When we hear that #2023 is the hottest year ever, it is hard to understand the extent. Maybe it is only just a little bit hotter? Unfortunately no. I am back from a symposium on marine environment at Tohoku University, and here is the picture that I saw. Regarding #sea surface #temperature, 2023 is hotter to an extent that was never observed since we monitor that temperature globally. https://climate.copernicus.eu/record-high-global-sea-surface-temperatures-continue-august
💁♀️💁♀️#grab✋ your💿💿💿drives and request💅your #data babes👄👄✨ because it's #2023🎉💯💯 and we're getting off every fucking platform apparently📉📉💥🏃💁♀️ #youtube??😂😝🫡 More Like #You Snooze🛌🎳💤🙈 #twitter???👨🏻💎🚗🔥More Like SHITTER :nonazis: 💩💩🚽👎🪠 #Reddit🤔??#more Like Dead-It ⚰️💀💀🛐 #Windows???🪟🖥️more like WIN-BLOWS🐡💥🤯 :1000: :1up: it's time to download your #shit ⬇️⬇️💅💾at all costs🏴☠️🤪 :1000: and say #Fuck You :0w0: 🖕🖕💯 to the 🧍♂️🚫#Tech Bros🚀💥🎊so clone those repos :xenia_laptop: :sayori_like: 💯💯 :1000: and #grease up your router👉👉🧴🙌🥵💦⚠️ because it's a Tech #Fuckfest😳😳😳😳and the 🛟⛑️⛑️safety word is 🚨Fuck This🚨🔥🤪 :1000: :1000: :1000: 🤸
It's that time of year again, when I round up all the books I reviewed for my newsletter in the previous year. I posted 21 reviews last year, covering 31 books (there are two series in there!). I also published three books of my own last year (two novels and one nonfiction). A busy year in books!
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Since it's the last day of 2023, I'm going to share my Mastodon circles. These are the circles of people that interact most with myself and my posts here on the platform, so THANK YOU to all of you amazing people that I'll tag below!
The United States has surpassed 400 mass shootings in 2023, setting the stage for a record-breaking year in gun violence without any significant federal firearm legislation on the horizon.
I’ve been prompted by the Netflix algorithm pretty aggressively to watch Leave the World Behind, the 2023 apocalypse film — it said I was a 98% match for the movie. I’ve taken it in over the last couple of days, and I have to grudgingly admit that the algorithm was correct; I really liked it. Here are my impressions; spoilers ahead.
The film’s premise is straightforward — a middle-class Brooklyn couple played by Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke take an impromptu family weekend trip to Long Island in a surprisingly posh rental house. Things start going wrong immediately — an oil tanker grounds itself on the beach where they are sunbathing; then Internet and mobile phone service go out.
That night, they’re awakened by the Black owners of the house, a father and daughter played by Mahershala Ali and Myha’la respectively. They’ve come from the city, where there is a severe blackout; they decided not to stay in their Park Avenue home, but instead come back to their country house. The renters, initially reluctant, even when offered a refund, relent when they see that all the television channels are on the emergency broadcast system.
Over the course of a few days, the families settle into an uneasy truce, as they realise that a serious attack on the United States has taken place. They endure sonic attacks, crashing airplanes and runaway self-driving cars, and increasingly strange animal behaviour. Ultimately, as the children suffer greater and greater hardship, they find a bunker in a nearby mansion to settle into, as mushroom clouds rise over the Manhattan skyline in the distance.
The underlying premise is fairly direct — that a foreign power, or a coalition of them, has used cyberattacks to weaken America’s resolve and spread terror. With a frayed social fabric, Americans may do the job for the attackers by turning on each other. What leadership there is in the country abdicates any responsibility, moves their investments electronically, and moves off to what we can expect is comfortable exile.
The acting was masterful. With only the faintest of brushstrokes, Roberts shows off the racist assumptions of white culture (she insists that the owners are really scammers, or maybe the handyman and housekeeper). Hawke’s character is easy-going and cavalier about his privilege. The gender dynamics in their relationship is roiling and unstable.
All the relationships are telling — between the renter dad and the owner’s daughter; between the owner and the mom; between the mom and the owner’s daughter. Probably the most difficult is the one between the renters’ older son and his younger sister, who dangles perilously at the margin of the social group. Her disconnection, and her resolve to start looking out for herself (inspired by an episode of West Wing), drives the story to its conclusion.
I was pretty deeply troubled by the story, in the shadow of the war currently underway in Gaza. I could not help but notice the parallels — absence of medical facilities, destroyed roads, information blackouts, bombings — between the experience of the TV characters and the real experience of the civilian population there. The characters’ absolute befuddlement that such attacks would happen to Americans, without understanding that they happen to people around the world every day, is richly ironic.
Most of all, I found the natural world’s disruption unsettling. Roberts’s character has a monologue at the end where she notes how little Americans actually care about the effects of their own actions on other people in the world or the animals and plants in it. It’s a little blunt and heavy-handed, but so well-written and delivered so expertly that it definitely broke through.
I’d recommend the movie if you’ve got Netflix (and sorry for the spoilers). It’s definitely given me a lot to think about.
Es geht langsam los mit den Jahresrückblicken, wa?
Wenn auch kurz, aber es hat mich sehr gefreut, auf der #VELO Berlin @SheDrivesMobility getroffen zu haben.
Unsere Bekanntschaft begann mit einem Block und einer unfairen Misinterpretation meinerseits und ich schätze Katja seither sehr dafür, sich direkt in Kontakt zu begeben und im Gespräch $Dinge zu klären.
Ausserdem erklärte uns unser Umfeld beharrlich wir wären eigtl doch sehr ähnlich <3
Holiday travelers are starting their final sprint. About 2.7 million people were expected to board flights on Wednesday, and Sunday is expected to set an all-time record of 2.9 million.
Cresce la pressione su Ylva Johansson. Dopo le inchieste giornalistiche sui collegamenti delle lobby nel controllo delle chat, la Commissione Interni del Parlamento europeo pretende chiarimenti
Dalla ricerca è emerso che “un’intera rete di associazioni e organizzazioni di lobby”, finanziata con oltre 20 milioni di euro dalla sola Oak Foundation, mantiene stretti legami, tra gli altri, con la commissaria europea agli Interni Ylva Johansson. I rappresentanti delle organizzazioni hanno preso parte alle riunioni e hanno fornito consulenza al commissario per gli interni. Lei, a sua volta, è stata protagonista di un video promozionale per un'organizzazione di lobby ed è apparsa in una campagna di pubbliche relazioni. Inoltre, uno dei dipendenti di Ylva Johansson è membro di una delle organizzazioni di lobby ed è anche responsabile delle norme di controllo della chat presso l'ufficio del commissario per gli interni.
“Possibile influenza indebita”
Nella lettera al Commissario, che pubblichiamo integralmente, i coordinatori della LIBE esprimono la loro “preoccupazione” per i rapporti. I resoconti dei media suggerivano “una possibile influenza indebita nello sviluppo della proposta [ n.d.r.: il regolamento chatcontrol]”.
Particolarmente preoccupanti sono le accuse secondo cui le soluzioni proposte nella proposta legislativa per combattere il CSAM replicherebbero quelle progettate da questi gruppi e contribuirebbero quindi a promuovere i loro interessi economici, continua la lettera.
La commissione chiede quindi al commissario europeo per gli affari interni “chiarimenti e spiegazioni” sulle accuse – e chiede una risposta entro una settimana.
Voto rinviato
Anche la regolamentazione del controllo delle chat di Johansson sta attraversando un momento difficile nei negoziati del Consiglio dei ministri dell'UE: un piccolo gruppo di stati dell'UE respinge l'attuale testo legale sul controllo delle chat. Dato che il voto previsto per questo mese fallirebbe, la Presidenza spagnola ha rinviato la questione.
Data: 28 settembre 2023
Da: Juan Fernando López Aguilar, commissione LIBE
A: Ylva Johansson, commissaria per gli affari interni
Caro Commissario Johansson,Scrivo a nome e su mandato dei coordinatori LIBE per esprimere preoccupazione per le recenti notizie pubblicate negli organi di stampa che presumibilmente indicano un conflitto di interessi riguardo alla proposta di regolamento recante norme per prevenire e combattere gli abusi sessuali sui minori (2022/0155(COD)).
I resoconti dei media menzionati indicano presunti stretti rapporti di lavoro tra la Commissione europea e un’ampia rete di aziende tecnologiche, fondazioni, agenzie di sicurezza e agenzie di pubbliche relazioni, tra cui Thorn e WeProtect Global Alliance, indicando una possibile influenza indebita nella stesura della proposta.
Particolarmente preoccupanti sono le accuse secondo cui le soluzioni previste nella proposta legislativa per combattere il materiale pedopornografico replicherebbero le soluzioni ideate da tali gruppi, contribuendo così a promuovere i loro interessi economici.
Chiedo pertanto gentilmente di ricevere chiarimenti e delucidazioni in merito alle accuse sopra descritte. I coordinatori LIBE apprezzerebbero ricevere una risposta al più presto possibile e idealmente entro e non oltre una settimana dal ricevimento di questa lettera.
Riteniamo che la vostra cooperazione e una reazione tempestiva a questa richiesta andrebbero a vantaggio della trasparenza e della responsabilità, valori che sono al centro delle azioni dell’Unione Europea.
Wie ich eben hier im Fediverse durch einen Beitrag von @citoyen_candide, weitergesagt durch @anonymiss gesehen habe, wurde Simple Mobile Tools verkauft. Folgender Artikel bestätigt das auch noch einmal. Das ist traurig, da diese Opensource Tools von recht vielen Menschen genutzt werden welchen Opensource, Datenschutz, sparsamer Gebrauch von Rechten etc. wichtig ist. Und so kann man nur hoffen das die Anwendungen geforked und dann von der Community weiter entwickelt werden.
Here's the first question:
In an April speech at Liberty University, Gov. Ron DeSantis declared, “We have made Florida the state where [blank] goes to die." What filled in the blank?
@CmykStudent@prokoudine Moving away from Pango is part of our plans and was even part of Idriss' GSoC project (but it was too big so the project got scaled down).
Idriss did already a lot of very nice improvements regarding GIMP's font support. It's much less visible than stuff like NDE but GIMP 3 will actually be a huge step forward regarding font support.
United States tops 400 mass shootings in 2023 | CNN Politics (www.cnn.com)
The United States has surpassed 400 mass shootings in 2023, setting the stage for a record-breaking year in gun violence without any significant federal firearm legislation on the horizon.
2.7 million expected to fly Wednesday ahead of Thanksgiving (www.wptv.com)
Holiday travelers are starting their final sprint. About 2.7 million people were expected to board flights on Wednesday, and Sunday is expected to set an all-time record of 2.9 million.
Jericho - Iniko - 2023 (www.youtube.com)
I'm high, I'm from outer space. I got Milky Way for blood, evolution in my veins...