Violence begets violence, so many religions say. Americans should know. After all, the United States – a nation founded on Indigenous genocide, African enslavement and open rebellion against an imperial power to protect its wealthiest citizens – cannot help but be violent. What’s more, violence in the US is political, and the violence the country has carried out overseas over the generations has always been connected to its imperialist ambitions and racism. From the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites on June 21 to the everyday violence in rhetoric and reality within the US, the likes of President Donald Trump continue to stoke the violent impulses of a violence‑prone nation.

Political violence is quintessentially American

The US cannot claim innocence – political violence shaped its past and defines its present.

^{Donald Earl Collins (Al Jazeera)}

cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47871600

(I am not affiliated with the project at all, just an end user.)

Announcement: Retirement of Readarr

We would like to announce that the Readarr project has been retired. This difficult decision was made due to a combination of factors: the project's metadata has become unusable, we no longer have the time to remake or repair it, and the community effort to transition to using Open Library as the source has stalled without much progress.

Third-party metadata mirrors exist, but as we're not involved with them at all, we cannot provide support for them. Use of them is entirely at your own risk. The most popular mirror appears to be rreading-glasses.

Without anyone to take over Readarr development, we expect it to wither away, so we still encourage you to seek alternatives to Readarr.

Key Points

• Effective Immediately: The retirement takes effect immediately. Please stay tuned for any possible further communications.
• Support Window: We will provide support during a brief transition period to help with troubleshooting non metadata related issues.
• Alternative Solutions: Users are encouraged to explore and adopt any other possible solutions as alternatives to Readarr.
• Opportunities for Revival: We are open to someone taking over and revitalizing the project. If you are interested, please get in touch.
• Gratitude: We extend our deepest gratitude to all the contributors and community members who supported Readarr over the years.

Thank you for being part of the Readarr journey. For any inquiries or assistance during this transition, please contact our team.

Sincerely,
The Servarr Team

The github repo has been archived.

GitHub - Readarr/Readarr: Book Manager and Automation (Sonarr for Ebooks)

Book Manager and Automation (Sonarr for Ebooks). Contribute to Readarr/Readarr development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub

Two babies died of starvation in Gaza due to Israel’s continuing blockade of vital aid. The deaths come as the US approved $30 million in funding for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food from its aid centres.

Babies starve to death in Gaza as US approves more GHF funding

^{Al Jazeera}

Normalization between Damascus and Tel Aviv means that hundreds of thousands of people died and a stable nation was destroyed, while every ethnic/religious group turned on each other, all so that Israel could usurp more territory and deal a blow to the Palestinian resistance. There’s no way to sugar coat it.

If Syria Normalizes Ties with Israel, It Is Complicit in Genocide - Analysis - Palestine Chronicle

As has always been the case, Palestine is the litmus test, and Damascus has so far failed it dramatically. 

^{admin (Palestine Chronicle)}

Almost 84,000 people died in Gaza between October 2023 and early January 2025 as a result of the Hamas–Israel war, estimates the first independent survey of deaths. More than half of the people killed were women aged 18–64, children or people over 65, reports the study, which was posted on the preprint server medRxiv last week1. It has not been peer reviewed.

First independent survey of deaths in Gaza reports more than 80,000 fatalities

Results align with other efforts to count the number of people killed amid the ongoing conflict.

^{Fieldhouse, Rachel}

https://healthimaging.com/topics/medical-imaging/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri/new-ai-enabled-helium-free-mri-system-earns-fda-clearance

Government condemns Glastonbury chants aired live on BBC (2025-06-28)

bbc.com/news/articles/c33514nr…
———

>> The [UK] government has "strongly condemned" chants at #Glastonbury Festival from rap punk duo Bob Vylan calling for "death" to the Israeli military and broadcast live on the BBC.

>> Rapper Bobby Vylan led chants of "free, free Palestine" and "death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]" during their set, which came just before Belfast rap trio Kneecap.

>> A BBC spokesperson said some of the comments were "deeply offensive", adding it had issued a warning on screen about "very strong and discriminatory language". The set will not be available to rewatch on BBC iPlayer.

>> Police said they were reviewing videos of comments made by Bob Vylan and #Kneecap to decide whether any offences had been committed.

#BobVylan #FreePalestine
@palestine@a.gup.pe @israel

Government condemns Glastonbury chants aired live on BBC

Chants from rap duo Bob Vylan were streamed live and called for "death" to the Israeli military.

^{Zahra Fatima (BBC News)}

It was the hardest day of my life. I’ve never felt humiliation like I did that day.

I hope food can get through soon and be distributed in a respectful way, without humiliation and killing. The current system is chaotic and deadly.

There’s no justice in it. Most end up with nothing, because there’s no organised system and there’s too little aid for too many people.

‘My journey to get aid in Gaza was like Squid Game’

Editor’s note: The following personal account of Yousef al-Ajouri, 40, was told to Palestinian journalist and MEE contributor Ahmed Dremly in Gaza City. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

^{Ahmed Dremly (Middle East Eye)}

Looking back, my subscription-ending journey—or perhaps more accurately, subscription-consciousness journey—was a product, at least in part, of post-COVID lockdown reflections on what I really need and how I’d really like to spend my time. The excess of my subscriptions had started to feel akin to hoarding, and I needed to clear space, even if most of that space was intangible. There was also the lightbulb realization that has become more and more common amongst Millennials, that, despite our monthly investments in accessing various forms of media, we don’t actually own most of the culture that we consume. What’s more, should the companies that do own that media go defunct or be sold to entities that we may prefer not to do business with, we really wouldn’t have much recourse—except to unsubscribe.

This could mean years and years of playlists and TV shows and films that we would no longer have access to because they were never really ours to begin with, ultimately leaving us with nothing. And while I’m not interested in owning many things from culture, save for books and some fashions, I do think ownership of culture in its various forms serves more than capitalistic desire. Our things can be physical memories of what we love or once did, what has been passed on and gifted to us, and sometimes, reminders of what we saved and scraped for—emblems of hard-fought earnings. We are robbed of this when we choose to rent something out of convenience or compulsion instead of mindfully acquiring things that are truly meaningful to us.

https://conversationalist.org/2025/06/25/soapbox-unsubscribe-subscriptions-community-streaming-platforms-netflix-spotify-amazon-capitalism/

“We want our publishers to stand with us. To make a pledge that they will never release books that were created by machines.”

Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers

To Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, and all other publishers of America: We are standing on a precipice. At its simplest level, our job as …

^{Literary Hub}

Brother has indicated that this vulnerability cannot be fully remediated in firmware, and has required a change to the manufacturing process of all affected models.

On May 19, China’s top law enforcement agency released measures for the roll-out of “cyber IDs” (网络身份认证), a new form of user identification to monitor internet users. Although the measures were released as a draft over the summer last year, they have only just been finalized, and will come into effect in mid-July.

According to the measures, introduced by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), each internet user in China will be issued with a unique “web number,” or wanghao (网号), that is linked to their personal information. While these IDs are, according to the MPS notice, to be issued on a strictly voluntary basis through public service platforms, the government appears to have been working on this system for quite some time — and state media are strongly promoting it as a means of guaranteeing personal “information security” (信息安全). With big plans afoot for how these IDs will be deployed, one obvious question is whether these measures will remain voluntary.

Lingua Sinica Newsletter, 8 August

News, analysis, and commentary on Chinese-language media from the PRC and beyond.

^{Lingua Sinica}

On May 19, China’s top law enforcement agency released measures for the roll-out of “cyber IDs” (网络身份认证), a new form of user identification to monitor internet users. Although the measures were released as a draft over the summer last year, they have only just been finalized, and will come into effect in mid-July.

According to the measures, introduced by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), each internet user in China will be issued with a unique “web number,” or wanghao (网号), that is linked to their personal information. While these IDs are, according to the MPS notice, to be issued on a strictly voluntary basis through public service platforms, the government appears to have been working on this system for quite some time — and state media are strongly promoting it as a means of guaranteeing personal “information security” (信息安全). With big plans afoot for how these IDs will be deployed, one obvious question is whether these measures will remain voluntary.

Lingua Sinica Newsletter, 8 August

News, analysis, and commentary on Chinese-language media from the PRC and beyond.

^{Lingua Sinica}

cross-posted from: slrpnk.net/post/23993774

Practical Retrofitting for Obsolete Devices | Much like classic cars can be fitted with an EV motor, it is possible to retrofit older devices in order to make them usable again in a connected world

I created a new community on PieFed ( !action_movies@piefed.social ) and tried using lemmy-federate.com/ to get federated across other instances, but get an "instance is not registered" error.

Apparently, there are... issues?
lemmy.ca/post/45479147

So wondering about other ways to get federated.

1. Can I do it myself, at least for the one other instance where I have an account (lemmy.ca)?
   To me, at the moment it seems a bit 'chicken and egg'. I can't see it on lemmy.ca, so I can't subscribe to it from lemmy.ca. And lemmy.ca won't federate it until I subscribe to it. I must have it wrong.
2. Promo communities: I know about those, but I don't want to use them just yet. This is a "soft launch" until I get more familiar with having a community and get some more content into it.
3. Other ways?

Thanks.

Ever since Microsoft announced that it would end support for Windows 10 in October, the company has been trying hard to convince users to make the switch to Windows 11. First, it warned that unsupported Windows 10 PCs will no longer receive security updates, making them easy targets for hackers. Later, it advised users to trade in their old computers and buy a new one that comes preloaded with all the Windows 11 goodies.

Now, once again, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President and Consumer Chief Marketing Officer, Yusuf Mehdi, has published a fresh blog highlighting all the benefits and advantages of Windows 11, including a statement claiming that Windows 11 PCs are up to 2.3 times faster than Windows 10 PCs. However, what they failed to make clear is that this claim is entirely based on a comparison of new versus old hardware, rather than the software itself.

Microsoft’s sketchy Win 10 vs Win 11 performance claims pit a 9-year-old PC against a modern machine to claim 2.3X gain

Odd that no AMD PCs were included in the performance comparison.

^{Hassam Nasir (Tom's Hardware)}

I'm trying out starting a new community.

• !action_movies@piefed.social
• piefed.social/c/action_movies

I wanted to crosspost some posts I already made elsewhere, e.g. piefed.social/post/984528 / lemmy.ca/post/46999890

But there's no crosspost button.
1. Is there a way to do it?
2. And I'm curious: why is there no crosspost button for so many posts?