Supreme Court: Well, you see, this country has an entrenched tradition of allowing oil companies to do whatever they want, so this law is unconstitutional. Wait, you know what ... in fact, Vermont needs to hand over a few of their state parks to oil companies even if they don't have oil under them, because fuck ya'll for even thinking you can make an oil company less profitable.
Heat pumps are especially ridiculous because their installation costs are insane when in actuality they're mostly the same installation process as Central Air with minimal extra work required, but they cost 10x more just for the installation alone, let alone the units themselves
I'm eyeing a heat pump water heater though, when our current one dies (which hopefully won't be too soon).
I know Lemmy isn’t normally the best place to search for this, but are there any high-quality right-wing explainers, or modern books, or media outlets?...
I don't know if you like podcasts, but Know Your Enemy is a take on the right from two leftists who used to be conservatives who approach it from an intellectual POV.
I linked to the political magazine that helps support them since it gives some rundowns of their topics that might give you some of the sources that can be read instead of listening to their podcast, if you'd prefer.
Extremist Militias Are Coordinating in More Than 100 Facebook Groups
After lying low for years in the aftermath of January 6, exclusive reporting shows, militia extremist groups and profiles have been quietly reorganizing and ramping up recruitment and rhetoric on Facebook.
“Join Your Local Militia or III% Patriot Group,” a post urged the more than 650 members of a Facebook group called the Free American Army. Accompanied by the logo for the Three Percenters militia network and an image of a man in tactical gear holding a long rifle, the post continues: “Now more than ever. Support the American militia page.”
Other content and messaging in the group is similar. And despite the fact that Facebook bans paramilitary organizing and deemed the Three Percenters an “armed militia group" on its 2021 Dangerous Individuals and Organizations List, the post and group remained up until WIRED contacted Meta for comment about its existence.
Free American Army is just one of around 200 similar Facebook groups and profiles, most of which are still live, that anti-government and far-right extremists are using to coordinate local militia activity around the country.
After lying low for several years in the aftermath of the US Capitol riot on January 6, militia extremists have been quietly reorganizing, ramping up recruitment and rhetoric on Facebook—with apparently little concern that Meta will enforce its ban against them, according to new research by the Tech Transparency Project, shared exclusively with WIRED.
Individuals across the US with long-standing ties to militia groups are creating networks of Facebook pages, urging others to recruit “active patriots” and attend meetups, and openly associating themselves with known militia-related sub-ideologies like that of the anti-government Three Percenter movement. They’re also advertising combat training and telling their followers to be “prepared” for whatever lies ahead. These groups are trying to facilitate local organizing, state by state and county by county. Their goals are vague, but many of their posts convey a general sense of urgency about the need to prepare for “war” or to “stand up” against many supposed enemies, including drag queens, immigrants, pro-Palestine college students, communists—and the US government.
These groups are also rebuilding at a moment when anti-government rhetoric has continued to surge in mainstream political discourse ahead of a contentious, high-stakes presidential election. And by doing all of this on Facebook, they’re hoping to reach a broader pool of prospective recruits than they would on a comparatively fringe platform like Telegram.
“Many of these groups are no longer fractured sets of localized militia but coalitions formed between multiple militia groups, many with Three Percenters at the helm,” said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project. “Facebook remains the largest gathering place for extremists and militia movements to cast a wide net and funnel users to more private chats, including on the platform, where they can plan and coordinate with impunity.”
Paul told WIRED that she’s been monitoring “hundreds” of militia-related groups and profiles since 2021 and has observed them growing “increasingly emboldened with more serious and coordinated organizing” in the past year.
One particularly influential account in this Facebook ecosystem belongs to Rodney Huffman, leader of the Confederate States III%, an Arkansas-based militia that, in 2020, sought to rally extremists at Georgia’s Stone Mountain, a popular site for Confederate and white supremacist groups. Huffman has created a network of Facebook groups and spreads the word about local meetups. His partner, Dabbi Demere, is equally active and on a mission to recruit “active” patriots into the groups. Huffman and Demere are also key players in the pro-Confederate movement known as “Heritage, not Hate.”
Before Meta shut it down, the pair ran Free American Army, which drew in individuals from several militias, including the Kentucky 3 Percenters, the Virginia Liberty Guard, and the Florida-based Guardians of Freedom, a group that was mentioned in the final January 6 report and whose members were among those arrested in connection with the Capitol attack. Free American Army also included a known activist in the far-right extremist Boogaloo movement. At least one user in the group claimed in their profile to be active-duty military; another claimed to work for the Bureau of Prisons.
“We have (and still do) traveled across our country standing up for our constitution, and have met most of you face to face. There's no time like the present to come together and organize our states, to build them stronger with true patriots (not people pretending to be Patri
No, no, you see, it's actually so empowering for the worker because they can quit at any time with no notice! Isn't that so empowering! In fact, I almost think that the balance of power goes too far in the workers favor on this and we need to give some of it back to the poor employers who are just always walking on eggshells since they can be quit on at any time!
/s just in case
It's so insane that anyone can argue that at-will employment is anything other than a shitty employer's wet dream.
Although the fines were originally proposed when the FCC was controlled by Republicans, the vote to finalize the penalties was 3-2 with dissents from Republicans Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington....
Same with Google's ads in general. For a long time they were whitelisted by default on just about every adblock list out there because they were so unobtrusive it didn't make sense to bother blocking them, especially when you compared them to the other ads that were common at the time. They were also generally relevant ads, so people actually did click on them and use them since it actually related to the thing they were searching for.
They're obviously more profitable now, but you have to wonder by how much and if they'd be a more trusted company today (and what's that worth monetarily) if they hadn't gone down this race to the bottom.
ETA: Part of what I mean is that now they create things like Stadia and most people didn't even bother trying it because they knew it'd hit the Google Graveyard in a few years. Had Google been a more trusted company, people may have been willing to give it a try and they could possibly have printed money since by all accounts the service was actually pretty good.
I, personally, don't see that happening, but I can easily imagine them making it a TOS violation to use adblock and then killing your account if you continue to do so :-/
Losing access to personalized YT would suck, but losing decades of emails would suck even more (when I initially got GMail, I imported all my old emails in ... I guess I should probably look at making a backup periodically, like I used to). I share your sentiment that I fear what these companies are going to do next in the pursuit of more money they can burn and/or give to shareholders as they continue to tank their reputations.
Yeah, and I can't speak for everyone here, but I didn't even bother trying it even though I was intrigued. It seemed like the kind of thing that could be completely game-changing and I wasn't willing to get hooked on another Googler's pet project that'd just get the axe in a few years. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point, nothing new is likely to get any traction because no one wants to run the risk and then Google cancels it. If they were willing to put in writing that they'll support something for x number of years (that's end user facing, not just whatever contracts they make with devs or whatever), it'd probably go a long way, but they're not willing to support an expensive flop if the product is what actually sucks, so, they're not likely to do that.
Hell, even anything older still runs the risk at any time :-\
Security researchers have discovered a new Android banking trojan they named Brokewell that can capture every event on the device, from touches and information displayed to text input and the applications the user launches.
When I installed fdroid from their website a month or two back it was like 2 or 3 clicks. Then whenever I want to install anything from there it's an extra click or two over what it would be from Play.
I've seen people click through way more complicated processes than this without even knowing they did it. Modern computing has taught people to just keep hitting whatever the approval text is (yes windows, I really do want to copy all of these god damn files. Yes, really, I still do! Yep, again, ALL of them!)
YouTube first spoke about pause ads last year when it started trialing them in select regions. At the time, the company said that when you pause a video, it will shrink, and an ad will appear next to it....
Yeah, it's like the ad supported Kindle's ... I've got one, I've paid attention to literally 0 ads though. I hit the power button and swipe away the 'lock/ad screen' ... it's completely unobtrusive because I have literally not paid attention to 1 single ad and what I have to do to unlock is exactly the same as I'd do with the non-ad-supported version.
The problem is at least with the Kindle, I got something out of it (a kindle at a discount) and I do buy some books through them every now and then, so they don't have an incentive to fuck up the experience for me.
Google on the other hand has every incentive to continue to fuck up the experience. First, it'll be still ads, then videos without sound, then videos with sound, then you won't be able to start your video back up again until the pause ad has finished, etc...
Alabama lawmakers on Thursday advanced legislation that could see librarians prosecuted under the state’s obscenity law for providing “harmful” materials to minors, the latest in a wave of bills in Republican-led states targeting library content and decisions....
I'm a millennial that doesn't like avocado at all, so, speaking of disgraces!
We managed to get a house, but there are also 3 of us with no kids, I can't imagine managing with two people in todays economy. We got in just before the rates skyrocketed in 2021, the house price is basically what the inflation calculators say the original owners bought it for decades ago, so, there's that at least, that we only paid the equivalent of the original list price for a 5-6 decades old house with decades of shoddy repairs such as every single plug with a ground having the ground pin tied to the neutral!
It's a real rough time out there right now though with ownership out of the realm of possibility for so many :-\
Republican attorneys general from 17 states filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging new federal rules entitling workers to time off and other accommodations for abortions, calling the rules an illegal interpretation of a 2022 federal law....
Regardless of anything else, it's a medical procedure, your employer shouldn't be privy to private medical details just because they don't agree with them. You should be able to get a doctors note that you're having a procedure, will require time to heal and be done with it, in any reasonable world, but ... here we are.
Donald Trump’s lawyer pushed an outrageous line of thinking on Thursday during oral arguments at the Supreme Court over whether the former president has immunity for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election: that a U.S. president could order a military coup d’état with almost no chance of repercussions....
Yeap, it is (lemmy.world)
Oil companies may soon have to pay for Vermont’s climate recovery (arstechnica.com)
Vermont’s Superfund climate act—which Big Oil called “unfair”—expected to pass....
Extremist Militias Are Coordinating in More Than 100 Facebook Groups (www.wired.com)
[Serious] Any high-quality right-wing media, books, explainers?
I know Lemmy isn’t normally the best place to search for this, but are there any high-quality right-wing explainers, or modern books, or media outlets?...
Elon Musk goes ‘absolutely hard core’ in another round of Tesla layoffs (www.theverge.com)
FCC fines big three carriers $196M for selling users’ real-time location data (arstechnica.com)
Although the fines were originally proposed when the FCC was controlled by Republicans, the vote to finalize the penalties was 3-2 with dissents from Republicans Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington....
Unarmed protest would not have stopped the confederacy (lemmy.world)
As a long-time user hearing YouTube wants to play extra ads when I pause a video (lemmy.world)
Who's Next? (lemmy.cafe)
I tried to add more product names but Bing couldn’t handle so many product names that Google has killed....
New Brokewell malware takes over Android devices, steals data (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
Security researchers have discovered a new Android banking trojan they named Brokewell that can capture every event on the device, from touches and information displayed to text input and the applications the user launches.
YouTube Tests Showing Ads When You Pause a Video, Calls it ''Pause Ads'' (www.androidauthority.com)
YouTube first spoke about pause ads last year when it started trialing them in select regions. At the time, the company said that when you pause a video, it will shrink, and an ad will appear next to it....
Possible snipers seen at OSU. Administration says they're not snipers but should be treated like they are. (midwest.social)
Update, yes there are snipers:...
Alabama lawmakers advance bill that could lead to prosecution of librarians (apnews.com)
Alabama lawmakers on Thursday advanced legislation that could see librarians prosecuted under the state’s obscenity law for providing “harmful” materials to minors, the latest in a wave of bills in Republican-led states targeting library content and decisions....
17 states challenge federal rules entitling workers to accommodations for abortion (apnews.com)
Republican attorneys general from 17 states filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging new federal rules entitling workers to time off and other accommodations for abortions, calling the rules an illegal interpretation of a 2022 federal law....
Trump Lawyer Makes Disturbing Immunity Claim Before Supreme Court: Apparently, John Sauer thinks staging a coup should be considered a presidential act (newrepublic.com)
Donald Trump’s lawyer pushed an outrageous line of thinking on Thursday during oral arguments at the Supreme Court over whether the former president has immunity for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election: that a U.S. president could order a military coup d’état with almost no chance of repercussions....
Sovcit sent a magical form of payment. (lemmy.world)