Another Friday, another #NewstodonFriday thread, with our usual mix of tech, politics, books and culture (if you haven’t heard of prima ballerina Maria Tallchief, check out @TheConversationUS’s story about her). All the newsrooms featured here are independent and have invested time and energy in establishing a presence in the fediverse. Please follow them, click on the stories, boost them, subscribe, donate and otherwise support if you can.
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If recent events have you feeling down and defeated, @thetyee wants you to know that it’s still worth fighting back. Alvin Finkel, author of “Humans,” writes about “the persistent spark of resistance throughout recorded history, in service of visions of more humane, egalitarian societies.”
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/11/21/Oppressors-Gonna-Oppress-Get-Tossed/
#Books #Bookstodon @bookstodon #Anthropology #History
Hold the phone — literally, in the case of @404mediaco’s @josephcox, who hasn’t had a cellphone since around 2017 due to concerns about information security. He wrote about a privacy-focused network, previously available just to members of the military, that piqued his interest. [This story may be paywalled]
https://www.404media.co/i-dont-own-a-cellphone-can-this-privacy-focused-network-change-that/
#Security #InfoSec #Cellphones #Hacking #CyberSecurity #Technology #Tech #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
When will someone make a biopic about Maria Tallchief, America’s first prima ballerina? A member of the Osage nation, she was key to the success of the New York City Ballet, danced with Ballet Russe (which tried to make her change her last name to Tolchieva) and became the highest paid ballerina in the world. Tallchief once said a ballerina “takes steps given to her and makes them her own.” Learn more about her in this story from @TheConversationUS
#Dance #Ballet #Culture #MariaTallchief #History @histodon @histodons #NativeAmericanHeritage #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Some cities are supposed to have storage programs for when they swoop in and destroy homeless encampments, so that folks can get their possessions back. These might include tents, medication, money, food stamps, jewelry and more. @ProPublica reports on the reality: If items are kept, it’s almost impossible to claim them, meaning vulnerable people lose everything — sometimes many times over.
https://www.propublica.org/article/homeless-encampment-removals-property-storage
#Homelessness #HumanRights #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
These encampment sweeps may also reduce people’s access to voting, @SFPublicPress found in a separate investigation. Lack of ID has other effects too, such as reducing people’s access to housing, city programs and medical help. “Replacement IDs cost money, they take time, they slow everything down,” said Joe Wilson, executive director of nonprofit Hospitality House.
#Homelessness #HumanRights #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
@Flipboard @ProPublica Around here encampments are often far from tidy.
I've participated in cleanup efforts in my neighbors forest. It is hard, dirty, dangerous work. None of the "owners" were present. Broken glass and needles (and amazing numbers of bicycle parts) were everywhere. I've had to remove leaking bottles of urine (used, I have heard, in drug production) and my wife had to use a pitchfork to move rodent infested, almost liquefied bedding. Clothing is often interfused among rotting debris and is hard to distinguish from those debris. Much of the material is properly characterized as hazardous. None should be touched without protective gloves, boots, and facemasks. It's not a situation where procedures for marking things and nicely packing them up for storage are going to be practical.
I have indeed seen prescription drug containers bearing names, but never money or food stamps. Around here there are far more plastic tarps used as lean-tos than there are tents.
The number of coffee shops in Ukraine has dramatically increased since the start of the war. The team at @timkmak’s Counteroffensive look at their cultural significance, now, more than ever.
https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/ukraines-resilience-coffee-culture
#Coffee #Culture #Kyiv #CafeCulture #Food #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
In 2022, organizers in California introduced a bill to have solitary confinement limited, and banned completely for pregnant people and other vulnerable groups. The bill was called the Mandela Act. For @bolts, Piper French writes about how the bill evolved beyond recognition — so much so that it now codifies in California law that it is permissible to use solitary confinement against pregnant people — and how that happened.
https://boltsmag.org/california-solitary-confinement-laws-2024/
#California #Prison #Incarceration #SolitaryConfinement #Pregnancy #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Dagoberto Gilb remains “an artful advocate for the unseen,” writes Roberto Ontiveros for @TexasObserver. The PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author has released two books: a collection of short stories and a series of essays. Which should you read? “These books are different animals,” Ontiveros says. “‘New Testaments,’ with its stories about humble healing and how personal myths may patch up memory loss, is a patient beast.’ A Passing West’ is, with Gilb’s recollections of auto shop epiphanies and insider info about the Corona beers kept in Rolando Hinojosa’s University of Texas office minifridge, decidedly on the prowl.”
https://www.texasobserver.org/seeing-the-unseen-dagoberto-gilb/
#LIterature #Books #Bookstodon @bookstodon #Texas #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Who should be guiding the Democrats over the next four years? Maya Contreras writes for @damemagazine about how it’s time to listen to experts in disinformation, historians and economists. “We must center the voices who’ve consistently shown up for the party, promote new leaders that have a proven track record of winning elections, and understand that the consultants who knew how to win elections in the 1990s don’t understand how elections are won in the current environment,” Contreras writes. “We’ll need a plan to counter the right-wing echo chamber with our own robust media. That won’t be easy or cheap.”
https://www.damemagazine.com/2024/11/20/democrats-policies-drowned-out/
#Disinformation #USPolitics #Media #Journalism #EchoChambers #USElection #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
4.6 billion people around the world are connected to mobile internet, according to @restofworld. But now, its growth is slowing, due mainly to lack of affordability. There are products and advances that can lead to sudden surges, however — including China’s satellite internet network, which is set to rival Starlink.
https://restofworld.org/2024/mobile-internet-users-growth-rate/
#Internet #MobileInternet #Technology #Tech #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
@Flipboard @damemagazine definitely an octogenarian who is out of touch with reality
I'd recommend that Democrats hire standup comedians, specifically road comics who venture inland from the coasts, as campaign consultants.
Political violence is a big earner for Meta. In the 10 weeks after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in July, advertisers paid between $593,000 and $813,000 for political ads on Facebook, according to reporting by @themarkup and @CALMatters. “There’s huge problems with their advertising broadly,” said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project. “They’re profiting off of a lot of harmful things, really without any sort of repercussions.”
https://themarkup.org/investigations/2024/10/04/how-meta-brings-in-millions-off-political-violence
#Technology #Meta #Facebook #Advertising #DonaldTrump #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Last of all, eggs. They’re culinary perfection — delicious, nutritious, versatile — but they also have a huge environmental footprint and are produced at industrial scale by animals often living in horrendous conditions. @KnowableMag takes a look at the food scientists who are trying to reverse-engineer eggs. “That’s not easy, because real eggs play so many roles in the kitchen. You can use beaten eggs to bind breadcrumbs in a coating, or to hold together meatballs; you can use them to emulsify oil and water into mayonnaise, scramble them into an omelet or whip them to loft a meringue or angel food cake,” writes Bob Holmes. “An all-purpose egg substitute must do all those things acceptably well, while also yielding the familiar texture and — perhaps — flavor of real eggs.”
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/technology/2024/creating-the-perfect-plant-based-egg
#Science #FoodScience #Cooking #Eggs #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
@Flipboard @themarkup @CALMatters Fair and concerning. That said, what is $600,000 for ten weeks relative to their overall revenue in the same period? In other words, is the $600,000 enough to influence their decision-making on these things, or is it more incidental, so to speakl?
@Flipboard
I don’t think egg substitutes have to be “all purpose.” Having a separate “scrambling egg substitute,” “whipping egg substitute,” etc. would be fine with me
@cdunnpasadena That’s a good point — there can’t be many (any?) other foods as versatile as an egg; why would humans think they could create one?
