Boy, today is going to be a mess, thankfully I have a few days to get back on track before I return to work. So, this week I'm finally starting to do stuff estate related, this week was cleaning out the book collection. No, seriously, I've basically spent something like five days working from one app to another, three apps total, selling Vik's book collection. Roughly 900 books went, and there's still plenty more if'n anyone wants a book. But, that's been this week's focus, took off work, and did nothing but that including re-arranging yesterday's plans to do one last pass. Wasn't the plan, but it kinda made sense as I went to clean and sort the downstairs bedroom, and decided I wanted the books all on one wall. This would require either moving full bookcases, emptying them, moving them and putting the books back or using some of the already empty cases and shifting books to them. If'n I'm doing that, why wait to sale scan them until after? So, about 30 more books boxed up, gotta ship that out Monday, and we're done.
So today? Time to rearrange and clean the bedroom, and we're also continuing the shed cleaning which we've been doing for a month, not because its a big job, but once a week, I sort and throw out trash until the curbside can is about half full, so maybe an hour a week if'n that. Once I get this part of the bedroom done, we'll decide on its future, I might replace the bed with a TwinXL, and move my desk and computer into there, not sure. Beyond that all the weekend calls for is a little work on household finances and grocery shopping, so not much. Oh, wait, gotta cut the lawn too.
Yeah, nothing really huge this weekend, so mostly just rest, maybe some extra cleaning, not sure.
Brazil's authoritarian age verification law became active this month. It won't be implemented by GrapheneOS. Complying would require integrating a mandatory process for each user where a third party service checks government identification and confirms a match using the camera.
It doesn't stop there. It would require keeping data for auditing and providing a token for connecting age verification checks by apps and websites to the data. The law is a privacy disaster and exposes minors to being exploited by leaking their age bracket to apps and websites.
Australiaβs first community-owned solar farm β with battery β was officially opened last Saturday, as Sophie Vorrath reported earlier this week.
Itβs not big, just 1.4 megawatts of solar and a 4.4 megawatt hour battery, but itβs the community effort that got it built at all that makes this such an uplifting and significant story, particularly in the world that we live in now.
The story of the Goulburn community owned solar farm actually began at least 12 years ago. The regional cityβs then elected representatives β current federal Liberal leader Angus Taylor and state MP Pru Goward β were making a lot of noise opposing nearly every large scale renewable project in the region.
But it was the actions of then prime minister Tony Abbott that really jolted the local community into action.
βWe really owe the existence of this solar farm to Tony Abbott,β Mhairi Fraser, a member of the Goulburn solar farm co-operative, says in an interview with Renew Economyβs weekly Energy Insiders podcast.
βHe was just attacking climate scientists, attacking science β¦ you know, climate change is crap stuff, dismantling a lot of the kind of government institutions that were supporting climate action and emissions reduction and certainly really trying to get rid of the Renewable Energy Target.
βThere were a lot of us in Goulburn that were furious and we were frustrated. A lot of us are grandparents and parents and feeling like what is going to happen to the future generations β¦ if we continue to along a trajectory of reliance on fossil fuels.β
And so a bunch of them travelled to Canberra for the first Australian community energy congress. βThat was a turning point,β Fraser said. βWe thought, why donβt we build a solar farm? Canβt be that hard.β
Tony Abbott's climate attacks inspired a local community to build a first of its kind solar farm. They literally had to watch the grass grow under their feet, but it is now complete.
Decades ago, it was possible to build your own Mac using spare parts and generic PC components. Given the tools and options available to vintage computing enthusiasts today, letβs see what happens when old meets new!
Remember when Elon Musk told advertisers to βgo fuckβ themselves and then sued them for the crime of taking his advice? A federal judge has now dismissed that lawsuit β with prejudice ββ¦
Did you know that, we also build #CastLab? An open-source app to cast your photos, videos and audio to your TV or any DLNA/UPnP and FCast device. Create playlists, filter your media and prepare your viewing sessions. No Google Cast, no cloud, just your local network. Only available on #FDroid: f-droid.org/packages/app.fedilβ¦
hey, iβm #newhere. iβm interested in #art, #cinema, #fic, #music, #radio and #writing, as well as just generally divesting myself of algorithms and overuse of genAI. looking for some recs for honestly anything, films, books, albums, gardening tools,,, coming over from tumblr (well. using in conjunction bc theyve locked the doors and wont let me out) so hopefully shouldnt be too slack on the tagging system but nettiquette differs so if any veterans have a pet peeve they wished new users knew lmk!
Remember back when ad's for Nazi stuff started appearing on "X" and advertisers stopped advertising there. And then Elon sued them for "antitrust" or something. Yeah, a Federal Judge dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it can't be refiled. Yay I guess. TXND - Memorandum Opinion and Order
A Durant, OK warehouse has soldβ¦ to the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma! ICE previously sought to buy the space to create a mega detention center capable of holding 8,500 people. This is the 13th warehouse they have been denied. kten.com/news/oklahoma-headlinβ¦
DURANT, Okla. (KTEN) β The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma has purchased the former Big Lots warehouse and adjoining land near its headquarters in Durant, tribal officials announced Wednesday.
#uspol Figures. Not only does a #Walmart opening near you ruin local business, they are tax supported! Yet, they want tax breaks that lead to cuts in public assistance?
In Nevada, Walmart had 4,574 employees, 29.3% of their employees in that state, enrolled in Medicaid in 2024. In four states (Colorado, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Michigan), Walmart had a total of 10,920 employees enrolled in the SNAP food aid program.
The media organization More Perfect Union points out that Walmart not only relies on SNAP to make up for the low wages they pay their workers, but they also benefit when people use food stamps to buy groceries in their stores. According to a Numerator survey covering the 12 months ending July 31, 2025, Walmart ranked No. 1 for SNAP benefit redemption, receiving nearly 26% of all SNAP dollars.
Ok, today's cover is going to be an easy one, more country, a country cover of a country song about driving a truck, what could be more country than that? Yep, no rock cover of a country song or country cover of a rock, nothing but pure truck driving country.
Vancouver has long had organized crime. So why didnβt the Italian mafia ever really take root here?
Because Joe Celona, a local Italian crime boss, realized something outrageous: why build a mafia when you can just rent the police?
In 1919, Celona arrived in Vancouver and opened a cigar shop. It became popular with politicians and police. But behind that legitimate front, he was also running brothels and gambling dens, most notably out of the Somerset Hotel, now the Washington Hotel.
Joeβs success was almost anti-mafia in structure. Instead of relying on omertΓ , the code of secrecy, he made himself highly visible. His pitch to police was simple: make me the vice king, and Iβll keep everyone else in line.
Cash, of course, helped sell that arrangement.
So when other organized crime outfits showed up in town, Joe would first send his brothersβhis actual familyβto have a βpolite discussion.β If that didnβt work, the police would show up as muscle and drive them out.
The other key to Joeβs success is that he didnβt really run a traditional mafia. He ran something closer to a franchise model. He didnβt care whether his partners were Italian. He cared whether they made money.
A lot of his operations were run by madams like Gussie Hall and local bookies who paid Joe a fee. In return, he offered the most valuable commodity in the city: police protection.
So when the Black Hand arrived in Vancouver, Joe shut it down. He understood that the real money wasnβt in extorting honest bakers. It was in licensing the criminals. In other words, the Italian mafia was bad for business.
To make sure it never came back, Joe also worked to marginalize the hoodlum element in Vancouverβs Italian community by becoming its patron. He helped immigrants with paperwork, found people jobs, settled disputes, and founded St. Giorgioβs Social Club in Strathcona.
Joe ran Vancouverβs underworld for more than 30 years. Paradoxically, the key to that longevity was visibility. It was an open secret that Joe Celona was Vancouverβs vice king. He was investigated more than once, but enforcement was suspiciously lax.
Gerry McGeer even ran for mayor on a βWar on Crimeβ platform aimed directly at Celona. Joe was finally convicted in 1935 and sentenced to 10 years, but he was back on the street in 5. Once released, he resumed his role as vice king, just with less public visibility.
It all finally started to collapse in 1955 with what became known as the Mulligan Affair.
In those stories, he alleged that Vancouver Police Chief Walter Mulligan and his inner circle were effectively doubling their salaries through weekly envelopes of cash. In exchange for βprotection,β gambling dens like the Mushroom Patch and bootlegging operations tied to Joe Celona were allowed to operate openly.
That led to the Tupper Commission. Public hearings began, but midway through them, Chief Mulligan abandoned his post and fled to California. He spent the rest of his life as a bus dispatcher and nurseryman, never held accountable for what heβd done.
In the end, the inquiry concluded that Mulligan and others were βcriminally corrupt.β But the Attorney General still ruled there was βinsufficient evidenceβ for criminal prosecution.
As for Joe Celona, he was never charged for his role in the Mulligan Affair either. He retired to Oak Bay in Victoria and died a free man, never spending a day in prison for his role in the scandal.
Hereβs the irony.
A traditional Italian mafia never took hold in Vancouver because other crooked Italians got there first.
They profited from organized crime. They just saw a formal mafia as bad for business. Why rely on street hoodlums when the police are more efficient?
To this day, there are still local Italians involved in organized crime in Vancouver. But instead of working through a distinct Italian crime family, they tend to plug into biker gangs and multi-ethnic syndicates like the UN Gang or Wolfpack Alliance.
it's quite interesting, but I would disagree that it isn't Mafia
(And concerning the omertΓ code of honor: it is not about not knowing who's in charge βthat's pretty much always well known, informallyβ but rather about never being βwitness to crimeβ, even when it happens under your nose and you know exactly who did it and why.)
(BTW this is my new primary account, even if I haven't done the Mastodon migration process from @oblomov@mastodon.uno)
@oblomov @oblomov Well, I mean itβs βnot mafiaβ in the same sense that βI Canβt Believe Itβs Not Butter!β is butter. It looks like butter. It tastes like butter. But itβs actually margarine.
And βnot mafiaβ in the sense it didnβt operate on a Cosa Nostra model: formal families, initiation, hierarchy, internal codes, and restricted membership.
And fair point on omertΓ . I was using it more loosely to mean the kind of codified secrecy and internal discipline people associate with a secret society like Cosa Nostra, not secrecy in the broader literal sense.
So yeah, mafia-like. Just not that specific model.
FCC boss Brendan Carr spends an awful lot of time pretending to be a tough guy, threatening any broadcasters that arenβt suitably deferential to our mad, idiot king. Carrβs had giant teβ¦
Hey hey how about an #introduction I'm wolf, i draw and animate and I won't shut up about it. Let's be friends who don't shut up about art together. π So #MastoArt have a lil #animation that I'm working on currently
Heads up, the fuckers in GitHub have opted everyone into training Copilot. You can see your setting under a new "Copilot Settings" item github.com/settings/copilot/feβ¦
Anyone who opts people into bullshit like this should be instantly thrown in a volcano
ok fuck let's commit to the jump then. I'll start looking for hosts.
long shot but I don't suppose anyone reading this would be interested in hitchhiking from Berlin to PoznaΕ with me for a day on two during the Easter holiday next weekend?
Alright, another one a day late, but better late than never. Yeah, this year is country heavy, but ain't nothing wrong with country? I ain't never seen a problem with it, and so today's is I Ain't Never, originally written by Webb Pierce and Mel Tillis in 1959, recorded by Pierce in 59, and Tillis in 72, or rather that's the recording everyone knows, he'd previously recorded it in 62. This version is a more recent one by BR5-49, a now defunct country/alt country/roackabilly/country rock band
Was at Ollie's picking up some things, and while I don't need more soap right now, I can never say no to weird, though I agree with the cashier, going to need to be careful around cops
Ok, lets get up to date on the covers with Air That I Breathe by Hank Williams Jr. I'm not actually sure which version I'm familiar with, I mean I have this one in my collection, but considering who wrote it, Albert Hammond in 72 who released it on his debut album It Never Rains In California, and while I don't recognize his name, I do recognize that album title as a song I've heard, so there's a fair chance I've heard it. And then there was the Evrly Brothers cover in 73, we all know them, followed by a Hollies cover in 74 produced by Alan Parsons, yes, that Alan Parsons, there's a lot of versions I could've and prolly did hear before this version. To make things even crazier, it was covered in 98 by Simply Red, a band name that sounds familiar, though I can't say from what song. So, yeah, lots of artists that I know and like have done this one, so which was the first I became familiar with is definitely a hard one to say, but they're all good. Kinda funny, the Wikipedia article lists other covers as well as the important ones, and this one doesn't show up any where.
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