Xeno Danger Evil @XenoDangerEvil@dpw.social

This week @pluralistic wrote this article, in response to the murder of #BrianThompson and the clear similarity of this situation to his _Radicalized_ short story (2019).

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

“If you witness someone being detained by ICE, take photos, and write down other relevant information from a safe distance. Immediately after, call the Immigrant Defense Project’s hotline at 212-725-6422 to report the raid and find out if the person/s will be eligible for an attorney.” #HereToStay https://maketheroadny.org/deportation-defense-manual/

"ICE cannot enter your home unless they have a warrant signed by a judge ... Most of the time ICE agents will only have warrants signed by ICE officers, and those warrants do not give them permission to enter your home.

If they say they have a warrant, ask them to slip it under the door. If you open the door, you are giving them permission to enter your home. This is why it is important to keep your door closed during the entire interaction with ICE."

https://maketheroadny.org/deportation-defense-manual/

Ok so you know my idea about a search engine that never indexes sites with predatory code (tracking, ad bloat), well there IS a search engine that won't index any site with JavaScript.

That's way more aggressive than I was thinking, but https://www.wiby.me is a great way to find the old web vibe, if you want to go surfing the old way.

Hell, even my old websites from 1995-2001 (which are still up) probably won't show because at one point I used JavaScript to make annoying pixels hover around the mouse pointer. It doesn't even work anymore, but it's still JavaScript.

Mastodon isn't perfect.

But the fact a social network exists that is completely free to use

has no venture capital investors

has no shareholders to answer to

has no growth targets

with a web interface with zero tracking cookies

and mobile apps with zero trackers at all

with ten thousand server administrators who donate their time for user safety

is - in my opinion - mindbogglingly cool, given the state of the world we live in. Not everything has to be shit. People make things better.

Thanks to all the atheists out there just doing the right thing without me threatening you with fire and brimstone.

CVS Health just removed all the pictures from their leadership page: https://www.cvshealth.com/about/leadership.html

For posterity, how it looked on November 25, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20241125095752/https://www.cvshealth.com/about/leadership.html

Meanwhile, UnitedHealth Group’s leadership page has just been taken down entirely: https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/uhg/our-leaders.html

For posterity, how it looked on December 2, 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20241202204046/https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/uhg/our-leaders.html

– from a reddit comment under an article about blue cross walking back a change to their reimbursement policy https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1h7kb2l/comment/m0lsen8/

Life goal: live so that your murder doesn't spur ethical and moral debates about whether it was a good thing or not. #LowBar

People are being kind of smug about the FBI announcent not to text anymore, and I understand why... But there's a bigger problem than your texts to aunt Edna being intercepted.

Your mfa codes that are texted to you are now fully compromised. And a lot of websites only have sms mfa. That's the real story here. We've known for a while sms mfa was insecure because it's susceptible to SIM cloning and hijacking but there's now confirmation of man-in-the-middle happening. That's 10x worse.

"When the rich rob the poor it's called business, when the poor fight back it's called violence"

Poster spotted in Brunswick, Melbourne

I never expected Trump to get elected at all. Of course, I thought Chumbawamba would have more staying power. Free will is weird.

Harry Litman: “I have written my last op-ed for the Times. Yesterday, I resigned my position. I don’t want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons.”

#latimes #patricksoonshiong #LosAngelesTime #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #WaPo #Journalism #FreePress #BoycottAmazon #EatTheBillionaires #USPol

Hot take: by being actively hostile to end to end encryption apps, FBI and DOJ has created the playing field on which Salt Typhoon now operates.

They're every bit as culpable for texts being intercepted as FCC is for the robocall epidemic.

🤣

Is the health-insurance industry "working to make coverage and care as affordable as possible"? Or is it pulling billions of dollars away from coverage and care and converting it to administrative overhead and profit?

Does the health-insurance industry "help people navigate the complex medical system"? Or does it create all that unnecessary complexity in the first place?

(Industry double-speak from the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/nyregion/delay-deny-defend-united-health-care-insurance-claims.html?smid=url-share)

Whatever works!