Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

I wound up having to delete all my archived email today. Why? Because so much of it was corrupted it was basically unreadable, and it wasn't worth sifting through the bad to save the good. It feels weird. It feels really, really weird.

Chinese city still officially in summer as 30-year heat record broken - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/14/chinese-city-still-officially-in-summer-as-30-year-heat-record-broken "Temperatures in Guangzhou fail to drop below level that meteorological service uses to mark change in season" #ClimateCrisis

On Monday November 25th at 8pm we’ll screen a new short video from @subMedia and Peter Gelderloos. There will be time for a short discussion afterwards. Details to follow when we have our letter writing flyer done, since that will precede the screening.

If the worst does not actually come to pass, I don't think I'm going to be sitting here going "oh noooo I can't believe I strengthened my communities, made sure I'm up to date on my healthcare needs, and volunteered for causes I believe in"

Want to help volunteer to get the word out about #DocumentFreedomDay or #SoftwareFreedomDay or #HardwareFreedomDay? Do you enjoy writing? Please consider signing up for the #WritingMonth challenge: https://writingmonth.org/ There's an option to work with a buddy. So, if anyone wants to do blog posts or articles for #DFD, #SFD or #HFD along with us at the #DFF, please let us know.

Shell’s successful appeal will not end climate lawsuits against firms, say experts - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/14/shell-successful-appeal-will-not-end-climate-lawsuits-against-firms-say-experts "Dutch appeal court ruled in favour of oil and gas company over judgment telling it to limit emissions" #ClimateCrisis

The @fsfe called on the community to participate in a consultation on the European Union’s Digital Europe Programme and demanded long-term sustainable funding for #FreeSoftware (#OpenSource) after recent budget cuts.

We also asked you, our community, to participate. And many of you did, nearly 800 answers were received —an unusually high number for such consultations. Big thanks to all of you who did and who made this a success! 👏

https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20241113-01.en.html

#Lincare Made Billions While Repeatedly Defrauding #Medicare. Feds Did Little To Rein It In.
—

Lincare, the nation’s largest distributor of home oxygen equipment, has repeatedly violated Medicare rules and probation agreements, victimizing ailing patients and costing taxpayers huge sums. The federal #government has done little to stop it.

https://propub.li/3UNDUms

#News #Healthcare #Insurance #Fraud #CPAP #Health

Hmm. Sounds like Ōtautahi's council is planning to enact some pretty constraining bylaws on dog owners... I haven't found the full list of proposed regulations yet, but some seem pretty unworkable (and a few quite unnecessary). Much of it is being done in the name of 'ecosystem protection'... I wish they'd address the elephant in the room: free-roaming domestic felines. I'd say cats are vastly worse for the local environment than dogs.

HR 9495, which would've let Trump and his treasury secretary decertify any nonprofit they claimed supported terrorism, appears to have failed. Phew

Pro-Israel Democrats wanted to use this to crack down on Palestine protesters, but it was structured as a bill that needed 2/3, and it seems that enough Democrats went "oh shit, we don't want *Trump* to use this against nonprofits *we* like," and reconsidered just in time.

#uspol for the muters
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-urges-house-to-kill-bill-that-could-give-trump-admin-power-to-crush-dissent-and-go-after-political-enemies

It completely staggers me that *anyone* could vote for GOP. I can't really come up with a sufficiently comprehensive characterisation to describe my despair & disbelief that they appear on track to control all 3 arms of gov't (exec, court, and congress). The US is a total unmitigated disaster. It is pathetic and heartbreaking to see it.

Anyone want to start a webring of personal blogs and websites? We could pick a connecting topic (ie. all members of a specific group, or all co-op folks, or just all single-person personal blogs, etc.) or just allow random sites. I'm trying to think of a better way to find good stuff than search, which is 99% controlled by Google even if you're using third party search engines, and is mostly useless these days anyways.

Spotify just reported record-breaking profits.

In totally unrelated news, Spotify stopped paying nearly 90% of artists on the service ANYTHING (no royalties for songs w <1k streams/year)

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/spotify-earnings-profitability-subscribers-1236060081/

The Biden administration massively expanded the electronic monitoring of immigrants, restricted access to asylum, left 287(g) in place, and increased deportations. So yes, the Trump administration does have “what they need” to carry out mass deportations.

Two of the most enriching things about mathematical literacy are knowing that:

1) When people say "it's just basic economics" they mean that they modelled something as y = mx + b, and didn't bother to validate their modelling assumptions, and

2) When people try to talk down to you with "advanced economics" they mean that they modelled something as y = ax^2 +bx + c, and didn't bother to validate their modelling assumptions

Of course this is cold comfort when those people end up in cabinet

Democrats must work to protect end-to-end encryption, crack down on SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) and do everything possible to stop Trump from siccing the FCC, the FEC, the DOJ and the IRS on his enemies, including in the press.

https://thehill.com/opinion/4698689-federal-law-must-fix-loophole-allowing-abusive-lawsuits-targeting-speech/

@lwriemen fwiw, I recently converted a Microsoft account I'm required to use (to access my employer's leave system) to let me get my auth codes from Aegis instead... it wasn't a well publicised option, but it works.

@lightweight @lwriemen Indeed. Independent authenticators aren't well publicized because there is no marketing team trying to make you believe you need a cloud login to use one.

A TOTP auth can work just fine offline. It doesn't need to come from a cloud or be connected to anything. I've used both Aegis and KeePassXC and both work fine.

holy shit if this actually works this is going to revolutionize git for us https://mergiraf.org/