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/

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-06-26-2025-a5c3052d1d983329b5d9a2f3986811fe

“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}

Easy, short but steep
1 mile out and back
312 ft elevation Gain
Hiked 5/27/25

This short trail begins with a very steep grade down to Connaught creek (formerly bear creek) with a stair section at the lowest. Photos of the falls come from this area downstream. Climbing another staircase puts you at the falls, surrounded by a massive mist cloud. Entertaining, but no pics. This was still during melt season and it was absolutely raging at the time.

Connaught creek rushes by as Bear creek falls rages in the distance.

The steep stairwell leading to the river below.

The steepest part of the trail is these steps, but it maintains a lot of slope in its short run.

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)}

Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J nonimmigrant visa are requested to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media accounts to ‘public’ to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States under U.S. law.
We use all available information in our visa screening and vetting to identify visa applicants who are inadmissible to the United States, including those who pose a threat to U.S. national security. Since 2019, the United States has required visa applicants to provide social media identifiers on immigrant and nonimmigrant visa application forms.
Visa applicants are required to list all social media usernames or handles of every platform they have used from the last 5 years on the DS-160 visa application form. Applicants certify that the information in their visa application is true and correct before they sign and submit. Omitting social media information could lead to visa denial and ineligibility for future visas.

I’ve been seeing these signs pop up everywhere, sometimes in the most unexpected places.

They help.

Thanks for seeing my work!

Secretary Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security announced $94 million in federal grants to over 500 Jewish-based organizations across the United States.

I recently sat down with Rabbi Sanford Akselrad from Congregation Ner Tamid, who told me the temple spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on security.

"The fight against hate against the Jews would morph yet again, um, so when someone says that they are, they, they love Jews but they, but they hate Israel and you get a little deeper, what do they mean by that..... and usually when they go into the territory not of being critical of Israel which is fair game. But they say Israel has no right to exist at all now.... we get into the area of antisemitism," Akselrad said.

More grants are expected in the coming months.

Department of Homeland Security announces $94 million in grants to protect Jewish organizations

^{Tricia Kean (Channel 13 Las Vegas News KTNV)}