There are companies which offer training and support to FOSS. Companies could also pay those companies.

It can happen to anyone, even someone married to an Australian police officer who married a man in the army.

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/terrified-excop-jailed-and-deported-during-holiday-to-us/news-story/f48a5e5f7337df29dcd3679336bf6031

I sometimes wonder what if everyone who spends money on licensing fees instead takes the same amount of money and puts it into FOSS. Imagine what we could achieve? Likely the money would be used more efficiently because they could donate it to non-profit companies which don’t need to pay tax.

You did something today: you helped remind me of him, with so much chaos he slipped my mind.

If you’re feeling frustrated by lack of power to do anything what you can do to help is chip away Trump’s pillars of support. Have you ever played Jenga? If you pull out enough blocks the tower will eventually fall. The biggest blocks holding up Trump are the billionaire wealthy donors and the right-wing propaganda machine.

Twitter is an example of both right-wing propaganda machine and owned by the biggest political donor to the GOP and one that we all can easily make a difference in by personally stop using it if you have an account and urging your friends and family to also stop using Twitter. Then try contacting organizations with an account and ask them to switch to Bluesky. And of course boycott Tesla and boycott Starlink too. If you like buying stocks maybe invest in SpaceX’s competitors.

For billionaire donors you can boycott their companies for example Uline is another big donor. We can make a difference. I see them as a good boycott target due to their reputation of being overpriced. Whenever you buy something online look at the box and labels. Do you see the words Uline on it? If so contact the vendor and tell them that Uline is overpriced and unethical, they can save money by switching to another supplier. This post shows someone about cut their costs in half by switching away from Uline: https://bsky.app/profile/geneha.com/post/3low65f4zac2d and https://refuseuline.com/ has a long list of alternatives.

Another big donor is the fossil fuel industry. I recently made a post about what you can do about that.

Good! Bring it down to 100% and also bring down Twitter usage to similar levels! Build fiber to rural areas so they won’t need Starlink or if you currently use Starlink see if fixed wireless is possible, maybe with a parabolic antenna on your roof or on an antenna tower you could get a signal. Keep boycotting Elon Musk until he’s bankrupt.

His political contributions are really on brand. He funded election deniers in 2022.

Also I’ve heard Oracle has a bad reputation when it comes to government contracts, very expensive poor quality software ripping off our taxpayers. I think they ought to be blacklisted or at-least require extra review due to their reputation. CUNY paid Oracle over $600 million and look at what that got them: https://pscbc.blogspot.com/2013/03/cuny-first-computer-system-to-aid.html. To be fair the article does claim that “The project required an expenditure of up to a billion dollars to do it right. CUNY Central offered far less. All but one of the bidders dropped out as a result”. I’m confused why it needs to be so expensive, even $600 million seems like way too much.

There’s going to be huge protests on June 14. I believe protests are just one component. I think what people should be doing is trying to beat the pillars of support that are holding Trump up. For example boycotting his top donors, educating people on things like media literacy and trying to reach people who are not informed on what’s going on. Getting his poll numbers way down especially among Republicans would have a big impact on stopping him.

That’s a huge shame. I wonder if the issue is the articles about what’s happening with Trump are in English and not making it to Portugal.

I’m sorry but I disagree, I think we can make it through. It’s not going to be easy but if we unite and fight together we can stop this madness. If we split up it’s going to screw all the Democrats and normal people who are stuck living in red states for reasons such as can’t afford to move.

But Google’s guidance was also telling us that recovery was possible if we just “removed” our “unhelpful” on-page content:

This is very chilling because it means websites will delete content. If the internet archive didn’t grab it in time it means knowledge is gone forever. An algorithm is not going to always be accurate in determining what is helpful.

For those people they should all contact the government agencies that are still on Twitter and demand they switch to Bluesky.

We have the power to fight back! Contact politicians in your country and demand a faster transition to renewable energy. The economic harms caused by climate change are far greater than the cost of switching to renewable energy.

One possible idea I had is to take advantage of global anti-Trump sentiment and urge countries especially those hit hard by Trump’s tariffs to fight back by buying less fossil fuels especially less fossil fuels from the U.S. I’m not sure if people from other countries understand just how influential the U.S. fossil fuel industry is in electing Trump and Republicans. It’s similar to how people are (unfortunately too slowly it seems) moving away from buying Russian fossil fuels.

So when you boycott fossil fuels you’re stopping authoritarian regimes and saving the planet.

Totally agree here, another good reason to cancel your Spotify account.

Of course you can!

I look forward to the day I never hear about this guy again.

What’s shameful is Spotify is still allowing some of Andrew Tate’s content. If you have a Spotify account please consider contacting Spotify and send them a message saying you want Andrew Tate completely removed, want Spotify to stop funding Joe Rogan and demand a feature to block podcasts the same way you can block artists for songs. Also maybe consider ending your Spotify subscription. When you cancel your subscription you will be prompted to explain why you’re canceling. It’s crucial to fill you the reason. Say you’re canceling because you don’t like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan.

This article is relying on anecdotal evidence citing only a few random Reddit and Bluesky posts and some of the claims in the article are not backed by any evidence. Also note that the Reddit links I clicked on are all heavily downvoted.

Denise is a person that’s been long involved in trust and safety analyzed a lot of the Gaza accounts and found that https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3lpxyoe4efk26 only 18% of Gazans were actually posting in Gaza time. Of course she didn’t publish hard data so this claim isn’t 100% scientific either but the poster is pretty reputable I feel.

Note later as a counterargument to this I did find one person who claimed they have a 4 AM morning prayer. I don’t know how many Gazans take part in that. https://bsky.app/profile/anothersmd.bsky.social/post/3lpyetkltys2y I did verify that some websites say they have a prayer at around 4 AM.

Also if you’ve ever used Bluesky before it used to be that you’d get random replies and mentions asking for money, recently they’ve gotten this much better under control.

So I think what is really happening is people post unsolicited requests for money on posts that are unrelated and they get correctly marked as spam.

This article: https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/terrified-excop-jailed-and-deported-during-holiday-to-us/news-story/f48a5e5f7337df29dcd3679336bf6031

Should be mandatory reading before anyone tries to visit the U.S.

Until we fix this please do not come here.

Twitter could be used as a weapon against Canada to promote destabilizing political movements such as the Alberta separatists mentioned in the article. I’d go as far as to say that Twitter under Elon Musk functions effectively as an extension or an arm of the Trump regime. No one should be using Twitter, especially those in other countries who are at risk of foreign influence from the Trump regime.

That’s why I’m calling on Canadians to boycott Twitter and urge institutions, business, universities, sports teams and celebrities to switch to Bluesky. Most websites have an about or contact-us section. Use that and urge them to boycott Twitter.

If for some reason you or anyone you know is still using Twitter now is the time to take advantage of the outage and urge people to leave Twitter permanently. Tell your friends about alternatives to Twitter such as Bluesky and Mastodon.