i have used gnu icecat for years now, and it has generally served me well.

it is now starting to fuck out on me on a regular basis.

the problem i am having is this: after some predictable amount of time, the web browser starts behaving as if the computer has no internet connection.

every other program still works with the internet, but i keep needing to restart icecat.

i am ready to hop to a new web browser, and have been using ungoogled chromium for some time now.

could someone suggest a new web browser to me?

the way the mainstream media talks about it, you'd think that chatGPT was triggering the end of the world.

i gotta say, i do love a good goofy american action movie.

a really good example of that is _clear and present danger_ (1994), which i have just finished watching for the first time.

we talk about the sneakernet...

what about not a _digital_, but an _analogue_ sneakernet??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdot

"At the International Congress of Photography in Paris in 1925 Emanuel Goldberg presented a method of producing extreme reduction microdots using a two-stage process. First, an initial reduced negative was made, then the image of the negative was projected from the eyepiece of a modified microscope onto a collodium emulsion where the microscope specimen slide would be. The reduction was such that a page of text would be legibly reproduced in a surface of 0.01 mm2. This density is comparable to the entire text of the Bible fifty times over in one square inch."

feeling pretty happy about the federal division of aston falling to the labor party after the by-election.

remember the by-election was triggered by the resignation of alan tudge, who was one of the ministers to be in charge of centrelink, the australian government's welfare benefits office.

(for those not in the know, centrelink pays you your unemployment money, pays all the government pensions, whatever they be, etc.)

what makes this defeat against the liberal party of australia (the australian version of the US republican party, don't let the name fool you) particularly sweet is that the liberal party tudge has resigned due to his intimate involvement in the outrageous scandal surrounding centrelink during the previous federal government.

it is called the 'robo-debt scandal'. putting it simply, the scandal involved a new set of welfare policies by the then-liberal party government that saw centrelink go from handing out money, to demanding that the unemployed and defenseless _pay back_ money to the welfare office.

there has been an official government inquiry into the scandal, and rather than face the music, tudge has ducked and weaved and decided, rather conveniently, to resign from politics.

so, the liberal party losing this seat in parliament virtually seals their fate in the history of australia--they are going to be in the wilderness for a long, long time.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-01/byelection-result-aston-melbourne-labor-win/102157990

i have been reading about ike eisenhower's presidency, which i never considered in connexion with mccarthyism.

the 'second red scare' came into full swing during eisenhower's presidency. intellectually i always knew those two historical events happened at the same time. but i never considered them together in context.

so i decided to look at how eisenhower responded to the second red scare, and i discovered for myself just how far joseph mccarthy went in his witch hunt against communists.

take this for example: mccarthy bagged oppenheimer, which i never knew. oppenheimer was the head of the united state's atomic energy project. i cannot help but be astonished.

then, mccarthy went after marshall (of the famous 'marshall plan' policy in europe). i am deliberately leaving reading about that until later.

can you imagine attacking marshall, the man tasked with beating the soviets in the scramble to rebuild europe? deciding to turn on mister anti-communist citizen number one of europe?

look, i am a weird person, and i demand an answer to this absurd question:

are there any TV shows like 'the west wing' but for communists?

... do i have to write this TV show?

i did the political compass test for the first time in about 10 years, and i haven't moved on the cartesian plane.

i am still supposedly right in the very bottom left hand corner, lol

i am so glad i found the fediverse.

i have no idea how i would have gotten by without all these like-minded and compassionate people.

i am very grateful for all the good things in my life, the things that bring me joy.