Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Today's Must-Read (don't worry, it's short):

Maybe Murder and Humiliation is the Whole Point, by Alon Mizrahi

We habitually think that greed and some general mental underdevelopment motivated colonialism and capitalism throughout the centuries. We may be wrong.

https://alonmizrahi.substack.com/p/maybe-murder-and-humiliation-is-the

Using an already waning problem to try to get everybody onto digital only national currencies (if you don't understand what kind of dystopian realities such a thing would enable, you need to read some more sci-fi). "Addicted to cash," just means "not buying our BS about the inevitability of our plans."

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/08/wave-of-atm-bombings-in-cash-addicted-germany-prompts-calls-for-fewer-atms-and-less-use-of-cash.html

I invite you to consider the level of hysteria with which this would be reported in the western media if it were an Israeli synagogue.
Spoiler alert - it's getting no coverage, at least in the Guardian. The BBC isn't even running a blog that I can find.

#UKMedia #GazaGenocide

from Middle East Eye

When I was 21 I was told that pregnancy could (and probably would) kill me AND that I was likely infertile.

I asked to have my tubes tied & was told “you’re too young. You may change your mind & want kids.”

🧵 on reproductive health, bodily autonomy & misogyny in medicine.

First off - this was devastating news at such a young age. I had stage 4 endometriosis, a tipped uterus, adenomyosis & other health issues that made pregnancy unlikely AND dangerous.

I was told in the event I became pregnant - they would have to recommend termination.
Abortion would ALSO be risky to my health - though less risky than carrying a pregnancy to term.

Given the threat it seemed perfectly reasonable to request a more fail safe method of birth control (tubal ligation).
I was having laproscopic surgery anyways to try and remove some of the endometriosis - so they were literally already going to be operating. Tying my tubes was a negligible risk compared to the rest of the surgery.
Imagine my shock when I was informed they wouldn’t do it because I might change my mind and want kids.

I asked them whether my “changing my mind” would change my prognosis or their recommendation. Nope. They would still recommend termination.

This was the first time I truly understood how deep misogyny and patriarchal values ran in medicine. My theoretical ability to bear children - whether I wanted them or not and whether it was safe or not - was more important than my health and my life.

It was infuriating. An IUD wasn’t an option for a myriad of reasons so I was stuck on hormonal birth control that I didn’t tolerate well. I was also getting sicker from the endometriosis & adenomyosis… and it quickly became clear a hysterectomy would be best for me.

Given doctors weren’t willing to entertain a tubal ligation - you can only imagine how they felt about a hysterectomy. Same tired arguments about how I could change my mind, I was too young, what if I met a man who wanted kids blah blah blah.

I got these responses from male and female physicians - all of whom were willing to let my health significantly deteriorate rather than “make me barren”. None of whom listened to what I wanted to do with MY body.

I continued to push for surgery because I knew it was what I needed - and was forced to undergo multiple psych evaluations. I heard everything from “don’t you want to be a mother” to “what if you meet the man of your dreams & he leaves you because you can’t have kids?.”

How is it appropriate to ask ANY woman these questions? Let alone a woman who has been told - repeatedly - that pregnancy would put her life in jeopardy? It was as though they thought something was wrong with me because I didn’t want to risk my life for a hypothetical baby. 1/2

#womenshealth #endometriosis #EDS #ehlersdanlossyndrome #pregnancy #gynecology #obgyn #abortion #reproductivehealth #reproductiverights #abortionIShealthcare #patriarchy #misogyny #Disability #Ableism #Denial #PublicHealth #InfectionControl #Eugenics #SafeHealthcare #MaskUp #Spoonie #Discrimination #Dysautonomia #mecfs #pots #mcas #communitycare #wearamask #chronicillness #DisabilityRights #hysterectomy #hystersisters

#Elsevier employee fired for speaking up about greenwashing... like its not even greenwashing #RELX straight up sells informatics tools to fossil fuel companies based off academic geology research to target fossil fuel exploration.

https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/LyallvElsevierIncetalDocketNo124cv12022DMassAug062024CourtDocket?doc_id=XM9I11IUDL9K5BTMAIM5M9MI6D

This is the way...

"Planned far-right rallies did not materialise over the weekend, amid a large turnout of anti-racist protesters...

"Reform UK['s] offices were targeted by [5k] anti-racism protesters in a peaceful march... and in Belfast 15k people turned up to one of the city’s biggest ever anti-racism gatherings."

#fascism #UKriots #racism

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/11/far-right-demonstrations-abandoned-amid-warnings-of-10-year-sentences?utm_source=instagramthreads&utm_campaign=farrightdemonstrationsthreads

We don’t talk enough about how the US military has contaminated drinking water worldwide with toxic chemicals like TCE, #PFAS, and jet fuel, including in Honolulu.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/air-force-epa-water-pfas-tucson

A year ago, Iris reached out through my blog to send me this post about her struggles as a trans job seeker in New Zealand.

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/what_its_like

Incidentally Iris is fantastic and she introduced me to Clausewitz. Just wanted to give it the old signal boost. I think it's a good one to share with people that are sort of sympathetic but don't "get it".

@dangillmor And by "forced" you mean "Patreon decided that it was a better idea to fuck over their creators than to just ditch their iOS app and simply have a web site like they used to". This is their own unforced error.

Is there any good[1] reason that OpenSSH allows password auth by default?

The one time I've had malware on my computers it was 20 years ago when I installed openssh on a laptop that happened to also have a forgotten guest account on it (with an easy password, because it was intended for physical access). The malware failed to privesc, but it was sobering.

And today @dynamic relayed to me a similar-sounding story from someone else.

I feel like by now we should have learned our lesson about services that are insecure by default, or default to the most convenient thing rather than requiring an explicit step for changing a security boundary. But at a quick check, both Debian and OpenBSD default to PasswordAuthentication=yes.

But maybe I'm missing something here?

[1] where "because we don't want to make a breaking change" is a bad reason, or at best a mediocre one.

My Tisha b'Av on @ReckoningMag from a year ago:

https://reckoning.press/tisha-bav/

This isn't one of the times when I want to say "I told you so."

May we manifest a future that is more expansive and just than rebuilding and restoration.

#tishabav #jewish #gaza #palestine #climatechange

This is true in most of the world. Immigration isn't the problem. It's inequality driven by selfish rich people who control the political discourse and are dividing the working class. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=VgKb95wcyQQ or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgKb95wcyQQ #GaryStevenson Spread the word.

It kind of sounds like the secret sauce for Front Porch Forum might be the fact that they have paid employees screening every single post to the forums.

From the New_ Public study report:
https://newpublic.org/uploads/2024/07/Front-Porch-Forum-report-2.pdf
"Postings are reviewed by FPF’s staff of profession-
al online community managers before publication
to assure compliance with FPF’s Terms of Use and
to keep each Forum mostly civil and constructive"

Let's talk about where the NGO-industrial complex fits into the Mozilla picture.

Adam Conover did a great video on why the billionaire owner of Patagonia set up a cluster of charitable entities and gave them ownership of the company;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I

Spoilers: it wasn't nearly as charitable as it looked. For one thing, it was a huge tax dodge. It was also carefully structured so they could still use revenue from Patagonia for political influence campaigns.

(1/?)

#Mozilla

"Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's top executive, was paid $2.4m in 2018, a sum I personally think of as instant inter-generational wealth. Payments to Baker have more than doubled in the last five years."

#CalPaterson, 2020

https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

For comparison, I'm looking for funding to pay 3 people to work on a fediverse hosting co-op. If all 3 of us were paid $100 an hour, for 40 hours each a week, that's $624,000 a year. Baker's 2018 salary could cover this for more than 4 years.

WTF?!

An article highlighting #startup success, "built and sold a $600M enterprise software..." suggests an #OpenSource failure.

"WSO2, an open source enterprise software provider with customers such as Samsung, Axa, and AT&T, recently agreed to be acquired by private equity giant EQT."

While the owners/investors must be pleased, I wonder how the contributors, collaborators, community, and adopters feel.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/03/meet-the-founder-who-built-and-sold-a-600m-enterprise-software-startup-from-sri-lanka/

@singe @pluralistic @defcon

The age of being looked after is over. As a software developer I am being treated gradually more and more like a factory worker. They have us doing timesheets now, on top of all that Agile/Jira crap.

This is why I am with much trepidation, doing my own thing and hopefully I will have my own company to fall back on when this ride meets its demise.

New versions of Windows might change the UI or underlying components, but they don't change the only thing important to know about Windows: it's nonfree software. Choose software that actually respects its users instead. https://u.fsf.org/3eu

The man is going for the #librarians vote.

>This veep likes books! Governor Tim Walz put a Little Free Library in the Minnesota capitol. https://lithub.com/this-veep-likes-books-governor-tim-walz-put-a-little-free-library-in-the-minnesota-capitol/

#FreeLittleLibrary #libraries #books #reading #literacy

@xgranade IMO if I can't *read* something without logging in, it us no longer part of the *public* internet