Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The last time a Speaker wasn’t elected on the 1st vote was re: 100 years ago. Before that in 1856, it took > 130 votes to elect a Speaker due to extreme polarization over slavery. In the process, 2 congressmen assaulted reporters. (1 “catawompously chawed up” a reporter’s finger)

What’s important here: being unable to elect a Speaker shows severe dysfunction. It’s easy to overlook the highly problematic & potentially dramatic implications of our Speaker problem.

#SpeakerOfTheHouse #politics

@dynamic yes! And it's incredible that Lula just appointed the first ever Indigenous person to head FUNAI--the indigenous agency. They'll also play a role in stopping deforestation. I'm really pleased with his ministerial appointments that touch on the environment--Marina Silva as Environment minister, Joenia Wapichana at FUNAI, and Sonia Guajajara as minister for Indigenous Peoples (she's also indigenous!)

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

https://viconsortium.com/vi-government/virgin-islands-attorneygeneral-denise-george-has-been-terminated-#

Thanks to @sofiav, I'm reading a lot of toots by Brazilians celebrating the return to power of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It's a good feeling.

I'd also like to remind everyone that this is something for the whole world to celebrate, and not just because the fall of Bolsonaro indicates a weakening of the global turn toward fascism.

Consider too the ecosystem services provided by the Brazilian Amazon.

My Brookings Metro colleague Tonantzin Carmona has an op-ed on CNN discussing how the cryptocurrency industry has been a form of "predatory inclusion" luring Black and Latine Americans with limited access to traditional investments into unsafe investments:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/opinions/crypto-black-investors-carmona/index.html

The idea that people get more conservatively as they get older is wrong, people get more conservative as they aquire more wealth, which in the past corralated with age. Given how it's now near impossible to buy a house with just job money, this trend isn't surprising

RT @MortenStostad@twitter.com

There are other countries where this millennial-specific trend is clear, especially in the Anglosphere.
Here's Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/MortenStostad/status/1609140081595498498

EFF is proud to defend the @internetarchive in this case, and we will keep fighting for a robust and vibrant digital future.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/fighting-digital-future-books-2022-review

My polite request to folks who think making transit fare-free is a low priority: that's fine, but spend your time and energy advocating *for* the things you think are high priority, not *against* free transit.

The reality is free transit is an idea that's energizing a lot of people right now.

Let's seize the opportunity to advance transit together even if we have different priorities.

Seeing new energy around transit and saying "yuck, no" is a weird way to be a transit advocate.

The first unionized Amazon warehouse in the U.S.
The first unionized Chipotle in the U.S.
The first unionized Apple Store.
The first unionized Trader Joe's.
260+ unionized Starbucks stores.
370+ worker strikes across the country.

2022 was a monumental year for worker power.

“The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.”
- Bertrand Russell In "Praise of Idleness and Other Essays" (1935)

#QOTD

"Colonialism was not just a conquest of land, and therefore space, but also a conquest of time. From South Asia to Africa to Oceania, imperialists assaulted alternative forms of timekeeping. They saw any region without European-style clocks, watches and church bells as a land without time."

#Kolektiva update 🖤 🏴

We're happy to announce we have a #Tor #onion 🧅 domain at http://klktvbm66ijfy5j7oflsidtcf3gbhrmbaaqfufxggflfb57rv5yakxqd.onion

Tor helps you to protect yourself against tracking, surveillance, and censorship. A .onion domain takes this a step forward by sidestepping some aspects of the larger public internet such as DNS while.

Grab a copy of Tor Browser at https://www.torproject.org/download and give us a try. Please let us know if you experience any issues.

Thanks,
-Kolektiva admin

💜 to @torproject

DEFEND DRAG STORY HOUR IN NYC!

Help protect queer spaces and expression under threat from the far right!

The far right has placed a target on Drag Story Hours nationwide, and New York is no exception. A group of violent, loud bigots, who have repeatedly harassed and invaded these events in the city, is openly planning to disrupt the next Drag Story Hour, on Thursday, December 29, at the Jackson Heights Library in Queens.

Queer community members and allies will be there to show the fascists they are not welcome, but that kids and drag queens are.

Let's show NYC's unwavering support for Drag Story Hour and for queer and trans people, and make a safe, encouraging, and joyful welcome for kids and their grownups as they enter the library. 

BE THERE:
Thursday 12/29 3pm
Jackson Heights Library
35-51 81st Street, Queens (7 train to 82nd Street)
3pm
Wear regular clothes and a mask
Bring rainbow swag, non-amplified noisemakers, musical instruments, joy, and love!

As somebody who's avoided COVID-19 for three years it's kind of depressing to think how easy it would have been for the government to get to COVID zero.

N95s for everyone and mask mandates. An actual vaccination campaign. Strict air quality rules, and a handful of targeted capacity limits where needed.

We would be fine. We'd have a society. Our hospitals would be functional. People wouldn't be dead.

It would be cheaper.

I remember the #FOSS community reaction claiming that Google used their #OpenSource hosting service, code.google.com, (eventually @killedbygoogle) to bend perceptions on licenses in ways that were favorable to them.

First, #AGPLv3 licensed #FreeSoftware projects were banned...

https://www.cnet.com/culture/googles-festering-problem-with-the-agpl/

Don't let proprietary software marketing dollars give you a false sense of security -- your devices are vulnerable. Understand the risks, and promote free software. Start the conversation in your community today! #FreeSoftware https://www.fsf.org

@lightweight @Godfrey642 @sinky @aral Thanks, Dave. It looks dire at Microsoft and the Bing proxies (Duck Duck Go, Ecosia, Qwant, Yahoo, etc.). This was one test I ran: https://jackyan.com/blog/2022/08/mojeek-shows-more-in-its-search-results-than-google/

Also, c. 40 per cent of Bing results are repeated from page to page. From what I can tell, the index is smaller than what Alltheweb and Inktomi had 20 years ago.

The only Google alternative for me is @Mojeek. Its rankings could improve but that can happen with a larger user base. Strictly no tracking.

As you know, we are currently dealing with #malware waves. This makes us mad. Mostly mad at #blocklist providers, which are mostly either not well maintainers, or selling a commercial product, where you are even asked to pay for delisted.

This is far from allowing for a free and decentralized Internet.

Read what we think about this: https://blog.codeberg.org/how-blocklists-prevent-the-internet-to-be-decentralized-and-safe.html

#Infosec #PiHole #eblocker #spamhaus #abuse #centralization

This is actually a productive question and I'm glad you asked. Most of the "feeling" of whiteness comes about when non-white users are policed in their use of the platform by white users who try to impose their own norms of use onto these users without reference for the cultural contexts of their use.

That's a lot of the word "use" there, so I'll try to be clearer with a fediverse specific example.

https://noc.social/@fredmarkle/109585606613963828

I don't think this is getting the coverage it needs. Scottish government to require passivhaus standard for all new build homes. This is big. Really big. Growing out of lessons from the 70's oil crisis. Passivhaus buildings use very little energy to heat, or to cool. We've known how to do this for decades. It's gross negligence from all western governments that the same is not true of all new builds in the developed world.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23197204.government-announces-passivhaus-standards-adopted-scotland/