Please tell your friends about federated social media site that speaks several fediverse protocols thus serving as a hub uniting them, hubzilla.eskimo.com, also check out friendica.eskimo.com, federated
macroblogging social media site, mastodon.eskimo.com a federated microblogging site, and yacy.eskimo.com an uncensored federated search engine. All Free!
i gave him one of the new mousies i got him recently. this is probably why he wants to stay in cause he's playing with it. it's a brown thing with a feather tail
Meta is under investigation for a privacy violation called "localhost tracking." This process allowed Meta to link users' real identities to their web browsing activity, even if they used VPNs, incognito mode, and deleted cookies.
The process involves the Facebook or Instagram app listening for incoming traffic on local network ports and exchanging information with Meta's tracking scripts in users' web browsers.
Berlin: Friedensinitiative ruft gemeinsam mit Palรคstina-Bewegung zum Protest gegen Regierung auf. Ein Gesprรคch mit Jutta Kausch-Henken von der Initiative ยปNie wieder Krieg โ Die Waffen nieder!ยซ
Scheduled servicing keeps your crane in the game. The parts you chooseโOEM or third-partyโshape its future. While OEM parts deliver reliability, third-party options can save costs if chosen carefully. Work with a supplier who knows your equipment and prio
Regular maintenance is the foundation of crane reliability, preventing costly downtime and safety risks. But when it's time to replace worn parts, the decision between OEM and third-party options sparks debate. It's about more than costโit's about keeping your crane on the job.
Why Scheduled Servicing Is Non-Negotiable
Every crane, including Tadano models, follows a maintenance schedule based on usage or wear. Over time, components like filters, seals, and structural parts degrade. Skipping these intervals lets small issues escalate into project-stopping failures. The real question is which parts to use during servicing.
The Case for OEM Parts
OEM parts come from the crane's original manufacturer. They're built to precise specs, ensuring seamless integration and reliable performance. Tested to handle your crane's specific conditions, they reduce the chance of breakdowns and typically protect your warranty.
The downside is costโOEM parts are often more expensive. Availability can also be an issue, especially for older models, leading to potential delays.
Third-Party Parts: A Mixed Bag
Third-party parts are attractive for their affordability and quicker delivery. Some aftermarket options are well-engineered, rivaling OEM quality at a lower price. But quality varies widely. Poorly made parts may fit incorrectly, wear out fast, or cause damage to other systems. They could also void your warranty.
For non-essential components like filters, a reputable third-party part might be fine. But for critical systems, caution is crucial.
Tadano Cranes Demand High Standards
Tadano cranes are known for their durability and precision, but only if maintained properly. High-pressure systems like hydraulics, electronics, or load-bearing components require parts that meet strict standards. Parts designed for these demands ensure safety and performance.
For less critical parts, a vetted third-party option could work, but only from a trusted source.
Partnering with a Parts Supplier
A reliable supplier is your ally in making smart choices. They understand your crane, can recommend when third-party parts are viable, and ensure fast delivery to minimize downtime. They'll also clarify the risks of each option.
Suppliers who push parts without context or can't verify compatibility are a liability. Choose a supplier who values your operation's success.
Closing Thoughts
Scheduled servicing keeps your crane in the game. The parts you chooseโOEM or third-partyโshape its future. While OEM Tadano crane parts deliver reliability, third-party options can save costs if chosen carefully. Work with a supplier who knows your equipment and prioritizes quality.
Ask the tough questions: Is this part reliable? What's the risk? A little care today prevents major headaches tomorrow.
Three years ago I wrote about how we may be slowly coming to understand that progress isn't inevitable and things may actually be trending downward on multiple fronts: alfiekohn.org/blogs/regress/.
Now comes strong evidence that this is particularly true regarding trends in attitudes about gender roles: nytimes.com/2025/06/04/opinionโฆ. Some truly disturbing polling data here.
May 16, 2022 When the Myth of Progress Unravels By Alfie Kohn The arc of history is long, but it bends toward catastrophic annihilation. ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย โ Barbara Ehrenreich ย The fact that five religious Supremeโฆ
As Washington, D.C. prepares for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, armored tanks have begun to arrive ahead of Saturday's celebration.#DonaldTrump #Arm...
I'm keeping an eye out for it. We first saw it on our way out to dinner. And I didn't see it when we came back about an hour later. Hopefully mama found it and got it home. It was barely bigger than a softball. I already know of a rehabber collective that I will call if I do see it again.
Thank you for caring. If you need to or just feel it's best, there are all sorts of safe live animal traps out there, if you need it or any more coons relocated..
http://bit.ly/2qKSWhW CLICK HERE for our rabbit live trapping guide and to get your professional-grade products!Watch how to humanely capture rabbits with li...
#Alerta Neo-nazi Ryan Sanchez was apparently on the ground in LA yesterday with a crew, infiltrating protests and taking people's pictures. He also had a knife with him. (See first link below)
Sanchez is a (former?) member of Patriot Front and a (definitely former) member of neo-nazi fight club Rise Above Movement (RAM), which was sort of the precursor to and model for today's "active clubs". (See second link below)
THE MONOLITH โChrist is king in this country. We donโt want illegal aliens from Mexico or outer space!โ Ryan Sanchez shouted to his viewers online.
HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 10 (ACN) In a post on X, Cuban President Miguel Dรญaz-Canel reasserted his unwavering support for former Argentine President Cristina Fernรกndez de Kirchner after the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice upheld her six-year sentence (toโฆ
โThis would do immediate and irreversible harm to our readers and to our reputation as a decently trustworthy and serious source,โ one Wikipedia editor said.
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which hosts and develops Wikipedia, has paused an experiment that showed users AI-generated summaries at the top of articles after an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the Wikipedia editors community.
โJust because Google has rolled out its AI summaries doesn't mean we need to one-up them, I sincerely beg you not to test this, on mobile or anywhere else,โ one editor said in response to Wikimedia Foundationโs announcement that it will launch a two-week trial of the summaries on the mobile version of Wikipedia. โThis would do immediate and irreversible harm to our readers and to our reputation as a decently trustworthy and serious source. Wikipedia has in some ways become a byword for sober boringness, which is excellent. Let's not insult our readers' intelligence and join the stampede to roll out flashy AI summaries. Which is what these are, although here the word โmachine-generatedโ is used instead.โ
Two other editors simply commented, โYuck.โ
For years, Wikipedia has been one of the most valuable repositories of information in the world, and a laudable model for community-based, democratic internet platform governance. Its importance has only grown in the last couple of years during the generative AI boom as itโs one of the only internet platforms that has not been significantly degraded by the flood of AI-generated slop and misinformation. As opposed to Google, which since embracing generative AI has instructed its users to eat glue, Wikipediaโs community has kept its articles relatively high quality. As I recently reported last year, editors are actively working to filter out bad, AI-generated content from Wikipedia.
A page detailing the the AI-generated summaries project, called โSimple Article Summaries,โ explains that it was proposed after a discussion at Wikimediaโs 2024 conference, Wikimania, where โWikimedians discussed ways that AI/machine-generated remixing of the already created content can be used to make Wikipedia more accessible and easier to learn from.โ Editors who participated in the discussion thought that these summaries could improve the learning experience on Wikipedia, where some article summaries can be quite dense and filled with technical jargon, but that AI features needed to be cleared labeled as such and that users needed an easy to way to flag issues with โmachine-generated/remixed content once it was published or generated automatically.โ
In one experiment where summaries were enabled for users who have the Wikipedia browser extension installed, the generated summary showed up at the top of the article, which users had to click to expand and read. That summary was also flagged with a yellow โunverifiedโ label. An example of what the AI-generated summary looked like. Wikimedia announced that it was going to run the generated summaries experiment on June 2, and was immediately met with dozens of replies from editors who said โvery bad idea,โ โstrongest possible oppose,โ Absolutely not,โ etc.
โYes, human editors can introduce reliability and NPOV [neutral point-of-view] issues. But as a collective mass, it evens out into a beautiful corpus,โ one editor said. โWith Simple Article Summaries, you propose giving one singular editor with known reliability and NPOV issues a platform at the very top of any given article, whilst giving zero editorial control to others. It reinforces the idea that Wikipedia cannot be relied on, destroying a decade of policy work. It reinforces the belief that unsourced, charged content can be added, because this platforms it. I don't think I would feel comfortable contributing to an encyclopedia like this. No other community has mastered collaboration to such a wondrous extent, and this would throw that away.โ
A day later, Wikimedia announced that it would pause the launch of the experiment, but indicated that itโs still interested in AI-generated summaries.
โThe Wikimedia Foundation has been exploring ways to make Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects more accessible to readers globally,โ a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson told me in an email. โThis two-week, opt-in experiment was focused on making complex Wikipedia articles more accessible to people with different reading levels. For the purposes of this experiment, the summaries were generated by an open-weight Aya model by Cohere. It was meant to gauge interest in a feature like this, and to help us think about the right kind of community moderation systems to ensure humans remain central to deciding what information is shown on Wikipedia.โ
โIt is common to receive a variety of feedback from volunteers, and we incorporate it in our decisions, and sometimes change course,โ the Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson added. โWe welcome such thoughtful feedback โ this is what continues to make Wikipedia a truly collaborative platform of human knowledge.โ
โReading through the comments, itโs clear we could have done a better job introducing this idea and opening up the conversation here on VPT back in March,โ a Wikimedia Foundation project manager said. VPT, or โvillage pump technical,โ is where The Wikimedia Foundation and the community discuss technical aspects of the platform. โAs internet usage changes over time, we are trying to discover new ways to help new generations learn from Wikipedia to sustain our movement into the future. In consequence, we need to figure out how we can experiment in safe ways that are appropriate for readers and the Wikimedia community. Looking back, we realize the next step with this message should have been to provide more of that context for you all and to make the space for folks to engage further.โ
The project manager also said that โBringing generative AI into the Wikipedia reading experience is a serious set of decisions, with important implications, and we intend to treat it as such, and that โWe do not have any plans for bringing a summary feature to the wikis without editor involvement. An editor moderation workflow is required under any circumstances, both for this idea, as well as any future idea around AI summarized or adapted content.โ
@DODResponse ยท 36m . @PressSec "President Trump will never allow mob rule to prevail in America. The most basic duty of government is to preserve law and order...
That's why President Trump deployed the National Guard and mobilized Marines to end the chaos and restore LAW AND ORDER."
A few weeks back I read on Mastodon that the US Dept of Health and Human Services was getting rid of COVID tests. This is bad for all the reasons, but some enterprising government employee did a program where you could fill out a form and get anywhere from 300-3000 COVID tests (unexpired) sent to your home. I figured why not try? Last week I got seven boxes of COVID tests delivered to my porch. I posted to a local mailing list and I am getting them pointed towards my community. Thanks Mastodon!
@DrChris โ๏ธ I'm afraid I don't see it that way. Mainstream media is out of touch, losing popularity, and is no longer the main source of news or culture.
This is a great example of how historical path-dependence has borked Canada. This savvy innovation is only workable with district heating, a collectivist infrastructure from the past. Now, that history of collectivism is allowing flexibility in unanticipated circumstances (climate change) which we cannot match, constrained as we are by our past choices.
A small town in Finland is about to ditch fossil fuels in its heating network thanks to a sand-filled energy storage tank the size of a house.
Finnish startup Polar Night Energy ...
Interesting that they are going the subscription route and not selling these outright. It works because the comparison with the cost of a human looks so favorable. I'd expect to see this with humanoid robots too as they take over more and more human jobs.
In Ukraine, there is growing reflection, turning into panic, about the ongoing offensive of the Russian army in the Sumy region, the tasks of which, for now, include the creation of a security buffer zone in the border area with the Russian Federatioโฆ
A very interesting analysis of Monday's anti-ICE protest in #Austin. I especially am interested that protesters used micromobility scooters as a makeshift barricade.
(I do wish Crimethinc would give credit for the photos they borrow from other sources)
Hey guys i have been using Navidrome to stream my music from my server and its been amazing. I primarily use YT Music because of discoverability so I have all of my "primary" playlists (about 8 of them really, but supporting a somewhat arbitrary limit would be nice) in YouTube.
Im looking for an automated way to download the music and keep my navidrome instance updated with a couple playlists. I started working on some Python script to handle it, but its just not working super well so i would prefer to use someone elses solution haha.
Anyone have any good recommendations? I tried this one but I couldn't actually find the music and it seems to only support one playlist at a time. It would also be nice to download the album art and set some ID3 tags too
Yeah I am using yt-dlp to download the music, and I can set that on a cronjob no problem.
I am specifically asking for better downloading (I don't want just the raw YouTube title most of the time), album art, and ID3 tagging. But that beets.io thing looks super cool! I might integrate that into my existing python scripting instead of trying to build it all out myself
Just to throw out an easy option: if the music is well-labeled on Youtube, you can get pretty close to that full suite with just yt-dlp by using --embed-thumbnail as a stand-in for album art, dumping your files with an โArtist - track - albumโ naming structure using the --output-template flag โ then using an awk or python script as a second pass to add the artist/track/album names to each file as tags.
E: and in case it isnโt self-evident, you donโt have to give yt-dlp a URL for each track; itโll work fine with a playlist URL.
Fair enough; I can do one for you. I have a local ComfyUI setup, so prompt data won't go anywhere. Heck, even if I were generating it on a service, it'd be useless for letting said service gain information about you, as I don't know who or where you are.
For "over_clox", using stoiqNewrealityFLUXSD35_f1DAlphaTwo:
The board overseeing the Fulbright program, the prestigious exchanges between US and foreign scholars, quit on Wednesday, accusing President Donald Trump's administration of political interference. tag24.com/politics/politiciansโฆ #Fulbright
Do you think "conservative" black influencers rebranding "black fatigue" to "ghetto fatigue" is completely artificial or is it a survival tactic of the less prognathic?
I created a secondary Pixelfed account to test the share functionality, but none of the posts I've shared from my main account are showing up in the new accountโs feed.
if your two accounts are on a different instance, federation takes a while, your follow signals to your instance to synchronize the content from the other account, and it's not instantaneous, it's queued along the requests of everyone else on your instance.
Bots in Fortnite are no secret but it really has gotten bad, huh? I remember trying the game out some years ago, was annoyed by the obvious bots in my games and never touched it again after one session. Things must've gotten more downhill since.
I never even played fortnite, but i watched some videos on it, and it's pretty weird. I can just assume it's for children who don't care because they don't know and actually have a chance playing and winning. Marvel rivals put you in pity matches after you lost a game or two and it's ridiculous. It's just a waste of time. But even if the bots are so obvious, there are still teammates that go: let's go guys, we got this. They have a combined 3 kills and we have like 30 each. There is no reason playing this.
During his visit to Malaysia to participate in the first ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations)-GCC (the Gulf Cooperation Council)-China Summit, May 26-28, held in the capital Kuala Lumpur, Chinese Premier Li Qiang also met on the sideliโฆ
if my business or property was affected by this mess Iโd hire a lawyer to sue Newsome and Bass personally and professionally for it. Add in mental trauma and whatever else they can think of.
I want to see either a persistent rectangle box on the edges of the region being recorded (anything outside the box isn't recorded), or dim the parts of the screen that aren't being recorded. I looked for screen recorders for hyprland & wlroots and didn't find any with this functionality. wf-recorder + slurp works for me but I want a boundary visual.
In this blog, Professor Enrique Gaztanaga from the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth, puts forward a new theory about how the Universe was created.
In case you want to know if you need to start backing a local primary challenger:
Based on GovTrack, which documents Congress' legislative activities, the following 75 Democrats voted in favor of the first resolution expressing "gratitude" to ICE:
Adams, Alma (NC-12) Auchincloss, Jake (MA-4) Beatty, Joyce (OH-3) Bell, Wesley (MO-1) Bishop, Sanford (GA-2) Brown, Shontel (OH-11) Budzinski, Nicole (Nikki) (IL-13) Bynum, Janelle (OR-5) Cherfilus-McCormick, Sheila (FL-20) Cohen, Steve (TN-9) Courtney, Joe (CT-2) Craig, Angie (MN-2) Cuellar, Henry (TX-28) Davids, Sharice (KS-3) Davis, Donald (NC-1) Elfreth, Sarah (MD-3) Frankel, Lois (FL-22) Gillen, Laura (NY-4) Gluesenkamp Perez, Marie (WA-3) Golden, Jared (ME-2) Gonzalez, Vicente (TX-34) Goodlander, Maggie (NH-2) Gray, Adam (CA-13) Harder, Josh (CA-9) Hayes, Jahana (CT-5) Horsford, Steven (NV-4) Hoyer, Steny (MD-5) Kaptur, Marcy (OH-9) Keating, William R. (MA-9) Kennedy, Timothy (NY-26) Krishnamoorthi, Raja (IL-8) Landsman, Greg (OH-1) Lee, Susie (NV-3) Lynch, Stephen (MA-8) Magaziner, Seth (RI-2) Mannion, John (NY-22) McBath, Lucy (GA-6) McClain Delaney, April (MD-6) McDonald Rivet, Kristen (MI-8) Meng, Grace (NY-6) Min, Dave (CA-47) Morelle, Joseph (NY-25) Moskowitz, Jared (FL-23) Moulton, Seth (MA-6) Mrvan, Frank (IN-1) Neal, Richard (MA-1) Neguse, Joe (CO-2) Pallone, Frank (NJ-6) Panetta, Jimmy (CA-19) Pappas, Chris (NH-1) Pettersen, Brittany (CO-7) Riley, Josh (NY-19) Ruiz, Raul (CA-25) Ryan, Patrick (NY-18) Schneider, Brad (IL-10) Schrier, Kim (WA-8) Scott, David (GA-13) Sewell, Terri (AL-7) Sorensen, Eric (IL-17) Soto, Darren (FL-9) Stanton, Greg (AZ-4) Stevens, Haley (MI-11) Subramanyam, Suhas (VA-10) Suozzi, Thomas (NY-3) Swalwell, Eric (CA-14) Sykes, Emilia (OH-13) Thanedar, Shri (MI-13) Torres, Norma (CA-35) Torres, Ritchie (NY-15) Tran, Derek (CA-45) Vasquez, Gabriel (Gabe) (NM-2) Vindman, Eugene (VA-7) Wasserman Schultz, Debbie (FL-25) Whitesides, George (CA-27) Wilson, Frederica (FL-24)
that ozone treatment actually worked well to knock out the smell in the acura. now it doesn't smell like a homeless person's crotch blowing in your face
i got the vevor brand ozone generator off amazon for like $40 or something. that thing makes a deadly amount of ozone. definitely would not want to be in an enclosed space with it
A few months ago, a new terminal emulator was released. It's called ghostty, and it has been a highly anticipated terminal emulator for a while, especially due to the coverage that it received from ThePrimeagen, who had been using for a while, while it was in private beta.
LAPD shoot US woman with a rubber bullet for trying to get into her home, they were blocking her entrance and there was no protest in sight. โHoly fuck โ They literally just shot her point blankโฆ I live hereโฆโ ( www.tiktok.com/@labyrinthlore) #3E #StopICE
Truth Social is America's "Big Tent" social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology.
A data broker owned by the countryโs major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected U.S. travellersโ domestic flight records, sold access to them to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and then as part of the contract told CBP to not reveal where the data came from, according to internal CBP documents obtained by 404 Media. The data includes passenger names, their full flight itineraries, and financial details.
CBP, a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), says it needs this data to support state and local police to track people of interestโs air travel across the country, in a purchase that has alarmed civil liberties experts.
The documents reveal for the first time in detail why at least one part of DHS purchased such information, and comes after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detailed its own purchase of the data. The documents also show for the first time that the data broker, called the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), tells government agencies not to mention where it sourced the flight data from.
โThe big airlinesโthrough a shady data broker that they own called ARCโare selling the government bulk access to Americans' sensitive information, revealing where they fly and the credit card they used,โ Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement.
ARC is owned and operated by at least eight major U.S. airlines, other publicly released documents show. The companyโs board of directors include representatives from Delta, Southwest, United, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, and European airlines Lufthansa and Air France, and Canadaโs Air Canada. More than 240 airlines depend on ARC for ticket settlement services.
****Do you work at ARC or an agency that uses ARC data? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.****
ARCโs other lines of business include being the conduit between airlines and travel agencies, finding travel trends in data with other firms like Expedia, and fraud prevention, according to material on ARCโs YouTube channel and website. The sale of U.S. flyersโ travel information to the government is part of ARCโs Travel Intelligence Program (TIP).
A Statement of Work included in the newly obtained documents, which describes why an agency is buying a particular tool or capability, says CBP needs access to ARCโs TIP product โto support federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to identify persons of interestโs U.S. domestic air travel ticketing information.โ 404 Media obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
A screenshot of the Statement of Work. Image: 404 Media.
The new documents obtained by 404 Media also show ARC asking CBP to โnot publicly identify vendor, or its employees, individually or collectively, as the source of the Reports unless the Customer is compelled to do so by a valid court order or subpoena and gives ARC immediate notice of same.โ
The Statement of Work says that TIP can show a personโs paid intent to travel and tickets purchased through travel agencies in the U.S. and its territories. The data from the Travel Intelligence Program (TIP) will provide โvisibility on a subjectโs or person of interestโs domestic air travel ticketing information as well as tickets acquired through travel agencies in the U.S. and its territories,โ the documents say. They add this data will be โcrucialโ in both administrative and criminal cases.
A DHS Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) available online says that TIP data is updated daily with the previous dayโs ticket sales, and contains more than one billion records spanning 39 months of past and future travel. The document says TIP can be searched by name, credit card, or airline, but ARC contains data from ARC-accredited travel agencies, such as Expedia, and not flights booked directly with an airline. โ[I]f the passenger buys a ticket directly from the airline, then the search done by ICE will not show up in an ARC report,โ that PIA says. The PIA notes the data impacts both U.S. and non-U.S. persons, meaning it does include information on U.S. citizens.
โWhile obtaining domestic airline dataโlike many other transaction and purchase recordsโgenerally doesn't require a warrant, there's still supposed to go through a legal process that ensures independent oversight and limits data collection to records that will support an investigation,โ Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, told 404 Media in an email. โAs with many other types of sensitive and revealing data, the government seems intent on using data brokers to buy their way around important guardrails and limits.โ
CBPโs contract with ARC started in June 2024 and may extend to 2029, according to the documents. The CBP contract 404 Media obtained documents for was an $11,025 transaction. Last Tuesday, a public procurement database added a $6,847.50 update to that contract, which said it was exercising โOption Year 1,โ meaning it was extending the contract. The documents are redacted but briefly mention CBPโs OPR, or Office of Professional Responsibility, which in part investigates corruption by CBP employees.
โCBP is committed to protecting individualsโ privacy during the execution of its mission to protect the American people, safeguard our borders, and enhance the nationโs economic prosperity. CBP follows a robust privacy policy as we protect the homeland through the air, land and maritime environments against illegal entry, illicit activity or other threats to national sovereignty and economic security,โ a CBP spokesperson said in a statement. CBP added that the data is only used when an OPR investigation is open and the agency needs to locate someone related to that investigation. The agency said the data can act as a good starting point to identify a relevant flight record before then getting more information through legal processes.
On May 1, ICE published details about its own ARC data purchase. In response, on May 2, 404 Media filed FOIA requests with ICE and a range of other agencies that 404 Media found had bought ARCโs services, including CBP, the Secret Service, SEC, DEA, the Air Force, U.S. Marshals Service, TSA, and ATF. 404 Media found these by searching U.S. procurement databases. Around a week later, The Lever covered the ICE contract.
A screenshot of the Statement of Work. Image: 404 Media.
Airlines contacted by 404 Media declined to comment, didnโt respond, or deferred to either ARC or DHS instead. ARC declined to comment. The company previously told The Lever that TIP โwas established after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to provide certain data to law enforcementโฆ for the purpose of national security mattersโ and criminal investigations.
โARC has refused to answer oversight questions from Congress, so I have already contacted the major airlines that own ARCโlike Delta, American Airlines and Unitedโto find out why they gave the green light to sell their customers' data to the government,โ Wydenโs statement added.
โOverall it strikes me as yet another alarming example of how the โBig Data Surveillance Complexโ is becoming the digital age version of the Military-Industrial Complex,โ Laperruque says, referring to the purchase of airline data.
โIt's clear the Data Broker Loophole is pushing the government back towards a pernicious โcollect it allโ mentality, gobbling up as much sensitive data as it can about all Americans by default. A decade ago the public rejected that approach, and Congress passed surveillance reform legislation that banned domestic bulk collection. Clearly it's time for Congress to step in again, and stop the Data Broker Loophole from being used to circumvent that ban,โ he added.
An aviation industry clearinghouse is collecting passenger information from billions of past and future flights and selling it to Trumpโs immigration enforcers.
I love the fediverse. I really do. To the point where I run a couple of fedi servers and actively select platforms that integrate with it when I don't want to run things myself. That's why it truly bothers me that all these FutureOfFediForumsOfTheFuture are all just some contrived way of doing exactly the same thing that already exists, just fediverse'd. The biggest voices of the fediverse are never willing to let the thing just be what it IS.
Day after Christmas, known as Boxing Day to folks in the British Commonwealth, I called my cardiologistโs office to report some issues Iโd had during the previous week.
After riding a stationary bike for 20-30 minutes last Saturday the 21st, I started feeling like I was going to have a heart attack.
That I am perpetually fatigued. Simple things like doing the dishes, cooking, and carrying in a couple bags of groceries are leaving me exhausted.
So the receptionist dutifully notes down my issues. โWeโll have our triage person get back to you.โ An hour or so later, I get a call from someone in scheduling. โYour doctor says you need to go to the hospital.โ Of course, Iโm thinking this is complete and utter bullshit, because that day I was feeling just fine. Same for the day before. But we (GF and I) talked ourselves into going to the ER anyway.
They ran a bunch of tests on me. โYour heartrate is normal. Blood pressure is worryingly low.โ I didnโt think to mention that Iโd popped some xanax before heading to the ER; that might have explained the low BP. I did a bunch of sleeping. At some point, my girlfriend wakes me up. โThey want to hold you for observation and do a bunch of tests on you, including a CT scan on your brain.โ And Iโm like what the actual fuck? Brain? Whut?
The reasoning is that maybe my low blood pressure was due to a brain tumor. Maybe it is, but realize, I have a heart condition that is basically terminal. The last thing I care about is whether I have a brain tumor to go along with it. Metaphorically, suppose I was eating a slice of birthday cake made from rat faeces laden with hanta virus. Am I actually going to give a shit that the chef used some plutonium in the icing? Nope.
Iโm a huge believer in science, though I think the obsession with medical testing is harmful to science. Hell, this is pretty much true of all data. Weโve got data. We have so much data that itโs coming out of our ears and assholes. What we donโt have enough of is logic, intuition, and critical thinking.
Worth mentioning that while I was in the ER, I got myself a referral to hospice, so Iโm on hospice now. Hopefully I can live out the next months, years, weeks, days, or whatever I have left in some degree of comfort without playing this revolving door hospital game.
Iโll start at the end, because thatโs the most important part. Later this month, Iโm obtaining medical aid in dying AKA death with dignity. Barring unforeseen circumstances or unexpected changes, my last day on earth will be June 13th, 2025. Realize that Iโm just over 46 years old. So how the hell did we get here? Iโve written part of the story in dribs and drabs over the years, so I may as well write up the whole thing.
Late on the night of November 14th, 2021, I went to the local emergency room. I had a blood pressure of 55/37 and a pulse of 220. I had a heart attack at some point. Iโm not quite sure when that happened. They admitted me for a hospital stay.
One of the first things they did was an arteriogram, and they found blockage in one artery. They thought they would be able to treat it with stent placement during the procedure, but it was too severe for that. They had a surgeon consult with me about doing an open heart procedure. It would be a single bypass. If I refused the procedure, my life expectancy would be about 4 and a half years. So it seemed reasonable to go ahead with it.
On Thursday, I went in for surgery. It was miserable, but I survived it. By Monday afternoon, I had recovered sufficiently to be released from the hospital, so I went home and finished the recovery process there.
During my hospital stay, I was also diagnosed with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. My ejection fraction was between 25 and 30 percent. They told me that they would probably want to place an ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) if my ejection fraction didnโt improve. It never really did. The best it got was 30 to 35 percent. So in February of 2023 I went in for an out patient stay to have a subcutaneous implantable cardioverter defibrillator (SICD) placed.
Fastforward a few months. Iโm sitting in my recliner, eating some plantain chips, when all of a sudden, I got shocked. I jumped and screamed. Still, it only happened once, and Iโm thinking: this is no big deal. A few weeks later, in August, I received another shock. It only happened once, so again, Iโm like โno big deal.โ
On September 11th, the situation changed. I felt โoffโ all evening. I was shocked once, and I kept feeling like another one was coming. So I went to the ER. My ICD device fired while I was on the ambulance and when I was being wheeled into the ER. They kept me for a couple days, ran some tests, told me to follow up with cardiology, and sent me home.
A week later, I was back in the ER with the same complaint. I donโt remember whether there were multiple shocks. The same thing happened: they kept me for a couple days to make sure I was stable, ran some tests, sent me home, and told me to follow up with cardiology.
On the first Friday of October, I kept feeling โoffโ, as though I was going to have a heart episode. The device didnโt fire, but I went to the ER anyway. When I was in the ambulance, they told me that I was in VTac (ventricular tachycardia), and they shocked me. I was shocked several times by hospital staff while they tried to get me stable. This time was a little different. The cardiac electrophysiologist decided that it was time to do a cardiac ablation. They performed that procedure on the following Monday or Tuesday, and I went home in the middle of the week.
Things seemed ok for the next couple of months. Then, on the night of February 1, 2024, I started receiving more shocks from the ICD. I went back to the ER. That night, my ICD shocked me at least seventeen times, and I was also shocked several additional times by paramedics and ER staff. If youโve ever taken a physical beating that has left you sore for days, you know exactly what I went through that night. I took a beating or two of that sort when I was younger, and thatโs exactly how being shocked more than twenty times felt. Every movement of my upper body hurt for the next several days, including just shifting around in bed. The day after I landed in the emergency room, they sent me to a much larger university hospital in Portland. That hospital stabilized me, switched out my ICD for another device, and sent me home a couple days later.
I spent the next few months in a state of total mental paralysis that I suspect was some kind of PTSD. I kept feeling like I was going to have heart episodes and waiting for the next shock. The new device they placed when I was in Portland had some pacing functionality, so Iโm pretty sure I avoided some shocks. When I saw my cardiologist in the summer of 2024, she told me that the pacing functionality barely succeeded keeping me out of a round of shocks. She and her boss wanted to do another cardiac ablation.
At this point, I started wondering just how much life I had left. I bluntly asked for an estimation of my life expectancy and was told maybe ten years with the ablation and the defibrillator. The point of the ablation was to act as a โband-aidโ, to calm the heart and hopefully keep me out of the emergency room and from being shocked repeatedly. I agreed to yet another procedure, and it was done in late August.
Less than a month later, I received multiple shocks from the ICD. I went back to the ER. I was shocked at least nine times that night. They stabilized me, kept me for a couple days, and told me to follow up with cardiology.
So I followed up with cardiology. And I bluntly asked the life expectancy question again. โObviously, the cardiac ablation did not work. How much life would you estimate that I have left?โ โMaybe two years, but I honestly donโt know.โ At that point, I asked them to disable the defibrillator. I was tired of getting multiple shocks and not knowing when they would come, tired of landing in the ER. Realize that in one year, I had ended up in the ER and hospital 5 times for the exact same problem. My prognosis without the defibrillator was a few months.
But at first, I wasnโt going to let it stop me. In December, I started a cardiac exercise program. Basically, they monitored my heart while I exercised. That went well for a few days. Then one day, my blood pressure bottomed out and my heart rate spiked during a session. During the next session, I felt โoffโ afterward. A couple days before Christmas, I was riding my stationary bike at home for a while. At some point, I started feeling like I was about to have a VTac episode, so I stopped. I spent the next few hours in agony, until I was finally able to sleep.
It gets worse. At this point, even doing trivial tasks became a burden. Iโd start having heart palpitations and become winded while bringing in a couple bags of groceries or doing the dishes. This part of the story is told more completely in an older post: Reason 666 Why US Health Care Is So Fucked: The Testing Obsession!.
Iโm basically terminally ill. I got a referral to hospice, and Iโve been on that program for several months. I still have heart episodes. I can back them off with morphein, which I use very judiciously. But I expect that at any time, I could have an episode strong enough to land me back in the ER. At that point, Iโd most likely just die naturally.
I am afraid to so much as go for a walk, because the last thing I want is to die in the middle of the sidewalk, or worse, be discovered by paramedics and accidentally receive medical intervention.
A while ago, I started investigating Oregonโs Death with Dignity program. Not because I want to die. I donโt. But Iโd rather die in a controlled manner than die in pain and be found unresponsive in the middle of my floor by my girlfriend. I want to live, but Iโm strongly opposed to my few remaining possibilities for medical treatment (Iโll get to that in a moment). No, I am not a burden to my family. Theyโre glad to care for me. In fact, it is going to be bad for them when Iโm gone. Especially in this hellworld that the US has become under a second Trump Presidency with a stacked Congress and Supreme Court, as well as a crazed billionaire and his wrecking crew actively destroying the government. Iโm sad to leave them, and I worry about how theyโll make it without me. Iโm angry that I have severe heart failure that started when I was in my early forties. Iโm too young for this, but here we are, and here is what Iโve chosen.
So letโs talk about my scant options for treatment. I could have my defibrillator reactivated, and maybe have a couple more years. If I do that, I expect many more ER visits and more painful and unpredictable shocks. I already said no to that. Another slim possibility is a heart transplant. I am not interested. Iโve explained my reasons more fully to people who are close to me, but they basically boil down to the fact that an organ transplant requires a full commitment to the process, and Iโm not willing to make that commitment.
A few months ago, a friend sent me a link to a university doing clinical trials using stem cells to repair the heart. It seemed really promising. Unfortunately, they are in Germany, and they only accept German residents. So that wasnโt an option.
So anyway here I am, planning for my upcoming death. And I donโt have enough nice things to say about this process. At every point, the choice is entirely mine. From the beginning of the process all the way until I consume the cocktail of meds that will end my life, I can decide not to proceed, or I can decide to wait to fill the prescription, or whatever. This is my choice all the way.
As it was put to me: โChris, youโre dying of heart disease. You can choose to just let it naturally run its course. Or you can choose a controlled exit. Either way, if you choose medical aid or you choose to let it run its course, youโre dying.โ
Reason 666 Why US Health Care Is So Fucked: The Testing Obsession!
Day after Christmas, known as Boxing Day to folks in the British Commonwealth, I called my cardiologistโs office to report some issues Iโd had during the previous week.
After riding a stationary bike for 20-30 minutes last Saturday the 21st, I started feeling like I was going to have a heart attack.
That I am perpetually fatigued. Simple things like doing the dishes, cooking, and carrying in a couple bags of groceries are leaving me exhausted.
So the receptionist dutifully notes down my issues. โWeโll have our triage person get back to you.โ An hour or so later, I get a call from someone in scheduling. โYour doctor says you need to go to the hospital.โ Of course, Iโm thinking this is complete and utter bullshit, because that day I was feeling just fine. Same for the day before. But we (GF and I) talked ourselves into going to the ER anyway.
They ran a bunch of tests on me. โYour heartrate is normal. Blood pressure is worryingly low.โ I didnโt think to mention that Iโd popped some xanax before heading to the ER; that might have explained the low BP. I did a bunch of sleeping. At some point, my girlfriend wakes me up. โThey want to hold you for observation and do a bunch of tests on you, including a CT scan on your brain.โ And Iโm like what the actual fuck? Brain? Whut?
The reasoning is that maybe my low blood pressure was due to a brain tumor. Maybe it is, but realize, I have a heart condition that is basically terminal. The last thing I care about is whether I have a brain tumor to go along with it. Metaphorically, suppose I was eating a slice of birthday cake made from rat faeces laden with hanta virus. Am I actually going to give a shit that the chef used some plutonium in the icing? Nope.
Iโm a huge believer in science, though I think the obsession with medical testing is harmful to science. Hell, this is pretty much true of all data. Weโve got data. We have so much data that itโs coming out of our ears and assholes. What we donโt have enough of is logic, intuition, and critical thinking.
Worth mentioning that while I was in the ER, I got myself a referral to hospice, so Iโm on hospice now. Hopefully I can live out the next months, years, weeks, days, or whatever I have left in some degree of comfort without playing this revolving door hospital game.
Iโll start at the end, because thatโs the most important part. Later this month, Iโm obtaining medical aid in dying AKA death with dignity. Barring unforeseen circumstances or unexpected changes, my last day on earth will be June 13th, 2025. Realize that Iโm just over 46 years old. So how the hell did we get here? Iโve written part of the story in dribs and drabs over the years, so I may as well write up the whole thing.
Late on the night of November 14th, 2021, I went to the local emergency room. I had a blood pressure of 55/37 and a pulse of 220. I had a heart attack at some point. Iโm not quite sure when that happened. They admitted me for a hospital stay.
One of the first things they did was an arteriogram, and they found blockage in one artery. They thought they would be able to treat it with stent placement during the procedure, but it was too severe for that. They had a surgeon consult with me about doing an open heart procedure. It would be a single bypass. If I refused the procedure, my life expectancy would be about 4 and a half years. So it seemed reasonable to go ahead with it.
On Thursday, I went in for surgery. It was miserable, but I survived it. By Monday afternoon, I had recovered sufficiently to be released from the hospital, so I went home and finished the recovery process there.
During my hospital stay, I was also diagnosed with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. My ejection fraction was between 25 and 30 percent. They told me that they would probably want to place an ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) if my ejection fraction didnโt improve. It never really did. The best it got was 30 to 35 percent. So in February of 2023 I went in for an out patient stay to have a subcutaneous implantable cardioverter defibrillator (SICD) placed.
Fastforward a few months. Iโm sitting in my recliner, eating some plantain chips, when all of a sudden, I got shocked. I jumped and screamed. Still, it only happened once, and Iโm thinking: this is no big deal. A few weeks later, in August, I received another shock. It only happened once, so again, Iโm like โno big deal.โ
On September 11th, the situation changed. I felt โoffโ all evening. I was shocked once, and I kept feeling like another one was coming. So I went to the ER. My ICD device fired while I was on the ambulance and when I was being wheeled into the ER. They kept me for a couple days, ran some tests, told me to follow up with cardiology, and sent me home.
A week later, I was back in the ER with the same complaint. I donโt remember whether there were multiple shocks. The same thing happened: they kept me for a couple days to make sure I was stable, ran some tests, sent me home, and told me to follow up with cardiology.
On the first Friday of October, I kept feeling โoffโ, as though I was going to have a heart episode. The device didnโt fire, but I went to the ER anyway. When I was in the ambulance, they told me that I was in VTac (ventricular tachycardia), and they shocked me. I was shocked several times by hospital staff while they tried to get me stable. This time was a little different. The cardiac electrophysiologist decided that it was time to do a cardiac ablation. They performed that procedure on the following Monday or Tuesday, and I went home in the middle of the week.
Things seemed ok for the next couple of months. Then, on the night of February 1, 2024, I started receiving more shocks from the ICD. I went back to the ER. That night, my ICD shocked me at least seventeen times, and I was also shocked several additional times by paramedics and ER staff. If youโve ever taken a physical beating that has left you sore for days, you know exactly what I went through that night. I took a beating or two of that sort when I was younger, and thatโs exactly how being shocked more than twenty times felt. Every movement of my upper body hurt for the next several days, including just shifting around in bed. The day after I landed in the emergency room, they sent me to a much larger university hospital in Portland. That hospital stabilized me, switched out my ICD for another device, and sent me home a couple days later.
I spent the next few months in a state of total mental paralysis that I suspect was some kind of PTSD. I kept feeling like I was going to have heart episodes and waiting for the next shock. The new device they placed when I was in Portland had some pacing functionality, so Iโm pretty sure I avoided some shocks. When I saw my cardiologist in the summer of 2024, she told me that the pacing functionality barely succeeded keeping me out of a round of shocks. She and her boss wanted to do another cardiac ablation.
At this point, I started wondering just how much life I had left. I bluntly asked for an estimation of my life expectancy and was told maybe ten years with the ablation and the defibrillator. The point of the ablation was to act as a โband-aidโ, to calm the heart and hopefully keep me out of the emergency room and from being shocked repeatedly. I agreed to yet another procedure, and it was done in late August.
Less than a month later, I received multiple shocks from the ICD. I went back to the ER. I was shocked at least nine times that night. They stabilized me, kept me for a couple days, and told me to follow up with cardiology.
So I followed up with cardiology. And I bluntly asked the life expectancy question again. โObviously, the cardiac ablation did not work. How much life would you estimate that I have left?โ โMaybe two years, but I honestly donโt know.โ At that point, I asked them to disable the defibrillator. I was tired of getting multiple shocks and not knowing when they would come, tired of landing in the ER. Realize that in one year, I had ended up in the ER and hospital 5 times for the exact same problem. My prognosis without the defibrillator was a few months.
But at first, I wasnโt going to let it stop me. In December, I started a cardiac exercise program. Basically, they monitored my heart while I exercised. That went well for a few days. Then one day, my blood pressure bottomed out and my heart rate spiked during a session. During the next session, I felt โoffโ afterward. A couple days before Christmas, I was riding my stationary bike at home for a while. At some point, I started feeling like I was about to have a VTac episode, so I stopped. I spent the next few hours in agony, until I was finally able to sleep.
It gets worse. At this point, even doing trivial tasks became a burden. Iโd start having heart palpitations and become winded while bringing in a couple bags of groceries or doing the dishes. This part of the story is told more completely in an older post: Reason 666 Why US Health Care Is So Fucked: The Testing Obsession!.
Iโm basically terminally ill. I got a referral to hospice, and Iโve been on that program for several months. I still have heart episodes. I can back them off with morphein, which I use very judiciously. But I expect that at any time, I could have an episode strong enough to land me back in the ER. At that point, Iโd most likely just die naturally.
I am afraid to so much as go for a walk, because the last thing I want is to die in the middle of the sidewalk, or worse, be discovered by paramedics and accidentally receive medical intervention.
A while ago, I started investigating Oregonโs Death with Dignity program. Not because I want to die. I donโt. But Iโd rather die in a controlled manner than die in pain and be found unresponsive in the middle of my floor by my girlfriend. I want to live, but Iโm strongly opposed to my few remaining possibilities for medical treatment (Iโll get to that in a moment). No, I am not a burden to my family. Theyโre glad to care for me. In fact, it is going to be bad for them when Iโm gone. Especially in this hellworld that the US has become under a second Trump Presidency with a stacked Congress and Supreme Court, as well as a crazed billionaire and his wrecking crew actively destroying the government. Iโm sad to leave them, and I worry about how theyโll make it without me. Iโm angry that I have severe heart failure that started when I was in my early forties. Iโm too young for this, but here we are, and here is what Iโve chosen.
So letโs talk about my scant options for treatment. I could have my defibrillator reactivated, and maybe have a couple more years. If I do that, I expect many more ER visits and more painful and unpredictable shocks. I already said no to that. Another slim possibility is a heart transplant. I am not interested. Iโve explained my reasons more fully to people who are close to me, but they basically boil down to the fact that an organ transplant requires a full commitment to the process, and Iโm not willing to make that commitment.
A few months ago, a friend sent me a link to a university doing clinical trials using stem cells to repair the heart. It seemed really promising. Unfortunately, they are in Germany, and they only accept German residents. So that wasnโt an option.
So anyway here I am, planning for my upcoming death. And I donโt have enough nice things to say about this process. At every point, the choice is entirely mine. From the beginning of the process all the way until I consume the cocktail of meds that will end my life, I can decide not to proceed, or I can decide to wait to fill the prescription, or whatever. This is my choice all the way.
As it was put to me: โChris, youโre dying of heart disease. You can choose to just let it naturally run its course. Or you can choose a controlled exit. Either way, if you choose medical aid or you choose to let it run its course, youโre dying.โ
@VigilantFox: This is no longer America. But President Trump just declared war on the chaos. At Fort Bragg, he called the LA riots a foreign invasionโand made one thing crystal clear: โGenerations of army heroes did...โฆ
"Des รฉcoles promettent des conventions de stage en un temps record et pour quelques centaines dโeuros ร des jeunes qui recherchent un stage, parfois dรฉscolarisรฉs et en quรชte dโexpรฉrience. Enquรชte sur le business de ces formations en ligne.Enquรชte"
Pars Today โ Iranian state television, quoting informed regional sources on Sunday, reported the most significant intelligence blow in history against the...
Wouldn't it be amazing if just *once* the news was about all of our lives not getting materially worse whilst also reading about a handful of individuals breaking all previous personal wealth records. Interestingly the richest person who ever lived was Mansa Musa, the 14th-century ruler of the Mali Empire, whose wealth surpassed that of today's billionaires. Primarily from gold resources.
He threw his gold wealth around so much when on a pilgrimage, he totally wrecked a number of economies. Due to the subsequent depreciation of gold, it's estimated his pilgrimage led to over a billion dollars of economic losses across the Middle East.....
"The king reportedly left Mali with a caravan of 60,000 men.
He took his entire royal court and officials, soldiers, griots (entertainers), merchants, camel drivers and 12,000 slaves, as well as a long train of goats and sheep for food.
To a person, all the way down to the slaves, they were clad in gold brocade and finest Persian silk. A hundred camels were in tow, each camel carrying hundreds of pounds of pure gold."
Mali is now one of the poorest nations on the planet, heavily reliant on foreign aid, with food insecurity and high numbers below the poverty line including nearly 20% living in 'extreme poverty'.
Men that steal the natural resources of the planet on an obscene scale for personal wealth are not your friends. And they are not doing it for your benefit.
I feel super dumb asking this. But what actually is and how does github (or similar sites) work? Are they all just source files one needs to manually compile? I am always confused when I look at a github page. I know some have directions but they still go way over my head sometimes. Im not a total noob but some of this stuff seems like you need to be in programming and have an IDE just to run a program.
On the Hebrew Universityโs invitation to Javier Milei and why it shouldnโt surprise anyone
#Argentine President Javier #Milei is expected to arrive in Jerusalem tomorrow to speak at the Hebrew University. Miley is admired by the Israeli right for his unwavering support of Israel and his promise to relocate the Argentinian embassy to #Jerusalem.
Since taking office, Milei has slashed over 70% of public university budgets, vetoing a law to ensure adequate funding and accusing faculty members at the University of Buenos Aires of corruption. The universityโs budget has seen a 26% cut while the Argentinian secret service budget increased by 68%. Over 60% of university employees are now below the poverty line. While austerity measures might be argued for, Milei's actions appear to be a deliberate attack on education, #liberalism, and potential political opposition.
There have been growing calls to boycott the Hebrew University. Two Dutch universities have recommended suspending academic partnerships, citing the institutionโs complicity in Israelโs genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The Hebrew University was found to be directly training Israeli military intelligence officers through the Havatzalot program. The university develops military technologies used in #Gaza through Talpiot program. The campus was built on illegally occupied Palestinian land in East Jerusalem and armed soldiers attend classes on campus, creating militarized environment.
See also Maya Wind's book, Towers of Ivory and Steel, investigates the material realities of this involvement, arguing that Israeli universities are deeply embedded in the state and implicated in decades of Palestinian dispossession.
Gerry (Pureblood)
in reply to Gerry (Pureblood) • • •Otto Pureblood likes this.