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● 02.24.23

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● Links 24/02/2023: Devices and General News

Posted in News Roundup at 1:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ Beryl AX Wi-Fi6 Router runs on OpenWrt v21.02

• The company GL.iNet recently launched a compact Wi-Fi6 router offering 1x 2.5GbE WAN port and 1x GbE LAN port. The Beryl AX (GL-MT3000) supports both 2.4GHz/5.0GHz bands and it’s capable of running OpenVPN at 150Mbps.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Mini PC equipped with 12th Gen Intel processors and dual 2.5GbE ports

• The KC12 is a compact Mini-PC featuring the Intel Core i5-1240P and the Intel Core i7-1240P. The device is equipped with 2x HDMI 2.0, 2x M.2280 slots, 1x Thunderbolt, Wi-Fi6/Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity and other various peripherals.

=> ↺ ZBMINI Extreme Zigbee smart switch review with Home Assistant

• But in this review, we will show you how to manage the ZBMINI Extreme using another approach namely with integration with Home Assistant home automation framework. Home Assistant is a very popular open-source software, contributed by lots of great people around the world. We will use Home Assistant version 2023.2.0 installed on a Raspberry Pi 4 SBC with 4GB or 8GB RAM and a 128GB SD card. We won’t use an external Zigbee Bridge, and instead, we will make use of a Zigbee USB Dongle that connects directly to the Raspberry P i4 USB port. For the dongle, we have a Conbee II Zigbee USB dongle to create a Zigbee network in order to communicate with other Zigbee devices

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Testing The Raspberry Pi Debug Probe

• We mentioned the Raspberry Pi Debug Probe when it was launched, a little RP2040-based board that provides both a USB-to-UART and an ARM SWD debug interface. [Jeff Geerling] was lucky enough to snag one, and he’s put it through its paces in a handy blog post.

=> ↺ Laser Scanner Upgraded To Use PCB Motor

• [Rik]’s Hexastorm laser scanner project originally used a discrete polygon mirror controller+motor module from Sharp to spin a prism. But the scanner head was a bit difficult to assemble and had a lot of messy wires. This has all been replaced by a single board featuring a PCB-printed motor, based on the work of [Carl Bugeja]. The results are promising so far — see video below the break.

=> ↺ An Amiga Mouse, The Modern Way

• When we recently featured an Amiga upgrade project, [EmberHeavyIndustries ] was prompted to share one of their own, an adapter to allow a modern USB HID mouse to be used with the Commodore quadrature mouse port.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Stirring Humor into ‘Old Age’

• No doubt everyone grows old in their own way.

• But once you actually hit it — that three letter word, “old” — watch out: “An aged man is but a paltry thing,/A tattered coat upon a stick . . .”

=> ↺ Lo-Fi Tchaikovsky

• [Kevin] over at Simple DIY ElectroMusic Projects recently upgraded his Lo-Fi Orchestra. To celebrate his 400th blog post, he programmed it to play Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Two Arduino Nanos, four Arduino Unos, four Raspberry Pi Picos, and one Raspberry Pi have joined the Lo-Fi Orchestra this year, conducted by a new Pico MIDI Splitter. Changes were made in every section of the orchestra except percussion. We are delighted that the Pringles tom and plastic tub bass drums remain, not to mention the usual assortment of cheap mixers, amps, and speakers.

=> ↺ NASA Help Wanted: Ham Radio Operators Please Apply

• NASA’s been recruiting citizen scientists lately, and their latest call is looking for help from ham radio operators. They want you to make and report radio contacts during the 2023 and 2024 North American eclipses. From their website:

=> ↺ The Tragedy of Till Is Our Failure to Grasp Its Radical Politics

• Danielle Deadwyler was widely expected to receive an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Mamie Till-Mobley in Chinonye Chukwu’s extraordinary film Till. She consistently received the strongest reviews of any lead actress. Manhola Dargis wrote in The New York Times, “With fixed intensity and supple quicksilver emotional changes, Deadwyler rises to the occasion as Mamie, delivering a quiet, centralizing performance.” Ronda Penrice of The Wrap concurred: “This magnificent performance elevates Deadwyler to the ranks of the great actors of our time.” The New Yorker’s Richard Brody described her performance as “one of the most radiantly, resonantly expressive to grace the screen this year.” Even before she snagged the Gotham Award for outstanding lead performance in November, she had already secured a spot on virtually every critic’s Oscar prediction list. So when neither Deadwyler nor Viola Davis received Oscar nods, it sent tremors through the industry and beyond. Rolling Stone critic Marlow Stern noted, “Deadwyler’s snub is perhaps the most shocking, given the gravity of the role and how she rose to the occasion.” Richard Brody was also “shocked,” as was fellow New Yorker critic Michael Shulman, who called Deadwyler “a contender” for how she “took a grieving-mother role that could have been clichéd and made her thrillingly alive and complicated.” Sarah Polley, writer/director of the Oscar-nominated Women Talking, urged her Twitter followers to see Till, adding that Deadwyler “gave one of the best performances of all time.”

=> ↺ What Happened to Jefferson Rodríguez

• The call to 911 came in a little after 11 p.m. A man said a small boy on his dairy farm had severe head injuries. He said he thought the boy had been trampled by a cow.

• Ann Ingolia, a deputy for the Dane County Sheriff’s Office, was in the middle of her shift when she heard the dispatch on this warm summer night in 2019. She turned on her siren and headed over, down winding roads and rolling hills, past the farms and fields that mark the landscape of this part of south-central Wisconsin.

=> ↺ Why It’s So Hard to Sue Doctors for Sexual Assault in Utah

• At 19 years old and about to be married, Stephanie Mateer went to an OB-GYN within walking distance of her student housing near Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

• She wanted to start using birth control, and she was looking for guidance about having sex for the first time on her 2008 wedding night.

=> ↺ Keebin’ With Kristina: The One Where Shift (Really) Happens

• Hooray, the system works! [Sasha K.] wrote to let me know about their Thumbs Up! keyboard, which is the culmination of a long journey down the DIY rabbit hole to end game. (Seriously, it’s kind of a wild ride, and there’s a ton of pictures).

=> ↺ Jay Jackson’s Audacious Comics

• In June 1941, Harold Gray’s nationally syndicated comic strip Little Orphan Annie made a singular contribution to the war effort: The titular heroine formed a group called the Junior Commandos, a club for boys and girls who wanted to fight fascism. The logic behind the Junior Commandos was that because the United States was in a total war, kids had to pitch in too. Some of the Junior Commandos’ adventures were fanciful, such as foiling a Nazi submarine attack off the shores of America. Others reflected the ways that total war had transformed everyday American life: starting up vegetable gardens, buying war bonds, rationing and recycling. The concept of the Junior Commandos took off in real life too, with many actual kids’ organizations mimicking the good citizenship promoted in the strip.

=> ↺ Zelenskyy’s Heroes: Ukraine’s Best Respond to the Earthquake in Turkey

• Rescue workers from Ukraine have been working nonstop since the Russian invasion to save civilians from the ruins of their buildings. After the earthquake in Turkey, though, some of them took a break from the war to help out in the disaster zone.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Moderna’s 2022 Windfall a ‘Scandalous’ Result of Pandemic Profiteering, Campaigners Say

• The Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical giant Moderna announced Thursday that it brought in over $19 billion in revenue and $8.4 billion in profits in 2022 thanks primarily to its Covid-19 vaccine, which was made possible by federal funding and government technology.

=> ↺ Jackson’s Water System Is Broken by Design

• Every March, cardinals arrive in Kali Akuno’s front yard in Jackson, Miss., to build nests in his trees. But in spring 2017, something odd happened: The chicks hatched on cue but then died. “They didn’t fall out of the nest,” Akuno says. “They starved.”1This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center and produced in partnership with the Jackson Advocate.

=> ↺ Toxic Forever Chemicals Found in More Than 330 Animal Species

• More than 330 animal species around the world are at risk of harm from exposure to toxic “forever chemicals,” according to an Environmental Working Group analysis published Wednesday.

=> ↺ Regulators Overhaul Inspections of Hospice Providers

• In late January, amid intensifying scrutiny of the quality of care provided by the American end-of-life care industry, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has reformed how it inspects hospice providers. The changes, detailed in a 196-page document, went into effect immediately.

• Under the new protocol, inspectors must sample data from multiple locations where the hospice operates and evaluate a broader range of metrics. These include records on the hospice’s inpatient care, bereavement practices and reasons patients are leaving the service alive. “An unusually high rate of live discharges could indicate that a hospice provider is not meeting the needs of patients and families or is admitting patients who do not meet the eligibility criteria,” the revised rules note.

=> ↺ Want to Fix Public Health? Stop Thinking Like a Doctor.

• A changing of the guard in US public health is impending—and, with it, a chance to rejuvenate a flailing field. Anthony Fauci has retired in the shadow of one of the worst preventable disasters in history, and President Biden is moving to make new appointments while establishing a permanent White House Office for Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy. In doing so, Biden and his advisers must confront the fact that the rot in public health is structural: It cannot be cured by simply rotating the figureheads who preside over it. Building effective national health infrastructure will require confronting pervasive distortions of public health and remaking the leadership appointment systems that have left US public health agencies captive to partisan interests.

=> ↺ Pollution From a Plastics-Based Fuel Has a 1-in-4 Lifetime Cancer Risk

• The Environmental Protection Agency recently gave a Chevron refinery the green light to create fuel from discarded plastics as part of a “climate-friendly” initiative to boost alternatives to petroleum. But, according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and The Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer.

• “That kind of risk is obscene,” said Linda Birnbaum, former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “You can’t let that get out.”

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Cyber companies accompanied Netanyahu on his visit to Budapest, one of them later trained foreign intelligence officers in Hungary

=> ↺ The Supreme Court Needs to Rein In the Surveillance State

• Rapidly advancing technologies are giving the government dramatically more power to track us and peer into our lives, with “national security” often the justification for intrusive new forms of surveillance. But if these technologies lead us toward a surveillance state, it will be in part because our courts failed to play their constitutional role as a check on Executive Branch power.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Who’s Winning and Losing the Economic War Over Ukraine?

• With the Ukraine war now reaching its one-year mark on February 24, the Russians have not achieved a military victory but neither has the West achieved its goals on the economic front. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States and its European allies vowed to impose crippling sanctions that would bring Russia to its knees and force it to withdraw.

• Western sanctions would erect a new Iron Curtain, hundreds of miles to the east of the old one, separating an isolated, defeated, bankrupt Russia from a reunited, triumphant and prosperous West. Not only has Russia withstood the economic assault, but the sanctions have boomeranged–hitting the very countries that imposed them.

=> ↺ Putin Announces Suspension of the New START Treaty

• New START is the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia.

=> ↺ German Lawmaker Calls for Nord Stream Probe

• Sevim Dagdelen takes the Scholz government to task for its lack of “strength and will” in responding to Seymour Hersh’s reporting on the U.S. sabotage of the Russian pipeline. Video and text of her Feb. 10 speech to the Bundestag.

=> ↺ March to Iraq War, 20 Years Later: February 22, 2003

=> ↺ March To Iraq War, 20 Years Later: February 23, 2003

=> ↺ At Least 10 Palestinians Killed, More Than 100 Injured in Israeli West Bank Raid

• A child and two elderly people were among at least 10 Palestinians who were killed Wednesday morning by Israeli military forces conducting a raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.

=> ↺ Seven Things We Could Do If We Cut the Pentagon by $100 Billion

• What would be possible if we had an extra $100 billion to spend on urgent human needs?

=> ↺ Democrats Introduce Bill to Return $100B From Pentagon Budget to the Public

=> ↺ Lee, Pocan Revive Bill to Cut Military Budget by $100 Billion

• U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan on Wednesday reintroduced their People Over Pentagon Act, which would slash $100 billion from the nation’s military budget and reallocate that money to urgent needs, from investments in education and healthcare to combating the climate emergency.

=> ↺ Chile’s Battle for Memory: A Report From the Latest Front

• Santiago, Chile—Every morning, as I take my daily walk up toward the nearby Andes mountains, I pass by the Aeródromo Tobalaba, an airfield catering to a wide variety of private planes.

=> ↺ Chomsky: A Stronger NATO Is the Last Thing We Need as Russia-Ukraine War Turns 1

=> ↺ Kenyan Writer: History Explains Why Much of Africa Chooses Neutrality Over West’s Support of Ukraine

• One year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many African countries have tried to avoid strong denunciations or shows of support for either side in the conflict, walking a diplomatic tightrope even as the war has had a major impact on food and fuel prices across the continent. Kenyan writer and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola says that neutrality is influenced by memories of Africa as a conflict zone during the Cold War, as well as a desire to chart foreign policies independent of former colonial European powers.

=> ↺ Scholar Ho-fung Hung on China-Russia Relations & Whether Beijing Could Mediate Ukraine Peace Deal

• China’s top diplomat Wang Yi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow this week, where they reaffirmed the close relationship between the two countries. The high-profile visit comes just days before the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For more on China’s relationship with Russia and its role in the Ukraine war, we speak with Ho-fung Hung, professor of political economy and sociology at Johns Hopkins University.

=> ↺ “A War of Imperial Aggression”: How Russia’s Invasion One Year Ago Changed Ukraine & the World

• Friday marks one year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Over the past year, at least 8,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, according to the United Nations, but the true death toll is believed to be higher. The U.N. refugee agency said this week that more than 8 million refugees have fled the fighting in Ukraine. This week, U.S. President Joe Biden met with NATO leaders in Warsaw, while Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Western countries sending military aid to Ukraine bear responsibility for prolonging the death and destruction of the war. We begin today’s show looking at the war’s impact and future with Nina Krushcheva, a professor of international affairs at The New School and the great-granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Hanna Perekhoda, a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Lausanne and member of the democratic socialist organization Sotsialnyi Rukh. Perekhoda is from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

=> ↺ Malcolm X Would Call Biden a ‘Pretender Public Defender’

• Malcolm X, one of the most effective critics white America has ever known, who decried “straight-jacketed thinking, and straight-jacketed societies,” believed: “In our mutual sincerity we might be able to show a road to the salvation of America’s very soul.”

• Malcolm X wasn’t ever, to put it blandly — an adjective one could never pin to the charismatic firebrand — naïve about how difficult such an effort would be, and the challenge for white people who accepted it. He explained: “Indeed, how can white society atone for enslaving, for raping, for unmanning, for otherwise brutalizing millions of human beings, for centuries? What atonement would the God of Justice demand for the robbery of Black people’s labor, their lives, their true identities, their culture, their history — and even their human dignity?”

=> ↺ Who Killed Malcolm X? Family to File $100M Suit v. FBI, CIA, NYPD & Others to Find the Truth

• On the 58th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination, civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump announced a new lawsuit from Malcolm X’s surviving family seeking compensation from the NYPD, CIA and FBI for its role in concealing evidence in his murder case. This lawsuit comes more than a year after it was confirmed that federal and local agencies had a role in the wrongful conviction of Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam for the murder. Aziz and Islam’s convictions were overturned in 2021, and they were awarded a $36 million settlement for wrongful imprisonment by the state and city of New York. We air excerpts of Tuesday’s public comments from Crump and one of Malcolm X’s daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz, of their intent to file a wrongful death lawsuit over evidence concealed in the murder investigation, in part to seek answers on the extent of the government’s involvement in the civil rights leader’s death.

=> ↺ As Putin Suspends New START Treaty, Is There Still Hope for Nuclear Disarmament?

• Russian President Vladmir Putin’s announcement that Moscow would suspend its participation in the New START treaty threatens to end the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia. Putin made the pledge during his annual State of the Nation address on Tuesday, when he accused Western nations of provoking the conflict in Ukraine. The treaty limits the U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapon stockpiles and gives each country opportunities to inspect the other’s nuclear sites. Russia says it will continue to respect the caps established by the treaty, but that it will no longer allow inspections. For more on the treaty and the wider challenge of nuclear proliferation, we speak with Dr. Ira Helfand, a longtime advocate for nuclear disarmament, who says the need to end nuclear weapons “transcends” all other issues between the U.S. and Russia. “If we don’t get rid of nuclear weapons, they’re going to be used. And if they’re used, nothing else that we’re doing is going to make any difference,” says Helfand. He is the former president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which received the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, a member of the steering group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, as well as the co-founder and past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

=> ↺ ‘Victory for the Afghan People’ as US Judge Blocks 9/11 Families From Seizing Frozen Assets

• A coalition of Afghan-American community organizations on Wednesday welcomed a U.S. federal judge’s ruling rejecting a bid by relatives of 9/11 victims to seize billions of dollars in assets belonging to the people of Afghanistan.

=> ↺ ‘Victory for the Afghan People’ as US Judge Blocks 9/11 Families From Seizing Frozen Assets

• “This money belongs to the Afghan people, and no one else,” said Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, a coalition of Afghan-American community groups.

=> ↺ It’s Not All Balloon Buffoonery: Weaponizing Anti-China Paranoia

• By Blake Fleetwood / Original to ScheerPost The U.S. suffered worldwide embarrassment in the last two weeks while the American media and  Republican and Democratic politicians hyperventilated over four UFO balloons that turned out to be harmless.

=> ↺ The Chinese Balloon the Biden Team’s Hot Air

• Over the past 60 years, U.S. presidents have benefitted from advice from moderate and pragmatic advisers as well as examples of presidents ignoring such advice and suffering the consequences. President John F. Kennedy was not admirably served by his secretaries of state and defense, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, but a little-known U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Llewellyn Thompson, former ambassador to the USSR, provided the off-ramp that resolved the Cuban missile crisis without use of force.  An official in the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, George Ball, provided superb advice that challenged the Cold War thinking of the “best and brightest” leftovers from the Kennedy administration, but Johnson ignored Ball and blundered into the tragic Vietnam war.

• President Jimmy Carter had advisors to his left (e.g. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Marshall Shulman) and right (National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski), but unfortunately ignored the wisdom of Vance and Shulman on key issues involving the USSR.  The Reagan administration was going nowhere in resolving national security issues, until a new secretary of state, George P. Shultz, and a Foreign Service Officer, Jack Matlock, provided the guidance that led to the breakthrough on arms control negotiations and detente in the 1980s.  

=> ↺ UN Security Council on Nord Stream Attack With Ray McGovern and Jeffrey Sachs

• Ray McGovern and Jeffery Sachs addressed the U.N. Security Council Tuesday on the Nord Stream pipelines sabotage in light of Sy Hersh’s reporting.

=> ↺ Patrick Lawrence: Russia Takes Another Step Back From the West

• News that Russia will suspend its participation in the New START nuclear arms pact, which arrived Tuesday via Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Federal Assembly, had to land hard.

=> ↺ Scott Ritter: Arms Control or Ukraine?

• As Russia suspends New START, the sooner the Ukraine war ends, the sooner the U.S. and Russia can work to preserve arms control to avert the ultimate disaster.

=> ↺ Why Environmental Groups Must Oppose War

• Should an environment-protecting group like W.A.T.E.R. get involved in issues of international war? Or conversely, should W.A.T.E.R. “stay in its own lane”? More generally, should pro-environmental groups also be anti-war? The US government has been involved with fighting or funding wars for much of the past 80 years, so the question for us, as Americans, is not new. It is particularly pressing now because of the war in Ukraine.

• Everyone knows that wars are hugely destructive to both people and the environment; that is indeed the tactical intent of every exploding bomb and lethal projectile. Escalation to nuclear use would be a worldwide humanitarian and ecological disaster. Fighting around nuclear power plants – an especially stupid thing to do – may well lead to catastrophic toxic radioactive waste release spread over huge swaths of land. It is obvious that military action (and preparation for action) itself consumes a huge amount of energy and produces a huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions. According to a 2019 study at Boston and Brown Universities1, “the DOD is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum and correspondingly, the single largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world.”

=> ↺ The Proxy War in Ukraine Must End

• • No Guns For Nazis, No Love For Putin!

• • End The Proxy War Between NATO & Russia Now!

=> ↺ War in Ukraine and ICBMs: The Untold Story of How They Could Blow Up the World

• Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, media coverage of the war hasn’t included even the slightest mention of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Yet the war has boosted the chances that ICBMs will set off a global holocaust. Four hundred of them — always on hair-trigger alert — are fully armed with nuclear warheads in underground silos scattered across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming, while Russia deploys about 300 of its own. Former Defense Secretary William Perry has called ICBMs “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world,” warning that “they could even trigger an accidental nuclear war.”

• Now, with sky-high tensions between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, the chances of ICBMs starting a nuclear conflagration have increased as American and Russian forces face off in close proximity. Mistaking a false alarm for a nuclear-missile attack becomes more likely amid the stresses, fatigue and paranoia that come with protracted warfare and maneuvers.

=> ↺ EU foreign ministers express support for Ukraine in joint video, Hungarian FM only one to send substitute

=> ↺ Putin announces plans to deploy nuclear-capable Sarmat missiles amid media reports of failed tests — Meduza

• In a video released by the Kremlin’s press service to mark Russia’s Defender of the Fatherland Day on Thursday, Vladimir Putin announced that the country’s nuclear-capable Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles will be moved to combat readiness this year.

=> ↺ In Defender of the Fatherland Day message, Russian State Duma speaker says holiday ‘doesn’t apply to those who fled’ the country — Meduza

• In a Telegram post marking Russia’s Defender of the Fatherland Day, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that the holiday is an occasion to celebrate “both the men and the women” who “faithfully serve Russia.”

=> ↺ After days of pointed complaints, Evgeny Prigozhin says Wagner Group to begin receiving ammunition — Meduza

• Wagner Group founder Evgeny Prigozhin said Thursday that shipments of ammunition for the mercenary company are on their way.

=> ↺ Evgeny Prigozhin blames Wagner Group casualties on Defense Ministry, demands ‘ammo for Wagner’ — Meduza

• Evgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group has published a photo of several dozen dead mercenaries. Prigozhin himself explains that all of them were killed on February 21, and that their deaths could have been avoided if not for the scarcity of ammunition supplied by the Defense Ministry.

=> ↺ Russia charges Ukrainian soldier with using prohibited methods of warfare in first-of-its-kind case — Meduza

• Investigators in Rostov-on-Don have filed charges against Ukrainian soldier Anton Cherednik for allegedly using prohibited methods of warfare and forcibly seizing power, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.

=> ↺ Russian State Duma unanimously approves bill to suspend Russia’s cooperation with New START Treaty — Meduza

• Russia’s State Duma has voted unanimously to suspend Russia’s cooperation with the New START Treaty, which is the U.S. and Russia’s only remaining nuclear arms control agreement.

=> ↺ Stadium rally in support of invading Ukraine begins in Moscow. Putin is expected to speak. — Meduza

• A patriotic rally whose motto is “Glory to the defenders of our Fatherland!” is beginning in Moscow. TASS is running a live broadcast of the event.

Environment

=> ↺ The First Must-Read Environmental Books of 2023 Have Arrived

=> ↺ Vivian Krause to ‘Oil Mafia’ Supporters: ‘The Environmentalists Have Won’

• Vivian Krause may well claim the title of the Canadian woman who launched a thousand op-eds. 

• For over a decade Krause’s claim — that American philanthropic organizations are influencing Canadian environmental groups — provided the basis for hundreds of editorials alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to landlock Canadian oil and gas resources. Columnists pointed to Krause’s research as evidence that American-backed eco-radicals had taken over federal and provincial governments in Canada, halted major pipeline projects, and “played right into the business interests of U.S. billionaires by becoming their useful idiots.”

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Policy Lets Norfolk Southern Officials Order Crews to Ignore Safety Alerts

=> ↺ Norfolk Southern Agrees to Paid Sick Leave for 3,000 Workers Amid Ohio Crisis

=> ↺ Trump Is Returning to the Scene of His Crime When He Visits the East Palestine Train Wreck

• When Donald Trump accepted the GOP presidential nod in Cleveland in July 2016, he might have been picturing a place like East Palestine, Ohio — just 85 miles southeast of the massive podium where he was standing — as he promised voters he’d “deliver a better life for the people all across this nation that have been ignored, neglected, and abandoned.”

=> ↺ As Trump Visits East Palestine, Critics Say ‘He Should Be Apologizing’ for Safety Rollbacks

• Ahead of former President Donald Trump’s Wednesday visit to East Palestine, Ohio—where a Norfolk Southern-owned train transporting carcinogenic chemicals derailed on February 3, prompting a mass evacuation and release of pollutants—progressive critics highlighted the key role his administration played in making the fiery crash and its toxic aftermath more likely.

=> ↺ Norfolk Southern Lets Officials Order Crews to Ignore Safety Alerts

• Norfolk Southern allows a monitoring team to instruct crews to ignore alerts from train track sensors designed to flag potential mechanical problems.

• ProPublica learned of the policy after reviewing the rules of the company, which is engulfed in controversy after one of its trains derailed this month, releasing toxic flammable gas over East Palestine, Ohio.

=> ↺ Under Massive Pressure Amid Ohio Crisis, Norfolk Southern Agrees to Paid Sick Leave Deal

• Facing intense scrutiny and backlash over the toxic derailment of one of its trains in eastern Ohio, Norfolk Southern on Wednesday reached a deal with a leading rail union to provide up to a week of paid sick leave per year to around 3,000 track maintenance workers.

=> ↺ A Norfolk Southern Policy Lets Officials Order Crews To Ignore Safety Alerts

• In October, months before the East Palestine derailment, the company also directed a train to keep moving with an overheated wheel that caused it to derail miles later in Sandusky, Ohio.

=> ↺ It’s Time to Talk About Nationalizing America’s Railroads

• If the derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials in East Palestine, Ohio, tells us anything, it is that the corporate CEOs, billionaire speculators, and profit-hungry investors who control America’s transportation systems are not up to the job of running railroads. As Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown told CNN, “There’s no question [that the railroad company] caused it with this derailment because they underinvested in their employees.”

=> ↺ Electric Vehicles Are No Silver Bullet—Transportation Fixes Must Go Further

• The U.S. faces a critical juncture for the decarbonization of its transportation system.Will zero emissions transportation be an electrified status quo, with ever more massive electric SUVs stuck in traffic on highways connecting sprawling metropolitan regions? Or will it diverge from car dependency to take the form of e-bikes and e-buses zipping around denser, more walkable cities and suburbs?

=> ↺ Report Urges Biden to Stop Aiding Big Oil ‘Ploy to Prolong the Era of Fossil Fuels’

• Titled Liquefied Natural Cash: How Methane Exports Reverse Climate Progress, Harm Consumers and Endanger Communities, the report highlights the surge of methane gas delivery contracts inked in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago, a boom aided in part by the Biden administration’s efforts to export more U.S. gas to European allies.

=> ↺ Biden Proposes First Gulf of Mexico Offshore Wind Lease Sales

• Clean energy advocates on Wednesday applauded an announcement from U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who said her department is proposing the first-ever offshore lease sale for wind power in the Gulf of Mexico, long a center of oil and gas extraction.

=> ↺ The Natural Gas Industry Sees Cow Manure Gas as the Key to a Net Zero Future

• Chevron has been talking a lot about cows lately. Alongside POLITICO articles about clean energy, in D.C. newsletters, on Facebook and LinkedIn, are Chevron’s recent ads featuring taglines like “We’re looking to turn the methane from cow 💩 into the fuels of the future.” Each ad links to a page on Chevron’s website which explains how methane captured from manure is actually “renewable natural gas.” 

• But Chevron isn’t the only one talking cow manure. As world leaders convened in Egypt last November to negotiate climate action at the United Nations COP27 summit, a dairy industry trade association also ran a social media campaign highlighting efforts to “upcycle methane” from cattle. The ads showed anaerobic digester machines capturing methane emissions from manure and turning it into biomethane, which can be upgraded into natural gas. The public relations behemoth Edelman, which has come under fire for its work for the oil industry, created Facebook, Twitter, and even TikTok ads for this campaign.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Two Minutes

• I recently read an article discussing Held, et al v. Montana. This case, the first of its kind in the United States to go to trial, was filed in Montana First Judicial District Court by 16 young Montanans. These plaintiffs are suing to enforce their inalienable right to a clean and healthful environment, guaranteed under Article II, section 3 of our Montana Constitution.

• The article prompted me to reflect upon the evolutionary history of our species, homo sapiens–a story of soaring accomplishment and abject failure.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ An Aging Population Poses Issues, Just Like the Baby Boom Did

• The New York Times had an interesting piece on aging societies in Asia and elsewhere. The piece rightly points out that as the elderly comprise a larger share of the population, societies will have to make adjustments to meet their needs. This is not some sort of crisis, as it is often portrayed, by rather a challenge that has to be recognized, similar to other challenge posed by past demographic changes.

• The NYT piece noted that older people are likely to need more medical care than younger adults. Also, many will face chronic conditions like dementia, which will be difficult to deal with, especially for those without children or other family members to help them. It also pointed out that many older people are forced to work late in life because they don’t have a sufficient income on which to retire.

Finance

=> ↺ More Drivel Over the National Debt!

• How the hell can we expect Americans to understand what the national debt means if the media doesn’t report it accurately?

=> ↺ Distortion of Breakfast Price Hikes Leaves WSJ With Egg on Face

• At the same time these companies are acting like their hands are tied by supply disruptions, their profits have skyrocketed.

=> ↺ Inflation of food prices in Hungary decreased for first time in 20 months, but we are still way ahead of rest of EU

=> ↺ Hungarian inflation now more than two and a half times the EU average at 26.2

=> ↺ Digital business building driven by conviction and experimentation

• Investors today no longer reward companies for incremental changes in their core business. Embracing digital throughout the business can help traditional companies exponentially increase value and their ability to compete with digital natives, if done correctly.

=> ↺ Shareholders re-Joyce again, as Qantas ignores tax-payers, passengers and staff

• The ebullience with which Qantas chief Alan Joyce announced the airline’s well telegraphed record half year pre-tax profit of $1.4 billion, underscored perfectly the jarring disconnect now at play in the company. Michael Sainsbury reports.

• True to its priorities, the company also announced a share buyback of $500 million, its second in the past 12 months designed to prop up its share price. That’s a cool $840 million diverted to shareholders instead of investing much needed funds on its aging fleet, maintenance division and staff wages that continue – for the majority of employees – to go backwards in real terms, as inflation neutralises the small increases.

=> ↺ Shine Justice? Class action law firm poised to sue class action law firm

• It is understood that a class action law firm is planning to take a class action against class action law firm Shine Justice. What’s the scam?

• The scam is shonky accounting, as per the story below. The question is, is this law firm breaking the law? We posed questions to them and their auditors PwC but they declined to respond. Then they came out with more of the same today when they disclosed their financial statements and the share price tanked 20%.

=> ↺ Humanity Faces Converging Debt Crises

• An enormous debt bomb threatens the U.S. federal government and the nation’s financial system unless warring politicians can agree on a plan to defuse it. However, there are even bigger debt bombs ticking away beneath us all, of which fewer people are aware. It may be impossible to disarm all of them, but action is required to minimize the casualties.

=> ↺ What Will Happen When Banks Go Bust? Bank Runs, Bail-Ins and Systemic Risk

• Financial podcasts have been featuring ominous headlines lately along the lines of “Your Bank Can Legally Seize Your Money” and “Banks Can STEAL Your Money?! Here’s How!”

=> ↺ Biden’s Missing Word: Inequality

• On February 2nd, Pres. Joe Biden delivered his annual State of the Union address and received considerable praise for both the “progressive” positions he took and his combative tone. He seemed awake, getting ready to announce his 2024 candidacy. According to one source, former Pres. Donald Trump offered some praise.

• However, the word “inequality” was absent from Biden’s speech.

=> ↺ The Lesson We Need to Teach Our Nation’s Rich

=> ↺ The Day the World Should Have Changed

• There was a day when humanity was invited to reinvent its relation with power, when we should have realized that competition among nations as we knew it was obsolete, as well as pretty well all our relations based on power and domination.

• The day was July 16, 1945, the day of the Trinity test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, when the first nuclear weapon was exploded, proving that humanity had pierced the secrets of the atom and could now build weapons staggeringly larger than the 25-kiloton bomb exploded that day. The hydrogen bomb was already envisioned. It would use fission devices such as the Trinity bomb to create a fusion reaction that would unleash energies hundreds of times greater. Even the name of the test indicated that scientists understood humanity had obtained a godlike power.

=> ↺ Price of ticket for 100E airport bus in Budapest to increase by HUF 700 in April

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ McCarthyism, Then and Now

• And the (True) One-Party State in America.

=> ↺ GA Grand Jury Foreperson Implies Trump Will Face Charges for Raffensperger Call

=> ↺ President Novák shakes hands with US President Biden at B9 meeting

=> ↺ Orbán’s visit to Kyiv is being planned

=> ↺ New York Court Says Fox, Rudy Giuliani Can’t Escape Defamation Lawsuit Over BS Stolen Election Claims

• Donald Trump and his supporters are unable to process facts. That inability led to many of them engaging in questionable election-related lawsuits and extremely questionable election-related public statements. Alleging a “stolen” election, Trump and his backers claimed, without any supporting evidence, voting machines/software made by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic conspired to rob the lame duck of a second term in office.

=> ↺ Will Trump & Allies Finally Face Jail for Election Lies? Georgia Grand Jury Recommends Indictments

• The special grand jury in Georgia that is investigating attempts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election has recommended more than a dozen indictments, and the list could include Trump. Emily Kohrs, the foreperson of the grand jury, confirmed the indictments on Tuesday, though it’s still unclear if they will include crimes other than perjury. Prosecutors will ultimately decide what charges to bring in the coming days. For more, we speak with The Nation’s D.C. bureau chief, Chris Lehmann, who says convictions are still unlikely, given that “the legal system favors heavily entrenched power.”

=> ↺ By Caving to Israel, Biden Opens the Door to War With Iran

• As all eyes were on Ukraine and Chinese balloons in the sky, the Biden administration seemingly shifted America’s longstanding opposition to Israel starting a disastrous war with Iran.

=> ↺ Biden Administration Takes Its Capitulation to Israel to an Absurd New Level

• An independent human rights expert was denied a post for accurately criticizing Israel.

=> ↺ Mark Fiore: Freedom Liberry

• The movement to ban certain books is gaining traction in Florida and around the country. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is riding the book ban bandwagon to national fame (after first riding Covid misinformation bandwagon) as he prepares to run for president. 

=> ↺ „Brussels farce“: Hungary’s justice minister rails against EU committee

• A parliamentary EU committee investigated political persecution in Hungary using the „Pegasus“ spyware. The government suspected a left-wing conspiracy and was apparently poorly informed about it.

=> ↺ Orbán lists his opponents: a harsh outburst against the West at the Fidesz-KDNP caucus meeting

=> ↺ The Real Problem With Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Call for a “National Divorce”

• Over Presidents’ Day weekend, House GOP darling Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia caused yet another firestorm by calling for a “national divorce.” She tweeted: “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this.”

=> ↺ The Unfulfilled Promise

• When it comes to understanding modern politics, analogies abound. We have the 1938 Munich conference as a metaphor for the perils of being “weak” on foreign policy. Modern hyper-partisanship has driven comparisons to the 1850s and the lead-up to the Civil War. With the combination of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and a new wave of strikes roiling the nation, scholars and journalists have compared our current moment to the 1918 influenza pandemic and the following year’s Red Summer, when the United States appeared to be on fire with strikes and protests from coast to coast.1

=> ↺ Leadership, Kevin McCarthy–Style

• He bowed to the wackos’ demands. He’d needed their votes. Those were vital To winning the office he craved. Now all he has left is the title.

=> ↺ Rosa Parks, Courage and Leadership

=> ↺ Politico: Orbán threatening with veto unless 4 individuals removed from sanctions list

=> ↺ Judit Varga’s talk about dollar-funded left ridiculous and shameful – chair of Pegasus delegation

=> ↺ Ralph Nader Remembers Michael Pertschuk

• The tumultuous start of the 118th Congress has planted it squarely in the public eye. We should broaden out our field of vision to include congressional staff members. These unsung but influential aides should be made aware of what their predecessors accomplished in the past, led by Michael Pertschuk.

=> ↺ Putin spends 3.5 minutes speaking to Russians gathered at stadium rally — Meduza

• President Vladimir Putin gave a much-anticipated speech before thousands of Russians gathered at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium.

=> ↺ Air defense system spotted near Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, ahead of Putin speech — Meduza

• A Pantsir missile system has been spotted opposite Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, where Vladimir Putin spoke today, as part of a patriotic rally commemorating a year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. TV Rain has published a video of the air defense installation near the Moscow State University building.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Lawsuit Shows Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham Among Fox News Hosts Who Knew Election Claims Were Baseless

• As Donald Trump and his inner circle potentially face indictments over their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Fox News is also in legal hot water for amplifying the same unfounded claims about election fraud. Dominion Voting Systems, which makes voting machines, has sued the conservative cable news outlet for $1.6 billion in a defamation suit that has exposed how top hosts and executives knew they were spreading misinformation but continued to push the conspiracy theories on air. “Fox News, despite its corporate name, is not in fact a news organization,” says Chris Lehmann, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation. “What they are doing is promulgating lies for the sake of maintaining audience share and high profitability.”

=> ↺ Crazy Like a Fox (Satire Alert)

• In a recent defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Dominion Voting Systems contends that dozens of people with editorial responsibility—from the top of the organization to the producers of specific shows to the hosts themselves—made false on-air statements that Dominion’s voting machines were programed to change the results of the 2020 presidential vote so that Trump could lose. The late Roger Ailes, founder and former chairman of Fox News, was instrumental in setting up the network’s news division. In their play Rupert!, Marvin Kitman and Richard Lingeman imagine Ailes explaining the philosophy behind his proposed news channel.

=> ↺ Climate Misinformation Is Now Our Main Competitor

• What do people across the U.K. really think about climate misinformation? Outright denial that climate change is real is waning, but there are still real barriers to engagement and effective climate action. Today, most people are neither climate activists nor climate deniers. Confronted with ever-worsening climate impacts, the majority believe that climate change is real—but they aren’t actively engaged in trying to create change to tackle it.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Ron DeSantis Carves Out a Brand as a Book-Burning, Anti-LGBTQ+, Racist Authoritarian

• Ideological attacks on public education are central to the politics of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is carving out a brand as a book-burning, gay-phobic, transphobic, racist authoritarian. A Fauci-hater and anti-vax hero of right-wing media, DeSantis restricted instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation with his “Don’t Say Gay” law. He limited what schools can teach about racism and diversity with his “Stop WOKE” law. He rejected math textbooks en masse for what the state called “prohibited topics,” such as critical race theory; and he banned an Advanced Placement course in African-American studies for high school students on the grounds that it is a tool for “political indoctrination.” Playing the wannabe tough guy, he wants to troll his way to the White House as America’s premiere culture warrior.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ LuxLeaks Whistleblower Wins Case Before Europe’s Top Human Rights Court

=> ↺ LuxLeaks Whistleblower Wins Case Before Europe’s Top Human Rights Court

• By Kevin Gosztola / The Dissenter The grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights recently ruled in favor of a whistleblower who worked for the multinational accounting conglomerate PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and exposed tax evasion schemes in Luxembourg.

=> ↺ Darkness into light: Night Carnival for Assange

• The latest expression of support for Assange was the Night Carnival protest in London, the very spot where Dickens pictured the poisonous fog to be thickest. Its slogan is ‘Light into Darkness’, using the age-old subversive nature of carnival to shine a light on this very dark corner of the political and legal system.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Sanders Says US Must Condition Aid to Israel to Rein in “Racist Government”

=> ↺ Seattle Becomes First US City to Ban Caste Discrimination With Kshama Sawant Ordinance

• The Seattle City Council voted Tuesday for the first U.S. ban on caste-based discrimination, a move the measure’s socialist sponsor hopes will inspire similar legislation nationwide.

=> ↺ WI Supreme Court Election Candidate Is Trump Loyalist Involved in Electors Plot

=> ↺ “It’s White Supremacy” — Critics Lambaste Greene’s Call for “National Divorce”

=> ↺ The Supreme Court Just Heard 2 Cases That Could Break the Internet

• Humility, thoughtfulness, and restraint are not virtues one can in good faith associate with our current Supreme Court. The past few years have seen a rash of extremist rulings from the conservatives who control the court, with the six archconservatives assuming the power to invalidate human rights, grant new rights to guns and corporations, and win the culture wars for their far-right confederates. The Supreme Court no longer acts as an impartial panel of jurists but as a cabal of rulers eager to foist their worldview upon the rest of us. 

=> ↺ Progressives Score a Major Win in the Wisconsin Supreme Court Primary

• Just 33 minutes after polls closed in the primary election for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat that will determine the balance of power on one of the most powerful and contentious judicial benches in the country, the Associated Press announced that liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz will advance to the general election on April 4. The Milwaukee County judge, who ran as an unapologetic defender of abortion rights and fair elections, overwhelmed the other three contenders in the first round of a contest that political observers on both sides of the nation’s partisan divide consider the most consequential election fight of 2023.

=> ↺ In ‘Extremely Rare’ Ruling, SCOTUS Orders Resentencing of Arizona Prisoner

• The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a rare rebuke of Arizona’s criminal justice system as the majority ruled in favor of a death row inmate who has called for a resentencing, saying the state ignored legal precedents during his trial.

=> ↺ Supreme Court Declines to Hear Challenge to ‘Unconstitutional’ Arkansas Anti-BDS Law

• In a move decried by one critic as a “significant loss for the First Amendment,” the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a challenge to an Arkansas law requiring companies doing business with the state to sign a pledge vowing not to boycott Israel.

=> ↺ The Cult of Violence: New Poll Finds Evidence of Authoritarian Values Driving U.S. Public Opinion

• Social scientists have long expressed concerns that a large number of Americans embrace authoritarian modes of thinking that are centered on suppression of dissent, violence, and an infatuation with strong leaders.

• New evidence reveals that these authoritarian values are endorsed by a disturbing number of Americans, with the trend being most acute on the American right. A new national poll sponsored by the Marcon Institute for anti-racist studies and social justice suggests that the way in which authoritarian values are manifested with the American public may be shifting. The poll was conducted from February 7-9, and contacted a nationally representative sample of 1,021 Americans.

=> ↺ Disability Justice Organizers Dream Big and Resist a Culture of Disposability

=> ↺ Guilty: Mexico’s Ex-Top Cop García Luna Convicted in U.S. Drug Trafficking Case

• A New York court on Tuesday convicted Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former secretary of public security and a close ally of U.S. law enforcement for decades, of drug trafficking and money laundering, among other charges. Prosecutors said García Luna accepted millions in bribes from the very criminal groups he was meant to be fighting, including the infamous Sinaloa Cartel formerly led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. García Luna faces up to life in prison and is the most high-ranking Mexican official ever tried in the U.S. For more, we speak with award-winning journalists Peniley Ramírez and Maria Hinojosa, co-hosts of Futuro Media’s podcast USA v. García Luna. They say the case exposes how corrupt the so-called war on drugs has been on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. “The U.S. government, the DEA, the entire security apparatus failed here,” says Hinojosa.

=> ↺ While Ex-Elected Officials Invest in Cannabis, I Remain in Prison for Selling It

=> ↺ The Democratic Party Failed Striking Warrior Met Coal Miners in Alabama

• After almost two years on the picket line, the hundreds of United Mine Workers of America members who have been on strike at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama have offered to go back to work. They still do not have the fair contract they have sacrificed so much for. Their negotiations will continue, but they did not win this strike—and that is tragic. The company and its private equity owners bear the most direct responsibility for precipitating this heartless, inhuman struggle. But if you are looking for a meaningful place to focus your rage over the way that this strike has turned out, look directly at the Democratic Party.

=> ↺ New Biden Rule Denounced as ‘Trump’s Asylum Ban Under a Different Name’

• The Biden administration on Tuesday proposed a rule that immigrant rights groups, civil liberties organizations, and some Democratic lawmakers condemned as an illegal attack on asylum-seekers that resembles an inhumane policy pursued by former President Donald Trump.

=> ↺ Help ProPublica and The Salt Lake Tribune Investigate Sexual Assault in Utah

• We’re reporting on sexual assault by health care professionals, an issue we highlighted in our story about a Provo OB-GYN who was sued by nearly 100 women who said he sexually assaulted them during treatments. You can fill out our confidential form below to tell us about other practitioners and health care institutions you think we should report on.

=> ↺ In the Dominican Republic, the Fight for Abortion Rights Is a Fight Against Anti-Blackness

• Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic—There’s a citywide blackout. No street lights, no shop lights—just headlights from passing cars. “This is just your typical Friday night,” Alicia Mendez Medina says, and a bodega worker nods from behind her. Alicia bids her goodbye and we head to Parque Duarte, the place many have described as “the it spot” for nightlife in Santo Domingo. She orders some wine.

=> ↺ I Explained To A Court How California’s ‘Kid’s Code’ Is Both Impossible To Comply With & An Attack On Our Expression

• Last year, Techdirt was one of only a very few sites where you could find out information on California’s AB 2273, officially the “California Age Appropriate Design Code” or “Kid’s code.” As with so many bills that talk about “protecting the children,” everyone we talked to said they were afraid to speak up, because they worried that they’d be branded as being against child safety. Indeed, I even had some people within some larger tech companies reach out to me suggesting it was dangerous to speak out against the bill.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ After Introducing Caps And Raising Prices, Starlink Introduces $200 Global Roaming Charge

• To be clear, Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband service is great if you have no other options and can afford it. Especially if you’ve spent an eternity stuck on an expensive 3 Mbps DSL line straight out of 2003, or a traditional, capped, expensive satellite broadband connection. The ability to get somewhere between 10 and 100 Mbps in your cabin in the woods (if it works) is a great thing.

=> ↺ Some Initial Thoughts On The Supreme Court Oral Arguments In Gonzalez: Non-Experts Might Still Make A Mess Of Things, But Without Understanding Why

• Despite the Supreme Court hearing what could be the most consequential case regarding the future of the internet in decades, I decided to log off for most of Tuesday and go do something fun, far away from any internet connection. I didn’t listen live to the oral arguments, but rather chose to listen (at 3x speed) to the arguments Tuesday evening, while simultaneously reading the transcript. My colleague Cathy Gellis didn’t just listen to the oral arguments, but attended live at the Supreme Court (and is doing the same today with the associated Taamneh case), so I expect that she’ll have a more thorough analysis from her later.

=> ↺ Supreme Court Passes On Important Parody Case, Allows Cops To Treat Satire As A Criminal Act In The Sixth Circuit

• While we’re all waiting to see if the Supreme Court is willing to destroy Section 230 immunity the way it did abortion rights, more bad news has been delivered by the top court in the land. Hidden among the list [PDF] of dozens of cases the Supreme Court will not be reviewing is this one, rejected without comment by the justices.

=> ↺ Liquid (Zol) facing another service degradation nationwide, its slow speeds until further notice

• It was just under two weeks ago that we were talking about Liquid having an outage. Then, we were told the outage was as a result of a fibre break. The outage did not lead to people being cut off completely, but rather getting slow speeds, Well, it’s just happened again.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Colorado Passes Landmark Agricultural ‘Right To Repair’ Bill

• Colorado is the latest state to move forward on new “right to repair” legislation despite a growing and sustained lobbying effort by industry. The Colorado House of Representatives passed the bipartisan Consumer Right to Repair Agricultural Equipment Act (HB23-1011) with a 44-17 vote on Tuesday, the first major right to repair legislation to be passed so far in 2023.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ Destroying Culture With Modified Corn

Copyrights

=> ↺ Russia Claims Ukraine & Allies Use Pirate Sites to Spread Propaganda

• A Russian security company is reporting a surge in movie and TV show-related domain registrations. Some believe that pirates are buying domains to exploit an upcoming gap in the market when Hollywood licenses expire at the end of the month. Telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor claims that Ukraine and its allies are running pirate sites for propaganda purposes.

=> ↺ The European Union’s Official Site Has a Persistent ‘Piracy’ Problem

• The European Union warns that pirate sites can lead users to malware and other unwanted content. Unfortunately, the EU also has its own piracy problem; its official website continues to be exploited by bad actors to advertise piracy-related scams. Meanwhile, male enhancement gummies, Onlyfans hacks, gift card generators, and other scams are promoted too.

=> ↺ MPA: Pluto TV .m3u Playlists Facilitate Piracy on a Massive Scale

• A condition of watching streaming service Pluto TV is that users must use approved methods such as official apps. This is the reason that Pluto TV is free, since revenue is generated through advertising. Unofficial Pluto TV .m3u playlists are easy to access and do away with advertising and user behavior tracking mechanisms. A copyright complaint sent by the MPA this week pulls no punches; these playlists facilitate piracy on a massive scale.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Contrasting Visual and Nonvisual

• I’m aggressively non-visual. So much so that I am still utterly baffled by the idea of a picture. I mean, how on Earth do you squish three-dimensional reality into two dimensions on a page, a screen, a canvas, or what have you? If I sit here and try to grok it, you’d probably see figurative smoke coming out of the top of my head.

• And yet, I love Lisp. Lisp, and S-expressions in particular, helped me understand trees.

Technical

=> ↺ My Pinebook Pro Lives!

• Really, that’s it. I just goofed up the eMMC and since it boots to that first by default I had to remove the chip in order to be able to mess with it again using Armbian on an SD card.

• Now I’ve just gotta get around to grabbing an eMMC to USB adapter of some sort so I can re-flash it with a copy of the OS as it lives on the SD card, and I’ll be back up to 64GB of cheap storage.

• For the kinda stuff I’ll likely wind up doing here that’s about as convoluted as I’d need my storage size to be.. anything more than that and I should probably be offloading it to a storage hard drive anyway.

=> ↺ A breakdown of the triple-star pointer

• I few days ago I read “Lessons learnt while trying to modernize some C code [1]” (via Lobsters [2]) and one of the problems of C stated stood out to me: “Avoid constructs like char ***. I thought it was a joke, but people do pass around char *** and it’s insane—almost impossible to comprehend why do you need a pointer to a pointer to a pointer.” Yes, it happens, but come on! That doesn’t happen often enough to complain about!

=> ↺ GPT-3 On Electronic Pets

• I’ve lately wanted a pet, but no animal lives up to my criteria. Jokingly both I and friends have said that maybe I should get an e-pet instead, like a tamagotchi. Of course, an e-pet doesn’t alleviate loneliness in the least! But don’t just take my word for it; listen to an AI explain it for you.

Programming

=> ↺ Reply – Christina – February 2023 Five Questions (5Q)

• Christina, looks like the questions as posted on your gemcap have been truncated a bit by Nano or Emacs &c. FYI. I still cleave to Nano as my default $EDITOR, but have aliased it to always run with flags for line numbers and line wrap for this reason. Highly recommended. Not to mention setting the config for endearing ansi colours! Anyway, no worries, I shall make do with inference. If clarification is needful and interesting, please ping me by XMPP.

=> ↺ I’m learn-ding

• Illness aside, I’ve been trying to keep myself busy over the last month, mostly in my attempts to continue learning C. I still have no real desire to make my own applications, but I want to maintain and modify applications that I already use, like adding Atom support to snownews, and fixing some problems that I found when compiling it for Snow Leopard. I also kinda want to toy with other applications, like I did when learning what I know of Perl.

• Lua will come soon enough, as I use wordgrinder on a daily basis, and I’d like to be able to eventually fork the older 7.2 version I modified since it runs better on my OS of choice than the current version does.

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