● 07.19.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 19/07/2022: Microsoft is Offline Again

Posted in News Roundup at 9:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Applications

=> ↺ 6 Best Free and Open Source C++ Static Site Generators

•  LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.

• While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.

• There are lots of other advantages of running a full, static HTML website.

=> ↺ 14 Best Free and Open Source Linux System Monitoring Tools

•  These types of systems gather data relating to CPU, memory, network, disk utilization, response time of network services, and much more.

• To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 14 Linux system monitoring tools. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants to monitor a specific service or situation.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Event-driven architecture explained in a coloring book

• “Explain it to me like I’m five.”

• When you want someone to get to the point as efficiently and as clearly as possible, that’s what you say. Following that logic, you might be compelled to ponder the most powerful tool the average, everyday 5-year old wields: coloring books. What better way than a coloring book to transform a droll slideshow presentation into a fun and educational journey?

• That’s what artists Máirín Duffy and Madeline Peck thought, anyway, and it has turned out to be accurate. In the past, Máirín has helped produce five open source coloring books to help explain advanced topics including SELinux, Containers, Ansible, and more. It’s a fun and easy way to learn about emerging technology, and you can either color your lessons yourself or hand it over to a resident specialist (an actual 5-year old) for project completion.

• The latest coloring book in the series is all about event driven architecture (EDA). As with all the previous coloring books, this one’s not only free to download, but it’s also open source. You can download the sources and assemble it yourself, or learn from the files so you can build your own about topics important to you.

Games

=> ↺ Exanima gets vastly improved Linux and Steam Deck support

• Exanima is an unforgiving 3D isometric RPG set in an original dark, low fantasy world. Currently in Early Access, it seems the developers have been paying attention to user requests for better Linux and Steam Deck support with Proton.

=> ↺ Tesla to demo Steam for more in-car gaming soon using Linux & Proton

• Tesla and Steam? It’s coming and it sounds like it’s progressing nicely with a demo to come soon to show it off.

=> ↺ Dead Cells has an exciting roadmap ahead as it’s far from finished

• Dead Cells is the absolutely brilliant game from Motion Twin and Evil Empire. A rogue-lite, metroidvania inspired, action-platformer and it’s not finished, far from it. The developers have just recently revealed a roadmap, that mentions how 2023 will be the “most exciting year in Dead Cells’ history” which is a pretty bold claim.

=> ↺ Hot swapping SD Cards on Steam Deck is okay but Valve plans improvements

• There’s been a lot of talk about the Steam Deck and SD Cards lately around hot swapping and apparently bricked SD Cards but Valve say it’s fine, although improvements are coming.

=> ↺ Relive memories of going to the arcade in Point Rescue Arcade

• Point Rescue Arcade is a game that very much leans into the experience you might have had when going to a real Arcade, grabbing a big gun and sticking in some coins.

=> ↺ fheroes2 game engine for Heroes of Might and Magic II gets even more AI upgrades

• Fully playable but they’re not done yet. The team behind the Heroes of Might and Magic II game engine reimplementation continue to improve it even further for playing it on modern platforms. This free and open source reimplementation is simply awesome, the best way to play the classic.

=> ↺ Swirl W@tch is a blindly-vibrant upcoming stealth-action rogue-lite

• Sleeper Games have revealed their latest game with Swirl W@tch, a very colourful and bright stealth-action rogue-lite that will release later this year.

=> ↺ iFixit have the Steam Deck Fan in stock if you’re in the U.S.

• Want to get rid of the whine that certain models of Steam Deck have with their fan? Good news, at least if you’re in the USA, as iFixit have fans in stock.

=> ↺ Souls-like game Hellpoint: Blue Sun major expansion DLC is out now

• The thoroughly challenging Souls-like game Hellpoint has expanded with the Hellpoint: Blue Sun major expansion DLC. With the DLC you will end up getting some answers, as they said it reveals the full story “for those who can understand it”.

=> ↺ Open source evolution sim Thrive gets procedural maps, better gameplay

• Thrive is a free and open source science-based game about evolution, currently allowing you to swim around as a little cell and attempt to survive. The latest release brings in some major improvements. It’s in Early Access and they have a long way to go before it’s a complete game but it’s still a really interesting idea, very much like an expanded early-stage version of Spore.

=> ↺ Heroic Games Launcher adds GOG Cloud Saves, Epic Overlay support, anti-cheat helpers

• The Heroic Games Launcher for Epic Games and GOG on Linux has a huge new Beta release (plus a bug fixes for the stable build) with loads of fancy new features.

=> ↺ Wine 7.13 rolled out recently continuing the PE conversion

• Fashionably late on this one. Wine 7.13 rolled out just before the weekend rolled in, so here’s a quick run down of what’s new in this Windows compatibility layer.

=> ↺ The Commodore 64 Smartwatch Can Now Sync With Your Commodore 64 Desktop

• If you’ve got a smartwatch on your wrist, chances are you’ve also got a device nearby that links up with it. Most modern watches will happily sync with Android devices or iPhones, and some will also talk to Windows PCs. But what if you’re running an alternative OS? Something like, say, Commodore BASIC? In that case, you might want to check out [Nick Bild]’s latest project, which lets you to sync your smartwatch to your Commodore 64.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Asahi Linux runs on Apple M2 machines

• The team behind Asahi Linux have announced that the distribution runs on the M1 Ultra and Mac Studio without needing a virtual machine.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Top 10 Features of Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” [Featured]

• A list of top 10 features of Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” across Cinnamon, Xfce and MATE desktop environments and more.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 21.10 Has Reached End-of-Life, Upgrade Now!

•  Ubuntu 21.10 has reached end-of-life on 14th of July. Backup your files before starting an upgrade!

• While Ubuntu 21.10 was the only way to experience GNOME 40 back then, it brought a newer kernel and high-quality Bluetooth codecs.

• Unfortunately, it reached end-of-life on the 14th of July, meaning you will no longer receive any updates for it.

• So it’s time to upgrade!

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Geniatech’s SBC taps Rockchip SoC and runs on Android 11 & Debian

• The XPI-3566 is the latest Single Board Computer developed by Geniatech. This SBC is powered by the Rockchip RK3566 System on Chip (SoC) and it comes in a Raspberry Pi 4 form factor. The company expects to target smart retail and similar interactive applications.

• This SBC implements the Rockchip RK3566 which is a four core Cortex-A55 processor with a maximum frequency of 1.8GHz. In addition, there is a Mali-G52-2EE GPU and a Neural Process Unit (NPU) with processing performance up to 1.0 TOPS (according to the Rockchip datasheet).

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Hacker Liberates Hyundai Head Unit, Writes Custom Apps

• [greenluigi1] bought a Hyundai Ioniq car, and then, to our astonishment, absolutely demolished the Linux-based head unit firmware. By that, we mean that he bypassed all of the firmware update authentication mechanisms, reverse-engineered the firmware updates, and created subversive update files that gave him a root shell on his own unit. Then, he reverse-engineered the app framework running the dash and created his own app. Not just for show – after hooking into the APIs available to the dash and accessible through header files, he was able to monitor car state from his app, and even lock/unlock doors. In the end, the dash got completely conquered – and he even wrote a tutorial showing how anyone can compile their own apps for the Hyundai Ionic D-Audio 2V dash.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Auto Rotate Not Working On Android? Here’s How To Fix It

=> ↺ Google has a new home on Amazon and doesn’t want to talk about Android

=> ↺ Surprise Android phone update brings Android 13 feature early | TechRadar

=> ↺ Headwolf Releases WPad1, the First Android 12 tablet

=> ↺ When is Android 13 coming to my phone?

=> ↺ Ulefone Armor X6 Pro: a new budget rugged smartphone with an upgrade to Android 12 – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ Acer launches new Android 11-powered budget smart TVs in India starting at ₹14,999 | Business Insider India

=> ↺ How to Make a Song Your Ringtone on Android

=> ↺ How To Fix An Android Phone That Keeps Crashing

=> ↺ Why You Need To Turn Your Android’s Bluetooth Off When You’re Not Using It

=> ↺ Google Wallet update starts rolling out to Android users – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ Google promotes its apps on Amazon page without using the Android name – PhoneArena

=> ↺ Nothing Phone (1): Android fans get blockbuster FREE bonus when buying one | Express.co.uk

=> ↺ Android Auto issue gets acknowledged by Google | T3

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Ortur Laser Will Go Open-Source

• Well, that was fast! Last week, we wrote about a video by [Norbert Heinz] where he called out the Ortur laser engravers for apparently using the GPL-licensed grbl firmware without providing the source code and their modifications to it, as required by the license. Because open source and grbl are dear to our hearts and CNC machines, we wrote again about Norbert’s efforts over the weekend, speculating that it might just be unfamiliarity with the open source license requirements on Ortur’s part.

Events

=> ↺ SCaLE Returns to Celebrate Its 20th Birthday July 28-31

• This year SCALE, the community-focused Southern California Linux Expo, is back — live and in-person — on July 28-31. The lineup is great, and will include a closing keynote address by Vint Cerf, who’s regarded as one of the “fathers’ of the internet.”

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Code your first React UI app

• Who wants to create their first UI app? I do, and if you’re reading this article, I assume you do, too. In today’s example, I’ll use some JavaScript and the API with Express I demonstrated in my previous article. First, let me explain some of the tech you’re about to use.

Python

=> ↺ Turn your Python script into a command-line application

• I’ve written, used, and seen a lot of loose scripts in my career. They start with someone that needs to semi-automate some task. After a while, they grow. They can change hands many times in their lifetime. I’ve often wished for a more command-line tool-like feeling in those scripts. But how hard is it really to bump the quality level from a one-off script to a proper tool? It turns out it’s not that hard in Python.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Cognitive Distortions

• Damaging as they may be, hoaxes by individual pranksters are usually removed from Wikipedia as soon as they are discovered. Something far more potentially harmful, both to Wikipedia and to public knowledge as a whole, is when several users work together across multiple Wikipedia articles to discredit a body of scientific research, and do not allow their misrepresentations to be corrected by any of the site’s other users. This is what has occurred over the past two years on Wikipedia’s articles related to human intelligence.

=> ↺ The Shallow End

• The bottom now is actually miles below our feet, in water so deep it looks dark at noon. This thought is so frightening we push it aside when it comes up.

• We’ve stupidly drifted out to sea, far away from the pool of American mythology, taking undue comfort in the belief we could get right back to it in the next election if only we all get out the vote.

=> ↺ The Metaverse Could Change The World, If We Could Stop Getting In Its Way

• Beyond the overproduced marketing videos and janky product prototypes closely associated today with “the metaverse” lies a bright and boundless future. In a pandemic-stricken world that imposes more and stronger barriers at every turn—whether they be medical, social, legal, economic, or geopolitical—there is magic in transposing the spirit of a global free and open internet into a more immersive technological utopia. But many obstacles stand in the way of that dream, including the companies trying to build it and the governments who will regulate it.

=> ↺ Journalist Patrick Radden Keefe Explains His Craft

• In the years since his byline first appeared in The New Yorker in 2006, Patrick Radden Keefe has become known for his revealing portraits of powerful people who refuse to speak to him. It is a testament to Keefe’s prowess that his subjects end up feeling more lifelike in his stories — more brazen, vulnerable, even sympathetic — than they do in their own memoirs and authorized biographies. This might explain why El Chapo, the Mexican drug lord and the focus of two of Keefe’s articles, wanted him to ghostwrite a book about his life — an assignment that Keefe politely declined.

• Keefe’s recent output has cemented his reputation as one of the most popular and thrilling journalists at work today. In 2018, he published “Say Nothing,” a rigorously psychological account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. A bestseller, it was followed by the hit podcast “Wind of Change,” a picaresque tour of the Cold War’s cultural front, and last year’s “Empire of Pain,” a meticulous investigation of the Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis.

Education

=> ↺ Internet Archive Seeks Summary Judgment in Federal Lawsuit Filed By Publishing Companies

• The motion for summary judgment, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Durie Tangri LLP, explains that our Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program is a lawful fair use that preserves traditional library lending in the digital world.

• The brief explains how the Internet Archive is advancing the purposes of copyright law by furthering public access to knowledge and facilitating the creation of new creative and scholarly works. The Internet Archive’s digital lending hasn’t cost the publishers one penny in revenues; in fact, concrete evidence shows that the Archive’s digital lending does not and will not harm the market for books.

=> ↺ How to create great educational video content for computing and beyond

• Over the past five years, we’ve made lots of online educational video content for our online courses, for our Isaac Computer Science platform for GCSE and A level, and for our remote lessons based on our Teach Computing Curriculum hosted on Oak National Academy.

=> ↺ Students Like Me Can Target School Boards to Get Police Out of Schools

=> ↺ Will Our Children Be Able to Read?

• The sharp attack on education during this past decade forces us to consider the kind of future that young people will inherit, writes Vijay Prashad.

Hardware

=> ↺ Quick Hack: The Phone To Stream Deck Conversion

• What do you do with those old Android or iPhone phones and tablets? You have plenty of options, but it is pretty easy to build your own stream deck with a little off-the-shelf software. What’s a stream deck, you ask? The name comes from its use as a controller for a live-streaming setup, but essentially, it’s an LCD touchscreen that can trigger things on your computer.

=> ↺ How To Become A Lego Submariner

• A submarine is by necessity a complex and safety-critical machine, but the principle upon which it depends is quite simple. The buoyancy is variable by means of pumping water in and out of tanks, allowing the craft to control the depth at which it sits. The [Brick Experiment Channel] has a series of posts describing in detail the construction of a working submarine, with a hull made from a plastic tube and mechanics made from Lego.

=> ↺ Modular Z80 Really Racks Up The Retrocomputer Cred

• Very few retrocomputing projects are anything other than a labor of love. There’s really no practical reason to build a computer that is woefully inadequate for just about any task compared to even an entry-level PC today. But the lack of a practical reason to do something rarely stops a hacker, as with this nifty modular Z80-based rack computer.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Boost Now or Wait for New Vaccine? Many Wonder How to Face COVID’s Next Wave

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ Is Microsoft’s VS Code really open source?

• As stated, Microsoft follows an open-core model for VS code. Therefore, developers who want access to the full open source code that is MIT licensed will have to download the code from the repository and then build the VS code on their own.

• The task is cumbersome for most users. This is where VS Codium comes into play. VS Codium is fully open-source software binaries of VS Code licensed under the MIT license. With VS Codium, developers do not need to download and build from the source. Instead, the VS Codium team builds VS Code from the source repository and uploads the binaries to GitHub. “VS Codium is a clone of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code. This project’s sole aim is to provide you with ready-to-use binaries without Microsoft’s telemetry code,” mentioned Abhishek Prakash, creator of It’s FOSS (a web portal focused on open source), in a blog.

Security

=> ↺ Microsoft investigates ongoing Exchange Online, Outlook outage

• Microsoft is investigating an ongoing outage impacting Microsoft 365 services after customers have reported experiencing issues while trying to sign into, access, and receive emails on the outlook.com portal and via Exchange Online.

=> ↺ Microsoft Patch Tuesday update has broken another really important software

• It seems some updates that came as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday (opens in new tab) broke MS Access runtime applications. Multiple users have reported having this issue to Microsoft, saying MS Access 2016 (opens in new tab) and MS Access 2013 are having issues, post KB5002112 and KB5002121 updates.

=> ↺ A Deep Dive Into the Residential Proxy Service ‘911’

• For the past seven years, an online service known as 911 has sold access to hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Windows computers daily, allowing customers to route their Internet traffic through PCs in virtually any country or city around the globe — but predominantly in the United States. 911 says its network is made up entirely of users who voluntarily install its “free VPN” software. But new research shows the proxy service has a long history of purchasing installations via shady “pay-per-install” affiliate marketing schemes, some of which 911 operated on its own.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ ICE Is Buying Up Massive Troves of Cell Phone Location Data… For Some Reason

• The Department of Homeland Security is purchasing cell phone location data on a massive scale, according to documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union.

• Per the documents, hundreds of thousands of location points across North America have been attained by DHS. Purchasing the information from private businesses would help circumvent legal requirements to obtain a warrant.

=> ↺ Growing support for political violence raises alarms

• The chilling incident is among a series of violent threats recently that have targeted political figures and comes amid a shifting landscape in which the share of partisans who think violence is sometimes justified to achieve political ends has grown significantly.

=> ↺ Joe Walsh’s MAGA warning: If Trump is indicted, expect “major violence”

• As the country becomes more racially diverse, younger, forward thinking and pluralistic, the American right wing is attempting to force the country back to the 19th century and the Gilded Age. Such moves are generally unpopular with the American people en masse. The Republican Party and the larger right wing movement dismiss such protests because they reject the basic principle of a true “We the People” democracy and are earnestly working to create a herrenvolk, apartheid, plutocratic, Christian fascist new America that will be ruled by a small number of white men and their allies.

• As seen on Jan. 6 with Trump’s coup attempt and the terrorist attack on the Capitol by his followers, such political violence will become the norm as the Republican-fascists expand and consolidate their power and target the Democratic Party (and liberals and progressives more generally) as illegitimate.

=> ↺ EFF and Partners Urge the Indian Government to Keep End-to-End Encryption Alive

• End-to-end encryption is vital for private and secure communications. And while the Indian Supreme Court introduced a necessity and proportionality test when it recognized that the right to privacy as a fundamental right, the traceability requirement, in fact, is a disproportionate measure: it breaks encryption; threatens freedom of speech, privacy and national security of Indian people and businesses. Therefore, it is imperative to withdraw the traceability requirements under the Indian 2021 IT Rules. 

• The full text of the letter and list of signatories are below. 

=> ↺ Ring: Cops Can Still Obtain Recordings Without Warrants Or User Consent

• Welcome back to the negative news cycle, Ring! It’s been awhile.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Can the System Be Saved?

• Now, those hearings are offering the country (and the Justice Department) what could be a last chance to begin restoring the kind of governance that once underlay a functioning democracy. There is, however, a deeply worrisome trend lurking just under this moment’s attempt to garner accountability — namely, the way loyalty to institutional Washington (even outside the law) perpetuates a flight from accountability that’s become a crucial part of American political life.

• So far, the January 6th hearings have inspired a cascade of takeaways. With each televised session, new evidence about the acts of Donald Trump and crew have come to light, among them that the former president was all too tight with the far right and that he knew the crowd approaching the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was armed and dangerous. So, too, those watching have learned about witness tampering and also the lengths White House lawyers and others went to in trying to restrain the former president’s engagement with the January 6th rioters. Overall, many Americans (though not so many Republicans) have learned that January 6th was part of a far larger Trumpian effort to negate the results of the 2020 presidential election, no matter the facts or the law.

=> ↺ Opinion | The State of US ‘Democracy’ Is Grim. Can It Be Saved?

• Well before the House select committee’s January 6th investigation began, trust in the classic American system of checks and balances as reliable protection against executive (or, more recently, Supreme Court) abuses of power had already fallen into a state of disgrace. A domestically shackled Biden presidency, a Congress unable to act, and a Supreme Court that seems ever more like an autocratic governing body has left American “democracy” looking grim indeed.

=> ↺ Opinion | Don’t Normalize Trump’s Enablers

• The historic House Select Committee’s hearings on the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, are a necessary undertaking for the health of our democracy. The fact that most of the witnesses are Republican—and many are former members of Donald Trump’s own inner circle—greatly bolsters the committee’s credibility. In our hyper-partisan reality, this fact can also lead to a temptation to hail the witnesses as courageous, honorable figures putting their consciences above ideology.

=> ↺ Night Raids and Executions: the SAS in Afghanistan

• A senior officer who worked at UK Special Forces headquarters told the BBC there was “real concern” over the squadron’s reports.

• “Too many people were being killed on night raids and the explanations didn’t make sense,” he said. “Once somebody is detained, they shouldn’t end up dead. For it to happen over and over again was causing alarm at HQ. It was clear at the time that something was wrong.”

=> ↺ An Iron Curtain is Descending on America and We Were Warned

• “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

• “This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.” [Note: the numbers are from 1953 and are more unfair today.]

=> ↺ Opinion | The House Military Spending Bill Is a Massive Giveaway to the Weapons Industry

• On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets policy goals and recommends a number for total Pentagon spending. The final version of the bill will be determined later this year.

=> ↺ The Coup Allegations Against the Secret Service Are Astonishing

=> ↺ Steve Bannon’s Contempt of Congress Trial Formally Began Today

=> ↺ Threading Violence

=> ↺ Deceased Russian soldier’s family uses compensation payment to buy new car ‘in his memory’ — Meduza

• On July 17, the state-owned television channel Russia-1 ran a story about Staff Sergeant Alexey Malov, a tank commander who died on the third day of the war in Ukraine. According to the report, Malov’s relatives have already spent the compensation money they received from the government for his death. “In memory of our son,” Malov’s father told reporters, the family bought “a brand new car.”

=> ↺ Fear and hardship in the Donbas After years of frozen conflict, Donetsk residents describe life under constant shelling — Meduza

• Before Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the intensity of the hostilities in the Donbas had been declining steadily since 2014. In 2021, the United Nations recorded 36 civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine, most of which were caused by landmines and the mishandling of unexploded ordinances. Since mid-June 2022, however, regular explosions have plagued the city of Donetsk. Ukraine has either refrained from commenting on the blasts or reported the destruction of Russian ammunition depots in the region. In response, the authorities in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Moscow have accused Ukrainian forces of deliberately targeting civilians. (Meanwhile, Russia’s constant attacks on civilian areas across Ukraine have claimed thousands of lives). For insight into what everyday life is like in wartime Donetsk, Meduza turned to local residents.

=> ↺ ‘I have no moral right to joke about Ukraine’ Standup comic Denis Chuzhoy discusses threats, emigration, and how war shattered Russian comedy — Meduza

• Standup comic Denis Chuzhoy denounced the war against Ukraine on the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. In return for speaking out, he started receiving death threats on the phone, and audience members at a show in Vologda approached the stage and presented him with a funeral wreath. Chuzhoy left the country more than two months ago, but he’s returned to Russia several times for performances that he scheduled before February, donating part of the proceeds to charities helping Ukrainian refugees. Meduza spoke to him about threats, emigration, and what kind of career in comedy is even possible today for Russians.

Environment

=> ↺ The danger posed by heatwaves deserves to be taken more seriously

• Heatwaves may generate headlines, but less attention is paid to them than they deserve. In 2018 roughly 300,000 people over the age of 65 died as a result of extreme heat, mainly in India and China, a 54% increase since 2000, according to a report in the Lancet, a medical journal. Unlike storms and floods, heat does not lead to dramatic before-and-after pictures or widespread damage to property. It is a silent killer, its victims often apparent only in retrospect, as statisticians tot up excess deaths and hospital admissions. (The fact that as many as 70,000 people died as a result of a heatwave in Europe in 2003, for example, became apparent only in 2008.) Heat also kills by exacerbating conditions such as heart problems, so not all the deaths it causes may be directly attributed to it.

=> ↺ Greenland Threatens

• Greenland is sending signals to coastal metropolises around the world that it’s never too early to start building seawalls. These are not mixed signals from the big ice island. Rather, they are straightforward signals indicative of rapid breakdown of average ice thickness of 5,000 feet sooner than ever thought possible.

• Stating the obvious, it’s horrible news.

=> ↺ Biden Considers Declaring Climate Emergency Amid ‘Heat Apocalypse’

• With large swaths of the planet currently in the grips of hellish, record-shattering heatwaves and devastating wildfires, U.S. President Joe Biden is reportedly considering declaring a national climate emergency this week as a senator with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry continues to obstruct much-needed renewable energy spending.

• Biden’s plans for a possible emergency declaration, first reported late Monday by the Washington Post, come as the White House is facing mounting pressure to take unilateral climate action as its agenda remains stalled in the upper chamber of Congress, hampering U.S. efforts to rein in planet-warming carbon emissions as temperatures soar worldwide.

=> ↺ Bill McKibben: “Appalling” European Heat Wave Demands Massive Climate Action

=> ↺ Bill McKibben: Record Heat Wave in Europe Is Latest Warning That Action on Climate Can’t Wait

• A scorching heat wave continues to fuel wildfires across southern Europe and parts of North Africa, resulting in hundreds of heat-related deaths and forcing thousands to evacuate their homes. The record-breaking temperatures come as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has effectively killed President Biden’s Build Back Better climate legislation after stringing Biden along for 18 months. “It’s appalling, but it’s not unexpected. It’s why we have to keep building movements bigger,” says Bill McKibben, climate author, educator, environmentalist and founder of the organizations Third Act and 350.org.

Energy

=> ↺ ‘Collective Action or Collective Suicide’: UN Chief Pleads for Real Climate Response

• Governments can either come up with a collaborative and urgent plan to tackle the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency that is already wreaking deadly havoc across the globe or keep allowing corporations to pollute the atmosphere without limit, thereby condemning humanity to a grim future.

• That stark warning comes from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who said Monday: “We have a choice. Collective action or collective suicide.”

=> ↺ Nuclear Power is Racist, Sexist and Ageist: So Why Do Some Progressives Support It?

• Nuclear power is all three of these things, yet Booker, Whitehouse and a number of others on the Democratic left, support nuclear power with almost fervent evangelism.

• Let’s start with racism. The fuel for nuclear power plants comes from uranium, which must be mined. The majority of those who have mined it in this country — and would again under new bills such as the ‘International Nuclear Energy Act of 2022’ forwarded by not-so-progressive “Democrat”, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) — are Native Americans.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Salmon Farming’s Dirty Business

Overpopulation

=> ↺ Water situation is critical in 4 states: Conagua

• Related to the La Niña climate pattern, the lack of rainfall is also reflected by the scarcity of water in dams. The newspaper El País reported Monday that Mexico’s 210 main dams are only 45% full on average, a level that is 10% lower than normal. Some dams are completely dry or close to it.

=> ↺ Tracking the California drought

• Since 2000, the U.S West. has grown warmer and drier. Data from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows that the region has plunged deeper into extreme drought over the past several years. Scientists have increasingly said the West is experiencing “aridification” driven by human-caused climate change, and they have called for the region to prepare for drier conditions in the long term as temperatures continue to rise.

=> ↺ California’s Idle Crop Land May Double as Water Crisis Deepens

• California’s historic drought may leave the state with the largest amount of empty farmland in recent memory as farmers face unprecedented cuts to crucial water supplies.

=> ↺ Texas residents asked to ‘immediately’ conserve water amid drought, extreme heat

• The utility company, which serves about 2 million people in northern Texas, including the city of Plano and North Dallas County, was forced to cease water production at one of its four treatment plants unexpectedly on Saturday to perform critical maintenance “to return the plant back to full water purification capacity,” according to the alert.

=> ↺ Arizona cities respond to the worst drought in over a thousand years with a new plan

• The Colorado River supplies water to about 40 million people across the southwest, but it is facing catastrophically dry conditions. The last two decades have been the driest in 1,200 years. At least six cities in Arizona, including Phoenix, have now declared water shortages. But as Katherine Davis-Young at member station KJZZ reports, one of the first to start cutting back was Scottsdale.

Finance

=> ↺ Just Two Weeks of Food Billionaire Wealth Gains Could Fund Anti-Hunger Effort in East Africa

• The aid group Oxfam International estimated Monday that a mere two weeks of wealth gains recently secured by global food billionaires would be enough to fully fund the United Nations’ multibillion-dollar effort to combat hunger in East Africa, where soaring commodity prices are intensifying food insecurity and pushing poverty to new extremes.

• “A monstrous amount of wealth is being captured at the top of our global food supply chains.”

=> ↺ Opinion | Structuring the Economy to Give Money to the Rich Is Inflationary

=> ↺ Opinion | The Federal Reserve Thinks the Answer to Inflation Is Imposing Class War

=> ↺ Just 27 Billionaires Have Spent $90 Million to Buy GOP Congress: Report

• A few dozen billionaires are spending tens of millions of dollars on the 2022 midterm elections—mostly to support Republican candidates, including many who have parroted the dangerous lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen—in a bid to ensure that Congress is full of lawmakers willing “to make their wealthy benefactors even richer,” according to a fresh analysis.

• “What’s good for billionaires—including cutting taxes on the rich and corporations—is bad for working families.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Why Tim Cook is concerned about coding skills

• Demand and supply. In theory, when demand increases, supply emerges to meet it. Except it doesn’t always work out that way and as the world gets more digitized, the need for coders is growing faster than the world can keep up.

=> ↺ CISA announces launch of London bureau

• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced on Monday that it will open its first attaché office in London later this month.

• The London bureau will serve as a focal point for international collaboration between U.S. and U.K. government officials, the agency said. It will also help advance CISA’s objectives in cybersecurity, critical infrastructure protection and emergency communications.

=> ↺ Sanders Denounces Manchin for “Intentionally Sabotaging” Democratic Agenda

=> ↺ Omar Calls for Manchin to Be Removed From Role as Chair of Energy Committee

=> ↺ Sanders Rips Manchin: He ‘Represents the Very Wealthiest People in This Country’

• Sen. Bernie Sanders lambasted fellow Sen. Joe Manchin on Sunday for sinking the Democratic Party’s latest effort to pass renewable energy funding, accusing the West Virginia Democrat of acting on behalf of his corporate and billionaire donors instead of the working class of his home state.

• Rejecting the notion that Manchin “abruptly pulled the plug” on the majority party’s revived push for a scaled-back reconciliation package ahead of the November midterms, Sanders told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that there was “nothing new” about the West Virginia senator’s move last week, when he reportedly told the Democratic leadership that he wouldn’t support new climate spending or taxes on the wealthy.

=> ↺ After Visit, Palestinians Say Biden Presidency Is ‘Like the Trump Years With a Smile’

• Palestinians offered a dour assessment of U.S. President Joe Biden’s policy agenda and track record thus far in the wake of his brief visit to Israeli-occupied territory last week, with one official describing the administration as “like the Trump years with a smile.”

• Biden’s trips to East Jerusalem and Bethlehem on Friday were met with protests from rights groups and ordinary Palestinians who decried the administration’s refusal to break substantively from its predecessors and condemn Israel’s deadly military aggression and unlawful occupation of Palestinian land.

=> ↺ After Visit, Palestinians Say Biden Presidency Is ‘Like the Trump Years With a Smile’

• “There must immediately be a settlement freeze, in accordance with international law and resolutions to preserve the right of the Palestinian people to their independent state,” said on…

=> ↺ Bill McKibben: Egypt U.N. Climate Summit Must Demand Freedom for Jailed Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah

• We speak with climate author and activist Bill McKibben, who is pushing for the climate movement to demand the release of Egyptian prisoner and human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah ahead of the next U.N. climate conference, which will be hosted in Egypt. McKibben says releasing El-Fattah to the U.K., which has agreed to house him, would be “the easiest of gestures” by Egypt, whose authoritarian leader met Saturday with President Biden. “The spread of authoritarian governments around the world is one of the things that’s making it difficult to deal with the existential challenge that climate change [presents],” says McKibben.

=> ↺ Biden Fails to Hold Saudi Arabia Accountable for Khashoggi Murder. Now UAE Arrests His Lawyer.

• President Biden met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Friday, as the Saudis agreed to increase oil production as well as open their airspace to Israeli commercial flights. Biden says he told the crown prince he held him responsible for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was a U.S. resident, though Biden’s claims were later contradicted by a top Saudi official. We speak with Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, who says Biden’s friendly fist bump with the crown prince will become the “legacy of President Biden as a man who broke his promises” on holding Saudi Arabia accountable and sends a troubling message to other wealthy oil-producing countries. Whitson also calls for the UAE to give civil rights lawyer Asim Ghafoor, who represented Khashoggi, “due process” after he was detained by officials while traveling through Dubai’s airport and sentenced to three years in prison for fraud charges he denies.

=> ↺ The Rise and Fall of the Megamachine

• That is the case Fabian Scheidler makes in his recent work, The End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization. He begins by looking back to the first military-industrial complex, when around five to six thousand years ago in the Middle East humanity learned to make bronze by smelting copper and tin with wood-stoked fires. Before that time, human settlements evidenced relative equality in terms of dwellings, food and burial rites. Then the hardness of bronze made possible weapons and armor that allowed rulers and empires to emerge. Temples and palaces appeared. Some people ate better than others, and had more elaborate burial rites.

• Rulers forced farmers to pay taxes in the form of grain, accumulating the currency of food in temples, controlling distribution. Around 2500 BC came the first evidence of land ownership in the early empire of Sumer. Writing and the first legal codes came about to record and enforce tax obligations and property ownership. With failure to pay taxes and debts came enslavement. Around this time also came the first religions with a singular, dominating god.

=> ↺ Lula’s Next Visit to Pernambuco

• Lula in Pernambuco is a movie that never stops playing. It is the cinema of Recife, where the people enter the screen and participate in the action. But what films, what epics of political love awaken and pass their presence among us? Do we see Os Companheiros or Eles não usam black-tie? If so, the film would be more related to the story of the worker Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But I think Lula’s film, which keeps on playing in these dark times, is Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. And why is that? In the film, Chaplin gives a speech of hope, which projects the end of fascism to crowds who are in anguish and despair:

• The Great Dictator may be the movie, because the above words are worthy of Lula and of these hours. But first, in greeting the future president, what collective chant could be sung by the crowd? For the people of Recife, it could and will be a frevo, or frevos. But by whom, Capiba or Nelson Ferreira?

=> ↺ Parliament passes proposal which recommends dismantling the EP in its current form

=> ↺ Serbia purchased 250 million euros worth of gas from Hungary

=> ↺ Protesters spot and question government’s Communications Commissioner

• At one point during this morning’s demonstrations in Budapest, the police was blocking the way of a few hundred demonstrators at the House of Representatives without justification, citing security reasons, and started to stop pedestrians in the area of the nearby Olympic Park. At the same time István Hollik, the Government’s Commissioner for Communication made his way on foot to the parliamentary session starting at 13:00. In the end, he almost had to make a run for it and needed a rather large police escort, although people only wanted to consult him about the new tax law.

=> ↺ President Novák signs new tax law

• The President of Hungary, Katalin Novák has signed the amended tax law, thus it is final: beginning in September, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who have been using this form of paying their taxes will be forced to change to another tax category or give up their business altogether. Earlier, both MSZP and Jobbik had asked Novák to send the bill back to parliament, but she did not exercise this right.

=> ↺ ‘Historic Day’ as Staff of 8 House Democrats File for Union Elections

• Staffers of eight Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday took a key step toward unionizing by filing petitions for representation at the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights.

• “We are bringing worker power and equitable conditions to one of the most powerful institutions in the world.”

=> ↺ Opinion | The Great Crisis of the 21st Century: Hijacked Democracies, Propaganda, and Rebellions

• Professor Walter Scheidel, in his book The Great Leveler, showed, more than convincingly, that from prehistory to the present day, all the socioeconomic systems known to humanity tended towards inequality and ended in global catastrophes. The first is quite obvious and we are seeing it today: those who have financial and economic power have inflamed political power, which produces a snowball effect. The rich and their corporations are the big donors to the political parties and then write the laws at their convenience. In 1971, a classic of political comics, The Wizard of Id summed it up best: “The golden rule is that he who has the gold makes the rules.”

=> ↺ White Supremacists Want ‘Their’ Country Back

• One thing I notice as I read the growing warnings that this is the case is the assumption that suddenly the USA has become a divided nation, a splintered democracy, when, in point of fact, it has always been deeply – and for much of its history, good God, legally – divided.

• Indeed, Jim Crow America was the prime model for a certain would-be European dictator.

=> ↺ The Rise of BRICS: The Economic Giant that is Taking on the West

• As was the case since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, the West attempted to display unity, though it has become repeatedly obvious that no such unity exists. While France, Germany and Italy are paying a heavy price for the energy crisis resulting from the war, Britain’s Boris Johnson is adding fuel to the fire in the hope of making his country relevant on the global stage following the humiliation of Brexit. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is exploiting the war to restore Washington’s credibility and leadership over NATO – especially following the disastrous term of Donald Trump, which nearly broke up the historic alliance.

• Even the fact that several African countries are becoming vulnerable to famines  – as a result of the disruption of food supplies originating from the Black Sea and the subsequent rising prices – did not seem to perturb the leaders of some of the richest countries in the world. They still insist on not interfering in the global food market, though the skyrocketing prices have already pushed tens of millions of people below the poverty line.

=> ↺ Constitutional Law Prof Tells Dems: Use 14th Amendment to Block Trump 2024 Run

=> ↺ Joe Biden’s Age Isn’t the Problem

• In politics, age is not just a number—it’s a weapon. Recently, we’ve seen it wielded in a spate of articles, from The New York Times to The Atlantic, seeking to attack President Biden’s potential reelection campaign. But such attacks are hardly new, with Biden enduring an avalanche of them in both the 2020 Democratic primary and general elections. In fact, criticizing elderly politicians for lacking sufficient “fight” is among the oldest—and dirtiest—campaign tricks in American politics.

=> ↺ The Age of Weird Men: Gonzo Politicians From Berlusconi to BoJo

• Students 50 years from now may be asked by their teachers to write an essay on the importance of the fall of Boris Johnson……

=> ↺ Elon Musk’s Response To Twitter’s Legal Filing May Impress His Fans On Twitter, But Is Not A Good Legal Argument

• Last week, I wrote about Twitter’s opening legal salvo in its case to try to force Elon Musk to pay the $44 billion he agreed to pay for Twitter (or, more likely, to try to force him to pay a very large settlement to walk away). As we noted, it was a very strongly argued filing, and Musk’s lawyers had their work cut out for them. Nothing is certain in court, and getting the Delaware Chancery Court to order “specific performance” (i.e., complete the agreement you signed) may still be a long shot, but Twitter’s lawyers had a very strong opening. I expected that Musk would have a strong comeback, but many of the points Twitter raised would be difficult to refute.

=> ↺ Shared Values and Fist Bump Geopolitics: Biden’s Blurred Vision of Human Rights

• I mention China’s effort to enhance its image as a legitimate state as a positive development not deserving the hostile reaction that it received in many sectors of the West, but especially in those quarters that were intent on a new cold war to counter the competitive edge that China was gaining, especially in the world economy and on many technological frontiers of special relevance in the digital age. To seize upon this Chinese initiative, even granting that it was partly motivated by quite legitimate soft power ambitions, is to denigrate efforts to develop an international culture of respect for human rights as an essential foundation for indispensable cooperation in a variety of functional areas ranging from trade to climate change and migration. And let us not overlook American arrogance in relation to human rights, given its refusal to accord economic and social rights the normative status they deserve, and of which China is justly proud of its remarkable record. This acute societal shortcoming in the United States is exhibited to the world by highly visible urban homelessness in the cities of the United States coupled with the unavailability of affordable health care to millions of its own citizens; as well, constitutionally validated gross violations of the right to life due to promiscuous access to assault weaponry for anyone with the cash to make the purchase, and despite a rash on mass school and mall shooting the governing institutions turn their heads away from the carnage.

• It is with these considerations in the background that we should assess the Biden mid-July visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia. If the critical reaction to Bachelet’s visit reflected establishment resentment as a breach in the geopolitical wall of hostility that had been mobilized to justify coercive diplomacy directed at China. In contrast, Biden’s visit to the Middle East dramatized the extent to which human rights are buried far underground when perceived to clash with strategic interests being pursued in foreign policy as abetted by the domestic incentives to treat the most flagrant violators of human rights as if they are behaving as a model democracy. Of course, it is of relevance to note that overlooking Saudi Arabia dreadful record, which includes blood dripping from the hands of the de facto head of state, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon (MBS), did bring Biden and the normally compliant media visible discomfort and some steps back from fist bump amicability in Saudi Arabia. Biden made clear that only national security interests prevented him from fulfilling his 2020 campaign pledge to treat Saudi Arabia as a ‘pariah’ state, he continued to believe that it was when it came to human rights and even more pointedly he rejected MBS’s insistence that he had nothing to do with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi back in 2018. Awkwardly, Biden made himself vulnerable to MBS’s clever taunt—you seem to care much more about Jamal Khashoggi than Shireen Abu Akleh. Rather than implicate Israel, the U.S. investigation of the murder of its own citizen, seems prepared to share the grief of Akleh’s surviving family instead of seeking accountability of the sort that might protect journalists covering dangerous hotspots in the future.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Stephen Colbert’s Team Has Charges Dropped for Filming Insult Dog Segment at Capitol Without Escort

• The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has decided to drop charges against the members of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” production team that were arrested at the U.S. Capitol on June 16. The group had been filming a Triumph the Insult Dog segment for the talk show.

• The decision to decline prosecution on the case was confirmed in a statement made by U.S. Capitol Police on Monday.

=> ↺ You Can’t Buy These Books

• In a remarkable brief filed on July 7 in their ongoing lawsuit, four titans of corporate publishing (Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley) accused the Internet Archive of stealing, “mass-scale copyright infringement,” and “[distributing] full-text digital bootlegs for free.” Those are pretty wild allegations—especially considering that the Internet Archive’s Open Library operates on the traditional terms that libraries in this country have abided by for centuries. The Open Library loans books, which it owns, to one patron at a time, for a fixed period—just like any other library. Like any public library, the Open Library doesn’t charge money for this service. The main difference is that the Open Library loans e-books online. Each e-book is scanned from a paper copy, and the paper copy is stored away and doesn’t circulate; this practice is called Controlled Digital Lending, or CDL.

=> ↺ Jafar Panahi: Acclaimed Iran film maker ordered to serve six years in jail

• Iranian media said Mr Panahi was held after going to Evin prison to ask about one of two fellow directors arrested for supporting protests.

=> ↺ Meet the Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy

• It is an uncomfortable job for anyone trying to draw the line between “harmful content and protecting freedom of speech. It’s a balance”…

=> ↺ A new stage of repression Three experts weigh in on the Kremlin’s changing approach to silencing dissent — Meduza

• On July 15, a judge in Komsomolsk-on-Amur acquitted artist and LGBT activist Yulia Tsvetkova after three years of legal proceedings. Tsvetkova was accused of “distributing pornography” after she published drawings of vulvas on a social media page called the “Vagina Monologues.” Since Russia launched its war against Ukraine, the number of absurd cases like Tsvetkova’s has only grown; Russians can now be charged for as little as putting quotation marks around the phrase “special [military] operation.” For insight into how the authorities’ censorship methods are evolving, Meduza asked a human rights advocate, a political scientist, and a state repression historian about the purpose of cases like Tsvetkova’s.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Russian Journalist Released After Brief Detention

• Her lawyer, Dmitri Zakhvatov, said she was detained because she was suspected of having “discredited” the army in remarks outside a Moscow court last week in support of opposition activist Ilya Yashin, who is accused of spreading false information about the army.

• After sending troops to Ukraine, Moscow adopted laws imposing sentences of up to 15 years for spreading information about the military deemed false by authorities.

=> ↺ Assange Fights Extradition To US With Two Appeals

• Attorneys for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange separately appealed decisions by Home Office Secretary Priti Patel and a United Kingdom…

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Drake Okay, Fine … I Did Have a Run-In w/ Swedish Cops

• In any case, he seems to have had an easier go than A$AP Rocky did. Thank goodness for that.

=> ↺ Uber to pay millions to settle lawsuit for overcharging customers with disabilities

• In a news release, the DOJ said Uber has committed to waiving wait time fees for customers who need more time to get into a car due to their disability or refund disabled customers who don’t get a waiver beforehand.

• The company will also pay back some 65,000 eligible riders for double the amount they were charged in wait time fees, which the DOJ said could add up to millions of dollars.

=> ↺ Uber will pay over $2 million to disabled riders after federal settlement

• Uber has settled with the Department of Justice over allegations that it discriminated against disabled passengers, the DOJ announced in a press release on Monday. As part of the agreement, Uber will credit double the total wait fees issued to the 65,000 disabled riders already identified by Uber’s programs and commit more than $2 million to funds for other affected individuals.

• The claims center on Uber’s wait fee policy, which adds additional fees when a passenger takes more than two minutes to board the car. Disabled riders have long objected to the policy, claiming the fees disproportionately affect riders with physical disabilities.

=> ↺ White Riot

• The Clash’s lead singer Joe Strummer strenuously denied charges that the song was racist. It was, he said, explicitly anti-racist. The song approvingly cites the uprising of Black youth in British cities against poverty and racism. The lyrics urge White youth to rise up in solidarity since, after all,

• The events of January 6, 2021 are an eerie, fun-house reflection of these lyrics. In what turned into a White riot, the insurrectionists effectively wanted a “riot of my own” after observing the BlackLivesMatter protests that broke out in the wake of George Floyd’s killing half a year earlier. But this was hardly a demonstration of solidarity. Even though the January 6 riot ended up being far more antagonistic and violent toward the police than any #BLM demonstration, it was a direct repudiation of the efforts by African Americans and others against police brutality, political disenfranchisement, and economic inequality.

=> ↺ Opinion | Cruelty Is Still the Point, But Will It Make a Difference in November?

• Since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, the Republican party has doubled down on its utter contempt for women’s rights and civil rights more generally.

=> ↺ 10-Year-Old Ohio Rape Survivor Shows U.S. Not Ready for Post-Roe “Unimaginable Abortion Stories”

• We speak with Harvard journalism analyst Laura Hazard Owen, who says reporters will have to abandon “conventional journalism wisdom” to cover abortion stories following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. “Reporters are going to need to accept that it’s going to be really hard to sort of do the things that they’ve been trained to do when they’re writing about these cases,” says Hazard Owen, explaining why privacy laws and the criminalization of doctors will make it harder to identify pregnant people and fact-check different abortion stories that involve young victims or occur in Republican-controlled states. Her latest piece is titled “Unimaginable abortion stories will become more common. Is American journalism ready?”

=> ↺ WaPo Joined Right in Casting Doubt on 10-Year-Old’s Post-Roe Nightmare

• Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson (Mediaite, 7/13/22) accused Biden of “lying,” insisting the story was “not true”; a New York Post op-ed headline (7/12/22) declared it “looks like a lie”; and Fox contributor Charlie Hunt (7/12/22) opined:

=> ↺ Lawmakers Answer Supreme Court Threat to LGBTQ+ Equality With Respect for Marriage Act

• Members of Congress alarmed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent reversal on abortion rights and threats to other basic freedoms on Monday introduced legislation intended to ensure protections for LGBTQ+ and interracial marriages.

• “The far-right Supreme Court is waging war on the freedoms of the American people, including the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.”

=> ↺ ‘We Need to Fight’: Cori Bush, Tina Smith Unveil Bill to Bolster Access to Medication Abortion

• Rep. Cori Bush and Sen. Tina Smith introduced bicameral legislation Monday aimed at bolstering access to medication abortion as Republican-led states across the U.S. attempt to restrict distribution of the pills in their drive to ban abortion entirely.

• If passed, the Protecting Access to Medication Abortion Act would codify into federal law the Food and Drug Administration’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for mifepristone, one of two medications commonly used in tandem to end a pregnancy. In December, the FDA permanently lifted its requirement that mifepristone be administered in person, allowing patients to receive the medication through the mail.

=> ↺ We Need Honest Debate, Not Unprincipled Attacks: A Further Response to the Attacks On Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights

• Never mind that Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights already thoroughly rebutted the dishonest claims against it that Sommers elevated and attempted to legitimize. Never mind that, from their own perspective, the Revcoms rebutted the attacks on them and their leader, Bob Avakian, as well.

• It is necessary for organizations and individuals to substantively debate differences of analysis and strategy. This is a process that everyone can learn from and which serves to forge unity in the fight against injustice. But it is something else entirely to traffic in lies, slanders, and libel, as do the attacks Sommers is legitimizing.

=> ↺ Idaho GOP Sets Party Line Against Life-Saving Exception for Abortions

=> ↺ House Staffers in 8 Offices File to Form First-Ever Congressional Unions

=> ↺ Starbucks and Other Companies Escalate War on Unions With Store Closures

• Workers at “progressive” companies like Starbucks and Heine Brothers’ Coffee exercised their right to form a union. Now the companies are closing their stores.

=> ↺ What Is Class Struggle Unionism?

• Joe Burns’ new Class Struggle Unionism comes at a key time. That’s because the long-slumbering union movement looks like it could be starting to stir again.

=> ↺ “The Worst Abuser You Could Ever Have”

• Tracy McCarter did everything that society tells domestic violence survivors to do. She separated from her husband, Jim Murray, and moved on with her life. She continued working full-time as a nurse at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was enrolled in a master’s program at Columbia University, and was looking forward to celebrating her graduation with her four grown children. In the seven months since she had separated from her husband, she had rented her own apartment in Manhattan and was in the process of buying one in Queens, far enough away from Murray, whose alcoholism had been spiraling out of control, to minimize his intrusions. Although she still loved her husband, McCarter was preparing to enter a new chapter in her life—one in which she would welcome her first grandchild into the world, purchase and renovate a co-op, and advance her career.1

=> ↺ The Fight Over Berlin’s Comfort Woman Statue

• On the second Monday of each month, Jim-Bob Heimberg walks across the street from his family’s flower shop café to a park in the quiet Berlin neighborhood of Moabit. There, Heimberg, a tall, 27-year-old German, places a crown of flowers atop a statue of a small Korean girl.

=> ↺ Edafe Okporo’s Manifesto for the Migrant

• When Edafe Okporo was released from a New Jersey immigration detention center in 2017, he had nowhere to go. He spent a few nights wandering in Newark Penn Station, dozing on benches and in corners, and then found shelter at a nearby YMCA. He had no money, no phone, knew nobody, and, besides a few hours in a back room of JFK airport, had never been in the United States as a free man. A year later, he was the director of a homeless shelter in Harlem, offering refuge to people who were facing the same displacement and homelessness he had barely overcome.

=> ↺ Two Cities Took Different Approaches to Pandemic Court Closures. They Got Different Results.

• On Dec. 31, 2020, a 40-year-old man named Leon Casiquito walked into Kelly Liquors on Route 66 in Albuquerque and tried to shoplift a bottle of tequila. When one of the owners, Danny Choi, tried to stop him, Casiquito flashed a small pocketknife. Choi told police he knocked the bottle out of Casiquito’s hand with a stick and Casiquito left the store.

• Choi locked the door, but Casiquito hung around in the parking lot, shouting that he was going to beat up the store’s employees. One of them called the police, and soon four officers arrived and wrestled Casiquito to the ground. He was charged with armed robbery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon — despite not actually attacking anyone with the pocketknife — and held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque.

=> ↺ Federal Court Allows Protesters’ First Amendment Suit Against Violent Boston Cops To Continue

• A lawsuit filed by four protesters against three Boston police officers can move forward, following a federal judge’s determination that the cops’ counterarguments were too ridiculous to be granted credence.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Advocates Welcome New Push for ‘Incredibly Important’ Net Neutrality Bill

• Open internet advocates on Monday celebrated news of soon-to-be-unveiled legislation that “would reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service,” exposing industry giants to stricter federal oversight.

• “Broadband internet is a necessity, not a luxury.”

=> ↺ U.S. Senate Democrats plan bill aiming to restore ‘net neutrality’

• Two U.S. Senate Democrats active in internet issues are working on a bill to restore landmark “net neutrality” rules that would bar telecommunications companies from blocking or throttling traffic or offering paid fast lanes. Senators Edward Markey and Ron Wyden plan to introduce a bill this summer that would put broadband under the umbrella of a telecommunications service, which means that providers would be subject to stricter Federal Communications Commision (FCC) oversight, a source briefed on the matter told Reuters. Representative Doris Matsui is working on a companion House version.

=> ↺ Democrats prepare bill that would codify net neutrality

• The Net Neutrality and Broadband Justice Act — spearheaded by longtime Senate internet advocates Ed Markey (D-MA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) — would reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service under Title II. This would give the Federal Communications Commission new enforcement powers over the internet, including the power to set rules against throttling, blocking, or paid prioritization.

=> ↺ Democrats plan sweeping net neutrality bill as FCC majority stalls

• While the two-page bill is seemingly simple in scope, it would have massive implications in addition to reinstating net neutrality, the rules that bar internet service providers from blocking or throttling content. It would shift how aggressively the FCC can regulate issues like internet pricing, consumer privacy and competition in the broadband market.

• Lawmakers plan to introduce the bill in coming weeks, likely before the August recess, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

=> ↺ Legislative Brief on Digital Rights for Monsoon Session 2022

• We have prepared our legislative brief on digital rights for the Monsoon Session 2022 of the Indian Parliament. In our brief, we highlight some of the focus areas within the larger issues of digital rights, data governance, increased digitalisation in the absence of robust rights-based policies, and other concerns that call for extensive deliberation in the Houses of Parliament.

• [...]

• The Monsoon Session of the Indian Parliament commenced on July 18, and as per bulletins by the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha secretariats, it will end on August 18.

• The previous Budget Session of the Parliament saw several key issues being taken up as part of the budget deliberations in both the Houses. Even though the House was adjourned sine die a day ahead of schedule, the Lok Sabha worked for 123% of its scheduled time and Rajya Sabha for 90%. In our review of the Budget Session, we had previously analysed the budgetary allocations for the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (“MeitY”).

• Though the Prime Minister called for the Members to put aside party politics, this session is expected to be a confrontational one, as issues like the agnipath scheme, demolitions drives, raids on members of the opposition, allegations of use of spyware and planting of evidence, rising inflation and unemployment are expected to come to the fore. While there is speculation that the Draft Data Protection Bill, 2021 and new legislation to replace the Information Technology Act, 2000 might be tabled in the House this time, they have not been included in the Lok Sabha List of Business as of July 15, 2022.

=> ↺ U.S. Consumers Pay $1,600 Annually For Cable TV Channels They Don’t Watch

• One of the reasons that propaganda mills like Fox News don’t take a bigger hit from advertising boycotts is because U.S. consumers pay billions of dollars annually for the channel, even if they don’t watch it. More specifically, Fox rakes in $1.8 billion in carriage fees to include the channel in bloated cable bundles, despite the fact that just 3 million of the nation’s 90 million cable TV subscribers actively watch.

=> ↺ Brief Reprieve: UK Puts Online Safety Bill On Hold While It Sorts Out Its Boris Johnson-Shaped Mess

• I guess it’s only natural that the UK’s Online Safety Bill — brilliantly dubbed the bill to Brexit the internet by Heather Burns — is getting delayed, just like the regular Brexit. And, no surprise, Boris Johnson is part of the issue again. As you’ll have likely heard, if you haven’t been under a rock, Johnson is on his way out and is currently in the lamest of lame ducks periods as we wait to figure out what other nutty character will replace him (don’t worry, none of the choices are good).

=> ↺ Just A Click Away: How To Improve Broadband Competition

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Netflix braces for critical earnings call after challenging year

• Netflix will share its earnings information and outlook going forward on Tuesday after a rocky year in which it faced falling subscription rates and increasing competition.

• Tuesday’s call will be the streaming service giant’s first briefing on its quarterly earnings since sharing in April that the company lost 200,000 subscribers — its first subscriber loss in more than 10 years.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ US Lawmakers Want FTC to Crack Down on Overpromising and Dishonest VPNs

• Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Anna Eshoo are urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to take action against abusive and deceptive practices in the VPN industry. They note that many Americans benefit from the increased privacy and security that VPNs offer, but some VPN providers can overpromise or be dishonest with their subscribers.

=> ↺ Court Orders Cloudflare’s DNS Resolver 1.1.1.1 to Block Pirate Sites in Italy

• An Italian court has ordered Cloudflare to block three torrent sites on its public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1. The anti-piracy measures were requested by local music industry group FIMI and anti-piracy group FPM. This is the first time that Cloudflare DNS must block pirate sites and, with this injunction in hand, Google and OpenDNS could be next.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Dimanĉo

• I had no trouble waking up for Liturgy this morning, in fact I had an excellent sleep. It was the local bishop’s namesday and so we greeted him after liturgy. The weather has been clear and unseasonably chilly, though I would rather it be a too cold than too warm.

• At lunch I met 3 Polish-speaking young women, one from Germany, one from somewhere else in Poland, and one from Białystok. They seem very nice if a little insular, i.e. they are more comfortable speaking Polish to each other rather than English to the rest of us, and I can’t blame them. Ili estas agrablaj, kaj mi antaŭĝojas paroli pli kun ili.

• I’m excited for the conference; it technically starts tomorrow. Meeting people from around the world and sharing ideas and time will be great.

Technical

Science

=> ↺ Observing Sound Waves Up Close

• I never really thought about the intricacy of sound waves before, the minute variations they possess. However, given that I am entering the field of audio design, gradually creating more intricate songs, I decided today to view, firsthand, the microscopic pattern of a waveform, courtesy of a piece of software I have installed which allows for a comprehensive visualization.

• The results were stunning, as well as being visually appealing on their own merits. The amount of variation present within microseconds of audio spans a wide range of strange and unique patterns. Given that I am also involved in the visual field, I see something captivating in these whorls of invisible force.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

=> Techrights

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.