Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

" Nobody becomes a #billionaire by accident. You have to have wanted that level of power, control & wealth more than you wanted anything else in your life. They all sacrifice family, relationships, stability, community, connection, and belonging in service of keeping score on a scale that actually yields no additional real-world benefits on the path from that first $100 million to the tens of billions.

This makes billionaires "a cohort that is, counterintutively, very easily manipulated." And they're all #manipulators
and hang out together, which means that when a #conspiratorial belief takes root in one billionaire's brain, it spreads to the rest of them like wildfire.

Then, billionaires "push each other further and further into extreme ideas because their entire careers have been predicated on the idea that they're genius outliers who can see things others can't, and that their wealth is a reward for that imagined merit."

2/2
https://www.anildash.com/2023/02/27/tycoon-martyrdom-charade/

Summary: Corey Doctorow
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/15/in-the-dumps/#what-vacation

@ProPublica

That's why they don't let me be editor of publications.🤷🏿‍♂️

Because if I was your editor, I would tell you to go back and try again because you missed the story.

Who is paying to fly these Proud Boys around the country? How many of these angry speakers are not even authentic members of the community? What is the ultimate goal of disrupting school boards? Why did federal law enforcement not take action against this clearly concerted and coordinated effort to disrupt school boards?

Attending @defcon? Be sure to check out EFF’s second annual charity poker tournament, hosted by @Tarah, where you’ll face off in some friendly competition to support civil liberties and human rights online. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/eff-poker-tournament-def-con-31

The Arizmendi bakeries have spun-off another #WorkerCoop business (or are about to), but this one is happening in a little different way than normal.

https://oaklandside.org/2023/07/18/nicks-pizza-and-bakery-oakland-becoming-a-worker-owned-collective/

LGBTQ #Cooperative cafe Glitter Bean has launched a GoFundMe to make needed repairs and recover from 2 years of covid restrictions.

https://www.thecoast.ca/news-opinion/glitter-beans-workers-turn-to-crowdfunding-to-save-queer-centric-co-op-cafe-31179174

https://www.gofundme.com/f/6t29tp-save-the-bean

On the #CyberResilienceAct #CRA the @fsfe has already proposed a solution that will lead to more #security while safeguarding #FreeSoftware (#OpenSource):

* Liability should be shifted to those *deploying* Free Software instead of those *developing* Free Software and

* Those who significantly financially benefit from this deployment should make sure the software becomes CE-compliant

https://fsfe.org/news/2023/news-20230719-01.en.html

One of the main problems with Capitalism is that it does not follow my mom’s rule of “everyone gets firsts before anyone gets seconds.”

Asking for a friend: If I post something followers-only, under what circumstances would it federate to threads.net? (Assuming the latter is not blocked, of course.)

Only if I currently have a follower there? Only if someone *else* on my server has a follower there? Or under some broader set of circumstances?

Experiments proved confusing, so I'm hoping to get an answer from someone who actually knows the protocol.

(I know there's no "real" privacy in ActivityPub, but I'm curious.)

Currently, 39 out of 373 social.coop members have voted on the proposal to Limit Threads.net. Of the 39 votes, 34 Agree, 3 Disagree, and 2 have voted to Abstain.

That looks like fairly broad support, but with only 10% voting, it's hard be confident that it's where we all are. I hope that more will vote before the poll closes in 4 days.
#SocialCoop

Censorship and the Nazi bar
https://alexxkay.dreamwidth.org/688831.html

@DaywalkingRedhead @oscarjiminy @carnage4life

Trump lost in 2020 not because Cambridge Analytica was gone, but because mail-in voting was ubiquitous, and most of the usual anti-Black voter suppression techniques don't work with mail-in or drop off ballots.

They even tried to kill the US post office for everyone, to stop mail-in ballots. Restriction of mail-in and drop off ballots is why Texas went red instead of blue.

GOP strategists admit this openly.

In a just world, these Texas troopers would be charged with attempted murder for pushing kids into the river to stop them from entering the US -- but we don't live in that world. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/border-trooper-migrants-wire-18205076.php

First, we lock you in; then we push features you don't want--and may even jeopardize your core mission; then we charge you for those unwanted tools,

#EdTech #Schools #K12 #HigherEd #HigherEducation

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/07/18/furthering-our-ai-ambitions-announcing-bing-chat-enterprise-and-microsoft-365-copilot-pricing/

@lightweight I was pleasantly surprised to learn several US cities have banned them:
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/news-insights/think-globally-on-climate-act-locally-on-leaf-blowers/
My bugbear is the gas-powered patio heater which is banned in France at least.

The incessant drone of petrol powered leaf blowers in the environment (I can hear one now) is exhausting. Also, people have forgotten the art of raking. I'd argue that a competent rake user silently expends far less energy (and little CO2) than someone lugging a blower around, and the results are better in every way.

Amid a world wide heat wave and massive floods, it is depressing how little we are willing to do to prevent climate catastrophe. We know the primary cause - the burning of too much fossil fuel - more CO2 produced than the earth can absorb. Yet any moves to seriously curtail this burning seem to be off the table.I would like to see worlwide rationing of fossil fuel at a level that is more sustainable. That the free market is unable to do this underlines the failure of capitalism

Are the reasons to leave GitHub more persuasive than the reasons to stay? https://ntietz.com/blog/moving-off-github/

You know what fulfils me? Feeling connected to my community - that I'm an integral, valued, contributing part of a vibrant, interesting neighbourhood & broader society that's always striving to be better.

What doesn't fulfil me: a positive balance of trade, greater productivity (GDP), corporate shareholder profits (a the cost of polluted lakes & rivers & a ruined environment), higher house prices, or how much an overseas company bought someone else's startup for (moving it offshore).