Lou Katz @lou@entropyservice.com

What if instead of being elephant-themed mastodon had been owl-themed and posting was called hooting

The piece of the Pavel Durov story that isn’t getting enough attention is the scandal around Emmanuel Macron granting him French citizenship as part of his effort to attract tech investment.

Brings to mind New Zealand doing something similar with Peter Thiel.

https://www.politico.eu/article/macron-finally-admits-he-gave-telegram-chief-pavel-durov-french-citizenship/

#tech #france #paveldurov #telegram

Cars are increasingly surveillance systems on wheels. They spy relentlessly not just on the driver --why are people comfortable with this, or do they not know it's happening? -- but also on the surroundings. Tesla is the worst offender as it keeps trying, unsuccessfully, to do self-driving.

If you own one is these, you are helping make the surveillance state much more pervasive.

Congress and state lawmakers obviously are in favor of all this spying, because they do nothing to stop it.

Israel Has Built an Economy Fueled by Genocide at Home and Abroad https://truthout.org/articles/israel-has-built-an-economy-fueled-by-genocide-at-home-and-abroad/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

China is such a techno-authoritarian police state that the government now censors social posts when they mention that the government censors social posts. https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/08/weibo-cracks-down-on-posts-about-weibo-crackdowns/

I was in SF for a few days this week. There are cars lining every street, owners paying pennies an hour if they're paying anything at all for the space and the state is tearing up homeless encampments as though the people in them have anywhere else to go or any way to get there. There are parking lots taking up half a city block all over downtown and an affordable housing crisis.

Subsidized housing and full employment programs for cars, subsidized theft and state-sanctioned cruelty for people.

The headline is strangely mild; the piece is devastating. Trump’s national security adviser Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster shows him to have been a walking catastrophe in international affairs.

“An unpredictable waffler.” “A chump.” China “ate our lunch.” Undisciplined, disruptive, tired, inane. He has receipts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/27/books/review/at-war-with-ourselves-hr-mcmaster.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HU4.FGk8.FRtj371rRW8b&smid=url-share

Schiff on hostage deaths: ‘Sons of b------ who did this' must be 'brought to justice’ https://thehill.com/policy/international/4857802-adam-schiff-hamas-hostage-deaths/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Never forget this and never forget that this was repeated a dozen times since. There was no need for this war. No need for the genocide. No need for any of this.

It was all a political decision for Netanyahu to avoid accountability, and it was only possible because of the direct complicity of the Biden administration.

#Gaza #Israel #Genocide

X wasn't banned in Brazil because of censorship. It was because Musk refused to abide by a court order to block accounts linked to the invasion of the Brazilian Parliament, Supreme Court and Presidential Palace in 2023. Musk preferred to close his Brazilian offices instead of helping to catch those who tried to overthrow a democratic elected government. If someone tells you otherwise, they're either dishonest or misinformed.

This is probably the best thing I ever posted on Twitter. The memory is pretty dear to me; I'm sharing it here so it still exists somewhere if that place collapses.

Might be an unpopular take, but “swatting” sure seems like the state doing to white people on camera what it’s been doing to black people off camera for a long, long time.

Holy shit, my wife just found this on the top of a container of collagen that we just bought from #Costco:
“By opening and using this product, you agree to be bound by our terms and conditions fully set forth at vitalproteins.com/tc, which include a mandatory arbitration agreement. If you do not agree to be bound, please return this product immediately.”

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

@mhoye The subsidy for free or almost free parking on two lanes of almost every publically funded road dwarfs everything given to public transit.

What I always hear: “We can’t afford to pay our workers $15 an hour.”

What I never hear: “We can’t afford to pay our CEO millions of dollars a year.”

Funny how that works, huh?

A good friend of mine notes that while nobody ever _declares_ a Sev0 incident, one of the most notable signals you're in a Sev0 incident is when lawyers who have no reason to be there and nothing to add start joining incident calls so that whatever is said in those calls is now sheltered by attorney-client privilege.

https://www.courtwatch.news/p/heres-22-examples-of-google-employees

@brouhaha Wait a month, lose something unimportant on your desk, and when you search for it you might find the USB drive.