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● Links 30/09/2022: *buntu 22.10 Beta and Linux Mint 21.1 Plans

Posted in News Roundup at 9:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ SCP and SFTP, What Are The Differences? – Invidious

• Explaining the differences between Secure Copy and Secure File Transfer Protocol Music used in the video

=> ↺ Become a FreeBSD Bash Script pro with ShellCheck! – Invidious

• I can do BASIC, and maybe even a little sh/bash script, but to become better, I need a tutor to correct my work, and in this short video I have a look at ShellCheck on FreeBSD!

=> ↺ LHS Episode #482: Linux Network Utilities Deep Dive

• Hello and welcome to Episode 482 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts take an in-depth look at some common network utilities on the Linux command line to help you configure, monitor and troubleshoot your computers’ network connections. We hope you find this episode informative and entertaining. Please send us feedback and we look forward to catching you for the next installment.

Applications

=> ↺ Excellent Utilities: CopyQ – advanced clipboard manager

• This series highlights best-of-breed utilities. We cover a wide range of utilities including tools that boost your productivity, help you manage your workflow, and lots more besides.

• CopyQ is an advanced clipboard manager. This software stores content of the system clipboard whenever it changes and allows to search the history and copy it back to the system clipboard or paste it directly to other applications. The tool offers a lot of functionality.

• It’s written in C++ and published under an open source license.

=> ↺ 32 Outstanding Linux Utilities to Maximize your Productivity

• This is a series of cornerstone articles highlighting essential utilities. These are small, indispensable tools, useful for anyone running a Linux machine.

• You’ve migrated over from Windows or Mac OS X to the wonderful world of Linux. You’ve selected a Linux distro (after a bit of fruitful distro hopping), chosen a desktop environment, and studied the basic Linux commands. Or you’ve been using Linux for decades, know the operating system like the back of your hand. Whatever your level of experience, you want some really useful free utilities. Software that enriches your workflow, offers new opportunities, and allows you to tap into new innovations. This article picks the finest open source software to maximize the goodness of Linux.

=> ↺ ‘UnstableFusion’ Makes AI Art Easy on Windows, Mac, and Linux

• Stable Diffusion is a popular tool for creating AI artwork, since it can run directly on your computer, instead of relying on cloud servers like DALL-E. However, Stable Diffusion isn’t as easy to use as web-based tools, which is starting to change.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Most Commonly Used Linux Commands You Should Know

• Linux is a very popular Operating System (OS) amongst programmers and regular users. One of the main reasons for its popularity is its exceptional command line support. We can manage the entire Linux operating system via command line interface (CLI) only. This allows us to accomplish complex tasks with a just few commands.

• In this guide, we will discuss some commonly used commands that are useful for experienced sysadmin or a beginner. After following this guide, users will be able to operate the Linux system confidently.

=> ↺ How I dock my Linux laptop

• Not that long ago, docking a laptop was a new idea to me. Since then, I’ve set up two different laptops for docking, and I’ve been more than satisfied with how this configuration works. This article describes how I set up the laptop docking stations and gives tips and guidance for anyone considering the same.

=> ↺ Day 4: the min() function

• It’s time to get me up on speed with modern CSS. There’s so much new in CSS that I know too little about. To change that I’ve started #100DaysOfMoreOrLessModernCSS. Why more or less modern CSS? Because some topics will be about cutting-edge features, while other stuff has been around for quite a while already, but I just have little to no experience with it.

=> ↺ Drive failure and IO errors? ZFS to the rescue!

• It’s funny, because it’s actually difficult to put into words. I have dealt with different filesystems over the past 35+ years, but one thing is clear, ZFS is unique! Absolutely nothing compares. And it’s not just the fact that ZFS tries really really hard to protect your data, actually amazingly hard, but it almost also “holds your hand” while it does it.

=> ↺ Detecting manual (and optimizing large) package installs in Puppet – anarcat

• I recently worked on a neat hack called puppet-package-check. It is designed to warn about manually installed packages, to make sure “everything is in Puppet”. But it turns out it can (probably?) dramatically increase the bootstrap time of Puppet bootstrap when it needs to install a large number of packages.

=> ↺ GNU Linux Debian 11 (bullseye) – find and remove duplicates files with czkawka_cli (successor to fslint)

=> ↺ Linux rmdir Command Examples for Beginners

• As Linux users, we interact with the files and directories on a regular basis. One common operation users perform is removing directories from the file system. However, we have to be extra careful while removing the directories. Because carelessly performed removal operations can result in data loss.

• In this beginner-friendly article, we will learn about the rmdir command. We will also discuss some of the practical examples that can be used on a day-to-day basis.

=> ↺ How to Properly Theme KDE Plasma [An in-depth Guide]

• If you have been using Linux for some time, you know about KDE Plasma, the desktop environment.

• Many distributions ship KDE Plasma as the default (or flagship) desktop environment.

• Hence, it is not surprising to find it among the best desktop environments.

=> ↺ 6 Ways to List Network Interfaces in Debian 11 – VITUX

• A network manager often finds himself in situations where he has to change various network configurations.

=> ↺ How to Install and Use Ngrok

• “This tutorial explains how to use Ngrok to make local resources public. For example, to make a local website from the localhost accessible from the internet.

• After reading this tutorial, you will be able to make websites and applications hosted on the local computer (Local Host or 127.0.0.1) public. Except for the installation methods, which only cover Debian and RedHat based Linux distributions, usage instructions are valid for every distribution.

• All instructions included in this tutorial contain screenshots, making it easy for every Linux user to understand and follow them.”

=> ↺ How to Use the Bash xargs Commands

• “xargs is a bash command that allows the execution of multiple commands in the same line. Whether the commands take parameters or arguments as input, they can run in the same line when combined with xargs. With xargs, you can build and execute multiple commands through the standard input, as xargs can take an input and convert it to a command argument to be used by the next command.”

• To help you understand xargs and how you can use it, this article will give multiple examples of using the xargs command. Take a look!

=> ↺ Install Samba on RHEL-Based Linux Distributions | TechRepublic

• With some Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu Desktop, many of the pieces are in place by default. Other distributions, such as those based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, might not include everything required to get Samba working out of the box. That’s what I’m here for: I want to walk you through the process of getting Samba up and running on RHEL-based Linux distributions.

=> ↺ How to Install Yarn on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

• Yarn is a package manager that helps develop JavaScript code and shares it through software packages. A team at Facebook developed it as an alternative to the Node package manager (NPM) client and focused on speed, security, and consistency. Packages, also known as modules, are used to distribute the code, and a package.json file outlines the contents of the package and all associated distributed codes. Yarn can work offline and has a deterministic algorithm used to install packages, meaning that if two developers have the same dependencies, Yarn will generate the same file structure in both projects. This allows for a better understanding of projects and more reliable builds.

• In addition, Yarn uses checksums to verify the integrity of every installed package before its code is executed. Yarn will attempt to fix mismatches automatically or report an error if mismatches are found. Using Yarn, developers can share JavaScript code more quickly and efficiently while ensuring that code is secure and consistent across projects.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn various methods of installing Yard on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish desktop or server, along with some tips on using Yarn.

=> ↺ How to Install Okular on Linux Mint 21 LTS

• Okular is a free and open-source multiplatform document viewer developed by the KDE community. It is based on Qt and KDE Frameworks libraries and is distributed as part of the KDE Applications bundle. Okular was initially developed as a fork of KPDF, and it has since replaced KPDF, KGhostView, KFax, KFaxview, and KDVI in KDE 4.

• The application is available for Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows, and Android. Okular has various features that make it suitable for viewing multiple document types, including PDFs, PostScript files, DjVu files, XPS files, comic books, and more. The app also supports annotations and notes, making it ideal for students and researchers who need to take notes on documents. Okular is a versatile document viewer perfect for users who require to view various document types.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn to install Okular on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish using the standard default apt repository or flatpak third-party package manager, with some tips for maintaining or removing Okular in the future.

=> ↺ How to clear cache on Linux? – Unix / Linux the admins Tutorials

• Clearing the Linux cache can bring us certain advantages that we should take a look at. Today you will learn how to do it on Linux. Let’s go.

=> ↺ How to install Element on a Chromebook – a Matrix client

• Today we are looking at how to install Element, a Matrix client, on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

Games

=> ↺ The free Indonesia update for art of rally is out now

• Continuing to expand to some gorgeous locations to race through, the free Indonesia update for art of rally is out now.

=> ↺ Open-world turn-based RPG ‘Of Blades & Tails’ arrives October 19th

• Inspired by classic hack and slashers like Diablo and turn-based RPGs like Tales of Maj’Eyal or Stoneshard, we have the new open-world RPG coming Of Blades & Tails. Planned to enter Early Access on October 19th, this will feature Native Linux support and it looks great.

=> ↺ Project Killswitch sales suspended as the kickstand messed with the Steam Deck fan

• Looks like dbrand are not having a great time with Project Killswitch, their bundle of accessories as they had to pull it from sale shortly after going up for reservations due to it causing problems.

=> ↺ A Mod For OpenTTD

• I’ve started fiddling with it, and I really like it. I’m incrementally getting somewhere. I figure that if I could sit down alone for a full day I could have this NewGRF finished. It’ll be at least a week before I have that opportunity though.

=> ↺ Pico W retro gaming special in The MagPi magazine issue #122

• Get back in time to the glory years of gaming with the brand new Pico W microcontroller board.

=> ↺ GOG celebrates 14 years with big sale, game giveaway and Skyrim release

• GOG are celebrating 14 years of existing with a big sale on lots of games, plus you can get a free copy of Master of Magic Classic.

=> ↺ Transferring files from PC to Steam Deck with FileZilla FTP

• Want another way to transfer files from a PC (Linux / Windows) over to a Steam Deck? Here’s how to do it using the FileZilla FTP application. I’ve already covered the use of tools like Warpinator and Syncthing and both are great, however not everyone gets along with them and this way is pretty much bulletproof with a tiny bit of a setup.

=> ↺ Point and click mystery adventure The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is out now

• Arriving with Native Linux support, the new mysterious point and click adventure game The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow from Cloak and Dagger Games / Wadjet Eye Games is out now.

=> ↺ Google Is Shutting Down Stadia Games Service After It Failed to ‘Gain Traction’

• After three years, Google Stadia is exiting the arena.

• The internet search giant, which launched the streaming games service in November 2019, announced that Google Stadia will be winding down over the next few months. Players will continue to have access to their games library and be able to play through Jan. 18, 2023. Google said it will refund all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, as well as all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store.

• While Stadia’s approach to streaming games “was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service,” Phil Harrison, VP and GM of Stadia, wrote in a blog post Thursday about the decision.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Parrot OS 5.1 Brings a Host of Updates and New Docker Repo

• Updated security tools, IoT performance improvements, and its own Docker repo are some things the new Parrot OS 5.1 comes with.

• Parrot OS, similar to Kali Linux, was created as a security-focused operating system for ethical hackers and privacy-oriented users. It is a free and open-source Linux distribution based on Debian.

• Half a year after its latest stable release, 5.0, Parrot OS 5.1 is finally here. So let’s see what’s changed.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Red Hat advances Enterprise Linux with improved Podman containers | VentureBeat

• There is more than one type of application container technology that enterprises can choose as they build out cloud-native applications.

• Linux vendor Red Hat announced this week the beta release of the latest update for its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) platform with the 8.7 and 9.1 milestones. Both RHEL 8.7 and 9.1 add new features and capabilities designed to help organizations more effectively use Podman containers, which is an open source effort led by Red Hat.

• Red Hat has been a business unit of IBM since it was acquired for $34 billion in 2018.

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the company’s flagship Linux platform on which enterprises and government users run all types of applications. Red Hat supports multiple versions of its enterprise platform with a series of incremental updates every year.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu 22.10 Beta is Now Available to Download

• Links to download the Ubuntu 22.10 beta are live, meaning those wanting to test the “Kinetic Kudu” can now do so!

• The final stable version of Ubuntu 22.10 is due in on October 20. But before it can receive the rubber-stamp of officialdom, eagle-eyed bug testing must take place, which happens by way of this beta build.

• Now, as this is an interim Ubuntu release, the changes and features on offer aren’t as substantial as in April’s LTS release.

• But there’s still plenty to look forward too.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) Beta Released with GNOME 43, Linux Kernel 5.19

• Featuring the latest GNOME 43 desktop environment, Ubuntu 22.10 beta comes with PipeWire as the default sound system, which is accompanied by WirePlumber as its session and policy manager, GCC 12 as the default system compiler, as well as Endeavour, a new app for managing your personal tasks.

• Under the hood, Ubuntu 22.10 beta is powered by Linux kernel 5.19, which features support for AMD’s Secure Nested Paging feature, initial support for Loongson’s “LoongArch” RISC ISA CPU architecture, support for ZSTD-compressed firmware files, support for the ARM Scalable Matrix Extension (SME), and many other changes.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 22.10 Beta is Out! Here Are Top 7 Features

• Ubuntu 22.10 is around the corner. This release brings significant improvements, notably GNOME 43 (the showstopper?) and Linux Kernel 5.19.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) Final Beta released

• The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the Beta release of the Ubuntu 22.10 Desktop, Server, and Cloud products.

• Ubuntu 22.10, codenamed “Kinetic Kudu”, continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

• This Beta release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Cloud products, but also the Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu Unity, and Xubuntu flavours.

• The Beta images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper image build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of 22.10 that should be representative of the features intended to ship with the final release expected on October 20, 2022.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Studio 22.10 Beta Released – Ubuntu Studio

• The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 22.10, codenamed “Kinetic Kudu”.

• While this beta is reasonably free of any showstopper installer bugs, you may find some bugs within. This image is, however, mostly representative of what you will find when Ubuntu Studio 22.10 is released on October 20, 2022.

=> ↺ Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” to Arrive on Christmas with Improved Driver Manager, New ISO Verifier

• Linux Mint 21.1 has been codenamed “Vera” and it’s the first point release to Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa”, which means that it will be based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) and powered by Linux kernel 5.15 LTS, and the same internal components as upstream.

• While the internals will be pretty much unchanged, Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” will come with improvements to the Driver Manager and Software Source in-house built tools. Software Sources has been updated to make it easier to handle PPA keys.

=> ↺ That’s a wrap! Canonical attends the very first OpenSearchCon in Seattle

• A few of us at Canonical travelled from Europe to the beautiful Pacific Northwest, Seattle, Washington and attended the very first OpenSearchCon. Huge congratulations to the OpenSearch team for the well-organised, first ever in-person conference held on 21 September 2022 at Fremont Studios.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Nuvoton NuMicro MA35D1 Arm Cortex-A35/M4 microprocessor to power Linux edge IIoT gateways – CNX Software

• Novoton NuMicro MA35D1 microprocessor features two Arm Cortex-A35 cores, one Arm Cortex-M4 real-time core, and two Ethernet interfaces for Linux-based edge IIoT gateway.

• The SoC also is offered in variants supporting external DDR memory or integrated up to 512MB RAM, 154 or 208 GPIOs, and an optional “Enhanced ADC”. The MA35D1 also comes with a TFT interface for up to 1920×1080 displays, several hardware security features, and the company says the microprocessor facilitates Tiny AI/ML for edge computing despite not integrating an AI accelerator.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi CM4 cluster Mini-ITX board available for $199

• SeeedStudio recently launched the DeskPi Super6C CM4 Cluster board which can accommodate up to 6 Raspberry Pi CM4 modules. This cluster board comes with a mini-ITX form factor providing access to 2x GbE LAN ports and M.2 sockets for each CM4 module.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ We all live in a LEGO submarine

• This radio-controlled submarine is smart enough to maintain a steady depth and keep a set distance from the bottom of the body of water it’s dropped in. A pressure sensor and a laser distance sensor make all of this possible. The LEGO submarine has so far survived tests in a swimming pool and a real-life river.

=> ↺ Stackable Storage Caddies #3DThursday #3DPrinting

• Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

=> ↺ Let’s Race! Using ESP32 Wireless Timing

• There are two techniques for timing an athlete’s 40-yard dash; hand timing, and fully automated electronic timing. As you probably know, hand timing consists of manually starting and stopping time as the athlete crosses the start and finish lines. Fully automated electronic timing methodologies are used to mitigate human error, whereby the actions of the athlete will start and stop the time. Typically, an athlete will have a “slower” 40-yard dash time if they are timed using a fully automated timing system. These electronic systems are extremely expensive costing the average Joe more than $600 for one system. Inspired by the significance of the 40-yard dash and its costly market, we set out to replicate this timing system using only SparkFun components.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Are Android-based game-streaming handhelds a fad, or are they the future? | Ars Technica

=> ↺ Samsung Music app now officially supports Android 13 and One UI 5.0 – SamMobile

=> ↺ Android 12 rolling out for Galaxy Tab A8 in Europe – 9to5Google

=> ↺ Chrome tab count now includes pages in Tab Groups on Android

=> ↺ Every Way To Take A Screenshot On Your Android Phone

=> ↺ The best video players on Android in 2022

=> ↺ Warning for millions of Android phone owners over very dangerous mistake | The US Sun

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Ken Thompson Really Did Launch His “Trusting Trust” Trojan Attack in Real Life

• In 2021, I’ve rediscovered the full Usenet message after a search effort in multiple Usenet archives. My success was partial – it was still a repost by someone else, and I was unable to find the original message. However, this repost contains the full Usenet message, including complete headers and message body, with the poster name and its Message-ID, establishing the authenticity of the post beyond reasonable doubts.

• Historians with a higher standard of proof may contact the poster in person, and the confirmation would be trivial. The poster of this message was Jay R. Ashworth, apparently well-involved in tech and was the author of RFC 2100.

• In conclusion, Ken Thompson’s “Trusting Trust” compiler Trojan attack is not just a thought experiment. In fact, it was actually what he really did in real life. In a 1995 mail, he said he was able to successfully compromise the Unix Support Group at Bell Labs (precursor to Unix System Laboratories).

=> ↺ Unicode in C

• Unicode is a set of non-English characters which can be characters from a different language like Arabic, Hebrew, etc, or can be special characters like emojis and smiley faces. Character encoding went for a toss when different people from different regions of the world started encoding in their local languages. Because of that, the whole process of communication by the means of computers got affected. So, to handle this problem, the Unicode consortium came into the picture which was a group of different people from different regions and different companies whose main task was to encode all the characters that exist in the world in such a way that there remain no disputes.

• Unicode started with a fixed two-byte character set but later on, it was changed. Unicode consists of more than a hundred thousand characters and over a hundred languages to handle the vast multitude of different languages including complex characters like emojis, modifiers, and other unknown characters.

• If we try to print a special character like an emoji in C language, the compiler will not give the result of printing that emoji. Rather, it returns a code for that emoji which will not be helpful for the user. To resolve this matter, we will practice the Unicode process in C.

=> ↺ Fgets() Function in C

• The title of this article little clears out the purpose of using the fgets function in C. The fgets() function in C is mainly designed to get the data input from a user or an input stream like file and display it within the output console. To get the input from a user to display on the console, we must have some buffer memory or array in which we can store that input. Using this function, we can restrict the number of characters to be displayed from an input stream and avoid displaying the excess data and display only the needed ones. This guide covers some C examples to explain the use of the fgets() function in detail.

• The system update is a must before performing any sort of coding on it as it caters to all the memory-related issues and makes your system feature full. Thus, the “update” keyword with the “apt” utility and “sudo” privilege is a must. After adding this query to your Linux shell, it would require the passcode of a currently logged-in user.

=> ↺ Limine nested menu

• I posted a couple of days ago, adding a “Fix broken video” menu entry to Limine boot-loader

=> ↺ POSIX Semaphores in C

• “Although every programming language has many libraries for specific purposes, the POSIX library of C has its place. It has been designed to create a great harmonization among the processes and helps a lot in using multithreading within the programs, i.e., creating multiple threads and synchronizing their execution. Within this guide today, you will see a simple illustration of using POSIX semaphores in C. For the basic C code examples, we must configure its compiler in the system. But, before that, we need to update the system as it’s a must needed step for the smooth execution of code. Thus, the query displayed in the attached snap is a must-have to update and upgrade your Linux operating system with the “apt” utility.”

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ gfldex: Rabbitholeing

• With PWC 182-2 specifically asking for Linux paths to be handled, we need to resolve issues like /../ and symbolic links. Since I didn’t feel like putting a directory called a into my root folder, I wrote a little helper that deals with some of the tripwires that modern filesystems provide.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Forsaken Identities: Brujes-la-Morte

• If this sounds familiar, it is because Rodenbach’s book influenced Boilea-Narcejac’s novel The Living and the Dead, upon which Hitchcock’s Vertigo is based. The same phantoms of identity haunt all three works in the form of a doppelgänger, the inauthentic double of an object of love whose apparition brings tragedy and death. In the early modern period, false appearances and general uncertainty preoccupied the sciences, arts, and popular imagination. The advent of photography and cinema seemed to propel dusty phantoms into material existence, and old folk tales of dead ringers took on new forms with new technologies (spirit pictures, films like The Student of Prague and Der Januskopf, the compulsions of psychoanalysis and early sociology). The human double was a blurry byproduct of the paranoias of anonymity and social relations, a bad conscience of mass production become flesh and mirror. As Freud put it: The double has become an image of terror, just as, after the collapse of their religion, the gods turned into demons.

=> ↺ Hackaday Prize 2022: An Old (and Distinguished) Camera Learns New Tricks

• In the 1950s the major Hollywood studios needed impressive cinematic technologies for their epic movies, to both see off the threat from television, and to differentiate themselves from their competitors. For most of them this meant larger screens and thus larger frame film, and for Paramount, this meant VistaVision. [Steve Switaj] is working on one of the original VistaVision cameras made for the studio in the 1950s, and shares with us some of the history and the work required to update its electronics for the 2020s.

=> ↺ SIEGE

• i. In the dark, a woman traces the body of her son the way she traces the map of scars that adorns her body. It is night in their village. Outside, the branches of trees fall like men on the battlefield. There is a sound rising into the air like the voices of those about to be murdered. A sound that carries with it the cries of women buried beneath the bloodied soil of this land. Somewhere a woman placates her child to sleep, says tomorrowyou will wake up to a sky with stars. In a room, a man teaches his son how to outpace bullets whenever he goes to the streets to play. There is silence lingering in rooms abandoned by those who stay awake tonight in a refugee camp.

=> ↺ The Real Butt of Nathan Fielder’s Joke

• Nathan Fielder bothers people. Or at least the character he plays makes them very uncomfortable. His lack of affect, monotone delivery, and blank demeanor alienate or captivate viewers depending on their charitability toward his enterprise. A persistent, somewhat integral question comes up again and again in his work: What is the line between the real-life Fielder and his character? (We’ll refer to the character as “Nathan.”) Fielder’s creative motivations have been the subject of some predictable debate in light of his latest HBO series, The Rehearsal. The metafictional documentary follows Nathan as he assists ordinary people paralyzed by everyday challenges (difficult conversations; learning how to parent) by having them rehearse the situation in a meticulously designed facsimile. Nathan commissions elaborate sets and well-prepared actors to practice seemingly every iteration of an awkward confession or a difficult interaction. The results impact both Nathan and the participants in unexpected ways.

Hardware

=> ↺ A Drone For The Rest Of Us

• As anyone who’s spent Christmas morning trying to shake a quadcopter out of a tree can attest, controlling these fast moving RC vehicles can be tricky and require a bit of practice to master. [Erik] wanted to simplify this a little bit so his children and friends could race with him, and the end result is a drone that only needs two inputs to fly.

=> ↺ Building A Replica Of An Obscure Romanian Computer

• We’ve all seen emulated Apple II and Commodore 64 boards about the place. Few of us have heard of the Romanian ZX Spectrum clone known as the Cobra, let alone any efforts to replicate one. However, [Thomas Sowell] has achieved just that, and has shared the tale with us online.

=> ↺ Casting Metal With A Microwave And Vacuum Cleaner

• Metalworking might conjure images of large furnaces powered by coal, wood, or electricity, with molten metal sloshing around and visible in its crucible. But metalworking from home doesn’t need to use anything more fancy than a microwave, at least according to [Denny] a.k.a. [Shake the Future]. He has a number of metalworking tools designed to melt metal using a microwave, and in this video he uses them to make a usable aluminum pencil with a graphite core.

=> ↺ Teensy Becomes Tiny Handheld Computer, Plays Emulators

• Science fiction predicted that we would one day all carry around tiny computers of great power. While smartphones are great, those predictions were more based on cuter systems that more closely approximated existing computers, with keyboards and screens. [Jean-Marc Harvengt] has built something along those very lines, and it’s called the T-COMPUTER.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Becoming a father shrinks your cerebrum

• It is hardly surprising that pregnancy and childbirth, nine months of enormous changes to a woman’s body, also change her brain. And they do, by causing certain parts of it to shrink. Fathers, it might be thought, would be unaffected. But no. There is evidence that their brains shrink, too. A paper just published in Cerebral Cortex by Magdalena Martínez-García of the Gregorio Marañón Health Research Institute in Madrid, and her colleagues, divulges the details.

=> ↺ Opinion | Denial of Mental Healthcare: ‘Your Therapist Will See You Now or Will They?’

• Can you imagine breaking your arm and your doctor saying, “I think we can squeeze you in—in a month or two.” Unimaginable. 

=> ↺ From COVID to Monkeypox, Our Health System Failed. We Need Medicare for All.

=> ↺ The Democrats Need to Keep Their Promises on Marijuana Reform

• Vote for Democrats “if you believe in decriminalizing cannabis,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer insisted just days prior to the election. “If I become majority leader, I will put this on the floor and it’s likely to pass.”

=> ↺ Voices from the Picket Lines: the Strike at Kaiser Continues

• This is from Kostka’s speech at the NUHW’s rally in Sacramento. NUHW members have been picketing Kaiser medical centers and clinics in Northern California. They’ve held rallies in Santa Rosa and Sacramento, including a Labor Day rally at Kaiser’s flagship medical center in Oakland.

=> ↺ Intranasal Vaccines: A Potential Off-Ramp For Coronavirus Pandemics

• An interesting and also annoying aspect about the human immune system is that it is not a neat, centralized system where you input an antigen pattern in one spot and suddenly every T and B lymphocyte in the body knows how to target an intruder. Generally, immunity stays confined to specific areas, such as the vascular and lymph system, as well as the intestinal and mucosal (nasal) parts of the body.

=> ↺ Urine Flow Measurement Made Accessible With UroFlow

• If you’re dealing with a chronic illness, the ability to continuously monitor your symptoms is indispensable, helping you gain valuable insights into what makes your body tick – or, rather, mis-tick. However, for many illnesses, you need specialized equipment to monitor them, and it tends to be that you can only visit your doctor every so often. Thankfully, we hackers can figure out ways to monitor our conditions on our own. With a condition called BPH (Benign Prostate Hyperplasia), one of the ways to monitor it is taking measurements of urinary flow rate. Being able to take these measurements at home provides better insights, and, having found flow rate measurement devices to be prohibitively expensive to even rent, [Jerry Smith] set out to build his own.

=> ↺ Missouri Town to Get Air Pollution Monitors Following ProPublica Report

• The Environmental Protection Agency will start monitoring the air in Verona, Missouri, where a manufacturing plant named BCP Ingredients emits a potent carcinogen called ethylene oxide. The mayor of Verona, Joseph Heck, has fought for air monitoring for nearly a year, since ProPublica’s analysis showed the company’s emissions substantially raised the local cancer risk. In some parts of the small city, the industrial cancer risk was an estimated 27 times what the EPA considers acceptable.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Social Media Giants to Top Creators: Your Terms of Service Have Changed

• On Sept. 20, YouTube, led by Susan Wojcicki, unveiled a series of creator-driven announcements, including a plan to bring its “secret sauce,” its revenue-sharing model, to its shortform product, Shorts. But there’s a catch: While longer-form YouTube videos pay out 55 percent of their ad revenue to creators and 45 percent to YouTube, the shortform version flips that, with only 45 percent of total revenue going to creators (the rest covers costs of music licensing). Creators’ payouts will be determined by their contribution to the total Shorts views every 30 days, which means that as more users upload Shorts, it could become more difficult for a user to take up a larger percentage of total viewership, likely leading to even lower revenues for influencers.

=> ↺ Google to build its first cloud region in Greece

• A cloud region usually is based around a cluster of data centres.

=> ↺ Researcher warns of new zero-day in Microsoft Exchange under exploit

• Beaumont pointed to a post by a Vietnamese source named GTSC Cyber Security Company that said details of the vulnerability, noticed in August, had been sent to the Zero-Day Initiative which had verified and acknowledged two bugs.

=> ↺ Web security flaw in Sophos Firewall patched

• Sophos Firewall v19.0 MR1 (19.0.1) and older are potentially vulnerable to the security bug in the User Portal and Webadmin of Sophos Firewall.

=> ↺ Fake CISO Profiles on LinkedIn Target Fortune 500s

• Someone has recently created a large number of fake LinkedIn profiles for Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) roles at some of the world’s largest corporations. It’s not clear who’s behind this network of fake CISOs or what their intentions may be. But the fabricated LinkedIn identities are confusing search engine results for CISO roles at major companies, and they are being indexed as gospel by various downstream data-scraping sources.

Security

=> ↺ Researcher warns of new zero-day in Microsoft Exchange under exploit

• Reports are emerging that a new zero-day exists in Microsoft Exchange and that it is being exploited in the wild, a well-known security researcher has warned.

• Kevin Beaumont said in a series of tweets that he could confirm significant numbers of Exchange servers had been backdoored, including a honeypot.

• He added that while Microsoft appeared to be aware of the new vulnerability, the company had not yet informed its customers.

• Beaumont pointed to a post by a Vietnamese source named GTSC Cyber Security Company that said details of the vulnerability, noticed in August, had been sent to the Zero-Day Initiative which had verified and acknowledged two bugs.

=> ↺ VMWare Releases Guidance for VirtualPITA, VirtualPIE, and VirtualGATE Malware Targeting vSphere

• VMWare has released Protecting vSphere From Specialized Malware, addressing malware artifacts known as VirtualPITA (ESXi & Linux), VirtualPIE (ESXi), and VirtualGATE (Windows), which are used to exploit and gain persistent access to instances of ESXi.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Roskomnadzor Has Become Putin’s Personal Powerful Surveillance Network

• Russia’s Roskomnadzor never used to be a powerful government thug. It used to be almost nothing at all. It was an afterthought — a regulatory agency created to cover things hardly anyone considered to be important. It was formed in 2008 and asked to oversee radio signals, telecom, and the Russian mail service.

=> ↺ Is California’s Kids Code Screwing Up The Efforts For A Federal Privacy Law?

• It really does feel like the legislative process regarding the tech world and privacy is a complete mess. While politicians are right that it would be good if we got a comprehensive privacy bill in place, they seem to have no idea what that even means. Actually, it seems like they don’t even know what privacy means. And thus, the mess just continues. California tried to leap ahead into the unknown by putting together a truly ridiculous bill (CCPA) that no one has even figured out yet, despite it having passed years ago. And, without even bothering to understand any of it, California has pushed ahead again with the California’s Age Appropriate Design Code law, which somehow intersects with the CCPA, but again, no one’s quite sure how or why.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ UK: Muslims say of Hindus, ‘Let’s clean them from Leicester as we did from Kashmir’

• Yet once again, jihad allies and enablers are spreading claims of Muslim victimhood in this unrest, and once again, the international media is falling for it.

=> ↺ Shariah Law and Islamist Ideology in Western Europe

• The text was compiled, written, and edited by the following CIP staff: international director Irfan Al-Alawi, executive director Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, general studies director Kamal Hasani, German director Veli Sirin, and UK research director Daut Dauti. Further, Qanta Ahmed, MD, wrote a supplemental section on Islamist ideology in UK medical training, and leading North American legal authority F.H. Buckley contributed a Prefatory Note. Finally, numerous Muslim colleagues – translators, reviewers, and other personnel – assisted in the production.

=> ↺ France: Incitement against Jews, gays and women at Salafist mosque in Obernai

• The Salafist legitimises polygamy and calls for discrimination against Jews, homosexuals and women, towards whom he also justifies the violence committed by their husbands, especially in the case of adultery,” according to the Ministry of the Interior. The cleric is also accused of “also legitimising the use of violence against cartoonists and taking pleasure in the attacks on them; he makes conspiratorial comments about them and declares that they are orchestrated by the Islamophobic French state”.

=> ↺ 79 Islamists are released from German prisons

• Among the released prisoners are also IS fighters. According to the Federal Government, at the beginning of this year there were twelve persons imprisoned in Germany who had taken part in fighting operations of the Islamic State (IS), had been trained in handling weapons, had carried out or prepared attacks for the IS or had been trained in handling explosives. Of these, two persons have been released from prison since January 1, 2022 after serving their sentences, and a further three persons from this group are expected to be released by December 31, 2023.

=> ↺ Millions of Americans Would Approve of Using Violence to Put Trump Back in WH

=> ↺ Duma speaker believes those on military registers are prohibited from leaving Russian Federation, but Defense Ministry disagrees — Meduza

• Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on Telegram that Russians who are on the military register during mobilization are forbidden to leave their place of residence without the permission of the military commissariat.

=> ↺ Tuva police arrest 20 anti-draft protesters after official says region’s mobilization ‘completed’ — Meduza

• In Kyzyl, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Tuva, police put down an all-women protest against mobilization on Thursday. According to local media, officers arrested about 20 women and took their fingerprints.

=> ↺ Ukrainian Journalist Describes Mass Graves, Widespread Torture & Other Abuses by Russian Troops

• Russia has announced it will formally annex four areas of occupied Ukraine on Friday, after organizing referendums in the regions widely denounced by Ukraine and its allies as a sham. We speak with Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk, who explains how armed Russian soldiers went to the houses of Ukrainians in the occupied territories, forcing them to vote. She also describes widespread abuses committed by Russian forces, including mass graves and suspected torture chambers. Meanwhile, more than 200,000 Russians have fled the country over the past week following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a partial military mobilization to draft at least 300,000 people. Gumenyuk says she hopes the draft will “create some disturbance within Russia” now that the war is impacting middle-class Russians.

=> ↺ Letter From Crimea: Yalta’s Terms and Why Peace Treaties Don’t End Wars

• Perhaps the only peace that was arranged at the 1945 Yalta conference in Crimea was the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War that began with the Japanese sneak assault on the Russian naval base at Port Arthur in southern Manchuria and ended with Japan in control of Korea and much of Manchuria (in China).

=> ↺ “End War in Ukraine” Say 66 Nations at UN General Assembly

• African leaders echoed one of the first speakers, Macky Sall, the president of Senegal, who also spoke in his capacity as the current chairman of the African Union when he said, “We call for de-escalation and a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, as well as for a negotiated solution, to avoid the catastrophic risk of a potentially global conflict.”

=> ↺ US Hybrid War against Venezuela Goes to Court: The Case of Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab

• Judicial overreach on political grounds

=> ↺ EU parliamentarian calls to sanction Vanessa Beeley and all observers of Donbass referendums

=> ↺ EU Parliamentarian Calls To Sanction Vanessa Beeley and All Observers of Donbass Referendums

• EU Parliamentarian Natalie Louiseau asked for the European Union to place sanctions on all international observers in the Donbas region of Ukraine, including journalist Vanessa Beeley.

=> ↺ Putin Out!

=> ↺ Queen Elizabeth Was No Mere Symbol

• It was utterly unsurprising that the moment Buckingham Palace announced that Queen Elizabeth’s doctors were “concerned for Her Majesty’s health,” a gross amount of invective would be flung at Meghan Markle. Now that the queen has died, grief seems to be overshadowed in certain corners by the joy taken in blaming Markle for the passing of a 96-year-old woman whose health had been in decline over the past year. The Windsors’ brand has always been unmiscegenated whiteness as a proxy for imperial glory, and for royalists and racists both British and American, Markle’s entry into the family was a blemish on, even an invasion of, that monarchical legacy. So it was no surprise that #GoHomeMeghanMarkle trended, that a cluster of white women refused to shake Markle’s hand as she greeted mourners at Windsor Castle, that one viral tweet claimed it was “sickening” to watch her “pretending to be sad after making the Queen’s final years a misery.” Nor that those incidents were gleefully recounted by right-wing rags such as the UK’s Daily Mail and the New York Post.

=> ↺ Russia’s dangerous game How likely is Putin to cross the nuclear red line? — Meduza

• Since the start of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin — along with numerous other Russian officials, politicians, and propagandists — has regularly threatened to use nuclear weapons. The president’s most recent mention of the topic came on September 21, when he announced Russia’s “partial mobilization.” To get a better idea of whether there’s any chance of Russia’s leaders following through on their nuclear threats and what the consequences will be if they do, Meduza spoke to Maxim Starchak, an expert on Russia’s nuclear policy and a Fellow at the Center for International and Defense Policy of the Queen’s University in Canada.

=> ↺ Who rules occupied Ukraine? 90 percent of state officials in Russian-controlled Ukrainian regions are Russian citizens — Meduza

• Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 36 people have been appointed for government roles in the self-proclaimed “DNR” and “LNR,” as well as the occupied Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv regions. Only three out of 36 were citizens of Ukraine. The rest, close to 92 percent, were all Russian citizens. These conclusions emerged from the study conducted by the Proekt media project.

=> ↺ The Russia-Georgia border is now closed to bicycles and scooters, witnesses say — Meduza

• The border between Russia and Georgia is closed to pedestrians, cyclists, and scooters at the Verkhny Lars crossing in North Ossetia, reports Baza. Only cars and buses are allowed across.

=> ↺ Half of Russians feel anxiety and fear about draft orders, while a quarter feel ‘pride for Russia’ — Meduza

• Almost half of Russians (47 percent) experienced anxiety or fear when they learned about the orders for “partial mobilization,” according to a poll conducted by the Russian polling organization the Levada Center at the end of September. 

=> ↺ Russian college conducts terrorism drill without informing students in advance — Meduza

• Administrators at the Rabotkinsky Agrarian College in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region held an anti-terrorism drill on Thursday without warning students, according to the local news site NN.ru. The site posted screenshots of messages sent by students who believed they were experiencing a real terrorist attack.

=> ↺ Dozens of Gazprom employees forced to join army as ‘volunteers’ — Meduza

• Over 80 Gazprom employees have been forced to enlist in the military as “volunteers” after being taken to their local military commissariat under the pretense of having their documents checked, according to the independent TV network Dozhd.

=> ↺ State Duma deputies invited to Kremlin for annexation ‘ceremony’ on Sept. 30 — Meduza

• State Duma deputies were invited to the to the Kremlin for a 3 p.m. special event on Sept. 30. The presence of President Vladimir Putin is expected at the event, wrote Duma Deputy Denis Parfenov on Telegram.

=> ↺ Opinion | Nuclear War and Moral Sanity

• What does surrender look like in the world of geopolitics? To my mind, this gets pretty close:

=> ↺ Inside America’s War Machine, Integrity Is Optional

• William J. Astore examines the epidemic of lies and dishonor that exists within the US military industrial complex.

=> ↺ Opinion | The Urgent Need for a Draft Ukraine-Russia Peace Agreement

• Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski famously described Ukraine as a “geopolitical pivot” of Eurasia, central to both US and Russian power.  Since Russia views its vital security interests to be at stake in the current conflict, the war in Ukraine is rapidly escalating to a nuclear showdown.  It’s urgent for both the US and Russia to exercise restraint before disaster hits.  

=> ↺ From Nabulsi to Shtayyeh: Which Side is the PA On?

• For years, various Palestinian and international human rights groups have criticized the PA’s violent practices against dissenting Palestinian voices, quite often within the same human rights reports critical of the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. The Hamas government in Gaza, too, has its fair share of blame.

=> ↺ “Take Israel to the ICC:” the Families of 5 Children Killed in Israeli Airstrike Demand Justice

• Israel’s three day attack on the Gaza Strip, earlier this August, resulted in 49 Palestinian deaths, 17 of which were children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. No Israelis were killed or sustained notable injuries. Israel claimed that its military were targeting Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Party fighters, yet the majority killed were civilians.

=> ↺ Hungary does not recognise Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories

• The usual weekly government briefing was held today by Gergely Gulyás, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff and government spokesperson Alexandra Szentkirályi. They provided information and answered the press’ questions on several current issues. Below is a summary of the most important points relating to Hungary and the world.

=> ↺ Are the Fleeing Russians Merely Draft Dodgers?

• The difference between objecting to a particular war and all wars should not be minimized. In order to be given conscientious objector status in the United States during the Vietnam draft, one had to be a pacifist, opposed to all violence. The classic question in 1968 was: “If your mother was attacked in the street, would you defend her?” A negative answer, with some form of religious confirmation, was necessary.

=> ↺ Why I Love the “Vietnam Syndrome” of the People

• Over the years, the Vietnam Syndrome lived this double life. One proposed cure was by way of the Weinberger Doctrine, which in its essence sought to correct the alleged government mismanagement of its intervention in Vietnam over the course of a full decade. What Caspar Weinberger, a right wing political figure and at the time Reagan’s Secretary oof Defense proposed in 1983, was that the U.S, should not enter future non-defensive questionable foreign wars, with the Vietnam War in mind, without satisfying the following conditions:

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ What’s with the UFO on a U.S. intelligence agency seal?

• A spokesperson there told CyberScoop in an emailed statement that its National Intelligence Manager for the Air Domain, also known as NIM-Aviation, “erroneously posted an unofficial and incorrect logo.”

Environment

=> ↺ Mexico was the deadliest country for environmental activists in 2021

• Global Witness (GW) conducted a worldwide analysis that found that 200 land and environmental defenders were murdered in 2021. Fifty-four of that number were killed in Mexico, an increase of 24, or 80%, compared to the 2020 tally of 30.

=> ↺ Study finds that climate change added 10% to Ian’s rainfall

• Thursday’s research, which is not peer-reviewed, compared peak rainfall rates during the real storm to about 20 different computer scenarios of a model with Hurricane Ian’s characteristics slamming into the Sunshine State in a world with no human-caused climate change.

=> ↺ “We Don’t Care About Y’All”: Incarcerated People in Hurricane Ian’s Path Not Evacuated, Live in Fear

• As millions of Florida residents in the path of Hurricane Ian were ordered to evacuate, advocates pushed authorities to also evacuate what they say are as many as 176,000 people incarcerated in prisons, jails and immigrant detention centers. Now the storm has left millions without power and many without water. “We’re worried about the conditions in the days and weeks following, with no AC, lack of sanitation and water, lack of food, lack of appropriate staff and access to health,” says Angel D’Angelo, a member of Restorative Justice Coalition and Fight Toxic Prisons.

=> ↺ ‘Total Devastation’ as Hurricane Ian Tears Through Florida

• After making landfall in southwest Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, the storm battered the state with sustained winds upwards of 150 miles per hour and hit the peninsula with what the National Hurricane Center (NHC) described as “catastrophic storm surge.” In some areas, according to state authorities, storm surge reached as high as 12 feet.

=> ↺ “Reality of Global Warming”: Hurricane Ian’s Power Shows How Climate Change Supercharges Storms

• Authorities say hundreds may be dead after Hurricane Ian made landfall Wednesday along Florida’s southwestern coast as a powerful Category 4 storm, one of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit the continental United States. We get an update from Tampa and look at links between the climate crisis, rising sea levels and intensifying storms. “It’s just been devastating, and we don’t know the full extent of the damage yet,” reports Seán Kinane, WMNF news and public affairs director. “We are seeing these storms that aren’t otherwise stressed just exploding in intensity,” says Harold Wanless, professor in geography and urban sustainability at the University of Miami.

=> ↺ Grassroots Climate Organizers Led the Way to Scrapping Manchin’s Dirty Deal

=> ↺ Acidification of Arctic Happening Up to 4 Times Faster Than Other Oceans

• The faster rate of change is due to the speed with which ice in the ocean is melting, according to Wei-Jun Cai of the University of Delaware and Liqi Chen of the Third Institute of Oceanography in China.

=> ↺ House Dems Urge Biden to Push for Removal of Climate-Denying World Bank President

• “People and governments now more than ever need a World Bank leader who listens to the science and is a global leader in combating climate change.”

=> ↺ Opinion | Eight Reasons Why There Hasn’t Been a Global Climate Revolt Yet

• Our worldhome is critically ill and on fire, but the politicians and economically powerful are fluffing about with rockets, gleefully banning abortion, spending US$932 billion on new oil and gas fields, and goofing around with carbon trading, as though our living conditions and survival were a leisurely card game.

=> ↺ Biden Declares Disaster in Florida as Record-Breaking Hurricane Ian Floods State

=> ↺ US Gas Flaring Releases Five Times More Methane Than Previously Thought

• “There is a lot more methane being added to the atmosphere than currently accounted for in any inventories or estimates.”

=> ↺ Analysis Exposes Taxpayer Billions ‘Wasted’ on Dead-End Carbon Capture Schemes

• “What the fossil fuel industry hopes you won’t find out is carbon capture is already a failure of an experiment, funded with taxpayer money.”

=> ↺ Climate Scientist Demands ‘War Crimes’ Charges for Whoever Ordered Pipeline Sabotage

• “Whoever ordered this should be prosecuted for war crimes and go to jail,” Stanford’s Rob Jackson told the Associated Press as scientists assessed the potentially massive environmental impact of the pipeline damage, which European countries and NATO have formally concluded is the result of a deliberate attack.

=> ↺ The Timing of the Pipeline Attack

• Joe Lauria explains the timely nature behind the attack on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is affecting Russia and Germany most.

=> ↺ The Urgent Global Climate Revolt That Isn’t Happening

• Globally, we are worried, and terrified. Scientists are screaming that all the climate records have been broken and it is now or never. Many of us are already living through water scarcity, increased food prices as farmers struggle with longer dry seasons, unprecedented fires and floods, mental health issues, and illness or death from overheating.

=> ↺ Environmental Defender Killed Every Two Days Over Last Decade, Report Finds

• “Our data on killings is likely to be an underestimate, given that many murders go unreported.”

=> ↺ Extreme Events are the New Normal…and Not Just in the Weather

• So, extreme events are taking place not only in the physical climate. They take place as well in the political climate. January 6, 2021, the storming of the Capitol in the United States, was another such event. The return of the Marcoses, Trump’s incitement to rebellion, Narendra Modi’s ethnonationalist regime in India, Jair Bolsonaro’s fascistoid government in Brazil, and just in the last few days, the electoral triumphs of the far right in traditionally Social Democratic Sweden and, horror of horrors, in the birthplace of fascism itself, Italy—all of these are extreme events, and they are, in turn, symptoms of a much larger extreme event:  the deepening crisis of liberal democracy.

=> ↺ Sea Level Acceleration

• According to knowledgeable sources, regardless of mitigation efforts, sea levels are destined to rise by approximately one foot by 2050. Thereafter, fairly high probabilities indicate up to 5 feet-to-10 feet by the end of the century, which is considerably more than “up to 3 feet in a high-GHG emissions scenario” forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

=> ↺ Roaming Charges: Shelter From the Surge

• The sizzling atmosphere did its part. With every degree of warming, atmospheric water vapor increases by at least seven percent. In a mere six hours, Ian unloaded 12 inches of rain on the Ft. Meyers area. A day later, parts of the city were still under 4 feet of water and sharks were videotaped swimming up the streets of Naples.

Energy

=> ↺ Bitcoin’s Environmental Damage Is On Par With Beef, Natural Gas And Oil, Study Suggests

• The climate-related damages of each bitcoin generated—the asset is “mined” using an energy intensive computer process—in 2021 was more than $11,300, according to the researchers’ estimates, which were based on the economic costs of carbon dioxide emissions.

• Between 2016 and 2021, the average climate damages of each bitcoin mined stood at 35% of its market value, the researchers estimated, rising to nearly 60% between 2020 and 2021.

=> ↺ [Cryptocurrency] mining could hinder U.S. ability to battle climate change, White House says

• between 0.4% and 0.8% of domestic emissions, respectively, though the estimates are uncertain, the report said. Mining crypto produces planet-warming emissions primarily by burning coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels to generate electricity.

• This year, crypto mining produced between 110 and 170 million metric tons on carbon pollution across the world and roughly 25 to 50 million metric tons in the U.S. alone, the report said. The process produces electricity by purchasing it from the power grid or by producing and disposing of computers and mining infrastructure.

=> ↺ Over a third of electricity generated this year from renewables

• Over a third of electricity generated in Estonia this year will have come from renewables, ERR reports.

• Renewable electricity will constitute 37 percent of the total, around half from the burning of woody biomass, principally wood chips, and the remainder from wind and solar energy combined – the total for the latter two categories will depend on weather and seasonal conditions.

=> ↺ Orbán announces “national consultation” on energy sanctions – but what is this exactly?

=> ↺ Fossil Fuels Subsidized at Rate of $11 Million per Minute

• Lee Camp explores how the fossil fuel industry receives subsidies in a new video.

=> ↺ Fukushima: Novel Fixes Fail, Waste Dumping Threatens Pacific Ocean

• Attempts to locate and examine the total of 900 tons of melted reactor fuel (which possibly burned through the wrecked “containments” and foundations of the three units) have failed, because robotic cameras have repeatedly been destroyed by the ferociously hot and radioactive melted wastes. Eleven years after the catastrophe, the condition and location of the melted fuel masses, known as “corium,” is still uncertain because Tepco has yet to develop a robust enough camera.

=> ↺ The Electricity Crisis in South Africa Continues to Brew

• Eskom has been unable to provide a stable supply of electricity for 15 years due to a lack of investment in keeping infrastructure up to date and its poor maintenance, a period of plunder under the kleptocratic regime of former President Jacob Zuma, and a longstanding state austerity program that has resulted in general disinvestment from state-owned companies.

=> ↺ Unnatural Consequences

• Char Miller is one such voice. His years of prose detailing the dangers of fracking, the commercial reasons those dangers are denied and the struggles against this industrial destruction comprise a fair amount of his recently published text titled Natural Consequences: Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril. As a resident Southern California, he is also witness to the devastation caused by the excesses of US capitalist culture that most of his fellow residents seem to take for granted. Among those excesses are too many motor vehicles on too many giant highways, not enough water but a refusal to conserve what water there is, and a human hubris that is only exacerbated by an economic system that rewards environmental destruction in the short term while rejecting and silencing those who search for more long term and sustainable approaches to humanity’s presence on the planet.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ The Aerodynamics of Velvet: What Owls Can Teach Humans

• “Microscope photographs of the down show it consists of hairs that form a structure similar to a forest:” Peake explained. “The hairs ini­tially rise almost perpendicular to the feather surface but then bend over in the flow direction to form a canopy.” This Lilliputian ‘forest’ reduces pressure fluctuations and turbulence dramatically as the air flows over the wing. The researchers, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Office of Naval Research, recreated this topography in plastic. Testing their prototype in a wind tunnel, they found it reduced sound so well that they patented the de­sign. This discovery promises not simply stealthier surveillance aircraft or submarines but also a significant drop in everyday noise pollution from, say, wind turbines, computer fans, and even the passenger planes daily crisscrossing the planet.

Finance

=> ↺ With Manchin’s Permitting Reform on Ice, Mountain Valley Pipeline Again Faces Uncertain Future

• Framed by Democratic leadership as a companion piece to the Inflation Reduction Act, and as a “dirty side deal” by activists, Senator Manchin’s permitting reform legislation sought to streamline the regulatory and legal process in order to speed up the construction of a variety of energy, minerals, and electric transmission infrastructure projects, both clean and dirty. It would have placed time limits on environmental reviews, shortened the window for legal challenges, curtailed the ability of states to use the Clean Water Act to reject projects, and created a list of vital energy projects in the national interest that would be prioritized.

=> ↺ ‘Gut Punch’: Biden Pulls Student Debt Relief for Millions as GOP States Sue

• “Republicans want to keep you in debt for the rest of your life and take away student debt cancellation.”

=> ↺ Despite Nearly 80% of Voters in Favor, House Dems Stall on Stock Trading Ban

• “It it is time to take the next step and ban stock trading activity altogether by members of Congress and their spouses.”

=> ↺ Activists Call Fed Pilot Program to Assess Banks’ Climate Risk a ‘Welcome First Step’

• “Big banks still pour billions into fossil fuels, ignoring the serious risks posed by climate change and threatening the savings of everyday Americans in the process.”

=> ↺ Newsom Reverses Course and Signs Farmworker Union Bill After Grassroots Pressure

=> ↺ ‘Incredible Victory’: California Gov. Newsom Signs Farmworker Unionization Bill Into Law

• “This victory belongs to every farmworker who marched and sacrificed.”

=> ↺ Anti-Poverty Programs Work and New Census Data Proves It

• First, these numbers show that government programs work. After Social Security, refundable tax credits like the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) and stimulus payments were the biggest contributors to reducing poverty.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Apple’s tech supply chain shows difficulty of dumping China

• But Bloomberg Intelligence estimates it would take about eight years to move just 10% of Apple’s production capacity out of China, where roughly 98% of the company’s iPhones have been made. Scores of local component suppliers — not to mention modern and efficient transport, communication and electricity supplies — make it particularly difficult to get out of the world’s second-largest economy.

=> ↺ It’s Official: America Is an Oligarchy

• Pause and consider that last fact. Working-class Americans held a greater share of the nation’s wealth at the end of Ronald Reagan’s “trickle-down economics” presidency in the late 1980s than they do today. Now, pause and consider this fact: Wealth inequality is substantially more severe for people of color. “In 2019, White families’ median wealth was 6.5 times that of Black families, 5.5 times that of Hispanic families, and 2.7 times that of Asian and other families,” according to the CBO.

=> ↺ Man fined for insulting asylum seekers on social media

• According to the Lappeenranta court, the defendant had posted two comments in a conversation on his Facebook page, which included bias, insults and violent threats against asylum seekers.

=> ↺ Democratic Leaders Will Likely Delay Vote on Stock Ban Until After the Election

=> ↺ Trump’s Lawyers Dodge Special Master’s Questions on Mar-a-Lago Inventory List

=> ↺ Trump Believed He Could Sue Congress to Stop Congressional Impeachments

=> ↺ Activists Condemn GOP States’ “Sham” Lawsuit Over Student Debt Forgiveness

=> ↺ Disunited States

• In August, Joe Biden invited a group of liberal academics, historians and journalists to the White House. They included historian Michael Beschloss, whose rhetoric has inspired some of Biden’s speeches. Since the attack on the Capitol, the constant refrain has been, ‘We are all in existential danger of having our democracy and democracies around the world destroyed’ (2). This will be the Democrats’ campaign message in 2024, allowing them to link stopping Trump with taking on Russia and China.

=> ↺ Dorothy Bain: Incompetent or Corrupt?

• A Scottish Independence referendum could radically alter the future of not just one entire nation, but several. In these circumstances, it is remarkable that there has been no media comment on the fact that the ruling party of Scotland had to radically re-argue the case for the referendum its own government had put before the London Supreme Court.

=> ↺ What Happens when Culture is too Expensive?

• Usually, when I review the Carnegie Internationals in Pittsburgh, which I have done for forty years, I focus on the art. Some years ago, however, I reflected on the politics of this institution in an academic way:

=> ↺ Hungarian government orders complete payment freeze at government agencies until end of October

• A so-called “2000″ government decision has been issued. According to this, apart from a few items, government agencies will not be allowed to pay out essentially anything other than salary costs until 31 October. There is little reason to be alarmed, however: the state’s liquidity situation is not so bad that it would provide a financial reason to block spending. Our sources say it is more a case of Viktor Orbán wanting to do a clean up because he feels that the government spending cuts decided upon in May are being sabotaged.

=> ↺ Ken Burns Gets at the Nasty Underbelly of American History

• Ken Burns’s new documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust, is streaming now on the PBS app and other platforms. David Nasaw is a historian and biographer whose most recent book is The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Nation. This interview, originally broadcast on the Start Making Sense podcast, has been edited for length and clarity. Powered by RedCircle

=> ↺ Fox News Compares a Film Examining White Women’s Racism to Pearl Harbor

• A provocative if uneven documentary about an intriguing project to help white women acknowledge their own racism sent Fox News huckster Jesse Watters into hysterics Monday night, calling it an attack comparable to Pearl Harbor. The film, Deconstructing Karen, was made by American women, but distributed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Apparently, our peaceful allies to the north are coming for us.

=> ↺ Keir Starmer Might Win Power—but Can He Do Anything With It?

• Liverpool— It’s been four years since the last Labour Party conference here, but it might as well have been decades. In 2018, the party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, stood behind a podium with an all-red placard emblazoned with his iconic slogan “For the many, not the few.” This year, his successor Keir Starmer’s podium featured a more tepid message, “A fairer, greener future,” right next to a giant Union Jack.1

=> ↺ Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Has What It’s Always Wanted: Institutional Power

• Agde, on the western end of France’s Mediterranean coast, is a city of some 30,000 people, divided between a historic inland center and a vacation district by the sea. Conceived between the 1960s and ’80s as an affordable destination for the swelling middle classes of France’s postwar boom, Cap d’Agde, as the vacation colony is now known, has since gained a reputation as a main port of call on Europe’s swinger and libertine circuit. But the 2022 season had long since peaked by the weekend of September 17 and 18, when elected officials and insiders of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally met for their end-of-summer convention.

=> ↺ Opinion | What Brazil’s Upcoming Election Tells Us About Violence and Democracy

• When doing fieldwork for my book on Brazilian social movements in 2010, I heard many people express a kind of qualified support for the outgoing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration.   

=> ↺ Trailing Lula in Polls, Bolsonaro’s Party Peddles ‘Fabricated’ Attack on Brazilian Voting System

• Four days before Brazilians head to the polls, Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party released a report on an audit of the election system it completed in July, baselessly claiming it had found evidence that federal employees have “absolute power to manipulate election results without leaving a trace.”

=> ↺ ‘Let’s Pass Medicare for All,’ Says Jayapal as Survey Spotlights Failures of For-Profit System

• “No one should have to go into debt because they need to access healthcare. No one should have to choose between seeing a doctor and paying bills.”

=> ↺ What South Sudan Needs and Doesn’t Need

• South Sudan is the embodiment of so many ills that affect the world—colonialism, militarization, civil war, climate change, famine, and sexual violence. By the mid-20th century, Sudan, encompassing what is now South Sudan and Sudan, began to fill up with firearms. By 1966, the country had received 30,000 G3 rifles from West Germany. By the late 1970s/mid-eighties, with the US-Soviet proxy wars in full swing, US arms transfers to Sudan were so large ($1.4 billion) that combined with arms transfers from other countries, the country was dubbed “Africa’s arms dump.”

=> ↺ Opinion | What South Sudan Needs and Doesn’t Need

• By every conceivable measure, South Sudan is a nation in acute crisis. According to the World Bank, eighty percent of the South Sudanese population lives below the international poverty line, only one percent of people have access to electricity, and this month a UN Security Council delegation warned that another full-fledged civil war could break out at any moment.

=> ↺ Opinion | ‘End War in Ukraine’ Say 66 Nations at UN General Assembly

• We have spent the past week reading and listening to speeches by world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York. Most of them condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of the UN Charter and a serious setback for the peaceful world order that is the UN’s founding and defining principle.

=> ↺ What Brazil’s Election Tells us about Violence and Democracy

• Even though Lula left power with a high approval rating, Brazilians were still seeking a leader to confront issues such as corruption.

=> ↺ How Mikhail Gorbachev Became the Most Reviled Man in Russia

=> ↺ Bipartisanship Is Bullshit

• When future historians seek out a representative scene to distill the essence of our unique age of political folly, it will be hard to surpass Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s recent star turn at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center. The symbolic pageantry of the occasion alone was overwhelming: here was a feckless apostle of political obstructionism for its own sake holding forth at a podium supplied by the era’s most disciplined practitioner of obstruction for ideology’s sake. Both Sinema and Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell are notoriously bankrolled by the most venal and compromising financial interests, and both are militantly proud of that fact. And both, far from coincidentally, profess awestruck devotion to the sacred antidemocratic rites of Senate lawmaking—most especially the filibuster, which began life as a blunt tool of racial suppression and continues to thwart any and all instrumental progress toward the expansion of our formal democracy.

=> ↺ Compromised Talking Heads

• MSNBC talking heads often bring on US House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff (D-CA). A centrist Democrat who has accumulated a net worth of $60 million across a 22-year Congressional career, Schiff voted for the monumentally criminal, petro-imperialist, and mass-murderous US invasion of Iraq in 2003. He supported the US-backed Saudi Arabian invasion of Yemen in 2015, cause of an epic humanitarian disaster.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ The Great TikTok Moral Panic Continues As White House Fends Off Calls For A Ban. For Now.

• We’ve noted repeatedly how the massive freak out over TikTok is kind of dumb and myopic, with folks singularly fixated on TikTok, but not the lax global adtech, data broker ecosystem we built that helped create it in the first place.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ We Got Arrested Protesting Against King Charles III

• The arrests took both Symon and Mariángela, as well as people across the country, by surprise. Symon has previously been arrested for taking part in direct actions. “While I don’t think those arrests were okay, I wasn’t surprised by them,” he says. “But this time I was really surprised, because I don’t think I’m naive about police behavior, but I’d literally just said a couple of sentences in the street and got arrested.”

• Mariángela recounted similar thoughts at the time: “When I went up there, I thought: worst-case scenario, people are gonna get angry at me, and maybe the police will ask me to take down the poster. If they ask me to, I don’t really want to get arrested, so I’ll do it. But it just came out of nowhere.”

• The police seemed just as confused by it. Symon hasn’t been charged with any crimes, and while arrested, he kept asking why they had detained him. “The policeman who was with me didn’t seem to know. He kept saying he’d find out. I mean, he should know, he was supposed to be responsible for it.”

=> ↺ The End of Debate: Censorship is the one thing world leaders can agree on.

• The one thing the Russians and Europeans can agree on is that the whole matter of the war can be reduced to “disinformation”: bad speech that we would all be better off without. The only issue, as Lenin put it, is “Kto Kovo” or “Who, Whom”. Who gets to censor whose speech?

• No regime, no matter how debased, hesitated to rant about “disinformation” at the UN.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ “Is There a Future for Russian Independent Media?”

=> ↺ Rafael Correa: ‘They Have Already Destroyed Assange’

• Declassified sits down with the former president of Ecuador who granted Julian Assange asylum in London. He talks about dealing with the British, how the US seeks to control his country and the lawfare campaign against him.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Four-day workweek pilot shows wide support for a 32-hour week

• The experiment is being run by the 4 Day Week Global coalition in collaboration with researchers at Cambridge University, Boston College, and the University of Oxford. With a few exceptions, most companies taking part in the project are smaller firms.

=> ↺ The Great Cover-Up

• Mahsa Amini’s death sentence was written 43 years ago, and it is based on a lie. On that day—February 1st, 1979—a fanatical cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini, arrived in Iran from exile in Paris and seized power in the nation. He abolished democracy, civil rights, and the freedom of women to feel the wind in their hair, the sun on their arms, and the grass on their legs. Since that day, tyrannical Muslim clerics from Iran to Indonesia and my native India have controlled generations of women with that lie—the lie that God commands women to cover their hair to protect their honor and chastity. They have incorrectly called this cover “hijab.” But women can win the war against dress codes and gender apartheid because the world can finally see the injustice and absurdity of their violence.

• This lie has had plenty of enablers since Khomeini’s austere and cruel religious coup 43 years ago. These enablers come in many forms, and many of them wear a Western secular face, notably US fashion houses and bloggers, and women’s and girls’ magazines like Glamour and Teen Vogue. In that world, where nothing—including the truth—may be said or written that might possibly be judged as “Islamophobic,” the mandatory wearing of the hijab has been transformed from a cudgel used to control and oppress women into a fashionable item of liberation.

=> ↺ Taliban Disrupt Afghan Women’s Rally Supporting Iran Protests

• Taliban security forces snatched and tore the banners before firing in the air to disperse the rally. Organizers later said the demonstration was held to show “support and solidarity” with the Iranian people and the women in Afghanistan.

=> ↺ Young Iranians Want Regime Change

• Are Iranians now protesting against the protestors in support of the regime? There is no way to know for sure. It is difficult to verify any of the news emerging from Iran as the regime has cut off internet access and has likely flooded the internet with its own propaganda.

=> ↺ Yes, accessibility is also a backend concern

• There is a prevailing notion in web development that the frontend—the discipline of creating what someone can see and do on a website or web app—is the only place you need to consider accessibility.

• This simply isn’t true. Accessibility is a holistic practice that touches every aspect of creating a digital experience. This means it is also a backend web development consideration.

=> ↺ Teen sought in Amber Alert dies in shootout after running toward deputies

• After police say Anthony Graziano shot his estranged wife in Southern California on Monday morning, an Amber Alert was blasted out saying he was on the run with his 15-year-old daughter, Savannah.

• The next morning, someone spotted his Nissan pickup and notified authorities, leading to a vehicle chase that officials say began and ended with gunfire. Graziano was killed in the firefight. Also killed was a passenger who emerged from Graziano’s vehicle in “tactical gear” and ran toward the officers, deputies say.

=> ↺ Outrage in Austria because the state broadcaster ORF employs a headscarf-wearing correspondent for a report on the women in Iran protesting against the headscarf

• Thousands of young women in Iran are currently protesting against the compulsory headscarf and fighting for their rights. On the Austrian public broadcaster ORF’s news programme ZiB1, however, a correspondent wearing a headscarf appeared in the middle of this protest movement – and a political debate ensued.

=> ↺ Belly Buttons And Napolean Poses: Google Play Flags Android Game For Inappropriate Content

• We’ve talked a great deal about the impossibility of getting AI or other automated systems to properly police content for moderation purposes. While all kinds of content fits into this generally, we can pick on the topic of nudity or sexual content to demonstrate the point. We have a slew of posts on the topic, almost all of which deal with a service provider, through automated systems or even IRL people, not being able to discern when content is inappropriate or not. For instance, Facebook has a ban on showing a picture of a penis. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, what about Neptune’s penis? You know, on a statue in Bologna? Now it seems kinda silly, right?

=> ↺ Controlled by Right-Wing Justices, US Supreme Court’s Approval Hits All-Time Low

• Just 47% of U.S. adults have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the federal judiciary, Gallup found. “This represents a 20-percentage-point drop from two years ago, including seven points since last year,” and is six points lower than the previous record low of 53%, the polling firm noted. “The judicial branch’s current tarnished image contrasts with trust levels exceeding two-thirds in most years in Gallup’s trend that began in 1972.”

=> ↺ The Left Needs to Take Back the Constitution

• With the catastrophic recent term of the Supreme Court finally concluded, it can no longer be denied that the judiciary is firmly under the thumb of the conservative movement. In discussions of how the conservatives accomplished this feat, we often hear about the organizing acumen of the Federalist Society, or the vast financial resources of the Kochs, the Olins, and the Scaifes. But one critical ingredient has been largely overlooked, something the conservative movement has but its progressive counterpart does not: a compelling constitutional ideology.

=> ↺ The Supreme Court Returns on Monday, Stronger and More Terrible Than Ever

• The Supreme Court will return to work on the first Monday of October, after a three-month summer break, with all the determination of a Renaissance-era explorer looking for new lands to conquer. Last term, the court’s conservative supermajority showed it was willing to ignore precedent (overturning Roe v. Wade), reality (issuing rulings that will lead to more gun violence and climate pollution), and facts (making up evidence in the praying-football-coach case) to arrive at its preferred judicial outcomes.1

=> ↺ As Millions Evacuate, Incarcerated People in Ian’s Path Are Left Behind

=> ↺ Women do not choose abortion because it’s fun

• Thousands protested against the tightening of the abortion law on Wednesday evening in Budapest. From 15 September, it is mandatory that women seeking an abortion listen to the foetus’ heartbeat before the procedure. The demonstration began outside Parliament, from where demonstrators marched to the Interior Ministry.

=> ↺ The Chris Hedges Report: Roger Waters on His Music, Activism and ‘This is Not a Drill’ Tour

• Chris Hedges interviews legendary rock icon Roger Waters from Pink Floyd about his music, activism and ‘This is Not a Drill’ tour.

=> ↺ The Global Fight Against Fascism

• Sadly, social democrats are not great fighters. While the American right-wing does not want to admit it, (nor do centrist Dems or even, in fact, much of the left) the most effective fighters against fascism are communists and always have been. That’s because the communist analysis of fascism, as handed down by Leon Trotsky and Clara Zetkin is the most honest, lucid and unequivocating one around and it leads inexorably to the conclusion that only mass action, maybe even – as happened when confronting Nazism – antifascist violence, is the way to stop this horror.

=> ↺ “Art Evokes Thought” in New Star-Studded Antifascist Film

• The two-hour, 14-minute Amsterdam has an intricate plot that may be hard to follow unless viewers pay close attention to the complex storyline. The movie begins as if it’s a quirky period piece, flashing back and forth from New York City in the 1930s to Europe during World War I and the postwar “Lost Generation” of Americans abroad. At first, the film’s vibe is similar to that of a wacky Coen Brothers’ comedy, but all this builds up to Amsterdam making an unexpected left turn that is startlingly timely as contemporary America struggles to maintain its system as a constitutional republic.

=> ↺ Disastro Italiano: Neo-Fascism Returns

• This might well be a historic turning point towards fascism or, at least – as many neo-fascists in Italy will hope – to something we know as, a Hungarian-style illiberal democracy – with the emphasis on “illiberal” rather than democracy.

=> ↺ Chris Hedges: The Disappearance of Meghan Marohn

• ScheerPost is reprinting Chris Hedges’ moving, urgent piece on the disappearance of his friend Meghan Marohn, who was recently found dead in Massachusetts.

=> ↺ Meghan Marohn: Goodbye to All That and a Whole Lot More

• ScheerPost is reprinting Meghan Marohn’s August 3, 2020 piece in her honor.

=> ↺ A Feminist Revolution in Iran?

• That said, while as yet unacknowledged, the historical shadow of Ṭāhirih Qurrat’ul-ʿAyn, the ‘Remover of the Veil’, hangs long over current events unfolding in Iran, with Mahsa Amini (who was murdered by the security forces of the Morality Police of the Islamic Republic on the 13th of September 2022 which triggered current events) becoming a sort of archetypal Qurrat’ul-ʿAyn revisited, since Qurrat’ul-ʿAyn was the first modern Iranian woman to have challenged the Islamic patriarchy at its root, and the ḥijāb in particular, in the way it is once more being decisively challenged and defied, this time by all sectors of Iranian women rather than just a single person. The slogan of this uprising, ‘Woman, life, freedom’ (zan, zendegī, āzādī), also epitomizes what Qurrat’ul-ʿAyn and all Iranian women who came after her have stood for, struggled and fought for. In a sense, given its conspicuous anti-clericalism, current events are also a reprise of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1906-1909) itself from where it left off: a movement initially spearheaded by late nineteenth century and early turn of the twentieth century Iranian Azalī Bābīs that was originally designed to curb both the unchecked power of the absolutist monarchy as well as the reactionary Shiʿite clergy behind it.[8] Given Tsarist Russian intervention in an anti-Constitutional coup d’etat in 1909 on the side of the Qājārs and some of their clerifical allies, such as Khomeini’s bigotted anti-Bābī hero Shaykh Faḍlullāh Nūrī (d. 1909) – an arch-reactionary figure of the period which the Islamic Republic has gone out of its way over the years to celebrate and lionize – this movement slowly unravelled over the next decade before being twilighted altogether with the rise of the Pahlavi shahs and their uber-modernist, statist and petro-dollar dictatorship during the 1920s. But its memory and thrust lived on because it re-appeared in a new guise during the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran (1941-1946) and with the two shortlived premierships of Mohammad Mossadegh (d. 1967)[9] in the early 1950s.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Musk’s Pledge To Bring Starlink To Iran Didn’t Actually Do Anything. That Didn’t Stop The Hype Machine.

• Despite Elon Musk’s disdain for the press, his legend wouldn’t exist without the media’s need to hyperventilate over every last thing that comes out of the billionaire’s mouth. We’re at the point where the dumbest offhand comment by Musk becomes its own three week news cycle (see the entire news cycle based on Musk’s comments on a baseless story about somebody cheating at chess with anal beads).

=> ↺ Five things to know about the UN telecoms agency

• The ITU was created to manage international telegraph networks but expanded its remit to new technology such as telephones, radio, television, satellites, mobile phones and the [Internet].

Monopolies

=> ↺ Maintaining monopolies with the cloud: Microsoft, Oracle and other cloud giants use their terms of service to prevent competition.

• Correction: An earlier draft of this article incorrectly stated that John D Rockefeller owned the railroads that shipped product for the Standard Oil Company. In reality, Rockefeller controlled those railroads through bribery and coercion, not an equity stake. I regret the error.

• “There is no cloud, there is only other people’s computers.” It’s funny because it’s true, and the “other people” in this case are rapacious, vertically integrated monopolies that use their cloud businesses to put their customers in cages.

=> ↺ Software Makers’ Restrictive License Rules Targeted by New Group

• The Coalition for Fair Software Licensing argues that software agreements need to be more flexible and predictable for customers, including allowing the use of cloud services and programs from different providers.

=> ↺ Google Loses Appeal Against EU’s Record Antitrust fine, But Will Big Tech Ever Change?

• The DMA reflects the EU Commission’s experience with enforcing antitrust rules in the digital market. Some of the new requirements forbid app stores from conditioning access to the use of the platform’s own payment systems and ban forced single sign-ons. Other rules make it easier for users to freely choose their browser or search engine. The ruling by the General Court in the Google Android case will make it easier for the EU Commission to decide which gatekeepers and services will fall under the new rules and to hold them accountable. 

Trademarks

=> ↺ Third Culture Bakery Celebrates Loss Of ‘Mochi Muffin’ Trademark With Giveaway

• This will be a short one, but the reputation rehab project for Third Culture Bakery has begun. If you don’t recall that name, it’s a baker business in California that somehow convinced the USPTO to issue it a trademark for “mochi muffin“. Mochi is a rice paste popular in Japan for making small baked goods and other foods. A mochi muffin is just that: a muffin made of mochi. It is, therefore, purely descriptive to call your product a mochi muffin. The sort of thing, in other words, that you’re not supposed to be able to trademark.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Indie Record Label Leads Crackdown on YouTube Downloaders

• Three years ago, the RIAA began targeting YouTube ripping sites by sending relatively rare takedown requests to Google.

• Instead of the usual DMCA copyright notices, the music group asked the search engine to remove various URLs for alleged violations of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision.

• The sites in question are accused of circumventing YouTube’s rolling cipher, a technical protection measure that attempts to protect audio and video from being copied without permission. As such, the RIAA argues that the sites should be removed from Google’s search results.

=> ↺ Danish Pirate Site Blocking Updated, Telecoms Group Publishes All Domains

• Rights Alliance and ISPs have agreed to update their code of conduct to block pirate sites more quickly in Denmark. When one ISP receives an instruction to block a domain, a new process will see other ISPs follow in less than seven days. Meanwhile, Denmark’s Telecommunications Industry Association is publishing files that reveal precisely which domains are being blocked.

=> ↺ That Time The Former White House Photographer Was Threatened By A Copyright Troll Over His Own Public Domain Photo

• We’ve talked in the past about the fact that creative works of the federal government are in the public domain and cannot be covered by copyright. This is pretty explicit in the law. Back in 2009 we had called out the fact that the Obama White House was (usefully!) posting images taken by the White House photographer, Pete Souza, to Flickr — but that they were placing a restrictive license on them. Flickr had created a special public domain license specifically to deal with these photos, but still the White House was demanding restrictions it had no legal right to demand (the images are public domain). That happened a few times unfortunately.

=> ↺ David Bowie’s handwritten ‘Starman’ lyrics sell for over £200,000

• The handwritten lyrics sold for five times as much as the £40,000 estimate.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ The Direction One’s Toil Has Taken

• It is a good morning. It is a good morning despite having the feeling that Marisa is irked at something. Of course, I could be placing the origin of her being irked upon myself, which makes me an egocentric offal ball. More likely, and I’m thinking positively here (but again, thinking positively means that somewhere in my sodden brain, I am searching for what I may have done to cause the irk), she is irked because of her need to go to work early. She always needs to go to work early. Shouldn’t she be used to it? Or perhaps she just didn’t sleep well. Nightmares? She gets um.

=> ↺ After a bad night’s sleep

• Don’t take a day off after not having slept enough the previous night. That would be wasting the holiday allowance. It wouldn’t be possible to enjoy my free time anyway, so why not just work? For an IT Engineer, there’s still a way to be productive (sometimes even more) with half or less of the concentration power available!

=> ↺ Mixed Feelings About My Current Job

• Figures my first post will be about work…but it’s been on my mind all week, and I didn’t want to burden Midnight pub.

• So my journal seemed like the best spot for it!

• Anyway…

• I started this job late August, and came close to quitting on my first day, after they threw me to the wolves. I got swamped with dishes, which was a big deal because I work for a catering company that prides itself on scratch cooking. Problem is, they didn’t do any of that or use real utensils and flatware throughout the pandemic.

Politics

=> ↺ Farewell, anarchy

• Against labor exploitation, I felt that traditional ancom was a good idea. Worker co-ops, unions… all good solutions. Creating a haven for the downtrodden, so we could leave the owner classes plants and highrises hollow and abandoned. “The workers are going home.”

• Against climate change & other environmental effects of externalities abuse, the ancom set of solutions aren’t so hot, especially given automation tech. Plenty of cruel machines that’ll poison the Earth with or without us.

• The core value of ancom style anarchy is that every human has the same worth. There can be no coercion or hierarchy or force. The ultimate democracy, not only politically but also economically.

Technical

=> ↺ Announcing hoursctl — a command-line utility to manage your hours

• I created a small shellscript over the summer to manage my hours. Since then, it’s grown into being an ‘actual program’ So, I decided to properly release it.

• It’s now on Sourcehut, and is on version 0.7. hoursctl understands many different time formats, adheres to the Unix Philosophy, and is well-documented in English and toki pona — and it’s written in fully POSIX-compliant shell!

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