Notices by Nonya Bidniss :CIAverified: (nonya_bidniss@infosec.exchange)

What the hell. The Fediverse, especially Mastodon, already exists. There is literally no need for this $30M plan to basically recreate Mastodon. https://writing.exchange/@ernie/113821463499065078

I have a bad feeling about how bad the next 4 years will be for U.S. stability, institutions, nation as a whole. I wish I had ways to protect myself but I don't know of any beyond stocking up on stuff for when my pension and retirement money's disappeared. I believe the banks may fail, savings disappear, there will be nationwide violence, government will be turned toward only implementing corruption and extremist religion. Instability could bring a global depression and resource wars while natural disasters cause mass migrations. This won't change when Trump's last Big Mac takes him out, it might get far worse. Hope I'm wrong. *Most* people who actually run things may be pathetically neutral on Trumpism but I don't think the majority of them are accelerationists who want any of this. I hope they can prevent it.

@selzero But we have to know when to get out of the Jeffries tubes!

@kathhayhoe That's an interesting and unfortunate distinction about the character of comments on Mastodon and it also brings to mind quite a few Black Mastodonians who've stated that the experience here has often been bad for them. It seems like Mastodon may have a real know-it-all problem, a lot of rigid, superior-feeling people who don't respect what others are saying. I get a few irritating insta-blockables but my posts have a small reach, which I'm often glad of.

Regarding U.S. Surgeon General's call to add #cancer warnings to alcoholic drinks:

"That idea that moderate drinking has health benefits came from imperfect studies comparing groups of people by how much they drink. Usually, that was measured at one point in time. And none of the studies randomly assigned people to drink or not drink, so they couldn’t prove cause and effect.

People who report drinking moderately tend to have higher levels of education, higher incomes and better access to health care, said Naimi.

“It turns out that when you adjust for those things, the benefits tend to disappear,” he said.

Another problem: Most studies didn’t include younger people. Almost half of the people who die from alcohol-related causes die before the age of 50.

“If you’re studying people who survived into middle age, didn’t quit drinking because of a problem and didn’t become a heavy drinker, that’s a very select group,” Naimi said. “It creates an appearance of a benefit for moderate drinkers that is actually a statistical illusion.”

Other studies challenge the idea that alcohol has benefits. These studies compare people with a gene variant that makes it unpleasant to drink to people without the gene variant. People with the variant tend to drink very little or not at all. One of these studies found people with the gene variant have a lower risk of heart disease — another blow to the idea that #alcohol protects people from heart problems."
https://apnews.com/article/drinking-alcohol-cancer-health-3dc58ed10ba5f948cb4f6949e276fb06

It wouldn't be the first time. The extreme way the govt has treated this crime, wherein a man shoots a man in the street, which happens over and over again and is not treated this way when there's not an obscenely rich person involved...in the context of the gross injustice (waves hands around) in which it took place, I'll be blunt since I'm not part of the jury pool...if I were, I would be inclined toward it. The justice system needs a slap from the people. https://www.salon.com/2025/01/01/real-risk-of-jury-nullification-experts-say-handling-of-luigi-mangiones-case-could-backfire/

In honor of #JimmyCarter I post his TED Talk, "Why I believe the mistreatment of women is the number one human rights abuse"
#WomensRights #feminism #equality #HumanRights #patriarchy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfW3aZCFfLA

#RIP President Jimmy Carter, a good man. https://apnews.com/article/jimmy-carter-dies-18c198c20352c835bca3eec276020dd7

@glynmoody Uggghhhhh

Everything the Trump or Trusk or Mump regime does for the next four years, just stop and ask yourself, "Is there some way in which this action serves the strategic goals of America's enemies?" My guess is you'll be able to answer yes a significant majority of the time. We'll see. #USPol

There are now 27 detainees at Guantanamo, 15 of whom are eligible for a transfer out of the detention facility. #military #DOD #terrorism #GTMO https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-announces-3-transfers-guantanamo-24-hours/story?id=116896937

If you see a link that starts with "amp." I suggest you do not boost it. These are Google redirects. Instead take the 3 whole calories and 20 whole seconds to find the actual source and boost that instead.

“With six more months like this, there will be nothing left” of the scientific community, says Mariano Cantero, director of the Balseiro Institute in Bariloche, Argentina, which trains physicists and engineers.

A view to the U.S.'s #science future under the new fascist christo-kakisto-kleptocracy https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03994-y

If you publish a website of any kind, please don't embed twitter widgets. It's a way of giving the fascist billionaire more traffic. Screenshots are forever. You can also download twitter videos.

Trump voters: dumber than a bag of hammers. https://www.buzzfeed.com/sarathompson1/donald-trump-voters-regrets-flipped

Please, #journalism #media etc. STOP calling "DOGE" an "agency" or an "office" or using any words at all that imply Elon Musk is doing anything other than impersonating a government official. No office has been established, Congress has not appropriated any money against a submitted budget. In fact I wonder if what they are doing is even legal, as far as the impersonation part goes. Maybe what you SHOULD be doing is investigating that. As they troll the American people with threats of cutting off elderly people's incomes and healthcare to a wide swath of the U.S., you are trotting along like good stenographers reporting on these creeps as if they are somehow officers of the government. They are not. They are grifters, scammers, and fascists seeking the destruction of the country that gives you the freedom to do this reporting. And their idiot patron is not even a government official at this time!

@cobalt I hope people figure out that school vouchers are a right wing project to destroy public schools because public schools are integrated and don't indoctrinate children into christianity. I don't want my taxes used for some wing nut's private school!

@glynmoody Dems are so tiring sometimes.

I'm listening to audiobook The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans and the first chapters so far have covered in depth a range of (for lack of a better word) pressures on/in German society in the years between the turn of the 20th Century, mostly following WWI, years before the rise of Hitler, and boy, are there a ton of echoes of all this in the U.S. today. Whew. Not good. Ominous. #history

Eight hours in, he has finally introduced Hitler. All this previous discussion has set up how so many Germans were ripe for what Hitler was selling.