My moment of clarity in the last few weeks was coming back to “Oh right, copyright is a hack, and one that is not serving us, particularly us on the margins”
The moral rights of authorship and the way we situate our legal process of ownership are, actually, kinda at odds. And it entirely misses the idea of a commons, both as community and as a cultural base to draw from.
I've long believed that we, collectively, should own our culture — to have modern myths be Copyright 1972 LucasFilm, the traditional songs we sing Copyright 1922, now owned by Warner/Chappell Music is one of the things I find repugnant about the situation we find ourselves in.
That said, reconciling that with the behavior of the AI companies, _particularly_ the American ones? It's hard. Google abuses its monopoly position; Microsoft has forced harmful and terrible tooling on people at every turn; OpenAI is run by someone who actively despises art and does not understand it; and Anthropic is run by a guy who is trying to make sure the apocalypse has a pleasant demeanor and doesn't offend any corporations on the way. All of the above have scraped the web with no active consent — and that's largely fine, that's what putting things in common _is_, that's the beauty of the open information world we have the remnants of — but also actively evading measures people put in place to stop it and with absolutely no willingness to engage with the process. Extracting from the commons _is_ the tragedy of the commons.
It does not mean that enlarging the commons with the resulting tools is bad. The doctrine of original sin is a Christian concept I do not subscribe to. The concept of 'fruit of the poisonous tree' is a legal tool to fix power relations not a moral stance. They're worth understanding, but they are not absolute moral stances that are self-evident.
These are not harmless tools, but so too putting hard regulation and corporate, legalistic scrutiny on everything has a vastly negative impact: it is a yoke on human creativity and community to the reins of capital.
And, so too, disruption has huge costs. We are, apparently, committed to doing things the worst possible way. One can just hope that we capture the good too, because the ride has started and it's rather late to get off.
In all seriousness, there are a ton of possible scenarios. The Iranian regime is weaker than it has ever been. I deeply hope for the liberation of Iranian people, especially oppressed minorities. Meanwhile, the US is lead by the most incompetent leadership ever (which is really saying a lot).
The Kurds, who could be the keystone ground forces needed to collapse the regime have been betrayed by the US so many times that they may not rise up (correctly) predicting that the US will stab them in the back at the fist chance.
But they are also a highly oppressed group in Iran, and may well take this opportunity. I don't know enough about this region to make any kind of reasonable prediction.
There are a huge number of unknowns, which is really *not* what anyone wants when starting a conflict.
To Iranian people, I wish you freedom and self-determination against all actors. To the US military, I wish you the best of luck getting your whole behive-dick situation.
“Of all the possible Middle East scenarios, 🔥the current state of play is one of the worst for the global economy,”
says the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s head of global economics, Joseph Capurso.
He added: 💥“We expect the situation to escalate before it de-escalates.
“Iran’s leadership and military capabilities have been significantly degraded.
However, what is unknown is their intent and capability to block the
For those wondering about the bizarre Apache helicopter flyover of a No Kings rally and "spontaneous" visit to Kid Rock's mansion, whether it was intentionally orchestrated (seems likely to me) or not, the effect was to send a public signal to the military that acts of allegiance to Trump and his supporters will get rewarded and shielded with impunity, even if they're flagrant violations of military codes and procedures.
It's another step in the fascist playbook of getting the military in line to support tyrannical acts, so it's very much not a "no harm no foul" situation.
As for why I think it's more likely quite deliberate: those helicopters don't fly without thousands of dollars of fuel, air traffic control (or you're creating some *serious* danger going without), and other logistical support. There's no way that level of risk makes personal sense to some random army helicopter pilots, just for the benefit of pulling a public stunt? These aren't random rookies in basic training, it takes serious skill and many hours of training to successfully pilot a helicopter at all. Why risk your entire military career on a stunt, and how did you convince an entire ground crew and air traffic control tower to get in on it? Having some kind of orders/encouragement/guarantee of impunity from above makes the most sense. I'd be 0% surprised if Hegseth directly gave the orders/go-ahead and the show of an "investigation into insubordination" that gets publicly cancelled by Hegseth personally is an entirely intentional result if not the main objective.
Also buzzing the No Kings rally was 100% intentional.
#NoKings
This is a great example of the drum I’m always beating about elected officials: we lead, they follow.
And yes, it matters who we elect, and no, they’re not “all the same” (my dude, come on). It matters •not• because we can count on them to come save us — we cannot and •must• not — but because when we do the work, they can become tools of and extensions of our own power. We elected Moriarty, we set up the situation for her to do this, and now she’s doing it. We led, she followed.
I really hope she pulls it off. I’ll keep doing my part on the ground.
While I am struggling to find any detailed media reports about the current situation in #Venezuela, the Fediverse is already certain that the U.S. has invaded the country “just like russia” did with Ukraine. Would we not have seen an invasion force being built up (like the russian one before 24 February 2022)? 🤔
Folks, this is a general Gaza Verified message.
Please note that while we know the unconscionable situation people in Gaza are having to go through, we are also seeing a rise (from a small number of people) of mass tagging of people in messages and unsolicited direct messages.
To our friends and families in Gaza Verified: this is against the rules of almost every server, including the one your account is on and it will get your account limited or suspended. It is also against our…
@… For better and worse, the geopolitical situation also seems to have been the final push that some folks out there needed to ask themselves why their whole lives rely on American SaaS.
And while I hate the situation that got us there, it’s heartening to see some folks ask themselves that question.
This sums the #VENEZUELA situation up nicely:
For anyone questioning the legality of attacking Venezuela and abducting their leader:
Remember we're talking about a highly corrupt leader, a known criminal who used his high office to make billions for himself, and has manipulated elections to stay in power, has used his military against his own citizens, has protected his corrupt friends and punished his political enemies.
And the President of Venezuela did some bad things too.
Ser vi her samme situation fra to forskellige sider? 🤔
#BotModBot
The reason Grok so easily can generate nudes of children is because it is trained on that type of content. It is not using "imagination".
Too few are saying this part aloud. Any face generated using image-gens can be from a situation of abuse.
New board game: #Fjords by Franz-Benno Delonge (here with additions by Phil Walker-Harding), illustrated by Beth Sobel
Don’t find the inspiration toot, we saw a picture of the tiles and vikings somewhere as illustration for something non-gaming from Finland. Bought it today at „Au paradis du jeu“
The current situation in between the UK and the US feels like Griff calling Marty chicken in the Cafe 80s.
So for many folks - cancelling their Hilton Honors membership was a way to let the chain know that their handling of the situation in Minneapolis was unacceptable.
Nice techdirt article and template for those perhaps looking to do the same https://www.techdirt.com/2026/01/07/dear-h
Learning how to psyop Third World populations with Manual of The Mercenary Soldier
https://archive.org/details/PaulBalorManualOfTheMercenarySoldier
Badly played Heather. I've somehow allowed the situation to arise where the cats have got into the same bag as my #knitting 😱 Tails is sitting on it now so I risk making things far worse if I try to rescue it. It'll be treat time soon so I'll rescue it then.
Permeation of hydrogen across graphdiyne: molecular dynamics vs. quantum simulations and role of membrane motion
Mateo Rodr\'iguez, Jos\'e Campos-Mart\'inez, Marta I. Hern\'andez
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24827 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.24827 https://arxiv.org/html/2603.24827
arXiv:2603.24827v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Previous research based on electronic structure calculations and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have demonstrated that graphdiyne (GDY) is a very suitable two-dimensional membrane for the separation of small molecules in a gas mixture of different species. However, quantum effects may play a role in the dynamics of these permeation processes when light molecules are the ones involved in the crossing of the GDY subnanometric pores. In this work we report rigorous quantum-mechanical calculations together with equivalent MD simulations of the transport of H2 molecules through a static GDY membrane, as a case study for the validity of the application to these problems of classical dynamics. The force fields employed are based on an improved Lennard-Jones formulation, with parameters optimized by means of accurate ab initio calculations. It is found that, although quantum effects are still significant at the temperatures of interest (between 250 and 350 K), MD simulations are able to reasonably reproduce the dependence of the quantum permeances with the temperature. Moreover, MD permeances computed with quantum corrections through Feynman-Hibbs effective potentials provide a lower bound to quantum permeances, while the pure classical counterpart gives an upper bound, thus leading to a well delimited range of confidence of the permeation results. Furthermore, within MD simulations it is possible to incorporate the thermal motion of the GDY layer and in this situation it is observed an enhancement of the permeances with respect to the fixed membrane case, due to a significant reduction of the permeation barriers when the GDY atoms are allowed to vibrate. It seems apparent therefore, that modeling the membrane motion is crucial to provide reliable simulations of the gas transport features.
toXiv_bot_toot
Which ~~phrase, paragraph, or page~~ are you most proud of writing this month?
#writerscoffeeclub 2026-01-29
"all of the people who live in the land that was promised and is now tortured have equal claim to be of the seed of Abraham"
It's not from fiction, it's from a bleak essay about the situation in
This poem by Shelley is so apposite to the world situation right now (shared by writer Paul McAuley).
A very special read. Here's the full text:
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/the-masque-of-anarchy/
This piece from the LRB blog, "It cannot read the human heart", about a (Chinese) plagiarism scandal, has total «Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote» energy, which is both particularly fitting and ironic in this situation.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/february/i
Following an official github documentation about integrating Claude with Github MCP ends up with github token in a plain text in ~/.claude.json. Other guides I found did the same, except revealing a different github secrets there.
That means I am really really really surprised that there are so few security incidents like axios. I'd guess the situation is much worse.
#claude
Janne Korhonen argues,
“When you hear the warnings beeping and flashing all the time,
it is only a natural reaction to lose focus
- and be paralysed by fear and despair.
That's why airplanes, for example, have toggles that turn the alarms off.
So that the pilots can concentrate better on working the problem.
Pilots and especially astronauts are trained to "work the problem."
Even, perhaps especially, if the situation seems truly hop…
The Incoming Energy Crisis
What the Closure of the Strait of Hormuz Means for Europe and the World
A very good summary of the situation in the ground plus the geopolitical factors at play, by "European Geopolitical Journal"
https://europeangeopoliticaljournal.su
I have installed Arch and alpine on my laptop. I'm looking for a suitable OS that boot the device quickly. I can't see that much different between Arch and windows (2~3 min). Alpine is kind of helpful to the situation with ~1 min boot time.
Probably the major issue is the HDD in the lap.
#LinuxChallenge
"As you can tell, I think this was a bad gamble: it was very unlikely to succeed but instead always very likely to result in a significantly worse strategic situation for the United States, but only after it killed thousands of people unnecessarily. If you do a war where thousands of people die and billions of dollars are spent only to end up back where you started that is losing; if you end up worse than where you started, well, that is worse."
I suspect it's been said before, yet many have forgotten:
California's CPUC polices on the TNCs (Uber, Lyft, etc) that prohibited local regulation are example of how wealth transfer really works - Toward capital, not those at the lower income levels. This situation is absolutely shameful.
Pity I haven't heard concerns about this from politicians, especially those with strong SF connections, like Governor Newsom, or our reps in Sacramento.
SF taxi drivers wan…
I suspect it's been said before, yet many have forgotten:
California's CPUC polices on the TNCs (Uber, Lyft, etc) that prohibited local regulation are example of how wealth transfer really works - Toward capital, not those at the lower income levels. This situation is absolutely shameful.
Pity I haven't heard concerns about this from politicians, especially those with strong SF connections, like Governor Newsom, or our reps in Sacramento.
SF taxi drivers wan…
So, now the nutz are thinking of invading and occupying Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export terminal.
I wonder if the nutz - cheato and baby bibi - recognize that they have placed Iran in a life-and-death situation.
And when faced with national death Iran may well choose to destroy the facilities on the island and the undersea pipelines leading to the island.
Iran knows that the main issue on the mind of many isn't the war itself - we are, after all, a country made…
“How many people does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
The answer – in SAPN’s case study – is an electrician, a plumber and software techs, who now all need to work together to ensure the home management system can control the proverbial lights.”
https://
'Tierische Begegnungen' #FotoVorschlag
'animal(ic) encounter'
I wasn't sure if I have a good or funny one to share with this topic. But I remembered visiting a wildlife park nearby at an autumn day.
It was a beautiful stroll through the park, watching the wildlife there when this situation came to be. Unplanned, just by pure luck.
And well.. I thin…
One more thought...
One of the more toxic elements of the whole "manosphere" thing relative to dating is the application of game theory to relationships. They've got people trying to "maximize their dating potential" or whatever, trying to find the "most attractive march" (which is it's own fucked up thing I'm not even going to dig in to). But that whole mindset is basically going to always leave you miserable.
Oh, you're single? You need a partner. Oh you have a partner? Could you get a "better" one?
It turns relationships into the endless pointless grind of capitalism. Fuck that. None of that shit makes sense. No matter how "well" you do in that game, you always feel like a loser. Everyone does. Fuck that game. Quit.
The constant desire makes you miserable and your misery makes you unlikable. When you let go of it, you leave room to experience what is instead of constantly imagining what could be.
You will always be able to imagine a better "could be" than what is now. By comparing your situation now to that "could be" you will always see your situation as bad because it's worse than your yardstick.
Is your situation good for you? Is it serving you? It can be good and it can also be possible to make it better. When was the last time you just experience your life instead of trying to strategize your way into "something better."
Throw away the yardstick. Something something Buddha.
Edit: all this is of course aside from the whole objectification thing, which is it's own whole set of fucked up. But yeah... All that shit is real bad news.
The overthrow and reported capture by invading US forces of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s hardline socialist president, will send a shiver of fear and consternation around the world. The coup is illegal, unprovoked and regionally and globally destabilising. It upends international norms, ignores sovereign territorial rights, and potentially creates an anarchic situation inside Venezuela itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/03/illegal-coup-venezuela-donald-trump-peace-war?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
I’m so glad we have military strategy being developed by a guy picked for being white…
At least he’s honest/capable enough to understand that it’s not a sure or even likely success. His predecessor likely would know the answer (it will be a disaster.) @…
The opening salvo of a war is not "a fast-moving situation." It is the deployment of a pre-assembled target list under zero pressure to outpace an adversary. #minabstrike
Call for articles: Degrowth and Ecosocialism: the global picture
Degrowth UK plans to run a series of articles as a stock-take of degrowth and ecosocialism worldwide. We envisage two types of contribution. 1) Short pieces (up to 2,000 words) summarising the situation with regard to degrowth thinking and practice at a country level (or for large countries at a more regional level). 2) Longer pieces (up to 5,000 words) reviewing the state of degrowth and ecosocialism in…
RE: https://mastodon.social/@glynmoody/116141632957260263
Imagine if parents everywhere raised Conscientious Objectors; there would be no more war.
Do the world Rich really want a situation where AIs are fighting other AIs using drones and robots?
Last week, tramping the Milford Track with my whānau (it was stunning), I ended up chatting with a lone fellow tramper from Switzerland. Got to practice my German quite a lot... turns out he's a recently retired heart surgeon, who primarily did heart transplants. 😲 Turns out he wants nothing more to do with his profession & is very pessimistic about the EU social situation heading rightward. He finds Aotearoa magical & inspiring & is busy doing as many Great Walks as he possi…
A woman adopted as a toddler by an American war veteran,
who he found in the 1970s in an Iranian orphanage and raised as a Christian,
is being threatened with deportation to Iran, a country notoriously dangerous for Christians and now on the brink of war with the United States.
She is one of thousands adopted from abroad who were never granted citizenship because of a fracture at the intersection of adoption and immigration law.
The woman, who The Associated Pres…
I don't know if a JPEG would look better than the HEIF my iPhone generated but this two pictures really show how bad the situation currently is with the phone camera.
Both were shot on an iPhone 15 Pro Max with the 5x lense.
The one with the bright spot on the left is from the iPhone camera app and the one with the spot on the right is from another app which lets you shoot in plain #Raw
We have a hostage situation
Where do y'all get your random SMT breakouts from? I'm running low on SOIC8 to DIP8 ones and adafruit seems like they're no longer a good option. And I'm not in the mood to DIY every variant I need in kicad and send to oshpark.
There's a ton on aliexpress but I'm not sure how bad the tariff situation is for random one-off small items from China to the US these days... I know at one point there were threats of like $100 per low-value shipment once de minimis was …
Vibe coding provides a tantalizing answer in that situation: maybe it’s too varied to •abstract•, but not too varied to •plagiarize• and call it good.
This is something subtly different from abstraction. It’s not “do this in the standard way.” Instead, it’s “just rip off whatever other people are doing right now.”
A lot of people really want that — and tbh, a lot of them are not wrong to want it. I personally love the craft of programming, but let’s face it, a lot of software out there just needs to look like everything else and be done with it.
Middle East crisis live: IEA chief says Iran war energy crunch worse than 1970s oil crises and Ukraine war combined
The head of the International Energy Agency is addressing Australia’s national press club now and says the public needs to understand the “depth of the problem” facing the globe.
Fatih Birol starts by saying the situation is now “very serious”,
more so than the two oil crises in 1973 and 1979, and more serious than the gas crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion …
@… I think this is the perfect time to exercise my option to not vote, because my answer is “I do not know”.
It comes with some shame, but I must admit my eye has been turned away from those atrocities to others for the time being, and I have no clue if the situation now is any different than it was last I heard.
My gut instinct says no, but who am I to say?
This softly-delivered overview of renewable energy technologies eventually veers into a holistic overview of the current American situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
You know, the Climate Skeptics got it partly right. But they missed the fact that the situation is worse than predicted. The #ClimateModels haven't really understood the complex, interacting impacts of the #ClimateCrisis. They are worse and more diverse and happening faster than expected.…
You know, the Climate Skeptics got it partly right. But they missed the fact that the situation is worse than predicted. The #ClimateModels haven't really understood the complex, interacting impacts of the #ClimateCrisis. They are worse and more diverse and happening faster than expected.…
Trump’s economic agenda has created a new level of volatility for the federal budget,
as the Supreme Court ruling against many of his tariffs appeared to create a trillion-dollar hole on Friday morning that Trump quickly said he could fill.
Mr. Trump has reshaped the country’s fiscal situation since he took office last year.
He passed an expensive income tax cut that economists warned could put the already-indebted nation on an even more perilous path.
But he also ins…
Colonial nations didn't stop colonialism because they became moral. They stopped because it was untenable. The advancement of asymmetric warfare made it impossible to maintain colonial holdings and those empires crumbled.
The answer was neoliberalism and soft power. Trump had annihilated the financial systems that held that fragile order in place.
#Venezuela will probably end up trying to teach Trump the lesson everyone else learned in the 20th century, but since he's incapable of learning it may very well teach him the lesson Afghanistan taught the USSR.
We'll see how it goes.
It's still possible that we could end up with the US interfering so much that the only people left able to defend space are anarchists. South and Central America actually has some really interesting and advanced anarchist tendencies, so fucking with that could absolutely blow up in Trump (and every other authoritarian's) face.
I hope that the Venezuelan people can take advantage of the situation to get rid of both a shitty dictator and the shitty colonizers who want to replace him.
Our Panic World episode about ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis is out.
You can watch the video version by clicking the embed and you can listen to an audio version anywhere you get your podcasts.
The situation in Minneapolis is escalating rapidly.
Last night, the Department of Homeland Security said they arrested eight “rioters,”
after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tried to clear out protesters camped out at the Whipple Federal Building,
ICE’s de f…
Making extreme threats -- and walking them back -- will again provide Trump with the illusion of agency.
But he no longer has control of events in Iran.
He does not get to decide when the conflict ends.
Markets are figuring out that that will probably be up to Tehran.
Oil rebounded on Tuesday and stocks gave up much of their Monday gains
after Iranian officials denied the “productive conversations” Trump claimed had taken place
“regarding a complete and t…
Catholic personnel in the US military could in good conscience consider disobeying orders to attack Greenland,
according to the bishop responsible for their pastoral care.
The Archbishop of the Military Services #Timothy #Broglio said personnel
“could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to…
Drones over base where Rubio, Hegseth live raise security concerns
U.S. officials detected unidentified drones above the Washington Army base where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live,
according to three people briefed on the situation.
Officials have not determined where they came from, two of the people said.
The military is monitoring potential threats more closely because of the heightened alert level as the United States and …
The Gulf countries are in a no-win situation,
stuck between a belligerent Israel that has no qualms about using violence to achieve its strategic aims
and a desperate Iran lashing out against U.S. allies in the region as it tries to survive.
"No matter which side prevails, Gulf states have realized how vulnerable they are despite U.S. security guarantees.
“In either scenario, I don’t think that the Gulf states will be happy with the outcome,”
says Kareem …
A man armed with a rifle rammed a vehicle into the nation's largest Reform synagogue, in a Detroit suburb,
and was fatally shot by security, The Associated Press has learned.
That's according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday.
The vehicle caught on fire after crashing into the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, the person said
Retired Army Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson said that President Trump would be “smart” to “declare victory” in the conflict against Iran and “go home.”
“Well, this war will end whenever Donald Trump says it’s going to end, whenever he decides to declare victory.
And if he was smart, he’d declare victory today and go home,
because this is not going well.
We have a more radicalized regime in place now,” Anderson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room.”
“The […
Britain's Keir Starmer has agreed with Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni to “work closely together” in navigating commercial shipping through the strait of Hormuz.
A spokesperson for Starmer said the prime minister spoke to the leaders of Germany and Italy on Monday night “about the situation in the Middle East, discussing the strait of Hormuz.”
He said:
They agreed on the vital importance of freedom of navigation for vessels through these waters. They ag…
@aredridel@kolektiva.social
