Mitch Effendi (ميتش أفندي)

the thing i keep seeing as a wrinkle is, he’s using the national guard, who are by-and-by-large the weekend contract kind who maintain jobs and have families in far-flings of the state.

by deploying them and keeping them deployed, the longer they stay like that, the more guardsmen will lose the jobs they had waiting for them. i know there are protections and such, but, we’re in a capitalist-fascist hellscape now, money is gonna do the talking from now on, and a deployed soldier don’t make money. i also do not see this occupation ending any time soon, nor do i see any protestors being dumb enough to try and test the might of the world’s only global military hedgemon… so, i think they’re just gonna be sitting around playing fucking candy crush.

like, is there a ceiling with guardsmen on how much bullshit they’ll tolerate before they start deserting? i am genuinely asking, if anyone is in the service and knows better.

i am old in terms of internet years, and Bill Gates really is living proof that billionaires can essentially destroy the lives of thousands and thousands of people to gather their wealth, and then spend the autumn of their years choosing which countries or causes get a splash-out of the unfathomable excess, like a little kinglet.

i am happy his money helped fix stuff in the world. but that’s called “catching up to what has been expected of you for 60 years.” he does not get a cookie for working out of the Andrew Carnegie playbook.

the mergers & acquisitions leviathan eats yet another beautiful thing, just like it ate my precious linode.

i just wanted to drop my personal favorite self-hosted git alternative, Gogs (gogs.io). i have very modest git needs (i just need a place to host code and interact with the git client), and i think it fits the bill well.

i am not associated with it at all, i just want folks to know that self-hosting your own git service has really never been easier or better; there are so many good options, like a similar project, gitea.

if you are uncomfortable with exposing your home network to the internet, you can use tools like tailscale funnel or a reverse proxy server like caddy and a $5 VPS from any cloud host of your choosing to obscure your home IP, while still keeping the storage and the brains somewhere closeby.

imo, the only way forward for all of us to stay safe is to keep repeating a simple mantra: “let’s go back to making websites.”

The one I personally have experience with is telemarketing. I worked at an agency whose business it was to call businesses and gather information about what IT tech they use, and at what point they were likely at the highest propensity to buy new stuff. We’d sell those leads to tech companies like Dell or HP for their sales teams to reference.

There was another “agency” out there that did the same thing we did with American young adults, but with prison labor paid something like $1-$3/day. It basically put our agency out of business, which good riddance, but also, it was at least a living for hundreds of people. Now those jobs don’t exist, pretty much.

Just a friendly reminder, slavery has been an active part of the Neoliberal agenda since the 60s. For-profit prisons use their prisoner population to do factory work (cus nobody cares about them or their wellbeing), and the products of which can then be sold on the open market, which undercuts and drives small businesses out of operation.

Prison labor has touched and destroyed countless American industries, and has genuinely done more damage to the idea of a “free market” than every Communist on the planet combined. How exactly does one compete against a business whose cost-basis is quite literally the cost of Nutriloaf?

officer, promote that person

I thought that Ukulele was a pretty nice way to learn the foundations of string instruments

well… this is going to cause a chilling effect. :/

Yeesh, even beyond the obvious, sticking around after that probably puts a real target on your back for a few years later. I would do the same thing.

Seriously, folks. I was born here, grew up here, and never left. Do not come into the country. Basically, we will all let you know when the coast is clear. 🤷 Until then, please, do not risk it, even if you think you are from a friendly country.

I’m so frustrated. It’s happening exactly like everyone said it would. I wanted to think everyone was smarter than this, but this is the Executive equivalent of yelling, “IT’S COMING RIGHT FOR US” right before you kill illegal game.