Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Looks like I got it wrong re Google antitrust decision and Mozilla. See this post: https://spyglass.org/google-apple-and-mozilla-win-in-the-antitrust-case-google-lost/

Good grief; I knew Audible/Amazon were predatory but I’m surprised this is legal.

Short version - if an author isn’t exclusive to Audible, then Audible will do their best to take the author’s royalties and give them to people who are exclusive.

Exclusive including “not available in libraries”.

https://youtu.be/1ur9398YdrA

@pluralistic

just wow. read this, from Techdirt:

Wired, Business Insider Editors Duped By Completely Bogus ‘AI’ Using ‘Journalist’ Who Made Up Towns, People That Don’t Exist

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/02/wired-business-insider-editors-duped-by-completely-bogus-ai-using-journalist-who-made-up-towns-people-that-dont-exist/

Here's Wired's mea culpa:

https://www.wired.com/story/how-wired-got-rolled-by-an-ai-freelancer/

Techdirt's Karl Bode correctly concludes: "This country has taken an absolute hatchet to quality journalism, which in turn has done irreparable harm to any effort to reach reality-based consensus or have an informed electorate. The rushed integration of “AI,” usually by media owners who largely only see it as a way to cut corners and undermine labor, certainly isn’t helping. Add in the twisted financial incentives of an ad-based engagement infotainment economy, and you get exactly the sort of journalistic outcomes academics long predicted."

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset.

In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia.

In 2005 I started medical transition. For the state to recognise this I had to submit to standards of "care" which were humiliating, degrading and which placed me at risk of violence.

But I did it "by the book"

As I did it "by the book", the NHS agreed to reregister me as female, which makes sense because my anatomy now is.

In 2007 I had sex reassignment surgery. This had to be signed off by two mental health professionals, "by the book", and it was.

In 2008 I applied for gender recognition. This involved signing a statutory obligation, stating that I promised, BY LAW, to live fully as female for the rest of my life. As this was done, "by the book", the government promised that it would treat me as such.

Its first act as treating me as female was to annul our marriage because it was a same sex marriage and those were not allowed.

The state then reissued my birth certificate, correcting the "mistake" it had originally made when it recorded me as male, "by the book".

In 2009 Sylvia and I married for the second time, in a same sex civil partnership, which was done "by the book", because the state regarded me as female and I was bound by law to be female.

In 2013 we married again, because the state decided that same sex marriage was in fact allowed after all. This was done, "by the book". Despite having been married for 12 years, we had to submit ourselves to individual questioning to prove our relationship was genuine, "by the book".

In April of 2025 the state turned round and told me that I had been mistaken. That it never regarded me as female. That I was male the whole time. That the marriage it annulled because it was a same sex marriage was never a same sex marriage (but it stays annulled). That the civil partnership in 2009 never really happened because "opposite sex" civil partnerships were not allowed in 2009.

And that the legal obligation I have to live as female for the rest of my life, which I signed and gave up my marriage for, is still in effect but also if I keep following it, I am breaking the law and subject to arrest. As it's still valid, presumably if I don't keep following it, I am also breaking the law and subject to arrest.

The law of the land simultaneously requires me to be both a man and a woman and if I do either then I am breaking the law and subject to arrest.

At every stage I did what the state asked me to, even though it was humiliating, degrading and cruel.

And it kept moving the goalposts, and reneging on the agreements it made, whilst continuing to hold me to them even when they are now mutually contradictory.

Apparently this is "all my fault" and I should have known that this would be the consequences of my actions when I started medical transition 2 decades ago.

Perhaps you can now appreciate why we are upset?

OpenAI is now using legal threats to harass its critics, on the claim they're funded by billionaires to attack OpenAI

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/dlw78

HRDAG stands firmly with the human rights community in insisting that encryption is not optional — it is fundamental to the defense of truth.

Any attempt to ban or backdoor encryption technology is a threat to the human rights community.

https://hrdag.org/without-encryption-my-work-wouldnt-be-possible/

Boiling milk before use was just what you did. They had dedicated cookware for it. (Specially shaped to contain boil-overs, which milk is really prone to.)

Household hygiene had SERIOUSLY high stakes back before hot running water & pasteurization.

That's… like… why they taught home economics.

When people say "We used to drink raw milk from our own cow and it was fine,"

That's... usually not the case!

In families w their own cow, the mom usually boiled it before using.

We just forgot bc that's a boring chore that mom did. And who pays attention to that?
https://youtu.be/vKDPast9WFk

PSA: Caregiving is NOT unskilled labor.

I run two small businesses while being the primary caregiver to an elder with significant support needs that are likely to increase over time.

I just had an affluent white man question why I didn't solve all of my problems by finding "anyone in the neighborhood, preferably a SAHM whose kids are at school", to stop by on occasion for 30 minutes for pennies to magically solve all of my challenges with this. His explicit example of this being unskilled:

hyped to share these two events this month @ @varia 🎇

come meet @f who is passing by for an evening! we will have a show & tell and some dinner: https://varia.zone/en/community-technology-from-below.html

we're finally doing a self-organised tech school thing 🤓 i'm aiming to dive into the nuts & bolts of @coopcloud along the way: https://varia.zone/en/vakbond-precaire-netwerken.html

#Permacomputing #CoopCloud #Rotterdam

🔴 Brand new comic now up on Boing Boing
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SUPER-FUN-PAK COMIX, feat. A.I. High, Secret-Origin Man, How to Draw Doug, and MORE
-
https://boingboing.net/2025/09/03/tom-the-dancing-bugs-super-fun-pak-comix-feat-shane-the-hurricane-a-i-high-and-more.html

Social murder, American style:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/09/social-murder-as-a-necropolitical-governance-technology.html

Hello everyone! I am Joy, a Palestinian writer and poet, I have just migrated from Blue Sky platform, after they deleted my accounts after I received a lot of interest, followers and fans for my writings and poems that I published on my personal page. Blue Sky platform decided that they will fight all Palestinian writers, and the only accusation is their nationality and their voice that they chose to silence and bury alive, but I am here now to complete my journey 💗

No one can eviscerate economists like another economist.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/09/james-galbraith-crash-in-top-economist-hiring-contradicts-elite-favoring-skill-biased-technical-change-theory.html

In the case of 404 Media, I guess I could stay on the free plan and use their Tip Jar? That's significantly more work for me to track and manage.

On groups.io, I instead have to upgrade to a paid plan for a month out of each year in order to pay them the amount of money I would like to pay them. It's very silly.

It kinda drives me nuts how companies choose their subscription tiers.

Just to pick on 404 Media for a moment, the lowest tier is $100/year. That's more than I want to pay, but I'd be fine with $50/year and a much reduced feature set, maybe even *no* features that a free user wouldn't get. (Basically, just a patronage tier.)

In these situations, I end up as a free user, even though I'd happily *donate*. They just make it surprisingly hard to do so.

The federal judge let Google off the hook in the antitrust case that the company supposedly lost. He said no to any serious remedy. And he indirectly killed Mozilla (Firefox and Thunderbird).

A good day for Google, and a terrible day for what's left of the open web.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/google-wont-have-to-sell-chrome-judge-rules/

"Amazon argued, that the class was too large to be manageable"

This is my favorite defense to a class action suit.

"We cheated so many people, we can't possibly be expected to make it up to everyone"

From: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/amazon-must-face-us-nationwide-class-action-over-third-party-sales-2025-09-02/

"If police are going to be using drones, we need much stronger limits on how they do that, including treating the flying of the drone as a search that requires a warrant,” EFF’s @Adam_D_Schwartz told the Columbus Dispatch. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2025/09/02/central-ohio-police-adding-drones-sparking-civil-liberties-concerns/85634475007/

Risk terrain modeling “is a mathematical way of justifying a type of policing in certain people and neighborhoods that police have already wanted to surveil,” EFF’s Matthew Guariglia told @Kansasdotcom. https://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article311854329.html