Announcing the NNCPNET Email Network
From 1995 to 2019, I ran my own mail server. It began with a UUCP link, an expensive long-distance call for me then. Later, I ran a mail server in my apartment, then ran it as a VPS at various places.
But running an email server got difficult. You can’t just run it on a residential IP. Now there’s SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and TLS to worry about. I recently reviewed mail hosting services, and don’t get me wrong: I still use one, and probably will, because things like email from my bank are critical.
But we’ve lost the ability to tinker, to experiment, to have fun with email.
Not anymore. NNCPNET is an email system that runs atop NNCP. I’ve written a lot about NNCP, including a less-ambitious article about point-to-point email over NNCP 5 years ago. NNCP is to UUCP what ssh is to telnet: a modernization, with modern security and features. NNCP is an asynchronous, onion-routed, store-and-forward network. It can use as a transport anything from the Internet to a USB stick.
NNCPNET is a set of standards, scripts, and tools to facilitate a broader email network using NNCP as the transport. You can read more about NNCPNET on its wiki!
The “easy mode” is to use the Docker container (multi-arch, so you can use it on your Raspberry Pi) I provide, which bundles:
Exim mail server
NNCP
Verification and routing tools I wrote
Automated nodelist tools; it will request daily nodelist updates and update its configurations accordingly, so new members can be communicated with
Integration with the optional, opt-in Internet email bridge
It is open to all. The homepage has a more extensive list of features.
I even have mailing lists running on NNCPNET; see the interesting addresses page for more details.
There is extensive documentation, and of course the source to the whole thing is available.
The gateway to Internet SMTP mail is off by default, but can easily be enabled for any node. It is a full participant, in both directions, with SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and TLS.
You don’t need any inbound ports for any of this. You don’t need an always-on Internet connection. You don’t even need an Internet connection at all. You can run it from your laptop and still use Thunderbird to talk to it via its optional built-in IMAP server.
Hamas's application to the UK Home Secretary to remove its designation as a terrorist organization aims to build international support for Palestinian resistance and affirm the group's role as a political actor in determining the future of Gaza.
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/04/hamas-files-challenge-to-overturn-uk-terror-designation/
Breaking the Silence (on FB):
The following statement was published in #Haaretz’s #Hebrew print edition on Friday, in collaboration with many of our partners in #Israeli civil society.
“Say no to the Israeli government’s policy of death
Tens of thousands of deaths, entire cities razed, millions of human beings emaciated from hunger, hostages abandoned to suffer and die - none of this satisfies the bloodlust of the #Netanyahu-Ben Gvir government.
For the sake of its political survival, and in the name of the war of attrition it declared against the Palestinian people, the Israeli government is prepared to continue committing the gravest crimes.
This is what dictatorship looks like - when a leader is prepared to trade in human blood for his own selfish interests.
It’s time to say loud and clear: We will not continue to follow him on this path of doom.
We all have a duty to resist the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir government’s policy of death.
#Palestine #Gaza #BenGvir #Fascism #Genocide #WaeCrime #Politics #BreakingTheSilence @palestine @israel
Israel has begun the final stage of its genocide. Palestinians are being forced to choose between death or deportation. What we are witnessing dwarfs all the historical assaults on Palestinians.
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/03/the-last-chapter-of-the-genocide/
Israel’s apologists: release the hostages and the war will end
Israeli “leftists”: once the hostages are released annihilate Gaza
Temperature anomalies exceeded 10°C above the 1981-2010 climatological average in February 2025 from Svalbard toward the North Pole! 🔥
Data from @CopernicusECMWF ERA5 reanalysis.
Albanese lines up with the fascist right "Among the countries who agreed to the statement were France, Germany and Britain. Among those absent were Australia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Italy." https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-impose-sanctions-international-criminal-court-2025-02-06/
this is a delight https://defector.com/salesforce-is-using-a-hallucination-to-sell-ai
🌡️The Arctic is warming rapidly, but not all regions are feeling the heat equally. Greenland’s ice loss accelerates, while Russia’s Arctic shows less dramatic changes but increasing variability. Will this pattern continue?
📖 Read the full article here: https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/17/4645/2023/tc-17-4645-2023.html
Tired: "Computer skills are great for your career and future"
Wired: "Having no computer skills will save you from actual slavery"
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.
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.
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."
Sometimes, back on Twitter, I went pretty hard. https://twitter.runhello.com/mcclure111/status/1044264156793393152
random nobody. Canberra. Science graduate. Impaired. Divergent.
books: https://librarything.com/profile/znalo
music: https://bandcamp.com/znalo
student: https://vrvl.net/~ambrose/2023pgm.html