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  If somebody replies to your post to say you've said something antisemitic, the best way to respond is to argue. Nobody likes an antisemite, so don't let your self be counted among them.

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  A few years ago I was at a Purim Spiel that was a spoof of Frozen and one of the repeating songs had the bad guys singing "Do you want to kill a snowman?" Every single time, one woman in the audience just fell over laughing. Anyway, after spending a week hearing a six year old singing 'Hakuna Matata', I have somewhat greater context to understand why this was so funny.

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  Permacomputing is a beautiful fantasy about making computer systems that are sustainable, helpful and widely available. It's a goal to work for, rather than a thing to exists. Digital sovereignty is equally a fantasy . . ..

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  People who are still fans of Harry Potter are problematic in several ways. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-potter-fans-force-relocation-of-430m-undersea-cable-to-avoid-dobbys-grave

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  When I tried to write a tutorial and was posting it as a thread here, people said it sounded like an LLM. I've written a LOT of online tutorials over the last twenty some years and they all got into Common Crawl. It's not a coincidence that AI sounds like me.

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  A stranger on signal just sent me death threats because he saw my use of the hebrew alphabet (to spell a Yiddish word). Does signal leak location data at all? Like, I don't need to worry about this, right?

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  "This keeps happening!" I say as I carelessly make the same mistake ten times in a row.

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  Every time I talk about my friend dying of heatstroke the June heatwave, I want to add that he was 48 and healthy. Because I know that if I don't, people will assume he had a health condition or was elderly. Because that would be less shocking and less upsetting. Because climate change has a massive element of eugenics built in to how we conceive of its victims. In our mental model, climate change is eugenics, which in turn causes some degree of passivity in how we think of the inherent vio...

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  If a train regularly sells out for part of the year, maybe run more of them on that route at similar times? Just a thought. (I will not be getting the night train to stockholm this summer.)

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  A search engine for bands that looks at faircamp sites, band camp and sound cloud in that order.

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  Unexpected death of a not-close friend

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  When Facebook was prattling on about "friendship" in a way that allowed them to dodge responsibility for content moderation (read: when they were merrily enabling genocide), they also had a hackathon culture, in which their workers were periodically expected to work all night, in addition to their more than 40 hour per week workweek. This is to say, the job was specifically unavailable to anyone with caring responsibilities or who was actually embedded in physical community. By taking...

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  Things that emit a lot of carbon collectively that are not solved by eating the rich: * Eating meat, especially cows. * Fast fashion. Yeah, rich people do eat more beef than normal people, but they don't eat enough by themselves to account for the emissions or deforestation. Chicken-eating, not a luxury food, has been climbing steadily for decades and it also has a cost in global heating. Fast fashion makes owners rich, but its normal people who are wearing it. There's a lot of the S...

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  In the 90s, when I was a queer teenager, it was often legally risky for queer adults to even speak to queer teens. Just to be clear, this was NOT put into place to protect us. I mean, lol, imagine, its like getting protection from section 28. Indeed, it's exactly like that since there was nothing remotely accommodating at school either. When I came out, I literally did not know any other out queer person. I knew no queer adults. This was because of several policy decisions. I later saw on...

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  Apparently, fascists like AI slop music because it can just be made to say racist stuff really quite loudly and there's none of the baggage or liability associated with racist bands. This does rather suggest that consumer-facing slop music generators should face more scrutiny.

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  What the fuck? "This weekend, Fight for the Future is issuing a safety advisory for those in the San Francisco Bay Area ahead of San Francisco Pride activities scheduled for June 27-28. "We’ve learned of several prominent gay bars in San Francisco (including Mix, Badlands, and Toad Hall) that have TSA-level face scanners for entry, putting already vulnerable patrons at severe risk of surveillance. If you're partaking in San Francisco’s Pride festivities this weekend, please check...

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  The term 'AI' has become so overloaded,I have no idea what people are even talking about. Say what you mean. Is this 'gesture recognition' or 'parameter reduction' or 'slop'?

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@transactualuk/116527283979349024 Trans Actual is a long established trans rights group who are trying to collect data for their efforts to improve our rights. If you are in work, they want to hear from you.

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  This week: Two donated Linux laptops have found new homes with people who would not otherwise had laptops. In the queue: I've got three thinkpads awaiting new power adaptors, one of which needs a new battery, and another of which _NEEDS_ a new battery. And two macbooks, one of which is having (broadcom) WiFi problems. And the other is waiting. You: Are you a carer, a migrant, unemployed or otherwise could use an Ubuntu laptop? (Or do you know someone who would benefit?) Do you have...

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  RE: https://post.lurk.org/@celesteh/116527717998236643 Voting is entirely compatible with radicalism and direct action.

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  Q. Can you be an anarchist and a voter (or even a Green party member)? A. We use money now to get bread and roses into the hands of the people. Does this mean we endorse capitalism? No! It means we endorse bread and roses. If there is a means that helps us achieve our ends, it helps no-one to ignore it.

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  Zambia cancelled RightsCon the same week that Trump threatened to kill thousands of AIDS patients in their country. I haven't seen anyone mention this connection? Like, I understand this is annoying for conference attendees, but, also, the country is being held hostage for mineral rights plus whatever other demands a powerful fascist feels like making. I would also give up the human rights conference before I'd allow unregulated mining.

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  Does anybody have a handy link about why to avoid the term "meritocracy" in a code of conduct. I'm trying to help out a tech group that's very well meaning, but lacks some experience in facilitating inclusion.

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  NGO: Our values are peace love and solidarity! Me: Could you stop using Google docs? NGO: But its so coooonvieeenient

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  These are not the same cow. Only one of the is an easter egg. #cowsay #oggcamp

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  No masters. No slop. No digital ID.

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  Right to repair And weird products and batteries

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  Next task: Convince an HP elite book that I really did put ubuntu on the hard drive #linux #uefi

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  Met up with a friend today who explained that their shabbat services are very safe because the address is not known online and everyone removes their kippah as they exit and don't chat with anyone outside. Now, let's re-imagine this conversation: Our gay club is very safe because its a secret location, everybody makes sure they look straight as they arrive and leave, and we all head directly for transport instead of chatting. How safe does that sound? So here's my challenges to yo...

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  I'd never noticed how much golf courses look like cemeteries.