⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

These stories are less than 6 weeks apart:
•Paramount lays off 2000 workers
•Paramount magically finds $100B cash to hostile takeover a rival

Billionaires don’t care about working people. They care about power. Stop defending billionaires. Start taxing them out of existence.

Subscribe to support my human rights advocacy: https://lets-address-this-with-qasim-rashid.ghost.io/

"Why don't you just Amazon it?" asks my mum.

Because I walked up to the local shopping centre and I bought Christmas cards and actual gifts from a little gift shop. I get to handwrite the cards and wrap the gifts myself and it feels personal. I touched these soft toys and wrapped them and wrote the little card.

Then I went to the post office and bought the box and packaging I'd need to post them tomorrow. There was an old lady with a frame delivering mince pies to the staff. At the checkout counter I saw some gift label stickers and I'd just run out, so I bought them too.

Then I went via the local cafe for a takeaway tea and laughed at a small boy (2ish) determined to pay for his ice cream by himself, thereby holding up the whole queue in an adorable way.

As I walked home I smiled at the random guy walking past me and he smiled back.

Sure, this way of gift-giving is much longer and takes much more effort. But I've given my friend the gift of time and energy and that makes it much more special.

And I got to feel like part of a community for a moment.

#WordWeavers day 8: Does your world have any weird laws, practices, or beliefs?

A ridiculous number of them, ranging from the idea that women are inferior to men in various ways to the casual acceptance of ridiculous amounts of inequality (in wealth and other things). At least the city where my story takes place doesn't participate in the larger society's legal ban on women, but not men, showing their nipples in public.

It's our world, BTW.

New #ebook @gutenberg_org: The analysis of matter by Bertrand Russell https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77427

we were re-watching Stranger Things and my kid commented on the poor quality of the flashlights as maybe a way to ramp up the drama and i had to point out that no, serious, flashlights were **fucking terrible** in the 1980s, if anything the show **overstates** the effectiveness of flashlights back then, they **fucking sucked** kids who grew up in an LED world have **no** idea how bad we used to have it for flashlights.

Colour of buses across Great Britain

@0xabad1dea
I read a post recently that outlined a likely reason: Facebook needs to stay a growth company unless they want to lose most of their value. It's the same reason NFTs moved into AI and why AI is simultaneously a god that will change everything and a poor word guesser.

Once a company transitions from "growth" to "stable" they lose the ability to print stock that will be accepted like money and their valuation tanks fast. That's why they keep making up bullshit that will never do anything -- to keep from maturing.

@neil in case you have not seen it already here's a thread with an overview and links (that I think you've already found) for further digging

https://mastodon.pirateparty.be/@surfhosting/115674236291033568

But TL;DR is that someone with little, if any, public OSS history has access to taking over maintenance with no warning or any other communication from the original maintainer. While there appears to not be any malicious changes on the new releases the whole process is suspicious AF. So I'd recommend disabling auto-updates

If anyone in the UK wants to purchase a Scanning Electron Microscope there is a very good deal on eBay UK right now. 🙂

Will probably need extensive reconditioning and setup as well as a large space to house it. But fuck that would be cool to own and use 😁

https://ebay.us/m/sS6kfe

~ £350 plus £180 for delivery.

#SEM #UK #Microscope

@book I don't get why this is such a big deal? After some research, it looks like they're using local AI models, with the option to use third parties. But... the third parties aren't included by default, you have to go out of your way to enable them. Local AI where nothing gets sent to the server is fine imo

The IAEA has confirmed that the new sarcophagus at Chornobyl lost key safety functions after a drone strike earlier this year,specifically its ability to contain radioactive material.

While no irreversible damage to structural or monitoring systems was found, the agency stresses urgent repairs are needed to prevent further degradation and ensure long-term nuclear safety.

@jmeowmeow @PeterLudemann When I visited ILM in San Rafael when they were filming the "Genesis Effect" sequence for "Wrath of Khan", I had a temptation to stick my hand between the CRT that was slowly drawing each frame and the camera pointed at the CRT that would click off completed frames. I didn't do it though.

I have trouble keeping track of these, so I was happy seeing this article: What does a blue USB port mean? I learned the truth behind all the colors, and it's wild https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-does-your-usb-port-color-mean/

Let me get this right: the person who is praising the destruction of fishing boats, who has sent masked thugs into US cities to kidnap children and wrest families apart, who is threatening Somalian-Americans and trying to influence EU politics while threatening Venezuela with massed naval forces and an airspace blockage, has been given a FIFA peace prize.

Don't they have enough hooligans to contend with at their football matches already?

#FIFA #FIFAPeacePrize #uspol #Trump

Cold War Steve

🚨 NEW: One of the largest COVID-19 vaccine studies ever (28 MILLION people in France) just dropped.

Results?
• 74% lower risk of death from severe COVID-19
• 25% lower risk of all-cause mortality
• No increase in 4-year mortality
• Vaccinated people had lower risk of death from any cause.
In short: mRNA vaccines weren’t just safe — they were protective across the board. 🔥📉 https://shorturl.at/GcZeK

We have our first victim of overreacting to the React vuln - the Cloudflare global outage was them taking down their own service while trying to spot an actually very niche vuln.