Attention riseup.net users! Your data and communucation may not be safe anymore…

Popular provider of web tools for activists and anarchists and backbone of much infrastructure for internet freedom, Riseup.net has almost certainly been issued a gag order by the US government.
[…]
My read is that Riseup is complying with the gag order while fighting the surveillance demanded in court. Riseup is made up of long-time anarchist activists who would feel obliged to go to prison rather than collaborate in snitching out others. However there is a small chance someone could crack from threats of decades in prison. Additionally there’s a much more substantive chance that regardless of their optimism Riseup may soon be forced to close everything down.
Riseup’s Canary Has Died – C4SS

Long story short: There exists a high possibility that the riseup servers and their infrastructure is compromised. The given links also suggests some actions to be taken to recover from the loss of riseup as a trustworthy source for communication services…

(If you want a description and summary in german of what this is all about, you can look there).

In search of your soul mate?

Lots and lots of songs and movies tell us: There is one person in the world who is your soul mate. A person who understands you and completes you. If you happen to believe this or want to make fun of this theory (read: criticize this thinking) , I have something written/drawn and something sung for you.

On what if? Randall Munroe answers the question “What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world?” in a funny and witty way.

[…] The odds of running into your soul mate are incredibly small. The number of strangers we make eye contact with each day is hard to estimate. It can vary from almost none (shut-ins or people in small towns) to many thousands (a police officer in Times Square). Let’s suppose you lock eyes with an average of a few dozen new strangers each day. (I’m pretty introverted, so for me that’s definitely a generous estimate.) If 10% of them are close to your age, that’s around 50,000 people in a lifetime. Given that you have 500,000,000 potential soul mates, it means you’ll only find true love in one lifetime out of ten thousand. […]

Also there is the song “If I Didn’t Have You” from Tim Minchin which perfectly sums up this topic.

Say Grace

The Boondocks

I read some marx and I liked it

And if you want to read some Marx: www.marxists.org (Marxists Internet Archive00)

Lyrics:
I thought I just wanted to pass;
Good grades were all I cared for.
My college made me take the class
More stuff for me to ignore!
But then I found out that
His theories weren’t so bad:
Labor and class combat,
What a very clever man!

CHORUS
I read some Marx, and I liked it;
The friend of the proletariat.
I read some Marx, just to try it;
Hope Adam Smith don’t mind it!
It felt so wrong,
It felt so right;
Men of the working class, unite!
I read some Marx, and I liked it;
I liked it!

There is a spectre hanging o’er
The face of Europe!
‘Tis communism, and it’s more
Than just a social hiccup.
A time will come soon when
The masses rise as one
To carve out their place in
The brand new poetry to come!

CHORUS

Marx is the man, he’s working for you;
The bourgeoisie, they just ain’t your crew.
Alienation of labor is bad,
Commodification is not a good fad.
The capitalists are greedy you see;
A shorter workday, now that’s what we need!
I’m reading some Marx, and I’m liking it;
Rise up now, proletariat!

CHORUS

I Read Some Marx (And I Liked It)

Lyrics:
I thought I just wanted to pass;
Good grades were all I cared for.
My college made me take the class
More stuff for me to ignore!
But then I found out that
His theories weren’t so bad:
Labor and class combat,
What a very clever man!

CHORUS
I read some Marx, and I liked it;
The friend of the proletariat.
I read some Marx, just to try it;
Hope Adam Smith don’t mind it!
It felt so wrong,
It felt so right;
Men of the working class, unite!
I read some Marx, and I liked it;
I liked it!

There is a spectre hanging o’er
The face of Europe!
‘Tis communism, and it’s more
Than just a social hiccup.
A time will come soon when
The masses rise as one
To carve out their place in
The brand new poetry to come!

CHORUS

Marx is the man, he’s working for you;
The bourgeoisie, they just ain’t your crew.
Alienation of labor is bad,
Commodification is not a good fad.
The capitalists are greedy you see;
A shorter workday, now that’s what we need!
I’m reading some Marx, and I’m liking it;
Rise up now, proletariat!

CHORUS

Save the newspaper: Buy One Anyway

“Not Everyone Can Afford to Wait for a New Profit Model”

Source: Netzpolitik.org

The Real Power of Human Energy

This is an identity correction remix that turns Chevron’s multi-million dollar Human Energy greenwashing PR blitz on its head.

Source: Rebellious Pixels

Somebody has to be for them…

Everybody against Everybody
Somebody has to be for them
Amnesty International

Source: Netzpolitik.org

Australian Democracy is “Microsoft Compatible”

Here is the Australian Electoral Commission documentation on how to register a political party. It includes the requirement for “A Microsoft compatible electronic membership list (and paper copy) providing the following information”.

So a prerequisite for registering a political party appears to be the ownership of a PC running Windows. While it may be the case that I could create a plain text file on a Linux machine and append some CR characters to each line, or create a CSV format spread-sheet/database file the most common interpretation of this is likely to be that MS-Office is required.

Source: Russel Coker

The Sissy Cheats

Of course, it’s a reduced critic to the capitalistic system. But it’s inspiration for more videos to come.