https://www.patreon.com/posts/were-increasing-130695366

A return to vernacular buildings, which maintain interiors at a comfortable temperature through architectural design rather than energy-intensive technical installations, could significantly reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling. However, it’s not a short-term solution: it would require a large amount of time, money, and energy to replace the existing building stock.

Fortunately, history offers an alternative solution that can be deployed more quickly and with fewer resources: textiles. Before the Industrial Revolution, people added a temporary layer of textile insulation to either the interior or the exterior of a building, depending on the climate and the season. In cold weather, walls, floors, roofs, windows, doors, and furniture were insulated with drapery and carpetry. In hot weather, windows, doors, facades, roofs, courtyards, and streets were shaded by awnings and toldos.

Removable insulation can achieve significant energy savings with much more flexibility than permanently enclosed insulation materials. Because modern insulation methods require construction permits and structural interventions to a building, they are expensive, time-consuming, and only accessible to home owners. Furthermore, modern insulation methods are ill-suited for older buildings, in which case they are often not financially and energetically sustainable.

How to Dress and Undress your Home

Before the large-scale use of fossil fuels, removable textile layers kept homes warm in winter and cool in summer.

^{LOW←TECH MAGAZINE}

https://www.patreon.com/posts/were-increasing-130695366

The US House of representatives is preparing to vote next week on a resolution that would deem “Free Palestine” to be “an antisemitic slogan.”

If anybody votes against this, they’ll say they voted to support Colorado terrorist attack.

Update (from comments): A Nitter link to the Ryan Grim tweet in the screenshot:
https://
xcancel.com/ryangrim/status/19
30972170479370686

#USpol #FreePalestine #Genocide #Israel #Antisemitism #Fascism
#Palestine @palestine@a.gup.pe

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that the House passed is objectionable for many reasons, most obviously because it is the most regressive economic bill of my lifetime, the class war condensed into in legislative form. Its tax policies and spending cuts will erode the well being of Americans slowly for decades to come. Its most immediate destabilizing impact, however—the one that has the potential to push our democracy to the brink—is its vast expansion of the Homeland Security budget, which will be used to build ICE into a huge national army of loyalists under Trump’s control. The money to build America’s brownshirts is in the pipeline. Whereas our military-industrial complex is a threat to the rest of the world, this force will be a direct threat to all of us in the USA. This is the Proud Boys, at national scale, with badges. It is a very dangerous prospect.

Everything I am writing about here has been previously reported in the past few weeks since the House sent the bill to the Senate. But, from my vantage point, the public has not quite grasped just how horrifying a precipice we are on. When you consider the scale of protest already unleashed by the ICE raids in LA; Trump and Stephen Miller’s clear intent to double and triple and quadruple down on the ICE raids and crush the protests with military force; Trump’s unhinged declaration yesterday that “we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York” to achieve “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History”; and then connect this deep well of poisonous intent with the staggering expansion of ICE’s size and scope that will occur if this bill’s funding comes through, what you will see is the setup for not just a mass deportation program, but a violent national clash between a militarized, government-sanctioned army of Trump loyalists and everyone else.

How much does ICE stand to grow if this bill’s funding comes through? A lot. The all-in costs of deportation over the next decade could reach a trillion fucking dollars, according to this Cato analysis. That includes the border wall and a huge expansion of prisons for immigrants, to a size nearly on par with the federal prison system.

Building the American Brownshirts

New funding will make ICE an unaccountable army of Trump loyalists.

^{Hamilton Nolan (How Things Work)}

Yes 🙏❤️

#Madleen #FreedomFlotilla #HumanRights
#Gaza #BreakTheSiege #FreePalestine #HumanRights #Palestine

FREEDOM FLOTILLA COALITION SAYS THE LAST THREE DETAINED VOLUNTEERS HAVE BEEN RELEASED FROM ISRAELI DETENTION, RETURNING TO HOME COUNTRIES VIA JORDAN

@palestine@a.gup.pe @israel

cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/36828953

Archived

The Apple and Google app stores continue to offer private browsing apps that are surreptitiously owned by Chinese companies, more than six weeks after they were identified in a Tech Transparency Project report. Apple and Google may also be profiting from these apps, which put Americans’ privacy and U.S. national security at risk, TTP found.

[...]

After the Financial Times asked Apple for comment on these findings, two of the apps linked to Qihoo 360—Thunder VPN and Snap VPN—were pulled from its app store. When TTP checked again in early May, another Qihoo 360-connected app called Signal Secure VPN had been quietly removed. But two other apps linked to Qihoo 360—Turbo VPN and VPN Proxy Master—remained available in the U.S. Apple App Store, along with 11 other Chinese-owned apps identified in TTP’s report.

The Google Play Store, meanwhile, offered four Qihoo 360-connected apps—Turbo VPN, VPN Proxy Master, Snap VPN, and Signal Secure VPN—as well as seven other Chinese-owned VPNs identified in TTP’s initial report.

The linked article lists several China-owned VPN apps identified by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP).

[...]

TTP - Spot Check: Apple and Google Still Have a Chinese VPN Problem

The Apple and Google app stores offer VPNs without revealing they’re owned by Chinese companies. That keeps Americans in the dark about privacy and national security risks.

^{www.techtransparencyproject.org}

Valedictorian told to stay home after making pro-Palestinian remarks in grad speech | CBC News (2025-06-16)

cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/vale…
------
h/t mastodon.social/@RealJournalis…

>> The valedictorian at a west #Ottawa high school says she's been told not to come to school Monday after she made pro-Palestinian remarks during a speech at her commencement ceremony.

>> Her comments on the war in Gaza came at the end...

>> "As a commitment to truth and reconciliation, I must acknowledge colonial and genocidal atrocities today, including the massacre of more than 17,000 Palestinian children in Gaza," ... the crowd cheered.

>> The next day, ... a call from her principal, who said her statements had "caused harm" and told her she shouldn't come to school on Monday.

>> That decision is being criticized by some as going against Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (#OCDSB) policy, and Yao said she stands by her speech.

#Canada @palestine@a.gup.pe

hcommons.social

hcommons.social is a microblogging network supporting scholars and practitioners across the humanities and around the world.

^{Hometown hosted on hcommons.social}

RealJournalism

2025-06-16 11:30:47

Valedictorian told to stay home after making pro-Palestinian remarks in grad speech cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/vale… #Palestine #Canada #Ottawa #Fascism

Martedì 17 luglio verso metà mattinata verrà aggiornato Lemmy alla versione 0.19.12.

È stato fatto l'aggiornamento oggi nel server di test e non ci sono stati problemi di alcun tipo.

Tutte le novità della nuova release le trovate qui: join-lemmy.org/news/2025-06-13…

Israel’s onslaught on Iran, which began Friday night, entered a new phase on Sunday. Having destroyed large portions of Iran’s air defenses, attacked military and nuclear facilities, Israel has now shifted its targets to civilian infrastructure, including water treatment facilities and energy infrastructure.

The Israeli military reported striking more than 80 targets in Iran overnight Saturday and Sunday. “Tehran residents reported the heaviest wave of attacks yet on Sunday afternoon, with explosions ringing out every half hour,” the Washington Post reported.

Among the targets were water treatment facilities in northern Iran, whose destruction sent waves of sewage flowing in Tehran’s streets. On Saturday, Israel attacked the main oil refinery in Tehran and South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas field.

On Sunday, Israel expanded its strikes to airports, manufacturing plants and police stations.

Commenting on the shift, the Post wrote, “The targets appear to indicate an expansion of Israel’s war aims… By striking Iranian industry and infrastructure, Israel is aiming to degrade the Iranian state, further damage the country’s already-reeling economy, and possibly trigger regime change, according to analysts and former officials.”

Richard Nephew, a former State Department and White House official, told the Washington Post, “It sure does feel like this is a regime change ending, rather than taking out the nuclear program.” He added, “Israel may have decided that the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was to topple the Iranian regime.”

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked whether “regime change” in Iran was a goal of his government. Netanyahu replied that it “could certainly be the result because the Iranian regime is very weak.”...

Israel attacks civilian infrastructure in Iran as Netanyahu calls for regime change

Israel's onslaught on Iran appeared to enter a new phase Sunday in what has been described as the heaviest period of attacks yet.

^{World Socialist Web Site}

The psychological defense mechanisms liberal zionists use to block out reality. The coping is real ya'll.

A recent skirmish over the 1 percent's feces is currently being worked out by the Florida state legislature.

One of the places that Jeff Bezos lives is a man-made island off the coast of Florida called Indian Creek Village. The island is predominantly populated by other billionaires and is colloquially known as the “Billionaire Bunker.” In fact, if you’re not a billionaire, it’s quite difficult to get in. The bridge from the mainland to the island is closed to the public and protected by armed guards and a sophisticated security system.

However, if the island is almost entirely cut off from the rest of humanity, the island’s inhabitants still seem intent on sharing one thing with members of the outside world: their piss and shit.

Indian Creek doesn’t have the underground infrastructure to deal with its own poop, so the solution it came up with was to funnel it through Surfside into a wider regional sewage system. Unfortunately, Surfside didn’t want the poop unless Indian Creek was willing to contribute $10 million to the community for future sewer system improvements. Indian Creek has referred to this request as “extortion.”

Billionaire Island Where Bezos Lives Lobbies State Gov to Flush Its Poop Down Neighbor Town's Pipes

^{Lucas Ropek (Gizmodo)}

In February, a Bluesky post caught the eye of Alex Winter. The result is a coalition of environmentalists, anti-Trump advocates, and federal workers that’s been hyping Tesla’s stock slide ever since.

Archived copy of the article

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-takedown-definitive-story/

https://cointelegraph.com/news/kidnappers-release-crypto-trader-because-insufficient-funds

The text of a budget reconciliation bill released by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) last week calls for the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, known as AST, to begin charging licensing fees to space companies next year. The fees would phase in over eight years, after which the FAA would adjust them to keep pace with inflation. The money would go into a trust fund to help pay for the operating costs of the FAA's commercial space office.

While the FAA's commercial space office receives more federal funding today, the budget hasn't grown to keep up with the cadence of commercial spaceflight. SpaceX officials urged the FAA to double its licensing staff in 2023 after the company experienced delays in securing launch licenses.

Cruz's section of the Senate reconciliation bill calls for the FAA to charge commercial space companies per pound of payload mass, beginning with 25 cents per pound in 2026 and increasing to $1.50 per pound in 2033. Subsequent fee rates would change based on inflation. The overall fee per launch or entry would be capped at $30,000 in 2026, increasing to $200,000 in 2033, and then adjusted to keep pace with inflation.

Companies may soon pay a fee for their rockets to share the skies with airplanes

Some space companies aren’t necessarily against this idea, but SpaceX hasn’t spoken.

^{Stephen Clark (Ars Technica)}

cross-posted from: freefree.ps/users/faab64/statu…

The US House of representatives is preparing to vote next week on a resolution that would deem “Free Palestine” to be “an antisemitic slogan.”

If anybody votes against this, they’ll say they voted to support Colorado terrorist attack.

#USpol #FreePalestine #Genocide #Israel #Antisemitism #Fascism
#Palestine @palestine@lemmy.ml @palestine@a.gup.pe

AI-generated songs have made their way onto streaming services and it’s not just ambient or electronic music: fake bands, be they rock, salsa, or jazz, are also abundant

Fake bands and artificial songs are taking over YouTube and Spotify

^{Pablo G. Bejerano (Ediciones EL PAÍS S.L.)}

UN rapporteur calls for move as food deliveries are attacked and starvation becomes a weapon of war in Gaza and Sudan

Archived version: archive.is/newest/theguardian.…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Send in armed UN troops to protect aid convoys or risk ‘dystopia’, says expert

^{Mark Townsend (The Guardian)}

As the withdrawal of US funding disrupts treatment and halts crucial research in South Africa, clinics fear the resurgence of mother-to-child transmission of the virus

Archived version: archive.is/20250616144603/theg…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

‘I don’t want my boy to be positive’: pregnant women face sky-high viral loads as cuts hit HIV care in Africa

^{Nick Dall (The Guardian)}

She finds the whole idea absurd. To Prof Marci Shore, the notion that the Guardian, or anyone else, should want to interview her about the future of the US is ridiculous. She’s an academic specialising in the history and culture of eastern Europe and describes herself as a “Slavicist”, yet here she is, suddenly besieged by international journalists keen to ask about the country in which she insists she has no expertise: her own. “It’s kind of baffling,” she says.

In fact, the explanation is simple enough. Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US”.

Starkly, Shore invoked the ultimate warning from history. “The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later.” She seemed to be saying that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now, in Donald Trump’s America – and that anyone tempted to accuse her of hyperbole or alarmism was making a mistake. “My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”

Why a professor of fascism left the US: ‘The lesson of 1933 is – you get out’

Marci Shore made news around the world when her family moved to Canada. She discusses Trump, teaching history and how terror atomises society

^{Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian)}