This extension replaces images of Trump and Musk with a placeholder.

Soon I will add a configuration screen to it so you can put in any names you like.

addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firef…

UglyMug – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

Download UglyMug for Firefox. Replaces images of Trump and Musk with a placeholder

^{addons.mozilla.org}

https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2025/11/ice-came-to-dallas-city-hall-it-did-not-go-well-for-ice/

Launching a New Era for the Free State Project

As torches of liberty dim all around us, our flame in New Hampshire grows brighter every election cycle.

With so many losing hope for liberty in their states on November 4th, November 5th was the perfect time to launch our new website (details below) and welcome video — inviting liberty seekers to come home and join us in the birthplace of American liberty.

Watch our newly launched Free State Project promotion video — introducing new people to a better way to build liberty.

Thank you to our FSP Video Strategist, Reinita Susman, for producing this new video — utilizing footage and interviews from her upcoming documentary on the Free State Project.

Free State Project Website FSP.org

Launching a New Era for the Free State Project

As torches of liberty dim all around us, our flame in New Hampshire grows brighter every election cycle.

With so many losing hope for liberty in their states on November 4th, November 5th was the perfect time to launch our new website (details below) and welcome video — inviting liberty seekers to come home and join us in the birthplace of American liberty.

Watch our newly launched Free State Project promotion video — introducing new people to a better way to build liberty.

Thank you to our FSP Video Strategist, Reinita Susman, for producing this new video — utilizing footage and interviews from her upcoming documentary on the Free State Project.

Free State Project Website FSP.org

This is not a shitpost, it is live on .gov.

www.whitehouse.gov/mysafespace/

This runs roughly 100% too long and really could have benefited from an editor (yeah, we got those early points the first time and didn't need to be reminded), but the points are largely sound.

Tuesday, Republicans got crushed in elections across New Jersey, Virginia, and New York. Not close races. Not razor-thin margins. Massive defeats in states they’d convinced themselves were winnable after Trump’s 2024 victory.

Bret Baier—on Fox News, to Fox & Friends—had to explain to his audience how bad it was. “It’s a big loss,” he said. Not just the results, but “the spreads are surprising.” Young women “overwhelmingly” supported Democrats based on the economy and “those ICE images.” Based on how they “feel about the economy” versus “how Wall Street’s doing.”

Trump posted cryptically: “AND SO IT BEGINS.”

He’s right. Something has begun. Just not what he thinks.

The simulation is collapsing.

Not literal Matrix-style unreality. Something more precise and insidious: the manufactured consensus that authoritarianism was inevitable, that resistance was futile, that most people had become—or would become—what the sociopaths are.

The Simulation Is Collapsing

Tuesday, Republicans got crushed in elections across New Jersey, Virginia, and New York. Not close races. Not razor-thin margins. Massive defeats in states they’d convinced themselves were winnable…

^Techdirt

Tuesday was a great day at the ballot box for the planet, with climate-friendly initiatives and candidates winning nationwide.

In races from New York to Georgia to Washington, voters backed funding renewables, reining in energy costs, and building out mass transit — and the people promising to deliver those policies. On the whole, the results suggest Americans are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back climate action.

“This election was a decisive rejection of the Trump Administration’s ban on clean energy, multi-million dollar taxpayer bailouts for expensive dirtier energy sources like coal, and other ineffective proposals that will make costs go even higher,” Sara Schreiber of the League of Conservation Voters said in a statement.

It was a very good election for the climate

In the first election of President Trump's second term, voters make it abundantly clear that they still care about climate action.

^{Sophie Hurwitz (Grist)}

Mamdani, just like Johnson, and other popular leftist mayoral candidates like Katie Wilson in Seattle, will all face a common threat: debt from Wall Street and the strings that come with it. This structural challenge, addressed head on by campaigns like #CancelWallStreet, could prove to be even more difficult than winning an unthinkable race.

Take this example: the New York City public school district is in massive debt because of neoliberal policies from previous administrations. The district isn’t properly funded, and thus must rely on loans from creditors to make up for gaps. Mayor-Elect Mamdani is inheriting this situation — he didn’t create it. To put it bluntly, the debt service payments owed to Wall Street is a form of racialized extraction. Money that should be spent on New York City schools, students, and teachers is instead sent to Wall Street lenders and creditors. Creditors and credit ratings agencies will apply pressure on Mamdani to “reign in costs” and be “fiscally responsible” by making austerity-based cuts or being conservative with school funding at a time of broad right-wing attacks on education.

What we must do now is help Mamdani in his fight to generate more revenue for New York City schools and against the forces that will call for brutal austerity. It would be wise for him to work alongside a debtor’s movement powerful enough to challenge Wall Street directly, to demand that it loosen its grip on our cities, our public institutions, and our collective future. In fact, this is an opportunity for all mayors exhausted with the false choices Wall Street has “provided” to us to join forces in illuminating the capitalist grip on our cities — especially in advance of centrist and right-wing attacks against progressive policy agendas.

Zohran Won Main Street—Now He Must Face Wall Street

Mamdani will face a looming threat to his progressive agenda: debt

^{Debt Collective (In the Red)}

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/us/politics/hegseth-firing-military-leaders.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zU8.IyiC.q0SpxO2v-zTw

geteilt von: toast.ooo/post/10442557

Although Wayland has been GNOME’s default session since 2016, X11 has continued to linger in the codebase—until now. That changed with the recent merging of two PRs (here and here), which completely removed the X11 codebase from both Mutter, GNOME’s default window manager and compositor, as well as the GNOME Shell itself.

In other words, the GNOME project is finally closing one of the longest chapters in Linux desktop history. With the upcoming GNOME 50 release, scheduled for mid-march 2026, the desktop environment will officially drop support for the native X11 session, making Wayland the sole display system moving forward.

GNOME 50 Ends the X11 Era After Decades

GNOME 50 completes the long migration to Wayland, dropping X11 backend code and relying on XWayland for any remaining compatibility needs.

^{Bobby Borisov (Linuxiac)}

archive.ph/Jvmnn

Dutch Ready to Drop Nexperia Control If Chip Supply Resumes

The Netherlands is prepared to suspend its powers over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia in a move that would de-escalate a fight with Beijing that threatens to disrupt automotive production around the world.

^{Patrick Van Oosterom (Bloomberg)}

cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/45245084

Archived

China has transformed the Tibetan Plateau, one of the world’s most fragile environments, into a zone of extreme ecological stress under its state‑centric model of infrastructure expansion, militarisation, and resource extraction, reported the IANS new service Oct 6, citing Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs at the Institute for Security and Development Policy. The centre has accused China of engaging in ‘extractive colonialism’ in Tibet, with forced relocation of close to one million Tibetans.

The group’s report, published ahead of the UN’s climate change conference COP30 in November in Brazil, has said Tibet must no longer remain the blind spot of global environmental governance as the crisis unfolding on the ‘Roof of the World’ is already shaping the future of water, food, and energy security across the Indo‑Pacific and beyond.

The centre’s new Stockholm Paper, titled as ‘Wither Tibet in the Climate Crisis Agenda?’ has brought together more than 20 international experts to examine the Tibetan Plateau’s accelerating ecological breakdown and its far‑reaching implications for Asia’s water security, regional stability, and global climate governance.

Noting that the Tibetan Plateau, often referred to as the ‘Third Pole’, is warming at more than twice the global average, the report has warned that its glaciers are retreating, permafrost is thawing, and grasslands are degrading, threatening the delicate water systems that sustain nearly two billion people across South and Southeast Asia.

The report has expressed alarm that despite this planetary importance, Tibet remains largely absent from international climate diplomacy, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and successive COP negotiations.

[...]

The report has described this as “extractive colonialism”, a process in which the costs of global sustainability are borne by one of the planet’s most vulnerable ecosystems.

The resulting pollution, deforestation, and cultural displacement is found to undermine both environmental justice and human security, with the human dimension of Tibet’s transformation being equally severe.

The report has found that close to one million Tibetans have been forcibly relocated since the year 2000 under programs justified as ecological protection or poverty alleviation. What is more, many have been resettled multiple times, often without fair compensation or sustainable livelihoods. These relocations, together with demographic engineering and assimilationist education policies, erode cultural identity and weaken the traditional stewardship that has preserved Tibet’s high‑altitude ecology for centuries.

The paper has called for Tibet to be treated as a frontline of the global climate emergency, comparable in urgency to the Arctic or low‑lying island states. It has pointed out that the plateau’s stability is essential to monsoon patterns, biodiversity corridors, and continental climate regulation.

The report has presented a 10‑Point Framework for Global Action designed to embed Tibet within international climate cooperation.

The paper has stressed that protecting Tibet is not a political act but an ecological imperative that transcends national borders. Its degradation threatens Asia’s hydrological balance, undermines global carbon stability, and jeopardizes the livelihoods of nearly one‑third of humanity, the report has noted.

[...]

Ahead of COP30, Stockholm paper raises alarm over lack of global climate diplomacy on environmental devastation in Tibet - Tibetan Review

(TibetanReview.net, Oct07’25) – China has transformed the Tibetan Plateau, one of the world’s most fragile environments, into a zone of extreme ecological stress under its state‑centric model of infrastructure expansion, militarisation, and resource …

^{tibetanreview (Tibetan Review)}

Social media giant Meta is about to start reading users’ conversations, including direct messages (DMs) and chats with its AI, with no option to opt out other than not to use their platforms – which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which provides no option to turn its AI off. This data access will start in most of the world from 16 December though in the EU and UK, which have stricter data protection laws, it will start later – apparently from 4 March next year.

PC World Magazine reported:

The initiative will begin starting December 16th, 2025, initially outside the EU and UK where stricter data protection laws will force a later introduction. The data will be used to further personalize advertising and content, and it won’t be possible to opt out.

Meta spying

Industry media analyses have tended so far to focus on the issue of AI chats but Facebook, in a privacy update titled “Your activity and information that you provide” includes DMs in the data it can access, gather and use:

Meta has been known to provide ‘near real-time’ data on its users to the authorities since at least 2021, though previously this has not usually – at least officially – included the content of DMs. A report in Israel’s 972 Magazine and analysis by Tech for Palestine last year revealed that Israel’s ‘Lavender’ AI targeting system was using WhatsApp data to target Palestinians for murder, often based on as little as a ‘target’ being in a WhatsApp group with someone else who had been targeted and killed. One of 972’s sources told the magazine that after Lavender identified a victim, Israel:

bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.

Far beyond overreach

Journalist Jamal Khashoggi was also murdered in a Saudi embassy after his family’s WhatsApp messages were hacked by Israel’s ‘Pegasus’ spyware, which has also been used to spy on human rights activists, journalists, political opponents and Western government ministers.

Meta denies that its products contain backdoors and that it is (currently) reading messages. However, the company is now being sued in the US by its former head of security, who alleges that it allows thousands of its engineers to access sensitive user data and has not adequately tackled issues allowing the hacking of over 100,000 accounts a day. Complainant Attaullah Baig claims that the company ignored his warnings and sacked him for raising concerns. Meta denies the allegations.

The Meta issue comes on top of wider concerns over online security after digital rights group SMEX revealed that all Samsung mid-range handsets in large parts of the world come pre-installed with ‘unremovable’ Israeli spyware.

Oggi ho scoperto che anche io, nonostante io non sia una pianta, faccio la fotosintesi!!! Almeno, così mi è stato suggerito, e direi che potrebbe avere un senso — nel senso, si parlerà di “fotosintesi octofiliana” per un motivo, sennò credo che il meccanismo si chiamerebbe diversamente — nel momento in cui mi sono banalmente […]

octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…

minioctt

2025-11-07 17:19:40

fotosintesi octofiliana e nuove scoperte naturali (evidentemente faccio la fotosintesi come le piante e perciò sono triste se mi manca il sole)

Oggi ho scoperto che anche io, nonostante io non sia una pianta, faccio la fotosintesi!!! Almeno, così mi è stato suggerito, e direi che potrebbe avere un senso — nel senso, si parlerà di “fotosintesi octofiliana” per un motivo, sennò credo che il meccanismo si chiamerebbe diversamente — nel momento in cui mi sono banalmente lamentata che, con il cielo nuvoloso che c’è oggi, nella mia stanzetta al primo pomeriggio non entrava la quantità di luce di cui io necessito per… boh, per vedere qualsiasi oggetto in modo soddisfacente senza accendere la luce della scrivania, inclusa la vibrantezza dei colori di ogni cosa, come la mia fragile anima desidera e anzi, no, necessita. Non ho mai capito perché la mancanza del sole mi rende, a parte gli scherzi, un pochino più triste, ma forse questa spiegazione è la più logica (beh, non che io ne abbia altre da parte). 🌱

È comunque molto particolare il meteo oggi, perché pareva minacciare pioggia, ma alla fine non l’ha fatta… quindi, cosa c’erano a fare queste nuvole tutte sopra l’intero cielo a me scorgibile? Poi, se è per questo, stamattina pareva sereno e tranquillo, quindi è veramente bastato che mi distraessi per qualche ora (che stessi lontana da casa per qualche ora) per ritrovarmi poi questa sorpresa al mio altrimenti solenne risveglio (ritorno dal luogo lontano). Un po’ mi sento di fregare, che queste nuvole proprio oggi pomeriggio dovevano esserci, proprio quando io sono a casa, quando almeno qui in altri casi il sole c’è a quest’ora… al contrario della solita università, dove sono dovuta stare gli ultimi 3 pomeriggi di fila, dove è invece impossibile prendere sole di pomeriggio nella zona in cui devo stare io; ma su questo fatto servirà forse quasi un discorso specifico, perché quella situazione è ancora più particolare, e le vibe possono pericolosamente ricordare Gotham City. 😱
Vabbè, comunque: per me ci sta un botto, l’idea che ho bisogno anche della luce solare decisa, e non solo delle mie distrazioni, per stare tranquilla e felice, perché ho un requisito biologico simile alle piante… certamente è un ennesimo puntino che si aggiunge nel disegno della mia intricata lore. A proposito di disegno, però: ho approfittato di questa nuova rivelazione scientifica per disegnare una piccola rappresentazione di me, credo sufficientemente accurata, nel momento in cui sono in astinenza da fotosintesi, proprio come oggi pomeriggio… la mia piantina in testa si affloscia e potrebbe marcire, quindi attenzione. (Oppure, in realtà, è già marcia da sempre… nel senso che quella è in realtà muffa che mi è cresciuta nella testa, ed è uscita, e non una vera pianta? Quanta altra mia lore ci sarà ancora da scoprire???) Speriamo che almeno domani pomeriggio il sole mi cuocia allora, dai, che sennò vedete come sto… 🌻
#lore

Telegram

^Telegram

Describing the Trump administration’s depiction of Chicago as “untrue” and “simply not credible,” a federal judge has again ordered federal immigration authorities to limit their use of force during their crackdown in the area.

Ellis did not give an end date for her order, and no trial date has been set for the case. In the meantime, the parties will appear in court periodically for status updates.

Before announcing her latest order, Ellis described Chicago as a place “brimming with vitality and hope” as it works to move past a history that includes segregation and violence, with “everyday people standing watch to protect the most vulnerable among us.”

“The government would have people believe, instead, that the Chicagoland area is in a vise-hold of violence, ransacked by rioters and attacked by agitators,” Ellis said. “That simply is untrue. And the government’s own evidence in this case belies that assertion.

“After reviewing all of the evidence submitted and listening to the testimony, I find the defendants’ evidence simply not credible.”

The government has said agents have used justified force to respond to “rioters” and violence.

“Describing rapid-response networks [and] moms as professional agitators shows just how out of touch these agents are, and how incredible their views are,” Ellis said.

Federal Judge Blasts Border Patrol Boss For Lying, Extends Order Restricting Use Of Force

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis called the Trump administration's depiction of Chicago as besieged by violence "untrue" and "simply not credible."

^{Mina Bloom (Block Club Chicago)}

In case you’re wondering how the Senate was able to vote on this during a government shutdown, it’s because the Congressional Review Act remains a legislative function during a funding lapse.

The USFWS first introduced the plan under Biden, but the Trump administration is supporting it under pressure from loggers who argue that scrapping the plan could affect existing land-use plans, thus jeopardizing GOP efforts to increase logging, Politico reports.

The Senate vote on October 29 revealed an unusual divide between the Trump administration and certain Republicans. According to The Guardian, officials had encouraged Kennedy and other GOP members to support the proposal. And yet, the majority of votes in favor of Kennedy’s resolution were Republican, C-SPAN reports.

Activists have been similarly split on the issue. Some say the barred owl cull is a necessary measure to prevent extinction of the northern spotted owl, while others argue the plan is cruel and impractical and could have unintended consequences for the ecosystem.

Controversial Plan to Kill 500,000 Barred Owls in U.S. Clears Major Hurdle

A controversial conservation strategy that has sparked division among both lawmakers and environmentalists will move forward.

^{Ellyn Lapointe (Gizmodo)}

Some called for him to step down. Roberts, who holds a PhD in history and spearheaded the rightwing manifesto Project 2025, has moved the foundation into more of a Trumpian stance since he joined in 2021.

He has said he will not resign his position, writing on X: “I’m staying. I’m all in.”

The Washington Post reports that “at least” five members of an antisemitism taskforce at the organization have resigned in protest. One staffer in the internal meeting called the issue her “final straw”.

Roberts previously called those speaking out against Carlson a “venomous coalition”, a loaded phrase he subsequently said was a “terrible choice of words” that caused “justified concern” among those who worry about rising antisemitism.

Heritage Foundation leader apologizes for backing Tucker Carlson’s interview with white nationalist

Kevin Roberts, whose group pushed Project 2025, had defended ex-Fox News host’s talk with Nick Fuentes

^{Rachel Leingang (The Guardian)}

For all the headlines about an on-off relationship with Donald Trump, baiting liberals and erratic behaviour, Tesla shareholders are loath to part with Elon Musk.

Investors in the electric vehicle maker voted on Thursday to put the world’s richest person on the path to become the world’s first trillionaire, despite the controversy that is now seemingly intrinsic to his public profile.

Shareholders approved the $1tn compensation plan, which could yield the largest corporate payout in history if he meets a series of tough-looking goals, not least pushing Tesla from its current market value of $1.4tn to $8.5tn (£1.06tn to £6.4tn). Musk’s fortune, which includes a stake of about 12.5% in Tesla, is already worth $461bn.

“Musk is Tesla and Tesla is Musk,” says Dan Ives, a managing director at the US financial firm Wedbush. “Despite some of the brand damage Musk has caused to Tesla during his political stint, the AI future at Tesla depends on Elon.”

‘Musk is Tesla and Tesla is Musk’ – why investors are happy to pay him $1tn

Making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire appears to fit a US investment culture of backing high-flying innovators

^{Dan Milmo (The Guardian)}

“I’ll tell you right, as God as my witness, if we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison,” Bannon told the crowd Wednesday at an awards event hosted by the Conservative Partnership Academy. This group offers training and certifications to aspiring right-wing ideologues working in politics and government.

“They’re not gonna stop,” Bannon said of Democrats and progressives aligned against Trump’s authoritarian push and Republican economic policies that have focused on lavishing ever-larger tax cuts for corporations and the rich while gutting government programs, including cuts to Medicaid, food assistance for the poor, devastating environmental policies, and dismantling of healthcare subsidies leading to a surge in monthly premiums for millions of families.

Bannon Tells GOP: 'Seize the Institutions' of Government Now or We're 'Going to Prison' After 2028

"Steve Bannon motivating Democratic voters," said one historian in response to comments by the former Trump White House advisor.

^{jon-queally (Common Dreams)}

https://bmymarketer.com/

An immigration enforcement officer who shot a US citizen in Chicago last month bragged about the incident in texts afterwards, according to court documents filed in federal court on Wednesday. It’s just one of the latest examples of how, contrary to the Trump administration’s own narrative, the agents helping the supposedly terrified residents of American cities are posing a danger to residents themselves.

The texts were released in court at a hearing requested by the lawyer for the woman, Marimar Martinez, who is facing federal charges of assaulting an officer. According to the government’s account, Martinez allegedly rammed her car into a vehicle driven by Charles Exum, a supervisory Border Patrol agent, on October 4 in Chicago. When Exum got out of the car, Martinez allegedly drove her car “at” him, and the officer then fired five shots at her.

Martinez has pled not guilty, and contests the government’s allegations. In her account, Exum sideswiped her car, and fired the five gunshots at her “within two seconds” of exiting his vehicle, according to court documents filed by her lawyer. After driving about a mile from the scene, Martinez took an ambulance to a hospital, where she was treated for gunshot wounds and later arrested. She has been released from custody on $10,000 bond; a jury trial is scheduled for February.

A Border Patrol agent bragged about shooting someone, texts show

"Sweet. My fifteen mins of fame. Lmao."

^{Mother Jones}

More than 2,000 flights in the US are cancelled or delayed on Friday after airlines were told to cut traffic during the government shutdown

Airports have been grappling with air traffic controller shortages, who are either calling in sick or taking side jobs as they work without pay during the federal government shutdown

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says reductions will start at 4% of internal flights before rising to the full 10% by the end of next week - it warns up to 4,000 flights per day could be affected

Several of the largest US airlines are assuring customers they'll be able to get full refunds for the cancelled flights - here's what some, including United and Delta, are saying

Live updates: US flights cancelled as government shutdown leaves air traffic controllers unpaid

Domestic air travel will be cut by up to 10% at 40 major airports, resulting in thousands of cancelled flights in the coming days.

^{BBC News}

The so-called ‘manosphere’ has existed for several years now, and in that time the personality types we’re subjected to have diversified. Dale Partridge is known for being a misogynist of the Christian persuasion, and he’s specifically famous for shaming women. The shoe is now on the other foot, however, as Derek Guy the menswear expert […]

By Willem Moore

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Willem Moore, Author at Canary

Articles by Willem Moore for Canary

^{Willem Moore (The Canary)}

A man collapsed at a White House press events, and RFK Jr just runs out of the room.

I can't stand Dr. Oz, but at least he acted like an F'ing doctor here.

What the article describes means so, so much. Being able to have electric light, to charge a phone, this was not a given for so many people. I think it's huge.

AFAIK, alone air pollution from kerosene fuel in the house is in Africa a leading cause of death.

You know that feeling when you’re waiting for the cable guy, and they said ‘between 8am and 6pm, and you waste your entire day, and they never show up?

Now imagine that, except the cable guy is ‘electricity,’ the day is ‘50 years,’ and you’re one of 600 million people. At some point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself.

What’s happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it’s not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It’s being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it’s working.

Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day.

And if you understand what’s happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.

[...]

What I am also thinking for a while that the switch to non-fossil power is a historic seismic shift in how huge streams of money are flowing. It changes how power is transmitted very much in a double sense.

And this is not the end of what is possible and what is needed. Tiny solar installations might not be enough for cooking, efficient induction stoves might now still be too expensive. Standard AC voltage systems for home appliances might not match these power sources well. Broken components might be difficult to repair and create waste.

But hey, that's life, isn't it - we solve one problem and in turn we get two new ones for free 😉

Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa

Or: How Africa is building the future by skipping the past

^{Skander Garroum (Climate Drift)}

ArcaneChat 2.25.0 is on its way to Google Play and f-droid and should be available in the upcoming days, can't wait? for other download options check arcanechat.me/

🔮 What's new?

★ Now it is possible to create channels that have invite links! (to join the official ArcaneChat channel update your ArcaneChat client and you will receive the invitation in Device Messages!)

★ More metadata protection (now Date header is protected!)

★ Better multi-device: synchronize group creation across devices

★ Data saving: reduce size of read receipts

★ Improved on-boarding speed

★ Now it is possible to save to storage files shared from inside in-chat apps

★ Fixed sorting of old media in the chat's gallery

★ Several other fixes and small improvements

💜 Help keep ArcaneChat (and several of its in-chat mini-apps and bots) independent and make it even more awesome in the future: arcanechat.me/#contribute

ArcaneChat - Apps on Google Play

Private secure chats for the family

^{play.google.com}

The industry keeps echoing ideas from bleak satires and cyberpunk stories as if they were exciting possibilities, not grim warnings.

In a recent article published in the New York Times, author Casey Michael Henry argues that today's tech industry keeps borrowing dystopian sci-fi aesthetics and ideas -- often the parts that were meant as warnings -- and repackages them as exciting products without recognizing that they were originally cautionary tales to avoid. "The tech industry is delivering on some of the futuristic notions of late-20th-century science fiction," writes Henry. "Yet it seems, at times, bizarrely unaware that many of those notions were meant to be dystopian or satirical -- dismal visions of where our worst and dumbest habits could lead us."

You worry that someone in today's tech world might watch "Gattaca" -- a film that features a eugenicist future in which people with ordinary DNA are relegated to menial jobs -- and see it as an inspirational launching point for a collaboration between 23andMe and a charter school. The material on Sora, for instance, can feel oddly similar to the jokes about crass entertainment embedded in dystopian films and postmodern novels. In the movie "Idiocracy," America loved a show called "Ow! My Balls!" in which a man is hit in the testicles in increasingly florid ways. "Robocop" imagined a show about a goggle-eyed pervert with an inane catchphrase. "The Running Man" had a game show in which contestants desperately collected dollar bills and climbed a rope to escape ravenous dogs. That Sora could be prompted to imagine a game show in which Michel Foucault chokeslams Ronald Reagan, or Prince battles an anaconda, doesn't feel new; it feels like a gag from a 1990s writer or a film about social decay.

The echoes aren't all accidental. Modern design has been influenced by our old techno-dystopias -- particularly the cyberpunk variety, with its neon-noir gloss and "high tech, low life" allure. From William Gibson novels to films like "The Matrix," the culture has taken in countless ruined cityscapes, all-controlling megacorporations, high-tech body modifications, V.R.-induced illnesses, deceptive A.I. paramours, mechanical assassins and leather-clad hacker antiheroes, navigating a dissociative cyberspace with savvily repurposed junk-tech. This was not a world many people wanted to live in, but its style and ethos seem to reverberate in the tech industry's boldest visions of the future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/magazine/ai-tech-industry-sora-science-fiction.html

Hey folks,

I run the site piratefeeds.net/. It's a free mirror for premium podcast feeds hosted on Patreon and works entirely from people donating feeds they subscribe to. I don't host the media files, just the RSS feeds. I don't make any money from it. If you wanna listen to any of the pods listed all you have to do is plug the feed URL in your podcast app of choice.

This is both self promo and a request for feed donations. If you subscribe to a podcast and are willing to collectivize your subscription, reach out! Sharing is caring... I anonymize the feeds before publishing them, so there's no risk of other users doxxing the donors. In the past there have been some issues with Patreon blocking some feeds, but I've improved the site's OpSec since then and there haven't been any issues in months now. Even then, the worst that can happen is that Patreon might block the specific link and issue the subscriber a new one.

I mainly mirror feeds hosted on Patreon because those are guaranteed to work, other hosts such as SupportingCast have better anti-piracy protections so I cannot use their feeds for now. If you want to donate a feed all you have to do is PM me your Patreon RSS audio feed URL.

So far most of the pods listed are lefty politics/media/culture commentary and comedy. I'm not picky about the donations I accept, as long as they're not actively reactionary/bigoted. A bunch of the feeds on the site are currently inactive for lack of working sources, I'd be particularly grateful for donations of those. If you have a subscription to a pod that is already listed you can absolutely still donate your link: backups are valuable.

Most of the pods listed are by independent creators who definitely deserve your money if you can afford to support them. The reason I run this is that, like most people, I cannot afford to subscribe to all creators I'd like to follow.

Do you have podcast X?

If it's not listed then nobody donated it yet, or it's hosted on a service I don't support.

NOTE: I've asked and received permission to post this in advance from db0, to make sure this didn't violate comm rules.