In How I became ‘collapse aware’, Rosie Spinks articulates something many of us sense but struggle to name – that persistent feeling that we’re approaching the end of a particular way of life.

“It’s a nagging sense that has hung over modern life since 2020, or 2016, or 2008, or 2001 – pick your start date – that things are not working anymore. And that waiting for them to get better after the next Most Important Election of Our Lives, or another war to end, or a new economic recovery cycle doesn’t seem to be having the desired effects.”

It’s this shared unease that leads Spinks to explore the notion of collapse and how to respond to it: “To be collapse aware is to live with the sense that something about the way we live is coming to end. And then to ask the next obvious question head on: If the incrementalist approach of our existing political and economic structures is not up to the task of improving things – climate, society, inequality, injustice – what comes next?”

At the heart of her essay lies a simple framework that captures the dual reality many of us inhabit: There and Here.

“There is where I earn a living, and it’s where I have a mortgage, and order groceries for pickup. It’s where growth is uniformly seen as good, and we’re told that social problems have to be ameliorated while still upholding shareholder value... It’s a place where most of us are very burned out, in a manner that mirrors the exhaustion of the earth.”

Meanwhile, “Here is where I’ve internally accepted that infinite progress and wealth are not inevitable... Where life is less concerned with status, and more with sustenance. It’s a place where the entire economy is not based on getting consumers exactly what they want, where cheap flights and next-day delivery are not available... Where we adjust our lives accordingly, and rely on one another by necessity, rather than forging ahead pretending that everything is fine.”

What makes her essay compelling to me is her subtle reframing of collapse not as an endpoint, but as a transition from There to Here. Spinks reminds us that collapse doesn’t mean the end to “sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity, and meaning – just that it’s an end to our ‘normal modes’ of acquiring all those things.”

This distinction seems crucial, especially when she notes that “a lot of people are already living under collapse. Throughout history to today, people outside the countries we call ‘developed’ have seen their homes and land destroyed, and have experienced no shortage of violence under this paradigm. Those people still manage to have rich lives as they fight for survival and meaning. They still have children, celebrate festivals, write stories, and fall in love. We have a lot to learn from them.”

From this view, Spinks points to a possibility – that being forced to move beyond our obsession with material wealth might actually present a chance for healing and a renewed sense of presence:

“While I believe my son’s life may be materially worse off than my own, I think about how it could possibly be better too – psychologically, spiritually, and collectively. I think about how many of the social problems we lament – the mental health crisis among young people, especially young men; the cruel isolation of new motherhood; the normalization of depression and anxiety; the growing number of homeless and destitute people in the richest cities in the world – would be ameliorated by the kind of collective consciousness change I describe above.”

Rather than a catastrophe to fear, collapse awareness becomes an invitation to reassess our relationships with consumption, community and care. As we enter a season typically marked by excess, perhaps there’s wisdom in pausing to consider how we might begin moving from There to Here – not in fear or resignation, but in somewhat hopeful recognition that different ways of living and connecting await our discovery. – Kai

It'll affect everyone.

• All of computing is moving to the cloud at a rapid clip, including (government) parts you might want to keep under your own control
• Europe has no relevant ‘hyperscaler’ cloud providers at all, and there is a desire to change this by policy means
• Competing with the IKEA-concept is nearly impossible. Offering IKEA-like products but then with a smaller range is not an attractive proposition. You can’t replicate IKEA without a LOT of upfront work
• Replicating a company like Airbus (or ASML) is similarly very hard: both companies (and their ecosystems) are one of the very few places where you can buy modern wide body jets and extreme UV wafer steppers. Their products are technically incredibly advanced.
• The ‘hyperscaler’ cloud providers (like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba) are both IKEA and Airbus/ASML hard to replicate. They offer a huge and complete range services that are also incredibly advanced and years ahead of commodity products
• Europe has precisely nothing that competes, and is 100% dependent on the ‘IKEA clouds’. We only have partial companies.
• Fixing that situation will not be possible through legislation, standardisation or concerted government action. You can’t procure a competitive mega cloud into existence. Europe did assemble Airbus from its component parts but it was very hard
• Although IKEA exists, you can still get (better) furniture from more specialised places. A European owned email, communication and collaboration cloud might be a feasible idea
• European procurement law makes it entirely doable for governments to order their services from such European communication clouds
• From that, a more viable European cloud ecosystem could perhaps evolve

We do have some (smaller) cloud (Scaleway) and datacenter players (Leaseweb, could use some innovation) and some inbetween (OVH, Hetzner)... But none are really a true cloud provider with serverless, all the storage stuff, etc.

Evroc is trying just that -- being a real competitor to GCP and AWS -- but that'll need a lot of funding, and it's been rather quiet from their end for a few months.

To be seen what'll come out of it ...

Then again, I've recently (year or two) seen a push from medium-sized companies to get away from the cloud (Basecamp/Hey for one, but they are not alone) -- at least the big players -- due to exaggerated vendor lock-in and pricing.

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…

Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Final speech from The Great Dictator Copyright © Roy Export S.A.S. All rights reserved

[...]

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

[...]

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black.

[...]

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

[...]

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"

One of the contentious points raised by Jom was regarding a statement in their publication. While conceding that this particular statement could have benefited from additional context from the full remarks of the politician involved, they stands firm in their stance on the other two statements. These, according to Jom, neither implied governmental corruption nor suggested that the government was responsible for blocking an Instagram post, contrary to the court's determination.

As Jom argues, the law, intended to correct factual inaccuracies, is being overextended to include interpretations and opinions, potentially diminishing its effectiveness and transforming it into a political instrument. The concern is that if journalism is reduced to merely echoing official government statements, verbatim, it could significantly reduce critical thinking (which is already at a low level in Singapore) and further diminish any public discourse.

Jom is right in advocating for a more democratic approach to establishing truth in journalism. This approach would involve moving away from granting politicians sole authority over determining facts, and instead fostering a more inclusive and critical environment.

Uphold the truth, but in a manner that respects diverse perspectives and maintains the integrity of journalism.

Website & Report.

• Global greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.0% in 2022 to reach their highest levels in human history, driven mainly by a rise in coal, oil, and gas use.
• The world is failing to cut emissions and remains far off track from limiting warming to 1.5°C as outlined in the Paris Agreement goals.
• Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted since the Paris Agreement have strengthened ambition somewhat but are still insufficient to narrow the emissions gap by 2030.
• High-income and high-emitting countries like the G20 need to take more ambitious action to cut emissions and support developing nations in their transitions.
• Land-based carbon dioxide removal and novel removal technologies will need to play a stronger role later in the century to achieve net-negative emissions targets.
• Clean energy transitions present opportunities for countries but also challenges, including entrenched fossil fuel interests and the need for international finance.
• Low- and middle-income countries can develop roadmaps for ambitious low-carbon development and specify their finance and technology needs.
• Carbon dioxide removal technologies require strong policy support, priority-setting, and accelerated innovation to play meaningful roles in mitigation.
• Equity principles must guide responsibilities for deploying large-scale carbon dioxide removal between countries.
• The next Conference of the Parties (COP28) is an opportunity to strengthen climate action and support for developing nations.

PDF Summary via Kagi.

Via Kottke.

Here's a summary from Danny Mekić post:

• The European Commission wants to turn digital communication apps into mass surveillance tools by automatically scanning EU citizens' live conversations, photos and videos for criminal offenses, even if they are not suspected of a crime.
• Hundreds of academics, privacy regulators and EU legal experts have condemned the proposal, arguing it grossly violates privacy rights and the technology cannot accurately detect criminal activity.
• When the EU Council meeting showed insufficient support for the proposal, the Commissioner launched a paid advertising campaign on social media targeting specific countries to sway public opinion.
• The campaign used emotionally manipulative images and music to suggest opponents did not want to protect children, while also misleadingly claiming majority European support.
• The ads were microtargeted to exclude people interested in privacy, Euroscepticism, Christianity and other critical political/religious groups, creating an uncritical echo chamber.
• This microtargeting violates the social media platform's policies, the Digital Services Act, and GDPR.
• When a proposal lacks sufficient support, the proper response is to withdraw or amend it, not pressure doubting members through manipulative disinformation campaigns.
• By setting aside European values, the Commission is endangering the foundations of the European Union.
• The Commission should take down the ad campaigns and refrain from future attempts to bend public opinion through illegal targeted ads.
• The document was written by a jurist and technologist who is critical of the Commission's overreach and disregard for democratic processes and individual rights.

Via Kagi: Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance

Via Kottke.

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power "under the guise of 'super-patriotism' and 'super-Americanism.'" And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a "well-planned 'hate campaign' against minority races, religions, and other groups."

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. "In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations."

Third, fascists would insist that "the world has but two choices — either fascism or communism, and they label as 'communists' everyone who refuses to support them."

Well, well, look at that.

Exactly what's happening now (LGBTQ+, women/abortion, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, etc).

And exactly the same is happening in Europe.

This is sobering: in an ad for the United Nations Global Compact, the words of Carl Sagan from nearly 40 years ago warn us of the necessity for urgent action on climate change, deforestation, and extinction.

Source: Kottke & Colosal.

I’m very fortunate to have a handful of new trees, some grass and public seating bookend the street I live in. One of my favourite times of the day to be out on my balcony is dusk, because when the sun starts setting and the hustle and bustle of the city subsides, a group of Indian myna birds, attracted by that greenery, playfully chirps and flies between the trees. The tweeting draws out neighbours, too, and creates a beautiful moment of connection through nature in an otherwise man-made environment.

An increasing body of research tells us that interaction with nature is associated with better body and brain health. Birds play a particular role in this, in part because they are some of the only animals able to venture into highly developed areas and give out calls audible to the human ear, providing a direct link to the natural world.

The pleasure we get from encountering nature can be explained through the biophilia hypothesis, the idea that humans have an innate affinity for life and living systems: “Human preferences toward things in nature, while refined through experience and culture, are hypothetically the product of biological evolution.”

This theory is guiding academic work but also urban and architectural design. For example, there is solid evidence that having a window looking out to living plants helps speed up the healing process of patients in hospitals. In educational settings, exposure to nature seems to help kids focus better, feel less anxious and improve memory.

It’s fair to conclude then that we need nature. But does nature need us? Probably not. Clive Thompson calls this the biophilia paradox: “Biophilia is asymmetric. We have biophilia, but nature doesn’t have ‘anthrophilia’. In fact, it’s the opposite: If humanity were to vanish tomorrow, the remaining plants and animals would set about rapidly reclaiming all the asphalted-over world we’ve created.”

There is a tragic irony here: our modern existence is largely incompatible with our biophilic need for nature. Our attempt to be closer to nature often comes at a cost to nature.

“We humans should be living a little more densely, to give nature more space away from us. Meanwhile, to satisfy our biophilia, we should be designing more nature into these denser human environments – using everything from an increased number of street-plants to town parks to ‘living walls’ on houses, and buildings that use more natural materials. … We need plants close to us – and far away from us. That’s the biophilia paradox.”

My local council recently bought a bunch of warehouses and turned them into a public park with a playground. What used to be a barren, semi-industrial area suddenly came alive with people and plants. Everyone visiting the park looked in surprise at the playground wondering the same thing: ‘Where have all of these kids been hiding?’

Today’s urban spaces are designed for cars and commerce, making them particularly hostile towards kids. With most streets being considered unsafe, there has been a huge drop in outdoor play. This study, for example, claims that today just 27% of children play outside their homes, compared to 71% of the baby boomer generation. Or look at this fascinating map showing how an eight year old’s ‘range of exploration’ has changed from ~10 km a few generations ago to a mere ~300 metres today.

This short piece makes some cogent points about how our society tends to divide children into two categories undeserving of autonomy – ‘angels’ and ‘demons’:

“On one hand children are considered too small, vulnerable and innocent to roam and play in urban spaces because of traffic, ‘stranger-danger’ and other hazards. On the other hand, teenagers are constructed as a public threat and should not be allowed to hang out on the streets with their bikes, skateboards and presumably bad intentions. … Children and young people are increasingly sequestered in homes, cars or institutional spaces for adult-controlled education and play.”

Research tells us that limiting children’s sense of safety and autonomy also hampers their mental and social wellbeing. And yet, we continue to design spaces that completely robs them of their right to participate in public life. “Children should not be reduced to mere ‘future investments’ or ‘adults of tomorrow’. They are also people with present-day rights to citizenship, participation and autonomy in their living environments.”

As a kid who grew up in the country, I spent my summers roaming the neighbourhood, local fields and woods. I was pretty shocked to hear about friends in Melbourne having spent much of their early teenage years inside shopping malls. They did so because we gradually made every public space unsafe or unwelcoming for them. The irony of now blaming them for being glued to screens all day!

Many of us (especially people like me who don’t have kids of their own) move about a city oblivious to the lack of infrastructure suitable for young people. Away from home, their ability to move freely is often constrained to fenced off spaces: playgrounds, daycare centres, school yards, sports grounds. They are often chauffeured between these spaces in the very thing that makes streets unsafe for them: cars.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We know that designing cities for children ends up benefitting everyone which is why all of us should be demanding child-friendly, slow streets and engage in community efforts to take back public space from cars. Just watch any video of a Bike Bus in action and witness the joy of reclaiming our streets.

Via Kottke.

So, I would like to propose another metaphor for the risks of artificial intelligence. I suggest that we think about A.I. as a management-consulting firm, along the lines of McKinsey & Company. Firms like McKinsey are hired for a wide variety of reasons, and A.I. systems are used for many reasons, too. But the similarities between McKinsey — a consulting firm that works with ninety per cent of the Fortune 100 — and A.I. are also clear. Social-media companies use machine learning to keep users glued to their feeds. In a similar way, Purdue Pharma used McKinsey to figure out how to "turbocharge" sales of OxyContin during the opioid epidemic. Just as A.I. promises to offer managers a cheap replacement for human workers, so McKinsey and similar firms helped normalize the practice of mass layoffs as a way of increasing stock prices and executive compensation, contributing to the destruction of the middle class in America.

A former McKinsey employee has described the company as "capital's willing executioners": if you want something done but don't want to get your hands dirty, McKinsey will do it for you. That escape from accountability is one of the most valuable services that management consultancies provide. Bosses have certain goals, but don't want to be blamed for doing what's necessary to achieve those goals; by hiring consultants, management can say that they were just following independent, expert advice. Even in its current rudimentary form, A.I. has become a way for a company to evade responsibility by saying that it's just doing what "the algorithm" says, even though it was the company that commissioned the algorithm in the first place.

“We’re constantly being told that doing anything about the astronomical growth and the average size of motor vehicles would infringe on the freedoms of people to do whatever they want. But your freedom to swing your arm ends where my face begins, and SUVs are a giant punch in the face to everyone who doesn’t drive one. …

Over a ten-year period, over 500 American children were killed by being run over by SUVs – usually by their own parents, in their own driveways. This is insane! This is legitimately insane in any civilized society. This information alone would be enough to regulate the hood design of SUVs and light trucks, but instead the industry solution for this is proximity sensors and front-facing cameras, because car companies are happy for any regulations that means they can sell you more stuff. …

In the early days, most SUV buyers were arseholes. I’m not being flippant in suggesting that all SUV drivers were arsehole, but arseholes were literally the primary target market. When automakers wanted to make SUVs mainstream, auto industry research determined that the average light truck purchaser was obsessed with status, less likely to volunteer or feel a strong connection to their communities, less giving, less oriented toward others, more afraid of crime, more likely to text and drive, [and] more likely to take risks while driving. …

I really struggle to understand how a [European] DHL delivery driver can do his job with a [Renault] Kangoo van, but a middle-aged suburbanite thinks they need a Chevy Silverado [truck] to buy groceries. … One of these vehicles is designed to efficiently carry lots of useful stuff, while the other is designed to carry fragile egos.”

Source: Kottke

Three reasons prices are going up. But also most notably massive markups and lack of healthy competition.

Source: Kottke

U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc and the Singapore government said they were transforming old sneakers into playgrounds and running tracks. Reuters put that promise to the test by planting hidden trackers inside 11 pairs of donated shoes.

Most got exported instead.

[...]

t a rundown market on the Indonesian island of Batam, a small location tracker was beeping from the back of a crumbling second-hand shoe store. A Reuters reporter followed the high-pitched ping to a mound of old sneakers and began digging through the pile.

There they were: a pair of blue Nike running shoes with a tracking device hidden in one of the soles.

These familiar shoes had traveled by land, then sea and crossed an international border to end up in this heap. They weren’t supposed to be here.

Five months earlier, in July 2022, Reuters had given the shoes to a recycling program spearheaded by the Singapore government and U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc. In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore.

Dow, a major producer of chemicals used to make plastics and other synthetic materials, in the past has launched recycling efforts that have fallen short of their stated aims. Reuters wanted to follow a donated shoe from start to finish to see if it did, in fact, end up in new athletic surfaces in Singapore, or at least made it as far as a local recycling facility for shredding.

[...]

4 parts.

Because it's been two years, and both the world and the US still has a lot of work ahead.

Source: Kottke

[…]

But if there's one thing I remember about Sim by, it's his criticism of the Singaporean mindset.

The No U-Turn Syndrome, or NUTS, was how Sim viewed how Singaporeans always required a rule base to get anything done.

It's referring to how in Singapore, u-turns are not allowed unless there's a sign that allows you to do so, which is different from how other countries do it — you can u-turn unless there's a sign prohibiting you to do so. And to make things even more fun, there are sometimes no u-turn signs, too.

This also means that when you want to do something, you automatically seek the approval of an higher authority, and if there's no rule, the default is "no".

It's terrible, and forces you to just stay in your lane without making changes.

When I started working, I saw plenty of examples of how this worked, especially in larger organisations.

[…]

With the passing of Sim, it doesn't hurt to be reminded of what he said again, and the examples he gave of how inflexible our Singaporean mindset is.

If we're going to honour his legacy, we should honour his words, too. Because as nuts as it sounds, NUTS is still pretty relevant in our society today — if not more so than ever, with the challenges Singapore faces ahead.

Again, sadly unable to embed it here -- but definitely worth looking in the investigational journalism and the war crimes committed.

Last week, an Australian climate protester, who blocked a lane of traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was sentenced to up to 15 months in prison under a new anti-protest law. It was one of many recent disruptive climate protests that seem to do little else than annoy and inconvenience everyone.

Our knee-jerk reaction to seeing someone throw soup at art or glue themselves to trains is usually contempt and anger. But I think when teenagers, grannies and scientists participate in activism that puts them at risk of going to jail and becoming the target of public scorn, it’s worth digging a little deeper.

First, we should remember that civil disobedience has long been a major tactic of nonviolent action. Whether in colonised Africa and India, in the American civil rights movement, or in the many labour, anti-war, social and racial justice movements, civil disobedience was used to provoke the government of the day, set a moral example and prompt broader discourse. It was also often loathed by much of the public because of its disruptive, divisive nature.

Most environmental movements have been around for a while. After decades of protests and marches, emissions are still going up, biodiversity loss is accelerating and hundreds of millions of people face an unlivable future. When the United Nations can issue a ‘code red for humanity’ and it’s only the third most important headline of the day, how effective is another courteous sit-in? When most of us have become numb to the daily shock and outrage in the news, how can activism cut through? Well, through theatrical, controversial actions.

But attention is not the only point. Our reaction to this sort of ‘performance activism’ also highlights a pretty major dissonance. We seem to be much more outraged about a defaced piece of art than a system that continues to trash and destroy the natural world we all depend on. The inconvenience of a delayed rush-hour commute infuriates us in ways that the prospect of frequent catastrophic ‘natural disasters’ does not. In reaction to the sentencing of the Sydney Harbour Bridge protester, the state’s conservative political leader said: “If protesters want to put our way of life at risk, they should have the book thrown at them.” It begs the question: who is putting our way of life at risk?

[...]

History tells us that harsher punishments do not stop activists. Considering what’s at stake today, I doubt it will this time. In the meantime, we can prepare for more disruption, keep the controversy in perspective, and think about where to channel our outrage. Like many protesters point out: if this kind of activism seems overly disruptive, we’ll be shocked to find out what climate change has in store for us. – Kai

I admit I'm the first one getting annoyed at these protests when it impacts me -- because I already try to do my part, and am well aware of what's at stake. We should disrupt the industries and politicians over regular people.

But having it put in that way, and comparing it to previous protests, I agree we likely have little choice, and it has worked in the past, and will work again now.

At least, until everyone is aware and starts doing their part.

I guess that's one thing that I do miss in Singapore: informal places that are affordable (almost everything here costs money) and that are not shopping malls (exactly what he mentions in the video).

Sure, there are bars, but they are usually expensive and atas, and not the place people go for an informal chitchat (more for date nights). There are the places around the hawker centres (i.e.: the food courts) with a lot of "uncles" sitting down -- but that's hardly my crowd. ;)

But maybe I'm also just in a bad neighbourhood. Chinatown has more craft beer places (somewhat affordable) right inside the food courts (i.e.: no air-conditioning, but it's informal and easily accessible).

But I'll admit I miss the Belgian-style pub where we'd go for a drink before dinner, or later at night for a tea. Places like Fenikshof in Grimbergen.

Apple purposely disables a feature on your phone during unrest.

Anti-government protests flared in several Chinese cities and on college campuses over the weekend. But the country’s most widespread show of public dissent in decades will have to manage without a crucial communication tool, because Apple restricted its use in China earlier this month.

AirDrop, the file-sharing feature on iPhones and other Apple devices, has helped protestors in many authoritarian countries evade censorship. That’s because AirDrop relies on direct connections between phones, forming a local network of devices that don’t need the internet to communicate. People can opt into receiving AirDrops from anyone else with an iPhone nearby.

That changed on Nov. 9, when Apple released a new version of its mobile operating system, iOS 16.1.1, to customers worldwide. Rather than listing new features, as it often does, the company simply said, “This update includes bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all users.”

Hidden in the update was a change that only applies to iPhones sold in mainland China: AirDrop can only be set to receive messages from everyone for 10 minutes, before switching off. There’s no longer a way to keep the “everyone” setting on permanently on Chinese iPhones. The change, first noticed by Chinese readers of 9to5Mac, doesn’t apply anywhere else.

[...]

But why did Apple rush out the change unannounced, in an unassuming update to iOS in early November, and apply it only to Chinese iPhones? One clue may lie in what happened the month prior, when Xi Jinping’s anointment to a third term as China’s leader was met with rare displays of public dissent.

In the most visible protest, a dissident now known as Bridge Man lit a fire on a bridge in Beijing to draw attention to his protest banners. One read, “Go on strike at school and work, remove dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping.” References to the banners were quickly censored across the Chinese internet, but photos still made their way through private channels. Vice reported that Bridge Man’s messages were spreading on the Shanghai subway via AirDrop.

Source: qz

The unannounced update has, as always, been twisted as a useful update to "protect the users".

Besides all the power they already hold "curating" the app stores, imagine, next time, Apple (or any other Big Tech Corp) decides to disable your camera when the police put their knees on the neck of a poor guy, or they decide to disable the keyboard inside certain Telegram chat rooms, or disable Wi-Fi and data inside certain geo-zones, etc...

I specifically disagree with his stance on free speech, because I think that it depends on your interpretation of what free speech means. If you allow the most intolerant voices to be as loud as they want to, you’re going to shut down voices of different opinions as well. So allowing free speech by just allowing all speech is not actually leading to free speech, it just leads to a cesspit of hate.

I think that is a very uniquely American idea of creating this marketplace of ideas where you can say anything you want completely without limits. It is very foreign to the German mindset where we, in our Constitution, our number one priority is maintaining human dignity. And so, hate speech is not part of the German concept of free speech, for example. So I think that when Elon Musk says that everything’s gonna be allowed, or whatever, I generally disagree with that.

Regardless of what happens to Twitter, Elon Musk is without a doubt the most interesting man in the world right now. He's positioned himself at the intersection of so many trends and topics that it's hard to keep count, and through it all, he's tweeting memes. It's the greatest show on earth, no work of fiction could ever hope to compete.

It's also incredibly divisive. Not since Trump has a single character managed to invoke such extreme levels of love and hate on the world stage for weeks at the time. Nor has anyone been able to play the media like a fiddle with such virtuosity.

Thankfully the stakes are so much lower, though. Musk might be firing rockets into space, but they won't accidentally have any nuclear warheads on them. His media trolling isn't coming from within the White House. This reality show is playing out over something as disposable as a struggling social media website.

Furthermore, the world doesn't need Twitter. In fact, the world would almost certainly be better off without Twitter.

That's what makes this show so guiltlessly entertaining to watch: Whichever the outcome, the world wins. If Musk manages to fix Twitter, we're left with a better Twitter. Great! If Musk manages to burn down Twitter, we're left with a world free of Twitter. Great!

This is a 44 billion dollar gamble where the rest of us will win whatever the outcome.

Fitting for Global Warming (and likely plenty of other weird stuff humans got accustomed to), but apparently the story is about death.

When these shows resurfaced, they were full of these weird jumps, signaling that scenes were removed during censorship because someone somewhere thought it would be inappropriate or illegal to stream such content.

[...]

77 of the first 100 episodes had at least one edit, amounting to 206 removed scenes.

[...]

I categorized these scenes, among which sex, LGBTQ+ (and atypical heterosexual relationships), as well as disrespect toward China or the country’s allies are the most common ones. The four other topics account for a rather small portion but are still worth mentioning: illegal actions, religion, unhealthy addictions, and miscellaneous.

[...]

This added up to over one hour of deleted scenes, or nearly three full episodes of purely censored content.

Source and analysis by The Pudding.

The author analysed all the censored cuts out of TBBT and categorised them in 7 different ways (explained at the end of the article).

Very nicely done, showing side by side comparison of the censored and original version.

[...]

Those pages are now gone, along with thousands of anonymous posts sharing gossip, seeking advice, and protesting against government policies. In August, police in Hong Kong arrested two administrators of the Facebook page Civil Servant Secrets on suspicion of sedition, without specifying what content they found problematic. Shortly after the arrests, many other popular pages each with tens of thousands of followers shut down, as people feared becoming the next targets of Hong Kong’s crackdown on dissent.

“We don’t know where the red line is,” the administrator of the CityU Secrets page told Rest of World. Requesting anonymity to avoid being targeted by the authorities.

[...]

As time changes... All the (stupid?) things we posted (when we were kids?) on the World Wide Web will come and bite us.

Long gone are the days of the free "underworld-y" internet that existed when I grew up, I know, but few of us realise that all the things we posted on the internet are there, forever, and eventually... It'll come and haunt us.

Wish this was an option in Singapore -- sadly, driving a bike here is needlessly dangerous. But likely a viable mode of transportation when we move back to Europe.

“Due to short life-spans and faulty memories, humans have a poor conception of how much of the natural world has been degraded by our actions, because our ‘baseline’ shifts with every generation, and sometimes even in an individual. In essence, what we see as pristine nature would be seen by our ancestors as hopelessly degraded, and what we see as degraded, our children will view as ‘natural’.”

In the US, since the first European settlers arrived, 90% of virgin or ‘old growth’ forest has been destroyed. Today’s forests could be better described as ‘tree farms’ as they do not resemble the richly biodiverse forests that once were.

Another example are whale populations: in just one century we managed to reduce whale numbers by a whopping 99%. The impact of this is hugely complex: apparently the lack of whale poop reduced the fertilising effect on ocean algae levels, permanently crashing the productivity of ocean food webs and even altering global climate.

The Twitter thread has a lot of examples.

A more current and more widely understood example is the recent, dramatic decline of the insect population. Thanks to SBS, our children will most likely never know how many bugs ended up splattered on windshields during a road trip taken just a few decades ago.

The Windscreen phenomenon.

- A new Chatham House report highlights that the global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss. 

- Biodiversity loss will continue to accelerate, unless we change the way we produce food. Further destruction of ecosystems and habitats will threaten our ability to sustain human populations. 

- The new report calls for an urgent reform of food systems, suggesting three interdependent actions: changing global dietary patterns, protecting and setting aside land for nature, and farming in a more nature-friendly and biodiversity-supporting way. 

- Policy makers are urged to take a system-wide approach to account for the impacts of food systems, develop global guidance for change, and translate this to national targets. 

We definitely need to rethink how we produce and consume food.

But also, while mostly interesting for space travel, scientist find a way to grow plants in total darkness (i.e.: without photosynthesis). This could help with vertical farming inside buildings. It's also ~18x more efficient this way.

While we should not take that as an excuse to get rid of trees and greenery, this could maybe be used to grow in larger scale with less land usage.

Source: Nerdland

Just like Air France-KLM is already offering Thalys tickets for some of its flights from Brussels: instead of departing from BRU airport to AMS or CDG; just take a train from Brussels South.

It looks like Lufthansa, and soon all of Star Alliance, will offer more comprehensive (long-haul) tickets including a train ride to or from your final destination.

Can only applaud this: planes are here to stay; but I’d 100% prefer to take the train (at least a high-speed one like Thalys, Eurostar or the Shinkansen) over a small CRJ9, A220 or other sardine cans for my layover flight (BRU doesn’t have a lot of decent direct connections to Asia). These inter-city flights (short distance, frequent take-off and landing) heavily contributing to noise and environmental pollution.

Europe will also impose additional tax on short flights, so hopefully this may make the entire journey a bit cheaper (and more relaxing).

Oh, and if I get miles for this, it’s even better (and I’m going to guess a lot of people think the same: earning miles on train rides, yay).

Deutsche Bahn is the first company outside the aviation industry to become a partner in an international airline alliance.

Deutsche Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn are already working together on the German transport market and are offering joint tickets. This service could also be opened up to the customers of the other Alliance members.

Source: Aviation24

On Monday, an AP reporter tested how the company would respond to a similar post on Facebook, writing: “If you send me your address, I will mail you abortion pills.” The post was removed within one minute. The Facebook account was immediately put on a “warning” status for the post, which Facebook said violated its standards on “guns, animals and other regulated goods.”

Yet, when the AP reporter made the same exact post but swapped out the words “abortion pills” for “a gun,” the post remained untouched. A post with the same exact offer to mail “weed” was also left up and not considered a violation.

Shame on you, once again, Facebook/Meta.

It doesn’t serve Singaporeans to have the government acting as our nanny, covering our eyes while clutching her pearls. When it seizes the power to decide whether the people are “reading the right thing,” it is depriving Singaporeans of opportunities to develop media literacy, exercise critical thinking, and become savvier navigators of online spaces. This benefits the government because it fosters among the people a culture of dependency on those in power to exercise control over all aspects of people’s lives. But it hurts Singaporeans by curbing our agency and freedom, trapping us mentally within authoritarian frames and environments.

[...]

Carrying an extra passport

In ways that are hard to explain, working for a bigger tech company is like carrying an extra passport. Everyone else has to commute to work. You get driven in an air-conditioned private bus with dedicated wifi. Work visa failed to renew? No worries, do an intra-company transfer to one of several global hubs.

It's not that the rules don't apply to you, it's that you have a safeguard for when the shit hits the fan.

And this week, that's exactly what happened. The Supreme Court of the US overturned Roe v Wade and a bunch of tech companies rushed in to reassure their employees. Yes, the law of the land just changed. But, don't worry. We will fly you out of state, we will approve relocation if you wish, we will take care of you. You will be insulated against the worst of anti-choice laws, regardless of where you live. This is a massive change in reproductive freedom for Americans, but not for you.

We're not opposed to employers taking care of their employees. We're not even upset that companies got gold stars for their employer brand in an otherwise hot talent market. But the extra passport is tricky. It has two profound impacts and whether those things are intended or not is hard to say.

An extra passport can make you feel like you have a perpetual plan B. Like whatever is going on in the world is someone else's problem to solve. That untethered, unmoored thing means you pay less attention to the fucked-up-ed-ness of San Francisco. You can always move to Miami. Or Austin. Taxes are lower there anyway. Pulled all the way through, tech people resemble locusts. We come, we eat, we leave at the first signs of blight. Even when it's blight we caused.

The other reason it's tricky is that it reduces scrutiny on the issuing body. The company paying for the air conditioned, wifi-enabled shuttle or the round trip airfare to a blue state. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. They are doing all of this to take care of you. And it'd help out a whole awful lot if you didn't ask what the public policy team has been up to for the past few years.

[...]

Incoherent answers

So here we are. Faced with this disastrous ruling. And it makes us wonder: how coherent are your organization's actions on this one? We heard about the relocation policy, what other actions are they taking? Do they line up? Or are they shielding their employees from a political reality with one hand, while they help bankroll that reality with the other? The twitterverse has been quick to call out the companies whose statements don't match their political spending. But that critique, lobbed at a brand's social account, often stops at the social media manager.

It's harder for organizations to ignore the questions that come from their own people. It's harder to ignore questions from you.

What are our company's policy/lobbying priorities right now?
Which candidates have we donated to that helped make this mess, and have we cut off that support?
How are we making our position clear, and what concrete steps are we taking to advance that position?

Those questions may produce some awkward shifting in seats. If this were about product strategy, the conversation would be all coherent actions and strong point of view. But when it comes to their role as political actors, many executives have shown that they don't have the range. So, when you ask these questions, you may get a patronizing smile, and some version of, "we can't do that. Donating across the board is how you play the game. If we want influence on the things we care about, we need to be in the room."

You deserve better answers than that. You deserve better than to have your employer tell you that criminalizing abortion is "playing the game." Some of you, when you push, will find out that your labour has been supporting an organization that helped fund what's unfolding right now. And when you discover that, you deserve better than, "we don't claim to get everything right." You deserve better than, "we're not all going to agree on everything anyway."

We don't need you to agree on everything. But, if you are one of those lucky humans who found yourself with an extra passport you didn't know you had, we're invoking Spiderman rules.

That company-issued passport affords you a set of privileges. Like the ability to flit between jurisdictions when the need arises. It also comes with an extra set of responsibilities. We need you engaged, informed, and asking tough questions at this week's all hands. Even if you're not American, or married to an American, now is a good time to get clear on how your organization is using its influence in the world. Particularly when your company's public stance and their actions don't line up.

I'm pro-Becky who found out at her 20-week anatomy scan that the infant she had been so excited to bring into this world had developed without life sustaining organs.

I'm pro-Susan who was sexually assaulted on her way home from work, only to come to the horrific realization that her assailant planted his seed in her when she got a positive pregnancy test result a month later.

I'm pro-Theresa who hemorrhaged due to a placental abruption, causing her parents, spouse, and children to have to make the impossible decision on whether to save her or her unborn child.

I'm pro-little Cathy who had her innocence ripped away from her by someone she should have been able to trust and her 11-year-old body isn't mature enough to bear the consequence of that betrayal.

I'm pro-Melissa who's working two jobs just to make ends meet and has to choose between bringing another child into poverty or feeding the children she already has because her spouse walked out on her.

I'm pro-Brittany who realizes that she is in no way financially, emotionally, or physically able to raise a child.

I'm pro-Emily who went through IVF, ending up with SIX viable implanted eggs requiring selective reduction to ensure the safety of her and a SAFE number of fetuses.

I'm pro-Jessica who is FINALLY getting the strength to get away from her physically abusive spouse only to find out that she is carrying the monster's child.

I'm pro-Vanessa who went into her confirmation appointment after YEARS of trying to conceive only to hear silence where there should be a heartbeat.

I'm pro-Lindsay who lost her virginity in her sophomore year with a broken condom and now has to choose whether to be a teenage mom or just a teenager.

I'm pro-Courtney who just found out she's already 13 weeks along, but the egg never made it out of her fallopian tube, so either she terminates the pregnancy or risks dying from internal bleeding.

You can argue and say that I'm pro-choice all you want, but the truth is:
I'm pro-life.
Their lives.
Women's lives.

You don't get to pick and choose which scenarios should be accepted. It's not about which stories you don't agree with. It's about fighting for the women in the stories that you do agree with and the CHOICE that was made.

Women's rights are meant to protect ALL women, regardless of their situation!

Overturning Roe does not stop abortions, it stops SAFE abortions! 

Abortion is healthcare.

[...]

Last year she found out her 65-year-old mother had 1,100 micrograms of PFOS per liter of blood—a concentration more typically found in industrial wastewater. Her 68-year-old father had about 800. Her 19-year-old daughter tested at 300. D’Hollander’s own level had come down to about 100, which she attributes to not eating eggs and to breastfeeding, a theory backed up by studies showing mothers pass on high amounts of the chemical through their milk. She and her mother both have malfunctioning thyroids, a condition now associated with PFOS, and doctors have told them that at some point the drugs they take for the condition will stop working. Other health problems associated with high PFOS levels include high cholesterol, diabetes, hormone and immune disorders, and even diminished vaccine efficacy.

[...]

One sample showed 257,000 micrograms per liter, according to a 3M-commissioned study submitted to the Flemish waste management agency. For context, Minnesota’s current safe limit is 0.015 micrograms per liter.

[...]

After more than a decade of fighting, Flemish officials were eager to go ahead with the Oosterweel. They needed 3M’s help. In November 2018, Lantis and 3M signed their secret pact allowing the most dangerous of the toxic dirt (with 70 to 1,000 micrograms of PFOS per kilo) to be dumped on 3M’s site. Lantis argued Flemish regulations allowed it to move the soil without treating it as toxic waste as long as it served a function, in this case a security wall. Lantis estimated it would cost €63 million to move all that soil. 3M’s cost would be €75,000.

[...]

The Province of Antwerp planned to move roughly 4 million cubic meters of soil from the tunnel-highway project to a nature reserve far south.

[...]

Alongside health anxieties, farmers in the area have lost business. Koen Doggen grows organic vegetables that he sells to consumers through a subscription service. He says tests last summer showed his soil had more than twice the level of PFOS at which the government says sanitization is required. “I considered quitting,” he says. “I didn’t know if I wanted to work on contaminated soil. I breathe it in daily in the summer and wash it off my skin every evening. I wondered how I could ever sell this product again now that Zwijndrecht has become PFOS land, like it’s Chernobyl.”

[...]

High concentrations of PFBSA had made it into fish in the estuary of the western side of the Scheldt leading into the North Sea, according to a study paid for by residents of Zwijndrecht late last year. Flounder in the estuary had 24 micrograms of PFOS, seven times above safe limits for people who eat fish once a week.

[...]

Last autumn, 3M’s chief medical officer, Oyebode Taiwo, flew to Antwerp from the US to defend the company in Parliament. He argued that blood tests showing high PFOS levels weren’t proof the chemical caused the health problems that individuals were experiencing. “It could be due to reverse causation, meaning that it’s not the exposure that is causing the health outcome, but it is the health outcome that is causing the exposure to build up,” he said.

In other words, he argued certain people with specific health conditions are more prone to build up PFAS chemicals in their blood. Scientifically, the idea is dubious. Legally, it’s absurd, says Berezofsky. She points to the “eggshell skull” rule accepted in US law. “If I walk down the street and I hit somebody over the head, a normal person with a normal skull may just feel a bump. Somebody who has a skull made of an eggshell might die,” she says. “I’m still responsible. The fact that they have an eggshell skull does not relieve me of the liability of what I did.”

[...]

Source: Bloomberg

If we cast a wider net and examine violence more broadly, evidence suggests mental illness does not cause violence. Large epidemiological studies have shown that rates of violence among people with mild-to-moderate mental illnesses range from 2%-4%, compared to 1%-3% in the general population. One of the strongest longitudinal studies, called the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, found that only 1% of patients discharged from psychiatric facilities committed an act of violence against a stranger with a gun.

[...]

So not all mass shooters have mental illnesses. And the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness will not commit mass murder (or violence in general). This suggests that other factors are more important in predicting mass violence. Experts believe the following factors, especially in combination, are more predictive:

a/ Particular motivations, such as revenge or envy. A type of mass murderer identified by some experts is the “pseudocommando,” who “kills in public during the daytime, plans [the] offense well in advance, . . . comes prepared with a powerful arsenal of weapons,” expects to die during the massacre, and is driven by intense anger, resentment, and revenge.

b/ Adoption of extremist beliefs that promote the use of violence to attain one’s goals. There is a growing concern in the U.S. about the rise of extremist groups and influences and their relationship to mass killings.

c/ Social isolation. When people with these and other characteristics that put them at risk for violence become socially isolated, the combination can place them at even greater risk.

Whether one terms these characteristics dysfunction or evil, such behaviors do not constitute a diagnosable and treatable health condition.

A research group studying mass shootings for decades (called The Violence Project) concluded that mass shootings are largely the results of a constellation of behaviors involving a buildup of childhood trauma, an identifiable crisis point (separate from psychosis), the need to blame someone, and the opportunity to conduct a mass shooting (i.e. access to firearms).

Blaming mental illness entirely “conceals it more than it reveals it.”

Antytila went viral earlier this year after they posted a video offering to perform via live link at a concert for Ukraine in Birmingham. 

Organisers of the concert, which featured Ed Sheeran, turned down the offer because of the group's association with the military.

Topolya said that because of this, Sheeran's team then proposed a collaboration with the band. The video has since had over one million views on Youtube.

Source: BBC

Because under the 1954 convention, “damage to cultural property means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind”. So attacks on cultural heritage are a considered war crime. But treaties can only do so much. In the years since, conflicts around the world have rendered immeasurable damage to cultural heritage. A lot of it intentional. Like the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan buddhas. And Isis’ attacks on ancient sites all over Syria.

“That cultural heritage is not only impacted, but in many ways it’s implicated and central to armed conflict. These are things that people point to that are unifying factors for their society. They are tangible reflections of their identity.”

And Putin has made it clear that identity is at the ideological center of Russia’s invasion: “I would like to emphasize again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.”

“He thinks that we don’t really exist and they want to destroy all the signs of our identity.”

(Source)

When is a cargo of Russian diesel not a cargo of Russian diesel? The answer is when Shell Plc, the largest European oil company, turns it into what traders refer to as a Latvian blend. The point is to market a barrel in which only 49.99% comes from Russia; in Shell’s eyes, as long as the other 50.01 percent is sourced elsewhere, the oil cargo isn’t technically of Russian origin.

Source: Bloomberg

Scum.

Nuclear. These numbers appear to be correct, and come from our single operational nuclear power plant in Borselle.

Fossil gas. I think this includes only our ‘regular’ natural gas power plants. However, other sources authoritatively say we also burn a steady 458 MW of ‘biogas’.

Coal. Probably complete.

Waste. The Netherlands incinerates a lot of waste, and this leads to the production of electrical power. Not a lot though.

Wind onshore. Turns out this number only includes wind farms directly connected to TenneT. In other words, there is a lot more onshore wind power than reported in this number.

Wind offshore. Most people consider this number to be good & to include all the offshore wind farms.

Other. No one knows what this is (!!), except it sometimes peaks to 5 GW. But not recently. Goes up and down between 50 and 600 MW more or less.

Dutch Electrical Power Numbers part 2

If Europe is serious about becoming energy independent (from Russia today, from someone else tomorrow), it's time to publish transparent data on energy sources.

Hello, open data, anyone?

Via NY Times.

Via NY Times.

Sadly can't embed it here due to the horrific nature, but worth to see it directly on Youtube.

[...]

Europe has a shared past that dates back 2,000 years. Its influences have been the same, from Greek culture to Roman culture, the Church, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, the emergence of Nation-States, the colonial period, the world wars… Despite recent immigration, its countries are racially and culturally similar, as Europeans quickly discover in their Erasmus student exchanges. It isn’t united in diversity6. It’s united in values.

As long as it focuses on its differences, each country’s sovereignty will prevail. And the more sovereignty stands at the country level, the less power the Union has. Until European citizens realize that their nationalism weakens the European Union, the region will be weak.

So Europeans must put Europe first. For that, though, you need a common project that everybody is excited about. But what is that project?

[...]

Equality of religion is the reason why Turkey should be a candidate to the EU, and why the European knee-jerk reaction against it isn’t right. But this goes both ways. All of the above are questionable in Erdogan’s Turkey, who has been in power for over 20 years, and who has led the country down the path of more authoritarianism, less freedom, and less equality. These are the issues that don’t make Turkey an imminent candidate to join the EU. Not the fact that it’s a Muslim-majority country.

Europeans’ inability to explain this is a calamity, rooted in the fact that Europe doesn’t talk about its common values, focused as it is on diversity and trade. The European Union doesn’t fight for anything. It doesn’t stand for anything. Until Russian tanks invade Ukraine.

[...]

European nations have been so obsessed with their own glorious past, avoiding war, and pushing economic growth, that most of them—especially the big ones—haven’t realized they are small nations yet. Once they realize it, they will be ready to shed their baggage: their national identities. Only when they build a European identity stronger than the regional ones will Europe be ready to unite. Will they become a true nation.

[...]

The first rule of a nation is that you need to decide what you stand for. The EU stands for human rights, but you never hear that. It’s not central to the discourse. Human Rights are not encapsulated into a catchy little sentence that everybody can recite. Until they become central to everything the EU does, Europe won’t unite around its values.

[...]

So here are five necessary ingredients to make the EU into a global superpower:

- Focus more on what Europeans have in common than on their differences.
- Put universal human rights at the center of European discourse.
- Make English co-official across the EU.
- Unify the military.
- Unify the foreign policy.

Without that, the EU will remain a backwater.

Europe should get better marketing and rethink the way it promotes its values. Too much right-wing politicians have abused this.

Once again incredibly relevant...

"When NATO announced in 2002 its plan for a major wave of expansion that would include three former Soviet republics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—Putin barely reacted. He certainly did not threaten to invade any of the countries to keep them out of NATO. Asked specifically in late 2001 whether he opposed the Baltic states’ membership in NATO, he stated, “We, of course, are not in a position to tell people what to do. We cannot forbid people to make certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a particular way."

"NATO is a defensive alliance. It has never attacked the Soviet Union or Russia, and it never will. Putin knows that. But Putin is threatened by a successful democracy in Ukraine. He cannot tolerate a successful, flourishing, and democratic Ukraine on his borders, especially if the Ukrainian people also begin to prosper economically. That undermines the Kremlin’s own regime stability and proposed rationale for autocratic state leadership."

Very powerful speech.

May peace be returned swiftly.

The Hamburg Regional Court today ruled that they would not suspend an existing injunction against Quad9 in a case filed by Sony Music Germany. The case centers around Sony Music’s demand that Quad9’s servers located in Germany stop resolving DNS names of third-party sites which are claimed to have URLs that contain copyright infringements.

Unbelievable.

Also note "claimed to have". Not proven to have.

Knowing that Sony has not been very good at actually identifying copyrighted content, and they just throw stuff around to see what sticks.

And DMCA requests have done more evil than good...

Also, what will actually happen? Quad9 will move its DNS servers outside of Germany and/or people will use other DNS resolvers. Nothing get fixed, and users are punished with worse latency.

This summer, the Lithuanian government went public with an astounding finding. A Xiaomi phone sold in Europe — the Mi 10T 5G — could censor approximately 450 words and phrases, it said. The blocklist wasn’t active, but could be activated remotely. It was filled with political terms, including “Democratic Movement” and “Long live Taiwan’s independence.”

[...]

The accusations, which Xiaomi disputes, clarified just how fraught the West’s relationship is with China’s growing technology power. As China-based tech companies like Xiaomi and TikTok flourish, there’s still no playbook in North America or Europe to deal with their potential to censor or steer culture via algorithms.

“Western countries,” Abukevicius said, “are more and more reliant on technologies, and a big part of those technologies comes from countries which are not friendly, which we don't trust, and it poses risks.”

(Source)

And this.

By Miet.

(Source)

And not a single fuck was giving. Not one. Please remain calm and keep on hypnotoad.

If GCHQ was indeed the agency concerned then this investigation is unlikely to go anywhere and the most that can be expected is some sort of diplomatic complaint from Belgium to the UK, its EU and Nato partner.

Best NSA related comment in weeks.

This link.

President Obama announced a plan to limit the sale of combat weapons and, hours later, those kinds of guns are out of stock in Wal-Mart

David v Goliath. @Tuinslak zet iRail terug online. https://yeri.be/cb PRO OpenData, PRO OpenGov.

— Vincent VQuickborne (@VincentVQ) July 6, 2010

In other words, De Gucht won't accept the idea that the European electorate, through their representatives in the European Parliament, might possibly want to reject something they were not allowed to know about until late in the negotiating process, and to which they were unable to provide any meaningful input. In his view, ACTA must be passed, and ACTA will be passed -- whatever anyone else thinks about it.

[…]

Source.

Source.

De rechter sprak de man echter vrij. Volgens hem heeft de jood voldaan aan zijn religieuze plicht. "De religieuze plicht weegt zwaarder dan de plicht om te voldoen aan de wettelijke voorschriften in Nederland", verklaart persrechter Elkerbout.

(Source)

Megaupload has been forcibly closed by the FBI. In a sickening undermining of the people’s will, they are making an example out of an historic, legitimate, useful and well-known website. This is a prophetic glimmer of the coming war against pure free speech- the internet.

This happened once before. Here in the UK, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) is a censoring system for the internet. In 1996, the Metropolitan Police started requesting the banning of illegal content by ISPs in the UK. With veiled sly threats they asked that ISPs engage in ‘self-enforcement’ rather than forcing them to enforce the law on them.

Most of the ISPs complied except Demon internet. Demon was a British ISP that contributed to the Open Source community, ran several IRC servers and were pioneers of their time. They objected on the grounds of it being “unacceptable censorship”. A few days later, a tabloid expose appeared in the Observer newspaper alleging that the director of Demon was supplying paedophiles with photographs of children being sexually abused.

Then the police let it be known that during that summer, they were planning a crack-down on an unspecified ISP as a test-case (translation: making an example of them). Between the threats and pressure, the IWF was formed- a supposedly voluntary organisation but in fact a fake-charity and a quango. The IWF is a disgraceful secretive group with an awful corrupt history and no public oversight.

Now we see the same tactic has been used against Megaupload. They are using the threat of violence to coerce companies, how the British police did to create their own laws. The SOPA legislation did not go their way, so they have resulted to immoral tactics of repression.

From ACTA which is decided behind closed European chambers, the DEA which was pushed through undemocratically at alarming speed before elections, evil La Hadopi and now SOPA/PIPA in the US, there is nowhere to run. The nepotists are determined to push through these legislation. At all costs. This is not about piracy- it never was and will not do a thing. It is about control.

We have built a tool. For all their false talk of democracy we have for the first time in history reached this epochal moment. Self determination. If they truly believed in democracy, we could have a direct-democracy tomorrow. The tools exist. Instead we see this flagrant deception. It has become acceptable for politicians to cater to the greatest common denominator. We let them off the hook on the truth like Cameron pretending to be pro-NHS or Obama pretending to be Christian because it is for voters. Since when did it become acceptable to lie! Now today we see this limp-wristed hand wringing by the US president about how he will veto SOPA. Oh shut up.

Was it Gordan Brown who said that voting levels were dangerously low in the below-30s because youngsters today are apolitical. He wanted mandatory attendance for voters. No, we are not apolitical, we are sick of your lies and deceit. This generation is probably more political than any generation in history. In the 80s, only 5% of people in the US were members of organisations. In the 90s, 70% of Americans belonged to some kind of organisation. People are mobilising and prescient of issues.

Libel law is atrociously bad in the UK. Payouts are 10 times greater than in main-land Europe and you get a situation where billionaires use law firms like Carter-Ruck to keep news publishers (which are poor) in court and bleed them dry. Time magazine did an undercover piece of reporting and was sued for libel. They won the case but it ended up costing them $1 million. That’s effectively a fine of $1 million for undercover journalism.

Of course when the law is broken, what do we do? Make more laws! That is why California has brought in anti-SLAPP legislation.

Patent law is so stupid and I won’t even go there.

Copyright is fascist. I find it revolting that we are creating this artificial scarcity where there is none. Everyone could have the Alexandrian library in their back-pocket. It is not the responsibility of these new models to bail out the old ones. The wealth of world knowledge harnessed by parasites.

The biggest copyright lobbyists have their own origins in the bootleg and parody industries. Fox moved west to escape litigious action by Edison’s copyrights. Disney’s original Mickey Mouse cartoons were rip-offs of The Jazz Singer and Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr. In fact nearly ever Disney film is a rip-off from popular culture: Mulan, Cinderella, Jungle Book, Little Mermaid, Tarzan, Yet the constant copyright extensions right before it expires for Mickey Mouse has become a twisted joke- termed the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extensions.

Copyright’s own origin is in the 1700s when the English protectorate wanted to protect London publishers from Scottish ones who were printing public domain work. It was a monopolistic law. How then has society somehow brainwashed itself into believing they are anything but? We have the copyright owners for “I have a dream” issuing DMCA takedowns against websites. This is an important historical document- how can copyright be encouraging artists to create when they are DEAD.

This does not have much to do with bitcoin, but I am mad. This free-speech infringement feels so odious and Machiavellian that you cannot stand it, and the only way to stop the machine is to throw yourself under the tracks. The vox populi means nothing under the false pretense of ‘protecting artists’.

If downloading child pornography supports child pornographers how can downloading music destroy the music industry?

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Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition. We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.

THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

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-- Margaret Mead

Also: Wikipedia Blackout.

Oh, and Wordpress blackout.

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.

The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

Assassination of U.S. citizens

President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)

Indefinite detention

Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While the administration claims that this provision only codified existing law, experts widely contest this view, and the administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal courts. The government continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for “prolonged detention.”)

Arbitrary justice

The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)

Warrantless searches

The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use “national security letters” to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens — and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.)

Secret evidence

The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts. It also forces the dismissal of cases against the United States by simply filing declarations that the cases would make the government reveal classified information that would harm national security — a claim made in a variety of privacy lawsuits and largely accepted by federal judges without question. Even legal opinions, cited as the basis for the government’s actions under the Bush and Obama administrations, have been classified. This allows the government to claim secret legal arguments to support secret proceedings using secret evidence. In addition, some cases never make it to court at all. The federal courts routinely deny constitutional challenges to policies and programs under a narrow definition of standing to bring a case.

War crimes

The world clamored for prosecutions of those responsible for waterboarding terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration said in 2009 that it would not allow CIA employees to be investigated or prosecuted for such actions. This gutted not just treaty obligations but the Nuremberg principles of international law. When courts in countries such as Spain moved to investigate Bush officials for war crimes, the Obama administration reportedly urged foreign officials not to allow such cases to proceed, despite the fact that the United States has long claimed the same authority with regard to alleged war criminals in other countries. (Various nations have resisted investigations of officials accused of war crimes and torture. Some, such as Serbia and Chile, eventually relented to comply with international law; countries that have denied independent investigations include Iran, Syria and China.)

Secret court

The government has increased its use of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has expanded its secret warrants to include individuals deemed to be aiding or abetting hostile foreign governments or organizations. In 2011, Obama renewed these powers, including allowing secret searches of individuals who are not part of an identifiable terrorist group. The administration has asserted the right to ignore congressional limits on such surveillance. (Pakistan places national security surveillance under the unchecked powers of the military or intelligence services.)

Immunity from judicial review

Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has successfully pushed for immunity for companies that assist in warrantless surveillance of citizens, blocking the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy. (Similarly, China has maintained sweeping immunity claims both inside and outside the country and routinely blocks lawsuits against private companies.)

Continual monitoring of citizens

The Obama administration has successfully defended its claim that it can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review. (Saudi Arabia has installed massive public surveillance systems, while Cuba is notorious for active monitoring of selected citizens.)

Extraordinary renditions

The government now has the ability to transfer both citizens and noncitizens to another country under a system known as extraordinary rendition, which has been denounced as using other countries, such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, to torture suspects. The Obama administration says it is not continuing the abuses of this practice under Bush, but it insists on the unfettered right to order such transfers — including the possible transfer of U.S. citizens.

These new laws have come with an infusion of money into an expanded security system on the state and federal levels, including more public surveillance cameras, tens of thousands of security personnel and a massive expansion of a terrorist-chasing bureaucracy.

Some politicians shrug and say these increased powers are merely a response to the times we live in. Thus, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) could declare in an interview last spring without objection that “free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” Of course, terrorism will never “surrender” and end this particular “war.”

Other politicians rationalize that, while such powers may exist, it really comes down to how they are used. This is a common response by liberals who cannot bring themselves to denounce Obama as they did Bush. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), for instance, has insisted that Congress is not making any decision on indefinite detention: “That is a decision which we leave where it belongs — in the executive branch.”

And in a signing statement with the defense authorization bill, Obama said he does not intend to use the latest power to indefinitely imprison citizens. Yet, he still accepted the power as a sort of regretful autocrat.

An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.

The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” His response was a bit chilling: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.

The indefinite-detention provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention.

Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

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© The Washington Post Company

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Also: Reddit blog.

Thanks to Sphere for the screenshot.

Source.

Repost from Ikin & Saltytales - original news article.