Interesting about the typo. That’s actually a software defect. My text had “19”, but Lemmy apparently decided I wanted a sequential itemised list. To force it, I had to make the 19 literal (using ticks), which now causes it to indent and become part of item 12.
(edit) found a better workaround: introduced a blank line.
(crossposted from !humanrights)
The US can be credited with starting the Orwellian idea of forcing all “visa-free” visitors to file an ETA¹. It’s not just a money grab for us$ 20. It’s a snooping mechanism to link people to social media accounts, and then perform a background check on travelers to look for any speech that’s critical of the US.
Someone from Lebanon got a scholarship for Harvard. Then he was blocked at the border by border control. The cause: a friend linked to him on social media said something critical of the US. Even though the aspiring student did not himself criticise the US, being associated with someone who did was sufficient to block his entry. (He eventually made it back after some hassle and back and forth on flights).
Then the UK decided decided to impose travel authorisations as well, thus doing a money grab of £16. Initially it seemed to just be a retaliation against the US. But recently the UK decided to target Europeans.
So now the EU has decided to follow suit. In 2027, the loss of visa-free travel hits Europe. Even those who merely have a connecting flight in Europe will have to pay €20 and pass the background check. You need not even leave the airport to be subjected to this.
Of course it’s bullshit to continue calling this “visa-free travel”. They hope a technical semantical spin will fool people into accepting unfunded background checks coupled with surcharges as still “visa-free”.
¹ Electronic Travel Authorisation
Do we still have privacy and free speech, as guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12 and 19, which states (respectively):
- “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
…
- “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
?
Yes, those rights are protected -- but only if you stay in your homeland. Only if you do not expect to simultaneously exercise your Article 13 rights, which states:
“1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
What other UDHR-signatory countries have joined this ETA shit-show?
Cross-posting to !right_to_unplug because:
The US can be credited with starting the Orwellian idea of forcing all “visa-free” visitors to file an ETA¹. It’s not just a money grab for us$ 20. It’s a snooping mechanism to link people to social media accounts, and then perform a background check on travelers to look for any speech that’s critical of the US.
Someone from Lebanon got a scholarship for Harvard. Then he was blocked at the border by border control. The cause: a friend linked to him on social media said something critical of the US. Even though the aspiring student did not himself criticise the US, being associated with someone who did was sufficient to block his entry. (He eventually made it back after some hassle and back and forth on flights).
Then the UK decided decided to impose travel authorisations as well, thus doing a money grab of £16. Initially it seemed to just be a retaliation against the US. But recently the UK decided to target Europeans.
So now the EU has decided to follow suit. In 2027, the loss of visa-free travel hits Europe. Even those who merely have a connecting flight in Europe will have to pay €20 and pass the background check. You need not even leave the airport to be subjected to this.
Of course it’s bullshit to continue calling this “visa-free travel”. They hope a technical semantical spin will fool people into accepting unfunded background checks coupled with surcharges as still “visa-free”.
¹ Electronic Travel Authorisation
Do we still have privacy and free speech, as guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12 and 19, which states (respectively):
- “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
…
- “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
?
Yes, those rights are protected -- but only if you stay in your homeland. Only if you do not expect to simultaneously exercise your Article 13 rights, which states:
“1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
What other UDHR-signatory countries have joined this ETA shit-show?
Cross-posting to !right_to_unplug@sopuli.xyz because:
This is a correction to my recent post. The UK has already decided to do a money grab on Europeans, not just Americans. They are already becoming hardasses about this month.
£16 only lasts 2 years. Not sure if there is an exception for family.
The EU’s version of this shitshow allows “family” to bypass the travel auths. But what does that mean? Who is “family”? The step-brother of the husband of my maternal great aunt? My immediate family members do not even have the same last name, so I wonder what kind of proof is needed. Whatever it is, it will likely cost more in verification than some stranger applying for a travel auth.
The CJEU held that national courts may not order Internet Service Providers ('ISPs') to preventively, indefinitely and at their own expense install a filtering and blocking system applicable to all electronic communication between customers. This type of system breaches ISPs’ right to conduct business...
In Brussels there is a library that’s “open” as late as 22:00. There’s an after hours program where you register for after hours access, sign an agreement, and your library card can be used to unlock the door. Staff is gone during off hours but cameras are on. Members are not allowed to enter with non-members (can’t let anyone tailgate you incl. your friends).
I don’t get why my fellow pirates try so hard to justify what they’re doing. We want something and we don’t want to pay the price for it because it’s either too expensive or too difficult, so we go the cheaper, easier route. And because these are large corporations trying to fuck everyone out of every last dime, we don’t feel guilt about it.
Justification is important to those who act against unethical systems. You have to separate the opportunists from the rest. An opportunist will loot any defenseless shop without the slightest sense of ethics. That’s not the same group as those who either reject an unjust system or specifically condemn a particular supplier (e.g. Sony, who is an ALEC member and who was caught unlawfully using GPL code in their DRM tools). Some would say it’s our ethical duty to do everything possible to boycott, divest, and punish Sony until they are buried.
We have a language problem that needs sorting. While it may almost¹ be fair enough to call an opportunist a “pirate” who engages in “piracy”, these words are chosen abusively as a weapon against even those who practice civil disobedience against a bad system.
I think you see the same problem with the thread title that I do - it’s clever but doesn’t really give a solid grounds for ethically driven actions. But it still helps to capture the idea that paying consumers are getting underhandedly deceptively stiffed by crippled purchases, which indeed rationalizes civil disobedience to some extent.
Among the primary benefits: no commute, flexible work schedules and less time getting ready for work, according to WFH Research.
They forgot: being able to secretly simultaneously work 3 full-time overlapping jobs to triple your income.
More fun to mention 11 “states” at a 5.1% uninsured cutoff, because number 11 is Peurto Rico -- a US territory that you might expect to be less developed. Since people are forced to run javascript to see the list, I’ll copy it here up to the 6% point:
(22) California (6.5%.. worse than we might expect for CA)
…
(52) Texas ← ha! Of course Texass is last. 16.6% uninsured in the most notable red state showing us how to take care of people
The general pattern is expected.. the bottom of the list is mostly red states.
Can’t read the article (Cloudflare blockade).
In principle there needs to be pushback on the power of defaults for sure. Yes, all the options are shit anyway, but that’s in part due to the #powerOfDefaults.
I wonder if the 2024 diesel Volvos will become high-value collector’s items. There’ll always be that niche of hobbyists who refine their own biodiesel from waste oil.
“The trend of “autobesity” is forcing car park providers to think of new ways to accommodate larger cars, such as introducing wider bays.”
That’s the most disgusting part of this. They are adapting the infrastructure to accommodate the child killers when the sensible approach is #fuckBigCars.
#fuckCars in general.
Indeed. What happened with cars in the US is an “arms race” on the road. Everyone wants to be in the bigger car so they just get bigger and bigger and reach a point where that e=mc² equation is pegged.
max selfishness → max energy
As expected, right-wing U.S. republicans disproportionately drive big cars. While liberals tend to favor small cars or bicycles.
It was certainly a click bait headline. But still a fair point that train fare averages are double airfare. Although we have to question, did Greenpeace throw out the outliers before compiling the stats?
Gender is somewhat relevant here-- according to my women studies course in uni. When women are describing a problem, they don’t usually want solutions. They want support, understanding, & sympathy, contrary to the typical male response which is to give advice & propose solutions, which then has a good chance of ending badly.
I hope it won’t run bank apps. When my bank tries to shut down their website and force me onto a smartphone (which is inherently not a smart move for privacy and security), I want to be able to show them that their app won’t run on my linux phone so there is pressure to keep the website running.
Fuck phone banking. Let’s have some separation of church and state.
boot lickers who want to run corporate spyware → Android or iOS
freedom seekers who want to keep their dignity and autonomy → linux
Worth noting that banks deliberately block alternative platforms. Some detect whether they are running in an emulator and refuse to run. And “emulator” is very loose. I saw a bank app refuse to run on a laptop that natively ran Android.