Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The core argument from an upcoming piece; something I've come to view as nearly an iron rule in BigCo's:

Going from decent to excellent performance is a technical challenge, but moving from poor to decent performance is fundamentally a management and culture problem.

#DOGE’s #Screwworm Legacy May Be Tons Of Euthanized #Cats And #Dogs - https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/20/doges-screwworm-legacy-may-be-tons-of-euthanized-cats-and-dogs/ "it’s obvious that there were no taxpayer cost savings due to DOGE’s fuckery. If anything, it seems like we’ll be spending more money to remediate the problem than we did keeping it from becoming one. "

Attention Nerd Friends:

Does anyone here have a connection with anyone that worked at Humongous Entertainment? I desperately want one of the podcast episodes next year to be talking to delightful people about designing children's video games.

The Force is strong with this one. https://www.commondreams.org/news/darth-vader-flock

RE: https://techhub.social/@jonathanreed/117129903538588670

Admirable, having the courage to follow his convictions.

While everyone is rightfully concerned about ICE’s new ‘Shock Gloves’, it’s important to know that shock devices have been used in prisons and schools for disabled children for years.

The Gloves killed an inmate in Kentucky after a guard held them to his body for well over a minute.

Disabled children are exposed to electric shocks to ‘correct’ their behaviour.

ICE should not have access to these weapons, but we must also fight to get them out of schools and jails.

We must refuse to accept atrocities.

https://www.disabledginger.com/p/ices-new-shock-gloves-are-already

#uspol #ice #abolishice #shockgloves #disability #ableism #eugenics

I’ve been thinking a lot about the gulf between people who think LLMs can cut 90% of the cost of software development or whatever and people who think that’s a pile of catastrophes balanced on top of a nonsense wish.

I think a lot of that chasm boils down to the fact that software is already •terrible•, and people have very different feelings about that. I don't just mean “Liquid Glass is ugly” terrible; I mean “it’s broken and insecure and unreliable and just doesn't flipping WORK” terrible, like Arbiter Sports.

We are right now in a war between people who think software should treat humans humanely and people who are perfectly willing to offload their development costs onto captive users in the form of wasted time, anger, anxiety, and even more severe forms of personal harm. That war was raging well before LLMs entered the picture, but they’re exaggerated. I’m extremely skeptical of the idea that LLMs make any significant positive contribution to the long-term speed or cost of writing •good• software, but they clearly have the potential to lower the floor for •bad• software to unheard-of levels at unheard-of speeds. How you feel about that probably predicts a lot about how you feel about the “LLMs can 10x software dev!” hype.

3/3

In 2016, most unions backed the establishment over Bernie Sanders. A decade later, Hamilton Nolan argues that organized labor faces a similar choice as DSA-backed candidates gain power:

“Unions can help be part of the solution to the party’s reform, or they can get left behind.”

https://inthesetimes.com/article/labor-unions-dsa-democratic-socialists-of-america

“As nonprofit newsrooms, we’re struggling with both the attacks on journalism and the attacks on philanthropy.”

Prism’s editor in chief told CJR that the outlet’s focus on BIPOC communities makes it a target for the Trump administration.

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/movement-journalism-struggling-loss-funding-walking-targets-prism-scalawag-press-on-philanthropy-grant-rescinded.php

AI’s Rise is Being Fueled by the Sprawling U.S. Military State https://inthesetimes.com/article/ai-military-tech-workers-palantir

“Unfortunately, if you are on a machine that’s been issued by your workplace, you should expect that there’s some type of monitoring,” EFF’s @htsuka told @AssociatedPress. https://apnews.com/article/employer-surveillance-bossware-tracking-workplace-7d61e74242b872457bbfcf2223f9ebd5

Never thought I'd say this, but I'm drawing WAY too many comics about diarrhea this year.

@thomasfuchs
But then AI companies came and destroyed all of that. Apparently copyright law doesn't exist if you operate piracy at a large enough scale. I think there are two parts to why "we" accepted it. First was "Open" AI's weird corporate structure with the 501c3 that clouded the for profit motives. Second that the entire planet is being held hostage in a software cold war where the, legitimate, concerns are that rival countries will have more powerful AI that can exploit vulnerabilities

RE: https://dialup.space/@TechTangents/117128373167235184

I figured I would self quote this because replies are weird on mastodon. This is a big part of why I have a hard line "Never AI" stance.

Water usage can be mitigated, energy can be renewable, manufacturing can catch up, but generative AI will always be built on theft because it needs so much data.

"Creating media with an uncooperative mind"

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/deciding-what-to-do/

> Times change – they always change – and people who care about teaching try to work with an awareness of the new, a care for younger generations, and subsequently get rewarded with constant burnout and mental health crises.

New blog post/newsletter

#Racism and #sexism have become normalised in #Britain, says equalities minister | Bridget Phillipson | The Guardian

My view is that the extremists have become more vocal and are not afraid to hide any more.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/aug/20/racism-and-sexism-have-become-normalised-in-britain-says-equalities-minister-bridget-phillipson

#UK #Politics

We are open source, cooperatively-run, community-led and in the process of joining the social web. We're also working collaboratively with others in the space towards different modes of decentralisation, going against enshittification and one-size-fits-all approaches.

If you'd like to support our work and help allocate more resources towards these things, there are several ways to do so at the link below. Thank you! 💪🐦‍⬛

https://mirlo.space/team/tip

#SupportUs #Fediverse #Support #Coop #Coops

What if communities didn’t just petition government, but shared power with it?

That’s the idea behind co-governance: community groups and public agencies making decisions together, with the people most affected helping shape the policies meant to serve them.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/cogovernance-american-democracy-250

🔵 This week's Tom the Dancing Bug...
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🇺🇸 The MAGAs travel back to when America was Great, the Fabulous Fifties!
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Brought to you by the honored and revered Inner Hive, including long-time member Suite Lou and new member Mark Waid.
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READ IT RIGHT HERE, YOU MONSTERS👇