The FCC already has the tools to prevent unwanted calls that it’s not pushing hard enough. FCC’s proposal to require an ID to get a phone number is a massive data collection scheme with no actual benefit to consumers. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/fccs-spam-call-proposal-just-data-collection-scheme
"when did Star Trek get woke??"
In the very first episode of Star Trek: the original series, we see a white Captain reporting to his black Admiral boss, a black woman on the bridge just a couple years after Jim Crow was abolished, wearing a short skirt (a symbol of feminist liberation at the time), a Japanese helmsman on the bridge only 20 years after the internment camps, a Russian crewmate on the bridge during the Cold War [edit: actually did not appear until Season 2 but the point stands], and the foundation of the modern concept of queercoding.
In the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we see male crossdressing crew members, a female officer on the bridge in charge of security, a literal ship's counselor stationed at all times on the bridge, a single mom raising her teenage son on her own while juggling a full career in medicine, a blind mechanic whose "disability" is shown to be a strength, and an angry, all-powerful godlike being who is revealed to be simply a petulant child masquerading as a deity.
In the very first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, we see a black man gain a powerful command position, respect the hell out of the customs of a religion he didn't understand, show respect and equal treatment to members of three other alien races he didn't understand, appoint a female guerilla fighter who defeated imperialist fascists to a position of authority within his administration and defer to her judgement in areas of her expertise, accept his friend's gender change, and tell his son he loves him.
Star Trek has always been woke. You just grew up to be a bad person.
@Mrfunkedude this.
Meta, x, LinkedIn all big trees. Users are the many leaves that feed the central billionaire trunk. They're big, old, tired and susceptible to rot, taking large swaths of innocent leaves with.
Fedi is a new growth forest, lots of interconnected little trees and bushes and plants, all trying to live together
It'll take a lot longer to grow a whole forest, not every plant will make it, but know what? It's our forest, and it's much healthier than those greedy siloed trees are.
What a lot of people do not understand is the fragility of supply chains.
Setup
Let us assume there is a part X that is used by a large number of other companies. It is not glamorous, it is not expensive, and nobody outside a small circle of specialists ever thinks about it. But it is needed. Without it, other products cannot be finished.
Everything is fine
Part X is made by a small company with a few dozen employees and a machine that is several decades old.
Everything runs smoothly. The company knows how to maintain the machine. They know how to operate it. They know its strange noises, its moods, its undocumented rituals. They know which lever needs a bit of persuasion on cold mornings and which replacement part must be machined by hand because nobody has made the original since 1987. They also know how to train new employees, because the knowledge still exists inside the company.
Crisis
Then, suddenly, a few large customers run into a crisis.
Orders slow down. The warehouses fill up with part X. Prices fall.
The company downsizes. Then it downsizes again. But nobody really notices, because stocks are still full. Customers are not yet affected. Purchasing departments can still get part X from inventory. Balance sheets still look fine. The problem has not yet reached the spreadsheet.
If this goes on for long enough, the company goes broke.
Again, nobody really notices. Stocks are still full. Some people may worry, but as long as no current production line is stopping and no quarterly number is visibly bleeding, nothing urgent is done.
The employees move on. They retire, change industries, start new careers. The old machine is sold for scrap. The building is repurposed. The knowledge evaporates.
Recovery
A few years later, demand picks up again.
The warehouses slowly empty. Stocks run low. People start ordering part X again, only to discover that nobody is offering it anymore.
Now someone decides to restart production.
The first thing they discover is that there is no machine. Building a new one would be prohibitively expensive, assuming anyone still knows how to build it properly. So they desperately search for an old one.
They get lucky. In a scrapyard, they find a machine that used to produce part X. It is rusted, incomplete, and dysfunctional. Naturally, they buy it.
Now they try to get it working again.
But there is another problem. There are no people left who know how to maintain it. So they hire someone who understands industrial maintenance in general, but has never worked on this specific machine. That person does their best. They improvise. They read old manuals. They reverse-engineer undocumented fixes. They keep the machine alive with skill, patience, and increasing amounts of despair.
But it breaks down every few hours. Output is abysmal.
Bottlenecks
And now that one poor maintenance person is overworked. They need help. But training help requires time, and the only person who can train others is the same person needed to keep the machine barely running. Every hour spent teaching is an hour not spent preventing the next failure.
Very few businesses survive this phase.
There is no institutional knowledge anymore. New people are hired, begin training, look at the state of the machine, the chaos of the process, and the constant emergency mode, and conclude that the business is doomed anyway. Then they quit.
Churn becomes terrible. Even if the company survives financially, it remains fragile. It is always just one or two people quitting away from disaster.
At the end the world decides it needs to get rid of part X as the supply is too fragile.
Summary
This is still very much simplified. The reality is more complex, more ugly.
And that is the part many people miss: a supply chain is not just warehouses, contracts, prices, and transport routes. It is also people, habits, obsolete machines, informal knowledge, and boring little skills that nobody values until they are gone.
I've brought up the McNamara fallacy before in the context of metrics-driven management, something all too common in software engineering. The basic idea is that just because you don't have the ability to easily measure something doesn't make it not important. Something can be vitally important to your success, but difficult to measure for whatever reason.
Let me apply that to what AI is doing to OSS and to common culture.
A few simple steps can drastically decrease the amount of personal information that’s available about you online. https://ssd.eff.org/module/how-to-manage-your-digital-footprint
EFF isn't afraid to punch above our weight ✊ We're taking on companies and governments that are trying to erode your right to privacy online. We just need your support to continue these battles. https://eff.org/spring
I just discovered today that there are Pac-Man clones for the Unix terminal.
People truly will think of everything. Just a little ./configure; make; make install and you're good to go.
MyMan is the best:
https://termplay.github.io/posts/myman-terminal-pacman.html
for only $3.67 USD (5.00 CAD) you can have an incredible new C64 Tetris style game. Shun modernity embrace retro.
https://studio8502.itch.io/gridlocker
Plays great with https://www.bannister.org/software/frodo.htm