Eric J. Korpela @SETIEric@qoto.org

The most under-covered story happening in U.S. politics is the fight over whether power will be centralized in the hands of congressional leadership in each party or shared among leadership, committees, and the rank-and-file.

The party caucuses are voting today/this week on amendments to re-distribute power, but most coverage is on who won the party election. Process determines policy: will they be kings or the 1st among equals?

#legislatures #congress

Apropos of nothing, here's a reminder of a saying in Germany:
"If there's a Nazi at the dinner table and ten other people are sitting there talking to him, eleven Nazis are having dinner together."

The Trump tariffs on China failed in every way imaginable. They raised prices (& therefore inflation) for US consumers, while costing an estimated 245,000 US jobs. Yet Biden refuses to revoke them. He is following the same protectionist path as Trump. http://bit.ly/3ORmdOE

Musk himself has:
- Spread Covid misinformation
- Called safety precautions “fascist”
- Forced his own workers back to work forcibly infecting hundreds of them
- Fired employees w/ Covid for taking sick days
- Cast doubt on vaccines
- Dismissed mass death of over a million people saying, “everybody dies” https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/29/twitter-covid-misinformation-policy/ #covid #musk #twitter #twittermigration #journalist #technology #tech #technews

QUOTE: "Here’s why I find the sloppiness of this letter so frustrating.

"I absolutely agree that, as charged, the Espionage Act charges against Assange are a dangerous precedent. That’s an argument that should be made soberly and credibly, particularly if made by leaders of the journalistic establishment.

"I agree with the letter’s point that, “Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists,” (though these same publishers decided that disclosing the names of US and coalition sources was not in the public interest, and Assange’s privacy breach in doing so was the other basis by which Baraitser distinguished what Assange does from journalism).

"But so is fact-checking. So is speaking accurately and with nuance.

"If you’re going to write a letter that will be persuasive to the Attorney General, it would be useful to address the indictment and extradition request as it actually exists, not as it existed in 2019 or 2020 or 2021.

"And if you’re going to speak with the moral authority of five leading newspapers defending the institution of journalism, you would do well to model the principles of journalism you claim to be defending." - @emptywheel

https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/11/30/on-the-shoddy-journalistic-defense-of-wikleaks/

Nyaaaaaan!

I'll share here a reminder I also periodically fired off on birbsite - If you are feeling overwhelmed by stuff I, or anyone, is boosting - head to the user's profile, click on the 3-dots, and "hide boosts" from the account. You'll still see their own posts, or things they embed in other ways as they wish to comment.

But it'll filter out those of us just quickly firing off a boost to share/mark for ourselves/acknowledge a post.

Puerto Rican municipalities have filed a lawsuit in federal court saying ExxonMobil Corp, Shell Plc, Chevron Corp and others colluded to publicly downplay the risks of their fossil-fuel products on climate change and are financially responsible for damages from the devastating 2017 hurricane season, which was made worse by global warming

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/puerto-rican-towns-sue-big-oil-under-rico-alleging-collusion-climate-denial-2022-11-29/

#ClimateEmergency #pollution #ecology #environment #ClimateCrisis #ClimateCatastrophe
#ClimateChange #Climate #PortoRico #Caribbean

A #buck seen in Walnut Creek as it readies for another cool evening in Contra Costa county. The average lifespan for a deer in the wild is 3-6 years. Deer use body language to communicate with each other. They can run up to 40mph, and jump up to 10ft high. Yes, that’s its tongue sticking out at me. Guess it’s time to move on. #deer #wildlife #walnutcreek #ContraCostaCounty #hoof #

Thanks, Alito.

35,432,153 more Americans have contracted COVID, and 230,552 have died since the Supreme Court rejected the vaccine mandates. #ThanksAlito

@emptywheel followers. It is much easier to read text based images with image cropping disabled. If you are seeing cropped images that make the text impossible to read, you can turn off cropping in Preferences.

Reportedly the leaked personal data (name and phone number) of 250+ million #whatsup users has been scraped through search engines such as google with `site:wa.me "+country-code"`

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pHu0_ksUAbQ

If you are an affected user then be careful about who's calling you as this information can be used for "spear phishing"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing#Spear_phishing] meaning someone calling your phone number and addressing you by your name to scam/blackmail you.

#xp #security #whatsup #meta #privacy #dataleak

There's a certain Twitter migrant who likes Twitter but hates Elon Musk.

For me, I just hate Twitter.

Elon Musk is therefore a useful illustration for why centralization and corporate control over social media is terrible.

But Twitter has always been evil—whether or not Elon Musk runs it.

And post.news is evil for the same reason Twitter is: it's corporate-run centralization of social media.

Some people actually want that because they're not convinced that Twitter was always evil.

Give a man a fish. Sure, why not? Go around giving strangers weird fish gifts. Who cares

We've seen this illustrated again & again in recent years: reactionaries can only tear down & destroy. They can't build anything. Selfish, resentful, dull-minded people who define their whole identity around victimhood ... are not built for creativity & adaptability.

#Cryptocurrency mining in #Texas currently uses about 2,000 megawatts of power ... out of approximately 80,000 megawatts total on the Texas grid during peak demand.

“It is primarily used for speculation. I think that’s important to realize. And that is somehow worth the electricity usage of small countries? That blows my mind,” said crypto skeptic Molly White/ https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-is-becoming-a-bitcoin-mining-capital-can-the-grid-handle-it/

#Bitcoin #Environment #Energy #News

I stopped posting on Twitter a week ago because I don’t want to help a nazi sympathizing billionaire man-baby with his website. Feels good to not be doing that. Can I get an amen?