Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

It’s time to get ready for May Day! This month get 40% off all labor titles and 25% off all labor merch. Check out these best-sellers, and shop the sale via the link in our bio.

How about all the credit unions in the US fund a fork of GnuCash that can compete with QuickBooks, Quicken, etc.? Good free financial software would benefit the credit unions' membership.

One mod's opinion: mastodon.social remains the source of most reported content... Really, if they're not going to screen registrations, or are too big to moderate effectively, they should just close registrations and point people to other instances.

Praise for THE AI CON from across the pond.

UK release date: May 22
US release date: May 13

Want to read at the first possible moment and help me and @alex make a splash?

Pre-order at your favorite local bookseller or via the links at https://thecon.ai

Wisconsin supreme court race: liberal Susan Crawford beats Musk-backed candidate - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/02/wisconsin-supreme-court-election-result-race fab slap in the face for #musk

US embassies to contractors worldwide: Cancel any diversity programs or risk going unpaid - https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/01/business/us-embassies-european-suppliers-dei-intl/index.html as others have pointed out, the solution is simple: don't provide cleaning services etc., let #muricans stew in their own filth, real and metaphorical

I think the dirty little secret here is that the Democratic Party really, really, really wants the Zionists to like them -- and way more than they want Palestinians, Muslims, or college students to like them.

I remember not too long ago when anyone advocating for free speech was assumed (my many) to be a right-winger. My how things change.

"President Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on constitutionally-protected speech has solicited crickets from key Democratic Party leaders and self-described ​“free speech” advocates in the U.S. media."

https://inthesetimes.com/article/democratic-party-free-speech-trump-deportation-mahmoud-khalil

The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, says its bandwidth costs have gone up 50% since Jan 2024 — a rise they attribute to AI crawlers.

AI companies are killing the open web by stealing visitors from the sources of information and making them pay for the privilege

The "United States Disappeared Tracker' is brilliant, though we should be sickened that it is needed. Huge kudos to Prof. Danielle Harlow.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/danielleharlow/viz/UnitedStatesDisappearedTracker/Map

Here's her explainer:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-harlow-9a543a91?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAABN2vA0B7h8s6epajj2aERAymBK-Mfl7Jds

The #Forgejo monthly update was published ✨ It is a high level overview of the project activities.

Forgejo v11.0 is on track for release on 16 April 2025. New versions of v7.0 and v10.0 have been released. Improvements to the availability of Forgejo actions have been completed and the Forgejo runner has received new versions. The DDoS attack on code.forgejo.org has ceased and precautions have been taken for the future.

https://forgejo.org/2025-03-monthly-update/

Just saw a link to 'Cities Coalition for Digital Rights' on my feed. Looked at their site (with lots of participating cities, globally) trumpeting a checklist of good digital behaviours: https://citiesfordigitalrights.org/checklist mentioning good stuff like privacy-respecting IT, use of open source & open standards, etc. Then, at the bottom, they tell you to follow them... on Twitter & LinkedIn. No mention of the Fediverse. Even as I yank, I can appreciate that deep irony. I gently suggesting they get Fediwise.

Corporate executives are tempted to settle Trump’s frivolous lawsuits against their news companies to get on the administration’s good side. But they’re reportedly scared of getting sued if they do.

They should be. We explain why.

https://freedom.press/issues/how-shareholders-can-stop-media-outlets-from-bribing-trump/

Good news! Prosecutors have dropped their unconstitutional case against Chicago photojournalist Matthew Kaplan for covering an ICE protest in Gary, IN.

We're proud that our advocacy helped make this happen.

https://www.instagram.com/mkaplanphoto/p/DHuMXpYP5QI/?img_index=11

Happy birthday to Samuel R. Delany, born April 1, 1942. A visionary in science fiction, Delany redefined the genre. His explorations of language, identity, and queerness continue to influence writers and readers alike - a true literary pioneer. Check out The Atheist in the Attic here: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=897

SignalGate has gotten lots of attention.

But an important point is being lost. A strong argument can be made that the chat is a presidential record.

This would be the clearest proof yet that the White House isn’t appropriately saving its records (again).

https://freedom.press/the-classifieds/the-signalgate-problem-nobody-is-talking-about/

Why is Illinois State going on strike? Because the admin is all in on "AI," from the sounds of it.

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

@lwriemen The theme song for the present age:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_7Bmz73w-U

"As we hand over more and more of the learning process to artificial systems, we risk training a generation of humans who are informationally saturated but cognitively underdeveloped...This creates a dangerous recursive feedback loop: AI teaches children, children lose depth, and the AI of tomorrow is trained on their shallow thinking. The result is a slow but accelerating decline in the quality of both human and machine cognition"

Supporting AI=supporting senescence.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/160268470

A reminder that France brought out the guillotines right about now.