📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

So what's it like to use Linux as my main desktop OS for almost half a year now?

It's like I used to live in a fancy apartment with fine furniture and abstract art on the walls, everything "smart" and fully automated, except it wasn't mine. It belonged to an abusive landlord, who liked to come and go as they pleased, changing and rearranging whatever they wanted, sometimes telling me no, I can't do this or that for whatever reason. Every few months they'd increase the rent and install more cameras to make sure I didn't do anything they didn't like.

And now I've moved into a wooden cottage, built by my new strange but mostly friendly neighbors. They don't charge rent, they just thought building a house was fun and then they didn't know what to do with it. It has cool gadgets and contraptions too, but some of them are unfinished, in some places you can see the wiring where the plaster fell of the walls, and there's one room with a hole in the floor but we just put a wooden board over it and it's fine - we'll fix it eventually. It's still a nice house, cozy and warm, and I can put whatever I want on my walls and nobody bothers me. Sometimes the neighbors have loud parties at night and it's kinda difficult to sleep, but I've learned that it's a lot more fun to just join them instead.

I'm still friends with my old neighbors, though I admit I feel disconnected sometimes when I hear their landlord installed another camera in their bedroom, but they still can't bring themselves to live with loud neighbors and a hole in the floor. My first instinct is to argue with them, but then I realize it also took me twenty years living with that same landlord before it was finally enough for me, and if someone had suggested that I should move elsewhere, I also would have told them to fuck off. Because while it's always possible to abandon your home and move elsewhere, it sure isn't easy - it's often painful, takes a lot of time, and requires difficult compromises that may not be the right ones at that time. All I can say is that from where I am now, I'm pretty sure I'm not going back.

And to my friends who might feel addressed by this: there are far more important issues in life than your choice of apartment (or desktop OS), and I still love you 

Got an email from Dark Horse Comics (publisher of Hellboy, Witcher, Cyberpunk and Avatar comics) announcing that they are killing the digital comic book libraries their readers accumulated over the years.

Their FAQ makes it painfully clear you DO NOT own the DRM-ridden digital products the stores claim to be "selling" to you.

@pluralistic

give the brain a lil break today by hacking on the microblog. my books now show up in the activity feed and the reading list RSS feed.

now i'm going to go read my goofy dungeon crawler book

#indieweb

As someone who is totally blind, the Fediverse is the only place where I have ever been able to follow people such as photographers, artists, or even those who post pictures of their cats or the food they ate. The reason is that most of them use alt text. They take the time to describe the images that my screen reader can't recognise. Some write the descriptions themselves, and others use tools such as altbot. Some worry that their descriptions aren't good enough, especially when they are new at this. Let me assure you, not only are they good enough, they are extremely appreciated! If the rest of the world thought as you did, it would be a much better place. Don't hesitate to ask if you're unsure of something, but never think that we don't notice your effort.

#appreciation #accessibility #altbot #alttext #blind #blindness #fediverse #gratitude #images #inclusivity #peoplewhocare #pictures #technology

HAPPY ERIC CANTONA DAY!

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Manchester United vs. Crystal Palace match during which Man Utd. star Eric Cantona responded to a sieg heiling National Front/British National party supporter Matthew Simmons' racial abuse with a flying kick!

Asked about the incident two decades later, Cantona said “I didn’t punch him strong enough. I should have punched him harder.”

Still a dedicated humanitarian and anti-racist, Cantona has personally housed and feed a refugee family in his own home for two years.

To celebrate this momentous anniversary, we have printed a limited run of this image as stickers and we'll send you a pack of 30 in exchange for a donation to The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund! DM us for details!

#EricCantona, #KingEric, #ManchesterUnited, #KickRacismOutOfRacists