Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org

ALERT: Arizona court dismisses election denier Mark Finchem's (R) lawsuit contesting his loss in the AZ secretary of state race. The judge rejected all of Finchem's claims, calling them "frivolous," "wholly unsupported by the record" and "fatally flawed." https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/arizona-judge-dismisses-finchem-election-contest/

I've been on the Internet literally since before there was an Internet per se (that is, on the original DOD ARPANET that become the Internet). I've been thinking about Musk's actions over the last few days. I cannot think of any instance of any Internet-related firm ever attempting a broad *** censorship of their users' *** ability to post freely available, legal information, including discussion and links to such information, except ... that in so doing, Musk joins the ranks of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and other countries that criminalize all manner of information as part of their repressive regimes.

Musk has now bound himself to them and their philosophies, and any advertisers, firms, or other organizations doing business with him in any way, regarding any of his companies, will be doing the same by association going forward.

@Popehat my working theory is that his boots are crusted in coke and that’s why his fans won’t stop licking them.

Oh, wow, Tom Lehrer has released all of his songs into the public domain. Apparently also his website will shut down "at some date in the not too distant future" so now's a good time to download directly.

"In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs.
So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money."

https://tomlehrersongs.com/

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

by Cory Doctorow @pluralistic

"Optimized for Netscape Navigator." 😏​

Yeah, but what a great tweet to go out on!

My mastadon link at my pinned tweet on Twitter is now warning anyone who clicks on it that the sight may be “unsafe.”
You know what actually feels unsafe right now? Musk on Twitter.

Should all Journalists show solidarity with the banned accounts on Twitter and stop posting on Twitter?

It is a few today that fell foul of Elon Musk, it could be you tomorrow over something else.

If you see this post, vote and boost it.

Dear white friends: It's Black Friday when Black Mastodon celebrates its cultural heritage.

Follow the hashtag periodically today. I've already enjoyed music I haven't heard since I was a teenager; I've also seen some great artwork and bookmarked some reading material.

Expand your world with #BlackFriday every week. Boost Black and BIPOC voices as you do so.

And follow @BlackAzizAnansi who's made a great start increasing Mastodon's cultural diversity.

#BlackMastodon #BlackFedi

WOW. Elon Musk's Twitter straight-up banned the account for Mastodon. Just, wow.

i'm probably not the first person to say this but Post feels like a fake social network they'd show on someone's screen in a movie so everyone can see OH THAT'S A SOCIAL NETWORK!!!

it has this fisher price My First Influencer Opportunity vibe

At the urging of a few folks here, I decided to run a test to see which social networks clicked through most on this week's scoop about a hack of the FBI's InfraGard program.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/12/fbis-vetted-info-sharing-network-infragard-hacked/

LinkedIn tells me I have ~100k followers there. 80 Linkedin users commented on that story, but it looks like only about 25 of them actually clicked the link the first 24h!

A number equal to about 2 percent of my 350k Twitter followers clicked on the story (6600).

In contrast, the story posted here generated 3300 impressions in the same time period, even though I had (at the time) only about 15,000 followers. Also, That 3300 number would probably have been higher, but for the fact that I forgot to add the versioning link and edited that into it after the fact.

That tells me that, for now at least, engagement on Mastodon is significantly higher than on either LinkedIn or Twitter.

US sues Arizona over shipping containers on Mexico border

https://apnews.com/article/politics-mexico-arizona-doug-ducey-katie-hobbs-c5153ab8be0b9441aa3d8c22b2dca565

#BlackMastodon
#USpol

PSA 📣 For Twitter refugees: please remember that here in the Fediverse, we can focus less on finding ways to "disincentivize" bad behavior and just, y'know, moderate it the $%& out of existence.

This is kind of a core fedi strength (in addition to the whole no advertising, no algorithms, no for-profit-autocracy thing):

We actually do moderation here. We have far more moderators-per-megauser than Twitter, and they are also people you can interact with as peers rather than hidden panopticon operators.

First day on mastodon. Will start by following @donmelton of course. 🙂

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) today seized four-dozen domains that sold “#booter” or “#stresser” services — businesses that make it easy and cheap for even non-technical users to launch powerful Distributed Denial of Service (#DDoS) attacks designed knock targets offline. The DOJ also charged six U.S. men with computer crimes related to their alleged ownership of the popular DDoS-for-hire services.

The DOJ said the 48 domains it seized helped paying customers launch millions of digital sieges capable of knocking Web sites and even entire network providers offline.

One of the defendants has allegedly been peddling DDoS for more than a decade. John M. Dobbs, 32, of Honolulu, HI is charged with aiding and abetting violations of the CFAA related to the operation of IPStresser[.]com, which he allegedly operated for nearly 13 years until last month. During that time, IPstresser launched approximately 30 million DDoS attacks and garnered more than two million registered users.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/12/six-charged-in-mass-takedown-of-ddos-for-hire-sites/

Stopped posting comics directly onto Twitter as part of my phase-out. It's a bummer, a big loss in eyeballs and interactivity.

Get your friends onto Mastodon!! (And BOOST posts here!)

Thanks for joining us on Mastodon now!

Other platforms Instagram, Facebook, Telegram
https://grndcntrl.net/links/

Surprised church. #iceland #buildings #farm #church #OldHouses #RustyHouses #GoldenHour #Garðakirkja