Notices by Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al), page 54

@martinschlegel Yeah, no, I have no time for tankies either.

Damn… don’t you just hate it when committing genocide negatively impacts your credit rating? I mean, we’ve all been there, amirite? https://mastodon.social/@EndIsraeliApartheid/113236700325294586

“Profit!”

– Famous last words, the human race.

@martinschlegel Indeed.

@dansup To illustrate the second point:

https://ar.al/2019/01/11/i-was-wrong-about-google-and-facebook-theres-nothing-wrong-with-them-so-say-we-all/

@dansup Are you serious, Dan? Is this satire?

How did Meta/Facebook become a trillion-dollar corporation? By violating your privacy en masse.

https://ar.al/2022/02/07/everyone-hates-facebook-but-this-is-more-than-just-about-facebook/

What SWF is doing is giving Facebook legitimacy; enabling it to launder its reputation using *your* legitimacy.

Let me put it plainly: in Mark’s eyes PixelFed—however small—is a competitor and a potential future threat. He’s not going to help you hurt him. He will, however, embrace, extend and extinguish you.

The American way to break up a fight is to repeatedly stab the other guy until your guy wins.

#diplomacy #palestine #lebanon #middleEast #UnitedStates #USA #America #Biden #neoliberalism #imperialism #colonialism #israel #settlerColonialism #apartheid #ethnicCleansing #warCrimes #genocide

“Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”

—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, (Captain Beatty to Montag)

@RickiTarr I’m so sorry, Ricki. Sending you lots of love from across the pond.

🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕
🖕 “world leaders” 🖕
🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

@IanDSmith The rich have always been able to buy privacy. The goal should be to make everyone having privacy (and other human rights) by default, not just those who can pay more for it.

“From the White House, Biden has dutifully performed various roles to prolong the suffering in Gaza and expand Israeli aggression into a greater Middle East war. These include the roles of frustrated ally to an unhinged maniac, dishonest statesman in ceasefire talks, and loyal arms supplier to a regime of war criminals.

…

If Netanyahu is the monster in this ongoing nightmare, Biden is the mad scientist who keeps him alive.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/02/bidens-gaza-genocide-is-now-bidens-greater-middle-east-war/

#biden #genocideJoe #USA #israel #middleEast

Don’t worry gramps, we’ve all been watching you arm a genocide for most of the year. We know you’re “fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel.” https://journa.host/@w7voa/113233972113370760

This goes back to something I've ranted about in the past. Capitalism is incapable of comprehending the idea of a solved problem.

There is a class of problems for which optimal (or nearly optimal) solutions exist or could exist. Some of those solutions have existed for decades. But capitalism is never satisfied — growth must continue. So people keep trying to reinvent the wheel, making solutions that are more profitable but also more abstracted and inefficient.

Putting advertising on everything takes power.
Making everything internet connected takes power.
Pushing notifications takes power.
Autoplaying videos and sound takes power.
Tracking and data collection systems take power.
New "features" take power.

Don't even get me started on all this new "AI" bullshit.

I get that there are more impactful changes to society that can be made that would reduce our environmental impact more than writing better software. But it's still a thing that matters and should improve.

Laura’s* PenPot** session, Introduction to Flex and Grid Layout, will be live streamed via Peertube tomorrow from 2-3 PM UTC at https://peertube.kaleidos.net/w/g5F9Se2PK2934EFrLSuJ16

* @laura
** @penpot

#web #design #dev #FOSS #grid #flexBox #PenPot

@imarfisi 💕

@squared99 Selling billions upon billions of weapons to Israel and then sitting back and watching it commit genocide didn’t work out, then?

What’s a song that always a brings a tear to your eye?

I’ll start:

She Used to Be Mine (by Sara Bareilles, from the musical Waitress).