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● 03.04.23

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● Links 04/03/2023: Lots of Fedora and Politics

Posted in News Roundup at 12:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ LHS Episode #498: Dust in the Wind

• Hello and welcome to Episode #498 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short topics episode, the hosts discuss upcoming opportunities for students to contact the ISS…

=> ↺ elementary OS 7.0 Quick Overview #shorts – Invidious

• A Quick Overview of elementary OS 7.0

=> ↺ How to install Intellij Community edition on Linux Lite 6.2 – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at how to install Intellij Community edition on Linux Lite 6.2. Enjoy! For the commands and more, look here: https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2023/03/how-to-install-intellij-community.html Background Music: Hills by Riot If you want to know more about us, look here! https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2022/12/about-us.html

=> ↺ No ZDNET, Linux 6.2 WILL NOT Run On M1 Macs – Invidious

• Recently this ZDNET article was making the rounds making some absolutely wild claims about the state of Asahi Linux and it’s ability to run on M1 macs, it’s not ready by any defintion, at least right now

=> ↺ These 20 games defined the Steam Deck in February – Steam Deck News #74 – Invidious

• Sometimes it feels like there’s so much going on in the world of the Steam Deck that I just can’t keep up. Ya know?

=> ↺ How to install TUXEDO OS 2. – Invidious

• In this video, I am going to show how to install TUXEDO OS 2.

=> ↺ Most Linux Content Creators Are Honest (Not All Though!) – Invidious

• Have you ever watched a video from one of you favorite content creators and then suddenly got the feeling that you’ve heard those words before?

=> ↺ Linux Commands in 60 Seconds – The sed Command – Invidious

• Linux Commands in 60 Seconds – A series of YouTube Shorts that covers very basic usage of many popular commands, one video at a time.

Applications

=> ↺ 20 Best Open-source VoIP Software for 2023

• What is a VoIP?

• VoIP is short for “voice over internet protocol” or, in more general terms, phone service over the internet. Therefore, VoIP technology enables traditional telephone services to run over a computer network.

• VoIP refers to the transmission of voice traffic over an internet connection.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Communication between two Arduinos by Serial UART

• In this tutorial, we will use two Arduino Uno to communicate with each other via Arduino UART (universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter) communication. This communication is a

=> ↺ Gentoo, print in percent of all available packages in tree we installed

• $ echo "$((eix --only-names -I | wc -l * 100 / eix --only-names | wc -l))% of 100% packages from Gentoo Linux is installed"

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ What’s new for QML Modules in 6.5

• While QML modules have existed for a long time, their use had been rather sparse before Qt 6. With the introduction of qt_add_qml_module in Qt 6, they have however become much more prevalent. And with good reason: Only by placing all related QML in a module can tooling like qmllint or the Qt Quick Compilers work correctly.

=> ↺ JUCE x Qt

• Qt is used across many different industries, including the world of audio and music production software. As someone who occasionally dabbles in music production, I’ve always been motivated to keep Qt on the map for these use-cases, and to improve things where we can. To that end, during our latest company hackathon, I decided to explore the world of audio plugins.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Felix Häcker: #85 Preferred Installations

• Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from February 24 to March 03.

Distributions and Operating Systems

SUSE/OpenSUSE

Dominique Leuenberger ☛ openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2023/09Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,The weather is unpredictable and here changes from almost spring-like back to winter in a few days. In this world I am happy to have one constant: snapshot delivering 7 snapshots in as many days (0223…0301). Snapshot 0226 has not been announced to the mailing list as it did not contain any change of packages that are part of the DVD)The snapshots delivered these changes:gimp 2.10.34Node.JS 19.7.0SQLite 3.41.0KDE Plasma 5.27.1NetworkManager 1.42.2MariaDB 10.10.3Linux kernel 6.2.0 & linux-glibc-devel 6.2cURL 7.88.1make 4.4.1Mesa 23.0.0AppArmor 3.1.3 (fixes for log format change in kernel 6.2)zstd 1.5.4

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ 5 ways to make an impact on your IT community

• Learn how to grow your network, engage with other technologists, and give back to the community.

=> ↺ Fedora Magazine: How to use a YubiKey with Fedora Linux

• This article explains how to configure Yubico’s YubiKey, a hardware security token, and Fedora Linux Workstation for typical use-cases such as logging into GDM, authentication for the sudo command, OpenSSH authentication and key management, or as a second-factor on the web.

=> ↺ Fedora Community Blog: Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2023-09

• Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

• The F38 Beta freeze is in place. The current F38 Beta target is the early target date (2023-03-14).

• I have weekly office hours most Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time). Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

=> ↺ Fedora Community Blog: CPE Weekly update – Week 9

• This is a weekly report from the CPE (Community Platform Engineering) Team. If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on libera.chat.

• We provide you both infographics and text version of the weekly report. If you just want to quickly look at what we did, just look at the infographic. If you are interested in more in depth details, look below the infographic.

Remi Collet ☛ Remi Collet: PHP version 8.1.17RC1 and 8.2.4RC1Release Candidate versions are available in testing repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS / Alma / Rocky and other clones) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests, and also as base packages.RPM of PHP version 8.2.4RC1 are availableas base packages in the remi-php82-test repository for Enterprise Linux 7in the remi-modular-test for Fedora 35-37 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8as SCL in remi-test repository

Debian Family

=> ↺ Louis-Philippe Véronneau: Goodbye Bullseye — report from the Montreal 2023 BSP

• Hello World! I haven’t really had time to blog here since the start of the semester, as I’ve been pretty busy at work1.

• All this to say, this report for the Bug Squashing Party we held in Montreal last weekend is a little late, sorry

• First of all, I’m pleased to announce our local community seems to be doing great and has recovered from the pandemic-induced lull. May COVID stay away from our bodies forever.

• This time around, a total of 9 people made it to what has become somewhat of a biennial tradition2. We worked on a grand total of 14 bugs and even managed to close some!

=> ↺ Sven Hoexter: exfat-fuse 1.4 in experimental

• I know a few people hold on to the exFAT fuse implementation due the support for timezone offsets, so here is a small update for you. Andrew released 1.4.0, which includes the timezone offset support, which was so far only part of the git master branch.

=> ↺ Russell Coker: Hyper Threading on the E5-2696v3

• I just did some quick tests of hyper-threading on my new E5-2696v3 CPU. I compiled the Linux 6.0.10 kernel with and without hyper-threading enabled. Here’s the times for “make -j36 bzImage” and “make -j36 modules” with HT enabled:

=> ↺ Ian Jackson: Never use git submodules

• git submodules are always the wrong solution. Yes, even the to the problem they were specifically invented to solve.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Content Management Systems (CMS)

=> ↺ The Month in WordPress – February 2023

• February has been an exciting month for the WordPress community, with the celebration of the first-ever WordCamp Asia bringing friends and contributors back together in person. But that’s not all; read on for the latest project updates.

=> ↺ Let’s Party: Organize your WP20 Celebration!

• Join WordPress enthusiasts from across the globe on May 27, 2023, as they come together to celebrate its 20th anniversary!

• Regardless of how you use WordPress or where you call home, you are invited to celebrate this great milestone. Plan a larger party that includes your entire meetup, spend the day coworking with a group of friends, or hang out virtually online.

Education (not FOSS)

=> ↺ New Bill Could End Police Ticketing in Illinois Schools

• A new bill in the Illinois House aims to stop schools from working with police to issue students tickets for minor misbehavior, a harmful and sometimes costly practice that many districts have continued despite pleas to stop from the state’s top education officials.

• An investigation by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune revealed last year that school-based ticketing was rampant across Illinois, with police writing citations that can result in a fine of up to $750 for conduct once handled by the principal’s office.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Systemd Container and Podman in GitHub CI

• As D-Installer consists of several components like D-Bus backend, CLI or web frontend, we see a need to test in CI that each component can start and communicate properly with each other. For this we use a test framework and more importantly GitHub CI where we need a systemd container which is not documented at all. In the following paragraphs we would like to share with you how we did it so that so that each of you can be inspired by it or use it for your own project.

• We created a testing container in our build service that includes what is needed for the backend and the frontend. After some iterations, we discovered that we depend on NetworkManager which is really coupled with systemd. Additionally, we needed to access the journal for debugging purposes, which also does not work without systemd. For those reasons, we decided to include systemd.

=> ↺ Maui Release Briefing # 1

• Today, we bring you a new special report on the Maui Project’s progress.

• Maui 2.2.1 was released about three months ago, and since then, we have added new features, bug fixes, and improvements to the Maui set of apps and frameworks; the Maui Shell components and new apps have been updated and pushed for a new release. The following blog post will cover changes and highlights from the last three months, which pave the road for a Maui Desktop environment for convergence.

• To follow the Maui Project’s development or say hi, you can join us on Telegram:https://t.me/mauiproject.

=> ↺ Niko Matsakis: Trait transformers (send bounds, part 3)

• I previously introduced the “send bound” problem, which refers to the need to add a Send bound to the future returned by an async function. This post continues my tour over the various solutions that are available. This post covers “Trait Transformers”. This proposal arose from a joint conversation with myself, Eric Holk, Yoshua Wuyts, Oli Scherer, and Tyler Mandry. It’s a variant of Eric Holk’s inferred async send bounds proposal as well as the work that Yosh/Oli have been doing in the keyword generics group. Those posts are worth reading as well, lots of good ideas there.1

=> ↺ Mozilla Performance Blog: Ancient Bug Discovered in the Visual Metrics Processing Script

• Recently, we had an odd regression in our page load tests. You can find that bug here. The regression was quite large, but when a developer investigated, they found that the regression looked more like an improvement.

• Below you can see an example of this, and note how the SpeedIndex of the Before video shows up before the page is loaded. You can also see that in the After video the page seems to load faster (less frames with gray boxes) even though we have a higher SpeedIndex.

Rust

=> ↺ Adam Young: Hello World in rust on ARM64 includes a lot of code

• I had not taken the time to try and work with Rust on ARM64 in the past. Since I was doing disassembly of simple C programs on an one of our servers, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try the same thing with rust.

Leftovers

=> ↺ 2023-03-03 Obituary Editor

=> ↺ Will Carmakers Switch Clay For Computers?

• The 3D printing revolution has transformed a lot of industries, but according to [Insider Business] the car industry still uses clay modeling to make life-sized replicas of new cars. The video below shows a fascinating glimpse of the process of taking foam and clay and making it look like a real car. Unlike the old days, they do use a milling machine to do some rough work on the model, but there’s still a surprising amount of manual work involved. Some of the older film clips in the video show how hard it was to do before the CNC machines.

=> ↺ House overwhelmingly approves resolution to maintain Syria sanctions after earthquake

=> ↺ 2023-03-03 ‘It is forgotten that prisoners are earthquake survivors, too’

=> ↺ 2023-03-03 Preventing aid deliveries, detaining journalists: Rights group documents violations after quakes

=> ↺ 2023-03-03 At least 182 workers killed on the job in February, including over 90 in earthquakes

=> ↺ Another dog rescued from debris weeks after Türkiye earthquakes

• Two dogs were rescued from the rubble in three days in Hatay, southern Türkiye.

=> ↺ Lawyers’ group files complaint against religious authority over ‘child marriage’ statement

• In response to a question about the adoption of child survivors of the earthquakes, Diyanet had said there was no obstacle to a marriage between an adopter and an adoptee.

Science

=> ↺ The Curved Nature Of Time Clock

• While we’re told that space-time curves, we aren’t sure that was what [andrei.erdei] was going for when he built a great-looking curved LED clock. The LEDs are courtesy of a strip of 84 WS2812 smart LEDs, the curve comes from a 3D printed part, and a Wemos D1 mini provides the brains.

=> ↺ Daniel Valuch Chats About CERN’s High Caliber Hacking

• For those of us who like to crawl over complex systems, spending hours or even days getting hardware and software to work in concert, working at places like NASA or CERN seems like a dream job. Imagine having the opportunity to turn a wrench on the Space Shuttle or the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — not only do you get to spend some quality time with some of the most advanced machines ever produced, you can be secure in the knowledge that your work will further humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe around us.

Hardware

=> ↺ Breaking a Commodore 16 key, and retrocomputer storage

• Last weekend I was working on my 1984 Commodore 16, like a gentleman, trying to figure out why warm restarts don’t work. The machine can be switched on after a few minutes of being off, but the reset button doesn’t work, and flicking the power switch to simulate a warm reboot does nothing. The Commodore Plus/4 resets exactly as I expected when pressing its reset and power buttons, so I knew how the function was supposed to work on these 264-line of machines.

• I’d just reassembled the machine having probed its reset lines with my adorable new budget oscilloscope (a subject for another post), when I stood up and bumped the machine clean off the table. On its journey to the floor, the 6 keycap somehow popped off, sending the spring flying and snapping off its post from the board. I couldn’t believe it; it had literally just been sitting there.

• I have a spare parts board from the VC-20 I can use, though it will require desoldering and reattaching the shift lock key to gain access. It shouldn’t be too difficult, I hope. But it still sucks.

=> ↺ Supercon 2022: Michael Whiteley Saves The Badge

• Michael Whiteley (aka [compukidmike]) is a badgelife celebrity. Together, he and his wife Katie make up MK Factor. They have created some of the most popular electronic conference badges. Of course, even experts make mistakes and run into challenges when they dare to push the envelope of technology and delivery schedules. In his Supercon 2022 talk, There’s No Rev 2: When Badgelife Goes Wrong, Mike shares details from some of his worst badge snafus and also how he managed to gracefully pull them back from the edge of disaster.

=> ↺ Defender Arcade Rebuilt To Settle A Childhood Memory

• [Jason Winfield] had a nemesis: the Defender arcade machine. Having put quite a number of coins into one during his childhood, he’s since found himself as a seasoned maker, and decided to hold a rematch on his own terms. For this, he’s recreated the machine from scratch, building it around the guts of a Dell laptop, and he tells us the story what it took to build a new Defender in this day and age.

=> ↺ All The USB You Can Do With A CH552

• Recently, you might have noticed a flurry of CH552 projects on Hackaday.io – all of them with professionally taken photos of neatly assembled PCBs, typically with a USB connector or two. You might also have noticed that they’re all built by one person, [Stefan “wagiminator” Wagner], who is a prolific hacker – his Hackaday.io page lists over a hundred projects, most of them proudly marked “Completed”. Today, with all these CH552 mentions in the Hackaday.io’s “Newest” category, we’ve decided to take a peek.

=> ↺ PCB Makes 7 Segment Displays

• Of course, there’s nothing unusual about using 7-segment displays, especially in a clock. However, [Edison Science Corner] didn’t buy displays. Instead, he fabricated them from a PCB using 0805 LEDs for the segments. You can see the resulting clock project in the video below.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Breeders of new fish hope to tickle taste buds of salmon, cod and tuna lovers

• Fish farming can make food supplies more stable while itself becoming more sustainable, according to researchers in Hungary and Norway. By Pieter Devuyst Attention seafood lovers! Gabor Hetyey strongly recommends a new dish: fried catfish.

=> ↺ ‘Get Our Grandkids Out’: East Palestine Residents Erupt at Norfolk Southern Meeting

• “Every day that this community doesn’t have relocation options,” said local organizers, “is another day this community is in crisis.”

=> ↺ East Palestine Residents Confront Norfolk Southern at Town Hall Meeting

=> ↺ Rail Industry Has Spent $654 Million on Federal Lobbying Over Past 20 Years: Analysis

• A new analysis by the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets found that the rail industry has spent $653.5 million on federal lobbying over the past two decades as it has worked—often successfully—to fight off stricter safety regulations and antitrust enforcement.

=> ↺ East Palestine Residents Erupt at Norfolk Southern Meeting, Demanding Company Evacuate Town

• At a town hall meeting in East Palestine, Ohio Thursday night, hundreds of residents had their first chance to directly confront the rail company responsible for the train derailment that took place in the town last month, and used the opportunity to share their outrage over Norfolk Southern’s failure to keep residents safe following its release of toxic chemicals from the crash site.

=> ↺ Andrew Tate’s legal team says he has tumor, asks he be treated in Dubai

• The self-proclaimed misogynist has been consulting with doctors in Dubai about his “serious health condition,” a report said.

=> ↺ Plastic particles pass from pregnant mother to fetus: ‘concerning’ rat study

• “Much remains unknown, but this is certainly cause for concern and follow-up study,” Rutgers professor Philip Demokritou said.

=> ↺ Moscow researcher, who helped create the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, reportedly killed in domestic dispute — Meduza

• Andrey Botikov, one of the creators of the Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19, was reportedly killed in north-west Moscow, during a domestic dispute. Botikov was an employee of Moscow’s Gamaleya National Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology.

=> ↺ Makani Themba on Jackson Crisis

=> ↺ Woman Arrested in South Carolina for Allegedly Taking Abortion Pills in 2021

=> ↺ Walgreens Restricting Abortion Pill Sales Due to Coordinated GOP Threat

Proprietary

=> ↺ How to File Taxes for Free Without TurboTax

• Intuit, the Silicon Valley software giant behind TurboTax, doesn’t provide the only way to file your taxes electronically, but it has captured the market share like no other.

• For over two decades, Intuit waged a campaign to prevent the federal government from making filing taxes simple and free for most taxpayers. The company spent millions of dollars on lobbying to restrict the IRS from creating its own free filing system, all while growing its multibillion-dollar franchise.

=> ↺ AI Chatbots are Even Scarier Than You Think

• A New York Times reporter has a creepy experience

• Among the most read stories in the NYTimes in the last few weeks was the one by tech reporter Kevin Roose about his unsettling experience with Bing, the updated search engine by Microsoft. Initially delighted by its capabilities and speed, he changed his mind after discovering that Bing’s Open AI Chatbot was creepy. After a brief, getting acquainted period involving online searches and basic questions about AI capabilities, Roose began to get personal. Posing his questions as hypotheticals, he put the bot on the couch, probing its inner life. He asked about his analysand’s desires, fears and animosities. After some resistance, Sydney (the bot’s emerging alter ego) opened up, and out poured a surprising series of confessions and professions.

Privatisation/Privateering

=> ↺ Privatisation: essential services must stay in public hands

Security

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ Dish Network Finally Acknowledges Huge Hack After Days Of Not Answering Questions

• Early this week reports began to emerge that Dish Network was suffering from a widespread outage that effectively prevented a large chunk of the company’s employees from being able to work for more than four days. Initially, Dish tried to downplay the scope of the problem in press reports, only stating that they’d experienced an ambiguous “systems issue.”

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Facial Recognition Pitches In To Help Cops Arrest A Maryland Man For A Crime He Didn’t Commit

• Facial recognition tech needs more work. It’s not great. Even when it’s good, it’s still pretty bad. While it performs well when identifying people not often considered to be criminal suspects (middle-aged white men), it’s far less accurate when identifying everyone else (minorities, women).

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Russian pilot who bombed Kharkiv gets 12-year prison term in Ukraine — Meduza

• A court in Ukraine sentenced a Russian service member to 12 years in prison, finding him guilty of violating the laws and customs of war, reports Ukraine’s Prosecutor General.

=> ↺ Top Biden officials address pro-war rally led by Ukrainian Nazi supporters

=> ↺ AP’s journalism from Mariupol ‘saved tens of thousands of civilians’

• AP journalists were the only international team to remain in Mariupol when it was under siege.

=> ↺ Boston’s Home Grown Nazis

• Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front by Charles R. Gallagher (Harvard University Press)

• Last year, the white supremacist militia the Patriot Front (PF) marched through the streets of Boston two days before annual July 4th celebrations. About one hundred PF members in a tight phalanx carried American flags and marched past many of the historical sights of the Revolutionary War and Abolitionist eras. They also attacked and injured an African-American man before they rallied outside the majestic Boston Public Library in Copley Square.

=> ↺ Administration in occupied part of Zaporizhzhia names Melitopol regional capital — Meduza

• The administration of the part of Zaporizhzhia currently occupied by Russian forces has announced that occupying authorities will consider Melitopol the regional capital.

=> ↺ What if Ukraine had lost?

• Perhaps the best way to illustrate the perils of appeasing Putin with a premature peace deal is by imagining where the world would be today if Ukraine had indeed fallen one year ago, writes Peter Dickinson.

=> ↺ #BalkansDebrief – Is a deal on normalization between Kosovo & Serbia possible? | A debrief with Miroslav Lajčák

• Nonresident Senior Fellow Ilva Tare speaks with Miroslav Lajčák, EU Special Representative for the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue and other Western Balkan regional issues, on this episode of #BalkansDebrief about the latest meeting in Brussels, details of the EU brokered plan, implementation of any future agreement, and the path forward.

=> ↺ China’s Peace Plan for Ukraine

• It will be attractive to the Global South, writes Tony Kevin. It will cause consternation in the Western war party camp.

=> ↺ Atlanta Activists Say Prosecutors Plan to Indict Them on RICO Charges

• Atlanta, GA – Community organizations involved in the ongoing campaign to defend the South River Forest outside Atlanta, Georgia and ‘Stop Cop City’ say state prosecutors are planning on releasing indictments in the coming weeks charging them as a “criminal organization” under RICO statutes.

=> ↺ Possible drone explosion southeast of Moscow, wreckage not yet found — Meduza

• A drone may have exploded in Kolomna, a town approximately 70 miles southeast of Moscow. Law enforcement officials have told TASS that locals heard an explosion on the evening of March 2.

=> ↺ FSB publishes edited video footage of ‘Ukrainian saboteur attack’ in the Bryansk region — Meduza

• The FSB has published a video of the “attack by Ukrainian saboteurs,” which the Russian authorities reported on March 2. It is the first video footage to emerge in the day since that has passed since the attack. The footage appears to be heavily edited.

=> ↺ Russian man, who tried to swim from Crimea to Odesa to fight for Ukraine, sentenced to six years in prison — Meduza

• The Russian-controlled Supreme Court of Crimea sentenced a 40-year-old resident of St. Petersburg to six years in prison. The man attempted to swim from Crimea to Odesa to join the war on Ukraine’s side.

=> ↺ On Biden Turning Down China’s Push for Peace Deal in Ukraine

• There’s something irrational about President Biden’s knee-jerk dismissal of China’s 12-point peace proposal titled “China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis.”

=> ↺ Australia’s armed forces must be ready for the worst

• Kim Beazley recalls the 1980s when he oversaw a restructuring of Australia’s military establishment comfortable in the knowledge that no major attack was likely in the coming decade.

=> ↺ Australia has had some Pacific wins, but there’s no cause for complacency

• China’s growing influence in the Pacific islands region hasn’t ended, but there are signs that it’s slowed, especially on security issues.

=> ↺ ‘Part of the policy of terror’: How Russia captures civilians to achieve its aims in Ukraine — Meduza

=> ↺ March To Iraq War, 20 Years Later: March 3, 2003

=> ↺ Major US Outlets Found Hersh’s Nord Strom Scoop Too Hot to Handle

• Scores of hits from publications across the globe pop up from an internet search for veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s claim that the US destroyed Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Unauthorized Disclosure: Subscriber Show For March 3

=> ↺ Watchdogs Call BS on Jim Jordan’s FBI Witnesses Claiming Whistleblower Status

• Government watchdogs on Friday accused Republicans on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee of illegitimate “theatrics” as Democrats released a 300-page report outlining major weaknesses in the GOP’s investigation into supposed political bias at the FBI.

=> ↺ 2023-03-03 American Oversight’s Statement on Law Forward’s Ethics Complaint Against Michael Gableman

=> ↺ 2023-03-03 News Roundup: Missouri’s Anti-Transparency Bill, Election Denial, and the Constitutional Sheriffs Movement

Environment

=> ↺ ‘Tomorrow Is Too Late’: Climate Strikers Target Fossil Fuel Financing Worldwide

• “It’s time to end fossil finance because #TomorrowIsTooLate!”

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Appeals Court Dumps Another Coal Company CEO’s Defamation Suit, Says Mislabeling Convicted CEO Not Actually Libelous

• This isn’t about Bob Murray.

=> ↺ Feds ‘Cave to PG&E,’ Allowing California Nuclear Plant to Keep Operating Sans Safety Review

• In a move blasted by one environmental group as a “cave to PG&E,” the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved the criminal corporation’s continued operation of California’s last nuclear power plant without a renewed license or safety review while it seeks a 20-year-extension.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Time Is Running Out to Restore Plants and Animals That Exist Only in Captivity

=> ↺ ‘Plasticosis’: Researchers Discover New Disease Sickening Seabirds

• A newly discovered disease is sickening seabirds, and it’s not caused by a virus or bacteria—it’s caused by ingesting the increasingly ubiquitous bits of plastics contaminating land, air, and sea.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ Barbara Malthusian Hubbard: From Limits to Growth to UN Agenda 2030

• Did Barbara Marx Hubbard call for the culling of one-fourth of the human population? John Klyczek investigates the truth about the Malthusian bent of Hubbard’s “co-creative” gospel of “conscious” transhuman evolution.

Finance

=> ↺ 2023-03-04 Tackling Economic Inequality through Progressive Public Policy: A Call to Action

=> ↺ TX Lawmaker Proposes Tax Cuts for Straight Parents Who Have Never Been Divorced

=> ↺ Debunking “No One Wants To Work Anymore”

=> ↺ Tinkoff suspends currency transfers to Georgia one week after coming under E.U. sanctions — Meduza

• On February 25, 2023, Tinkoff bank came under sanctions from the European Union. The restrictions involve freezing the bank’s assets in the European Union, banning European companies from dealing with it, and disconnecting it from SWIFT.

=> ↺ US Is Maintaining Tensions With North Korea to Draw in Allies Against China

=> ↺ Lawmakers Quietly Gave Weapons Firms a Bailout for So-Called Inflation Relief

=> ↺ Sanders Rejects Starbucks Request for Subordinate to Testify Instead of CEO Schultz

• Sen. Bernie Sanders vowed Thursday to move ahead with a planned vote to force Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to testify on the company’s numerous labor law violations after the coffee chain offered up other executives to appear in the billionaire’s place.

=> ↺ The Guardrails Against Greed Capitalism Must Have

• I’m not surprised that migrant children who have been coming into the United States from Latin America without their parents, fleeing violence and poverty, have ended up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country.

=> ↺ 200+ Top US Economists to Congress: Raise Debt Ceiling or Face ‘Frightening’ Crisis

• More than 200 top U.S. economists warned congressional leaders Thursday that a failure to raise the debt ceiling would likely spark a devastating economic crisis, rattling global financial markets and killing jobs nationwide.

=> ↺ First home buyer lending hits six-year low

• Interest rate hikes and the rising cost of living are starting to bite Australians seeking their first home. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on Friday the number of new owner-occupier first home buyer loan commitments fell 8.1 per cent in January – its lowest level since February 2017.

=> ↺ Peso continues to strengthen; hits best level against the dollar since 2017

• The peso has gained 7.88% in value against the U.S. currency in 2023, making it the best performing major currency in the world this year.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ DOJ Says Trump Can Be Sued for January 6 Speech

=> ↺ 334,000 Hungarians disappeared – preliminary census results reveal

=> ↺ The Far-Right’s Culture Wars Are Just a Distraction So Oligarchs Can Keep Looting the Working Class

• Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for an American “divorce.”

=> ↺ European Commission: The EU’s long-standing position on member states not having embassies in Jerusalem is unchanged

=> ↺ The Unpredictable World and the Lust for Power

• As the world becomes increasingly unpredictable and power dynamics shift, nations grapple with the desire for influence and control. From rising powers like China and Russia to established players like the United States, countries are jockeying for position and seeking to shape the international system in their image. T

=> ↺ If Trump Returns as President: An Existential Threat to the United States

• Credo quia absurdum, “I believe because it is absurd”-Tertullian There are many reasons to fear Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, but one remains especially worrisome. It stems from the former president’s conspicuous ignorance of international law and US foreign policy.

=> ↺ Protests Against AMLO’s Reforms Reveal the Strongholds of Mexico’s Ancien Régime

• Mexico City—The ongoing protests against Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s reforms to the National Electoral Institute, or INE by its Spanish acronym, must be understood in the context of the opposition’s declining sway.

=> ↺ Ron DeSantis’s Struggle

• For someone who loudly announces his principled devotion to the American civic and constitutional order, Ron DeSantis spends a lot of time feeling besieged by it. In his new campaign memoir, The Courage to Be Free, the Florida Republican governor offers a rolling litany of cultural and ideological persecution, which he seems to experience anew with each passing breath. The grim saga starts with his young adulthood as a Yale undergraduate and carries right on through to his authoritarian tour in the governor’s mansion. There, his eager prosecution of culture-war inquisitions has drawn virtually every Sunshine State institution—from the courts and the K-12 and university system to the Covid-besotted “biomedical security state” to the Disney Corporation—into its book-banning, tenure-decimating, vote-suppressing, and tax-assessing sights.

=> ↺ DeSantis’s Educational Policies Come Right Out of the Fascist Playbook

• Fascism in its different forms has always thrived on attacking teachers, schools, critical ideas, democratic values, and allegedly unpatriotic groups while stifling dissent in the alleged name of freedom. Ron DeSantis is a religious, political, and ideological demagogue whose view of power is as ruthless as it is opportunistic. He views academic freedom and freedom of speech as liabilities to be stamped out, not unlike what happened in Nazi Germany. He has weaponized the government to punish industries such as Disney who challenged his “don’t say gay” bill. The dangerous nature of this precedent should be clear, particularly regarding how it resonates with tactics used in repressive regimes in the past.[1] He has signed into law Bill 233 which requires Florida’s public colleges and universities to conduct annual surveys of students’ and faculty members’ beliefs in order “to determine the institutions’ levels of ‘intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity’.” One can only assume that those with views at odds with DeSantis’s view of history, politics, and authority will be labeled as “unpatriotic” and will be pressured to conform to his indoctrinating pedagogy and policies or lose their jobs. This is not unlike what happened in the witch hunts conducted during the McCarthy era by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s in which a number of faculty were fired for having alleged subversive views.[2] In addition, DeSantis’s banning ideas, and entire fields of study–such as gender and race studies– aims to turn learning at the college and university levels into a form of stupidity, one whose ultimate goal is to undercut the ability of young people to think critically, learn from history, and make power accountable.

• Every level of education is under siege in Florida. Regarding public education, DeSantis intensifies and expands a policy of erasure and manufactured ignorance that is endemic to the GOP which provides the driving momentum for a nationwide banning of books and restrictions on teaching about race and gender in public schools. As Julianne Malveaux notes, “More than 1600 books have been banned in 138 school districts in 33 states so far, as the momentum for ignorance is increasing. Among the banned books – Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved; and Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale.”[3] In addition, as Sarah Schwartz points out in Education Week: “Since January 2021, lawmakers in 44 states have introduced bills or other policies that would restrict how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to an Education Week analysis. Eighteen states have imposed these bans.”[4]

=> ↺ Ralph Nader: Prairie Populist, Honest Senator James Abourezk, Fearless Fighter for Justice

• By Ralph Nader Most citizen advocates who work with U.S. senators on a wide variety of issues probably would agree that the late South Dakota Democrat, James Abourezk, was one of a kind. It was not that he was so honest, so down to earth, or so engaging with friend and foe alike.

=> ↺ Opposition Disputes Nigeria’s Election Results After Ruling Party’s Bola Tinubu Declares Victory

• Opposition parties are disputing the results of Saturday’s presidential election in Nigeria, where the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission has declared the winner to be Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress party. The former governor of Lagos played a key role in helping outgoing Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari win two terms in office and campaigned using the slogan “It’s my turn.” Tinubu received about 36% of the vote, and turnout was under 30%. Several of Tinubu’s challengers have disputed the results, alleging fraud, while election observers and voters have cited delays, closures and violence at voting sites. For more on how the election could play out in Africa’s most populous nation, we speak with Aderonke Ige in Lagos. She is a human rights activist and lawyer who works with Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, or CAPPA.

=> ↺ GOP Megadonors Are Trying to Pull the Party Away From Trump. It Could Get Ugly.

=> ↺ Hungary to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ New U.S. Cybersecurity Strategy: a strong step forward, with room for improvement

• Access Now commends the U.S.’s National Cybersecurity Strategy that centers “respect for human rights,” but it still falls short on collaboration with stakeholders abroad.

=> ↺ “I Was Just Kidding!” Assertion Can’t Justify Dismissal of Libel Case

• Def Noodles v. Keemstar.

=> ↺ Joint statement: Iraqi authorities must cease their chilling crackdown on free speech

• Through a joint statement, civil society calls for Iraqi authorities to stop censoring free speech online through crackdowns on so-called “indecent content.”

=> ↺ NCAC protests cancellation of play at Northwest Allen County Schools

• The National Coalition Against Censorship has written a letter to the School Board of Northwest Allen County Schools in Indiana to protest the cancellation of the high school’s production of Marian: The True Tale of Robin Hood.

=> ↺ ACLU, NCAC oppose removal of abortion-related art from exhibition at Idaho college art gallery

• Lewis-Clark State College announced that it will pull several artworks addressing abortion care from an upcoming exhibition for fear of violating the state’s No Public Funds for Abortion Act LEWISTON, Idaho – In a letter sent to Lewis-Clark State College President Dr. Cynthia Pemberton, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho [...]

=> ↺ No, Ukraine, The World Should Not Boycott A Video Game That Looks Kindly On Russian Communism

• As we’re right at the 1 year anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of its sovereign neighbor, Ukraine, regular readers here will have followed along with all kinds of posts we’ve done on the subject, be it on tech-related items or some of the ways the video game industry has organized to help the country get the funds it needs to survive. Throughout it all, the conflict has, in most cases rightly, been pitched as a conflict between good and evil, democracy vs. authoritarianism, and a free and open society combatting an aggressor with all the hallmarks of a closed, censor-heavy society.

=> ↺ Another Day, Another Blatant Attack On The 1st Amendment From The Florida GOP

• I keep hearing people pretend that the GOP in general, and Florida GOPers more specifically, and Governor Ron DeSantis most specifically, are fighting for “free speech,” when they continually seem to push blatantly unconstitutional legislation designed to attack free speech and the 1st Amendment in a way that keeps getting Florida shot down in court by judges (while wasting tons of taxpayer money).

=> ↺ Codify an Internet shutdown protocol

• Internet shutdowns in Rajasthan – as well as Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal – the latest case related to curbing cheating in examinations, has run against a Supreme Court ruling that allows suspension of freedom of expression and trade on grounds of national security and protection of citizens. This latest petition to codify [Internet] shutdown procedures has wider ramifications.

• India holds the dubious record of the most [Internet] shutdowns among countries, and permitting this for not-so-grave reasons risks holding this record for longer than necessary. Internet restrictions in Kashmir have a strategic bearing that cannot be altered in the immediate future. But GoI must codify limits on administrative overreach. It does the world’s largest democracy’s international standing no favour to find itself ahead of Ukraine and Iran, the two countries next in the list of most [Internet] shutdowns.

=> ↺ We need to normalise blasphemy

• The latest iteration of Britain’s new de facto blasphemy code came last week when four students were suspended from Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield after a Quran was allegedly ‘desecrated’.

• From what’s been reported it appears a Quran received minor damage after being brought into school as a forfeit by a pupil who lost while playing a Call of Duty videogame with other students.

=> ↺ Florida Republican wants any blogger writing about Ron DeSantis to ‘register with the state’

• Senate Bill 1316: Information Dissemination would mandate that writers register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics. It would apply to anyone who writes “an article, a story, or a series of stories,” about “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature,” and is paid for doing so. They would have to register within a five-day period by the publication of the article or stories.

=> ↺ Hongkongers wearing face masks at protests risk prosecution, says gov’t advisor as anti-mask law set to stay

• The protest would be the first legal demonstration of its kind since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out over three years ago. The authorities previously cited Covid-19 health concerns to ban protests and rallies, including the city’s annual Tiananmen crackdown vigils in 2020 and 2021.

=> ↺ Tunisia bans upcoming opposition protest

• Tunisian authorities on Thursday banned an upcoming protest by the country’s main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front (NSF), but the group has vowed to press ahead with its planned demonstration on Sunday.

• The governor of Tunis, Kamel Feki, said the NSF’s request to hold a march on Sunday had “not been approved as some of its leaders are suspected of plotting against state security.”

=> ↺ Woke Slovakian justice: Three years in prison for cleaning buttocks with Koran

• Sheila Smerekova’s reasoning for this: she had been sexually molested in her childhood and had also been a victim of Islamist human trafficking.

• The Special Criminal Court in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, on Wednesday sentenced Sheila Smerekova, who desecrated the Koran years ago, to three years in prison, parameter.sk reported today

=> ↺ Texas, Which Banned Most Content Moderation, Now Pushing Law Requiring Abortion-Related Info Be Blocked From The Internet

• Well, this will be fun. As you’ll recall, in 2021, Texas signed into law a bill that effectively banned the right of companies to moderate content on social media. That law has been challenged in court, and while a district court tossed it out as unconstitutional (and obviously so), the 5th Circuit reversed in a ruling so bizarre and incomprehensible, I still have difficulty understanding how anyone takes it seriously. That law is currently in limbo as the Supreme Court figures out what to do about it.

=> ↺ Call to ‘Boycott Walgreens’ Erupts After Company Caves to Right-Wing on Abortion Pills

• Calls to “boycott Walgreens” grew on social media after the United States’ second-largest pharmacy chain confirmed Thursday that it will not sell abortion pills in nearly two dozen GOP-controlled states, including several where such medication remains legal.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Journalist Syed Fawad Ali Shah found jailed in Pakistan after going missing in Malaysia

• Syeda, who asked to be identified by her first name, said that Shah fled Pakistan after he was abducted by agents of the country’s military intelligence agency, the ISI, who held him for three and a half months while beating and threatening him in retaliation for his reporting that unfavorably portrayed Pakistan’s security forces during the U.S. war on terror.

=> ↺ Wife Still Seeking Answers 5 Months After Pakistani Journalist Disappears

• The first inkling of her husband’s fate came on January 4, when Malaysian Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail acknowledged at a press conference that Shah had been deported to Pakistan in August, at the request of the Pakistan High Commission in Kuala Lumpur.

=> ↺ Belarusian human rights activist and Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski sentenced to 10 years in prison — Meduza

• A court in Minsk has sentenced the chairman of the Belarusian human rights center Viasna, Ales Bialiatski, to 10 years in a strict regime colony. This news was reported by Viasna itself.

=> ↺ Nobel Prize Is No Defense Against Jail for a Winner in Belarus

• Andrei Sannikov, an old friend of Mr. Bialiatski and a fellow Belarusian human rights activist, said the sentence handed down Friday against a Nobel laureate was part of a drive by authorities to show they will brook no dissent.

=> ↺ Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski sentenced to 10 years in prison by Belarusian court

• Bialiatski, a pro-democracy activist, has documented human rights abuses in Belarus since the 1980s. He founded the organization Viasna, or Spring, in 1996 after a referendum that consolidated the authoritarian powers of president and close Russian ally, President Alexander Lukashenko.

• The activist was arrested in 2020 amid widespread protests against Lukashenko’s regime.

=> ↺ Ales Bialiatski: Nobel Prize-winning activist sentenced to 10 years in jail

• Supporters of Mr Bialiatski, 60, say the authoritarian regime of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is trying to silence him.

=> ↺ The Nightmare Espionage Act That is Killing Julian Assange and the First Amendment

• Shenkman: What’s sobering is that I want to remind folks that Assange is not a U.S. government employee. He’s not even a U.S. citizen. And somehow the U.S. government says it has jurisdiction. Over this person for publication that exposes the US crimes and war crimes and human rights violations. So what does that mean? That means the US is saying that anyone, literally anyone on earth is subject to this Espionage Act. And what I want, what’s honestly scary and I think folks don’t talk about enough. Imagine if China or Russia said the same thing. What if Russia came forward and said, we want to extradite this U.S. citizen under our laws to face prosecution and life in prison in Russia for publishing evidence of war crimes committed in Ukraine, for instance? What if China… Yeah, by Russians. The same thing, what if China did that? I mean, we folks would be up in arms. They’d say they’d see it for what it is. I mean, and that’s exactly what the U.S. is doing. And I think if this case goes forward, it’s going to legitimize other countries doing it. And that’s truly scary. Just imagine any other country on earth saying that someone who is not even a citizen of their country is subject to prosecution for exposing the misdeeds of their government.

=> ↺ TUNE IN: Belmarsh Tribunal In Sydney, Australia

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ The Perks Workers Want Also Make Them More Productive

• But that’s not all. The pandemic, combined with a strong labor market where workers have persistent power to demand the kinds of work cultures they want, means even more changes could be coming. After years of advocacy, many U.S. states are moving towards mandatory, paid family and sick leave for all workers. Meanwhile, companies are flirting with a four-day workweek in pilot programs worldwide, including in the U.S.

• Policies like these have conventionally been seen as good for workers’ personal lives but bad for business. But thanks to the massive, sudden changes brought on by the pandemic, we now have more data than ever, and it shows that assumption is mostly wrong. Overall, policies that are good for employees’ personal lives are, when enacted correctly, good for their work lives, too. In fact, they seem to be good for everyone. The only question is whether we’ll start to see more companies adopt them.

=> ↺ Critical connectivity: Reducing the price of data in African markets

• In outlining why data remains so costly and inaccessible across Africa, Hruby profiles four main detriments: infrastructure, competition, policy, and consumption patterns. Through case studies and success stories from other developing nations who struggled with high-priced data and implemented successful mitigation measures, Hruby develops a framework for reform and showcases how key changes can rapidly reduce data costs, spur development, and transform entire industries. Her recommendations directly address the current US administration, African governments seeking to build and benefit from a digital economy, and global development finance institutions (DFIs) that are already investing and making much needed transformative inroads into African markets.

=> ↺ Hindu slavery under Islamic dominion in India: A topic not discussed in history

• Prior to this, slavery in ancient India was humanist in nature and slaves were not seen as commodities for making profit through sale, a major reason why foreigners like Megasthenes, aware of the fate of slaves in western nations, failed to see any slaves in India and declared that all Indians were free (Indica of Megasthenes, cited in Om Prakash, “Religion and society in Ancient India,” 1985, p. 140).

• While the western world right from ancient times was well acquainted with slavery, it was Islam that started the practice of slave trade, taking it to gargantuan proportions, making it run for profit like any other commercial activity. Prophet Muhammad had continued with the prevailing pagan Arab practice of keeping slaves; and as per his first orthodox biographer Ibn Ishaq, he had set a precedent by selling few captured Jewish women and children of Medina in exchange for horses and weapons in Egypt (The Life of Muhammad: A translation of Ibn Ishaqs Sirat Rasul Allah by A. Gillaume, 1987, p. 466). The Quran also expressly permits Muslims to acquire slaves through conquest.

=> ↺ Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad: Suspected poisonings a ‘terror attack’ on Iranian schoolgirls

• ALINEJAD: Look, the Islamic Republic is exactly acting like Taliban. That actually, if you remember, the chemical attack happened in Boko Haram in Afghanistan by Taliban and now by the Islamic Republic. So they are all following same ideology. They are against schoolgirls. They are against women. They hate women. So they actually try to create fear among schoolgirls to stop them from protesting. So that is why it’s ironic that the Islamic Republic trying to tell the rest of the world that we are against Taliban because the girls are not allowed to go to school. The Islamic Republic cannot admit it publicly that they are against the schoolgirls. But they are using terror tactic to create fear among schoolgirls.

=> ↺ SCOTUS Questions the Government’s Absurdly Broad Definition of ‘Aggravated Identity Theft’

• According to the Justice Department’s reading of the law, the crime need not involve impersonation or even fraud.

=> ↺ UNICEF Offers Help As Mysterious Wave Of Illness Sweeps Through Iranian Schools

• The first incident is believed to have occurred in November, when 18 schoolgirls in the city of Qom were taken to a hospital after complaining of symptoms that included nausea, headaches, coughing, breathing difficulties, heart palpitations, and numbness and pain in their hands or legs.

• Since then, hundreds more cases have occurred and it remains unclear what may be causing the illnesses, though some of those affected have said they smelled chlorine or cleaning agents, while others said they thought they smelled tangerines in the air.

=> ↺ US to Focus Bison Restoration on Expanding Tribal Herds

• U.S. officials will work to restore more large bison herds to Native American lands under a Friday order from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that calls for the government to tap into Indigenous knowledge in its efforts to conserve the burly animals that are an icon of the American West.

=> ↺ Meet Thelma Cabrera, the Indigenous Leader Barred from Running in Guatemala’s Presidential Election

• Guatemala’s presidential election this year is taking place against a backdrop of worsening repression against journalists, human rights activists and Indigenous environmental defenders. The Guatemalan Constitutional Court on Thursday upheld a decision by the country’s electoral tribunal to bar Indigenous human rights defender Thelma Cabrera from running. Cabrera and her running mate, former human rights ombudsman Jordán Rodas, are members of the leftist political party the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples. They visited the United States in February to meet with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights following their ban and spoke with Democracy Now! about the election, their platform and how political elites in the country have consolidated power. “Guatemala is a corrupt state that’s been coopted by criminals. This is now reflected in violating our right to participate in this presidential election,” said Cabrera.

=> ↺ Indigenous Leader Is Barred From Running in Guatemala’s Presidential Election

=> ↺ Progressives Mourn Karen Hobert Flynn—Among Democracy’s ‘Fiercest Defenders’

• Progressive groups and activists showed an outpouring of love and admiration for Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of Common Cause, after her death from an undisclosed cause was reported by the pro-democracy group on Friday.

=> ↺ Jon Chiappetta: Security Camera Tech – A Crime Was Committed Against Me!

• Well, my grandpa had a saying that I remember til this day, he said “son, nothing good ever happens at 4am”. So last night, at 4:15am, 2 folks stole my license plate off my car and they could be out there committing crimes in my name!

=> ↺ Meet the Bronx Activists Who Won a Historic Settlement for NYPD’s Violent Attack at 2020 BLM Protest

• New York City has reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with peaceful protesters who were violently “boxed in” or “kettled” by NYPD officers during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in response to the police murder of George Floyd in 2020. As part of the settlement, over 300 people who were trapped by police and assaulted with batons and pepper spray, then detained or arrested at a June 4, 2020, protest in the neighborhood of Mott Haven, will each receive $21,500 — believed to be the largest class-action settlement in a case of mass arrest. We are joined by three people who were at the Mott Haven protest: Samira and Amali Sierra, sisters who are two of the five listed plaintiffs, and Democracy Now! video news fellow Sonyi Lopez, whose footage of the protest was used in a Human Rights Watch report that condemned the NYPD’s actions as “serious violations of international human rights law.” In addition, we speak to Joshua Moskovitz, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.

=> ↺ Sea of Death and Our Unforgiveable Cruelty Towards Migrants

• The bodies of drowned migrants are still washing up on the beaches of Crotone, Italy on the Mediterranean Sea. Their wooden boat crashed on the rocks just offshore from this Calabrian resort town, turning the beach, said one local, “into a graveyard.” The death toll reached 67 on Wednesday, with 80 survivors. It is assumed that many more died, as at least 200 people were aboard the boat when it departed Izmir, Turkey, a few days earlier.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Kenyan Court First To Tell Meta It Can’t Walk Away From A Lawsuit Just By Claiming It’s Not From Around Here

• A lawsuit filed over exploitation of content moderators will be allowed to continue, according to a recent ruling by a Kenyan court. Former employees of Meta sued the company in the Kenya Employment and Labour Relations Court last year, alleging being subjected to a “toxic work environment” while performing the often unpleasant task for removing harmful content before it is seen by Facebook users. The plaintiffs also alleged Meta and its third-party contractor (Kenyan digital services provider, Sama) engaged in “union busting” and refused to provide mental health services to moderators.

=> ↺ Several Amazon Go Stores Are Crumbling

• Amazon is closing eight of its Amazon Go stores including two in New York City, effective early this Spring. The company confirmed the closures in an email to Gizmodo but clarified the only stores affected were those that had minimal impact on customers.

Trademarks

=> ↺ TTABlog Test: Is “REMO” Primarily Merely a Surname for Telecommunication Services?

• The USPTO refused to register the proposed mark REMO for telecommunication services and on-line networking services, deeming the mark to be primarily merely a surname under Section 2(e)(4). Applicant argued that “Remo” is a rare surname, and therefore “the consuming public would not recognize this term as a surname, and there is practically no risk to persons wanting to use the surname in business.”

Copyrights

=> ↺ Google Deindexes ‘Pirate’ IP Addresses When Used to Circumvent Blocking

• On top of billions of URL removals, at least 10,000 domains have already been deindexed and permanently removed from Google’s search results on copyright grounds. In response to some pirate sites ditching regular domains and publishing their IP addresses instead, Google is now deindexing by IP address when certain standards are met.

=> ↺ Pirate Bay Forum Suffers Extended Downtime After Hack

• The Pirate Bay’s official forum is usually a beacon of information if the main site goes offline, but for the last few days, it has become unreachable. According to a SuprBay administrator, the forum is recovering from a hack and should be back online in a week or two. Reportedly, no user data was compromised.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: TIKLPSC Wordo: YAHOO

=> ↺ The Names

• I keep a list of names for my characters. There were two names in particular that I liked for a story, the truth is I still like the names all the same, but they no longer belong to the character I had in mind; I’ve met a person who, as fate would have it, has both first and middle name just as I had written them. I met her on the subway, I was reading Last Evenings on Earth, and she asked if I was studying, and I said no, I said I was reading a Chilean writer. What a coincidence, she said, I’m Chilean too. A couple of days later we went to her friend’s concert in Brooklyn, two days after that she came along with me to buy some books in Manhattan and we walked around the city. She’s been living here fewer months than me. She’s a singer and understands life as an artist, I’m just a writer. The names came swiftly off the list. They fit her better anyway.

=> ↺ Without a mouse or keyboard

• It’s been a while since I wrote on my tablet using the text editor I programmed. Last year I relied heavily on it as I cranked out poems about lost love before falling asleep, yet those feelings have now been numb for quite some time and I suppose without the cathartic release of melancholy and nostalgia it’s just not been a priority. I’ve taken to prose lately, writing short yet unfinished stories on my laptop. Somehow, desktop operating systems feel safe. I’ve attempted to prove a point to no one in particular about the utility of a tablet in matters of productivity, yet that concept remains elusive and perpetually ridiculous. Sometimes it’s just fun to do things without a mouse and keyboard. Hunched over a touchscreen, pecking with thumbs, index and middle fingers, with my legs numb from sitting cross-legged on my bed, I feel like a kid with a new toy. The rain splashing on the window outside makes it all the more exciting.

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