glans

joined 1 year ago
11
markdown (hexbear.net)
 

For a long time I hated markdown.

Now I love it.

What do you think?

 

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Wed, Apr 10th 2024 05:29am - Karl Bode

However terrible telecom monopolies are in the free world, they’re arguably worse in prisons. For decades, journalists and researchers have outlined how a select number of prison telecom giants like Securus have enjoyed a cozy, government-kickback based monopoly over prison phone and teleconferencing services, resulting sky high rates (upwards of $14 per minute at some prisons) for inmate families.

Most of these pampered monopolies have shifted over to monopolizing prison phone videoconferencing as well. And the relationship between government and monopoly is so cozy, several of these companies, like Securus, have been caught helping to spy on privileged attorney client communications.

There’s not much in the way of oversight, so the problem just keeps evolving. Case in point: Ars Technica notes that a civil rights group has filed a two new lawsuits against two Michigan counties, two county sheriffs, and two prison monopolies, Securus and Viapath (formerly known as Global Tel*Link Corporation, or GTL.

The lawsuits allege that Michigan banned in-person visits in order to maximize revenue from voice and video calls as part of a “quid pro quo kickback scheme” with prison phone companies. It’s something the group states has become increasingly common over the last decade as telecom monopolies lobby governments and private prison contractors to ban in-person visits to make more money:

“Why has this happened? The answer highlights a profound flaw in how decisions too often get made in our legal system: for-profit jail telecom companies realized that they could earn more profit from phone and video calls if jails eliminated free in-person visits for families. So the companies offered sheriffs and county jails across the country a deal: if you eliminate family visits, we’ll give you a cut of the increased profits from the larger number of calls. This led to a wave across the country, as local jails sought to supplement their budgets with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from some of the poorest families in our society.”

Much like telecoms out in the broader free world, government has such a cozy relationship with telecom monopolies, the incentive to hold them accountable for much of anything is largely muted. In instances like domestic surveillance, it’s often impossible to determine where government ends and private monopolies like AT&T begin.

One lawsuit documents how Securus lobbied to have in-person visits eliminated and video kiosks installed where in-person visitation centers used to be. A contract was signed that doled out kickbacks to government so they got a big chunk of the revenue, incentivizing prisons to keep inmate populations high:

“Securus pays the County 50% of the $12.99 price tag for every 20-minute video call and 78% of the $0.21 per minute cost of every phone call. The contract promises the County an entirely new revenue stream, as well as a minimum guaranteed annual payment of $190,000 paid up front. And the contract gives Securus the right to terminate its video call service or pay the County less money if the jail population decreases by more than 5% or if
the jail fails to ensure a minimum number of monthly paid video calls.”

Much with the broader prison industrial complex, it’s not hard to see how perverse financial incentives point in all the wrong directions. It’s also not hard to see how this sort of relationship can easily be sold to cash-hungry counties and municipalities as more profitable, safer, and more secure. A win all around, unless you’re a poor inmate family member with limited resources and no personal lobbyists.

Efforts to do something about prison telecom monopolies were scuttled by FCC boss Ajit Pai, whose former clients included Securus. Pai not only routinely opposed efforts by ex-FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn to drive change in the prison telco sector, one of his very first acts as FCC boss was to pull the rugs out from underneath his own lawyers as they tried to support those reforms in court (they, as intended, lost).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

I have the impression that the pro-neanderthal sentiment can be a thin end of a racist wedge.

Here is a map from wikipedia captioned "Known Neanderthal range in Europe (blue), Southwest Asia (orange), Uzbekistan (green), and the Altai Mountains (violet) ":

So look at that and think, "what would a racist see". Don't be to cute about it.

With neanderthals being actually pretty smart and cool, they can be seen to contribute that certain je ne sais quoi to white people that makes them actually biologically distinct from other humans. Which is of course a closed question (FAKE) generally speaking.

I'm not saying that's true and I'm not saying anyone here is saying it. I'm just saying that there could be some motivated reasoning.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I decided to check as yous call it "natopedia" to find out what nato thinks of this

All I can conclude is that the actual page for penises is much longer than the page on vaginals. I think I discovered the two most bonkers wp pages.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

lolololololol

if Q can't be a huge troll with a huge D than

 

An undercover unit of the Metropolitan Police, together with MI5, for decades monitored and infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party while, by contrast, a “high level policy decision” was taken not to infiltrate the neo-Nazi National Front.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

trot groups in england were very heavily infiltrated by cops for decades as were others in the west. Search "swp" in the Undercover Policing Inquiry published evidence

there was a zine I read years and years ago that explained how (and maybe why) trots love making front groups to ruin every little progressive project. It was before all this infiltration stuff came out but when it did, everything made sense. The title was "monopolize resistance" I can't find it online.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Being so heavily infiltrated that the organization is basically run by the feds doesn't indicate some kind of inherent danger posed towards the state. It suggests that the organic membership are fools.

UK SWP was used for 20 years by the cops as a base from which to attack left-types. https://www.spycops.co.uk https://www.ucpi.org.uk/ International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party Archives - Undercover Policing Inquiry

Why people don't like trots is because they are often associated with personal and organizational ruin due to being agents of capital.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I want to learn to drive + get a license because

  • useful for running errands
  • a job I want requires a car
  • could help out friends and family

but

  • no available vehicle to learn on
  • insurance seems expensive
  • cars seem expensive and are always breaking
  • i could never decide on a car
  • parking seems expensive
  • driving seems dangerous

what do you think

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I had an n of 346.

included and excluded

  • included: only where the first word was "yes","no","maybe"
  • had intended to be case insensitive but realized after everything was done that I accidentally excluded 2 people who answered in all caps
  • below in method, this is fixed so if you follow it you will get slight variation
  • included: first listed pronoun only (otherwise too complicated)
    • eg: [he/him, comrade/them] = he, [she/her, they/them] = she
    • in Methods spoiler it includes a way to get all 4 if you want but it would need to be cleaned up
  • excluded: text in spoilers (too complicated)
  • excluded: accounts not on hexbear.net (no pronouns)
  • excluded: deleted replies

method

  • opened the thread and scrolled to the end, I think maybe selecting "chat" button at the top lets you get more responses? Also I tried sorting a couple different ways and copying everything as later it is deduplicated
  • note: am using firefox on linux with extensions that might affect the results; I didn't think to disable or anything at the beginning but I would if I were to repeat
  • selected all responses and copy to clipboard
  • go to https://regex101.com/
  • paste in the Test string text box
  • on left sidebar select Function > List
  • in the Regular expression field (above Test string), paste: /^(\w+) \[(\w+).*\](.*\n.*\n+)(no|yes|maybe)/gim
  • in the List field, (below Test string), paste $1;$2;$4;\n
  • here I used ; (semi colon) as column delimiter (used semicolon instead of , (comma) for compatibility when scraping all 4 pronouns)

expected output is like this:

useruseruser1;he;Yes;
useruseruser2;he;No;
useruseruser3;he;no;
useruseruser4;she;Yes;
useruseruser5;he;No;
  • copy and paste the contents of List text box into a text file results.csv and save

Set up spreadsheet

  • use a regular text editor (like notepad.exe on windows) to create a plain text file called template.csv
  • paste the following:
"number","UID","pron","ans","concat","pron count","pron count %","ans count","ans count %","cat count","cat count %","keep","n"
"=RANDBETWEEN.NV(10000,99999)",,,,"=CONCAT(C2,""-"",D2)","=COUNTIF(C:C,C2)","=ROUND(F2/$M2,3)*100","=COUNTIF(D:D,D2)","=ROUND(H2/$M2,3)*100","=COUNTIF(E:E,E2)","=ROUND(J2/$M2,3)*100",1,"=COUNTIF(L:L,1)"
  • Launch LibreOffice Calc (open source Excel)
  • File > Open and select template.csv It should open the text import dialogue. Important settings:
    • Separated by: comma (uncheck the others)
    • String delimiter: " (double quotation marks)
    • Other options: CHECK Evaluate formulas
  • This should give you a 2 row spreadsheet
  • You might want to use File > Save As to save it as ODS format which allows more features compared to csv. I name this file combined.ods.

Open results

  • File > Open and select results.csv. It should open the text import dialogue. Important settings:
    • Separated by: semicolon (uncheck the others) note this is different than the previous step!!
  • You should get a new spreadsheet document with 3 colulmns:
    • Column A: usernames
    • Column B: Pronouns
    • Column C: Response (Yes/No/Maybe)
  • Drag to select all the text
  • Copy to clipboard
  • Close this file (once the next part works)

Put results in template

  • Go back to your other file, combined.ods
  • Select all content of row 2
  • drag to fill down several hundred rows (however many results you have)
  • Place cursor in cell B2 (blank under column heading UID
  • Paste clipboard
  • You should get 300something rows inserted to columns B, C, D
  • You must delete the extra template rows (otherwise your n will be wrong)
  • You must manually edit the column called n (the last column, actually it is column number M) so that each value is 1. by default it will start to count so the values will because 1, 2, 3 etc. Should be 1,1,1.
    • This column controls whether the row is included in the data. If you set the value for 0 it will be excluded. So you can keep data you want to exclude in the sheet.

Now you must know how to use a spreadsheet. I suggest fixing all the answers to be the same case otherwise Yes and yes might be different in some circumstances.

Briefly the columns are: -A: number: assigns a random number so the file can be shared without publishing usernames - anonymizes data but lets you keep a record of how you got the results. How to:

  • open a copy of file
  • delete the column UID
  • sort by column number (otherwise results will still be in the order as on the page and it might be possible to infer information)
  • I didn't include it in the template but I actually also checked there were not any duplicate numbers also; you should do this
  • B: UID: user name
  • C: pron: first pronoun
  • D: ans: the answer provided -E: concat: combines columns C and D. Expected output like she-Yes. This is respresented in "Pronoun answer combinations" -F: pron count, H: ans count, J: cat count: absolute number of each -G: pron count %, I: ans count %, K: cat count %: the count value of each as a % of *n* -L: keep: whether to include this line (explained elsewhere) -M: n`: total number of included rows

method variation: to capture all 4 pronounsas above except:

  • in the Regular expression field (above Test string), paste: /^(\w+) \[(.*)\](.*\n.*\n+)(no|yes|maybe|deleted)/gim

expected output is like this:

useruseruser1;he/him, they/them;Yes;
useruseruser2;he/him;No;
useruseruser3;he/him, des/pair;no;
useruseruse4r;she/her;Yes;
useruseruser5;he/him;No;

subsequent instructions such as the spreadsheet may need adjustment



RESULTS

For some reason the markdown tables are black text on black text dark grey background on my computer. I can't seem to fix that it's a problem with the website theme. Idk I'm tired of this by now.


table: total answer %

ans count % ans
46.8% No
43.9% Yes
9.2% Maybe

csv: total answer %

percent,answer
46.8%,No
43.9%,Yes
9.2%,Maybe

table: Pronoun answer combinations %

percent pronoun answer
35.8% he No
25.1% she Yes
7.5% they Yes
4.3% comrade No
3.5% none No
3.2% he Maybe
3.2% any Maybe
2.9% comrade Yes
2.6% he Yes
2.3% any Yes
1.7% any No
0.9% they No
0.9% it Yes
0.9% fae Yes
0.6% they Maybe
0.6% she No
0.6% she Maybe
0.6% none Yes
0.6% comrade Maybe
0.3% ze Yes
0.3% xey Yes
0.3% undecided Maybe
0.3% none Maybe
0.3% love Yes
0.3% fae Maybe
0.3% e Yes
0.3% e Maybe

csv: Pronoun answer combinations %

percent,pronoun,answer
35.8%,he,No
25.1%,she,Yes
7.5%,they,Yes
4.3%,comrade,No
3.5%,none,No
3.2%,he,Maybe
3.2%,any,Maybe
2.9%,comrade,Yes
2.6%,he,Yes
2.3%,any,Yes
1.7%,any,No
0.9%,they,No
0.9%,it,Yes
0.9%,fae,Yes
0.6%,they,Maybe
0.6%,she,No
0.6%,she,Maybe
0.6%,none,Yes
0.6%,comrade,Maybe
0.3%,ze,Yes
0.3%,xey,Yes
0.3%,undecided,Maybe
0.3%,none,Maybe
0.3%,love,Yes
0.3%,fae,Maybe
0.3%,e,Yes
0.3%,e,Maybe

table: Pronoun answer %

pron count % pron
41.6% he
26.3% she
9% they
7.8% comrade
7.2% any
4.3% none
1.2% fae
0.9% it
0.6% e
0.3% ze
0.3% xey
0.3% undecided
0.3% love

csv: Pronoun answer %

percent,pronoun
41.6%,he
26.3%,she
9%,they
7.8%,comrade
7.2%,any
4.3%,none
1.2%,fae
0.9%,it
0.6%,e
0.3%,ze
0.3%,xey
0.3%,undecided
0.3%,love

19
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Source: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1275069/poster-handprint-community-worskshop/

1987 (made)

Artist/Maker: Handprint Community Worskshop (print-makers)

Place of origin: Kirklees (made)

Brief description: Poster depicting the outline of Africa and an automatic weapon, 'Death Aid Presents White South Africa', made by Handprint Community Workshop, designed and printed by Art Raiders, 1987

Physical description: Laminated, portrait oriented, poster consisting of a white background with black writing, an outline of Africa filled in with fluorescent red and a black stenciled image of an automatic weapon.

[printed by anarchists]

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I appreciate the guts here. Just fucking go for it. Push the limits. I've done it in different contexts, sometimes it works somewhat and sometimes you get fucked. But if you can, you should. Make them fucking work. Especially if you aren't already tied up in collective class conflict. And sometimes, when you are.

OTOH in the realm of "legal precedence" there is a big risk because where we're concerned while a victory of one isn't a triumph to all, an injury to one is a defeat for all. Particularly when embarking on "test cases." (Not sure if this was intended to be, or ended up being, a test case? Maybe nothing new happened here other than some attention.)

Ultimately anything good always comes from the organized power of the working class.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I just searched for this game and the first thing I see at https://openmw.org/ seems to be saying they are moving away from open source? In app ads, fees, marketplace and telemetry (if you live outside california or the EU where presumably regulations prohibit it).

edit it was posted april 1st is it some sort of joke

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Molesting children .... to maintain capitalism

infiltrate organizations that threaten capital

infiltrate pedo communities

So does it maintain capital or threaten capital?

And if it maintains capitalism because of kompromat, then does being open about it thwart the whole plan?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago

"it worked great for steve jobs!"

 

And something about diabetics.

Liberal-NDP pharmacare framework bill tabled | CTV News:

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Thursday. "This is historic. This is the dream of our party since the conception of our party."

[emoji]

What does the pharmacare bill say?

In paving the way for a full-fledged pharmacare program, Bill C-64, "An Act Respecting Pharmacare," indicates the Liberals' "commitment to consulting widely about the way forward," and intent to establish a committee of experts to make recommendations "on the operation and financing," within 30 days of the bill becoming law.

The committee would then have an entire year from the bill's passage to provide a report to the health minister with its recommendations.

Chrystia Freeland says drug coverage for diabetes and contraceptives in upcoming budget

Government highlights next step to universal access to free contraceptives - Canada.ca

April 1 shenanigans I guess.

 

I had this RS-1 Plus handheld gaming console. I liked it because:

  • comes with lots of games
  • cheap I think about $15
  • fairly comfortable and has actual buttons not like trying to play a game on a phone
  • fun to play for a little while but not toooo fun that it can't be put down

main problem was it wouldn't save any progress even when the game seemed to allow it. I guess it just doesn't have any writable storage or however they got the games didn't include that function.

is there something similarly low end and simple that allows saving? I don't want to DIY.

See this weirdly sarcastic blog post about the RS devices for some info hal of which I don't understand.

 

here is some free and unsolicited advice. agree/disagree?

situations you will want a cordless drill:

  • you are working where there is not guaranteed convenient electricity available
  • you need to be extremely mobile and a cord would be hazardous or very inconvenient
  • wet environments? idk

examples: rough construction, outdoors, drywall racing

benefits of a corded drill:

  • no batteries to charge
  • no batteries that can be stolen
  • no batteries you can lose or break
  • no need to plan around charging batteries
  • no batteries which allow the manufacturer to twist your arm into buying a new device when the old one works just fine; less susceptible to planned obsolescence
  • no batteries to weigh the tool down: lighter and more comfortable to use the tool and better balance
  • tool is smaller and easier to use in cramped situations
  • don't need a case, charger, extra batteries or other junk
  • one less thing to go wrong; more repairable if it does
  • more powerful

you are in a comm called "DIY" = you are probably always working near a power outlet and not going very far. consider a corded drill instead of mindlessly going cordless.

Make sure you get a decent extension cord. I used heatshink tubing to add an extra 6ft to my cord, that makes it long enough for many applications. Sometimes I tie on an extra one.

 

i don't know anything about trucks much less truck-human mating please forgive my ignorance comrades.

40
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

a little while ago i was on the public transit in the morning. since i have a regularish work schedule these days i see the same people here and there.

me (and everyone else) was overhearing a conversation by 2 teens. one of them was saying they only drink bottled water at school because they suspect lead contamination in the pipes. (the kids at this school look like rich kids, i don't think there is probably lead but it's not totally impossible i guess.)

after listening to this for a little while i turned around and gave that person friendly but firm lecture that if they think there is lead they should get a testing kit (which is free). [edit: and i told them how to do that.] why let other people drink water with lead? lead is very bad. if there is lead, you could be a hero for finding out. if not actually interested enough to do that, stop being a snob and drink the tap water because municipal water is a gift and you should appreciate it. then it was time for everyone to disembark.

now i see this person sometimes and we mutually actively ignore each other.

what do you think?

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