Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

And in August, FPF joined 140 press freedom organizations, journalists, and news outlets sent a letter to Secretary Blinken urging the U.S. to immediately cease sending weapons to Israel due to its continued killings of journalists.

Last week, FPF joined 18 press freedom and human rights organizations in supporting a call from members of the U.S. Congress asking the Biden-Harris administration to urge Israel to allow independent access to Gaza for international journalists.

https://cpj.org/2024/10/cpj-partners-support-us-congress-call-to-let-international-media-access-gaza-independently/

“Indifference to journalists' killing because of their nationality or background is not just immoral, but irresponsible and dangerous,” Sherif Mansour said. “Impunity acts like a virus; it knows no borders and, like violence, it knows no boundaries.”

https://freedom.press/issues/silence-is-complicity-why-us-should-stop-enabling-israels-attacks-on-press/

@like jam or bootlaces

"Elderly couple a few ahead of us were together, so they went to the table together. That's probably ok, but yeah learning that in NC couples can use the same booth still squicks me out."

They can *what* now??  That's... not ok.

At first I thought you meant just went over to get their ballots together.  That's fine.  Sharing a booth?  Nope.

Stories are powerful medicine! ✨ Will you help us provide storybook resources for kids experiencing climate disaster, grief, and recovery? Our co-op is partnering with Tepeyac Mountain Sanctuary to get trauma-informed book sets to children impacted by Hurricane Helene!

Visit firestorm.coop/helene to see the book wishlist and support the campaign with a book purchase for as little as $10. Please also share this post to help us reach a wider audience!

#HurricaneHelene #HurricaneHeleneRelief #KidLit #ChildrensBooks #ChildrensMentalHealth #FeministBookstore #Asheville #FirestormCoop (- L)

#Forgejo v9.0.1 and v7.0.10 were just released! They are security releases.

We recommend that all installations are upgraded to the latest version as soon as possible.

Check out the release notes and download it at https://forgejo.org/releases/. If you experience any issues with this release, please report to https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues.

"...this helps explain the fundamental SAP paradox -- that it was unpopular with many in Nigeria despite its success in turning around the economy."

Point 3. The WB would have you believe that they "turned around the economy" when their actions had no beneficial effect on most people's incomes. This is the key point: for the WB (and many economists) "the economy" is separable from the individuals comprising it, so the economy can recover while the citizens remain mired in poverty.
#FtheWB

I'd like to take some time to break down the extremely orwellian rhetoric from the World Bank that is quoted in this article 👇
https://alexthurston.substack.com/p/how-much-does-the-world-bank-change

"Under the new [SAP] policies, gross domestic product...[grew] by 5 percent a year throughout the...1986-92 period."

Point 1. SAPs increased GDP

"This success nothwithstanding, per capita income is still only US$320 and consumption and income are little higher...than they were in the early 1970s..."

Point 2. Most ppl did not benefit from it.

Lest I be accused of unmitigated negativity, here is my proposal for political action that would actually have a positive effect. It's not a totally new idea, but would be new for the US. I think that's why it might actually have a chance of success. In order to create a mass movement, you need to avoid the negative baggage that the traditional way of doing politics comes with, i.e. you need new ideas and new language to resonate w/ enuff ppl to have an effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0Agcx0MMgc

"Is “rich people” a precise enough term to describe the genuine villains at the heart of our nation’s problems? Perhaps not. But it’s close enough."

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/demonize-the-rich

As I've said before, the appropriate response to the choices we are being faced with is MOURNING. We have no good options. Both major candidates have voiced full-throated support for genocide, so no, you don't get to feel morally superior because you voted for one genocide supporter over another. You should be weeping over being forced into this situation. Sack cloth and ashes are what's called for here, not moralizing, and certainly not joy.

As for the whole: "if Harris wins we can still protest, but if Trump wins it's immediate fascism" - I was there for Occupy, and the Federally coordinated multi-state paramilitary crackdown that put a violent end to it. I sent camping gear with comrades to Standing Rock, where the Obama admin stood idly by while constitutional rights were violated left and right. If you think a Dem admin will protect your civil rights, you've probably never tried exercising them, or you have a short memory.

What amount of war crimes would an administration have to engage in before you decided that you weren't going to vote for them again? If Biden were directing US troops to slaughter Palestinians directly, do you think Dems would still be brow-beating everyone into voting for their candidate? I do, personally. I've been around long enough to realize that died-in-the-wool Dems simply don't care what atrocities their politicians commit - they know they are moral because they're not Repubs.

I am not a techy but I try to be a good manager of my tech use, opting for open source/security/privacy to the extent practicable. It's probably better than not doing all those things and yet … I can't help but feel it's mostly a coping mechanism, an attempt to feel in control in an increasingly hostile world.

BTW If anyone is looking for a technical consultant to work with small-to-medium news outfits, someone who;

* has experience running media projects on a photo of the smell of an oily rag

* understands network media from the inside out

* is not scared of getting elbows-deep into research on the right tool for every job

* is currently available for a steady gig

I'm right here folks. Must put a website like @lightweight's pimping my services ; )

@kaffiene @billbennett @lightweight

"NPR...reported that 'more than 1,600 digital subscriptions had been cancelled less than four hours after the news broke.'

It was a reasonable impulse. But if Bezos is indeed why the Post is no longer endorsing candidates, and if people are worried about his outsize influence on our society, they should not be canceling their newspaper subscriptions. They should be canceling their Amazon Prime subscriptions."

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2024/10/washington-post-bezos-amazon-prime-cancel/680421/

#1A #FirstAmendment #FreePress #journalism #boycott #USpol

Topics in the latest edition of my "Cornerstone of democracy" newsletter -- a compendium of the best of political reporting/commentary (and more) -- include:

-- Australian TV news covers the U.S. elections better than American TV
-- What's at stake, again
-- Trump-loving immigrant oligarch's contempt for U.S. law started early

I curate to save you time. Please subscribe (it's free), and let other folks know about it.

https://cornerstone.ghost.io/essentials-october-26-2024/

I just Googled a term I didn’t know, and Google’s AI Overview informed me that the Second Coming of Christ is a tenet of Judaism.

I’m really worried that people are taking Google’s AI Overview at face value.
Here’s an example where I happen to have the background knowledge to tell me how wildly wrong this is. But I don’t have background knowledge about everything, and students have a lot less than I do.
#generativeAI #Informationliteracy #teaching #AIOverview #Google

Air Canada has this cool system now where there are no human employees at the check in counter at all, and instead you register your baggage with a little touch screen and place it on a conveyor belt, and then the touch screen displays an error, and there's nothing you can do because there are no fucking human employees present to deal with it

Latest strip. At the Lancaster, PA rally, Trump got on the subject of his mental fitness and stated “I have no cognitive. She may have a cognitive problem, but there’s no cognitive problem… Got no cognitive.”

#cartoon #uspol #USPolitics #election #election2024