Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

I've mused before on the idea of different modes of social media use. There's the broadcast mode, one person trying to reach as large an audience as possible. Then there's the small group discussion model. Mixing the two or confusing one for the other is a cause of problems.

It occurs to me, layered on top of those are at least two minor modes. There's improv (yes and) and there's debate club (fight me). This seems to be a similar source of problems and confusion. 🤔

I'd call it a mask-off moment, if they hadn't already made it abundantly clear what kind of psychos they are.

https://www.aaronmate.net/p/for-biden-ending-israels-mass-murder

Wow, this proposed approach to drawing districts without gerrymandering is fascinating! In the spirit of "I cut you choose", the proposal is "One party defines 2N equal-population sub-districts, and the other party chooses pairs of adjacent sub-districts to combine, to form N districts."

The analysis in the body of the paper focuses on simulations of each party's optimal strategy in the context of some real-world maps of US voting precincts, while an appendix proves a few theorems giving bounds in the alternate context where the pairs of districts that get combined don't need to be geographically adjacent. (If this idea catches on, I'd bet someone will produce theoretical bounds in the presence of the geography constraint.)

A Partisan Solution to Partisan Gerrymandering: The Define–Combine Procedure

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/article/partisan-solution-to-partisan-gerrymandering-the-definecombine-procedure/B0792DD0A49332944F2AF5FF6828E275

My "device", I am told, might be "unverified"

There's a new trend of sites' CDNs inserting multi-second interstitials that distract you with a spinner to make you think they are doing something.

I find these vaguely threatening. They come with the...
https://jwz.org/b/ykNJ

I've got a new comic at In These Times on Alan Dershowitz https://inthesetimes.com/article/comics-dershowitz-nypd-cop28-wasteland

No More Presidents Day.

Art by @kleebenally / @indigenousaction (IG)

Keep the fire burning at @IndigenousAbolition (IG), @indigiabolition (TW) and at IndigenousAbolition.com

I have $1,000 in my wallet. My friend has $5. I pressure him into giving me a dollar so I can donate it to charity.

This is exactly how those appeals to donate the change at cash registers work.

Community colleges are underrated, easily one of the best parts about the US. Courses are typically a fraction of the $$$ of a 4-year school and the quality of education is at least as good if not better at the undergraduate course level. Go take a course. Never stop learning.

“Part-time work can also be a means of control. Because employers have total discretion over hours, they can use reduced schedules to punish employees who complain or seem likely to unionize — even though workers can’t legally be fired for union-related activity — while more pliant workers are rewarded with better schedules.”

My sister #AdelleWaldman has a great op-ed in The New York Times today. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/19/opinion/part-time-workers-usa.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Wk0.v6s_.9JWuaBzNIRdr&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

quite a surreal moment last friday seeing @coopcloud being presented by @aadil at HNI 🫣 https://nieuweinstituut.nl/events/tool-shed-3

so many projects im involved in are either hyper local or hyper online. and they rarely cross the boundaries between... it was a rare breakthrough!

i mean whatever about it being at the local art ivory tower, it's decidely not a software focused space. people who attend might have little familiarity with free software and such. that's great.

hearing a software project youre involved in being presented and accepted as socially useful and a Force for Good ™️ is just priceless 🥰

also hearing your personal perspective @aadil on going from 0 to hero on this project gives me so much hope. youve done such amazing work.

i think the project still has the potential to support a new wave of system administrators that can get dangerous fast and be involved in similarly lovely projects like https://lumbung.space 🥰

This is cool - mixed agriculture & solar... with great results for the latter, and improved results for the former! https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301355120

@simon yeah, was about to suggest my post!

For local spam I highly suggest this:

https://mastodon.de/@ErikUden/111940301222380638

What's the most effective way to handle it when a company sends you marketing emails despite you having opted out during account signup?

I've had this happen twice this week.

Report to FCC? Email customer support? Report as spam to email provider and hope it hurts the sender's reputation with their mailing service? Something else?

There’s a lot to chew on in this short article (ht @ajsadauskas):
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240214-ai-recruiting-hiring-software-bias-discrimination

“An AI resume screener…trained on CVs of employees already at the firm” gave candidates extra marks if they listed male-associated sports, and downgraded female-associated sports.

Bias like this is enraging, but completely unsurprising to anybody who knows half a thing about how machine learning works. Which apparently doesn’t include a lot of execs and HR folks.

1/

How to #donate to #Codeberg? We have updated our summary page.

https://docs.codeberg.org/improving-codeberg/donate/

Thank you for your contribution to the freedom of Free Software projects. Together, we allow them to do their work with Free Software only, and make dependencies on proprietary platforms unnecessary.

Mark your calendars for the first annual Upstate Anarchist Book Fair on May 4 and 5, 2024 in Binghamton, NY co-hosted by PM Press and Riot Act Books at the PM Press warehouse.

Learn more, spread the word, apply for a table, propose a workshop, and join us!

http://UpstateAnarchistBookFair.com

#anarchism #books

The logical explanation for Trump's endless silence on Navalny is by far the most likely one: He's fine with Putin persecuting opponents and having them killed.

This is what Trump plainly plans here, and he's made no secret of it.

The spammy toots and new accounts we've been seeing here over the last 24h or so all seem to be in service of a "Joe Job," i.e. spamming everyone promoting a handle or person that you want everyone to get mad at or think more poorly of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job

I made the mistake of deleting my Reddit account before deleting the (relatively few) posts I'd made there. If you're planning to depart, make sure you delete posts first, account second.

If you've ever posted anything on Reddit, your words are going to be sucked up into an "AI" database. The people who profit from this are Reddit and the "AI" company.

What do you get? Screwed, again, by a tech company that has pure contempt for your privacy and rights.

https://www.engadget.com/reddit-reportedly-signed-a-multi-million-content-licensing-deal-with-an-ai-company-124516009.html