Shamar @Shamar@qoto.org

HOW DID WE GET HERE?
(a thread of threads, quotes, and links)

This is a collection of writings and research concerned with how we got where we are today, which is in fact the story of what has been done *to* us, and what has been *taken from us*.

By "us" we're talking about "the 99%", "workers", "wage slaves", all non-owners of private property, "the poor", unhoused people, indigenous people, even plenty of people who swear by capitalism and identify as "capitalist" yet have no capital of their own and no serious hope of ever having any worth speaking of. In other words almost everyone except for the very few who have had the power to exploit us and shape our lives to serve their agenda. We're going to examine institutions and concepts that have deeply altered our world at all levels, both our external and internal realities.

By "here" we are talking about climate crisis and myriad other environmental catastrophes resulting from hyper-excessive extraction, consumption and waste; a world of rampant inequality and exploitation, hunger and starvation; a world of fences, walls, tollbooths, prisons, police, bullshit jobs and criminalized poverty; a world overrun with cars and preventable diseases; a world of vanishing biodiversity and blooming fascism; a world where "democracy" results in being led by some of the worst of humanity; a world ruled by an imaginary but all-powerful and single-minded god: Capital.

Our inspiration and structural framework for this survey is this quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property", an important work from political philosopher Karl Widerquist and anthropologist Grant S. McCall:

"After hundreds of millennia in which all humans had direct access to the commons, it took only a few centuries for enclosure, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization to cut off the vast majority of people on Earth from direct access to the means of economic production and therefore to rob them of the power to say no. It took only a few generations to convince most people that this situation was natural and inevitable. That false lesson needs to be unlearned."

https://widerquist.com/books-3/#2b

Also recommended: "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy"

https://widerquist.com/books-3/#4b

#capitalism #colonialism #enclosure #PrivateProperty #state #police #inequality #anthropology #environment #ClimateCrisis #economics

1/30

«So it doesn’t matter if it’s worse software. It’s good enough to ship because the bar for shipping code is on the floor.

Tech management will sacrifice technological progress – performance, design, and general product effectiveness – if it disempowers labour.»

Strong thinking and some new (to me) ideas.

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/react-electron-llms-labour-arbitrage/

Every university protest against the genocide in Gaza has specific demands.

Each group wants their university to do something specific.

At UT Austin in Texas, for instance, the protesters have called for the school to divest from Israeli weapons manufacturers. I'll say that again. The school has official working agreements with weapons manufacturers that are currently being used to kill Gazans.

If your argument against students is "they're just using this as an excuse to not to go to class and just want to cause disruption" then you are either being lied to or you are the one lying to others.

If you have not heard of the specific demands and terms of what would stop the protests...

...then you might want to question where you get your news and what other propaganda you have consumed and currently believe.

#stopGenocide #GazaGenocide #protest #universityProtests

Il conflitto nelle #università: studenti, professori e #guerre
https://centroriformastato.it/conflitto-nelle-universita-studenti-professori-e-guerre/ #Kant e #Humboldt aiutano a capire perché non dovremmo scandalizzarci se gli studenti non fanno i clienti, i professori non fanno gli impiegati, ed entrambi fanno, invece, gli studiosi

I hooked my GNU/Linux-loving son up with an old #lenovo #thinkcenter mini-PC that I picked up at a used AV store for about $50. For another $20, I upgraded the ram to 12GB.

He's got it setup it up with #debian as his first home server, with which he's now hosting a few static websites and an internet radio station for his friends and family. He's got loads of resources to spare for when he gets into running larger services.

You don't *need* to spend $30+ a month on cloud services when an old recycled office PC will more than suffice.

The best part? Helping him troubleshoot his problems with #DNS and #nginx and all that fun stuff. I've already made every mistake possible over the decades, and he gets to benefit from that. That how it should work!

#gnuLinux #selfhosting #disenshittify #eff

#Schrems 2 e mezzo #privacy Non è vero che la commissione UE è suddita degli USA, contro i suoi stessi cittadini: è sottomessa anche a altri stati https://ilmanifesto.it/dati-degli-europei-a-tel-aviv-via-libera-della-commissione

🚨 noyb has filed a complaint against the ChatGPT creator OpenAI

OpenAI openly admits that it is unable to correct false information about people on ChatGPT. The company cannot even say where the data comes from.

Read all about it here 👇

https://noyb.eu/en/chatgpt-provides-false-information-about-people-and-openai-cant-correct-it

"Microsoft and Alphabet enjoy AI-powered gains from cloud divisions": they are not making money from what AI can do; they are making money from the infrastructure needed by those who believe in AI
https://www.ft.com/content/f01c6852-8aa6-4cc0-991d-38f15077ba92

Tesla driver using autopilot mode charged with vehicular homicide in death of motorcyclist https://blog.quintarelli.it/2024/04/tesla-driver-using-autopilot-mode-charged-with-vehicular-homicide-in-death-of-motorcyclist/

‼️ Comunità XMPP:
📢 Annuncio: Eventi mensili in italiano sulla messaggistica XMPP! 🇮🇹
Trovate il video dell'XMPP Happy Hour di aprile nel canale Peertube https://video.xmpp-it.net/c/happyhour
della comunità italiana degli utenti XMPP: https://www.xmpp-it.net/
🌟 Unisciti a noi per partecipare alle discussioni, e incontrare altri appassionati di XMPP. 🚀

XMPP Italian happy hour
@nicfab
@mario
@darhma
@xmpp
#XMPP #standards #chat #jabber #federation #interoperability

@320x200 should it scale?

Public notice that I will be boycotting any software project that includes “AI-powered” features.

Boost to join in.

I'm proud to announce the launch of the public beta for Clew, my independent web search engine! 🎉🎉🎉

Try Clew: https://clew.se
Add to your browser: https://clew.se/add/

Clew maintains an independent index and is aiming to be a copyleft (APGLv3), self-hostable, privacy-respecting, customizable search engine which prioritizes independent creators/bloggers/writers and penalizes sites with ads and trackers.

Many features are yet to come. If you'd like to support Clew's development and server costs, you can donate to its Liberapay team: https://liberapay.com/Clew/

Boosts are very welcome, as is feedback of any kind!

Meta is allegedly sharing Whatsapp data to the IDF.

"Israel is killing people based on being in the same Whatsapp group as a suspected militant. Where are they getting this data? Is WhatsApp sharing it?"

https://blog.paulbiggar.com/meta-and-lavender/

#Palestine #Meta #

Secondo la ministra Calderone l'Italia sarebbe sotto la media dei morti sul lavoro tra i Paesi Ue. È falso: siamo tra i peggiori.

https://www.lanotiziagiornale.it/la-bugie-della-ministra-calderone-sui-morti-sul-lavoro/

(il mio pezzo per @lanotizia_giornale)

L'alternativa "paghi o ti profilo" adottata da #Meta per #Facebook non è conforme al #GDPR - lo afferma il #Garante #Privacy #EU

Non viene infatti offerta un'offerta equivalente alla profilazione, come per esempio pubblicità gratuita non targettizzata

Diciamo che si sapeva, ma ora abbiamo uno statement ufficiale dell'autorità europea

La notizia si trova qui: https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2024/edpb-consent-or-pay-models-should-offer-real-choice_en

Ho pubblicato la puntata di #NuovoBarettoUtopia con @pluralistic Cory Doctorow.

È stato un onore e un piacere parlare con lui. Abbiamo parlato di The Bezzle, il suo nuovo libro, ma anche di temi affascinanti come il sistema carcerario americano, gli abusi di potere, le truffe, le bolle tecnologiche e l'IA.

La puntata è in inglese, ma sono disponibili i sottotitoli. Sono felicissimo di pubblicare un contenuto così solo sul Fediverso, senza regalarlo a YouTube.

https://videoteca.kenobit.it/w/azRmQBCenVwjSRz9WCp8JS

I’m trying @librewolf browser and it might seem like a small thing to you all, but they went out of their way to preserve accessibility features for disabled users like myself, whereas other privacy solutions remove accessibility features completely, and their efforts to make sure disabled users have a private focused but accessible browser is more welcome than you can imagine because disabled people need privacy as well. I would argue that disabled people need privacy more. I wish more #privacy advocates took accessibility and disability into account the way they have currently. I hope this remains a core mission of theirs

Not even 24 hrs after making history as the first company to mass fire workers for pro-Palestine protests, by summarily firing 28 people, Google announced that the “(ir)responsible AI org,” the one they created in response to firing me, is now reporting up the Israeli office, through an SVP there.

Seems like they want us to know how forcefully and clearly they are backing this genocide.