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!
Hillary Clinton says she would nominate Trump for Nobel Peace Prize if he helps end war in Ukraine
> Elites and politicians of the west, of the global north, literally don't care about the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza by israel.
Well, I am not a big fan of weighing the two conflicts against each other, but I agree - a lot of empty phrases but now real consequences or actions to stop the war in #Gaza
Fuck literally all western capital dictatorship states. The EU keeps bringing up a bill that has been shot down like 5 times by popular demand and they keep changing it and bringing it back. Its chat control. Reading all your chat messages which is unconstitutional by the eu court of law but now only contains links, pics and videos because cHiLdReN. To find the links they still need to completely break encryption.
When you tell someone now and they keep coming. Thats not democracy.
"Якщо ви живете в #Alaska, мені потрібно, щоб ви придбали український прапор і перетворили будь-який регiон, в який Путін збирається, в море українських прапорів - стільки, що, коли Путін приземлятиметься, все, що він збирається побачити, просто жовтий і синій". ~Joey Contino
This is the first public footage of Barghouti, a senior Fatah official who was sentenced to five life sentences plus 40 years for his role in the Second Intifada, to be circulated in years
In the early morning of September 5, 1986, Pan Am Flight 73 was hijacked while on the ground in Karachi by four armed Palestinian terrorists. Amid the sudden panic and confusion, 22-year-old senior flight attendant Neerja Bhanot acted with remarkable composure. Without drawing attention, she managed to alert the cockpit by discreetly punching in the hijack code. Thanks to her quick thinking, the pilots escaped through the overhead hatch, ensuring the aircraft remained grounded and preventing the hijackers from using it as a deadly weapon in the sky.
Over the next 17 tense hours, Neerja displayed unwavering bravery. When the terrorists began seeking out American passengers, she quietly gathered and hid their passports — slipping them under seats, tossing them down chutes, and even flushing some away. Her efforts disrupted the hijackers’ plans and likely spared dozens of lives. Throughout the ordeal, she stayed calm, offering strength to the terrified passengers and working tirelessly to shield the vulnerable.
In the final moments of the standoff, as violence erupted and bullets flew, Neerja chose courage over safety once more. She opened an emergency exit, guiding passengers out of harm’s way. As gunfire raged, she used her own body to shield three children, sacrificing her life so others could live. Neerja Bhanot was just 22 when she died, but her selfless actions saved more than 350 people. She was posthumously awarded India’s highest peacetime honor, and her legacy endures as a symbol of fearless compassion in the face of unimaginable danger.
_Eighth Study Confirms mRNA Shots Increase Infection Risk_
"New study [in the Annals of Internal Medicine] of 1,745 healthcare workers finds mRNA boosters raise risk of influenza-like illness by up to 70% and increase workdays lost by 50%."
Kremlin reveals details of Putin-Trump summit rt.com/russia/622876-kremlin-r… The Alaska talks will focus on a broad range of issues and will be followed by a joint press conference, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov has said Read Full Article at RT.com #news #press
As the Israeli army confirms plans to invade Gaza City and occupy it, Palestinians have to decide whether to endure another cycle of displacement or stay and risk being killed. While some plan to evacuate, others are done following orders.
This is my entire Monkeynomics 101 series pertaining to investments in a single video! Some things were cut (like the intros between videos) in order to make it all fit within the YouTube maximum length of 2 hours and 10
I had a place once that was out of the way and quiet. Neighbors would come by and all social activities occurred on the porch. Adults were served coffee and such and were always offered to "kick it up"! meaning that we would put a shot of something in it if they wanted. Had to keep options on hand for this!
Many nice evenings and afternoons there on the porch.
SANAA, Aug. 15 (YPA) - A million-strong demonstration was staged on Friday in Al-Sabeen Square in the capital Sanaa, and in other squares in various provinces.In protest rallies, participants affirmed the continued Yemeni position in support of the P
I can't wait to use Bluesky, but I will not be joining Bluesky. As much as I trust and respect the Bluesky executives and board members I am acquainted with, I believe the service itself is insufficiently enshittification-resistant to trust:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
I've met Bluesky's CEO Jay Graber on a few occasions and heard her speak several times and I'm hugely impressed with her documented commitment to make "enshittification-resistant" social media:
Some of Bluesky's most innovative and well-developed features are *extremely* enshittification-resistant, like "composable moderation," which gives users an extraordinary degree of control over their feeds, which means that the service's owners can't readily dial down the amount of desirable information in those feeds in order to create space for ads or posts that someone has paid to boost::
(Or, as is the case with Twitter, the personal maunderings of the service's boss and whichever esoteric fascist crony talked to him last.)
What's more, this composable moderation, along with an open API for clients, allows Bluesky (the company) to adhere to its legal obligations to block content, while allowing Bluesky *users* to sidestep those blocks.
For example, Bluesky has a labeling service that flags content that has to be blocked under Turkey's system of authoritarian censorship, and, by default, the Bluesky client blocks anything with that flag for Turkish users. But users can turn off that block, and/or use an alternative Bluesky client that doesn't pay attention to the blocked-in-Turkey flag.
Same goes for the new British system of mass censorship under the Online Safety Act: Bluesky the company will do an age-verification process with users of its official client (like all age verification, this system is janky and it sucks), but UK users who choose a different client (one that isn't worried about being sanctioned by the UK government) can access all of Bluesky without any age verification.
But the key anti-enshittification measure - federation - has lagged on Bluesky. For most of Bluesky's history, it's been impossible to participate in the Bluesky service without being a Bluesky user, because the most critical parts of the Bluesky network were incredibly expensive to operate (tens of millions of dollars per year), and lacked any tooling to make it easy to create independent, federated servers.
Without the ability to participate on the Bluesky network without having to create an account with Bluesky (the company), users would have to subject themselves to Bluesky's terms of service, and could have their access to the Bluesky network unilaterally terminated by Bluesky (the company).
Now, I happen to think pretty highly of the management of Bluesky (the company) *at the moment*. But Bluesky has outside investors - the distressingly stupid- and sinister-sounding Blockchain Capital - and if these people get it into their heads to enshittify Bluesky, then can force good actors off the board of directors, fire the management, and replace them with standard-issue corporate sociopaths.
What's more, the fact that users are hostage to Bluesky - that they have no way to part ways with the company without parting ways with the people they value on the service - means that new management can torment Bluesky users with impunity, so long as these torments are kept to a level such that Bluesky users hate the company less than they love one another.
By contrast, with federation - the ability to part ways with the Bluesky company without losing access to the service - investors might understand that if they turn the screws on users, those users will find it trivial to leave the company's servers, because doing so won't cost them access to the service. And if the investors *don't* understand this, well, *users can leave* - without enduring any switching costs.
The good news here is that Bluesky has made *enormous* progress in true federation. The cost of operating a full Bluesky stack has fallen from *tens of millions* of dollars per year to *tens* of dollars per month:
This is an extremely welcome development and it goes a long way toward enshittification-proofing the Bluesky service, and some way to enshittification-proofing Bluesky, the company.
But Bluesky, the company, still needs *serious* work.
This is an update to a Summer 2024 blog post. At the time, atproto relays required a cache of the full network on local disk to validate data structures. With the Sync v1.1 updates, relays don't need all that disk I/O.
As things stand, Bluesky has *very bad* terms of service that every user who creates an account has to subject themselves to. In particular, Bluesky's ToS contain a "binding arbitration" waiver that forces users to surrender the right to sue Bluesky no matter how the company harms them.
This is so pro-enshittificatory, it's like a *landing strip* for the sole use of Enshittification Airlines, which can land a 747 full of enshittfying nonsense on Bluesky's users every 10 minutes, around the clock, without worrying about *any* legal repercussions.
Binding arbitration used to be illegal. Sure, two entities of similar size and power could elect to streamline their disputes by seeing an arbitrator instead of going to court, but you couldn't take away people's right to sue just by cramming 40,000 words of legalese down their throat as they passed over your threshold.
It took the absolute fuckery of an Antonin Scalia to unleash the plague of binding arbitration waivers on the world, with the result that these days, everyone from dentists to solar installers to ride-hailing companies force you to permanently waive your right to sue, even if they are so negligent or malicious that you are permanently maimed or killed:
These days, binding arbitration is everywhere, allowing corporations to proceed with total legal impunity. When a woman died of allergens in her Disney World meal (after being told it was allergen-free), Disney told her widower that he couldn't sue because he'd clicked through a binding arbitration waiver when he signed up for a free trial of the Disney Plus streaming service:
Binding arbitration has been creeping into every corner of the web, to the extent that lawyers will tell you you *must* put it in your ToS "just to be safe." Those lawyers are either ignorant, or assholes (or, you know, ignorant assholes), but they're everywhere. Earlier this summer, Mastodon almost launched a new ToS (which would have been the default for *every* Masto instance) with binding arbitration, because their lawyers told them they needed it:
But what they've come up with is *utterly* baffling and nonsensical. I have re-read it at least a dozen times, and - despite having followed and written about binding arbitration for more than a decade - I have *no idea* what it means.
The new waiver says that you don't have to arbitrate for "claims that fraud, criminal misconduct, or gross negligence by Bluesky caused death or personal injury." That sounds good! It also sounds like *everything that someone might sue Bluesky for*, leaving me to wonder what Bluesky *will* make you arbitrate for.
What's more, if the point of a binding arbitration waiver is to reduce nuisance suits and threats, this completely nullifies that tactic, because all a nuisance litigant has to do is claim that they are suing because of "fraud, criminal misconduct, or gross negligence," and Bluesky is back in court.
All I can assume is that the point of this clause is to intimidate people with grievances against Bluesky out of seeking legal redress because they can't figure out if their claim is covered by this baffling, nonsensical clause.
There are other, *gigantic* red flags in the arbitration waiver, like a prohibition on class actions. Here's why that's *especially* bad in an arbitration waiver.
By default, arbitration is a) confidential and b) nonprecedential. That means that if a corporation injures a ton of people through negligence, fraud or malice, *each* victim of the company has to individually go before an arbitrator and prove their case, but they're not allowed to know how other victims argued their case, and the arbitrator is not required to judge two identical cases in the same way (earlier cases are not a precedent).
One way around this is mass arbitration, like the Uber drivers engaged in when Uber stole tens of millions of dollars worth of tips from them, a tactic successfully deployed by other corporate victims:
If you've been injured to the tune of less than, say, $500, you probably won't hire a lawyer to get it back. Bluesky has 36 million users, meaning - thanks to the ban on class actions - it could steal about *$18 billion* from them all without having to worry about a gigantic, business-destroying lawsuit.
This is *not* how you enshittification-proof your service.
To be fair, the carve-out in the arbitration clause *might* help keep the company from committing this kind of fraud, but only if anyone could figure out what the hell it means. And also to be fair, the new arbitration clause provides for *three* arbitrators, one chosen by Bluesky, one by you, and a third, mutually agreed upon one.
This does inject more fairness into an unacceptably unfair process, and also does not make it acceptably unfair. Especially since Bluesky retains the right to consolidate claims into a mass arbitration, but does not let potential victims form a class if such a move would be disadvantageous to Bluesky.
If Bluesky wants to protect itself from legal liability, let it do what every company did until just a couple years ago: a) don't break the law on purpose, and; b) buy insurance
These new ToS are an absolute dog's breakfast. I wouldn't click through them.
And luckily, I don't have to! Because, to Bluesky's eternal credit, they have shipped the technical components needed to create a Bluesky server that is a full, first-class participant in the Bluesky service, *without* its users having to sign up to these Terms of Service.
(Unfortunately, if you're already a Bluesky user, it's too late, because its ToS says you're still bound to mandatory arbitration even if you delete your account).
Legacy social media is in trouble. Facebook and Twitter are thrashing around, using AI finance-theater in a bid to convince investors not to panic-sell their stock because they no longer have any growth left.
A new, federated, independent, web is being born before our eyes, running on Activitypub (Mastodon) and Atproto (Bluesky). This web does not have to fall prey to the enshittifying norms of the zuckermuskian web. If the people building this new web are wise, they will take irrevocable action that will limit their ability (and the ability of their successors) to fall prey to the siren song of enshittification in the future.
This is called a "Ulysses pact" - when you tie yourself to the mast so that you don't yield to future temptation.
Putting binding arbitration in your ToS is the opposite of a Ulysses pact: it's ensuring that you - and whoever you are replaced with when your investors decide it's time for a service-level heel turn - always retain the ability to enshittify, should the mood take you.
We can demand something better - and, if you run your own Bluesky server, you *can*.
My sysadmin, Ken, just took delivery of some new server hardware at his colo, and he's gonna be setting me up my own Mastodon and Bluesky servers in the coming weeks. I'm really looking forward to using the Bluesky service, especially since I can do so without clicking through the Bluesky terms of service or making myself vulnerable to the enshittificatory gambits that future management might assay, because those terms have given them the leeway to do so.
they have another problem they aren't addressing, which is reproducing Twitter's culture by reproducing Twitter's interface and seeding themselves originally with some of twitter's most online and toxic users. I know this isn't commonly considered, but a seed culture is Incredibly important, and they set up a twitter interface and deliberately invited the most online and upset users to found their culture.
there are so many examples of this. Unfortunately the justification is always survival no matter what. See the case of Reuters I recently came across when I received a note from ThompsonReuters to use one of my photos from 10 years ago and looked them up.
Be aware of how the insurance industry has been consolidated into near-monopolies by malign actors, like private equity hedge funds & the fossil fuel industry.
An insurance policy can be canceled or modified to suit its underwriters.
Insurance monopolists can order up changes on a whim.
"claims that [fraud, criminal misconduct, or gross negligence] caused [death or personal injury]"
In other words, something they can point at to attempt to debunk the idea that *they'll* have a Disney waiver incident, while still being able to stop you from suing over fraud, criminal misconduct, or gross negligence that had any result *not* involving blood, broken bones, or death.
@pteryx Even stipulating this, it still fails on its own terms, because they'll STILL have to go to court to litigate the meaning of this weird, ambiguous clause.
tl;dr blewski is owned by vc cryptobro billionaires. The "management" is meaningless. Proof? Blewski galloping enshittification before our eyes, very centralized censorship, etc.
Hm. Do we think Turkey and the UK will be OK with this state of affairs? Because it seems like this creates a big enough loophole to nullify their legislation (he says, like that's a bad thing 😉). Wouldn't they still go after Bluesky for allowing a data path to info hosted/stored on their servers which evades the legally mandated checking? I'm having a hard time picturing them agreeing that checking in the official client is sufficient.
@bjnord Well, that's gonna be interesting, because it amounts to an extraterritorial control on what can appear on the server *anywhere* in the world. It's the difference between the UK banning VPNs (a thing that has been mooted lately) and the UK demanding that nothing appear on the web anywhere in the world that you can access in contravention of UK law.
Even when you don’t vote for him, you are tarnished. With Reform UK currently leading the polls with less than one-third of the vote, the country appears to be hammering the stake into its own heart. Let’s all have a go: https://members.parliament.
#Profit-Driven #AI Jesus Chatbots Prey On Prayer-Driven Christians AI Jesus is proving that “there is a sucker born every minute.” The Ask Jesus app, signed up 30,000 active monthly users after just 3 days after launch. The AI world is directly exploiting would-be Christians with AI God and AI Jesus apps. The Bible says in Mark 13:22 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. I if were them, I would not like to run into the REAL Jesus anytime soon. ⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor. technocracy.news/profit-driven…
AI Jesus is proving that "there is a sucker born every minute." The Ask Jesus app, signed up 30,000 active monthly users after just 3 days after launch. The AI world is directly exploiting would-be Christians with AI God and AI Jesus apps.
„CDU-Fest in Koblenz: Bundestagspräsidentin Julia Klöckner will mit Finanzier des rechtspopulistischen Onlineportal „Nius“ feiern – Kritik vom Koalitionspartner SPD“ #klöckner #NIUS #Rechtspopulismus #schwarwel
#AI Update on the promised AI essay link In Episode #231 I talked about a watershed essay on the intense danger of AI as a substitute for human relationships. This is already happening in Japan. -- The author has removed the piece from her Substack, and it isn’t on the Wayback Machine, but I have reached out via email to see if it will be reposted. If it isn’t, I will write up my own explanation from memory, but the original piece is exhaustive in its explanation, so I’d rather wait to see if it will be available again. —AB barnhardt.biz/2025/08/04/updat…
As usual for @Terry updates this is *behind* where the front lines were last I checked. ie the russians are "winning" by taking ground that russia took a year or two ago
I think companies WOULD ask you to fix their shit, but it gives off "Oh we're way too broke to hire anyone, we hoped we could get a little work out of the internet, BTW do YOU know of anyone whose hiring? I need to get out of here." vibes.
If someone said that to me, I would say "Can you confirm that you have the money to make this hire and you're not just trying to hold your company together with free work?"
If they're confident then that's already a big boost. If they start getting offended and talking about ending the interview then that's a pretty good sign that they're not hiring...
#JESUITS St. Ignatius, PLEASE beg God to crush and grind to powder the sodomitical Luciferian cult that lyingly calls itself “The Jesuits”. Please. Poor, poor St. Ignatius of Loyola. Read this simple bio and then tell me that the so-called Jesuit order of today, a wretched hive of heretics, Marxists and sodomites, is the same thing that this saint founded: barnhardt.biz/2025/07/31/st-ig…
In this place, settler militias attacked the Palestinian Khader al-Nawajaa while he was sleeping in his residence in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, and assaulted him, resulting in injuries.
@verita84 nah frennet is too old to delete it would break my heart but i wanted to separate my stuff (frennet) and open a new instance for open registration
The system’s bacterial half is Salmonella typhimurium, a species that naturally migrates to the low-oxygen, nutrient-rich environment inside tumors. Once there, the bacteria invade cancer cells and release the virus directly into the tumor’s interior. \ “We programmed the bacteria to act as a Trojan horse by shuttling the viral RNA into tumors and then lyse themselves directly inside of cancer cells to release the viral genome, which could then spread between cancer cells,” Singer says. \ By exploiting the bacteria’s tumor-homing instincts and the virus’s ability to replicate inside cancer cells, the researchers created a delivery system that can penetrate the tumor and spread throughout it — a challenge that has limited both bacteria- and virus-only approaches.
When the Crew-11 astronauts launched to the International Space Station on August 1, 2025, they carried with them another chapter in space farming: the latest VEG-03 experiments, complete with seed pillows ready for planting. Growing plants provides nutrition for astronauts, as well as psychological benefits that help maintain crew morale during missions. During VEG-03 MNO, […]
NASA astronauts choose from lettuce, kale, and mustard greens to grow in space as part of the VEG-03 MNO experiment. See how this NASA research could help feed future explorers.
Just now, at midnight, a gang of settlers attacked a home in Masafer Yatta.
They injured a man and his wife, who are now being rushed to an ambulance.
The criminal settlers returned to their illegal settlement.
I don't care too much for Trump anymore but I do like when he has little wins that are good for the entire country. It's too bad that his second term started out mostly bad
He needs to stop catering to jews, but he's surrounded by them constantly and he's either too retarded and still needs the early life section or he's just intentionally sucking jew cock.
This doesn't compare to Trumps first 6 months of his second term. Especially since Motor Voter laws just laid the ground work for future election fraud. And the increase in immunizations appears to have had some very negative effects. And the budget reconciliation act was just a tax increase and the Family and Medical Leave Act was unpaid leave and hasn't been used much.
On 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, global conference calls for action to win a world without nuclear weapons pvonline.ca/2025/08/14/on-80th…
_Apocalypticism Is “A Code Of Belonging” Among Journalists_
Driven by the same impulses and motivations as those of the "clickbait" grifters, and also by the desire to brown-nose the oligarchs whose power depends on scaring people into supporting "white knight" saviors...who turn out to be wolves in sheep's clothing.
“Μετά βίας στους 35- 30c.. ακόμα χαμηλότερα… σιγά - σιγά εξασθενεί.. χαμηλή θερμοκρασία… όχι ιδιαίτερα αυξημένη θερμοκρασία” 🤝 Εκεί που καίγομαι πολύυυυυυ…. Πιο χαμηλά.. πιο χαμηλά… πιο χαμηλά🤝 🤣
@foufoutos Εκεί που καίγομαι πολύ Θέλω να νιώσω το φιλί Καν’ το κορμί μου να μιλά Πιο χαμηλά πιο χαμηλά πιο χαμηλά λέει & λέει & μη με ρωτάς που αφού τα γούστα μου τα ξέρεις θα μου το δώσεις στο αδύναμο σημείο μου που ξέρεις λέει. Τώρα τι λες δε ξέρω συγνώμη κιόλας 🤣
DH
in reply to Fou • • •Well, I am not a big fan of weighing the two conflicts against each other, but I agree - a lot of empty phrases but now real consequences or actions to stop the war in #Gaza
It's a moral bankruptcy!
haui
in reply to Fou • • •Fuck literally all western capital dictatorship states. The EU keeps bringing up a bill that has been shot down like 5 times by popular demand and they keep changing it and bringing it back. Its chat control. Reading all your chat messages which is unconstitutional by the eu court of law but now only contains links, pics and videos because cHiLdReN. To find the links they still need to completely break encryption.
When you tell someone now and they keep coming. Thats not democracy.
Fou reshared this.
indyradio
in reply to Fou • • •