Ambrose Andrews @znalo@librem.one

@pluralistic

Tired: "Computer skills are great for your career and future"

Wired: "Having no computer skills will save you from actual slavery"

https://www.8days.sg/entertainment/asian/malaysian-man-freed-scam-compound-computer-illiterate-840016

Trump is threatening Panama and wants to take control of the canal. So it's time for a little history lesson on US imperialism and Panama:

The US wanted to build a canal through the Isthmus of Panama in the 19th century. But they had a problem: the land required for the canal - the Canal Zone - belonged to somebody else, Colombia. Colombia said the US could build and operate the canal, taking over earlier failed efforts by French constructors, so long as Colombia retained sovereignty over the Canal Zone.

US negotiators rejected this position and insisted that the US must control the Canal Zone. Colombian legislators refused, just as any nation would refuse the prospect of a foreign government exercising sovereign control over a strip of land bisecting their country. The idea is quite obviously absurd.

So the US did what they always do: they intervened militarily. The US invaded Colombia in 1903. They supported a separatist insurgency in the Panama district, and forcibly blocked Colombian troops from containing it and reestablishing control over the area. The separatists declared an independent state, with US support, and immediately gave the US what they wanted: total sovereignty over the Canal Zone.

In other words, the land for the Panama canal was obtained under conditions of imperialist intervention. And it was orchestrated by Theodore Roosevelt, who perpetrated several other imperialist interventions in the region during his presidency. The US governed the Canal Zone as its own sovereign territory - effectively a colony - until 1979, when it switched to joint control with Panama. It was only restored to full Panamanian sovereignty in 1999.

As for who built the canal, it was created by 75,000 workers, most of them Afro-Caribbean from the West Indies, who laboured under extremely harsh and dangerous conditions, undertaking one of the most challenging engineering tasks in history. Some 28,000 workers died on the job. Without those workers, and without their extraordinary sacrifice, the canal simply would not exist.

The Panama canal does not belong to the US. It belongs to the people of the region and they have a right to sovereign control over their own territory.

Getting the electric model should come standard but it is still considered an upgrade.

what value is a democracy that commits genocide? what deference is owed to an electorate that avows the worst atrocities of settler colonialism? if i let a hundred pillagers decide what to do about my house, how is it different than if a pillager autocrat had directly sanctioned their cruelty? what value is a democracy of genocidaires?

And the fm of Israel said it’s outrageous that Ireland accused it of violating Lebanese and Syrian sovereignty?

Israel occupied Leb territory from 1982 to 2000 and now does it again. They’re literally still in south Lebanon. They’ve occupied Syrian territory since 1967 and in the past month have taken more Syrian lands.

Most of Israel’s history has been that of illegally occupying other people’s lands. It’s in the DNA of that state.

I've seen the Ursula K LeGuin quote about capitalism going around, but to really appreciate it you have to know the context. The year is 2014. She has been given a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Awards. Neil Gaiman puts it on her neck in front of a crowd of booksellers who bankrolled the event, and it’s time to make a standard “thank you for this award, insert story here, something about diversity, blah blah blah” speech. She starts off doing just that, thanking her friends and fellow authors. Allis well. Then this old lady from Oregon looks her audience of executives dead inthe eye, and says “Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship* She rails against the reduction of her art to a commodity produced only for profit. She denounces publishers who overcharge libraries for their products and censor writers in favor of something “more profitable®. She specifically denounces Amazon and its business practices, knowing full well that her audience is filled with Amazon employees. And to cap it off, she warns them: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words” Ursula K LeGuin got up in front of an audience of some of the most powerful people in publishing, was expected to give a trite and politically safe argument about literature, and instead told them directly “Your empire willfall. And | wil help it along"

#writer #LeGuin

Laura Loomer hates Elon so much you’d think she’s one of his kids.

Buried in a story about yet another Elsevier journal editorial board resigning en masse (Journal of Human Evolution, https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/27/evolution-journal-editors-resign-en-masse-to-protest-elsevier-changes/), there is an alarming new development in Elsevier's publication practices:

"In fall of 2023, for example, without consulting or informing the editors, Elsevier initiated the use of AI during production, creating article proofs devoid of capitalization of all proper nouns (e.g., formally recognized epochs, site names, countries, cities, genera, etc.) as well italics for genera and species. These AI changes reversed the accepted versions of papers that had already been properly formatted by the handling editors. This was highly embarrassing for the journal and resolution took six months and was achieved only through the persistent efforts of the editors. AI processing continues to be used and regularly reformats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and require extensive author and editor oversight during proof stage."

the best place to stick dynamically loaded code: INSIDE AN INTERRUPT HANDLER

Sometimes, back on Twitter, I went pretty hard. https://twitter.runhello.com/mcclure111/status/1044264156793393152

Now updated without typos and clarifications
https://fediscience.org/@Ruth_Mottram/113529251092165813
Ruth_Mottram - Small differences that make a really big difference.

We have a new paper just out this week on Greenland ice sheet projections of melt and runoff. "With identical forcing, Greenland Ice Sheet surface mass balance from 3 regional climate models shows a two-fold difference by 2100" In this post I go into some of the detail on why we think that is and what we can do about it...

http://sternaparadisaea.net/2024/11/23/on-the-devil-in-the-climate-model-details/

Are you and activist that uses Big Tech? At @mayfirst want to understand why and how to help to move away from it. :)
It only takes a few minutes to fill this form > https://share.mayfirst.org/apps/forms/s/GAjrPNyf4QecXjrErZRi6RWY

Thanks a lot! :) /\

Final post about this for today. The Kristallnacht remembrance tomorrow in Amsterdam is canceled. It was organized by the Jewish anti-Zionist organisation Erev Rav and Platform Stop Racisme. See the attached slides by Erev Rav for an explanation.

#Amsterdam #Kristallnacht #Jews #Halsema #Ajax #HumanRights #FreePalestine #MaccabiTelAviv #TelAviv #Zionists #IDF #Israel #Zionism #Palestine #Gaza #genocide #racism #Arabs #islamophobia #homophobia

I'm seeing a lot of bad digital security advice out there right now. I'm begging you, for the love of God, if you are trying to tighten up your digital security, please start with threat modeling: https://ssd.eff.org/module/your-security-plan

This is not Hiroshima, this is Gaza.

Don't stop talking about Gaza as if your life depends on it, because their lives depend on it!
#GazaGenocide

For shitlibs especially, because there is no point talking to fascists about this:

It is important to call a genocide a genocide.

South Africa’s Massive New Genocide case against Israel at ICJ: “The Problem is, We have too Much Evidence” http://dlvr.it/TFztS5