Leftovers

• Annie Mueller ☛ Every small thing you do actually matters

  Culture is what we make it. Culture is what we collectively agree upon. The loudest voices seem to have the most influence: people with fame, wealth, in positions of power, getting media attention and amplification.

• [Old] Derek Sivers ☛ Writing one sentence per line | Derek Sivers

  My advice to anyone who writes: Try writing one sentence per line. I’ve been doing it for twenty years, and it improved my writing more than anything else.

  New sentence? Hit [Enter]. New line.

  Not publishing one sentence per line, no. Write like this for your eyes only. HTML or Markdown combine separate lines into one paragraph.

• Science

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] China sends 3 astronauts off to space

  • Wired ☛ A New Quantum Algorithm Speeds Up Solving a Huge Class of Problems

    So far, no classical algorithm has dethroned the new algorithm, known as decoded quantum interferometry (DQI). It’s “a breakthrough in quantum algorithms,” said Gil Kalai, a mathematician at Reichman University and a prominent skeptic of quantum computing. Reports of quantum algorithms get researchers excited, partly because they can illuminate new ideas about difficult problems, and partly because, for all the buzz around quantum machines, it’s not clear which problems will actually benefit from them. A quantum algorithm that outperforms all known classical ones on optimization tasks would represent a major step forward in harnessing the potential of quantum computers.

• Career/Education

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-20 [Older] Indian, Chinese students sue Cheeto Mussolini over visa rules

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Trump administration cuts more than $1.3M in grants from Minnesota museums, institutions

    “This is definitely unprecedented,” said Christopher Stevens, the Walker chief of advancement. “It’s pretty devastating, and it’s discouraging that the federal government, which makes a relatively tiny investment in the arts, is willing to cut that investment.”

    According to Chad Roberts, director of the Ramsey County Historical Society, “The biggest thing is: It’s not really ever happened before where the federal government has made this kind of a promise to a museum with a grant agreement and then just decided not to do it.”

  • Naz Hamid ☛ SXSW ’11

    I have certain core memories that are embedded deep in my mind. The years I attended SXSW from 2007-2012 encompass some of those. In 2011, I shared a house with longtime partner-in-crime Scott Robbin, Jeff Skinner, and Sam Felder.

• Hardware

  • Ted Unangst ☛ vivibook 14

    Make another desperate sweep through the BIOS options and discover something called VMD, which is some volumen manager scam that eats hard drives. Disable that, and tada! OpenBSD can see my SSD. Install OpenBSD a second time, now on the SSD, which goes very smoothly, but again fails to boot. Realize that out of habit, I’ve been formatting the drive with MBR, and this computer is very new and very smart and can only boot GPT drives. We get to install OpenBSD a third time. The good news is I was able to complete all three installs, even the dreadfully slow USB stick one, in less time than it took Windows to get itself sorted out.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Robots lose against humans in half-marathon

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Germany: Police chief warns of 'cocaine surge'

  • CBC ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Fentanyl is the poison that killed my brother and many others. I want my vote to save lives

  • BIA Net ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] Turkey restricts planned C-sections amid vaginal birth campaign

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-20 [Older] First Wheat Shipment Since Assad's Ouster Arrives in Syria's Latakia

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] German beer sales down at home and abroad

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Refugees from Myanmar facing deep food aid cuts in Thailand

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Legionnaires' outbreak in Berlin has tenants worried

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Kenya: Kidney probe launched, clinic denies allegations

  • CBC ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Vegemite can stay on Ontario cafe chain's shelves for now, Canadian food regulators say

• Proprietary

  • Simon Safar ☛ Freedom to Remove Features - simonsafar.com

    Removing things is typically considerably easier than adding new things though. Meanwhile, a lot of commercially produced software would be a lot better if we just... removed parts of them.

  • Nicolas Magand ☛ I think I’m done with Safari and Apple Mail

    Recently, like others, I started to question these very habits and accepted the idea that some of these apps may need to go.

  • Bert Hubert ☛ 'The cloud' is not just servers. 'Going to the cloud' could also mean locking into a forever sub-contractor

    The brief version: Software was previously deployed on servers, then on virtual servers, then on rented virtual servers. We are now massively taking what seems like the next logical step: getting “locked-in to the cloud”, where organizations base their services not just on servers but ever more on powerful non-standard proprietary third party cloud services. This however is not a simple next step, it is a fundamental change.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Dutch privacy regulator concerned over Meta’s [Slop] plans using Facebook, Instagram posts

    • Futurism ☛ Top Chatbots Are Giving Horrible Financial Advice

      AI researchers Gary Smith, Valentina Liberman, and Isaac Warshaw of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence posed a series of 12 finance questions to four leading large language models (LLMs) — OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o, DeepSeek-V2, Elon Musk's Grok 3 Beta, and Google's Gemini 2 — to test out their financial prowess.

      As the experts explained in a new study from Mind Matters, each chatbot proved to be "consistently verbose but often incorrect."

    • The Conversation ☛ People trust legal advice generated by ChatGPT more than a lawyer – new study

      We ran three experiments on a total of 288 people. In the first two experiments, participants were given legal advice and asked which they would be willing to act on. When people didn’t know if the advice had come from a lawyer or an AI, we found they were more willing to rely on the AI-generated advice. This means that if an LLM gives legal advice without disclosing its nature, people may take it as fact and prefer it to expert advice by lawyers – possibly without questioning its accuracy.

    • Jim Nielsen ☛ Craft and Satisfaction

      In today’s moment, I wonder if AI tools help or hinder fostering a sense of wonder in what it means to craft something?

    • Tim Kellogg ☛ MCP is Unnecessary

      I can’t think of any strong technological reasons for MCP to exist. There’s a lot of weak technological reasons, and there’s strong sociological reasons. I still strongly feel that, ironically, it is necessary. I’m writing this post to force myself to clarify my own thoughts, and to get opinions from everyone else.

    • El País ☛ Juli Ponce, lawyer: ’100% of AI machines are psychopaths. Humans make mistakes, but only 1% are psychopathic’

      Juli Ponce Solé, 57, is a professor of administrative law at the University of Barcelona. He has just published a manual on the appropriate and reasonable use of artificial intelligence (AI) in public administrations, with a lengthy title: The European Union’s 2024 Artificial Intelligence Regulation, the Right to Good Digital Administration, and its Judicial Control in Spain. As in many other professions, civil servants will benefit from, and suffer from, AI. But due to the delicate nature of their work, the requirements for machines are more demanding. Ponce Solé believes that their “lack of empathy and other emotions means they cannot make decisions that affect humans.”

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Google’s AI Overview directly takes readers away from its own source sites

      So every search now starts with “AI Overview” — which goes through websites that have original information and redigests them into incorrect slop.

      Google told FT that AI Overview leads to “higher-quality clicks” and “shows a greater diversity of websites that come up.”

  • Social Control Media

    • [Old] James Grimmelmann ☛ The Fine Line between Persuasion and Coercion [PDF]

      In Murthy v. Missouri,a decided in June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court wrestled with the line between coercion and persuasion. It held that users suing the government must show there is a “concrete link” between government pressure and the removal of their specific posts. As long as platforms “exercise their independent judgment” over content moderation, there is no First Amendment violation.

      In this column, I will describe the history of the Murthy case and explain how it leaves platforms free to set their own content-moderation policies on controversial issues. This is the third column in a series about recent changes to online speech law. Future columns will deal with the TikTok ban and platform liability for algorithmic recommendations, both of which are currently being litigated.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] UN warns of massive cyberscams spreading across the world

    • CBC ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Retired Toronto lawyer charged with fraud after allegedly keeping client funds

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • 2025-04-24 [Older] High court upholds damages in ICBC privacy breach that resulted in shootings, arson

    • US Dept Of Health and Human Services ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] HHS Office for Civil Rights Settles Phishing Attack Breach with Health Care Network for $600,000

    • PC World ☛ Windows Recall is too risky for your Copilot+ PC. Turn it off, now

      Now, Recall and its saved snapshots provide a record of information that could be used against you. Fortunately, Microsoft hasn’t shied away from allowing you to remove Recall altogether, deleting these saved records entirely.

  • Confidentiality

    • 2025-04-19 [Older] NDPC, Health Ministry Partner to Boost Data Protection in Healthcare

    • 2025-04-19 [Older] Don’t be so quick to claim there’s no reason to believe there’s compromise of patient info: Saturday edition

    • 2025-04-19 [Older] Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office hacked; Data leaked

    • 2025-04-20 [Older] Behavioral Health Resources of Washington state updates its data breach disclosure

    • 2025-04-22 [Older] Hospital Español Auxilio Mutuo de Puerto Rico notifies patients of September 2023 cyberattack

    • 2025-04-22 [Older] Florida Bar Urges Law Firms to Adopt Incident Response Plans: A Call to Action for Legal Professionals

    • The Tribune IN ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Ex-employee, firm head booked for data theft

    • WBAL TV ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Cyberattack targets thousands of students, staff members at Baltimore City Public Schools

    • 2025-04-23 [Older] Au: Hacking suspect nabbed over court file data breach

    • 2025-04-24 [Older] County auditor ordered to pay $80k after cyberattack

• Defence/Aggression

  • India Times ☛ Elon Musk reacts to claims GPT-4o is engineered as a psychological weapon

    Responding to a post on X by entrepreneur Mario Nawfal — who alleged that GPT-4o was deliberately designed to be emotionally engaging and addictive — Musk replied simply: “Uh oh.” The update also increased hourly usage limits for ChatGPT Plus subscribers using GPT-4o and GPT-4-mini-high models, responding to demand from high-usage users.

  • Garry Kasparov ☛ Are You Ready to Lose Again? A Response to the Charge of Both-Sidesism

    The focus of The Next Move is laying out a strategy to win against demagogues and wannabe despots—in America and around the world. In order to do that, nothing can be off limits. We need to recognize where others have failed at stopping ascendant authoritarianism and learn from their mistakes.

  • Mike Brock ☛ Kasparov's Clarity

    The chess champion understands what many well-meaning defenders of democracy don't: that knowing you're on the right side isn't enough. Winning requires understanding your own weaknesses before your opponent exploits them fatally. When Kasparov critiques Obama's foreign policy or Clinton's triangulation, he's not suggesting they're morally equivalent to Trump. He's identifying missed opportunities and strategic errors that contributed to our current vulnerability.

  • [Old] Anne Frank House ☛ The German Luftwaffe bombs Guernica

    On 26 April 1937, German bombers of the Condor Legion, together with the Italian Air Force, bombed the Spanish town of Guernica. Hundreds of civilians were killed, and large parts of the town were destroyed. Worldwide, the bombardment had a great impact.

  • [Old] el Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía ☛ Pablo Picasso (Pablo Ruiz Picasso) - Guernica

    [...] Pablo Picasso’s motivation for painting the scene in this great work was the news of the German aerial bombing of the Basque town whose name the piece bears, which the artist had seen in the dramatic photographs published in various periodicals, including the French newspaper L'Humanité. [...]

  • [Old] History AE ☛ Nazis test new air force, Luftwaffe, on Basque town of Guernica | April 26, 1937 | HISTORY

    During the Spanish Civil War, the German military tests its powerful new air force—the Luftwaffe—on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain.

  • The Local DK ☛ 'Integrate immigrants': How Europe can deal with its population challenge

    However there will be major differences across the different parts of Europe, according to a paper published by Bruegel, an economic policy think tank in Brussels.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Congo boat fire: Death toll rises to 148, reports say

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Germany's Easter peace marches underway in war-filled world

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Gunman kills two in central Germany — police

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Pakistan: Protesters attack KFC restaurants over Gaza war

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] China and Indonesia Agree to Boost Maritime Security Cooperation in South China Sea Despite Tensions

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-18 [Older] US Military to Slash Troops in Syria to Under 1,000

  • Forbes ☛ 2025-04-20 [Older] Chinese Ghost Hackers Hit Hospitals And Factories In America And U.K.

  • USDOJ ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Former U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst Sentenced for Selling Sensitive Military Information to Individual Tied to Chinese Government

  • Forbes ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] DOGE Ransomware Hackers Demand $1 Trillion

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Private Security Guards Charged After Woman Was Dragged Out of Chaotic Idaho Town Hall Meeting

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] At Least 20 Feared Killed in Militant Attack on Tourists in Indian Kashmir, Security Sources Say

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Attack in disputed Kashmir poses security dilemma for India

  • The Local SE ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] The extra security questions Sweden's Migration Agency wants citizenship applicants to answer

  • The Local SE ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Thousands of Swedish citizenship applicants told to answer additional security questions

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Bangladesh eyes Rohingya return, but hurdles remain

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Burkina Faso junta claims to have foiled coup attempt

  • Site36 ☛ Anti-Elbit protest in Germany: ‘Blood, blood, blood on your hands’

  • Site36 ☛ Fatally shot from behind: German Police chased young man into side street and killed him

    A demonstration was held in Oldenburg on Friday over the fatal shooting of 21-year-old Lorenz A. The Fundamental Rights Committee warns against accepting police accounts without checking them. The 21-year-old who was killed by a police officer in Oldenburg on Easter Sunday was hit from behind by at least three shots.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Syria Detains Two Leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Brazil Suspends Social Security Officials, Seizes Assets During Corruption Probe

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Chechnya Leader's Son, 17, Becomes Head of Chechen Security Council

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Bloomberg ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] DOGE Sued Over Record Keeping, Failing to Reply to FOIA Requests

• Environment

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Canada’s Oil Habit Is Wrecking Its Future

  • Green Party UK ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Greens challenge “con artist” Farage to climate TV debate

  • HRW ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] COP30 Should Deliver Bold Action on Climate and Rights

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] The World's Biggest Companies Have Caused $28 Trillion in Climate Damage, a New Study Estimates

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Vineyards in NY Wine Country Push Sustainability as They Adapt to Climate Change

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] China's Action on Climate Change Will Not Slow Despite Global Political Changes, Xi Says

  • Vox ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] The gas station of the future is not what you think

  • Vox ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Welcome to the world of triple-digit spring weather

  • Vox ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] The false climate solution that just won’t die

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] How is the climate crisis affecting affordable housing?

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Pope Francis Converted to the Environmental Cause and Denounced Those He Blamed for Climate Change

  • Vox ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Meet the Cheeto Mussolini supporters who love wind energy

  • Vox ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Clean energy is big business. These 5 threats loom large.

  • Vox ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] A battery-powered house? You can make that a reality.

  • Vox ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] At the edge of the ocean, a dazzling ecosystem is changing fast

  • University of Michigan ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] U-M’s Climate Week 2025 aims to boost climate engagement

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] Climate Change Kills Capitalism

  • The Age AU ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] Gold Coast father and son undertake ambitious climate change expedition

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] Climate Non-Profits Anticipate Fight With Cheeto Mussolini Over Tax Status

  • Vox ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] We’ve unlocked a holy grail in clean energy. It’s only the beginning.

  • Vox ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] Escape Velocity

  • Vox ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] Will any climate progress survive the next four years?

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-04-18 [Older] Synchronized Global Climate Breakdown

  • Omicron Limited ☛ New study highlights global aridification, threat to agriculture

    The team's work highlights solutions that can help Mississippi and the U.S. stay ahead of the curve, including smarter irrigation strategies, better monitoring through data analytics, growing drought-tolerant crops, and restoring degraded land to retain more water and reduce long-term risk.

    They emphasize transitioning from reacting to crises to planning ahead, bringing together water management, land restoration, and farming support into one coordinated strategy.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Serenity Dialectics

    One vital and underapplied part of how we’re gonna beat climate change is learning and teaching mental coping skills.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Elon Musk's automaker Tesla sees profits plummet

    • CBC ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Air Canada ordered to pay passengers $10M in damages after class action over ticket prices

    • BIA Net ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] Thousands of workers stop work at Turkey’s largest oil refinery

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Are electric motors the future of shipping?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] Republican Lawmakers Face Clean-Energy Conundrum as They Work on Tax Bill

    • Bridge Michigan ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] Opinion | Improve Michigan public schools by protecting clean-energy incentives

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] Puerto Rico's Government Demands Answers From Energy Company After Island-Wide Blackout

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Environmental Lawyers Get Ready to Pounce on Cheeto Mussolini’s Energy Deregulation Moves

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] UK to Remove Curbs on Syrian Financial Services, Energy Production

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Threat Vaults Energy Policy to Center Stage in Canada Election

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Blowing Smoke: Cheeto Mussolini’s Energy Plan

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Green Energy Supporters Pushed for Faster Permitting. Cheeto Mussolini Is Doing It, but Not for Solar or Wind

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Who Is Ed Miliband? From Labour Leader To 'Sandwich Meme'—And Why His Green Plans Could Raise Your Energy Bills

    • CBC ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] LNG could help break Canada's dependence on the U.S. energy economy — but there are no guarantees

    • CBC ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] U.S. auto industry warns new auto parts tariffs will hike prices, cut sales

    • Mike Brock ☛ Trust Math, Not People

      Math is a hammer; meaning lives in the hand that swings it. When Bitcoin maximalists declare “math doesn't care about your feelings,” they're not just being edgy—they're celebrating the very feature that makes math an insufficient foundation for human society. We need systems that do care about feelings, about suffering, about justice.

      Bitcoin is not merely a tool. It embodies design choices that prefigure political arrangements and social contracts. The decision to cap the supply at 21 million coins, to reward miners through a specific mechanism, to prioritize certain types of transactions—these aren't mathematical necessities but choices made by people, encoding particular values and visions of society.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Ukraine ‘one step away from nuclear meltdown’, warns energy minister

      “Russia has been attacking the substations supplying independent cooling power to the nuclear station. So when there is destruction of these power supplies, the nuclear units go into an emergency shutdown regime,” he said.

      “The electricity for cooling then has to be supplied by a reserve diesel generator – but this is dangerous [because reserve generators can fail].

      “We have been one step short of a nuclear meltdown many times now.”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Report: Coral bleaching at highest level ever recorded

    • CBC ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Ancient tooth found near Old Crow, Yukon, belongs to earliest woolly mammoth in North America

• Finance

  • Futurism ☛ Check Your Credit Card Statement: Uber Is Being Accused of Something Incredibly Sleazy

    It's also breaking new ground in consumer violations as well, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In a lawsuit filed on Monday, the FTC accused the rideshare corporation of charging "consumers for its Uber One subscription service without their consent," while making it difficult for users to escape their monthly payments. (The FTC also claims that the company failed to live up to the kind of savings Uber One promises its subscribers.)

    A main issue is Uber's allegedly deceptive use of pop-ups to snare unwitting subscribers — pop-ups which look confusingly similar to those used to order rides. This makes it difficult to know what, exactly, users are signing up for, especially as Uber quickly whisks them back to their ride without ever asking for billing information to start the subscription.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Germany sees zero growth in 2025, blames Cheeto Mussolini tariffs

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] US Boomer Avoids High Rent and Lives on £1,400 Benefits by Travelling in a Trailer

  • CBC ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Rising demand at food banks seen as 'canary in the coal mine' for affordability crisis

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini probe raises doubts over US role in IMF, World Bank

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] IMF's Georgieva, World Bank's Banga Need to Earn Cheeto Mussolini Administration's Trust, Bessent Says

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Merz: My goal is to make Germany 'economically stronger'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] World Economic Forum chairman Klaus Schwab steps down

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] IMF to Help Syria Rebuild Institutions, Re-Enter World Economy, Georgieva Says

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] IMF Appoints First Mission Chief to Syria in 14 Years

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-18 [Older] IMF-World Bank Meetings to Discuss Restoring Support for Syria, UN Official Says

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] US: Stocks and dollar slide as Cheeto Mussolini attacks Federal Reserve

  • CBC ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Lawyer trying to save war memorials from Hudson's Bay stores in Toronto, Calgary

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] China warns countries against striking trade deals with US

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] With Milei 500 days in office, are Argentinians better off?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] US: State Department to eliminate over 100 bureaus, offices

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Tanzania Bans Agriculture Imports From South Africa, Malawi

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-18 [Older] Carney Says Lower Internal Trade Barriers Will Help Canada More Than Cheeto Mussolini's Tariffs Will Harm It

  • CBC ☛ 2025-04-18 [Older] I want to buy Canadian, but can't always afford to. Cost of living is my election priority

  • CBC ☛ 2025-04-18 [Older] Canadian airlines revamp offerings as travellers ditch U.S. vacations

  • CBC ☛ 2025-04-18 [Older] 'No options' on tariffs without more time, says company importing from U.S.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Is Canada the new mecca for raw materials?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • BIA Net ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Turkey's opposition defies ban to celebrate Children's Day

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-19 [Older] Syrian President Meets a US Congress Member on an Unofficial Visit to Damascus

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-18 [Older] U.S. Congressmen Visit Syria in First Trip Since Assad's Ouster

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-04-18 [Older] Foza Yusif: HTS risks turning into a new Baath regime

  • Truthdig ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Inside the Conservative Playbook for Bringing DOGE to Canada

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] The Canadian Right Wants to Copy DOGE

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Black Churches Back Embattled Smithsonian African American History Museum After Cheeto Mussolini's Order

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Faith in the Digital Age: How AI and Social Media Are Shaping the Future of Global Diplomacy

    In a world where information [sic] travels at breakneck speed and communication is almost instantaneous, it’s no wonder that religious discourse has been caught up in the digital change. Faith is no longer constrained by geographical boundaries. People of all religions and origins are now communicating with one another via internet channels, allowing for unparalleled debates on social concerns, human rights, and climate change. Faith, in all of its manifestations, has discovered a new medium in which to operate—one that crosses borders and cultural boundaries.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-21 [Older] How do Indians navigate through misinformation on WhatsApp?

    • BIA Net ☛ 2025-04-24 [Older] Turkey officially dismisses HAARP conspiracy theories after İstanbul quake

    • RTL ☛ US anti-disinformation guardrails fall in Trump's first 100 days

      From slashed federal funding for disinformation research to the closure of a key agency combating foreign influence operations, the United States has dismantled vital guardrails against falsehoods within President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office.

      The moves could have national security implications, experts warn, granting US adversaries such as Russia and China more freedom to sow disinformation as geopolitical rivalries intensify.

    • [Old] Vox ☛ The impeachment trial didn’t change any minds. Here’s why.

      I call this “manufactured” because it’s the consequence of a deliberate strategy. It was distilled almost perfectly by Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News and chief strategist for Donald Trump. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon reportedly said in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

      This idea isn’t new, but Bannon articulated it about as well as anyone can. The press ideally should sift fact from fiction and give the public the information it needs to make enlightened political choices. If you short-circuit that process by saturating the ecosystem with misinformation and overwhelm the media’s ability to mediate, then you can disrupt the democratic process.

      What we’re facing is a new form of propaganda that wasn’t really possible until the digital age. And it works not by creating a consensus around any particular narrative but by muddying the waters so that consensus isn’t achievable.

    • [Old] The Atlantic ☛ Steve Bannon Is a Lit Bomb in the Mouth of Democracy

      At a disinformation conference at Stanford in April, Barack Obama told an audience: “People like Putin—and Steve Bannon, for that matter—understand it’s not necessary for people to believe disinformation in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage.” This was an echo of what Bannon had told the journalist Michael Lewis in 2018, that his preferred media strategy was to “flood the zone with shit.”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] On the Free Speech Rights of Noncitizens

  • [Old] The University of Massachusetts ☛ Free Speech Zones: Silencing the Political Dissident [PDF]

    Following Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush Administration began imposing every increasing limitations on civil rights. One example is the implementation of free speech zones, a practice in which political dissidents are cordoned off from the President during public appearances. While these zones originated in the 1980s, the use of them has grown considerably in the past few years. Critics argue that moving protesters to a remote location during Presidential events gives the impression that there is no dissent. This paper explores the constitutionality of free speech zones, ultimately demonstrating the shortcomings of the true threats doctrine, a legal framework for analysis in cases dealing with speech that may be threatening. This article suggests an alternative framework for analysis that would 1) better balance national security interests with speech protection for political dissidents and 2) clear up some of the doctrinal confusion in the application of the true threats doctrine in general.

  • [Old] ACLU ☛ Free Speech Under Fire: The ACLU Challenge to "Protest Zones"

    In many cities across the country, the Secret Service has discriminated against protesters during Presidential and Vice Presidential appearances. Such incidents have spiked under the Bush Administration, prompting the ACLU to charge government officials with a ""pattern and practice"" of discrimination against those who disagree with its policies.

  • [Old] Gannett ☛ USA TODAY

    The justices ruled unanimously that the Secret Service acted appropriately when it moved anti-Bush protesters several blocks further away from the president's dinner table, even while allowing a friendly crowd of demonstrators to hold their ground.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Free Spirit of Germany’s Carnivals Is Under Attack

    Carnivals in Germany have long satirized the powerful. Calls to keep politics out of the festivities are now being used to silence dissent.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ DMCA Notices Can Silence Critics But Complaints By The Public Put All at Risk

    Even after years of trawling the invaluable Lumen Database, the scale of online copyright infringement today still manages to surprise week after week. And with more time spent searching, the greater the chances of the archive surfacing curiosities from years ago, or unusual items from the more recent past.

    Take the bait and time has a tendency to get eaten away in journeys down various rabbit holes, and that’s a good thing. Without Lumen, censorship would undoubtedly thrive in a darker place; it already needs little encouragement.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • RTL ☛ Thankful for support: Wikileaks founder Assange joins crowds for pope funeral

    "Our children and I had the honor of meeting Pope Francis in June 2023 to discuss how to free Julian from Belmarsh prison," Stella Assange said.

    "Francis wrote to Julian in prison and even proposed to grant him asylum at the Vatican," she said.

  • US News And World Report ☛ White House Journalists Use Annual Press Dinner to Celebrate First Amendment

    There was no president

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • BIA Net ☛ 2025-04-18 [Older] One in four children in Turkey engaged in labor, TurkStat reveals

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-22 [Older] Mexico urges removal of 'discriminatory' US immigration ad

  • ANF News ☛ Two Yazidi youngsters rescued from ISIS reunited with their families in Shengal

    The fate of thousands of Yazidis, especially women, remains unknown. Many were sold in slave markets established by ISIS in cities such as Raqqa, Mosul, Deir ez-Zor, and Al-Bukamal. However, SDF forces have successfully liberated thousands of them, reuniting them to their families in Shengal.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The enshittification of tech jobs

    All of this, despite the fact that tech union density is so low it can barely be charted. Tech workers' power didn't come from solidarity, it came from scarcity. When you're getting five new recruiter emails every day, you don't need a shop steward to tell your boss to go fuck themselves at the morning scrum. You can do it yourself, secure in the knowledge that there's a company across the road who'll give you a better job by lunchtime.

    Tech bosses sucked up to their workers because tech workers are insanely productive. Even with sky-high salaries, every hour a tech worker puts in on the job translates into massive profits. Which created a conundrum for tech bosses: if tech workers produce incalculable value for the company every time they touch their keyboards, and if there aren't enough tech workers to go around, how do you get whichever tech workers you can hire to put in as many hours as possible?

    The answer is a tactic that Fobazi Ettarh called "vocational awe": [...]

  • Jeremy Keith ☛ Adactio: Articles—Foreword to Accessibility Cookbook by Manuel Matuzovic

    Are you looking for a book that explains why you should care about web accessibility?

    This is not that book.

    Manuel Matuzović has too much respect for your intelligence to waste time trying to convince you of something you already know. You already know that web accessibility is important.

    What you really need is a guidebook, a handy companion to show you the way through a tangled landscape.

    This is that book.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Fake diversity: why hire a non-white DJ when you could just generate one with AI?

    ElevenLabs scrambled to post that ARN is “not replacing people” — though it literally is.

    It’s not even clear Thy is saving ARN money.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Chris O'Donnnell ☛ Radio is underrated

    So, what I'm saying is that you don't need Spotify.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• IP Kat ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] [Book review] Protecting Geographical Indications in Africa

• Court House News ☛ Google Chrome exec testifies DOJ’s proposed breakup likely not feasible

  Parsa Tabriz, Google's vice president of engineering and general manager for Chrome, warned that ordering the divestment of the browser would lead to significant performance issues for consumers.

• Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Only Google can run Chrome, company says in antitrust trial

  Google is the only company that can offer the level of features and functionality that its popular Chrome web browser has today, given its “interdependencies” on other parts of the company, the head of Chrome testified.

• PC World ☛ The vultures are circling for Chrome

  Google has a monopoly, and that’s the official line of the US federal government. In fact, it has two of them, losing two separate antitrust cases that threaten to cripple the tech giant. The Department of Justice has proposed forcing Google to sell or otherwise divest itself of the Chrome browser as its first and preferred remedy.

• Trademarks

  • CBC ☛ 2025-04-23 [Older] Montreal-based retailer Frank and Oak to close all stores, sell intellectual property

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Only 17% of Music Creator College Students Familiar With MLC

    MusicAnswers has spent two years conducting a survey of college student music creators to better understand their experience with song registration agencies—specifically the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). The results are pretty grim, with a majority of college students being unaware of the MLC’s purpose or what they do in the industry.