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knfrmity

@knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml

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knfrmity ,

Digital surveillance is omnipresent in the west. Apparently nobody cares.

knfrmity ,

Varoufakis is just one of many people who have come up with fancy new terms for capitalism and imperialism. It's not to say that he doesn't have an important perspective on some things, but coming up with new terms for things defined over a century ago only serves to distract.

knfrmity ,

Because universal surveillance is more profitable than consumer privacy, and surveilling consumers aligns really well with the interests of the billionaires that control telecommunications.

knfrmity ,

It's a call for freedom from oppression and genocide, specifically in the Palestinian context. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." Germany has decreed it hate speech.

knfrmity ,

Just... No.

knfrmity ,

The switch to Forgejo is super easy, if you don't mind everything being called "Gitea" you can just switch out the Docker image and carry on.

I just switched recently, maybe around version 1.19.

Forgejo is also working on federation which will give the system an advantage moving forwards. They're also sticking with Gitea as an upstream source so reasonable changes Gitea makes should make their way to Forgejo pretty quickly.

ajsadauskas , (edited ) to Fuck Cars
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Concerned about microplastics? Research shows one of the biggest sources is car tyres

A lot of the emphasis on reducing microplastics has focussed on things like plastic bags, clothing, and food packaging.

But there's a growing body of research that shows one of the biggest culprits by far is car tyres.

It's increasingly clear that we simply cannot solve the issue of microplastics in the environment while still using tyres — even with electric-powered cars.

"Tyre wear stands out as a major source of microplastic pollution. Globally, each person is responsible for around 1kg of microplastic pollution from tyre wear released into the environment on average each year – with even higher rates observed in developed nations.

"It is estimated that between 8% and 40% of these particles find their way into surface waters such as the sea, rivers and lakes through runoff from road surfaces, wastewater discharge or even through airborne transport.

"However, tyre wear microplastics have been largely overlooked as a microplastic pollutant. Their dark colour makes them difficult to detect, so these particles can’t be identified using the traditional spectroscopy methods used to identify other more colourful plastic polymers."

https://theconversation.com/check-your-tyres-you-might-be-adding-unnecessary-microplastics-to-the-environment-205612#:~:text=Tyre%20wear%20stands%20out%20as,rates%20observed%20in%20developed%20nations.

"Microplastic pollution has polluted the entire planet, from Arctic snow and Alpine soils to the deepest oceans. The particles can harbour toxic chemicals and harmful microbes and are known to harm some marine creatures. People are also known to consume them via food and water, and to breathe them, But the impact on human health is not yet known.

"“Roads are a very significant source of microplastics to remote areas, including the oceans,” said Andreas Stohl, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, who led the research. He said an average tyre loses 4kg during its lifetime. “It’s such a huge amount of plastic compared to, say, clothes,” whose fibres are commonly found in rivers, Stohl said. “You will not lose kilograms of plastic from your clothing.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyres-are-major-source-of-ocean-microplastics-study

"Microplastics are of increasing concern in the environment [1, 2]. Tire wear is estimated to be one of the largest sources of microplastics entering the aquatic environment [3,4,5,6,7]. The mechanical abrasion of car tires by the road surface forms tire wear particles (TWP) [8] and/or tire and road wear particles (TRWP), consisting of a complex mixture of rubber, with both embedded asphalt and minerals from the pavement [9]."

https://microplastics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43591-021-00008-w

@fuck_cars

knfrmity ,

The forces being applied to tyres are orders of magnitude higher than the forces being applied to your clothes. Tyre plastic compounds are also designed to wear a certain amount, or in other words they must be relatively soft and therefore subject to wear, in order to provide friction sufficient to keep hundreds of kilograms safely connected to the road surface at high speed.

ajsadauskas , to Fuck Cars
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

If you care about the planet, please make sure you sit down before you start reading this post about ExxonMobil.

So.

The CEO of ExxonMobil just said this in an interview: "We’ve waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets in terms of what we need, as a society, to start reducing emissions."

https://fortune.com/2024/02/27/exxon-ceo-darren-woods-interview-pay-the-price-for-net-zero/

Who's the most influential voice on climate change? Who's to blame for inaction on climate change?

According to the CEO of ExxonMobil, it's environmental activists.

No, really:

"Frankly, society, and the activist—the dominant voice in this discussion—has tried to exclude the industry that has the most capacity and the highest potential for helping with some of the technologies."

Oh, and the CEO of ExxonMobil also apparently thinks consumers are to blame for climate inaction:

"Today we have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon, but people aren’t willing to spend the money to do that."

Gets better.

He thinks unnamed 'people who generate emissions' should pay for it. (Rather than, say, major transnational oil companies.)

"People who are generating the emissions need to be aware of [it] and pay the price. That’s ultimately how you solve the problem."

https://fortune.com/2024/02/27/exxon-ceo-darren-woods-interview-pay-the-price-for-net-zero/

Worth including a quick reminder here that Exxon-Mobil made a US$36 billion profit in 2023: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exxon-beats-estimates-ends-2023-with-36-billion-profit-2024-02-02/#:~:text=HOUSTON%2C%20Feb%202%20(Reuters),higher%20oil%20and%20gas%20production.

Not gross revenue.

Profit.

So, remind me again. Who knew about climate change before most of the public?

"Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue... This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

And just who, exactly, stood in the way reducing emissions all these years?

"ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents...

"The new revelations are based on previously unreported documents subpoenaed by New York’s attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. They add to a slew of documents that record a decades-long misinformation campaign waged by Exxon, which are cited in a growing number of state and municipal lawsuits against big oil."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/14/exxonmobil-documents-wall-street-journal-climate-science

@fuck_cars

knfrmity ,

It's time to bring back the corporate death penalty.

Edit: IIRC Standard Oil, the predecessor of Exxon, was instrumental in abolishing the US corporate death penalty.

knfrmity ,

The freedom of slave owners to own slaves is being threatened by those pesky slaves who think they should have rights.

/s but not really

knfrmity ,

I really like what Mikrotik offers. Their gigabit routers start at maybe €40 and have the incredibly powerful Router OS installed.

A mini-PC with pfSense would offer similar features with more processing power, but with a homelab already you don't need to do much processing on the router itself.

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    knfrmity ,

    I'm not familiar with how VLC manages LAN streaming, but smb (samba) is a filesharing server you have to set up. Just search "set up samba share ubuntu".

    knfrmity ,

    In general white cishet westerners don't know any social dynamic beyond the "in" group oppressing the "out" group (colonialism, settler-colonialism, slavery, capitalism, imperialism), so without targeted education, their imagination of different social structures can only be a projection of this assumed default state.

    knfrmity ,

    Hetzner may have the thing for you. IIRC their VPS options don't have that much storage, but their storage plans are super cheap and easily connect to the VPS.

    knfrmity ,

    I'm not aware of material which responds and critiques in good faith, but I can point you to Anna Louise Strong's writing on her lived experience in both the USSR and PRC. It confirms Parenti's writing and discusses the challenges of building a socialist state.

    Another interesting thing to consider is the fact that the Soviet government archives were all opened post-coup. If the USSR was indeed a horrible country, we'd have all kinds of academic material going over findings in these primary source documents. We don't. Western historians rushed to Moscow in the 90s only to find nothing that would support their anti-Soviet narratives. Instead there's ML literature discussing the successes and struggles of the Soviet people based on these documents.

    knfrmity ,

    Strong's This Soviet World (1936) mentions a sort of that internal falsification.

    Today the chief fight of the dictatorship [of the proletariat] is against corruption and bureaucracy. The workers, in other words, struggle with their own government, not to overthrow it but to improve it by weeding out inefficiency. A vivid example of this was given by a letter from three railway-workers published in Pravda. They told how the workers of their station, hearing that Sizran station was considered a model, chose three delegates to go and study it. “The election fell on us. However, to our great regret, we convinced ourselves that Sizran is no model.” The letter proceeds to expose fictitious bookkeeping which compelled engineers to list repeated repairs as new in order to protect the reputation of the repair shops, and other false entries which hid inefficiencies. They noted employees who had been demoted for calling too open attention to troubles. They did a thorough and technically accurate job of debunking Sizran, a station on a different railroad to which they had gone in search of good methods. Imagine workers from a station on the Erie giving this attention to study, analyze and reform a station on the Pennsylvania! Imagine their securing ready access to all the records of an alien line! Imagine this as routine news in a metropolitan daily paper, leading to check-up and reprimands of railway superintendents for inaccuracy in reporting their work!

    knfrmity ,

    A bullet is cheaper than food, healthcare, and education.

    Austerity submachine gun go brr.

    knfrmity ,

    You mean this Ukraine?

    https://mronline.org/2022/07/12/the-ukrainian-army-is-murdering-the-donbass-children-with-the-help-and-approval-of-the-west/

    knfrmity ,

    Republicans aren't pro-Russia. Some just think war against Iran or China is a higher priority.

    knfrmity ,

    Russiagate is a made up conspiracy theory and US politicians are bribed lobbied all the time from all sorts of wealthy interest groups.

    knfrmity ,

    I never said these two things were related nor mutually exclusive.

    I'll be more explicit.

    Russiagate was a work of fantasy telling a story about a supposed Manchurian candidate, rather than admitting that the Democratic campaign made mistakes and that Trump spoke to genuine issues the US population has (of course without solutions but that's not the point here).

    Bribes Campaign donations and favours are given to candidates and office holders all the time by interest groups, companies, and wealthy individuals. A donation by JP Morgan or a Koch has nothing to do with the Russiagate fairytale.

    knfrmity ,

    Of course politicians are pro-money. You don't get to be a politician in a capitalist country without being pro-money, wealthy, and well connected to others who are wealthy.

    Bribery is in most cases legal in the US. It's called lobbying, or campaign donations, or the revolving door between public service and private industry. It's also an unsolvable problem given the current economic paradigm. The capitalist class will determine government policy in one way or another, as the government is designed to protect the interests of the capitalist class. The will of the working people is completely irrelevant.

    Russian money, insofar as it does exist in US politics (there's astonishingly little of it compared to other sources) is drawn to attention by a media that is owned by the same companies and people that are bribing in a much larger way. They call attention to the few thousand dollars a Russian immigrant may or may not have donated to the NRA or a Republican candidate to distract from the billions of dollars Wall Street spends on candidates and kickbacks to make sure they're the ones who control US economic, financial, and foreign policy. It's easy to call attention to Russian money because the same media has created an environment in which anything Russian is pure evil, so people don't even question the content of the story being told. This has its roots in Cold War anti-Soviet propaganda, which has been dug up and repackaged to use against a post-2008 "non-aligned" modern Russia.

    knfrmity ,

    Nah, they're dropping chat control for something bigger: breaking SSL.

    https://last-chance-for-eidas.org/

    knfrmity ,

    I can't recommend a self hosted SearXNG instance enough.

    DDG uses Bing as a search backend last I checked, and the founder/CEO is spoke in favour of censoring search results that don't match with his worldview.

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