If you need a good laugh:

https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060

"’ll go down this thread with [Chat]GPT or Grok and I’ll start to get to the edge of what’s known in quantum physics and then I’m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it’s vibe physics,” Kalanick explained. “And we’re approaching what’s known. And I’m trying to poke and see if there’s breakthroughs to be had. And I’ve gotten pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs just doing that.”

My paternal grandmother, Bertha.

She was a cotton spinner in a factory in Bolton. Lived to her 90s.

My grandfather barely made 50. He had been a coal miner in Wigan when they met, then a cotton worker. There's a chapter in Orwell's *Road To Wigan Pier* that describes the conditions¹.

Coal dust killed him, though cotton dust was bad, too.

I remember her house from before she had electricity.
___
1.Normally each man has to clear a space four or five yards wide. The cutter has undermined the coal to the depth of five fect, so that if the seam of coal is three or four feet high, each man has to cut out, break up, and load on to the belt something between seven and twelve cubic yards of coal. This is to say, taking a cubic yard as weighing twenty-seven hundred-weight, that each man is shifting coal at a speed approaching two tons an hour.
…
By no conceivable amount of effort or training could I become a coal-miner: the work would kill me in a few weeks.

I've just finished reading _Technofeudalism_ by Yanis Varoufakis. If he's right, then it's politically urgent to escape from the clutches of Meta, Google, Amazon and the like as soon as possible.

Varoufakis' arguments reminded me of _Chokepoint Capitalism_ by Rebecca Giblin and @pluralistic, though according to Varoufakis the dominance of Amazon and the like has killed off capitalism and is a form of feudalism. I still want to compare these two analyses more carefully.

But Varoufakis' argument is: these platforms have managed to lure people in to work for them for free, and with every post and update on their platforms, these exploitative and massively dangerous companies grow stronger and harder to defeat. On the other hand, if the people take back social media and the internet more generally, there's a real opportunity for building a counter-movement with these technologies.

The lesson I take from this: getting people to quit the capitalist platforms and join the #Fediverse is part of political organisation, and possibly an important part if you consider the way people are tethered to their Instagram and Tiktok.

Let me repeat this: Convincing and helping comrades to quit the capitalist platforms and join the Fediverse is an important form of revolutionary political organisation. ✊

Ej ej, a wiecie czym zakonserwowano papę?

Cenzoesanem sodu xD

How it started: Monstera plant, just split from parent plant which rotted at the base after a power failure in very cold weather. November 2022

How it's going: Same plant today. Threatening to take over my bedroom.

FTR (For The Record): Most, but not every Windows 10 PC or Laptop will run Linux. Especially in consumer oriented models you will often see weird parts that are not supported by Linux. Certain WiFi cards, touchpads and many more components can be problematic. With business level machines you are often more lucky. These machines often are certified with certain Linux distros (Ubuntu, Red Hat and more).

So always try, but be prepared it might not always JustWork™