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She/Her or It/It's, trans to the people who know me. I'm less active here, oh well...
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Edited 2 days ago

Look, I went over the Snowden documents as a journalist, but I never saw anything that shocked me quite like this story of Meta buying a VPN company for "security" but then spying on users of competitive apps by decrypting the traffic.

This is a real SSL added and removed here :) moment.

Seriously, like wow: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/26/facebook-secret-project-snooped-snapchat-user-traffic/

Court document: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.369872/gov.uscourts.cand.369872.735.0.pdf

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German is _full_ of tales of evil, prideful nobles who were eventually punished for their sins.

So why is modern media - starting with , and moving on from there - so full of pro- propaganda instead? Lots of "Just Kings", "Plucky Princesses", and so forth. Why is the implication in media nowadays that being exalted by the circumstances of your birth is likely to make you a good person? Instead of being totally oblivious to your own class privilege - and that's probably the _best_ case!

I wonder if anyone has done any scientific research on all these "pro-monarchy" narratives in modern media, and how they came into existence.

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It's important to understand that "age verification" schemes being passed by states, ostensibly to "protect the children", won't do that and will bring about incredible abuses.

In order to age verify children, obviously EVERYBODY of any age must be verified, for every account, under every name or pseudonym, ultimately on every site no matter how public or private the topic, and before downloading any apps.

Children will find ways to work around this. They'll use the accounts of adults, which will be openly traded. But because these age verification systems must by definition be based on government IDs, the verification process creates a linkage between your account names and your actual identity, subjecting you to all manner of leaked personal information, government abuses (think MAGA in charge), and worse. Firms will claim their systems either don't keep this data or can't be abused. History strongly suggests otherwise, and when courts step in, those firms will have to do what the courts say, often in secret, when it comes to collecting data.

Age verification is in actuality a massive Chinese-style Internet identity tracking project -- nothing less -- and there are many politicians in the U.S. who look with envy at how China controls their Internet and keeps their Internet users under police state controls.

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general reminder that anyone who thinks the world is overpopulated or will be in the near future is a fascist.

the world produces enough food to feed 10 billion people already. there's space to house that many, if only we had the political will to make housing a public service and destroy the concept of private property (as in landlordism; your toothbrush and undies will still be your toothbrush and undies).

white people make up about 15% of the world population. 'overpopulation' should be read to mean 'too many people who aren't white', and can thus be discarded. discard relationships with the people making such arguments while you're at it.

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Edited 4 days ago

Like, seriously, do you folks not understand what you're saying?

Birth rates in western capitalist countries, you know, the ones PRIMARILY responsible for boiling the planet, are declining. So what you're doing, is showing up in my mentions to low-key advocate for mercing brown people. Like that's literally what you're doing; that's where your line of argument ends.

If you were just WRONG, and you fucking are, I might ignore that. But my replies are not a safe space for nazi propaganda.

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💙 Bwee 💙 - 🏳️‍⚧️nonbinarybisexual_flag

Boost if you (Nyan-binary edition):
🐈

- Are nonbinary
- Have at least one nonbinary friend
- Either hoard too much gender or not enough
- Are secretly several animals in a trenchcoat
- Probably met a nonbinary person once

💛🤍💜🖤

Nobody will ever know which apply to you! xD

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𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not a wangjangler"

Edited 8 days ago

Dear New York Times et al,

He was never a successful businessman.

1. He inherited 400 million dollars and turned that into zero dollars.
2. He went bankrupt 7 times.
3. Some of those bankruptcies were casinos, literally a licence to print money which he couldn't manage.
4. He conned kids with cancer out of money once. That's why he can't run a charity anymore.
5. The following business ventures no longer exist or are insolvent:
a. Trump Steaks
b. Trump University
c. Trump Mortgage
d. Trump Vodka
e. Trump: The Game
f. Trump Ice
g. GoTrump.com
h. Trump Magazine
i. The New Jersey Generals
j. Trump Airlines
k. Trump Entertainment Resorts (filed for bankruptcy FOUR TIMES)
l. Trump Tower Tampa
m. Trump Taj Mahal
n. The Trump Plaza
o. Trump Castle
p. Plaza Hotel
q. Trump Media and Technology Group
r. Truth Social
s. Trump Shuttle, Inc
t. Trump Fire
u. Trump Power
v. Trump's American Pale Ale
w. Trump Marina
x. Trump Casino, Indiana
y. Trump Style
z. Trump World Magazine
aa. Trumpnet, LLC
ab. Trump Entrepreneur Initiative
ac. Trump Fragrances
ad. Empire by Trump
ae. Trump Mattress
af. Tour de Trump
ag. Trump Network
ah. Trumped!
ai. Trump Menswear
aj. Trump Home
ak. Success by Trump
al. Trump Hotel Bedding Line
am. Donald J. Trump Eyeglasses
an. Donald Trump Regency Lighting
ao. Select by Trump Coffee
6. Of the 16 companies that were manufacturing Trump-branded products in 2015, only 2 remain in business less than 10 years later. Neither of those companies are American. One is located in Panama and the other is located in Turkey.

Stop saying "successful businessman". My little company founded in 2014 has been in business longer, employs more people, and makes more income than 99% of his ventures. The difference between him and me is access to capital, which means he gets unlimited bites at the apple, and I get just this one if I'm lucky.

Signed,
a small business owner in Washington

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People who can comfortably live off 30% of their income cluelessly explaining savings to people who can barely live off 100% of theirs is a phenomenon I encounter way too often.

YOU'RE NOT BETTER AT BUDGETING YOU JUST HAVE MORE MONEY.

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emilia 🏳️‍⚧️

yeeah

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Incredible how just in a few years, the smartphone went from

"a device that's nice to have and allows you to contact people, access your calendar, play games and look up bus schedules on the go"

to

"a device you're absolutely required to own and have access to at all times because if you don't, you don't get a bank account, health insurance, public transit, or basically any online service required for enrollment in a school or an employment contract"

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git pull --force-with-leash

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/19/aya-nakamura-black-woman-france-paris-olympics

Can a Black woman really represent France? Well, can a Black woman really represent California? They're both silly questions.

California is about 40 million people. France is about 70 million people. California is about 5% Black. France is about 5% Black. There are more Black people in France than in California, and Paris is Blacker than Los Angeles.🙂🙃

One thing both the United States and France are united on, is being in denial about how Black France is. 🇫🇷🤝🏻🇺🇲

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gently panicked article about modern archiving issues. mostly about & but applies to , too. short translation: all is endangered, keep up the . https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/digital-preservation-film-tv-shows-archives-1235851957/

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Apparantly one of my two bank accounts now supports Google Pay.

...but I don't see the point yet. The bank's own NFC payment system works very well, my other bank does not support it yet so i don't have the problem of multiple bank accounts on the same phone

..and i see multiple risk factors at my bank being connected with my google account (which is never in sync with the country i reside in, which makes me even more afraid of the anti-fraud from an USA company kicking off)
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Just saw a meme that pretends that, unlike the US, enlightened European countries tax billionaires at near 50%

This isn't true

Billionaires are business owners and investors. What actually happens is that they take a modest income (for a billionaire) which is taxed like that because income tax is high. Then their business gets tax deals where they pay single digits of corporate tax. Then the profit is paid out as dividend tax

Dividend tax in the Netherlands for example is 15%. So while billionaires are taxed, they're taxed like 20-30% on the vast majority of their actual income, and that's assuming no cute tricks to get around a lot of that, too. Billions can afford you some nice accounting tricks after all

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Edited 17 days ago

Freedom in technology must include freedom from technology.

We must not create societies where the price of admission is owning a device controlled by one of two trillion-dollar US corporations.

We must safeguard people’s access to public services and the everyday necessities of life via alternate methods.

Technology should always be a progressive enhancement.

Do not let Silicon Valley privatise your access to modern life.

https://mastodon.ar.al/@lrvick@mastodon.social/112079059430275102

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Hey, speaking of rich people and complicit corporate media, did you know two of the three richest men on Earth (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos) and the family that own's Trader Joes, are currently trying to get American courts to declare the core functions of the National Labor Relations Act unconstitutional, and the mainstream media is literally barely reporting it?

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-02-22-americas-richest-men-ask-courts-make-unions-illegal/

Although this story seems complex, the essential point here is that these rich maggots who have both a vested interest in stopping unions, and own companies with a documented history of unionbusting, want to stop the board that rules on NLRA cases, from hearing cases in their administrative courts. This matters because these courts allow in particular, workers who've been fired for organizing unions by big corporations like Amazon, Tesla, and Trader Joe's to quickly get a ruling that stops those companies from union busting by simply axing the organizers. The rich guys, using essentially the same arguments that were refuted by SCOTUS almost 90 years ago, would prefer those cases be heard in federal court, because it would *guarantee* "that by the time they reach the bench, those organizing campaigns will have become a dim memory." Furthermore, it's entirely possible that the richest folks in the oligarch class won't stop there, and might even ask a very anti-union SCOTUS to literally toss the NLRA altogether, leaving workers entirely exposed to whatever predations these rich maggots want to enact upon them.

In other words, and to quote the author of this article:

"in a time of stratospheric economic inequality and overwhelming public support for unions, they want the courts to strike down workers’ right to collective bargaining? One of the fundamental landmarks of the New Deal? Shall we negate all of America’s mid-20th-century social progress? All of Roosevelt’s legacy? How about we revisit World War II and surrender to the Nazis and Japan?"

Naturally, you would assume this might be bigger news than it has been. But the truth is, corporate media in America has a vested class interest in keeping this one on the downlow because they too are owned by rich (mostly) American oligarchs; in the case of a paper like the Washington post, their boss, Jeff Bezos, is literally one of the oligarchs bringing the case before the courts through his EvilCorpTM, the American multinational corporation and technology company Amazon. When the same guys busting the unions, own the papers, it's clearly possible to gut the right to collectively bargain with barely a whisper leaking out into the mainstream discourse. In the immortal words of Frank Zappa, "they just takes care of number one, an' number one ain't you; you ain't even number two..."

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Okay...

You know those folks who say, "People who leave homeless shelters just don't want help."

Noooo... that's not what it is at all.

That shit is traumatic as fuck. Picture this. You are hungry and cold, and you go there to get warm because it beats sleeping behind a dumpster. You go in, and they are like, "Have you ever accepted Jesus as your lord and savior? We only help Christians."

Then, you have tho give a sketchy guy with gang ink and a hardon for Jesus all your personal info and let them photograph you when you look like hell.

Then they say you stink and make you shower. (I already had a shower that day.) Then you have to change into handmedown prison scrubs and go to a sermon. As if your religious traumas weren't bad enough already.

Oop, you were late. You missed the 5pm dinner of whatever the cat dragged in. Don't worry, the food bank has better. But hell.

Then it's just sitting in a big room with a bunch of haaaard mfs where nobody talks and everyone just stares at each other. Cue loneliness in a crowd.

Then it's bedtime, in a bunkhouse with 100 other people, and zero privacy.

You also can't leave until 7 am. unless you have a medical emergency.

My gay ass faked a medical emergency so I could leave. Then I had a mental breakdown and spent 2 days in the hospital.

So, no. People who won't stay in shelters likely do want help, but the shelter isn't help. It's hell.
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Some of you know today as π-day.

But the real insiders know that today is the 30th anniversary of the 1.0 release of Linux.

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TIL that the world of braille embossers/printers is dominated by greed. I am not surprised, but I am disappointed. A dot matrix printer knock-offs (because that's what they are) are sold for $1500 to $5000 apiece, and often require $500 software to convert text documents for print. Even stupid Dymo-like electric label maker costs $1200. C'mon, it's EXACTLY the same as regular Dymo, but with different character set!

There are open source embossers, like BrailleRAP, and despite their looks, they seem to give performance comparable to cheap commercial embossers, for under $250.

I wish these were widely available everywhere. Maybe at least in every library, or something. But even if they were...

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