Summer 2023 Recap

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Bonus: Substack roundup

Important pieces you may have missed.

July Roundup

What they did to us was diabolical. Even here in the US, officials moved in lock-step with the World Health Organization and characterized the rightful exercise of free speech as an “infodemic”, while massively expanding the powers of the already appalling post-PATRIOT Act surveillance state. These actions cost innocent lives.

Elon, X, and the Epitome of a Front Man

Elon's companies have received billions in government subsidies over the last two decades. Money that was later spent on the purchase of Twitter. Where he immediately began the process of turning it into an everything app with its own banking system. Or rather, the ruling class cabal that pulls his strings is turning Twitter into an everything app with its own banking system. And that should be alarming. But he says there are only two genders, and families are good, and people love a hero.

Don't kill your neighbour (yet)

Here are some ideas to help getting out of this noxious morass:

• learn to keep our autonomy of decision when we feel an emotion (when we are "triggered"), and get away from knee-jerk reactions when it is not necessary (meaning, almost all the time)

• stop consuming media that play the divide game, which means first of all not reacting to their publications but simply ignoring them, which is what they fear the most

• re-learning how to communicate without trying to be right at all costs and join one camp or another to fight some imaginary enemy

• create our own media where appeasement and discussion are a priority, and help those who are already doing so (this includes stopping all forms of clickbait) - and I am not talking exclusively about online projects

• discuss our frustrations constructively and try to work out projects for society

Money Money Money

I must have signed a waiver at some point stating that, as an artist, I will accept my starving wages and never ever learn about how money works, let alone what it actually is. Turns out, most people, artists or not, have signed a similar waiver because I’ve been asking friends about money and answers are scarce. I don’t claim to know how this technology works; not all the ins and outs of how others have made it work, anyway. But I do understand that at its absolute base, money simply is an agreed upon abstract value for which we exchange our energy

Recap

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Cyberwar primers

The human element

Escalating Cyberwar

• EU capitals want media law carve-out to spy on reporters

• https://www.wired.com/story/odni-commercially-available-information-report/

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/take-action-protect-end-to-end-encryption

• https://element.io/blog/end-to-end-encryption-the-will-of-the-british-people/

• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/uk-government-very-close-eroding-encryption-worldwide

Information Control

• https://www.accessnow.org/press-release/dsa-internet-blocking-statement/

• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/un-cybercrime-convention-negotiations-enter-final-phase-troubling-surveillance

• https://interpeer.io/blog/2023/07/google-vs-the-open-web/

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/web-environment-integrity-is-an-all-out-attack-on-the-free-internet