/

We’ve mapped over 13,000 surveillance technologies used by police across the U.S.
Drones. License plate readers. Body-worn cameras.
It’s all in EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance—because you deserve to know who’s watching. Help us Take Back CTRL. https://takebackctrl.org/stop-surveillance

Mike Johnson is the average Republican. Not as visibly gross as Trump, but just as evil. Good Republicans are cryptids, but only pundits believe in them. https://www.gocomics.com/brian-mcfadden/2025/11/03

"The top brass at the LA Sheriff’s Department don’t want their deputies to be accountable to the public they serve. The Sheriff’s Department fights all Public Records Act cases. It’s a knee-jerk reaction," attorney Susan Seager tells us about LASD's stonewalling of journalist Cerise Castle.

https://freedom.press/issues/la-sheriff-ducks-journalists-request-for-deputy-photographs/

JD is short for "Jimmy Dean" Vance. This smart little pig got the name after he slipped out of the slaughterhouse and wrote "MOM DRUGS" in some slop and then Oprah put him on TV.