Posts by eloquence@social.coop
(DIR) Post #AqFePwhxMpLmu0061g by eloquence@social.coop
2025-01-19T19:22:27Z
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Facts matter: Both Apple and Google censored TikTok and other Bytedance apps as a result of the ban, which was explicitly written to take effect today.Yes, this gave Trump an opportunity to play free speech hero (even though he himself had called for a ban previously) and to then try to arrange a sale to a US oligarch.The way to avoid this outcome would have been to not vote for the stupid ban in the first place.
(DIR) Post #AqelIUEiNlt1CdiAZE by eloquence@social.coop
2025-01-31T23:29:56Z
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@foone Been pretty happy with my Razer Viper, FWIW. I don't use it much for gaming but it's a great general purpose wired mouse.
(DIR) Post #Ar9DvfWJxjMZLIfm9Q by eloquence@social.coop
2025-02-15T01:13:20Z
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Dismantle public safety → Cause tragic loss of life → Blame scapegoat → Seek greater authoritarian powerDOGE is a central part of this playbook. Call it what it is: a threat against public safety.
(DIR) Post #Ard8l8KJIQgfxmaqcy by eloquence@social.coop
2025-03-01T19:46:03Z
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I find Trump as repulsive as most people here, but as a German, one thing I want to push back on is focusing only on one man.Hitler's rise was possible because he was able to exploit the racial hatred and conspiratorial thinking that already existed. It's MAGA acolytes that see Trump as an extraordinary figure. He was a reality show grifter with a crumbling business; Hitler was an undisciplined drifter with delusions of grandeur.It's the soil that matters, not just the rotten harvest.
(DIR) Post #AsBfMM4sw42hEZoBHM by eloquence@social.coop
2025-03-18T16:33:39Z
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Reporting that's based on public records shouldn't then be put behind a paywall. This also makes sense from a revenue perspective for many paywalled publications. It's a great way to establish an area of freely available reporting that can draw people into buying subscriptions.Really proud of my colleagues' advocacy here, and glad to see WIRED taking the lead on implementing this recommendation.https://freedom.press/issues/wired-is-dropping-paywalls-for-foia-based-reporting-others-should-follow/
(DIR) Post #AsUiE4OqI0aoAwLNUe by eloquence@social.coop
2025-03-27T22:51:36Z
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Feels like we're back in 2020 when it comes to travel to the US, but for entirely different self-inflicted reasons - and with no end in sight.
(DIR) Post #At5eDl9g1506weYU3U by eloquence@social.coop
2025-04-14T17:45:43Z
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If you're in the US and sat out the last #HandsOff protest, make sure to be there on April 19. This is no time to sit things out. Cancel appointments if you have to.
(DIR) Post #At6KYVZxJriUnCQJ9s by eloquence@social.coop
2025-04-15T00:51:34Z
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An epistemological reminder.Fascists lie, lie, lie, and lie some more.They plant drugs and other false evidence.They burn buildings, and worse, and then claim their enemies did it.By all means, ask people chronicling the regime's crimes for sources. Remember, of course, that they may _be_ the sources: witnesses, friends, victims.But do not trust anything the fascist shitheads or their defenders and enablers say. If they claim the sky is blue, look outside -- it may be on fire.
(DIR) Post #At6Kca8kIrHO64deN6 by eloquence@social.coop
2025-04-14T19:29:56Z
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Fox News is now calling Garcia, a dude who was harassed by gangs before fleeing to the US, only to be kidnapped and sent into a concentration camp _by_ the US, an "MS-13 leader".This is the sort of unadulterated lying that gets pushed into #MAGA people's brains every day -- America's version of "Der Stürmer" or the "Völkischer Beobachter".If you want to have any hope for people in the fascist MAGA cult, you gotta get them off those feeds first. (And that includes X, of course.)
(DIR) Post #At6KdzBEgpxu2zTMpc by eloquence@social.coop
2025-04-11T07:20:02Z
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“The cruelty of the US and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families.”Human Rights Watch -- a US organization originally founded to monitor human rights violations in the Soviet Union -- reports on the enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention under the Trump regime:https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/04/11/us/el-salvador-venezuelan-deportees-forcibly-disappeared
(DIR) Post #AtBJMjcoj5qhFYpoeW by eloquence@social.coop
2025-04-16T18:33:53Z
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#Bluesky remains important and valuable as a tool of political resistance _right now_; nobody should be scolded for using it.But (there's always a but) the company's willingness to fold quickly to censorship demands from Turkey's government demonstrates that it is not sufficient.Both the fact that it _can_ appease dictators, and the fact that it _does_ default to this response, show a lack of backbone: both structurally (due to centralization) and ideologically.https://bsky.app/profile/aliskorkut.com/post/3lmul5pt34c2b
(DIR) Post #Au6DYRZOfrnPERLIi8 by eloquence@social.coop
2025-05-14T22:38:23Z
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Wherever you see a Musk "X" project, assume the X is a temporarily embarrassed swastika.So, of course, Musk's X.AI is a nazi AI that promotes white genocide narratives:https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-ai-chatbot-grok-brings-south-african-white-genocide-claims-rcna206838
(DIR) Post #Au6DYZQ7UF81Zz40MS by eloquence@social.coop
2025-05-14T22:46:50Z
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I'm old enough to remember that when MSFT released an (inadvertently) nazi AI chatbot, it was still a bit of a scandal:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)Now the nazi AI is just one of the official megacorp AI variants to choose from. "Would you like swastikas with that?"
(DIR) Post #AwGBRji741duMwNYJs by eloquence@social.coop
2025-01-31T07:05:50Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
All of Trump's "America First" nonsense, including galaxy brain shit like "tariffs on Taiwan", will accelerate China's rise. The dumb logic of nationalism -- the rejection of the very alliances that made America powerful, for good and for ill -- means "America Second", then "America Third", and so on.But when failing authoritarian governments run out of scapegoats, they often go to war.https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-taiwan-semiconductor-tariff-impact-china-tech-2022564
(DIR) Post #Awcj1g0GAZYacESHAG by eloquence@social.coop
2025-07-28T21:46:20Z
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As someone mainly working in open source land, I can't tell you how under-appreciated it is to be able to _look at what some piece of code does_ to shortcut troubleshooting.So much corporate "software as a service" stuff is poorly and incorrectly documented, and you have to take wild guesses at what any of it actually does.(I'm mostly griping again about Mailchimp today, which is terrible no-good awful software, but it applies to so many things.)
(DIR) Post #AwrpjM9SlwA1WxSqbg by eloquence@social.coop
2025-08-05T17:55:50Z
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Keir Starmer is keeping Britain safe from encyclopedias.https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62j2gr8866o
(DIR) Post #AyrIjThOSPZ7hIITPE by eloquence@social.coop
2025-10-03T16:49:11Z
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Apple: And you'll see why 2025 will finally be like 1984.Think ... identically.https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/us/politics/apple-iceblock-app-store-trump.html
(DIR) Post #AyrIjVCyqSQUNY5DHM by eloquence@social.coop
2025-10-03T16:53:01Z
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For many years, activists and the annoying free software people in your area have warned that the power of app stores enables turnkey censorship. And of course there have been many examples of this, especially with repressive non-US governments getting apps removed from app stores.This is why alternative "stores" like https://f-droid.org/ are essential for free expression - and Google may soon make it impossible to meaningfully operate those, as well:https://f-droid.org/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html
(DIR) Post #Az6jQzCMjLjS1Tacca by eloquence@social.coop
2025-10-11T18:00:39Z
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People tend to think of ALT text as a "good thing to do for people with disabilities". That is true, but also reductive. It is useful for everyone, as is generally the case with accessibility.I sometimes see posts with screenshots of text in a language I don't speak. If they had ALT text, I could use the "Translate" feature, and it would translate both the post and the transcription.If you post in English, everyone who doesn't speak English fluently will benefit from ALT text.
(DIR) Post #AzwkhoPaO8z2nNQlW4 by eloquence@social.coop
2025-11-05T05:17:54Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
Gee, I wonder why billionaires want to control the encyclopedia.(Kudos to the contributors of this very astute section of Zohran Mamdani's Wikipedia bio.)