Really long, long, post! But, very worth reading! I would consider! 🙏💪
October 27, 2025 (Monday)
This morning, around 2 million federal workers checked their bank accounts.
Nothing.
Day 27 of the shutdown. The first full pay period gone. Air traffic controllers showed up anyway. TSA agents. Border Patrol. FBI. Coast Guard. All classified as "essential"—which means you work, but we don't pay you.
Congress got paid Friday. Every one of them. Yesterday, the USDA posted a message on its official website: "Bottom line, the well has run dry.” Forty-two million Americans use SNAP. One in eight Americans. Children. Seniors. Veterans. People with disabilities. Working people. "If the SNAP program shuts down," Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, told NPR, "we will have the most mass hunger suffering we've had in America since the Great Depression."
The well has run dry, the USDA says.
The USDA has a $6 billion contingency fund. Congress allocated it specifically for emergencies like this. Food policy experts say the administration is legally obligated to use it. Trump won't.
Over the last 17 weeks, Speaker Mike Johnson's House of Representatives worked on Capitol Hill for 20 days. Johnson canceled next week too. The House won't be back before November 1st, when the food stamps stop.
Congress got paid for all 17 weeks.
A TSA agent at JFK checked his bank account this morning. Day 27. Nothing. Daycare costs $1,200 a month. He has $91. He showed up for his shift anyway. Searched 1,200 bags today. One for every dollar he doesn't have.
Here's what else keeps running: Tax collection—the IRS is still taking money out of paychecks while federal workers get nothing. ICE—fully operational, conducting Trump's raids. Prisons—fully staffed. Military operations—wars don't pause. Debt collection—the Treasury still garnishes wages.
America has had 11 shutdowns since 1976. No other developed democracy does this. Canada doesn't. Germany doesn't. Japan doesn't. They keep operating at last year's funding until deals are reached.
But here, a shutdown stops child nutrition services and furloughs food inspectors, while Congress never misses their $174,000 salaries with complimentary gym memberships. They don't close the whole government. They close the parts that help you and keep the parts that serve power.
April 15, 1912. The Titanic struck an iceberg and sank. Over 1,500 people died. First-class passengers: 62% survived. Second-class: 42%. Third-class: 25%.
Everyone knows "women and children first." What's left out: first-class men survived at 33%. Third-class children survived at 34%. Being a wealthy man gave you nearly the same odds as being a poor child.
Here's what kept running perfectly as the ship went down:
The crew maintaining order. Stewards at gates between classes. Officers loading lifeboats according to protocol—even when it meant launching them half-empty. Lifeboat 1 had capacity for 40. It launched with 12. Radio operators sent distress signals until water took them. Musicians played to prevent panic. All died at their posts.
The enforcement of order never failed. Here's what "shut down":
The routes that would have saved third-class passengers. They were housed five decks below the lifeboats. The direct path went through first-class areas where they normally weren't allowed. During evacuation, those restrictions stayed in place. Gates remained.
Daniel Buckley, third-class passenger, testified to the U.S. Senate: There was one passenger getting up the steps, just as he was going through a gate, a crewman came along and threw him back down. Threw him down into the steerage place. The crewman locked the gate. Another passenger broke it down. Buckley's group got through.
Saturday, October 26, 2025. Portland ICE building. Video shows a federal agent speaking with a protester standing on the public sidewalk. The agent reaches across the blue line painted on the ground—the boundary between public property and federal jurisdiction. He pulls the protester over the line. The moment the person crosses, other officers move forward. Arrest.
The line didn't enforce itself. Someone decided where to paint it. Someone decided who could cross it, and in which direction. The protester didn't step over. They were pulled over. Then arrested for being on the wrong side.
No general alarm for third-class. No evacuation plan. Many weren't told what was happening until water reached their decks.
The ship had lifeboats. They launched half-empty. The systems of rescue were "overwhelmed." The systems of order kept running until the water took them under.
The same pattern is running now. Every shutdown since 1976. The pattern repeats. The systems that control you never have resource problems. The systems that serve you are always overwhelmed.
Air traffic control is breaking down. 196 shortages since the shutdown began, four times higher than last year. Essential workers showing up without pay, trying to keep planes safe. The system is breaking down. Overwhelmed.
Meanwhile, ICE operates at full capacity. Prisons fully staffed. Military operations continue. Debt collection never stopped. These systems are never overwhelmed. They always have the resources they need.
The USDA says the well has run dry for food stamps. But ICE has the resources to conduct raids. The government can't figure out how to use a $6 billion contingency fund specifically allocated for emergencies like this. But it can figure out how to keep garnishing wages during a shutdown.
The House worked 20 days out of 17 weeks. Congress got paid for all of them. Two million workers missed their paychecks this morning. Congress's 17-week salary for 20 days of work: $57 million. They could have fed 400,000 families for a month.
What keeps running? The apparatus that makes sure you comply, you pay, you stay in line. Enforcement. Control. Collection. Order. ICE raids at full capacity. Federal prisons fully staffed.
Congressional paychecks delivered on time—$174,000, all 17 weeks. Debt collection never pauses. Military operations continue. What shuts down? The parts that serve you. Food stamps for 42 million Americans. Air traffic control breaking down, controllers sleeping in cars. Paychecks for 2 million workers, day 27, nothing. Food inspectors furloughed.
Child nutrition programs closed. Safety systems at breaking point. Like the Titanic, it's not about actual scarcity. The ship had lifeboats. They launched half-empty. The government has money—a $6 billion contingency fund sitting unused while the USDA claims the well has run dry.
The question is never "do we have resources?" The question is always "who gets access to them?" First-class passengers didn't need to break down gates to reach lifeboats. The routes for them stayed open. The crew made sure of it.
Third-class passengers had to climb cargo cranes, break through locked gates, navigate five decks through a maze while the ship tilted and water rose. Many drowned in corridors, trying to find a way up. The ship didn't treat everyone equally. By design.
The government classifies ICE agents and food stamp recipients differently. One is essential—the apparatus to enforce must keep running. The other is a benefit that can be paused.
When you classify food as "non-essential" during a crisis, you're making a statement about who matters. The 2 million workers showing up without pay? Essential enough to work. Not essential enough to pay. The 42 million losing food stamps? Not classified as essential at all.
This is the Titanic's logic. First-class men survived at the same rate as third-class children because the system classified first-class men as more essential. The ICE arrests are public. The unpaid workers are public. The food stamp cuts are public. The $6 billion contingency fund is public. All visible. All documented.
The Titanic took 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink after hitting the iceberg. Lifeboats launched half-empty while third-class passengers drowned behind locked gates.
The treasury is not empty. The well has never run dry. The air traffic controllers are at breaking point. The TSA agents are calling in sick. The agent at JFK will show up tomorrow. Day 27. His daughter still needs daycare.. The government still has $6 billion it won't spend.
The systems of rescue are "overwhelmed." The systems of order keep running.

Hey Jamers! 😎

Did you know that one of Jami’s key features is its ability to work in emergency situations where Internet access is severely limited or completely cut off?
Want to know how?

Read our survival kit: jami.net/jami-survival-kit-you…

#Jami #OpenSource #P2P #MessagingApp #PrivacyMatters

I am going to catch a lot of hell for this, but that is ok. I was board, and sat down, and just started typing a bunch of thoughts into chat gpt about how christmas is starting way too early, and how it is like people have forgotten the true meaning of christmas. how it is so commertialized anymore. once I was done, I asked it to write a parody, and I love it. now if I could just get someone to sing this. maybe I should. lol, but here is the song it came up with. see? I at least know how to not take the credit for writing it. I just typed a bunjch of thoughts, ans had it do the work for me. smile. I suck at song writing.

**It’s the Most *Awful* Time of the Year**
*(Parody of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”)*

It’s the most *awful* time of the year!
With the stores prematurely
All decked out so cheery, I sneer with a tear...
It’s the most *awful* time of the year.

It’s the hap-*hazard* season of songs,
When they start November one,
You can’t hide or outrun that Mariah Carey gong...
It’s the hap-hazard season of songs.

There’ll be *plastic snow spraying*,
And *overdisplaying* of lights by October's last breath,
There’ll be lords a-cheap-buying,
And wallet cells crying,
And *zero* hint of baby in a manger left.

It’s the most *retail-abused* time of year.
There’s no silent night
When cash grabs take flight,
Joy hijacked by fear...
It’s the most *overdone* time of the year!

Yes, the carols are blaring on loop,
It’s the same dozen tunes,
By the afternoon, I need earplugs or soup...
'Cause the carols are blaring on loop.

They want gifts, they want gadgets,
They want sixty new jackets…
No mention of grace or goodwill...
Just ads yelling louder,
And eggnog with powder,
And “Peace on Earth” lost at the till.

Ohhh—it’s the most *early-arriving* ordeal!
When the wreaths show their face
Long before turkey’s place,
It just doesn’t feel real…
It’s the most *manufactured* time...
Yes, the most *commercialized* time…
It’s the most *I wish it was over*... time of the year!

Cool so there's a new attack against the Signal protocol, specifically the PFS. You can keep requesting PFS prekeys from a user and once theyre drained you have a better shot at being able to break that layer of security but more interesting is that the time it takes to get the new prekeys indicates if the device is online or not, so this is a metadata leak

Whatsapp published the research. Unclear if this is only Whatsapp's implementation that they're discussing.

arxiv.org/pdf/2504.07323

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Peter Vágner reshared this.

WhatsApp changes its terms to bar general-purpose chatbots from its platform. Meta said that the new chatbot use cases placed a lot of burden on its system with increased message volume and required a different kind of support, which the company wasn’t ready for. Really? I think that Meta just wants to force users to use Meta AI. techcrunch.com/2025/10/18/what…

Why did Wikipedia cofounder block edits to the ‘Gaza genocide’ page?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/4/why-did-wikipedia-cofounder-block-edits-to-the-gaza-genocide-page?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Global News @global-news-AlJazeera

in reply to Bubu

@Bubu da kann ich keine qualifizierte Auskunft geben, weil ich diesen Ost-Döner versus West-Döner-Unterschied (den von Dir beschriebenen zähle ich mal beim Osten mit dazu) nie so recht durchdrungen habe.

Zu diesem Döner-Ding, das hier gerade so steil geht, habe ich vor einem Jahr schon mal was geschrieben...

blog.fohrn.com/wirtshaus-explo…

@Bubu
in reply to Michi F.

einen random fact zu Berliner Dönern hab ich noch, dann höre ich auf, versprochen. 😅

Berlins international bekanntester Döner Imbiss (warum weiß eigentlich keiner so genau, der ist schon meistens gut, aber eigentlich nie die 30 min anstehen wert) Mustafas Gemüsekebab[1] hat eigentlich auch das "falsche" Brot. Trotzdem (oder deswegen?) ist er so beliebt. Vielleicht auch weil er dadurch anders ist, als die meisten anderen Berliner Döner. Wer weiß.

[1] tagesspiegel.de/berlin/bezirke…

Many experts caught up in the past crypto/decentralization discourse fail to recognize one key innovation area of #deltachat and #chatmail efforts:

A user interface (UI) and experience (UX) that mimicks and closely resembles Whatsapp and Telegram ... who both have a central cleartext database of identities, social graphs and, in the case of Telegram, also messages and media, of billions of users!

We prefer to ground every discussion in UX/UI terms and measure security by outcomes for users.

Well, I gave up on Dolphin Screen reader. Removing it was a whole different kettl of fish. Over 10 entries in the Windows add/remove view and then it left residual folders in absolutely any nook and cranny of my system. So yeah, same old experience that I had 10 years ago when I last tried that thing. Ah well, gonna love me some more NVDA With a side of JAWS and be happy.

Turns out, I overlooked a tiny little bit in the specification of XEP-0379, that adds another 2-3 days of work. 😫💩

datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/…

#xmpp #ejabberd #greatInvitations

Google creating a global centralized registration system for new Android apps is a bad idea for users, for developers, and competition. Google should nip it in the bud now. eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/appl…

In the mist of shite political news from around the world, here's a good news story, the Danish Foreign Minister give the Egyptian Foreign Minister a Lego set of the Pyramids as a gift, just look at his face ;)

#Politics #Denmark #Egypt #Lego #Joy #GoodNews

egyptianstreets.com/2025/11/03…

Australia’s first formal treaty with Indigenous traditional owners passed in Victoria

theguardian.com/australia-news…

We're so happy to annouce that we have an open source design devroom and we're now accepting calls for talks via the FOSDEM pretalx system.

Open Source Design has been part of FOSDEM for over a decade now, making sure designers who work with, or contribute to free, libre and open source software (FLOSS) a platform to share their ideas.

Call for participation details and link here:
opensourcedesign.net/2025/10/0…

#opensource #fosdem26 #opensourcedesign #design #oss #fosdem #cfp

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

Anyone interested in the #HackerTrain to #FOSDEM 2026, here is the quick (and long overdue) analysis of the interest check survey after FOSDEM 2025:

hackertrain.org/analysis-of-th…

In summary:

• 80% of respondents would (very) likely go
• so HackerTrain to FOSDEM 2026 is going to happen
• it will be organized as a distributed affair on several routes to accommodate for the diverse geographical and temporal needs
• most people would pay 100-120 € one way (we likely cannot affect that this year much)

in reply to André Polykanine

You can access a demo of both systems actually, though bear in mind Cloudron is going through a major new version so the demo on the site is for that version. i think new installs still default to version 8. Cloudron provides all the usual packages, I have a couple of LAMP instances running that host a couple of PHP websites as well as the Mastodon instance running here.