jwz

Back in 2021, my building's management made the amazing self-own of replacing our existing 90s-vintage RFID key-fob system with this ButterflyMX security-and-privacy panopticon malware thing. I've mostly been able to ignore it by simply never installing their app or creating an account, and my fob just continued working.

Welp. About a month ago, the whole thing system shit the bed and apparently nobody knows how to fix it. So the building management has been hiring 24 hour security to have some dude stand next to the open garage door and ask people "do you have a fob?" (The secret password to get in is "yes", he doesn't check.)

Today they mailed out an update saying that they had "met with representatives from ButterflyMX, who are preparing a proposal to replace the legacy system with a more modern solution".

More modern than the legacy system that was installed in [checks notes] 2021 by [checks notes] ButterflyMX.

Apparently they aren't expecting this to be resolved any time soon, because they're also about to distribute new actual keys to the building front door to everyone. It's a big building, that's a lot of keys. Those keys will cost us almost as much as... half a week's salary for the rent-a-cops.

I wrote, "I would like some assurance that I will still be able to get into my building using a key-fob without signing up with ButterflyMX or installing their app on any of my devices."

"I will pass your comments on to the board."

The only thing worse than the Mastodon HOA is an actual HOA.

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Spoek Mathambo:

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Walter Chaw:

It's tempting to get knives out to hack at the hanks of the great beast. It's tempting to sharpen your tongue to shriek at it, how close we are now to Idiocracy's prophecy of Ass: The Movie being the most watched and awarded film in the land. I keep coming back to the image of Kevin McCarthy at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, peering through the fourth wall to tell you it's too late. They're here already. The great beast will not feel you, and it does not have ears to hear you. It can't feel shame. As it was never alive, you can't kill it, and if you can't kill it, neither can you bury it. You can fight, but you'll lose. Not to the great beast, but to your friends and neighbours, who will urge you to forget it, take it easy. They will rationalize that some garbage piece of media was made for children, as if the things we make for children should be terrible. Feed them the rotten stuff, the maggot-infested stuff -- they won't know. Give them the chair with the splinters; the toy that takes eyes; the water full of lead. Why worry? It's just for kids. It's just for kids you don't think will grow up or don't care if they do. It's cheaper not to let them live. When they consume, that's less for you to consume. Maybe we should change our laws so they can work longer when they're younger, because they don't seem to last as long as they used to. Lie back and enjoy it. Pray you never get that direction outside of invitations to kid's movies. Your friends and neighbours are pods now. I know they look like people, but they're not. Your loved ones are dead. I'm sorry.

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WHEN YOU SIT BEHIND A SCREEN ALL DAY, IT MAKES YOU A WOMAN. STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THIS. IF YOU'RE OUT WORKING, BUILDING ROBOTS, YOU ARE AROUND OTHER GUYS. YOU'RE NOT AROUND HR L̽͋AD̷ͭIE̾̊ͩS̼͛ A͍͛N̦̾D LAW̱Y̙E̸̯ͧR̴̝S̠̿ T̗̤̅H͟AT̵̨̐ G̙̜̤̽̏̅̔̈̾͘I̶͆ͦ͞ͅV̴̛̹̱̖̙̺̥͌̾̋ͥͯͨͣͭͭ̽͐͡͞͡E̫̹̦͕ͫ̽̍̌S̸͓͈̟̺̘ͥͫ͐͜_̷̷̨̨͉͎͎̃͒̑̏͐ͬ́͜͠ Ý͉O"̯̣ͫ̀̋͑Ư"̝̩̪͖̱̱̖̜̓ͤ̐͑̄̍ͧ̔̈́ͩ̈̽̕̕͘͝ͅ Ę̵̛̹̱̮͚̂͂̔͒̓̈͜͜S̴̐T̤̙ͩ͑̈̓͋ͧR̨̿͟_̵͉̻̬͉͖̥͉̗̤͎ͯ́́ͨ̂̏ͨ̅͛͆͢Ǫ̵̧̮̘̹ͣ̔̕G͚E͍ͩ́Ņ̨""̗̤̜̳̥͊̆ͣ͋̋́̒̋̊̽ͧͦ͢͝͞.̙̹̲̓̀͊͘

♬️♬️♬️ "Pol! Pot! Pol! Pot! Pol! Pot!" ♬️♬️♬️

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Because of the ongoing fucktastrophe, the cries of "Use SIGNAL!" are constant and unavoidable. And I get it, it may be the least-bad option in a sea of terrible options. If, that is, you choose to ignore the advice of "don't use your phone for that shit" (the Stringer Bell Rule).

But out of curiosity, because I haven't been keeping up, has the Signal Corporation addressed:

• The fact that they are shilling a climate-incinerating cryptocurrency ponzi scheme right inside the Signal app;

• The fact that there are no interoperable third-party implementations, or even third-party builds/distributions of the Signal app, because the Signal Corporation abuses Trademark law to legally prohibit anyone from doing so;

• The fact that one cannot sign up for Signal without giving them your telephone number;

• The fact that when you do sign up, they will spam your name to everyone who has your number in their contacts;

• The fact that if you allow it access to your contacts, they will spam your phone number to those people too;

• The fact that there is no way to verify that the iOS Signal app downloaded from Apple is not backdoored.

Asking for a friend who is everybody.

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WASHINGTON -- As the Trump administration continues to alter the version of American history that appears in government publications, sources confirmed Monday that a page on the National Parks website had been revised to describe Harriet Tubman as a human trafficker.

"Operating between 1851 and 1862, the notorious human trafficker Harriet Tubman stole approximately 70 African Americans away from their homes in the southern United States," reads a post on the National Park Service page, which now refers to the Underground Railroad as one of the most prolific human trafficking rings ever to operate on American soil. "Tubman would kidnap people in their sleep, including children, and carry them off to locations as far away as Canada. Despite the best efforts of American lawmen to bring her to justice, Tubman remained at large over the course of 13 separate kidnapping raids into southern states. Even in her later years, she never once expressed remorse for displacing her victims or violating the property rights of their owners." At press time, the Parks Service had reportedly rewritten its page on Rosa Parks to describe her as a terrorist bus hijacker.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say we're more likely to see the end of the US Dollar than a Tubman Twenty.

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Musk Hounded by Haters:

On Saturday Elon Musk sat in his personal jet and tested out Starlink's in-air WiFI by streaming some Path of Exile 2. Less than five minutes into the stream, someone in game chat asked him to "jerk off mr trump so he dies of a heart attack!" For the next hour and 40 minutes, the world's richest man frowned his way through a livestream while people yelled at him.

Path of Exile 2 is an action role-playing game and Musk loves it, but he's terrible at it. He has claimed he's one of the top players in the world and later admitted he's paid people to help keep his account leveled up and full of the high-end gear it needs to play the game at the highest level. [...]

• ELON ARE YOU A SMART FELLA OR A FART SMELLA
• YOU HAVE NO REAL FRIENDS AND WILL DIE ALONE
• STILL NOT OVER GRIMES SHE NEVER LOVED YOU
• YOU WILL ALWAYS FEEL INSECURE IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY
• YOU RUINED THE COUNTRY JUST LIKE YOU RUINED ALL YOUR MARRIAGES

Since Musk is too afraid of serial killers to eat in restaurants where the little people could heckle him and ruin his meal, it's important to take the heckling to his "man cave".

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The revolution WILL be given permission:

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He was the bass player of two of my favorite bands of all time, Gang of Four and Shriekback. I met him once, about a decade ago. He endured my embarrassing fanboying with grace.

"According to Burnham, Allen passed away at home with his family after enduring the early-onset of mixed dementia for some years."

Guitarist Andy Gill died of COVID in 2020, so now they are Gang of Two.

There is not a lot of decent video of Allen's era of the band, but watch these. And if you are not already well familiar with their albums Entertainment! and Sold Gold, rectify that.

Then came Shriekback, where early videos are also thin on the ground. If you've heard of them at all, you probably think they only have the one song, Nemesis, and while that's fantastic, Allen co-wrote their first five albums, of which they have just released the eighteenth! (Which I guess isn't quite out yet? I got the fundraiser version.) Moving on:

Post Shriekback, he started his own label and was a member of and produced several of the bands. Low Pop Suicide was great, too:

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Coming soon to a sticky bar surface near you.

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