Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

"The tech giants say they buy enough wind, solar or geothermal power every time a big data center comes online to cancel out its emissions. But critics see a shell game with these contracts: The companies are operating off the same power grid as everyone else, while claiming for themselves much of the finite amount of green energy. Utilities are then backfilling those purchases with fossil fuel expansions, regulatory filings show."

Microsoft? Shell game? Surely, you jest.

"Data centers, the nondescript warehouses packed with racks of servers that power the modern internet, have been around for decades. But the amount of electricity they need now is soaring because of AI. Training artificial intelligence models and using AI to execute even simple tasks involves ever more complicated, faster and voluminous computations that are straining the electricity system."

Totally worth it for all the misinformation and bad art we're churning out though, right?...right?!?

Tech people out there, can you please reign in your brethren and sisthren? If you don't, someone else is going to have to, otherwise these morons are going to drive us to a bad end EVEN FASTER than we were already heading there. The stupidity of this BS is sooo depressing. And pretty depressing to realize how many people will both buy the marketing hype and stick their head in the sand about the massive, overwhelmingly negative byproducts of their gee-whiz toys.

https://archive.ph/ePJPm

Pretty sure funding, training, and providing cover for Neo-Nazis is, uh...bad.

"Junge Welt reports that since 2017, the National Militia “had been practicing brutal vigilante justice” throughout Ukraine, including “tyrannizing the LGBTQ scene.” Centuria was subsequently blamed for a terrifying November 2021 attack on a gay nightclub in Kiev, in which its operatives assaulted revelers with truncheons and pepper spray."

https://thegrayzone.com/2024/04/07/centuria-ukraines-western-neo-nazi-army/

The right-wing brigading of Amazon reviews of the essential new book by @Noupside is about the best evidence you'll see of why her work has been so important. We shouldn't countenance the supremely bad-faith attacks that have cost her -- and all of us in the end -- so much.

https://mastodon.social/@Noupside@saturation.social/112654991007362111

Apparently Orbea bikes has been a worker owned co-op for 55 years and I had no idea until just now! I'm very curious about how they're structured and how they handle employee ownership. If anyone in my co-op or bicycle circles has a contact there, I'd love to chat with them.

#bicycles #cooperatives #coop

"But what if they don't deserve that money?" is somehow only a question raised about poor people.

Summer's just starting and the climate records are already being shattered. https://brianmcfadden.org/2024/06/14/2024s-climate-records/

Check out the ongoing Purism Differentiator Series! From Our Operating System to baked-in Convergence, Purism has its own way of doing things. Stay tuned as we explore the diverse facets of Purism's unique offerings! #DifferentiatorSeries #PureOS #Purism #Librem5
https://puri.sm/posts/purism-differentiator-series-part-1-summary/

Microsoft knows I'm turning 53 in two weeks and is really committed to getting a little payback for all the comics. :-D

‘It felt like bad news after bad news’: why record numbers are leaving #NewZealand - https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/21/it-felt-like-bad-news-after-bad-news-why-record-numbers-are-leaving-new-zealand amazing: used to be regarded as some kind of paradise...

Britain’s millionaires are fleeing. Good night and good luck, I say - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/21/britain-millionaires-leave-tax-havens-uk good riddance, I say: if all you care about is maximising your wealth through tax avoidance, you poison our society, rather than enhancing it...

This take, by @timbray
on Wikipedia, reliability, and sourcing is excellent.

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2024/06/15/Wikipedia-Pain

It turns out that a five sentence letter to the editor published by the New England Journal of Medicine back in 1980 helped fuel the #Opioid crisis. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-a-letter-to-the-editor-enabled-the-opioid-crisis/

@mattblaze The way the Mastodon web UI copies ALT into TITLE is horrible. And the spec specifically says you should not do that. I reported a bug about it that I expect to be given... "all due consideration".

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/30016

Fossil fuel companies are literally spending billions to try to find any way to suppress shareholder oversight. The current initiative is the absurd claim that the foundational basis of capitalism somehow is a violation of antitrust laws. My response:

"Having failed to persuade anyone last year that there was some improper behavior that might be violating securities laws[1], the same forces have persuaded a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee to try to find a violation of the antitrust laws. At this point, they are just throwing darts at a list of federal legislation to see if they can find a way to explain that it is illegal for shareholders to raise concerns about corporate strategy and conflicts of interest. When the attempt to find a fit with antitrust law fails, they may come back next year with a claim that the FDA should look into shareholder requests for information because they cause queasiness and weak knees in corporate executives."

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2024/06/20/shareholders-are-not-an-antitrust-problem/

It's not your imagination: tech really *is* underregulated. There are plenty of avoidable harms that tech visits upon the world, and while some of these harms are mere negligence, others are self-serving, creating shareholder value *and* widespread public destruction.

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/20/scalesplaining/#administratability

1/

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/ has done such a staggering amount of traffic that I have been asked to be in an honest-to-God documentary, I believe as an anti-AI-hype expert, and I think I may need a new job on Monday because there is NO WAY I fly under the radar this time.

Pray for me 🙏 (Or better yet, network me with cool people)

Sigh. Comforting lies and apathy over accepting the truth and actively working to adapt. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/520144/kapiti-coast-residents-demand-council-throw-out-report-on-sea-level-rise People are strange.