Notices by Charles U. Farley (freakazoid@retro.social)

The fascists never could have made it this far without their staunch allies, the centrists, ensuring nobody actually stood up against them in any meaningful way.

And it will be the centrists who, after much agonizing, call the cops on us because they're worried that if we succeed they might lose their job or whatever.

The point of the Nazi marches is recruiting. When proto-Nazis think there are a lot of Nazis around, they get more comfortable doing Nazi things. The goal is to travel into an area and try to recruit enough locals to create a self-sustaining movement there

So it seems to me that the best tactic is to figure out who the locals are that they're trying to recruit and make sure they understand that they will not in fact be safe once the Nazis who traveled into the area leave.

Hegseth seems like the kind of person you'd pick for Secretary of Defense if you wanted to use the military at home.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Pentagon pick, sparks alarm over far-right extremism | Trump administration | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/15/trump-cabinet-pete-hegseth-defense

Don't seize power. Wield it.

@elexia There will still be plenty who donate them not because they want them to win but because they don't want to leave space for an actual left-wing party.

About the same number of people voted for Trump as he lost with in 2020. It's Democrats who stayed home. That's not "the economy".

The role of the Gaza genocide in Kamala Harris’s loss
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/the-role-of-the-gaza-genocide-in-kamala-harriss-loss/

@Gargron Glad to hear you're gonna stop accepting new registrations on your centrally administered mega-instances.

Water crisis → desalination & other energy-intensive water treatment → increased energy demand → increased fossil fuel use → more climage change → worse water crisis.

Heat waves → increased use of air conditioning → increased energy demand → increased fossil fuel demand → more climate change → more heat waves.

Only "democracy" in the Middle East.

So... is it not really a democracy, or is democracy actually worthless? One of those must be true.

https://social.mondoweiss.net/@mondoweiss/113415369890324497

Apparently when The Source was purchased by Reader's Digest in 1980 it had only 5,000 subscribers. But that was still more subscribers than CompuServe had in 1980, 3,600.

Subscribers peaked at 80,000, but CompuServe peaked at 500,000.

It's really interesting how much of the history of online services actually pre-dates people having computers in their homes. They used purpose-built terminals and TVs.

It makes sense that there was so much use made of televisions, since these were large displays people already had in their homes. So you'd have a terminal, perhaps built into the television, that could display graphics that were better than the computers of the time for a lot less money. The computer would be on the other end of the phone line, radio signal, cable, whatever.

In 1997, only about 36% of American households had a computer, and only half of those were connected to the Internet. Which I suppose is why Microsoft bought WebTV that year and then started working on their "Universal Settop Box", a device that was all about "fusion": all your multimedia and Internet use would happen through the same device and display. I played around with one at Microsoft's Mountain View campus.

I don't remember if Microsoft ever released a product based on the Universal Settop Box. Maybe as MSNTV boxes? But I think the XBox at least partially evolved from it.

"John Cioffi had recently demonstrated echo cancellation would work at these speeds, and further suggested that they should consider moving directly to 1.5 Mbit/s performance using this concept. The suggestion was literally laughed off the table (His boss told him to "sit down and shut up")…"

That was in 1980. One of the reasons ISDN never really took off in the US is because modems got better, cutting into its speed benefit. And then ADSL came along. Imagine if ISDN had had DSL speeds from the start!

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

Holy shit. Apparently by 2011 ⅓ of the world's 1.3 billion copper phone lines were running DSL.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5762795

From the same article, referenced from the Wikipedia page:

"Worse yet, after explaining the echo cancellation to a hostile audience and how it could be done, the same young engineer then had the audacity to suggest that 160 kb/s was too slow, and they really ought to consider a much higher speed, enough for video at perhaps 1.5 Mb/s, much closer to Shannon capacity for a four-mile twisted-pair telephone connection, at least in the toward-customer direction. The laughter was thunderous, and the kid was embarrassed beyond belief (particularly when even his own boss told him to “shut up and sit down”). But that was modern DSL's birth. I know well — that kid was me."

Seems even more precient to have realized video could be sent at 1.5Mbps in 1980. H.120, which operated at that rate, was published in 1984. But I guess DCT-based compression for videotelephones was being researched from around 1975, so I assume 1.5 Mbps must have been demonstrated by that time. Ironically, H.120 doesn't even use DCT but DPCM, which was pretty much obsolete by 1984. That's standards committees for you.

H.120 used that bitrate to be able to send video over a T-1. MPEG-1 used it to be able to encode video on a CD. But even though they're about the same, the bitrate of a CD has nothing to do with the bitrate of a T-1, though it DOES have something vaguely to do with video, since 44.1kHz is the highest sample rate compatible with both NTSC and PAL without requiring more than 3 samples per line, so it's the rate digital audio was recorded at at the time.

My "guilty" optimistic hope for climate change is that instead of ending up fighting WWIII it will somehow end up driving us all to figure out how to work together. If India and Pakistan can come together over smog, that'll make it easier for me to actually indulge that hope.

‘Climate diplomacy’: Can smog bring India and Pakistan together?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/1/climate-diplomacy-can-smog-bring-india-and-pakistan-together?traffic_source=rss

Ah, cool, just got spammed with a link to check if my wife voted so I can beat her up if she does.

Good job, America.

"And yet with less than two weeks to go before America’s 2024 presidential vote, it’s hard not to feel a creeping sense of déjà vu. Far from shaking up the political dynamic, this summer has instead crescendoed to a moment that is eerily reminiscent of 2016: a coin toss election that pits the most unabashedly right-leaning Democratic campaign in modern history against a menacing Maga effort with an alarmingly real shot at victory."

"Nowhere has the latter been more apparent than on the issue of Gaza. Throughout her campaign, Harris has rejected even rhetorical distance from the White House and repeatedly reiterated her support for Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing. (In addition to being morally reprehensible, polls suggest Harris’s hawkish stance could also significantly hamper turnout among both younger voters and Democrats in key battlegrounds like Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania)."

Hope your passport's current.

US Politics Has Reached a Dead End
https://novaramedia.com/2024/10/23/us-politics-has-reached-a-dead-end/

With no end in sight for the US's wars, China and India have reached an agreement dramatically reducing tensions over their border dispute.

China confirms pact with India to ‘resolve’ conflict over disputed border
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/22/china-confirms-pact-with-india-to-resolve-conflict-over-disputed-border?traffic_source=rss

I just realized Jurassic Park is a Frankenstein remake.