Periodic Reminder: TechSoup is a horrible organisation that is laundering proprietary software 'donations' and is trying to hook not-for-profits on expensive proprietary software they neither need nor can afford. For example: https://email.connectingup.org/t/i-e-ahiqly-pyddlddiy-c/ (the Oceania franchise holder is 'Connecting Up'). My advice: shun them. Spread the word.
Why is neither party willing to address inequality? They're both capitalist parties!
#TedRall
https://rall.com/2024/02/21/whats-left-4-we-need-a-real-minimum-wage
Guess what % of plastics have ever been #recycled? No prizes :(
And guess who knew about it all the time?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report
Are you a concerned citizen, a librarian, or a lawmaker who wants to support equitable contracts for libraries in your community? 🙋♀️ Check out E-Books for Us, a new advocacy hub from Library Futures for communities to support libraries 👉 https://ebooksforus.com
Fantastic -- if super-distressing -- article by Gisele Navarro about the horrible state of product reviews online
The tl;dr is that Google seems to overweight reviews from longstanding big journalism brands ...
... but many of those brands, like Popular Science, were long ago bought up by private equity or conglomerates, then hollowed out ...
... so they now produce crappy articles that are *probably* lying about their "test labs" to please Google
https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/
Read it! So good
"Demand for e-books is at an all-time high, but library collections are being hijacked by corporations."
"Love e-books? We do, too! Tap the comics to learn more, play games, and test your knowledge of e-book contracts."
go @libraryfutures !
“Paradoxically, what KOSA does is it removes the ability for teens and children to find information when they are experiencing the very sort of health problems and other problems that KOSA is trying to address,” EFF’s @aaronmackey told @NPR https://www.npr.org/2024/02/18/1232301930/how-tech-companies-would-be-affected-by-the-kids-online-safety-act
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
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
“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:
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?
#ShlaerMellor, #FunctionPointAnalysis, #punk, #environmentalist, #unionAdvocate, #anarchosocialist
"with a big old lie and a flag and a pie and a mom and a bible most folks are just liable to buy any line, any place, any time" - Frank Zappa