Ian Kenway @iankenway@qoto.org

JUST IN: We just passed in the House an #Omnibus #budget, BOOSTING public investments by more than 9% in

✅️ Clean energy
✅️ K-12 education
✅️ Higher education
✅️ Election security
✅️ Immigration
✅️ Labor
✅️ Mental health
✅️ Public health
✅️ Puerto Rico
✅️ Veterans.

FOR THE PEOPLE!

Share the news far and wide.

Are we clear now extreme disparities of income—and particularly subsidizing billionaires—is not great for a healthy, stable society?

🇷🇺 Monthly polling. Note how many now want to skip awkward question

“Russia against Putin.
A thread on what's going on with the public opinion of the Russian society.
(A lot. It changes rapidly, and definitely not in the way Putin would like it to change).

But before we start: where does the data come from and how could we expect it to be accurate?
There is a public opinion research department at the Anti-Corruption Foundation @ACF_int since 2013. “

#TheSpecials - #Gangsters (Official Music Video) [HD] - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgCZN1rU5co

#TerryHall

Even England’s police want to decriminalise hard drugs. Why won’t our posturing politicians listen - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/20/england-police-decriminalise-hard-drugs-home-office why, indeed? #drugs #decriminalisation

Female students have been banned from Universities in Afghanistan with immediate effect, the Taliban has said.

Women’s rights being disregarded, yet again. I’m incandescent with rage for Afghan women & girls, they deserve equal access to education 😡

https://news.sky.com/story/taliban-bans-female-students-from-universities-in-afghanistan-12772113

"The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds"

Dalai Lama

Wednesday's Front Page 📰

SICKENING
🟥As nurses and 999 crews fight to earn enough to pay their bills, PPE scandal peer Michelle Mone is on luxury break at £6k-a-night hotel in the Alps.

#TomorrowsPapersToday

Brexit = tax rises

“In March 2022, when he was chancellor, Rishi Sunak tacitly accepted the OBR’s projection that the economy would be around 4% smaller, and as a result raised tax by £46 billion to ensure public services would be funded.

"According to my analysis, almost all of those tax rises wouldn’t have been needed if Britain had remained in the EU.”

#Brexit #UKPolitics
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-12-20/brexit-costs-government-40-billion-a-year-in-lost-tax-revenue

I’m seeing some about the fediverse along the lines of “we welcome our new venture capitalist and Big Tech overlords… what could possibly go wrong?”

What could possibly go wrong? Oh, I don’t know… take a look at the whole damn web. Take a look at email. Take a look at any resource that was part of the commons but was enclosed/captured by corporate interests. Read up on embrace, extend, and extinguish.

1/2

#fediverse #mastodon #corporateCapture #slowlyBoilingFrogs

The group of people who are trying to divide the fediverse seem to have reached a new low.. They have a tool that lists how many instances block a particular instance, but it is highly manipulative.

For starters it is hand curated.. so they exclude blocks against their own instances and only includes instances they actually dislike.

Worse yet they curate a list ordered by "most blocked".. problem is they use the number of instances that block. They game the system by having large number of single-user instances. So instances in the top 50 may only be blocked by a few hundred people but still appear as if the blocks are significant....

This is why we need transparency, its why we need the https://UFoI.org

#mastoadmin #fediblock @ufoi #UFoI

Still slowly migrating over from Twitter, but here’s my #intro post 👋🏽

I work in tech and I’m cofounder of The Riz Test, researching how Muslims are portrayed in Film & TV, and also the Seen on Screen Institute.

I’m conducting research for my part time PhD on how poor representation of Muslims in the Arts has downstream effects on biased algorithms and AI. I speak regularly on the topic at universities, tech & media conferences and sit on the BFI Muslims on Screen Advisory Board. Come say hi!

Thinking of doing a TV piece about Mastodon in the New Year. Who should I talk to?

Mastodon has cracked the top ten social networking apps in the App Store. For context, Signal is at 15.

#COP27 and #COP15 are taking place in the same year and yet are only marginally related. Who’s the bright mind behind naming conventions?

The #Tories devastated the economy with #Brexit and then blew another hole in it by appointing #Truss. Now they're #gaslighting us by blaming #KeyWorkers. #JonathanPie nails ownership back where it belongs.

#ToryBrexitDisaster #GaslightingTories #ToryCostOfGreedCrisis #CostOfLeavingCrisis #SocialistSunday #FBPE @socialistsunday @fbpe

@WEBylines There is huge support for #proportionalrepresenation in the #LabourPartyUK membership. It was part of the 1997 manifesto. We need a constitutional overhaul and PR must be part of it. There are no perfect systems but the forced private coalitions within parties is harmful. Better they were public and officially sanctioned. Better political horse trading transparently between a variety of parties than behind closed doors.

Could the legendary Carl Sagan see into the future?
No, he was just an amazing, brilliant, insightful, human being.
#carlsagan

Earlier today Elon Musk said that my ban was temporary, 45 min later he denied my appeal to reinstate my account and confirmed that I am *permanently* banned. The email I just received says the decision cannot be reversed.
I have never once violated Twitters rules or terms of service. I’ve never had a single tweet flagged, my account was permanently banned with no warning and with no reason, after I reached out to Musk for comment.
#twittermigration #twitterexodus #twitter #tech #news #technews