Disaster

@Disaster@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that in 16 States in the USA has banned Ranked-Choice voting, including 5 that has just banned it in 2025, and 6 of those bans happened in 2024.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  because the state and fed levels are corrupt as hell. the local level seemed more amenable, although i suspect the nyc mayoral elections will be thoroughly fiddled.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What could go wrong?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I do get a bit of ringing in my ear after a while though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What can US citizens do to fight/prevent their country enabling genocide?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I disagree with you. Protests accomplish a great deal, and send an undeniable message when that message is appropriately scoped and targeted.

  Protests show popular support for an issue in ways that are impossible to minimize or ignore, and they are effective in moving the needle on issues. Have a few tens of thousands of people take to the streets sends an undeniable message. Even getting a hundred people to chant something in a town square sends an undeniable message. Just because the outcome isn’t immediately visible doesn’t mean that nothing was accomplished.

  NEVER go to a protest armed, that defeats the purpose. Why make a situation worse by making everyone surrounding the protest regardless of whether they’re uniform, or just someone getting to and from lunch fearful for their lives? That’s very bad advice. Additionally, gearing up almost automatically makes for a bad look. Half of what a protest aims to accomplish is to show the other side of an issue “We are here, we aren’t something you should be afraid of, we are people like you” - how is that aim going to be achieved by masking up like a bunch of cosplaying militarized goons? You don’t want that. I don’t want that. Believe it or not, I doubt half of the people co-opted into ICE want that. And part of the message has to be “We don’t need this in our lives”

  Just take a look at the campus protests regarding the Palestinian Genocide. First off the students were made out to be violent, which as it turns out is largely untrue, then a bunch of pro-israel actual crazies showed up and started assaulting them (and random people) on the street. Not a good look, even with media minimization. By simply being there, and refusing to give up, they have raised awareness on the issue despite the personal cost. Those people have taken a great personal risk to do something about a situation they find ethically intolerable. I think that deserves respect, at the very least.

  Be loud, focused and get your point across, but be respectful. I’ve seen police step in to stop potentially/violent counterprotestors on many occasions, believe it or not they do actually try to be neutral even in the face of provocation - so don’t offer that kind of fear to anyone sharing the local environment whilst making your point. There’s so little respectful middle ground remaining that it is critical to preserve it, because this is now a wasting asset.

  This situation is now tilting towards the question of how much the lack of protest and visible popular opposition emboldens a group of self-serving individuals, before the cumulative risk becomes worse than the risk of protesting and possibly getting hurt. Constant, nonviolent protest in even the face of state violence is how to win this, and sure, that puts the protestors at risk. Risk is part of this equation, it’s coming for us - for many it’s already here - and can no longer be ignored.

  I get that it’s hard work. Sometimes it feels like nothing is accomplished, and it’s not shocking and awe inspiring…but Hard Work is what’s required to correct this trajectory. We spend so much time and effort making entertainment about one special person or one special moment that we’ve given ourselves a social impediment vs. truly understanding the kinds of efforts, risks and suffering it took to get to a more equitable society in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What can US citizens do to fight/prevent their country enabling genocide?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Furthermore:

  Be aware of local political groups in your areas that share values that align with yours. Generally, have a practice of being involved. Work out how your state and local elections and party machines operate, run for empty positions or support good candidates who will do the job, and not sell out to the local moneybags.

  Attend protests. Sure, it might look like a bunch of people standing outside getting rained on with soggy cardboard signs, but protest works. It shows others that even though you may be afraid, you’re still standing up for what you believe is right. Support protests you agree with - order them some pizzas or something.

  There’s no longer a choice about what to do - become an activist, or become complicit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The NHS gave £330 million contract to Palantir to build an NHS data platform. Well we've found out that most English hospitals aren't using it.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Public Money, Public Code.

  Unfortunately, there are a great many directors and senior level administrators who aren’t up to the challenge of managing competent technical teams or projects, hence they prefer to go the easy route and just pay someone else for the headache.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨VMware perpetual license holders receive cease-and-desist letters from Broadcom⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  At this point, why would anyone do business with broadcom at all?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Europe bets on RISC-V for homegrown supercomputing platform⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Give me something like Talos2 with a full OSS firmware and a performant CPU… and hell, a half-competitive open source graphics core too. It doesn’t need to be peak performance, it needs to be good enough.

  I’ve been trying to work with SBC’s for a while for video decoding platforms and just wound up getting stuck on x86 because the ARM situation with weirdo custom kernels for anything useful is just… annoying.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The surveillance tech waiting for workers as they return to the office⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Just another reason to keep away from shitty offices then!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your Homelab goals for 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And here I am stuck in an apartment in NYC with one option… spectrum cable. That’s it. I mean you COULD get Verizon DSL (lol) or some horrendously overpriced LTE thing, but realistically you’re at the mercy of whatever bloodsucking landlord thinks you deserve.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your Homelab goals for 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re actually quite annoying, the documentation is there but makes a lot of assumptions about what you already know.

  I prefer podman systemd generate…just makes more sense to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your Homelab goals for 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I snagged an old fiber LTO5 drive… just got to work out how to get it powered and then spend hours fiddling with silly old tapes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your Homelab goals for 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  ipvlan / macvlan containers?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BBC staffers reveal editor's 'entire job' to whitewash Israeli war crimes⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of people don’t like what’s happening, don’t like the people loudly supporting it and are working as best they can to do something about it. There is international pressure from nations that have experienced parallels (South Africa, for one) and although it looks like nothing is happening, there are things going on which are not reported on and actively minimized, which nevertheless apply pressure to the bad actors in the situation.

  It’s disappointing how many people, particularly in the west, are displaying bad political judgment…well, it’s almost like they aren’t thinking about it at all… but that’s just going to have to catch up with them as a consequence later on. This has had the effect of serving to reveal an entire crop of bad actors, which we all know must be removed.

  Make no mistake - We Will Never Forget.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨MPs vote in favour of historic bill to allow assisted dying after emotional debate⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think anyone could look at the evidence and come to a different conclusion, honestly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨MPs vote in favour of historic bill to allow assisted dying after emotional debate⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d hoped nobody would come to the conclusion that was the core argument, but it is a consideration.

  And I would like to draw attention to the totalitarian nature of our attitudes towards suicide. It’s been enforced heartlessly for a very long time - if you commit suicide, you’ll go someplace worse. It’s this, it’s that. All ultimately to remove the last escape for people who are in some form of extreme physical, mental, emotional or existential pain to the point where they don’t believe there’s another solution.

  I’d sooner discuss why we have those attitudes - maybe it’s so we get a free pass to be extractive and shitty whilst simultaneously denying the people we abuse even the dignity of leaving on their own terms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨MPs vote in favour of historic bill to allow assisted dying after emotional debate⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Suicide is not assisted, leaves a mess for those that discover a corpse, EMT’s and others to clean up. Someone’s suffering might end when they jump in front of a train but the train driver’s suffering only just begins at that point.

  Suicide is often an unmanaged, chaotic process which causes trauma. It also often fails whilst leaving those that attempt it in bad physical shape. A law like this reduces the necessity of discussing, normalizing or enabling suicide because there is a safe and properly counseled path out of a no-win situation for those that truly need it. A policy on containment when there are probably household cleaners that could do the job effectively with a small amount of chemistry knowledge is absolutely insane - and if someone truly is in that much pain, they’ll find a way. Families and loved ones also have time to work through grief and loss rather than getting the wind knocked out of them when they hear the news.

  The fact that we’ve hit a point where we can even have a discussion about this is probably something that should be celebrated, rather than being so totalitarian and controlling that we effectively force people to live even when they’re in enormous pain.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sympathy for their PTSD⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  ah yes… “I was only following orders” - Otto Adolf Eichmann

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Baidu CEO warns AI is just an inevitable bubble — 99% of AI companies are at risk of failing when the bubble bursts⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe real estate?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sympathy for their PTSD⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Just as Chris Hedges predicted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solar panels between railway tracks?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is this the same bunch of people that wanted to make solar roads/bike lanes too?

  I could see a solar road working with some kind of passive heating medium circulated underneath but even then, the maintenance on that would be a nightmare. We can barely maintain all the roads we have already, and that’s just goopy rocks and grading.