Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Important and useful article.

""Peer review, especially when conducted at pandemic speed, does not exert the rather boring scientific scrutiny needed to identify the problems described above. Forensic work like ours is not organized by scientific journals. We do not get paid. We are not employed by universities, hired by governments, or supported by private money to do this. We do it because we feel it should be done."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/ivermectin-research-problems/620473/

Are you aware of the Indigenous-led protests outside the White House that have been occurring daily since Indigenous Peoples Day on the 11th? There's been more than 400 arrests, some violence from police, but in asking folk, I realized literally no one around me knows that there's essentially an Indigenous-led, climate-focused, Occupy, in DC, right now.

Thought of the moment:
I'm frustrated with Joe Manchin too, but he is *not* single-handedly ruining U.S. climate policy. He has the help of 50 Republican Senators for one thing, and that's just the Senate. There's also all the institutions that funded the political campaigns of those Senators, all the people who voted for those Senators, and I'm pretty sure a bunch of people in the military industrial complex. There's plenty of blame to go around.

https://going-medieval.com/2021/10/28/on-looking-in-the-past-for-a-better-future%ef%bf%bc/

Leftist medieval historian describes two times that free peasants formed self-sufficient communes with no class hierarchy, one of which lasted longer than the United States has existed. Both only failed when the landlord class decided it wasn't right for there to be land with no lords and invaded with armies, and even then one of the collectives held out for a very, very long time.

Global Money Laundering Watchdog Says Uh, Yeah, Better Regulate Cryptocurrency
https://gizmodo.com/global-money-laundering-watchdog-says-uh-yeah-better-1847956545 #Cryptocurrency

Exploding digital textbooks don't belong on your tuition bill. #OAWeek https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/10/inequitable-access-anti-competitive-scheme-textbook-publishers

Protect developer freedom. Abolish software patents. Learn why software patents are unjust by checking out the new design of our #endsoftwarepatents initiative. https://u.fsf.org/3f-

Test the new PureBoot feature that extend the tamper detection to the next level. Existing PureBoot users can download the R19-pre1 .rom file that corresponds to their Librem computer and flash it like any other PureBoot release. More here ➡️ https://puri.sm/posts/new-pureboot-feature-scanning-root-for-tampering/

What is the future of smartphones? Let's listen to Nicole Færber, Chief Technology Officer, Purism, at the recent discussion organized by Protocol

"The last twenty years of the internet have demonstrated the vast and unchecked power that comes with owning and controlling the platforms, the ability to structure and profit from every interaction. It seems unbelievably short-sighted for the education sector to relinquish the dwindling amount of agency it still possesses…" https://abject.ca/just-give-up-i-guess/

A recent discussion made me remember an interesting talk about higher education and the tendency of individuals to radicalisation. As I found: The matter is difficult, with in fact higher-ed graduates from various disciplines found at high rates in radical groups.

- book discussion from 2016: https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/33/1/161/2525515

- US library of Congress report from 1999 (see particularly page 48 f): https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/Soc_Psych_of_Terrorism.pdf

Any sociologist who can advise on the most recent state of reseach?

UN: Greenhouse gas concentrations hit a new record in 2020

https://ground.news/article/un-greenhouse-gas-concentrations-hit-a-new-record-in-2020_158938 #climatechange #climatecrisis #leadonclimate

1/2 off sale this week on TESA games including Co-opoly, Strike! and Game-Changer...

https://store.tesacollective.com/collections/games

A couple years back, the charitable foundation I work for took up MSFT's donation programme for Azure-based hosting (they gave us a USD 5k 'credit' for hosting services for a year). Azure was demonstrably less capable, needlessly complex, & uninformative compared to other cloud providers we were using alongside it. When our 'credit' ran out (Azure doesn't tell you how much you've spent on their dashboard - that's an extra $$ service), turned out our instance was costing USD600ish/month 1/2

And yes, I think Techsoup is an unethical organisation that is completely complicit in the wilful exploitation of charitable and non-profit organisations, globally. They actively avoid mentioning or promoting excellent Free and Open Source Software to their audience... because they make all their money from 'clipping the ticket' (the 'admin costs' they charge) getting them addicted to MSFT's proprietary software producing proprietary digital artefacts.

Microsoft are quite despicable. Look at https://email.connectingup.org/t/i-e-cjukitt-shutkotj-k/ - this is the web view of an email I just got from 'Techsoup', who exist to addict non-profits to MSFT proprietary software (offering 'donated' MSFT software at 'almost free' prices, so NGOs don't adopt #FOSS instead)... and now MSFT, having addicted them, are jacking up the price and forcing them to switch to subscription pricing. Yuck.

Rather than risk having to pay for that again in future, with all the issues we were having (did you know that Azure Linux instances don't support Websockets by default?), we migrated our Azure instance to a higher spec DigitalOcean droplet... costing USD 40/month. Yes, something like 1/15th the cost. We haven't regretted the move for an instant. We similarly ditched AWS, with massive productivity gains & substantial cost reductions. I can't believe businesses use either of those services. 2/2

EFF, with @ACLUNorCal, @ACLUSoCal, and @sdACLU, has filed a suit on behalf of three immigrant rights activists against Sheriff Bob Doyle and Marin County for violating two California laws that protect immigrants and motorists’ privacy. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/10/eff-files-new-lawsuit-against-california-sheriff-sharing-alpr-data-ice-and-cbp

Congratulations to Mi'kmaq water protectors on their hard-fought victory against #AltonGas. We figured we'd mark the occasion by re-sharing a video we put out about their struggle back in 2017.

https://sub.media/video/mikmaq-resistance-defend-the-sacred/

Crowd-sourced safety apps are out of control and have become the toxic social component of a landscape of surveillance, paranoia, and potential vigilantism.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/10/crowd-sourced-suspicion-apps-are-out-control