Notices by Cathal Garvey (cathal@social.coop)

I'm almost surprised that Trumpism hasn't capitalised on these similarities, because there is so much overlap between Trumpism and the more reactionary elements of "Environmentalism", that it wouldn't take much to rebrand Trumpism for that audience. They already distrust most politics, media, and science, and many of them are already obsessively "local" in outlook. Make your national socialism look more socialist, and put a green twist on it, they're yours. This is a real threat. It can happen.

Another issue that I don't see get enough discussion or traffic, when it comes to #AntiIntellectualism: Nothing about the #Trumpism phenomenon was surprising to me, after seeing so much of the AntiGMO movement's tactics, rhetoric, and culture.
They represent a clade that aggressively distrust "MSM" and consensus science. They have ideological leaders who they could trivially discredit with quick objective research. When challenged, they fall quickly to accusations of shilling and conspiracy.

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov
This gives me the feels. Ask any scientist working on things-that-matter, odds are they've seen this since forever. Anti GMO, Anti Nuclear Power, Anti Vax... all use the same language and rhetoric of "corrupt" scientists secretly owned by baddies.
(h/t KHayHoe on Twitter)

#NSA’s New Weak, ISO-Rejected, Poorly Documented "Encryption" Algorithm "Speck" now in #Linux Kernel 4.17
https://itsfoss.com/nsas-encryption-algorithm-in-linux-kernel-is-creating-unease-in-the-community/
#backdoor #privacy #iot #idiocy #Google

@Antanicus And, it may amuse you to learn that when I say these things (no patents, more design for permaculture and nutrition) to other science advocates, they often immediately assume I'm against GE and science generally. The effect cuts me both ways: everyone things I'm the other camp. Me, I hate camps.

@Shufei For sure: organic is a melange of good and bad concepts. Many of the good concepts have gone mainstream, like no-till, cover cropping etc.
On the subject of gene/variety patents, I wholly agree those are wrong. But those have actually nothing to do with GE: you can patent a gene variant you discovered in a landrace and bred in. You can patent any new variety, whether genes are new or not. GE is a breeding method, patenting is a monopoly method. Organic permits patents.

Also can we kill organic so that there're room in the public consciousness for an actually environmentally sound farming movement/brand?
Oh shit I just fell into the revolutionary trap of assuming the replacement will be better..

As a marketing tactic, fear is amazing because it spreads itself. It's hardly surprising that Organic has been such a marketing success story.
If regulations hadn't hit back at "alternative medicine" making medical claims, their fear-based marketing might have shredded trust in real medicine like Organic has shredded trust in nonideological farming.
Without "regulating all the things", a poor outcome in itself, how do we counter this natural social bias toward trusting fear?

@ajeremias
@Antanicus @alfred @ej
Again: the IARC monograph was constructed using carefully selected studies to designate Glyphosate as a carcinogen. It excluded studies that found it safe. And they could still only make it look "as bad as coffee". The process by which they did this, has attracted a lot of scrutiny. The chairperson of the study group, it turns out, is an unqualified activist. Not a toxicologist. Toxicologists, meanwhile, agree.

@gc You're not really self hosting if you do it using someone else's backbone: https://startyourownisp.com/
:P

@sophia
Where I work our job application forms used to have a field that read "github profile", until I requested a change to "code repository hosting profile". It was never the case that we'd reject gitlab or a self-hosted repo, it was just a cultural default.

@lawremipsum
We agree that platform design creates a mold for anti/patterns of behaviour. But I don't think someone implementing a feature in their own software project, or for their own instance, should have to weather such abuse. If people don't like a feature, they can fork. Or move to an instance that closer matches their values. Or, advocate like adults. Abuse isn't OK, whether levied on "little people" or "developers". Why is Garg less worthy of respect?

@gc (More seriously, AGPL all major implementations)

Has anyone made a site yet that helps you prepare airtight and comprehensive data-request and data-deletion notices for #GDPR, along with lists of suggested recipients like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Pipl, etc.?
#privacy

OK, the #LinkTax and #CensorshipMachines are coming unless we contact our EU Parlaimentarians and make some noise: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html
Summary:
* #LinkTax = Copyright extends to summary snippets, and potentially hyperlinks themselves, so sites can sue you for linking to them without paying a fee. Under current draft, _sites cannot waive this right for search/indexing_.
* #CensorshipMachines = Sites become liable for all uploads and must implement magical perfect upload filters or die.

#adtech, the business of spying on people without consent in order to sell mind control solutions to third parties on shady real-time exchanges, is suffering a lot today thanks to the #GDPR:
https://digiday.com/media/gdpr-mayhem-programmatic-ad-buying-plummets-europe/
Thanks #EU! Keep up the good work. :)
(thanks @david_ross and @rysiek)

Still my favourite page on the internet: https://opensource.google.com/docs/using/agpl-policy/ #freesoftware #fuckoffgoogle

@Angle Coal and Car emissions are well understood to cause huge death tolls, though I can't say I know whether it adds up to what this researcher indicates. This is a huge, huge part of the argument for a new look at Nuclear power, though; not only is it safer and less ecotoxic in the immediate sense, but it doesn't cause deadly pollution like fossil fuels, either. Even meltdown fallout, it turns out, kills factors-fewer people.

Ah, wow. Going through old projects, found my old pre-fediverse "federated censorship-resistant Microstatus network", TinyStatus. 30 Lines of #Python, designed to be shareable by email, forum-posts, printouts, etcetera. Near-unreadable code (heavily #codegolf'd) But, was designed to be spam-resistant!
https://github.com/cathalgarvey/tinystatus/blob/master/TinyStatus_Short.py https://social.coop/media/hEbxRMO8CVhU5_SkU2o
#censorship #freespeech

One problem (that isn't strictly unique to the Fediverse, but appears pretty common here vs. centralised platforms), is that because plenty of people have alts, if you mute or block someone you may find yourself later interacting with them again under a different name or guise without knowing.
I've had a paranoia a few times that I've boosted or followed someone I'd previously designated "fairly toxic", though thankfully it's been a false alarm in all but one case.
Nothing to be done, though 🤷