Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The best piece of art all year.

[Via @/sugarbombingworld on IG]

On this day in anarchist history, December 9th 1987, we remember the start of the 1st Palestinian Intifada, a years long decentralized uprising of Palestinians against Israeli colonial occupation.

https://kolektiva.media/w/hHQGdmspHY9bw3pj5e6iMA

I recently read that during the period of early contact many Europeans/colonists were known to have absconded from their home societies and joined indigenous communities, often after previously having been abducted/captured and then redeemed or 'rescued' by colonial authorities. There are no records of indigenous people willingly leaving their own societies to join the Europeans. The absconders often said it was because they liked being seen and treated as humans, which they hadn't been at home.

Can Europe Afford Its Energy Transition?

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/12/can-europe-afford-its-energy-transition.html

This also seems like a good moment to link to the thread/post by @Dan Fixes Coin-Ops, "Linux is a bit of a shit sometimes": #^https://retro.social/@ifixcoinops/112481957392068239

I'd actually misremembered his post, thinking he'd said that if a feature you want doesn't exist on Llinux it's just because no one has gotten around to implementing it yet (which I don't think is quite right, given my experience with [cough] scrollbars), but then I went searching for my own Mastodon posts about scrollbars, and lo, I had posted about them in response to the thread by Dan Fixes Coin Ops, and specifically because he had recommended Ubuntu Mate as a Linux distro that isn't continually mucking with the interface, so, like, he gets it too.

Here's my subthread about scroll bars, which ends with my discovery of the instructions for how to get scroll bars to (mostly) come back on Firefox:
#^https://social.coop/deck/@dynamic/112486285538221548

Or, if you'd like a cute top-level post re: fixing Firefox scroll bars: #^https://social.coop/@dynamic/111608520145132477

Anyway, Mastodon is definitely a bit of a shit sometimes.  (Don't get me wrong; Hubzilla is too, but in a much more stagnant way.)

Here's a common "peer-to-peer" conversation I have repeatedly with the #insurance companies as an oncologist:

Me: I want to appeal your denial of my patient's PET scan

Them: Sorry, PET scan isn't on our approved list

Me: You approved it last time, and it's a standard-of-care that the patient have a repeat PET scan to assess if their treatment is working

Them: Oh, we approved it last time?
[much hemming and hawing while they verify this]

Me: By the way, are you a board-certified oncologist?

Them: [again much hemming and hawing, and only when I insist do they tell me their name and credentials (and about 95% of the time they aren't an oncologist)]

Me: Let me make sure I have the spelling of your name correct for the chart so I can make a note of who is denying the necessary medical care for my patient

Them: [Finds a way to approve the PET scan]

And scene

(many times a month)

#MedMastodon #healthcare #healthinsurance #healthcareisahumanright #cancer #oncology

The reason so many liberals get so perplexed by anarchism seems to be that they can only conceive of two categories of social relations:
1) Issuing commands through hierarchical authority
2) Market exchange

When they ask how anarchist societies can defend themselves against "warlords" or whatever, it's because they can't conceive of defense that doesn't consist of paying police to enforce laws through state authority. Direct action and community never even enter their minds. It's illegible.

2024 will be hottest year on record, with the 1st eleven months averaging 1.6C over pre-industrial levels...

But the article wants to emphasize this hasn't broken the #Paris treaty, we just need a 45% global reduction in emissions by 2030.

Yet year on year emissions continue to rise (with the exceptions of the GFC and Covid) rather than fall.

The scale of #climate action is spectacularly inadequate, but the mainstream just pretends we're doing okay.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/09/climate-crisis-deepens-with-2024-certain-to-be-hottest-year-on-record

@zl2tod @heyrochelle My brother is a surgeon - his colleagues across other specialties are retiring early as the system collapses. He reckons conditions that could be treated immediately in the past on a Friday would need to goto a major centre to be dealt with on Monday - that delay could see treatable problems become a loss-of-function (example - treatable eye injury on Friday, loss of sight in the eye by Monday). This is just in the last few years but building for decades. Its dire.

@stephen Wellington Women’s House! It is also included of trans women. They provide wrap-around support and have amazing staff. https://wwh.org.nz/

NBC News: "Trump campaign paid law firm employing RFK Jr. weeks after he endorsed Trump"

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-campaign-paid-law-firm-employing-rfk-endorsement-rcna183266

Services rendered...

For folks interested in taking part in our monthly '#FOSS' (#libre software & related topics), we're moving our monthly meetings to a new platform as of our next meeting, tomorrow (Tue 10 Dec) at 20:00, to https://meeting.iridescent.nz - that URL will redirect you to the right place each month!

Here's what we discuss: https://nzoss.nz/online-meetups-now-happen-httpsmeetingiridescentnz Hope to see some of you there!

Note: hosting infrastructure is sponsored by https://catalystcloud.nz!!

Watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Dust Bowl, I am struck by how the history of the United States can be traced through a sequence of epic speculations, scams, and crashes.

This country is so much more, but it is forever scamming, forever being scammed, and forever trying to remediate the consequences. The hope and optimism that make us so capable and future-thinking also make us endlessly vulnerable.

@CedarTea This is kind of a subtoot about that whole situation. I’ve been stewing for months about it. The revolution isn’t for me if it isn’t for everyone damnit.

“Censorship was both a consequence of and a building block of the Apartheid system. There was no real freedom of expression,” says Anriette Esterhuysen about growing up in South Africa. Learn more in her Speaking Freely interview: https://www.eff.org/pages/speaking-freely-anriette-esterhuysen

If you need to give your peeps reasons not to join #Bluesky this great piece by @davetroy should do the trick.

He notes that Bluesky was initially seeded by #JackDorsey with a libertarian vision of a decentralized network that wouldn't require moderation. Troy expresses concerns about the platform's funding sources and potential vulnerabilities, urging users to critically assess the platforms they engage with, especially those backed by venture capital.

https://america2.news/without-sky-social-media-and-the-end-of-reality

@harris @dynamic Allow me to take a second crack at this and refine my point:

The calls to make improvements/changes to mastodon should be decoupled from concerns about competing with BlueSky because:

(1) As a causal story it rings hollow. (Vibes/marketing/momentum has overtaken whatever initial equal marketplace there may have been.)

(2) It's a poor lodestone for design & cultural choices. (I don't think I actually want growth that is mostly essentially broadcast/follower relationships.)

Which, again, doesn't mean I wouldn't love to see some changes here. There are both technical changes & cultural shifts I would love to see. But the "we need to do X to compete with BlueSky" narratives aren't doing it for me.

If you need something to do, if you are wondering how we will get past this moment, if you are tired of feeling helpless, let us offer these tools as tangible solutions that can create pretty quick results toward connection and finding people with similar values in your community.

https://geo.coop/articles/commons-economy-reloaded

Support REI workers in the Soho NYC store in demanding a well-ventilated and safe work space this winter https://actionnetwork.org/letters/rei-soho-ski-shop-letter?source=direct_link&
#REIUnion #rei #nyc

Police unlawfully storing images of innocent people for #facialrecognition - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/08/police-unlawfully-storing-images-of-innocent-people-for-facial-recognition "#Privacy fears raised as report warns photographs of arrested people who are then released are being retained" we did warn about this slippery slope