D
@ildiavolorosso @AnnieBuddy @pluralistic Yep.
But my support requests for private-sector monopoly websites markedly differ from those for Canadian government websites.
For the government sites, the questions are about barely navigable UX with practically incomprehensible design and copy, but for the corporate websites, the questions are about blocking ads and LLM chatbots, automatically declining all not-strictly-necessary cookies, and overriding dark patterns.
@PattyHanson To identify cryptocurrency accounts of US government officials see which "prediction market" bets were placed on this beforehand.
@AnnieBuddy @ildiavolorosso @pluralistic Indeed. In a typical year, well over 100 hours of my work is providing private support in use of Canadian government websites.
@danirabbit Some locals and I, as well as several other allied groups, are providing local young people private group access to physical spaces (with their choice of how to characterize the gathering internally and externally), their choice of banned books in print or DRM-free ebooks and audiobooks (hence those compatible with surveillance- and censorship-free apps), their choice of protest music on CD (with use of USB optical drives), their choice of outdoor activity gear (with their choice of coaching), their choice of how to convert one of our elders’ lawns into a permaculture garden, or their choice of art, craft, textile, cullinary, woodwork, electronics, or mechanical supplies (with their choice of volunteer expert guidance).
Outwardly, they may be going to a study group or tutoring session or whatever else they need to call it to keep various controlling people off their backs. Behind closed doors, they may be reading and discussing every book their local school board and library board has taken off the shelves, linking their local banned book club via video with another one in a neighbouring community whose demographics make them targets of locals’ bigotry, sharing in and dancing to each other’s protest music, modding thrifted clothes into body-pluralistic defiance fashion possibly with outer layers to camouflage when expedient, or working with an engineer, a mechanic, and an electrician to convert a pre-enshittification era ICE car into a BEV.
I’m not one of the facilitating older folks with a bunch of unneeded space or free time or saved money to share, but it only takes one or two in the community network to provide them that (or a few more, if groups have markedly different preferred activities). What I bring is experience cat herding and expertise providing and instructing in use of secure and private communications, and decades of studying underground resistance movements. Others bring skills as counsellors or social workers. Others bring expertise in activities the young people choose to do in the private spaces the few well-off community network members donate use of. Others design the public-facing front (such as the study group or volunteering organization website and social media), to let those escaping coercive control conceal what they’re doing.
Organize. Whatever the fash try to deny them, provide. Then step back as much as you can while keeping everyone safe, allow them their privacy, facilitate their autonomy, and follow their lead when they need guidance or support.
@bms48 @jenniferplusplus Even if you know what you're interacting with: cognitive atrophy is an inevitable result of cognitive outsourcing. The brain, like the muscles and skeleton, is a use-it-or-lose-it system. The body recycles tissue which is disused.
Astronauts know full well the atrophy which results from weightlessness, and some occurs even despite the deliberate work they put into its mitigation.
@Tutanota @edri Every client I support who's open to ditching Google apps has one indispensable requirement of any replacement of Google apps: They must be able to view their Google, Microsoft, and Google-replacement accounts in the same OS-native mail, contacts, and calendar apps. This serves two purposes:
They need to see their personal and work communications and schedules in the same window. This is essential, for example, to avoid double-booking themselves.
They need to be able to gradually transition between their old personal accounts and their new, as they update contact information with one person, business, nonprofit, and government agency at a time.
For #E2EE services, this requires a local SMTP, IMAP, CalDAV, and CardDAV bridge (or, for mobile devices lacking support for this, a self-hosted bridge and a VPN to which).
What options provide this capability?
@jenniferplusplus Those who are most certain they're immune to the cognitive harms of protracted faux-discussion with an #LLM are much like those who are most certain they can never be taken in by a cult, an extremist group, or a long-con fraud.
The more certain you are that it can't happen to you, the more susceptible you are, because of that certainty.
@jeffowski How about this: Let's not use ableism to fight against transphobia. Opposing one bigotry does not excuse perpetrating another.
Yes, the first reply means to call trans people mentally ill: both bigotries in one. But the joke of the second reply turns on disparaging mentally ill folks.
@CStamp @dingodog19 @mcnado It’s pretty obvious from the surveillance video that the Secret Service officer was shot with a pistol by a police officer with grossly incompetent gun discipline, when the cop tried to hit the runner while he passed between the officers.
Not being able to find the bullets means not wanting to admit the officers were hanging out, facing each other, not paying attention, when a man sprinted between them with a shotgun, and one of them put a bullet in the other’s vest and a couple into the wall. The only shots that didn’t miss were friendly fire.
Attached: 1 image @Nerde@beige.party @Lana@beige.party It looks like the only person who got shot at the #WhiteHouseCorrespondentsDinner was a #SecretService officer shot by a #police officer. It may be the case that *all* the gunshots were by the police, and every shot either hit a colleague or missed altogether. This is not being adequately discussed. No wonder #ToddBlanche was being cagey and evasive about ballistics and the investigation. When he said “When you fire a bullet, the bullet ends up somewhere — sometimes you find it, sometimes you don’t,” what he meant is, “sometimes you find it in a colleague’s vest or body, because the entire law enforcement and security operation under my leadership is grossly incompetent.” #WHCD #whcd2026 #whcdShooting
Infosec Exchange (infosec.exchange)
@Nerde @Lana It looks like the only person who got shot at the #WhiteHouseCorrespondentsDinner was a #SecretService officer shot by a #police officer. It may be the case that all the gunshots were by the police, and every shot either hit a colleague or missed altogether. This is not being adequately discussed.
No wonder #ToddBlanche was being cagey and evasive about ballistics and the investigation.
@Lana Who's the bystander that cop shot?
RE: https://flipboard.com/@independent/news-a3lhl24rz/-/a-S_-Llym8Q02J6wzMcnhDkA%3Aa%3A1855170754-%2F0
Are #JDVance and #ErikaKirk breaking up, or just having a tiff?
RE: https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/116483129467750759
So, what will we call the slop-free community fork of @Blender?
A summary of the #GovernmentDecidesAct in short skit form.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zbpe--AZOeI
#papersPlease #computerKillswitch #nannyState #uspol #ParentsDecideAct
RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116477033336507467
Time to start a new religious movement which prescribes niqab-like coverage for men too. Perhaps something based on sci fi or a video game, mixed with a digital reinterpretation of the Abrahamaic prohibition on making graven images, a bit more serious than the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
@thedarktangent Do you find the two together eliminate any use case for Google Maps?
@aral And to think: If they’d used .invalid, this would have been impossible. I’ve known that since reading RFC 2606 in 1999. I know programming and networking are ostensibly two distinct computing specialties, but do people really benefit from education so siloed that they lack even minimal breadth?
@mastodonmigration I would love to see some brave #Hollywood team produce a show with an Equalizer or Taken type plot, where a team of retired military special operators, with covert active-duty backing, set out to rescue service members, veterans, and family members abducted by #ICE, and to exact justice for some murders of, say, #VA healthcare workers, by #CBP.
As the series continues, it should start at the Zero Dark Thirty scale, escalate Bourne scale, the to John Wick scale, and so on, until entire hotels full or cities full of enemies are dispatched per episode. All the while, the series should intermix the humanity and either heroism or innocence of the victims, and the experiences of the victims being assaulted, abducted, and abused by the perpetrators, to keep the audience siding with the protagonists.
Angela of #ParkrosePermaculture has a great presentation of Scott Nakagowa’s article on “How to Make the Refusal to Quit Go Viral” in a video of hers titled, “Wait... is THIS how we win against Trumpism?”
The #oligarchs want us to excuse ourselves giving up. We need to make the persistence of those who don’t let themselves believe #resistance is optional part of our identity.
@TimWardCam Indeed.
