arethinn | Entries tagged with things that are not cool

Every member of Bandcamp union bargaining team was laid off in huge cuts at Oakland firm

Well THAT'S fucking great. I was thinking the other day that maybe I should buy some of the stuff I had bookmarked soon lest it become unavailable, but now I don't know if I want to give them money at a time like this...

(argh, apparently DW sanitizes a Tumblr embed down to just the link. That would have been easier than constructing this by hand. oh well.)

https://logan-galbraith.tumblr.com/post/712873216595591168/weve-got-a-problem-here-i-know-most-people-here:

j-thealchemist:
Here is a link to the US Restrict Act (commonly known as the TikTok ban) as it is currently written.

Please read the actual bill and share even if you do not live in the United States. The precedents this piece of legislation would set would have far reaching impacts on how the internet is used for everyone in the future.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text

We’ve got a problem here. I know most people here probably hate tiktok, and for some good reasons, but believe it or not there’s actually a good amount of good on tiktok too.

But this isn’t about banning tiktok. That’s just a cover for this, given power thanks to Meta (Facebook) lobbyists pretty much paying the United States Government.

For the tldr: This act, while saying it’s to insure American’s personal information will be safe from foreign powers, it goes much deeper than that.
It will give the United States Government the power to remove and ban ANY online service they deem “a security risk” while making it so they do not need just cause and do not need to clarify or release a public statement

It allows them the power to gather American’s data without our knowledge or consent and even force us to submit documentation for anything they wish.

It protects the government from scrutiny on this, and if you try to speak about it and inform people on what it ACTUALLY allows, they can claim it to be false information and charge you.

It prevents you from using a VPN as it’s seen as a breach of information security, thus they can charge you.

Failure to abide by these “guidelines” can lead to a fine up to ONE MILLION DOLLARS and/or 20 YEARS in prison.

And above all it does NOTHING to prevent AMERICAN companies from collecting and selling your data.

And that’s not even everything it does. This isn’t about banning tiktok. It’s about control, taking away our freedom of speech, censorship, and selfish monetary gain. This doesn’t just affect tiktok users. This affects ALL Americans, small businesses, communities, and even those that use American online products, like Tumblr.

The US is turning into a fascist regime, where they are slowly but surely stripping away our rights and freedoms even more than they already have. And it terrifies me.

If you’re not an American, please share this. We already have a hard enough time knowing what goes on with those in other countries. This could make it all the more difficult.

And if you are an American, share this, then contact your state representative and your state senators. Email, phone, even mailing a physical letter for crying out loud. You can search “who is my representative and senators?” on Google, bing, duck-duck-go, or whatever, and it’ll take you to where you can find that out and even how to contact them.

Calmly and professionally tell them that not only do you NOT support the TikTok ban(since that is the cover they are using), but you DO NOT support the Restrict Act.

And let them know that if this bill is to pass, you will be spending all your time and energy supporting their opponents in the PRIMARIES. They do not expect Americans to contact them about this, so not only will they see us going out of our way to contact them, but by saying you’ll be supporting their OPPONENTS, they’ll have to either listen or have to spend thousands of not millions of dollars in campaigning so they don’t lose their nice day paychecks, and to them this is all about money so it’ll hit them where it hurts.

It doesn’t matter what political party you’re on, because BOTH parties in office want this. This is not about sides. This is about the ENTIRE government stripping our rights away so they can keep lining their own pockets.

Changes to emails you receive for new video uploads from your subscriptions (August 6, 2020)

ARGH. So that's why I suddenly stopped getting new video notifications from Youtube back in August. Would have been nice if they'd, you know, sent out AN EMAIL NOTIFICATION about that. I'm not sure exactly what they were tracking to claim that "Less than 0.1% of these emails are opened" - like, could they only see usage through the GMail app or on the website, and not when mail was fetched to an email client via POP/IMAP? and does reading the mail in plain text rather than HTML make a difference? - but I relied heavily on it. It was in fact my only way of receiving such notifications; I don't have anything set up to receive push notifications (nor do I want them) and I don't really go look at my Subscriptions, although now I guess I'm going to have to. So this joins the ranks of Google Reader and iGoogle in "dammit Google I was using that" for a service they claim was not being used enough to justify its continued existence. Pfeh.

Crossposts: https://arethinn.livejournal.com/1258677.html

Aw damn. Alex Trebek died. Fuck cancer.

Crossposts: https://arethinn.livejournal.com/1257936.html

Not that I approve of extremely swift confirmations of controversial selections for Supreme Court, but my stomach would really like this all to be over quickly so that I can stop actually missing meals because my mother, who usually has been wont to go have a lie-down in the afternoon that gives me a window to grab lunch (even if it doesn't evenly split my workday in half as I would prefer), has decided to park it out in the kitchen all afternoon (plus her usual evenings) to watch the hearings and the associated Fox News commentary. And for some reason within the past couple of months she has started doing this around 10-11 in the morning, as well, which is when I had previously been getting breakfast, so now that's often late enough it's pretty much early lunch. (She usually goes to bed early enough we don't conflict over dinner, but I do occasionally have to wait her out on that too.)

In other news, ( Proposition 19 )

Crossposts: https://arethinn.livejournal.com/1255123.html

Ugh. I knew the Youtube "made for kids / not made for kids" thing was basically a shitshow, but the annoyance I encountered today? You can't add such videos to a playlist. (I guess because that is "data collection"...?) And because "Watch Later" is a specialized playlist, it means you can't add them to "Watch Later". I repeat, ugh.

Crossposts: https://arethinn.livejournal.com/1252633.html

"He could shoot Lindsey Graham in the chamber, and Graham himself would argue Trump's defense as he bled out."

Crossposts: https://arethinn.livejournal.com/1238347.html

Man. I like the smell of smoke when it's a nice campfire. Gettin' real tired of wildfires wiping entire towns off the map and choking people I know in the north bay.

Crossposts: https://arethinn.livejournal.com/1202701.html

Followup to this post: The new streetlights are indeed brighter than the full moon. With the orange lights, obviously the moon was not extremely bright as out in the country, but everything was clearly awash in bluish-silver. But now (January 1), between the lamp across the street behind the house that I was complaining about in that post, and the one across the street that our house faces that they replaced some days later, the back yard is all LED white and in front I had to crouch down between our two cars in the driveway to get into a position that blocked enough of the lamps' light that I was actually in moonlight.

AUGH.

Y U DO DIS

Crossposts: https://arethinn.livejournal.com/1171982.html

My mother is being such an amazingly aggravating steamroller about the work we're having done in our house's two bathrooms -- to wit, hers is the only opinion that matters, and she will simply make snap decisions without first looking at all the choices (as was the contractor's suggestion) nor anyone else's assent, input, or even getting of a chance to look at the possibilities, even after telling us we would be able to -- that

enotsola said, "Let's watch the Comey hearing. That'll be less stressful."

DS';AS';FLDKSA';GAJF'JGF

I will refrain from using my "Die in a fire" icon because my home desk computer literally, if very briefly, caught fire last night (just the dust in the case, I hope, since there's no visible damage, although I'm not sure if there might be something wrong with the power supply that could have provoked it, and we're definitely swapping that out before we try to see what survived, *fingers crossed*) which was a bit of a scare and we really don't want the house to burn down, but. I just. ARGH

(did I mention she's also a Fox News addict?)

eta: Visible damage found in the light of day. According to the report from the field, "the power connector to the optical drive is a melted mess, and the sata cable next to it is scorchy, and the top of your case right at the optical drive is all scorched." Speculation is that the power connector may have been slightly loose, and either dust or some such particles finally got into it, or maybe it would have arced anyway and the dust in the case merely made it more flashy. Said drive had been failing to recognize inserted discs for a while and I thought it had simply failed. We had tried the unplug-and-replug tactic on the SATA cable (since that was always a problem with IDEs) but I can't recall whether we did the same on the power; possibly not, since it was in fact opening and closing so it might not have occurred to us that there could be a problem with the power. I don't much care so long as other components have survived; although even if they haven't and we have to start buying new stuff, my most recent system image is only about 10 days ago and the delta between then and now is, I think, all recoverable, if a bit tedious to do so.

Crossposts: http://arethinn.livejournal.com/1153429.html

If I may wax tumblr-speak for a moment:

tfw you're like man i hate facebook but at least it's? probably? not owned by russia??

Fuck Cumulus Media. Fuck them up their stupid asses. They basically just bombed the crap out of KFOG. I don't know if it was quite as sudden from the inside as it is from the out, but dsg;lsdkjfldah;gf. I was wondering why they seemed to be playing random stuff and not 10@10 this morning and yesterday. I thought maybe Annalisa was on vacation, although I think in the past they've usually played archived shows when that's the case. But no, apparently she, along with a lot of the other on-air staff, was laid off without notice to pave the way for an upcoming format change.

http://10at10club.com/forum/index.php?topic=646.msg192047#msg192047
http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/KFOG-axes-DJs-future-up-in-the-air-7223598.php
(also http://10at10club.com/forum/index.php?topic=11695.0 although that appears to be getting reserved for when the new whatever it is actually starts on April 20th)

I mean, I suppose in a certain sense one could say it was inevitable the station would change someday, especially if management perceived it as stagnant and not "making numbers". But what a bunch of dick moves. Way to tank a brand and smoke existing goodwill for it.

I'm pretty steamed, could you tell? (and you all were spared the page-long rant and thread quotes poor

enotsola endured in chat.)

5:21:31 PM - Stygian Syzygy: Fun times.
5:21:52 PM - Stygian Syzygy: just heard the evolution ad. Ugh.
5:22:08 PM - Stygian Syzygy: And... 4/20? I think that just confirms they're smoking something

Crossposts: http://arethinn.livejournal.com/1117517.html

Stygian Syzygy: also, the "live stream" Apple advertised? Wasn't.
enchawntment!: oh?
Stygian Syzygy: Yeah.. apparently they weren't prepared for the amount of interest
enchawntment!: seriously??
Stygian Syzygy: I know, right?
enchawntment!: not prepared for the interest that they specifically tried to generate?
enchawntment!: seriously, you can't big-gorilla your way in here, building new buildings*, taking out trees, and then pretend you didn't know anyone would care??

* Not exactly, not in the sense of a permanent structure, though I think our Marketing department's calling it a "tent" (their exact term in the email inviting faculty and staff to take a look tomorrow afternoon, bring your District photo ID on pain of something) is rather understating it:

For reference, here's a picture of the empty space from a point roughly at the bottom of the steps that guard is standing at the top of:

Really, guys? You couldn't predict you might need pretty robust serving of internet traffic to stream your event here?

And yes, they did take out some trees that had only been there two years, like the one that replaced the tree in the bottom right of that photo when the Sunken Garden was recently renovated. (In kind of an ugly way, I might add - repaving the already-asphalt areas, ok, but they replaced half the grass with gravel because nobody knows why, and then they go and flag it part of the so-called "Historic Corridor" between the Trianon Building and the Baldwin Winery like it looks anything other than totally modern?) I hope those are at least going to be replaced. I can only imagine how much money Apple must have given the college for the privilege of having this event here (although I suppose De Anza probably won a low-bidding war or something).

enotsola says this is apparently the anniversary date and place of Steve Jobs' first product presentation, or something, but I don't know whether that's verified.

Oh, and did I mention there was basically a turf war on some of the days back in August that we were trying to get a truck in here to take our pallets of boxed library books away to storage, since Apple (well, their construction and security dudes) were blocking driveways and laying claim to every which where and saying no way you plebs can't walk through here etc. etc.? Fortunately that was not something I had to personally sort out.

Crossposts: http://arethinn.livejournal.com/1059910.html

Ye gods and little fishies, this is apparently temperatures in Australia right about now.

For the Celsius-impaired, 54 C is 129.2 F. And predictably, things are on fire (although, apparently, fortunately not yet resulting in too much damage). The person who posted this on my other journal flist said "the reality of climate change has led the Bureau of Meteorology to add two new levels of temperature to our national forecast charts." O.o

edit: see also http://trelan.tumblr.com/post/40037967023/awildellethappears-areyoutryingtodeduceme

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Arethinn

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you are in a maze of twisty little posts, all alike

Entries tagged with things that are not cool

Bandcamp woes

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smoke gets in your eyes

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