This is EXECUTIVES of companies, not "the company," taking funds meant to operate the companies and instead giving those funds to politicians that THE EXECUTIVES like.
Companies don't "do" things, they are contracts. PEOPLE "do things.
#Private#corporations don't have the power to stop anyone from speaking. They can #choose not to carry someone's speech on their own platform, but that's all. That's an #editorial#decision, and perfectly valid. The speaker can go to any other platform and speak, including standing on a soapbox in a public park, starting their own blog - or #fediverse instance.
#Government saying "channel X must not be #broadcast in this country" is entirely different.
#Sony should've been forced to support #OtherOS for the entire #PS3 lifespan and not be allowed to just pay settlement cheques - that ain't being offered worldwide anyways - and still retroactively #NERF a product.
I love programming and thinking and talking about thinking. I have an education (BS, MS, PhD) focused on artificial intelligence and neuroscience.
I'm an advocate of the public academic pursuit of knowledge, the scientific process, peer review, and I see open source software and hardware as an essential part of the scientific process.
I see software user rights, including security and privacy, to be protected mainly by free and open source software.
I see the democratizing effects of the Internet, including distributed journalism and social networking, to be largely the effect of the collaborative development of free and open source software.
I am interested in free and open source manufacturing, including open source 3D printers and CNC machines. I believe open source manufacturing will be important for distributed manufacturing, allowing local manufacturing and local labor.
I see worker-owned coops as the way to safely transition from a non-democratic authoritarian top-down power structure of a traditional corporation to a democratic work environment, where the workers own the company and elect the board of directors, transitioning to democracy in the workplace.
I believe that socialism is a regulatory response to capitalism.
I believe that laws, money, corporations, and government are social agreements, and I'm in favor of democratic social agreements.
I believe in the organized non-violent boycott as a way to control capitalists and change corrupt systems.
I try to eat plant-based / vegan foods to boycott the animal industry, to help with the climate crisis, to improve my health, to avoid animal cruelty, and to avoid the extinction of species of plants, animals and ecosystems.
I have been diagnosed with Retinitus Pigmentosa, which is a disease of progressive retinal degeneration. I am legally blind, although I have about 5-degrees of vision remaining in my fovea. I'm interested in researching and developing BCIs (Brain-Computer Interfaces), specifically BCIs that function as vision prostheses that may help with conditions like RP, or the more common degenerative retinal disease AMD (Age-related Macular Degeneration).
I enjoy playing computer games like Age of Empires and Rimworld. I used to program computer games when I was younger and would like to get back to it one day.
I love playing music, especially bass guitar. I've been listening to a lot of Rage Against the Machine and Enya recently.
I enjoy reading books, mostly non-fiction.
I enjoy studying religions. I've found a lot of value in Buddhism, and I meditate often daily.
Nina and I have recently had our first baby, a boy we named Tyoma.
I'm currently working at Apple on the Vision Pro headset team.
Meta is not gonna buy Mastodon or any server, this is based on absolutely nothing and untrue.
Yes, some of us indeed got contacted by Meta/Insta because they are working on a new social platform (this was in the news) and they are looking into joining the Fediverse (Mark Zuckerberg also told this in the recent podcast)
SO.
This contact was about a "heads-up" for a potential big platform to join the network and not for a "take over".
The Scorpion is asking the Frog to let it ride on his back, and this particular Frog is all too happy to help.
The Frog never learns that the Scorpion will always sting and kill it, because that is the nature of the Scorpion.
#Meta has spent the past 20 years buying up and destroying smaller companies, and just pushing them out of business. Why would they be any different this time?
"WHEN SOMEONE SHOWS YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM THE FIRST TIME." (Maya Angelou)
Testing... Testing...
First time tooting from #Tor :blobcatsunglasses:
I am trying to move as many of my casual browsing as possible to Tor to reduce my fingerprint. Not to "hide" but to become even more harder to track by nasty, disgusting #corporations.
Reading news, I feel like they became more shameless recently so I despise more their attempts to squeeze and monetize every bit of #data they touch. And I am willing to starve them of my data further than before.
If they are ready to break the laws and count EU GDPR fines as business costs I guess data are valuable. So why not keep this precious thing for myself? :blobcat_amused:
If some pages will block me, it may be signal for me they aren't respecting users and maybe I should stop visit them :blobCat_devil:
I don't want to make these disgusting entities richer and stronger. I don't want participate in this.
I am not "digital biomass" or "free data mine".
I despise what they did to the web.
Maybe I don't have do this for Mastodon, I personally know my admin :blobcatjoy: I am simply doing some innocent tests.
"In the US, supposedly a democracy where the decisions are ultimately made by “We the People,” we hear about the “public sector” and the “private sector” of our economy. What we call “the private sector” is really just the government “contracting out” the functions of managing society. Corporations are those contracts."
@aral@Kadsenchaos 🥥#Corporations are vampires sucking the life and value out of everything they grasp. Outfitted with a legal fiction of personhood and culturally incapable of seeing or caring about how their malign influence affects others, they enrich a few and impoverish many. 🥥
You can always correctly criticize #corporations for being greedy, even when prices are falling.
The idea that prices increased because corporations got greedier is nonsense. Corporations are always infinitely #greedy and trying to raise prices. If they didn’t, their executives and shareholders would consider it malpractice.
When prices go up, the difference (except supply shock) is that consumers continue to buy when sellers test higher #prices, rather than walk away
When people say that all superheroes are inherently fascist, they're ignoring the very real reasons superheroes were invented (mostly by immigrant Jews before and after WWII as a warning against fascism), and extremely specific examples of superhero antifascism like this. https://dmv.community/@akuchling/110407861811807513
"What if the government instead spent that money on educational and social support programs that nurture..children..Or invested it in improving the ability of universities to conduct the kind of basic scientific research upon which all industrial innovators build..the payoff would have been better."
"Let's not overcomplicate this:
Republicans passed a $2 trillion tax cut for billionaires and corporations.
And now they're refusing to pay for it.
It's really that simple. " Rep Adam Schiff
I love how no one in #India seems concerned that the government (officially atleast) banned major #encrypted communication tools, or has any idea how little the option it leaves for the citizens and #journalists that might otherwise have some tools to use to secure their #privacy from abusive #corporations and the current #fascist regime.
Republicans attack on democracy includes everything on this list plus racism, misogyny and anything they can conjure up to divide the US for their benefactors, the plutocracy.
In all appearances, Republicans are the water boys setting up Fascism for their benefactors, the oligarchs and corporations.