Lou Katz @lou@entropyservice.com

There are p-l-e-n-t-y of other reasons not to buy from Amazon, but I was reminded today of a big one: the last three electronic devices I purchased “new” were all very obviously used. A Surface Go 4 in a package with a broken seal and its frame slightly bent. An ereader with a fingerprint on the screen. And a laptop dock that was so scuffed and scratched and dinged-up that it had to have been somebody’s road unit (it even had the residue from a sticker—probably a corporate asset-tracking barcode—not fully pealed off of the bottom).

Yes, you should stop using Amazon because they are exploiting workers and fueling fascism. But they are also clawing back the convenience and affordability that made you so reliant on them in the first place. They aren’t a good partner to do commerce with, even if there weren’t bad guys sitting at the top.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/google-wrong-side-history

I missed this happening…

“””
Google has removed four key points from its AI principles. Specifically, it previously read that the company would not pursue AI applications involving (1) weapons, (2) surveillance, (3) technologies that “cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” and (4) technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.

Those principles are gone now.
“””

Trump's is a theory of all presidential powers and no obligations; that concedes no responsibility toward those who voted against him; and that treats rival elected officials not as reflecting elements of a divided and uncertain democratic will, but as traitors to that will if they cross him.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:36n7wd7gg4tapamnog4zyyc6/post/3ltwaanziwc2s

“In a functioning democracy with actual rule of law, the best products have the opportunity to win. In an authoritarian system, the company that makes the dictator happy wins—and that’s it.” https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/17/fascism-for-first-time-founders/

@1br0wn Sadly, people being nice to one another doesn’t drive ‘engagement' and thus profits.

Do not stay at a Hyatt hotel. They're running fake "smoking detectors" specifically as a revenue-generating scheme and arbitrarily fining guests $500. threadreaderapp.com/thread/19459...

Thread by @_ZachGriff on Threa...

Some of the most pro-Trump coverage NYTimes has ever done. On Epstein, they chose to adopt Trump's transparently disingenuous framing, treating a "grand jury records" stalling tactic as openness—he's trying to hide the rest—and presenting an obvious lie of "prepared to defer to the courts" as real.

Am I coming into work on Monday and proposing a Tolkein-themed anti-Ring campaign where we encourage people to throw their Rings into the nearest volcano? I don't know. Maybe.

I spent a whole day in a room full of privacy engineers talking about how they were trying to move their companies towards better practices and then I glanced at my phone, read this, and just let the wave of rage and despair wash over me: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/amazon-ring-cashes-techno-authoritarianism-and-mass-surveillance

Recent comic: It's time to update the old binaries.

#cartoon #comic #uspol #science #humanrights

Americans don't understand that the rest of the world just laughs when they claim to be the country of 'freedom'. They get about 4 days off work a year, no maternity or sick leave, no free healthcare, democracy is owned by billionaires, you arent even free to cross a street.

I'm not watching CBS News. I'm not reading CBS News articles. I'm not watching Paramount movies or TV shows. I am done with Paramount and CBS. They have sided with fascism, and we must side against them to preserve democracy. It's that simple.

Britain's extraordinary secrecy laws, including "super-injunctions" forbidding even the reporting that a court case is in progress, served it poorly during a recent controversy over relocating Afghan nationals [Ed West] www.edwest.co.uk/p/contra-pop...

Contra populum

Trump’s EPA eliminates research and development office and begins layoffs https://twp.ai/E6ADDl

WaPo: We've killed our independence and objectivity, please like our owner NYT: Trump Making Amazing Deals, White House Says; Mamdani Late 4 Times in 6th Grade CBS: We'll censor things you dislike, here's millions of dollars, please let our parent do a merger WSJ: BREAKING: TRUMP-EPSTEIN LETTER!

The whole idea of civil rights is that all people are equal members of a society and therefore mechanisms that make us unequal are illegitimate.

MAGA has built for itself a perverse mirror ideology in which certain groups of people are known to be inherently unequal and therefore any mechanisms that attempt to make us equal are illegitimate.

The very core of MAGA ideology is white supremacy. Second to that, Christian supremacy, and male supremacy. These are justified with a tautology. White people (Christian/male/hetero/cisgendered white men) are supreme, therefore they deserve social, legal, political, and economic privilege, because white male cis/het Christian men are supreme.

This is the evil heart of MAGA, and its only true core principle that they will not abandon. It lies beneath everything else; every corruption and every authoritarian attitude branches from an almost pathological need to create a racial and patriarchal underclass who can be dominated and tortured without consequence.

The entirety of conservative philosophy exists to justify and legitimize this core falsehood - that inequality is inevitable, natural, and desirable.

This is why there can be NO COMPROMISE and NO COEXISTENCE with MAGA, yes even blue, leftist MAGA. It is the cancer that we either purge completely, or will kill us.

Recent UK Labour governments have moved so far to the right that they're less and less distinguishable from the conservatives. They've shown growing contempt for freedom of expression, as demonstrated in this latest abuse. Example:

https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/25325826.man-banned-glasgow-city-centre-palestine-protest/

Old Clip Of Stephen Miller Praising Torture Resurfaces Amid Aggressive Immigration Enforcement https://twp.ai/E6ADlC