Barx [none/use name]

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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: May 20th, 2024

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  • This article is about one study, by CCDH, who did not publish much of anything about their methodology. CCDH’s CEO was an anti-Corbynite that fed into the false accusations of antisemitism against the left for having solidarity with Palestinians and CCDH continues to prominently focus on antisemitism and trying to blur the line between antisemitism and antizionism. The faction that he supported is currently in power in Labour and are supporters of Israel during this genocide.

    I would not trust them to make good calls on what is an accurate community note vs. not. Community notes are all over the place but on average depict a bazinga liberal position, which is not actually the most accurate one. Having looked at their “study” paper, their first and most promindnt criterion for accuracy was whether community note aligned with fact-checking websites. Fact-checking websites are, to put it bluntly, bullshit, and really just reflect the author’s opinion.

    For example, one of the things they claim is election misinformation is the claim that voting systems are unreliable. They are saying this is an inaccurate or misleading claim. In the US, it is accurate to say that it’s voting systems are unreliable. They are frequently run using voting machines from private companies, black boxes with no real way to verify their results that are actually implemented in most places, and polling stations often only gave 1 or 2, so when they break people are disenfranchised. Every computer security expert audit says you should not trust these systems and should use paper ballots with manual observable recounts. The allegation of misinformation is really about what is perceived to be voter suppression, of people feeling like they shouldn’t vote because it won’t count anyways. This is not actually misinformation, though: the voting machines are unreliable, that is the actual problem in this situation, not the use of repeating a fact in your favor.

    It is salient that at no point do they highlight the naked propaganda for Zionism that has been rampant on social media, including about elections. This was presumably filtered out early on by their selection of what counts as a topic of interest for their analysis.

    Finally, the clear purpose of CCDH is to lobby for having more oversight on social media, including large, centralized moderation teams that have historically been cozy with liberal governments.







  • As a start, follow the 3-2-1 rule:

    • At least 3 copies of the data.

    • On at least 2 different devices / media.

    • At least 1 offsite backup.

    I would add one more thing: invest in a process for verifying that your backups are working. Like a test system that is occasionally restored to from backups.

    Let’s say what you care about most is photos. You will want to store them locally on a computer somewhere (one copy) and offsite somewhere (second copy). So all you need to do is figure out one more local or offsite location for your third copy. Offsite is probably best but is more expensive. I would encrypt the data and then store on the cloud for my main offsite backup. This way your data is private so it doesn’t matter that it is stored in someone else’s server.

    I am personally a fan of Borg backup because you can do incremental backups with a retention policy (like Macs’ Time Machine), the archive is deduped, and the archive can be encrypted.

    Consider this option:

    1. Your data raw on a server/computer in your home.

    2. An encrypted, deduped archive on that sane computer.

    3. That archive regularly copied to a second device (ideally another medium) and synchronized to a cloud file storage system.

    4. A backup restoration test process that takes the backups and shows that they restores important files, the right number, size, etc.

    If disaster strikes and all your local copies are toast, this strategy ensures you don’t lose important data. Regular restore testing ensures the remote copy is valid. If you have two cloyd copies, you are protected against one of the providers screwing up and removing data without you knowing and fixing it.





  • OWS was not well-organized. Palestinian solidarity groups are doing better. The key difference is in being able to coherently make informed decisions as a group and then act on them as one.

    Every OWS encampment was basically 5-30 orgs all doing their own thing and then fighting about horizontalism and being naive about how the cops and City Hall would treat them. We need to be able to act like 1-3 orgs (even if there are more), politically educate so we can avoid mistakes, and create good structure as early as possible so that expectations are set and time isn’t wasted and bad decisions are avoided.

    The US left is basically slowly relearning the basics of organizing. Get involved and make it go faster!




  • Governments have frequently laundered the surveillance state as “child protection” laws, pushing for a cozy relationship between companies with data and cops et al. They want the ability to snoop more or less whenever they want and will push in that direction. This kind of relationship is not just for cops, though. The same companies also gladly work with and hire people from intelligence agencies to craft narratives and manipulate sentiment. When a company doesn’t play that role as well as feds want, the hammer comes down (TikTok, Telegram).

    Though really, the actual question is why they are writing this article and why now. The answer is that Durov has been arrested and the author is attempting to justify it by piling on “Telegram is bad” claims while avoiding discussing the actual legal basis and evidence around his arrest. You will also note the sources used in this article are entirely government officials and NGOs in the constellation of NGOs that work directly with the government - or are unsourced stipulations. No academics were cited, nor free speech advocacy groups, or even lawyers.



  • Trump isn’t a fascist. In action he is actually a pretty standard reactionary liberal. You will notice that Biden has continued the salient policies that made liberals call him a fascist, such as extreme and horrible border policies (Dems actually outflanked the GOP on this from the right), anti-China policy, and extending militarism (like maximum pressure on Russia via Ukraine).

    He’s mostly just openly racist whereas the political class usually wraps itself in polite jargon bullshit before it fucks with a bunch of brown people.


  • The main ways you’re exposed to microplastics is through ingestion and breathing it in.

    To limit ingestion, yes the main thing to do is to avoid food and drink that comes in plastic containers. Reducing your consumption of processed foods will help with this. Eating mostly produce is a simpler way to approach this. Even though produce may often be transported in plastic, if you wash it before consumption you’ll have done pretty well. Ideally you would also have a reverse osmosis filter at home, as your water probably has microplastics as well (but less than bottled water!).

    To limit breathing it in, yes avoid frequent exposure to busy roads. They are often full of tire dust that is getting kicked up. This is cumulative, though. Walking by a busy street once is no big deal. Walking along one twice a day may add up.

    Overall, however, to address microplastics we will have to control the production of plastics and the use of plastics in the first place. For example, there would be a lot less tire dust if we used more rail to get around. And there would be less need for bottled water if water fountains were ubiquitous and so were standardized stainless steel water bottles. In addition, we could use biodegradable plastics for more packaging so that they don’t accumulate in bodies or the environment.

    But this last point, despite being the only real solution, will literally require the overthrow of capitalism. I’m for this and am happy to talk about it more, but it is a lot.




  • The company you work for is not your friend. If it is their body can they will use it to their benefit. Any benefit you receive will be incidental or simply part if their propaganda to get you to wear it for them.

    It will be used, primarily, to surveil employees. They will track your habits and ensure you are aware that every single thing you do for your shift is something your boss or their boss or their boss can come back to you with and reprimand you for. They will try to set performance targets that can be compared to your videos so they can tell you what an algorithm or a petty middle manager says you are doing wrong. Too much time helping a customer. You’re not folding clothes fast enough. Walk faster. No sitting. They will set keywords. Union. Break. Curse words. Your bosses’ names. They might not even review these things. The intimidation is enough. Maybe you’ll get new policies. See that black guy? Follow him. Get video. The algorithm said to do it so it can’t be racist. We’ll pass it along to the cops.

    Companies wouldn’t pay for it if they didn’t see a business angle and the obvious ones are control over employees and being able to use more video for “liability” defense.