Hi. I’m Adam.

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 17:22:49 +0000

re: USPol biden retires

I lolled when he said "there is no place in America for political violence or any violence ever period"

🤣

Well, okay, good job he's out of the race, he's clearly utterly lost the plot.

America is founded in violence, and rules through violence, and spends more money on violence than everyone else put together. If there's a more violent police force in the world than the American police force, that other force also should be disbanded.

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 18:13:45 +0000

meta - youtube preview cards

It's fun how Youtube have stopped delivering proper preview-cards somehow, presumably in their war against anonymous access and their battle to get everyone to be logged in all the time to be tracked properly.

Our Mastodon sever is in Germany, and has no google login cookie, so previews these days are blank icons and German ad-copy.

I don't even speak German.

Thanks for enshittifying it all a bit more Google, keep up the good work. I will indeed click on your videos less when I have no idea what they are.

#google #youtube #preview

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 17:52:45 +0000

re: ukpol economics child-benefit cap

They were not lying to get into power when they said they wouldn't keep the two-child cap then.

I like the rebellious streak of MPs who lose the whip on the very first vote. Excellent going to those few. ✊

It's interesting how much the media are focusing on labour refusing to do the thing they said all campaign long they definitely wouldn't do because they think we're too poor.

The government are wrong: We are not too poor, and spending the money would make the country and government richer anyway.

But not only didn't they promise to bring kids out of poverty, they explicitly said they wouldn't. So it's weird finding that noteworhty or thinking they wouldn't punish rebel MPs.

They may well remove that cap, but they wanna do that in an election year, surely?

#labour #ukpol

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 18:11:03 +0000

USPol biden retires

So Biden quits, and chooses to do so via a text-image post on twitter.

The future is here I guess.

I don't really know anything about the other people than Harris they mention as potentials. I assume they are all terrible for one reason or another but hopefully a better chance of beating Trump I guess.

Maybe really to beat a reality TV star you need a reality TV star?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/21/joe-biden-withdraw-running-president

#uspol #biden

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 00:02:30 +0000

Oh!

I have a new whistle!

It's too sloppy to ring out though, it's just a different kinda mouth-fart if I breathe weird.

The tooth removed years ago on the opposite corner left two teeth remaining on the back rows.

But this one removed from the top side has left a single stranded tooth with no neighbours at all.

I'm not sure how to floss it. No leverage.

🫡

Here's to you single soldier. Please keep chewing. I need that.

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 22:21:17 +0000

Did the end-of-course improv show at the Hoopla thing at the Miller in London.

They had a cider festival going on and I was in the post-interval group, so I wasn't even allowed to drink any untill we were finished. 😠 It's not at all like being in the band, where we wouldn't go on stage till the start of the third pint. 😆

Someone who had never been on stage might think that the looks on the faces of all the audience may make you nervous, but in fact you can't really even see any of them coz the stage lights are in your eyes. Front two rows, max. Some lights on phones beyond that maybe.

On top of that, I was mostly stage right with a long-hair fringe which is also on my right. The audience were mostly hidden behind my hair in the dark and my attention upon co-performers.

As usual though, I still find my self-assessment of performance is that I do worse in front an audience.

The more aware I am that the audience exists, the less attention I have on the task at hand maybe?

That attention spent on awareness of the audience's existence certainly feels like it leaves less brain-power for forming memories.

I usually find being on stage a hazy recollection, mostly of my mistakes. And it turns out my recall of events is fairly poor even when not two-pints-in!

I think I was pretty superfluous and maybe a bit blocking in the first game, funny mostly by Incongruous references to toes and fingernails in the second, and lost but coping well with enacting a movie I never really watched in the third.

And that's all you get really, in a team of 14 doing two 45 minute halves.

That is the thing which makes Improv actually pretty easy. You don't have to be individually clever or smart or funny coz the collective is stronger than the components.

None of these lot in the pictures here are me obviously, they were in the first half when I wasn't.

I did used to do selfie-videos from the stage when I was in a band, but it would definitely not be right here where the job is teamwork, not front-man 😆

#improv #london #miller #hoopla #stage #performing

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 12:57:15 +0000

One for the #tesla fans out there.

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 09:59:03 +0000

The way they ship the virus-scanners on new machines and then have them nag for a subscription after a year with scary messages about your computer being insecure is one of the darkest patterns in software.

The machine manufacturers taking bribes from sketchy agency-connected software companies to install scanning software on their machine that then dark-pattern nags them for needless money every month, when Window's own security is mostly better than the anti-virus companies these days.

Whole industry is a mess.

[Edit: Not saying Crowdstrike do that, dunno, probably not, they sound more like corporate contracts then OEM deals at a guess]

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 09:48:39 +0000

I've often thought that the anti-virus-software was as likely to damage my machine as the viruses are. Some of the companies are very sketchy indeed and have deep contacts with security services.

Are those things really secure? I don't really trust 'em.

What do #crowdStrike do? Sounds like they are some kinda sketchy anti-virus/info-sec company. no doubt with very deep contacts in the security agencies.

So I wouldn't run their code if I could help it anyway.

Many IT managers are forced to use Windows though, sometimes even very old versions of Windows.

Poor bastards.

Plus they have to prove to an agency that their org is taking steps to secure their systems, like, for example, contracting one of these infosec companies with that revolving door to the security agencies.

Anyway. Good luck to everyone trying to fix what happens when that backfires and everything breaks at once today.

Updates to your security software make your machine secure from everyone, even you.

As usual, linux users unaffected, so we get to see who thinks it's okay to run their organisation on Microsoft!

#infosec #microsoft

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 17:40:16 +0000

Sherwood news has a great article on the bots that are scamming twitter.

Since Twitter has a revenue-share for popular accounts, you can set up a bot army to make one of your robots popular enough to get paid.

If it can earn enough to pay the AI-prompt-completion fees and the validation checkmark fee, then they make profit.

Advertisers are paying Twitter for robots to talk to each other and nobody even sees the adverts.

Payments for social media seems perverse to me. It distorts the conversation, even before it also flooded it with bot-spam. People do all kinds of karma-whoring even when the karma is just points on a website not things you can buy food with.

Guess Nostr will have similar issues if they ever get enough users zapping with lightning to make any actual money.

Great technical stuff on the ways you can analytically spot bots too.

https://sherwood.news/tech/elon-musk-didnt-rid-twitter-of-bots-x-is-paying-armies-of-them-for-slop/

#bots #socialmedia

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 17:05:13 +0000

"Crossed the line from protestor to fanatic" says the judge, who has crossed the line from judge in to fanatic.

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 17:01:34 +0000

Five years in jail for a climate protest when the jails are literally so full that they are early-releasing murderers and robbers.

This is not justice, this is state oppression.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c880xjx54mpo

#justice #climate

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 12:58:36 +0000

Tooth removed. Well, 99% of it he reckons. Apparently 1% fused to the bone too hard and will probably be fine but may require further attention after some healing.

Gauze in the gap currently to stem the bleeding a bit, which is making me want to throw up. Hate the cotton-wool-in-mouth thing.

All in all, more annoying than painful, but then the local anesthetic hasn't worn off yet.

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 12:48:23 +0000

And for Android firefox the option to turn it off isn't even an option in the option menu, it's an arcane config enchantment.

https://exquisite.social/@thomholwerda/112795429303595558

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 10:08:20 +0000

I'm hearing that Mozilla worked with Facebook to build this malware that they silently injected into our machines.

Reminds me of that episode of Batman where Batman teamed up with the Penguin to develop a more citizen-friendly system of crime and extortion so that the Penguin could stop having so many people murdered.

Oh, no, wait. That never happened because Batman knows who the fucking bad guys are.

#firefox #mozilla #meta #facebook

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 16:56:16 +0000

political violence imaginary voxpops

"We must never use political violence", the boarder guard said, "now shut up and get on with pushing these refugees back into the sea".

~

"oh no, political violence is just wrong" says the policeman, "so stop thinking and help me mace these protestors"

~

"Political violence? Oh no, we should never use political violence" says the bailiff as he sets is dogs on the squatters, "Political violence is a step too far."

~

"My subjects should never use political violence" says the king. "It's morally wrong, now leave me alone to write my bill giving more of the people's health systems to private capital"

~

"Political assassination is very bad when other people do it" says the drone-salesman, "now are you going to buy these flying murderbots or not?"

~

#uspol #voxpops #violence

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 14:53:21 +0000

re: uspol failed Trump assassination

LauraK at Normal Island News is on fire:

Israel just attempted a targeted assassination of a Hamas leader near Khan Younis, and blew up a few hundred civilians in a refugee camp. If one of the victims owned Trump Towers, this would have been a crime against humanity, but thankfully, the victims were living in tents so it’s no biggie. We totally have our priorities in order.

One prominent US commentator broke down when she heard of the injury to Trump’s ear and wailed: “This is not the American way!” and “What are we, Hamas?” because America, the country that has carried out targeted assassinations in Japan, Vietnam, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Kenya, Uzbekistan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, China, and Afghanistan, among others, is totally above this kind of behaviour, as is Israel, the country which has 292 assassination attempts listed on Wikipedia.

https://www.normalisland.co.uk/p/political-violence-against-rich-white

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 12:31:53 +0000

re: uspol failed Trump assassination

I liked how Farage reacted all like, "You know a very similar thing happened to me once when someone threw a milkshake at me that time"

😆

And the cops saying they have no idea what the motivation can be. Can't think of any reason at all someone would want to shoot him. It's most mysterious.

#trump #farage #cops

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 11:37:20 +0000

re: uspol failed Trump assassination

If that image does win the election it's notable that the American flag is upside down. 🇺🇸

Seems like the security are only halfheartedly trying to cover his body. Can't decide if they'd really take a bullet for this dude or not.

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 10:20:15 +0000

uspol failed Trump assassination

Doesn't seem to be that much consensus in the preexisting literature on whether an assassination attempt affects a political candidate's chances. Very hard to run any randomized controlled studies of course and nobody knows what happened in the control country where nobody got shot.

I don't really think it'll make much difference to his election chances, but then I already figured he was gonna win when they were scolding and arresting genocide-protestors, before it even became obvious Biden has pudding for brains now.

One thing that does increase in frequency is all the talking heads saying "There is no place for violence", even the ones who have been doing terrible violence to refugees and foreigners and minorities for years.

Real guns on film sound like pathetic little clicks rather than the powerful bass booms in the movies.

That image of his raised fist with his face with blood splatters from his newly bullet-pierced ear is an instant classic though. Defiance. His supporters will love that.

#uspol #trump #shooting