Taha Ahmed boosted

The "border crisis" is a manufactured emergency. Yes, people are fleeing to the US and Europe from wars, oppressive regimes, and disaster zones—and both capitalism in general and US foreign policy in particular contribute to creating those. But the same billionaires and politicians who are wringing their hands about undocumented immigration are also bewailing declining birth rates, fearing that those will diminish their access to cheap labor.

Over 12 million people in the US are undocumented. Calls for tighter border controls are chiefly about increasing the pressure on these vulnerable workers in order to exploit them more aggressively. What's at stake is how much violence they face, not whether the economy can do without them.

Capitalists have no intention of paying a cent more for labor. The function of political posturing about the "border crisis" is to distract us from capitalist profiteering and to create a rationale for more state violence targeting everyone, not just the undocumented.

The solution to our problems is not xenophobia. It is solidarity and resistance. If we do not stand up for the humanity of those who are excluded and oppressed today, we will find ourselves on the wrong side of the walls of tomorrow.

For more on how borders function:

crimethinc.com/borders

Taha Ahmed boosted

I wanted to write a short piece on using #RSS feeds vs sending newsletters out to my audience. It came out somewhat different than what I expected, but I am still happy with the result: preslav.me/2024/01/26/thank-yo

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#RSS #blogging #newsletter

Taha Ahmed boosted

eu: usb-c should be the universal charger for electronic devices, no matter the manufacturer.

people: nice.

eu: you should also get replacement parts for your devices for a long time and at a reasonable cost.

people: cool! keep 'em coming!

eu: and we want to scan all of your private messages.

people:

@hyde You're right, of course. Just like you, I'd like to extricate myself from Linkedin, but even so, I'm not sure Otta is very different (it's still VC-backed, and not (F)OSS). Well, at least it's already possible to decrease our dependence on the other Microsoft property (Github) with the aid of codeberg.org (and Gitea in general). Looking forward to some sort of FOSS Linkedin replacement (perhaps community-driven, that would be cool). Thanks for raising the issue!

@hyde Nice post, I enjoyed reading it! But regarding Otta. I was about to sign up for Otta based on the mention in your blog post, but then I read their terms.
otta.com/terms-and-conditions/
Apart from them reserving the (unenforceable) right to"withdraw linking permission", they explicitly state that "In order to be contacted by Employers on the Website you will be required to provide us with a link to your LinkedIn profile". So not a Linkedin replacement (or even alternative) at all, then?

@AmpBenzScientist UTC is a timezone, and timezone comprises just a small part of the full date-time string, which is governed by the system locale settings.
Most Linux distrubutions manage this using the `locale` program.
This program allows the user (or sysadmin) to use different locales for date/time strings, messages, etc., or the same locale for everything.
It's not as technical as it sounds, and I don't mean to scare anyone off. Plus, I'm hardly a professional myself.
I appreciate you taking the time to comment, though, makes it feel less lonely here in cyberspace ;-)

@ColinTheMathmo It's a good idea, but I don't have any en_UK.utf-8 locale (Ubuntu 18.04). I have tried en_GB.utf-8 though, and that gave a conventionally British formatted date-time string.
For anyone else interested in the nitty-gritty, I have written down my current locale settings as an Ansible role
codeberg.org/ansible/locales

I can expand a little on this subject.
The target is a date-time string complying with ISO 8601, like "2021-07-16 23:19".
Of the around 20 English-language locales on Ubuntu, the following appeared promising (I compared them to countries listed to support ISO 8601 on Wikipedia):
en_DK.UTF-8 displays as "16/07/2021, 23.19"
en_SG.UTF-8 displays as "16/7/21, 11:19 pm"
en_CA.UTF-8 displays as "2021-07-16, 11:19 pm"
en_ZA.UTF-8 displays as "2021/07/16, 23:19"
The two last ones are closest, but still deviate with the slashes, the comma, and the am/pm notation.
Does anyone know of a way to have English locale with ISO 8601 date-time?
BTW, this is doable if we allow other languages than English, e.g., by setting LC_TIME=sv_SE.UTF-8. But then weekdays and months are in Swedish. Of course, I'm Swedish, but does the English-language Linux world really not have ISO 8601 support?

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Is there really no way to use US or GB locale on Debian together with proper international standard ISO 8601 date/time notation in English?

Taha Ahmed boosted

Meanwhile, the EU has voted to kill the Internet as we know it and possibly aid in creating an even bigger surveillance machine in the process.

Civil disobedience is the way forward on this one. We redouble our efforts to create decentralised alternatives and if they’re deemed illegal by this myopic legislation, so be it. Fuck ’em. We go to jail if we need to.

If you had any illusions that the battle for personhood and human rights would be easier in our age, think again.

#article13

This video interview with @aral@mastodon.ar.al deserves to be heard. Articulates the importance of the digital commons splendidly! 

Taha Ahmed boosted

Just discovered the system monitoring tool glances and it's pretty great. I was using htop before but being able to see network, disk space and IO in one place is nice.

nicolargo.github.io/glances/

Taha Ahmed boosted

@Surasanji Thank you for that demonstration of QOTO in action :-)

@cm Indeed. For a second, I thought the LaTeX display would somehow be embedded in the toot, but a look in the browser console shows that qoto.org simply calls MathJax. So LaTeX rendering will only work in the QOTO web UI, unless we can convince all other Mastodon instances to load MathJax too ;-)
I wonder if a switch to KaTeX instead of MathJax would make any difference?

Except the LaTeX equation does not render in Tusky (displays verbatim). Is this a matter of configuration, or should we open a ticket with Tusky?

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Should QOTO be pronounced like ko-to? And does it stand for anything?

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Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.