A "seasoned" campaigner and community organizer. An anxious Canadian 🇨🇦 adjusting to living with a new health challenges.
These days i can be found working remotely, exploring decentralized decision making, coordinating doing research and campaign strategy and spending time with my dogs.
I'm writing a book called Mandate:The Monkey Flower Experiment, it's about a group of people trapped together at an off grid university on the side of a mountain after a terrible storm. It could be described as a #SolarPunk Lord of the Flies (or something).
I am currently living in the territory of the Huron-Wendat Nation and of the Anishinaabek people. I was born in Coast Salish territories.
This is my primary account.
Interests: #ClimateSolutions, #FOSS, #governance, #strategy, #urbanism, #privacy, #cryptography,, #infoSec, #OSINT, #decentralization, #biomimicry, #StreetArt, #transRights, #IndigenousRights, #humanRights, #juggling and #memes.
He/They
#LoveIsLove 🏳️🌈
| All My Links | https://www.benwest.blog/links/ |
| LinkedIn 🙃 | https://www.linkedin.com/in/benwestintoronto |
Polymarket has pulled the bet on a nuclear detonation happening in 2026. There were obv concerns that a platform being used by insider traders would not mix well with a bet encouraging the detonation of a nuke. Polymarket didn't respond to request for comment
https://www.404media.co/polymarket-pulls-bet-on-nuclear-detonation-in-2026/
The financialization of everything is all that is left. Which is why we end up with the totally insane situation that people are betting on whether world leaders are going to get killed, or that a nuke will drop this year
Watch, subscribe here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paHMe9kFf0w
A couple of commercial shipping vessels have been struck, likely by Iran, sailing near their coasts.
Iran appears to be very serious about their blockade on the Strait of Hormuz
Saw a few videos this morning of Iranian drones targeting US military bases and blowing shit up. I was struck by how loud and slow these things are. It's as if the loudest leafblower on the planet had wings and a propeller.
This AP News story has some good detail on Iran's response to its neighbors, which indicates the majority of the many, many missiles and drones Iran sent at or near the UAE were intercepted, but that some less defended places were still hit due to the volume of the missile/drone volley.
"Officials in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates said Sunday that air defenses had dealt with 165 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles and more than 540 Iranian drones over two days. While officials said they intercepted all air attacks Saturday, debris from the knocked-down weapons sparked blazes at some of Dubai’s most iconic locations."
"Some Iranian drones flew as far as a U.K. military base in Cyprus. The runway at the Royal Air Force base in Akrotiri was struck by an Iranian drone Sunday, according to U.K. officials, and sirens blared there again Monday when two more drones heading toward the base were intercepted."
"State-of-the-art U.S. and Israeli air defense assets have proven efficient in intercepting most of Iran’s ballistic missiles launched at Israel. But the attacks using large numbers of cheap drones hit some softer targets lacking the same level of protection."
https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-israel-gulf-war-drone-49c8ea76358e579447ff839485f394ac
The distinctive buzz of the Iranian-designed drones has become a familiar sound in Ukraine over the past four years. Now, it’s increasingly heard across the Persian Gulf as Tehran strikes back with the cheap but effective weapons following the attack by the U.S. and Israel against Iran. The Shahed drones have made a transformative impact on the modern battlefield, with Russia sending swarms of the deadly weapons into the skies above Ukraine on nightly missions. While ballistic and cruise missiles fly much faster and pack a bigger punch, they cost millions and are available only in limited quantities. A Shahed drone costs only tens of thousands of dollars — a tiny fraction of a ballistic missile.
New: the oversight body for DHS is investigating agencies', including ICE's, use of surveillance tech/data for immigration enforcement. Comes directly after our reporting on multiple tools and pressure from lawmakers
New from 404 Media: ICE's facial recognition app, which the agency is using to decide who to detain and deport, misidentified a woman. Twice.
ICE says results of the app are definitive and override a birth certificate; obviously this case shows the app is inaccurate
https://www.404media.co/ices-facial-recognition-app-misidentified-a-woman-twice/
In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid. ICE has said the app's results are a “definitive” determination of someone's immigration status.
We are about to get a "post-American internet," because we are entering a post-American *era* and a post-American *world*. Some of that is Trump's doing, and some of that is down to his predecessors.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/16/k-shaped-recovery/#disenshittification-nations
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Danish head of government IT (left) hands over the first "microsoft-free" computer to the head of Danish Traffic control, December 2025. They are testing Linux as the primary OS, with open source alternatives for stuff like office, on peoples work computers in government agencies. Traffic control gets to be our first test subject. This is gonna be put in the hands of somewhat tech-illiterate people.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1pohupu/danish_head_of_government_it_left_hands_over_the/
The EU is slowly becoming tech independent from *big tech* :)
Joseph Cox
nullagent
BrianKrebs
Cory Doctorow
nixCraft 🐧
Tanille