A new poll from NPR, PBS, and Marist College published on Wednesday, Oct. 2, shows a “striking change in Americans’ views on political violence.” We have grown much more violent as a country over the last year, NPR reports, with the share of U.S. adults who agree with the statement “Americans may have to resort to violence to get the country back on track” growing from 20 to 30% over the last 18 months.

This is scary data indeed. In NPR’s coverage of the poll, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University, says the data is “horrific”: “It’s just a horrific moment to see that people believe, honestly believe that there’s no other alternative at this point than to resort to political violence.” Where does America go from here?

But here’s the thing: The NPR/PBS/Marist poll did not ask people if they believed “there’s no other alternative at this point than to resort to political violence.” The survey asks adults whether or not they agree with the statement that people “may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track.” This is comparatively a much weaker statement and comes with a potentially heavy dose of measurement error. Respondents are asked to imagine a hypothetical scenario in which they’d have to commit acts of violence against a vague, unspecified victim. Maybe that means taking up arms against the government or their neighbors, or perhaps it just means throwing a rock at a cop or through a shop door.

The problem with polls and reports like this, in other words, is that they are not asking about the “political violence” we are imagining in our heads: An insurrection at the Capitol; driving a car through a crowd of protestors; shooting an activist you don’t like with a sniper rifle. The unfortunate reality (especially for those of us who care about democracy and what the people think) is that this survey does not ask whether Americans support certain acts of violence against their neighbors, even though that’s what the poll is being used as evidence for.

This disconnect between what is being polled and what is being talked about is part of a broader pattern I’ve pointed out in my recent coverage of political violence: Most polls overestimate mass support for political violence. I explain why this is the case, and why this is important for everyone from pollsters to elite journalists to casual news consumers to reckon with.

Why most polls overstate support for political violence

Misperceptions about the popularity of violence increase public support for it — but you can help change that.

^{G. Elliott Morris (Strength In Numbers)}

The Democratic representative-elect won her Arizona seat overwhelmingly. But so far, the Republican speaker will not swear her in.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/us/politics/adelita-grijalva-house-epstein.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rk8.ZfgL.SOMeunMNeiMZ

Two years on, complicit governments back a US plan to safeguard Jewish supremacy and mute global outrage, while Israel revives Nazi torture methods to force Palestinian surrender

Trump’s plan for Gaza rewards Israel’s genocide and punishes its victims

^{Middle East Eye}

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/37022550

Today we’re sharing some truly exciting news: Arduino has entered into an agreement to join the Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. family! This is a huge step in our journey – one that allows us to keep growing, thriving, and making technology accessible to everyone, while bringing our values of openness, simplicity, and community spirit to an […]

A new chapter for Arduino – with Qualcomm, UNO Q, and you!  | Arduino Blog

^{Arduino Team (Arduino)}

(I’m not actually in Denver anymore, I’m back home in Cascadia, but this was shot out that way a few days ago, and I’m trying to post only one work a day or less, so I don’t flood the community, and to give each of my works, and each of yours, greater appreciation. Thank you for understanding.)

This was shot in Union Station; I was completely new to Denver, having been there for less than thirty seconds, drinking in new architecture and taking the culture in. I think I took 120 exposures in this train station alone, and I think this is the one I liked the best. It’s such a simple image, and yet the color in it is delicious, almost food-like.

Thank you for seeing my work!

Furloughed federal workers aren't guaranteed compensation for their forced time off during the government shutdown, according to a draft White House memo described to Axios by three sources.

Why it matters: If the White House acts on that legal analysis, it would dramatically escalate President Trump's pressure on Senate Democrats to end the week-old shutdown by denying back pay to as many as 750,000 federal workers after the shutdown.

https://www.axios.com/2025/10/07/trump-memo-furloughed-federal-workers-backpay

I'm trying to find a better solution to manage configuration files, both user's dotfiles and system files in /etc.
I'm running an ubuntu server where I have a bunch services with custom configurations, and systemd drop-in files, but on top of that I also have some scripts and user dotfiles that I need to track.

What I'm doing right now is that I have a folder full of symlinks in the admin user's directory (poor username choice, btw) and I'm using bindfs to mount this directory inside a git repository, this way git won't see them as symlinks, and will version them as regular files. The problem with doing this is that as git deletes and rewrites files, bindfs fails to track the changes and converts the symlink to regular files.

I looked into chezmoi, but that is only meant to track user dotfiles and will refuse to add a file from /etc, that is unless doing some extra work. But even so, chezmoi will not track the user:group of files, so I would still have to manage that manually.

I also looked into GNU Stow, and that would not complain about files from /etc or anywhere, but it similarly will not track permissions and I would have to manage that manually.

I see that some people are using ansible to manage dotfiles, but at that point, it would make sense to just migrate to ansible, except I don't want to rebuild my server from scratch to use ansible. Also it looks like a lot to learn.

Is there a better solution I'm not seeing? Maybe something using git hooks?

Edit:

I ended up using pre-commit and post-merge git hooks to launch a python script. The python script reads from a yaml file where I annotate the file paths and permissions, and then copies to or from the file location to the git repository.

I used the sudoers file to allow the admin user to run this specific script with specific arguments as root without password (because the git commands are run from VS Code and not manually), which is dangerous, be careful when doing that. I have taken special care to make this secure:
* I used absolute paths for everything, to avoid allowing running from a different pwd as a way to copy different files
* The script itself is installed in a root-owned location, so an unprevileged user cannot edit it
* The configuration yaml is root-owned, so an unprevileged user cannot modify which files are copied or their permissions
* Configuration files that can grant permission are not managed by this script (the yaml, /etc/passwd, /etc/groups, polkit rules, the sudoers file, ...)