Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Texas #measles outbreak reaches 90 cases; 9 cases in New Mexico - https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/02/texas-measles-outbreak-may-have-spread-to-new-mexico-total-cases-near-100/ " The Texas cases are largely in children. Sixteen cases have been hospitalized." #antivaxxers

DOGE Exposes Once-Secret Government Networks, Making Cyber-Espionage Easier than Ever - https://cyberintel.substack.com/p/doge-exposes-once-secret-government "an unprecedented number of critical government systems, including those at the nation’s nuclear research labs, have been exposed to the open internet" this is serious

If you didn't already know that anyone who works at least 1 hour per week, and makes at least $20, is counted as "employed" for purposes of headline unemployment statistics, you probably shouldn't be opining in public about the state of the economy.

https://archive.is/KoguR

In conclusion, my state (North Carolina) hasn't been a real democracy for years. We still have the best women's healthcare access & among the top education in the South, because we just can't seem to stop giving 'em hell.

"We're speedrunning a climate disasters because these companies are shoving these tools in our face that nobody wants." ~Angela Collier
#AI #LLM

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

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of the worst people you've ever seen. https://www.patreon.com/c/BrianMcFadden

Obligatory doom on a M5Stack Cardputer. I am amazed how much stuff is already available for this little thing. #opensource #community #m5stack #cardputer #esp32

#Qt6 is in. I should probably upgrade.
But #QtQuick Controls 1 is gone. 2.x sucks: it doesn't pick up my theme, the widgets work different and the differences feel like the #desktop side was an afterthought.

What should I upgrade to? Is #Kirigami providing honest desktop widgets?

#AskFedi #kde

Substack Subscription Poll

Read @micahflee Micah Lee's great piece on why authors should switch from "brologarch garbage" Substack to Ghost: https://micahflee.com/2025/02/not-only-is-substack-right-wing-broligarchy-garbage-its-way-more-expensive-than-ghost/ and got to wondering if authors really understand how being on Substack hurts their subscriptions.

If you see a newsletter that you would like to subscribe to, BUT it is on "brologarch garbage" Substack do you:

Chris Kluwe, a former Minnesota Vikings NFL player, was arrested yesterday for protesting against Huntington Beach City Council's decision to allow the California city's library to display a plaque spelling out the word "MAGA." Kluwe spoke at a public meeting, describing MAGA ideology as "profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy and most importantly...explicitly a Nazi movement." After taking a few steps toward the council dais he was arrested, carried from the room and taken to city jail where he was given a misdemeanor citation for disturbing an assembly. Here's NBC's story about the episode. Kluwe later told @LATimes: "I have the responsibility to step up and do something ... That's what I also hope to see from other people who enjoy that position of privilege and power ... that they take this example and say, 'You know what? I can do that too. I can help protect the oppressed.' Because it shouldn't be on the people who are being oppressed to fight by themselves."

https://flip.it/y_4o1T

https://flip.it/NY9kgC — LATimes story, may be paywalled

#Football #NFL #ChrisKluwe #Protest #TrumpAdministration #MAGA #California #HuntingtonBeach

Microsoft is paywalling features in NOTEPAD. Let me say that again so it sinks in. Microsoft is _paywalling_ features in _NOTEPAD_.

My god this is so stupid.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2614943/microsoft-is-paywalling-these-features-in-notepad-and-paint.html

What a fascinatingly weird, specialized tool (h/t to @ColleenDoran for the pointer): https://x6ud.github.io/#

It provides you with a “skull" that you can rotate to a desired position, and then you can search for reference photos of animals facing that way.

I'm no artist, so don't have any use for it personally, but for folks composing #art that includes animals that look more realistic than medieval paintings, it looks pretty helpful…

The deadline to comment is March 17th, 2025, so there's time to gather your thoughts.  This is a situation where a carefully thought out and researched statement will be weighted more heavily than a general one dashed off quickly.

This Reddit post provides links to three places for public comment on the anti-trans passport policies: #^https://www.reddit.com/r/Passports/comments/1it0ko3/public_comment_on_us_passport_form_changes/

Recommendations are for comments to be polite but firm.  Specific personal stories and expert knowledge are particularly valuable on these kinds of federal "public comment" sites, which are meant to compile perspectives and data, not to track raw counts of numbers of people on each "side".

(boosts and reposts very welcome)

To my dear but deeply flawed homeland: when your democratic process delivers an intellectually & morally deficient autocrat & his evil entourage... the response is not 'we need incremental change!'. No. The response to that must be massive, grassroots, fundamental structural change. It must reject, entirely, the concept of billionaires (plus a 'margin of safety'). There's no incremental way out of the very deep hole you(we)'re in.

@lwriemen @a11yMel If moving, I would say to mirror it to/from Codeberg as codeberg is not as accessible yet. While I absolutely agree we should all be trying to reduse our dependance on github and US based services, please don't forget people with disabilities.

Look, it isn't difficult.

- They aren't susceptible to appeals to kindness or decency because they are cruel and indecent people. The cruelty is the point.

- They will never listen to appeals to logic or intellect because they are, fundamentally, stupid and illogical people. The stupidity is the point.

- They will not be swayed by political appeals to patriotism or democracy because they themselves are unpatriotic and undemocratic people. The fascism is the point.

Right now, Trump and his MAGA party goons are anti Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, anti Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, anti Roosevelt's New Deal, anti Truman's NATO, anti LBJ's Great Society, anti Reagan's immigration policy, anti Carter's emphasis on Civil Rights, preventing climate change, and peace in Israel, anti Clinton's making space for gay people and feeding children, anti Bush Sr's No Child Left Behind, anti Obama's healthcare, anti Trump's own US-Mex-Can trade deal, and anti Biden for the sin of picking a black VP and acknowledging the existence of trans people for the first time ever in our nation.

As a measure of just how venal this current cabal is, G.W. Bush's greatest humanitarian achievement was a project designed to fight AIDS in Africa. These assholes just cut its funding. If not reversed, it will end with an estimated 30 million deaths. And that's just for starters.

My main point - Trump and his MAGA jackboots have only one real goal: destroy respect for democracy. Details of their plans mean nothing to them. Stupid, crazy, extravagantly wasteful, doesn't matter.

The actual goal is failure.

I would like to formally apologize for once referring to crypto as "digital Beanie Babies." A lot of people lost money buying Beanie Babies, but at least they didn't directly transfer that lost wealth to billionaires.

Build local networks with decentralised solutions that are #OpenSource #FreeSoftware and based on #OpenStandrds not because you want to fight BigCorp, but because you want to help your neighbours. Focus on solutions, not on problems you can't really solve. Build bridges, not walls. Deal?