Notices by bignose (bignose@theblower.au)

Thank you for this kind response @nemobis.

I don't so much need an exemption for only myself. What I need is the #Wikipedia policy changed so that people who use #VPN are treated equally and allowed to edit while preserving #privacy.

Having been a fairly active #Wikipedia editor in its early years, I loved the experience and wish it for more people.

Since those days, I need to use a #VPN to avoid omnipresent snooping on our network traffic. More and more people will need this to be safe online.

Wikipedia categorically blocks anyone like me from editing, unless we beg individually for an exemption. I understand the need to fight spammers and other malicious behaviour, but this blanket ban of VPN users forces an unfair choice between remaining safe versus editing Wikipedia. It's a bad policy that doesn't address the problem.

@JMarkOckerbloom

The violent response to #BrianThompson, a CEO who profits obscenely from the torment and suffering of millions of customers.

It didn't need to happen. Those CEOs have had plenty of warning that oppressed people will be pushed only so far before seeking a violent response.

The title short story from collection _Radicalized_, by @pluralistic, details how people are corralled by the physical suffering of family members, exploited by an insurance industry deliberately designed to extract wealth while denying health care, and finally resort to violent terrorism in the absence of any other effective option.

CEOs have had this, and for decades many other, warnings that they must stop the ghoulish practice of denying health care to those who need it, while extracting wealth. A reckoning is coming.

https://craphound.com/radicalized/

#EndWealthCare #HealthCareIsAHumanRight #PolicyFailure #Radicalized

This week @pluralistic wrote this article, in response to the murder of #BrianThompson and the clear similarity of this situation to the _Radicalized_ short story.

Years ago, Doctorow was wondering at the fact angry gunmen, frequently made financially desperate because of denial-of-care industries like #ForProfitHealthInsurance, somehow don't turn that rage against the industry profiting from their suffering:

“This is an industry that is practically *designed* to fill the people who interact with it with uncontrollable rage. I mean, if you're watching your wife or your kid die before your eyes because some millionaire CEO decided to aim for a $10 billion stock buyback this year instead of his customary $9 billion target, wouldn't you feel that kind of murderous rage?”

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/09/radicalized/#deny-defend-depose