mastodon - Link to source

Mahmoud Khalil and his legal team vowed to fight Trump administration plans to deport the Palestinian activist to Algeria, calling the move "extreme punishment" for his pro-Palestinian speech.

mondoweiss.net/2026/01/mahmoud…

#Palestine #Israel #Gaza


Mahmoud Khalil vows to oppose Trump efforts to deport him to Algeria over pro-Palestine speech

Mahmoud Khalil and his legal team vowed to fight Trump administration plans to deport the Palestinian activist to Algeria, calling the move “extreme punishment” for his pro-Palestinian speech.
Michael Arria (Mondoweiss)
#israel #palestine #Gaza

mastodon - Link to source

Hey!!

Is anyone on here a Black birth worker or know one?

For my research, I am seeking to interview as many Black midwives (and other Blk birth workers, but midwifery is the central focus) as possible and get connected to birthing centers employing Black birth workers, esp. in the US South.

If you are/someone you know is interested, pls DM me! Thanks for reading!

*pls boost!!*

#BlackStudies #ReproductiveJustice #BlackWomen #BlackBirthingPeople #Midwifery #Doulas #BirthWork #MedicalAnthro

#blackwomen #ReproductiveJustice #medicalanthro #birthwork #doulas #midwifery #blackbirthingpeople #BlackStudies

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mastodon - Link to source

Ok so hey #Canada #GenX especially people from #Winnipeg who spent time in Eaton Place downtown in the early 80s, because that is the specific instance of what I'm certain was in many government offices and such.

Ok. It is maybe 1980 I'm late single digits and I go downtown with my gramma a lot, and we spend a fair amount of time in Eaton Place, her doing whatever she did, and me doing a circuit of Petland, a record store on the second floor, the arcade, and near the North entrance of the South building, there was a government office of some kind.

In that government office, there was a computer. Not one that #retro heads would recognize, it was large, did simple colour graphics, and had a weird nonstandard keyboard about the size of a gigantic TV remote, on a curly cable. Possibly some sort of Unix thing and I think it was networked, presumably on the Internet.

It mostly did very boring stuff and I was just a kid, I didn't care about whatever its main functions were, but I had learned that if I entered f518, there was a graphical mystery house game of some kind.

I remember that office had a fair amount of techy stuff, like, there was a kind of pushbutton video jukebox where you could watch various promotional videos, I remember one of the things it played was a Folklorama ad with the "la-lalala-la-lalalaaa" earworm, which my older California chick cousin and I laughed at one summer day that we were all downtown.

I would really love to find out what was the deal with that computer system, though.

#canada #retro #genx #winnipeg

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mastodon - Link to source
“This will result in the largest ever accumulation of power and wealth in the hands of a diminishing few, while the legitimate needs of the people, from healthcare to education, are met with ‘let them eat chatbots’. That *is* the intent and why AI is a project of class domination.” — disjunctionsmag.com/articles/w…

Why I'm Leaving Big Tech

A tech worker's reflections
Disjunctions

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in reply to Ethan Marcotte

mastodon - Link to source

Zach Bennoui

Great article, I agree with all of this. I worry about older people especially, my mom is a good example of this, who rely too much on LLMs to get information or conduct research. At the same time, they definitely have their uses, but I'm sick and tired of the hype. These things are not magic boxes, they are not some new species. They can do amazing things absolutely, but they're not the be all end all solution.

mastodon - Link to source
I would not be here except for the countless hours spent at my bedside as I grew up in and out of hospitals. They noticed infection when others missed it. They would sit in my room as I laid awake in pain as they charted. There is nothing or no way I can say thank you to my unsung heroes, my nurses, who worked with my doctors to heal me and save my leg from amputation. Think about nurses that have blessed you. Thank you nurses!

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source

May be hard for some to watch but is not extreme:

The killing of Alex Pretti: minute-by-minute analysis of video & stills from five different verified videos.

The videos show that Pretti "did not walk up to anybody from CBP in a threatening manner."

"There's nothing in the video evidence that we've seen thus far that would support" DHS's version of Pretti's intent.

~John Cohen, fmr DHS official & police trainer

abcnews.go.com/Politics/minute…

#USPol #Europol #AlexPretti #BorderPatrol #fascism .


A minute-by-minute timeline of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti involving federal agents

ABC News compiled a timeline based on six verified videos of the incident.
Gaby Vinick (ABC News)
#uspol #fascism #europol #alexpretti #borderpatrol

mastodon - Link to source
Again, stupid question time, sorry. Gemini has the --screen-reader switch which seems to remove the symbols announcing themselves as "box drawings". Open-codex doesn't let me do this. I want these symbols gone. the punctuation setting doesn't seem to change the situation at all. Does anyone know the way to get rid of these? I'm using windows ten powershell 5.1. I have tried CMD without any change. I am happy to upgrade powershell if it will do anything, I am also happy to get WSL 2 running if that will help, or set something up over SSH. I just want to know if any of these will kill these symbols.

mastodon - Link to source

"Neil Young Trashes Amazon, Gives His Complete Musical Catalog to Greenland for Free
"Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos, a billionaire backer of the president," Young writes to fans. "My music will never be available on Amazon, as long as it is owned by Bezos""

rollingstone.com/music/music-n…


Neil Young Trashes Amazon, Gives His Catalog to Greenland For Free

Neil Young has escalated his way against Amazon due to Jeff Bezos' support of Trump, and is giving his music to the people of Greenland.
Andy Greene (Rolling Stone)

mastodon - Link to source

The woman who survived
five gunshots from a Border Patrol agent in Chicago last fall,
-- only to be criminally charged and then cleared,
now wants a judge’s permission to share records that
show how the feds respond when “their agents use deadly force against U.S. citizens.”

#Marimar #Martinez’s lawyer argued Monday that
top Trump administration officials continue to smear her name,
and that the White House’s false narrative about her arrest
has even seeped into writings by
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

All the while, a standard court order bars Martinez from sharing records in her case.

Designed to protect against the improper disclosure of evidence,
attorney Chris Parente says the order has
instead become
“a prophylactic to countering a pernicious misinformation campaign mounted by the United States.”

“They are forcing the public,
and Supreme Court justices,
to have to rely solely on the government’s
inaccurate version of events,”
Parente wrote.

“This court has the power to shed light on the truth of what happened on October 4.”

chicago.suntimes.com/immigrati…


Woman shot by Border Patrol in Chicago asks judge to let her release evidence

Marimar Martinez is blocked from releasing evidence in her case by what's known as a "protective order." Though standard, her attorney says it's “become an albatross” around her neck and “keeps the entire country in the dark."
Jon Seidel (Chicago Sun-Times)
#marimar #Martinez
in reply to adison verlice

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

The Neural voice included in recent versions of Narrator are currently only available to Narrator. We'd be happy to make them available but that is up to Microsoft to open them up at this point.

With other "neural" voices, there are a couple like Sonata and Hear 2 Read on our extra voices page, depending on what you are after: github.com/nvaccess/nvda/wiki/….

I also came across this add-on the other day: github.com/TigreGotico/phoonnx… (it's not on the add-on store yet)


GitHub - TigreGotico/phoonnx-AddonNVDA

Contribute to TigreGotico/phoonnx-AddonNVDA development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub

mastodon - Link to source
Condo boards suck! If you ever get asked, or told to join such boards, run far far away! The currently elected board just accused the previous board for not attending the meetings, when it was the president that wouldn't sign anything, or miss many meetings. I have evidence, so I will share the minutes with the Facebook group... and then walk away. Because, I never missed a meeting... ever. It's so petty, considering what is happening in the world, but it still makes me sad.

mastodon - Link to source
OK, I'll make this promise: If I can't fix that darn "when" issue by the end of the evening, I'll re-upload the V16 add-on with the older pack's phonemes and upload the new ones as an packs-tuned.zip file people can try. I mostly got positive feedback, but I must handle this carefully without changing the sound of sounds too much. It's mostly good but we have some outlyers.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)

mastodon - Link to source
Well, as I tune phonemes I am watching Season 4 of Traitors UK. Guess it's a good thing it came out. Ugh I'm not a reality TV person but the challenges do fascinate me that people get through. And just how two-faced they can be, although the moment it turns into alliances and who created what drama, I tune it all out. LOL.

pleroma - Link to source

I haven't seen this copypasta on fedi yet. tbh it sounds like if he was in school this century he'd have been a school shooter, yikes

❄️❄️❄️

I live in Minneapolis but grew up in the quiet mountain town of Boone, NC, with a pathetic squat toad named Gregory Bovino. He’s grown up to be the pathetic Nazi toad in charge of ICE, and has come to my beautiful city to terrorize, torture, and murder my friends and neighbors. He is personally going door to door, so here’s some background on him and some things you can say if you see him to get under his skin.

His father used to run a bar called The Library Club in neighboring Blowing Rock. While driving drunk one night, his dad hit and killed a woman with his car. The ensuing financial problems forced him to sell his bar and ultimately caused his parents’ divorce. Greg will be sensitive about that so be sure to name drop “The Library Club.”

“You're the reason your dad got loaded and killed JANIE MAE MITCHELL with his car, resulting in your parent’s divorce. You're the reason they split up!”

"Your history teacher, GI Jones, thinks you're a pathetic Nazi punk. No wonder you failed all his classes!”

“Remember when Mast General Store banned you for sniffing shoes after people tried them on?”

"Remember when Mr. Combs found you jerking off in the Watauga High bathroom?”

"Remember eating the Pioneer wrestling team's soggy biscuit? Is it gay to eat semen off a Bojangles biscuit or was that just an 80s thing?"

"Remember when your swimsuit fell off at Trash Can falls and everyone laughed at your micro penis?”

“Does your democrat Mom say she’s ashamed of or just disappointed in you at Thanksgiving?”

mastodon - Link to source
Someone told me that Speechplayer reminds them of Mac OS Fred on Windows which I thought was amusing. I can kind of see it. But Mac OS Fred to my knowledge was diphone-based rules, not quite the same as it is here either, although perhaps the default neutral "Adam" voice could really remind people of Fred at the higher sample rate.
in reply to James Scholes

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@jscholes haha, guess the only good thing about Speechplayer too is that it doesn't slur at high speech rates quite like Fred. Maybe that's why I like it though, not everyone does especially Fred, but it sort of reminds me of the time before they really broke Fred, in the Mac OS Tiger days. I've wanted to run an emulator of Tiger with sound just to have it, maybe now I won't really have to once I tune this further xD
@James Scholes

mastodon - Link to source
So it's clear to me that a lot of sharpness on consonants came from the original phoneme tuning table, once I made the tools that identify spikes and corners inside phonemes it was a lot easier to target one and reduce it or spread the bandwidths out without really altering the sound's identity, just softening it. It's just countless moments of "oh no, words like fishing now sound like shishing gosh what happened."

mastodon - Link to source
New NVSpeech Update where I tried to rework the phonemes so they sound less sharp especially at sample rates above 11025, and probably failed. Everyone will hate it. But let's see.
eurpod.com/synths/nvSpeechPlay…
Letters like "F" sound less like "clentched teeth" and I do think personally that it has made a difference, but all of this has taught me that everyone's ears are different and someone who thinks a sound is clentched teeth another will think it's not. So Sigh.
New settings added. Graduated Coarticulation, boundary smoothing between sounds, and Enable formant trajectory rate limiting. All of these have edit fields to customize, and they are all off by default.
If you hate the new phoneme table, you can always get V15 (change the link) and still have it. I might get a revolt after this one.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Cleverson

mastodon - Link to source

Mew Projects

I'm not that account, but: no, a Mastodon client cannot retrieve more than 40 posts per API call. However, some Mastodon clients like mine, have the ability to pull down more posts using multiple API calls at one time. Even so, the home timeline can only pull a maximum of 800 posts backwards, regardless of any settings or features an app has, so if you have more than 800 posts coming in per week, that would explain it.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to victor tsaran

mastodon - Link to source

Nicole Parsons

I am familiar with the Melian Dialogue "Might makes Right"

uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/mi…

thecollector.com/thucydides-me…

My counterargument is that the patterns & practices of that path is a path to perdition.

Rule without the consent of the governed sows the seeds of self annihilation. It's a system inherently unsustainable & fragile. It collapses.

Athens was ended within a few years of the Melian massacre.


Might Makes Right Revisited: Is Greenland a Modern Day Melos?

Hubris and an inflated sense of entitlement, not unlike that of the Greeks after Melos, back American claims to Greenland and Canada.
USC Center on Public Diplomacy
This entry was edited (1 week ago)

mastodon - Link to source

🔮 ARCANECHAT SPOILERS ✨

heads up ArcaneChat content creators and channel owners!

your broadcast channel is already epic, it is #decentralized, end-to-end #encrypted, and independent of a central server, this is already quite rare! but it will be getting even more awesome! 🎉🎉🎉

in the next version of #ArcaneChat you will be able to easily see the number of views your posts have in your channel!

and stay tuned for even more cool stuff in the future! 🤯

#ArcaneChatSpoilers #e2ee #foss #chat

#foss #chat #decentralized #encrypted #e2ee #arcanechat #arcanechatspoilers

ArcaneChat reshared this.

mastodon - Link to source
I think I'm prone to over-thinking/over-analyzing potential life choices sometimes.
Maybe I could do A, and then X can happen, or I could instead do B, and then Y can happen, but it is hard to know exactly how the future will play out, and, ultimately, either choice would be okay.
It isn't good to act without thinking, but going to the other extreme can also be detrimental.

glitchsoc - Link to source

"A dildo rolled across the pavement like a wounded soldier while tear gas fogged the street. Someone picked one up and held it aloft like a freedom torch while coughing their lungs out." A must read.

closertotheedge.net/p/the-dild…


THE DILDO DISTRIBUTION DELEGATION

The revolution did not arrive with speeches, pamphlets, or a carefully moderated Zoom call about optics.
Closer to the Edge (CLOSER TO THE EDGE)
⇧