Every year we run this race, and every year we get to the finish line – the last couple of months of the year – ready to collapse, only to face the prospect of preparing for festive events and family gatherings, entertaining children and preparing ourselves for whatever fresh disaster hell our superheated global climate is readying for us.
It’s exhausting. But this year feels especially hard.
How often do conversations with family, friends and colleagues at the moment include at least one person commenting how tired they’re feeling? The news cycle keeps delivering horrors, shocks and moral affronts that drain our reserves. At the same time, we try to plough on with “normal” life: a calendar rammed with
Every year we run this race, and every year we get to the finish line – the last couple of months of the year – ready to collapse, only to face the prospect of preparing for festive events and family gatherings, entertaining children and preparing ourselves for whatever fresh disaster hell our superheated global climate is readying for us.
It’s exhausting. But this year feels especially hard.
How often do conversations with family, friends and colleagues at the moment include at least one person commenting how tired they’re feeling? The news cycle keeps delivering horrors, shocks and moral affronts that drain our reserves. At the same time, we try to plough on with “normal” life: a calendar rammed with end-of-year events, office parties, school presentations, catch-ups with friends we haven’t seen for ages because we’ve been too busy; all the while many of us try to squeeze in a few more days of paid work because the dollar doesn’t stretch that far these days and we need all the money we can get.
In workplaces, homes, shops and schools, there’s a sense that much of Australia is running on empty; emotionally, physically and financially.
When it comes to reasons for anxiety and exhaustion, the cost-of-living crisis is high on the list. Rising prices for food and housing are never far from the headlines but wages aren’t keeping up.
At the same time, Australians have a problem with overworking. “We are a long-working-hours culture compared to other equivalent OECD countries,” says Dr Lisa Heap, senior researcher at the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute. More than one in eight Australians work long hours, according to the latest figures. We also spend less time on leisure and personal care than the OECD average. “People who are in full-time employment [are] doing more hours than they’re paid for, and certainly more hours than they want to be doing.”
Nota: con web "progressista" sto deliberatamente usando un termine vago (che va oltre la divisione destra/sinistra) per includere la parte del web che non si riconosce nella deriva ultraconservatrice e di estrema destra di parte della tecnologia americana, incarnata da Elon Musk e X, tra gli altri.
Con l'elezione di Trump/Musk(1)Il social network X (ex Twitter) sta vivendo un altro episodio di "esodo" di massa. O, per essere pi
Nota: con web "progressista" sto deliberatamente usando un termine vago (che va oltre la divisione destra/sinistra) per includere la parte del web che non si riconosce nella deriva ultraconservatrice e di estrema destra di parte della tecnologia americana, incarnata da Elon Musk e X, tra gli altri.
Con l'elezione di Trump/Musk(1)Il social network X (ex Twitter) sta vivendo un altro episodio di "esodo" di massa. O, per essere più precisi, i social network concorrenti stanno assistendo a un nuovo episodio di arrivo di massa. Che non è proprio la stessa cosa. E non è esattamente una novità, visto che episodi del genere si verificano regolarmente da quando Elon Musk ha acquistato X.
Mentre un gran numero di utenti cerca un luogo meno tossico per esprimersi, molti lasciano (per alcuni⋅e⋅ in modo permanente) X per motivi morali.(2). E così, il social network che si sta gonfiando in questo momento è Bluesky.
Così la settimana scorsa ho creato un account Bluesky, giusto per vedere. Ho letto diversi articoli su questo social network, alcuni dei quali entusiasti, altri molto più sfumati e altri ancora molto negativi.(3). Oggi ho deciso: il web progressista farebbe bene a migrare direttamente su Mastodon, non su Bluesky. E perché no? Perché, a meno di un miracolo, Bluesky è il prossimo TwitterX.
Bluesky è stato creato da Jack Dorsey, lo stesso uomo che ha creato Twitter. Da allora ha lasciato il progetto, ma le idee sono sempre le stesse, le stesse ideologie (libertaria, tecno-utopica), le stesse persone. Riuscite a vedere l'inizio del problema? Bluesky è finanziato da grandi venture capitalist della Silicon Valley, non da persone che si accontentano di creare una rete sociale decentralizzata per il bene comune. Avevamo il diritto di essere ingenui a metà degli anni 2000, quando il social web ci veniva venduto come un'utopia. Oggi non è più così. Tra gli investitori, i primi sostenitori e i primi dipendenti di Bluesky c'è la galassia delle criptovalute. Quella che ha fatto attivamente campagna elettorale... per Donald Trump(4).
In termini morali, quindi, Bluesky sarà anche un social network molto giovane, ma non è già molto convincente. Ma ormai sappiamo che i progetti ideologici e politici giocano un ruolo decisivo nella tecnologia statunitense. In termini economici, Bluesky è nelle mani della classica big tech della Silicon Valley. Sperare che faccia qualcosa di diverso da quello che hanno fatto tutte le altre Big Tech (massimizzazione dei profitti, chiusura progressiva, economia dell'attenzione, cattura dei dati personali, pubblicità sempre più invasiva, diffusione virale dei contenuti tossici, ecc. Sarebbe addirittura come credere ai miracoli. Bisognerebbe credere che una società capitalista, finanziata da cripto-addetti e da Venture capitalist americani tecno-soluzionisti, si prenda davvero la briga di progettare un'infrastruttura tecnica che sia veramente open-source e interoperabile. Per il bene comune e l'interesse generale. A (molto) lungo termine(5). Yuhuu! Vi ricordate di OpenAI (la società dietro ChatGPT), che in origine era un'organizzazione no-profit il cui scopo era produrre scienza aperta sull'IA?
In breve, i progressisti del web, soprattutto quelli più militanti, non hanno tempo ed energia illimitati. Penso che sarebbe nel loro interesse risparmiare un po' di tempo saltando la fase Bluesky e migrando direttamente a un'istanza Mastodon. O, più in generale, a scoprire il Fediverso.(6). Non è perfetto, ovviamente, e ci sono ancora diversi problemi: i finanziamenti, perché nulla è gratuito, la moderazione, l'ergonomia, ecc... Naturalmente, come ogni nuovo strumento, ci vuole un po' di tempo per abituarsi e per costruire nuovi punti di riferimento. Ma esiste, funziona e fa progressi ogni giorno!
Vi aspettiamo, utenti progressisti del web alla ricerca di nuovi punti di riferimento. Venite ad aiutarci a costruire il social web alternativo di cui abbiamo disperatamente bisogno. Nota: sto continuando le mie riflessioni in un altro articolo. Et si le problème des réseaux sociaux, c’étaient les phares ?
In Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness you are Black slave on a Caribbean sugar plantation plotting a revolt against your master. Released in 1988, this is one of the most wildly ambitious DOS games ever made. How ambitious? It’s a point-and-click adventure, RPG, stealth game, and fighting game rolled into one. Yes, all of that, and no, your PC speaker isn’t ready for this level of intensity.
You sneak around the plantation dodging dogs, lighting fires, and rallying fellow slaves. Then, because subtlety isn’t enough, you throw hands against your oppressors in a Street Fighter-style one-on-one brawl. Should you lose, it’s not just “Game Over”.
Oh no, this game is here to remind you of the very real horrors of slavery. Mess up, and you don’t just lose – you lose badly. Your character faces terrible and grisly executions. Did I mention this game came out in 1988?!
Think this is a ca
... toon meer
In Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness you are Black slave on a Caribbean sugar plantation plotting a revolt against your master. Released in 1988, this is one of the most wildly ambitious DOS games ever made. How ambitious? It’s a point-and-click adventure, RPG, stealth game, and fighting game rolled into one. Yes, all of that, and no, your PC speaker isn’t ready for this level of intensity.
You sneak around the plantation dodging dogs, lighting fires, and rallying fellow slaves. Then, because subtlety isn’t enough, you throw hands against your oppressors in a Street Fighter-style one-on-one brawl. Should you lose, it’s not just “Game Over”.
Oh no, this game is here to remind you of the very real horrors of slavery. Mess up, and you don’t just lose – you lose badly. Your character faces terrible and grisly executions. Did I mention this game came out in 1988?!
Think this is a cash grab by some soulless dev studio? Think again. Freedom is the brainchild of Afro-Caribbean author and activist Patrick Chamoiseau. Not only did he design and write it, he made sure it hit hard. And somehow, it’s still ridiculously fun to play.
Now, for all the “gamers” out there whining about how “woke” games have become, let me tell you, Freedom will slap your silly beliefs sideways. This game doesn’t just raise the social justice banner, it sets the whole plantation on fire while shouting “Catch up!”
The gameplay? You pick one of four heroes, each with unique skills (like climbing or arson – classic RPG stuff). You can adjust their stats, but their attributes remain largely the same.
Then you’re given an overhead view of the plantation. You must learn about your surroundings, test the waters, waiting for your moment to strike. When you’re at the building of your choice, the view switches to landscape view where you’re given a menu which typically offers you the choices of “climb”, “pick lock” or “burn”.
If you get caught, it’s fight-or-die time. You kick, punch, and hurt your opponent before he hurts you. But unlike Street Fighter, there’s only one round. Lose, and it’s curtains.
For an EGA game, the graphics are stellar – though it doesn’t hold a candle to the Amiga and Atari ST versions. The reason I’m reviewing the DOS version is because it’s in English whereas the only copies for other platforms I could find were in French. Nevertheless, there’s great use of colour for EGA, and once you get into portrait view, there’s lots of detail. The fighting screen is a little too plain for my liking, but this game already does so much.
The only downside is the sound. There’s no music and only a few beeps for sound effects. No support for AdLib either. Listening to sound on Amiga, it’s vastly better. This is the game’s biggest weakness.
Because this game is so obscure, a manual is hard to come by. So controlling this game takes a lot of guesswork. What’s more, because Freedom has no support for mouse, “pointing” and “clicking” is replaced by using your arrow keys for pointer movement, then pressing <Enter> to select. <Esc> returns you to the previous screen.
Coktel Vision published Freedom. They’re also known for making various Asterix games. Eventually, they were acquired by Sierra.
So is Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness worth your time? Absolutely. It’s ambitious, brutal, innovative, and unapologetically revolutionary. We didn’t see this kind of gameplay fusion until Shenmue – over a decade later. It’s a little clunky, a little punishing, but holy hell, is it unforgettable.
Freedom: Rebels In The Darkness is a game that combines elements of strategy, stealth and fighting games. The main character is a rebellious black slave working on a sugar plantation that tries to incite a revolt among the slave population to gain...
Ce jeudi 21 novembre, le collectif a organisé un rassemblement à 18h place Carnot, à proximité d'un campement de fortune où vivent plusieurs familles sans-abri depuis l'été. Une action pour dénoncer l'urgence de leur situation....
Would love to see a comparison to states with most strict COVID guidelines during the pandemic. We in Illinois were second to shut everything down except essential services for a while and had a mask mandate in public spaces for a long time after.
PALM BEACH, FL—Admitting that ever since he joined the campaign trail the billionaire tech mogul had refused to leave him alone, President-elect Donald Trump reportedly locked the bathroom door Tuesday so Elon Musk couldn’t follow him in again.
Corporate media play an integral role in abetting the bipartisan US war on migrants. Much of the media’s complicity in this war has to do with what is not said in news reports—namely, that the US is itself largely responsible for wreaking much of the international political and financial havoc that forces people to migrate in the first place.
In Panama's Darien Gap, a constant stream of mainstream dispatches conveys the terrific plight of migrants—but simultaneously excises the US role in the whole sinister arrangement.
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Congress took the lead on JFK declassification. That should happen more often
Today is the anniversary of the JFK assassination. Congress passed a landmark law over 30 years to release millions of pages of assassination records, even though it doesn’t normally get involved in declassification efforts.
If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please support our work. Our impact in 2024 was made possible by supporters like you. Help us continue protecting press freedom in the year ahead — consider a year-end donation today. If someone has forwarded you this newsletter, please subscribe here.
Congress took the lead on JFK declassification. That should happen more often
Today is the anniversary of the JFK assassination. Congress passed a landmark law over 30 years to release millions of pages of assassination records, even though it doesn’t normally get involved in declassification efforts.
This makes 1992’s Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act a remarkable outlier in combating government secrecy. As of this writing, a few thousand records remain secret, based on arguments that are tenuous at best. But thanks to the law, millions of pages are now public, an overwhelming success.
Despite this, Congress hasn’t successfully ordered another targeted, high-level declassification review effort since. It should. Read more on our website.
Trump opposes the PRESS Act. We’re not stopping the fight
President-elect Donald Trump made headlines this week by calling for Republicans to “kill” the PRESS Act — the bipartisan journalists’ shield bill to protect journalist-source confidentiality.
We told The New York Times, CNN, and The Intercept why he should reconsider. Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Executive Director Trevor Timm told the Times that “The PRESS Act protects conservative and independent journalists just as much as it does anyone in the mainstream press. … Democratic administrations abused their powers to spy on journalists many times. The bipartisan PRESS Act will stop government overreach and protect the First Amendment once and for all.”
We’re not alone. Veteran investigative journalist Catherine Herridge, herself embroiled in a fight to protect her sources, told Chris Cuomo on NewsNation that her reporting — including stories that exposed defects in the Russian collusion narrative during Trump’s first term — would not have been possible without confidential sources. She explained how citizen journalists, including those using social media platforms like X and Trump’s Truth Social, need journalist-source confidentiality more than anyone.
San Francisco should not aid tech exec’s censorship campaign
We told you last week about the multifaceted censorship campaign by tech executive Maury Blackman against journalist Jack Poulson, who reported on Blackman’s past domestic violence arrest.
This week, we’ve got an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, co-written by Ginny LaRoe of California’s First Amendment Coalition, calling out San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu for his role. Chiu, at the request of lawyers for Blackman (whose companies, by the way, have received lucrative contracts from the city), sent a letter to Poulson telling him his reporting violated a California law against disseminating sealed arrest reports.
Are you a national security reporter who wants to know if the FBI has accessed your social media, email, or phone records? Too bad, that’s classified. The government can demand your information from a wide variety of third parties, and it can force those companies to keep the fact that it is investigating you a secret indefinitely.
Government gag orders to silence these third parties are especially concerning because the threshold for their use is low and they’ve often been abused — by Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Social platform X, owned by Elon Musk, has unsuccessfully waged separate lawsuits to curtail some of the government’s favorite surveillance tools. Whatever you think of Musk and his ties to Trump, people across the political spectrum should nonetheless wish X success in fighting secret surveillance. Read more on our website.
Time to confirm inspectors general
The more powerful the agency, the greater the need for strong internal oversight. But this can't happen without an inspector general. Yet the Treasury Department hasn't had one for nearly 2,000 days, and the National Security Agency has gone over 700 days without one.
FPF endorsed a letter organized by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to prioritize filling the vacancies before time runs out. Read the letter here.
What we’re reading
A legal showdown over press freedom(The Free Press). Appellate judges conducted parts of a hearing over Catherine Herridge’s First Amendment right to protect sources behind closed doors. As we told The Free Press, it’s a serious problem when, “The future of the reporters’ privilege for Washington, D.C.-based whistleblowers and journalists, a pretty important group, ends up being heard in secret.”
US House passes bill to punish non-profits deemed to support ‘terrorism’ (The Guardian). The House passed a dangerous bill that would give the Trump administration wide discretion to declare nonprofit organizations terrorist supporters and strip them of their tax-exempt status. That includes nonprofit media outlets and organizations that serve as sources for reporters. Fewer representatives voted for the bill this time around than in the past, but shame on those who still did.
Biden's legacy: Leaving FOIA in shambles (The Dissenter). No "systems" for greater transparency were established, and issues with FOIA were not properly dealt with in the Biden administration. As Trump returns to the White House, FOIA is just as fragile and in disrepair as it was when Joe Biden was elected in 2020.
Inside an American reporter’s Russian prison ordeal(The Washington Post). The imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich rightfully got plenty of attention, but he wasn’t the only American journalist who spent time behind bars in Russia on sham charges. The Post has more on the case of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Alsu Kurmasheva.
I am listening to the audio (narrated by the author) of Black Pill: How I Witnessed The Darkest Corners Of The Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics by Elle Reeve.
(what's with the mile-long subtitle?)
Scary stuff. It's mind-boggling how Nazis and 8-chan rejects and Richard Spencer tell the author EVERYTHING because they don't worry about consequences. Apparently, they don't need to. #FridayReads #NonFiction #Books #Bookstodon #AmReading #Audiobooks @bookstodon
