mérr

@merrulette
7 Followers
19 Following
70 Posts
Hello! I am Mérr, who has left the mainstream internet to follow the news and read stories in the fediverse. Interested in low-tech/repurposed tech and enviroscience.
pronounsthey/them

Quote in September last year for a high-memory compute server. £28,000.

Quote today for the _exact same machine_. £90,500

This is for medical research. Saving lives. When I say LLMs are killing people by killing research computing, this is what I mean.

@davidgerard.co.uk @edzitron.com

OtD 4 Mar 1943 nine members of the Baum Group, a Jewish communist anti-nazi organization led by Herbert Baum, were executed by guillotine in Berlin after they set fire to a Nazi propaganda exhibit https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10454/baum-group-executions

It's a little late, but the dolls are ready to greet the guests🎎🍑🙇‍♂️

#Kyoto #京都 #HinaMatsuri #ひな祭り #雛人形 #雛飾り #DollsFestival #Japan #DollsDay #dolls

I don't want a city on Mars.
I don't want AI in every app.
I don't want data centres in space.

I want clean water.
I want a stable climate.
I want bees to survive.

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@IndyRichard/116142884874491056

They have for years, if everyone who disagreed sent a second class postcard complaining about it, the BBC would take notice. Clicktivism and complaining online is ignored when you are up against millions of bots that clog up the internet.

@JulianOliver
Absolutely. Every step away from centralized tech ; like using Mastodon, rejecting Amazon, Netflix, PayPal, WhatsApp, and moving to Linux is resistance. it's a brutal monopoly that forces Microsoft and Google on us. But alternatives exist:

Linux distros like Tails, Qubes OS, or PureOS offer real privacy.
Browsers like Brave, Firefox, or LibreWolf replace Chrome.

You're not alone. Every small act; your choices ; slows the beast. Keep going.

📰 Regenerative agriculture sows success in Kenya

🗒 "They’re reporting up to 81% higher yields and 92% improvement in water retention. Meanwhile crop failure, soil erosion and dependence on chemicals have sharply reduced.

Outcomes have been validated by the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry, which analysed samples from 2,000 project sites and reported massive improvements in soil health and microbial diversity."

https://www.positive.news/society/regenerative-agriculture-sows-success-in-kenya/

#gardening #permaculture

"The solar panels delivered by a single container ship will generate as much power over their lifetimes as more than 50 ships carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) or 100 carrying coal, according to recent IEA analysis."

#solar #coal #ships

This is as good a time as any for a thought experiment.

You're in Nazi Germany. You know about the camps, you know what they do, you see the ash fall, you smell it. People who resist alone are killed, some are sent to the camps too. You're afraid to even talk to people about it for fear that they'll turn you in.

You think back to when the camps were being built. You had all the warning signs, but you didn't know how to interpret them. You could believe it would happen. You thought you'd have a chance to vote him out. You thought there might be another way. You thought maybe things would turn out differently if you just sat tight, kept your head down, kept yourself safe.

You see a family being dragged from their home. You know they will be killed. You want to fight, not just for them but for yourself. You opposed Hitler, and at any point you know you could be on the list... Even if you do nothing.

You wish you could rise up, shoot the SS, open the gates, fight it all. You know you aren't alone, but you don't know how to connect with the people who want the same thing.

Using the knowledge we have now, what should you have done in the preceding months and years to connect, to build a community that would open up all paths of resistance?

There were people who resisted. We know it wasn't enough.

Gun laws in Nazi Germany were very similar to US laws in that Nazis were largely free to own guns and everyone else was not. Unlike the US, where "others" have historically controlled using the fear that they might be randomly executed, Germany did codify it. Red flag laws were one more step in the US towards that codification, and there will be more.

When Nazis were taking away those guns, the social networks didn't exist to make resistance possible for most folks. But some Jews were able to resist.

It wasn't the guns that made the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising possible, though they definitely helped. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was made possible by labor organizing in the precessing years.

If there were more uprisings like that, the Holocaust could have been stopped if not prevented. Social networks make resistance possible. Guns are only useful tools to resist authoritarianism *after* you build a community able to support that resistance, and they are only one of many tools made useful by that community.

Getting guns is easy, and not always necessary. Building community is hard. Guns won't keep you safe. Community will.

Single acts of resistance may slow the machine down, but to actually bring down a monster you need to be able to attack more than once. You need a society of resistance. If you are afraid now, build that. Talk to people while it's still safe to do so. Ask them where their red line is. Talk to neighbors. Figure out your network.

Take the steps you need now to keep your neighbors safe, to keep yourself safe.

#USPol