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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • How to choose a browser - see link in bottom

    If MS was to sell less licenses than there out there, or claims more than actual, I would suspect there would a tax-ivasion liability against them. So if they have claimed sales of 3bil then they brag of 4bil users, someone would notice.

    On the other hand, in terms of anonymity of browsing you’d rather be identified as one of the many with the exact same setup than being unique. TB actually used this to even the mozilla version that was most popular, and even advised not to adjust the default screen size or window size to merge with the “croud”.

    But you have a valid concern, when rags come out and say 97% don’t use linux/bsd when in fact 14% do.

    Using vanilla ff or chrome is the worst possible way to protect your personal information. https://digdeeper.neocities.org/articles/browsers


  • I participated in clinic defense and pro-choice organizing from the late 80s till 09, and the most vivid memory was a case from Loyola Univ. (Baltimore) where a student had gotten pregnant and admins/clergy found out about it. They advised here on getting an abortion quietly or leave the dorms and school as it was a bad example for catholic women/students. The hypocrisy of marketing a myth while clergy having no moral constraints and were more interested in the school’s reputation and fame was enough to tell people what this is all about.

    Why are republicans against choice? It fits the rhetoric of conservativism (although Ge.Bush the father had cleared out that under his administration the then status quo was not to be challenged, clearly for choice) BUT!! A vast majority of democrats are catholics, and some are more traditional jews, and they are all against choice, among other religious groups within the democratic mainstays (Maryland & Massachusets especially). So republicans use this as a wedge to break up democrat’s votes to shift anti-choice voters their way. Otherwise they wouldn’t give a penny on morality, since morality is cheap against the interests they serve.

    Why are democrats pro-choice? Because half of the republican voters are women, and women tend to get sensitive on an issue that absolutely has to do with a productive woman’s choice. Given the population of the US, nearly half the female voters are not of productive age, but together with men they have a say on what productive women should do with their bodies.

    A rich woman can have a baby or can always get a safe abortion no matter how illegal it becomes. A poor woman may not even have enough to travel to the nearest legal state to get one, if she could afford and there was no subsidy.

    Fascists always locate a powerless or less powerful target group to mobilize the powerful against an easy enemy they can win and gain political power and legitimacy. In this case it is economically challenged productive women who are against the rest of society on moral grounds. Neither democrats or republicans will go out of their way not to lose them.

    Representative pro-capitalist anti-communist democracy: It is a dirty job but someone has to do it.


  • 1st of all globally libertarian is a specific mode with the anarchist movement, definitely anti-capitalist and anti-inequality of any sort (economic or political). What the FBI fabricated a pseudo ideology full of contradictions and sold it/financed it as libertarianism since the 50s (part of their counter-movement anti-communism enterprise which some of it was later banned in court) and spilled over to 3-4 other English speaking nations, has nothing at all to do with libertarianism (left libertarianism or libertarian socialist are also fake tags admitted by passive people that wanted to distance themselves from this “disease”. Anarcho-capitalism is equally a pseudo ideology. The rest of the world just laughs at the immaturity of the English speaking people shifting tags around to contradictory things because they are “pop”. The US effort to redefine a century and a half of political philosophy tradition to serve its own internal governmental pathology is purely a laughing matter for the world. Immature people develop immature movements. Or should I say people who refuse to read more than a page at a time can go out on social media and speak as theoretical authorities.

    Libertarianism is well documented for a century and a half, it doesn’t need US fed propaganda and social media to defend itself. Pathetic UK monkeys seeing the US propaganda and reproducing it like good pups, have also fallen for this anarcho-capitalist/libertarian construct for the mentally challenged.

    The one thing libertarians are known for is the proposal for class and social organization, to organize under certain minimal principles that ensure and protect the absolute equality of its members. And for communities (either work or living communities) to accept one and only one authority, of their collective organization and assembly, their collective decisions, on which they are free to participate and whose decisions only affect those who are part of it. That and rational communication within the assembly because individual leaps into the supernatural and metaphysical can only develop to collective chaos. So before entering the assembly you can leave your personal individualistic philosophy at the front door basket and pick it up on your way out.

    Now, you want to build a house, within a libertarian community, other than your own labor and physical technical abilities, to house yourself, you need resources (tools and supplies, metaphysics you can add on your own to your own house, see if some entity through preyer holds the beams up on top of your head). The available resources are those that are collectively available to the community, whether in shortage or abundance it is a communal problem to determine, One thing will be for sure, if there is shortage you can’t have more than your share because that will prevent someone else from also building a needed house. Fortunately, since the libertarian uprising there is no market, no industrial market you can get supplies, You have what the community has.

    You must be building that house for yourself, not to rent or exploit other people by it, correct? I don’t see why any libertarian community would have a problem with it.

    In theory, in practice I suspect that a true libertarian community helps as a community everyone to build a house and expect everyone to be helping you, not because it is a law or a decision of the assembly to do so, but as part of solidarity and the realization that shelter, food, health care, education, entertainment, are all human necessities and the community is founded in providing all this for the community.

    Does everyone get to have the same house, just as big, or just as complex, it is not up to theoretical or ideological criteria to determine, that would have been anti-libertarian, to have some mora/ideological authority to enforce an agenda on the community. It is simply up to the community to decide. If all one needs is a shady room, or a basement, to sit and play cello in their free time, why oppose it. If one needs a room and a kitchen and a small pad to raise spices and herbs and cook funky things, why not. Now if one wants to build a motorcycle that does 350km/h and we have no raw titanium and machining facilities to make valves for it, I am sure the community will have their objections to prostituting collectively just to get you those much needed 16 valves.

    So, libertarianism is not for all, it is for those who are in need to end their exploitation (economic) and oppression (political), whether that is by boss, parent, spouce, teacher, cop, those who feel it know who they will be liberated from. The rest are only worried about losing luxuries and toys during a possible transition to an eggalitarian social organization. They are not ready because they benefit from capitalism, Fortunately they are a small minority in N/W Europe, N.America, Japan, HK, Australia/NZ and a handful of urban centers elsewhere where either intense industrialization is controlled by them or extraction of tremendous amounts of raw materials in high demand by industry (oil minerals etc.). The rest of the world is happy to be able to grow beans, rice, corn and eat it too without been treated as slaves.


  • The country that holds the record for number and percentage of people in prison is the US. In the US the percentage of black people in prison was higher than the percentage of black people in prison in South Africa during apartheid.

    No other western/industrialized (at some stage) nation has had so many political exilees and people whose citizenship was revoked based on “anti-american” views than the US. At some point the general secretary of RCP was in exile in France with his citizenship revoked. So, not all states are equal, and their historic development as modern capitalist states should be studied within context.











  • Now this is a wider issue, the Red Army did liberate the largest part of Europe from Nazi rule, the US basically tried to liberate France but the Red Army was in Germany before the US crossed the border. In Yalta the three, US/UK/USSR divided the pie, Spain and Greece went on the other half and remained fascist till the 70s (meaning anticapitalists were executed, prisoned, exiled, etc). Yugoslavia went its own way. The US UK handed Hung/CZ over to them, but unlike other places the USSR had to use force to take over what was given to them in the pe cutting.

    This is not defense of tankie-ism it is pretty much what happened. Now between 90 and 2024 the 90/1 agreement was no Nato expansion beyond its current borders, and that was severely violated by NATO, to the last ring around the chain being Ukr and Belarus. So the not so red not so hot army anymore had to either react or accept total defeat and submission to NATO. There was no alternative for Russia other than to turn history back which in 30y proved impossible.

    I am not passing judgement on which dictator is better, I hate Biden as much as the next guy, but the narrative of recent history appears to have left out all petitions to the UN filed by Russia for the violation of the agreement. The UN’s excuse, NATO is not a UN member, and you can’t blame any particular state member of NATO for what NATO does. Unfortunately a state (Russia) which wasn’t part of the Yalta agreement the SU was, signed an agreement with NATO, not with any particular country. They should have had a better lawyer and not a drunk for a president.

    So Russia will evolve to yet another oil-rich country that is blockaded and cut-off from world markets like Iran and Venezuela. Unlike Iranians and Venzuelans Russians get really nasty when they get pissed, hungry, or out of vodka. So this is not going to go well too far too long. We shall see. Oil production and distribution, held by a handful of US based multinationals, will increase their profits in a further restricted oil market. So Iran, Russia, and Venezuela’s isolation does serve a profitable industry’s interests.


  • It was the mishaps of the internet effect and social media, being inherently hierarchical and non-democratic, “owners” of virtual space dictating communication to be a-political, under the preface that people get along when they are a-political. It is the same generation that you see as winning to be the motor for losing. The reason you can’t develop democracy on the internet is that “the internet” doesn’t exist over public space but is solely built on private space (land or wire doesn’t matter). It is always the host, not the tenants, that place the rules for being on or off.

    The age-polarization was a dillemma for many generations it was always a false polarization. Unless you would consider an anarchist/libertarian community of equals participating in decision processes, all hierarchical systems of organization will float the elders to the top and youth to serve in the bottom. Whether it is GOP, or a communist party, a club, or anything else, when do you find anyone young at the top. And by what means do you expect that someone younger will be more democratic, and less of a fascist?


  • With the democratic party moving as far to the right as it had, there was little room for the rep.party to move to, other than where it is now.

    This is the US political system’s reaction to the popular uprising of the Trump years, the transition of Occupy-xyz to BLM … It is like America of the 30s reacting and ending in the AmeriKKKa of the 50s.

    One thing that the American left has way overlooked is the power over 80% of the population that Sunday morning propaganda and indoctrination has. Zombies like Biden can be drawn out of the alter closets and dropped as saviors of a crisis.

    The health of the democratic tendencies of the US was evaluated by the revolution the Snowden revelations created. Since there was none, consider the corpse cold and stiff.



  • I hate to burst your bubble but when it comes to 6-7digits of cash at stake what does “trustworthy” even mean? You mean between millions and his word to you he will choose his word? His previously stated values and principles?

    The guy who made waterfox seemed pretty nice, friendly, committed to the cause, then sold the project to a data-miner, and so did the honest people who made startpage, the trustworthy privacy minded search engine? Now they see waterfox is independent again and not part of the big multi-natinal data miner.

    Mozilla once again made a sudden change that breaks your previous profile or other functionality and if you dare roll back the upgrade your profile has been ruined in transition, so you are forced to start from scratch reconfiguring, setting up you std tabs, bookmarks, history … Same stuff with TB, addons/plugins disabled, new “features” added, whether you trust them or not, added dependencies … you roll back you lose.

    The google chrome-engine is so intrusive in the way it runs, degoogled or not, it is hell to have on a system. Maybe inside a vm without anything else other than specific browser session may be ?ok? for fluff work, nothing private I hope.

    The naivity of people to accept and sometimes welcom large corporations producing FOSS is what got us to this mess, and I don’t mean users, but devs, distro managers, … if it is legally FOSS it is OK, even if it is a huge trojan horse manufactured by corporations to penetrate an other wise safe and secure system. FOSS - no corporate involvement - may be it, but will it boot? LinFound. gets millions and millions to have board seats to influence kernel, and it seems to be dancing with their wishes.