California enacts its own internet age-gating law | The Verge
California enacts its own internet age-gating law
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1043, which requires device and app store operators to age check users, adding to a growing wave of state laws.Lauren Feiner (The Verge)
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Mystery visitors plunged Ghislaine Maxwell’s Texas prison camp into lockdown as inmates complain of preferential treatment, report says | The Independent
Mystery visitors plunged Ghislaine Maxwell’s Texas prison camp into lockdown as inmates complain of preferential treatment, report says
Maxwell had a mysterious meeting in the prison’s chapel that prevented other inmates from getting their outdoor time, per the reportIsabel Keane (The Independent)
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Kremlin issues veiled threats towards Moldova, cites Ukraine as warning
#Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov issued a new round of veiled #threats towards #Moldova on Oct. 12, warning #Chisinau not to suffer from the same fate as #Ukraine just weeks after an election that saw Moldova’s #pro-European Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) secure a parliamentary majority.kyivindependent.com/kremlin-is…
#HybridWar #RussianAggression #threats #RussianImperialism
Kremlin issues veiled threats towards Moldova, cites Ukraine as warning
Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov issued a new round of veiled threats towards Moldova on Oct. 12, warning Chisinau not to suffer from the same fate as Ukraine just weeks after an election that saw Moldova’s pro-European Action and Solidarity Party …Dmytro Basmat (The Kyiv Independent)
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Estonia spots Russian troops without insignia near border
The #Saatse Boot — located near the small boot-shaped section of #Russian territory that juts into southeastern #Estonia — was closed after #border guards reported seeing seven armed men in unmarked #uniforms briefly appear on the road.The phrase "little green men" recalls 2014, when #RussianTroops without #insignia seized key sites in #Crimea in the first phase of the peninsula's occupation.
kyivindependent.com/estonia-sp…
#RussianAggression #RussianInvasions #LittleGreenMen
Estonia spots Russian troops without insignia near border — officials say 'not a new tactic'
Estonian officials say Moscow is intensifying its provocations after an unusual movement by Russian troops near the border forced Tallinn to shut down a transit easement on Oct. 10.Tim Zadorozhnyy (The Kyiv Independent)
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♲ @psych@diasporasocial.net:Cartoon by Bill Bramhall, The New York Daily News - https://x.com/EandPCartoons/status/1977403896055439785
#Truth - Woof! #TrumpVirus running wild, now powered by basic ingredient of #fascism - control of mass #media
ICE tickets Chicago man $130 for not having his papers with him
chicagotribune.com/2025/10/13/…
ICE tickets Chicago man with legal residency $130 for not having his papers on him: ‘It’s not fair…I’m a resident’
Under federal law, registered foreign nationals must carry proof of registration with them at all times. But prior to a second Trump administration, it was rarely enforced.Gregory Royal Pratt (Chicago Tribune)
like this
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Eventually... the UK future when the Digital ID comes in
A fine for not carrying your ID is a cheap way to raise funds...
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And giving these people a severe reality adjustment to get them to see past their noses is harder than we thought.
I'm trying to think of ways to break that wall, and we're running out of time here.
Biodegradable plastic made from bamboo is strong and easy to recycle | New Scientist
Biodegradable plastic made from bamboo is strong and easy to recycle
Bamboo is a highly renewable resource, and its cellulose fibres can be turned into a hard, mouldable plastic for use in cars and appliancesAlex Wilkins (New Scientist)
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Dear Fellow Americans,
“Make America Great Again” is a slogan originally used by the Ku Klux Klan, of which Trump’s father was a member. It’s rooted in the racist notion that our country was “greatest” when the only people who had any rights were straight white men who owned land and slaves.
It's Un-American that republicans are still following a man who lied to them 33,000 documented times and who has been arrested four separate times, a criminal defendant inmate # P01135809 and is currently out on bail in three jurisdictions while pursuing the highest political office in the world. Was found liable for sexual assault and defamation of his abuse victim $91.3 million. Was found liable for massive financial, bank, tax fraud $580 million and counting.
Stole and concealed 300,000 national defense documents and shared state secrets with others. The biggest spy and traitor in American history.
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Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver
wweek.com/news/2025/10/12/docu…
Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver
Feds delayed medics who had come to pick up an injured protester. Then, according to confidential incident reports, the agents became aggressive.Willamette Week
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Would you say that because of the decentralize aspect to the Fedi? I ask because I had posted something once and, in the initial time, it didnt have any real reach beyond those that follow me and maybe some movement in my local instance.
Then, months later, that same post ended up suddenly getting traction and from instances that I didnt have any mutuals in.
I think there's a lot more to this phenomenon than a quick quip. The fact that a good post can have an extended shelf life in a context that rarely produces flashy virality is a function of both the technological infrastructure and the much more human and real social norms here.
This is one of those things that I meant a couple days ago when I said to newcomers that a lot of the good parts of Mastodon/fediverse take some time to notice and appreciate.
Do you know an organisation that might want to join Mastodon or the wider Fediverse?
This guide could be useful, it goes through the reasons for joining and how to get started, as well as answering many questions:
➡️ fedi.tips/tips-for-organisatio…
If an organisation is running their own Mastodon server, they might want to also read this guide about how to assign roles and powers to server staff:
➡️ fedi.tips/how-can-organisation…
Tips for organisations joining Mastodon and the Fediverse | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediversefedi.tips
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The implication: Turn around or we will treat you as we do black people.
truthout.org/articles/using-do…
Using Dogs as a Tool of Racist Repression
Along with training K9s to horrifically maul people, cops have frequently been caught committing animal abuse.Alex Moyle (Truthout)
What's a flickr-like platform that I can run on my own server that people actually like and has an API for workflow integration?
Several folks recommended Immich, but having tried it, that's more of a mobile gallery app, turned website, rather than something that's built around the idea of looking at photographs on a proper monitor, organized and presented around a "viewer/visitor" experience.
I don't need Flickr for me to organize my work (I own DAMs already) I need it to show off my work =)
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@xurizaemon I am so deep in my current albatros T_T
But hopefully make.webblythings.com (open source platform, github.com/Pomax/make-webbly-t…) is feature complete enough soon that I can get back to the OTHER bird I'm wrangling (a 50kish word explainer on how to implement networked, four-player mahjong)
GitHub - Pomax/make-webbly-things: Make webbly things, federate with other creators, reclaim the web.
Make webbly things, federate with other creators, reclaim the web. - Pomax/make-webbly-thingsGitHub
You're right. History is repeating itself. The Gestapo and SS have new names, and fear and hatred are already spreading!
Columbus wasn't on a mission to expand scientific understanding. Nor did he "find" a new world. And far from enlightenment, Columbus brought enslavement, genocide, and mass rape. Finally, “Columbus Day” isn’t some ancient American tradition. It’s only 88 years old.
Here’s why we should replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
qasimrashid.com/p/indigenous-p…
Indigenous Peoples' Day Must Replace Columbus Day
Columbus was a historical figure who should be studied, not an icon to be honoredQasim Rashid, Esq. (Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid)
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Human Day fellow citizen Qasim Rashid, Esq.
To celebrate all of us.
ST
"Together my friend.
That's how humanity will win."
SearingTruth
Zohran Mamdani's statement is of the only statements by an elected official who acknowledges the humanity of Israelis AND Palestinians, who recognizes this atrocity as a US funded genocide, & who understands that future peace must include a dismantling of apartheid and occupation.
NYC—elect this man as your next Mayor.
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Paid Sick Leave Is Under Attack in Some Republican States
rollingstone.com/politics/poli…
Paid Sick Leave Is Under Attack in Some Republican States
Republican-controlled legislatures have rolled back state-level sick-leave policies, leaving gaps in access amid the party's attacks on health care.Nikki McCann Ramirez (Rolling Stone)
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There’s an accessibility bug on Mastodon: you cannot add custom alt text to your profile or header image. This means people using screen readers can’t know what these images show, so important info is missing for visually impaired users. ♿
Please help by upvoting and commenting on the issue so it gets more attention from developers 👇
github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…
Let’s make Mastodon more inclusive for everyone! 🤗
CC @Mastodon
#Accessibility #Mastodon #Inclusion #OpenSource
Accessibility bug: Cannot add alt text to profile and header images
Pitch In the public profile edit section of the Mastodon web interface, it is not possible to set alternative text (alt text) for the profile picture and header image. Right now, both images have a...pauloxnet (GitHub)
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Noting his "profound and powerful" joy at the release of Israeli hostages today and that he has had their names on his refrigerator doir to remind him to pray for them, Peter Beinart writes,
"This isn’t a day of celebration for Palestinians because it’s not fair to ask Palestinians to celebrate simply for not being bombed, right? The standard should be higher than that."
#Israel #Gaza #Palestinians #HumanRights
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peterbeinart.substack.com/p/th…
Thank God the Israeli Hostages Are Coming Home
But Don’t Ask Palestinians to Celebrate a Ceasefire that Deepens Their OppressionPeter Beinart (The Beinart Notebook)
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"The images coming out of Gaza are devastating. Palestinians are returning to nothing; their homes and neighborhoods have been leveled to rubble that barely resembles what once was. They’re coming back to an apocalyptic wasteland, over 50 million tons of debris, unexploded IEDs littering the ground like landmines, and a humanitarian catastrophe. This is what Netanyahu’s war has wrought."
~ The Feed
#Israel #Gaza #Palestinians #HumanRights
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thefeed1.substack.com/p/the-ce…
The Ceasefire Is Just the Beginning
Celebration on the streets of Gaza tells only part of the story.The Feed
"Here’s what the ceasefire cheerleaders don’t want you to focus on: Gaza remains occupied, as does the West Bank. Israeli forces control nearly 90% of the territory. The siege continues. Palestinians can’t fish their own waters, farm their own land, or rebuild their own communities without permission from the same military that just spent two years systematically destroying everything they had."
#Israel #Gaza #Palestinians #HumanRights
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Chicago priest urges parishioners to leave mass with caution after ICE agents reported nearby
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-priest-urges-parishioners-to-leave-mass-with-caution-after-ice-agents-reported-nearby/3837541/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into MAGA ICE RAIDS & DEPORTATIONS @maga-ice-raids-deportations-researchdept
Chicago priest urges parishioners to leave mass with caution after ICE agents reported nearby
Chicago's Rogers Park community remained vigilant after reports of federal agents near a Catholic church during Sunday mass.Natalie Martinez, Jorge DeSantiago, NBC Chicago Staff (NBC Chicago)
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What Happened When AI Came for Craft Beer
A prominent beer judging competition introduced an AI-based judging tool without warning in the middle of a competition, surprising and angering judges who thought their evaluation notes for each beer were being used to improve the AI, according to multiple interviews with judges involved. The company behind the competition, called Best Beer, also planned to launch a consumer-facing app that would use AI to match drinkers with beers, the company told 404 Media.
Best Beer also threatened legal action against one judge who wrote an open letter criticizing the use of AI in beer tasting and judging, according to multiple judges and text messages reviewed by 404 Media.
The months-long episode shows what can happen when organizations try to push AI onto a hobby, pursuit, art form, or even industry which has many members who are staunchly pro-human and anti-AI. Over the last several years we’ve seen it with illustrators, voice actors, music, and many more. AI came for beer too.
“It is attempting to solve a problem that wasn’t a problem before AI showed up, or before big tech showed up,” Greg Loudon, a certified beer judge and brewery sales manager, and who was the judge threatened with legal action, said. “I feel like AI doesn’t really have a place in beer, and if it does, it’s not going to be in things that are very human.”
“There’s so much subjectivity to it, and to strip out all of the humanity from it is a disservice to the industry,” he added. Another judge said the introduction of AI was “enshittifying” beer tasting.
💡
Do you know anything else about how AI is impacting beer? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
This story started earlier this year at a Canadian Brewing Awards judging event. Best Beer is the company behind the Canadian Brewing Awards, which gives awards in categories such as Experimental Beer, Speciality IPA, and Historic/Regional Beers. To be a judge, you have to be certified by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), which involves an exam covering the brewing process, different beer styles, judging procedures, and more.
Around the third day of the competition, the judges were asked to enter their tasting notes into a new AI-powered app instead of the platform they already use, one judge told 404 Media. 404 Media granted the judge anonymity to protect them from retaliation.
Using the AI felt like it was “parroting back bad versions of your judge tasting notes,” they said. “There wasn't really an opportunity for us to actually write our evaluation.” Judges would write what they thought of a beer, and the AI would generate several descriptions based on the judges’ notes that the judge would then need to select. It would then provide additional questions for judges to answer that were “total garbage.”
“It was taking real human feedback, spitting out crap, and then making the human respond to more crap that it crafted for you,” the judge said.
“On top of all the misuse of our time and disrespecting us as judges, that really frustrated me—because it's not a good app,” they said.
Screenshot of a Best Beer-related website.
Multiple judges then met to piece together what was happening, and Loudon published his open letter in April.
“They introduced this AI model to their pool of 40+ judges in the middle of the competition judging, surprising everyone for the sudden shift away from traditional judging methods,” the letter says. “Results are tied back to each judge to increase accountability and ensure a safe, fair and equitable judging environment. Judging for competitions is a very human experience that depends on people filling diverse roles: as judges, stewards, staff, organizers, sorters, and venue maintenance workers,” the letter says.
“Their intentions to gather our training data for their own profit was apparent,” the letter says. It adds that one judge said “I am here to judge beer, not to beta test.”
The letter concluded with this: “To our fellow beverage judges, beverage industry owners, professionals, workers, and educators: Sign our letter. Spread the word. Raise awareness about the real human harms of AI in your spheres of influence. Have frank discussions with your employers, colleagues, and friends about AI use in our industry and our lives. Demand more transparency about competition organizations.”
33 people signed the letter. They included judges, breweries, and members of homebrewer associations in Canada and the United States.
Loudon told 404 Media in a recent phone call “you need to tell us if you're going to be using our data; you need to tell us if you're going to be profiting off of our data, and you can't be using volunteers that are there to judge beer. You need to tell people up front what you're going to do.”
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
At least one brewery that entered its beer into the Canadian Brewing Awards publicly called out Best Beer and the awards. XhAle Brew Co., based out of Alberta, wrote in a Facebook post in April that it asked for its entry fees of $565 to be refunded, and for the “destruction of XhAle's data collected during, and post-judging for the Best Beer App.”
“We did not consent to our beer being used by a private equity tech fund at the cost to us (XhAle Brew Co. and Canadian Brewers) for a for-profit AI application. Nor do we condone the use of industry volunteers for the same purpose,” the post said.
Ob Simmonds, head of innovation at the Canadian Brewing Awards, told 404 Media in an email that “Breweries will have amazing insight on previously unavailable useful details about their beer and their performance in our competition. Furthermore, craft beer drinkers will be able to better sift through the noise and find beers perfect for their palate. This in no way is aimed at replacing technical judging with AI.”
With the consumer app, the idea was to “Help end users find beers that match their taste profile and help breweries better understand their results in our competition,” Simmonds said.
Simmonds said that “AI is being used to better match consumers with the best beers for their palate,” but said Best Beer is not training its own model.
Those plans have come to a halt though. At the end of September, the Canadian Brewing Awards said in an Instagram post the team was “stepping away.” It said the goal of Best Beer was to “make medals matter more to consumers, so that breweries could see a stronger return on their entries.” The organization said it “saw strong interest from many breweries, judges and consumers” and that it will donate Best Beer’s assets to a non-profit that shows interest. The post added the organization used third-party models that “were good enough to achieve the results we wanted,” and the privacy policies forbade training on the inputted data.
The post included an apology: “We apologize to both judges and breweries for the communication gaps and for the disruptions caused by this year’s logistical challenges.”
In an email sent to 404 Media this month, the Canadian Brewing Awards said “the Best Beer project was never designed to replace or profit from judges.”
“Despite these intentions, the project came under criticism before it was even officially launched,” it added, saying that the open letter “mischaracterized both our goals and approach.”
“Ultimately, we decided not to proceed with the public launch of Best Beer. Instead, we repurposed parts of the technology we had developed to support a brewery crawl during our gala. We chose to pause the broader project until we could ensure the judging community felt confident that no data would be used for profit and until we had more time to clear up the confusion,” the email added. “If judges wanted their data deleted what assurance can we provide them that it was in fact deleted. Everything was judged blind and they would have no access to our database from the enhanced division. For that reason, we felt it was more responsible to shelve the initiative for now.”
One judge told 404 Media: “I don’t think anyone who is hell bent on using AI is going to stop until it’s no longer worth it for them to do so.”
“I just hope that they are transparent if they try to do this again to judges who are volunteering their time, then either pay them or give them the chance ahead of time to opt-out,” they added.
Now months after this all started, Loudon said “The best beers on the market are art forms. They are expressionist. They're something that can't be quantified. And the human element to it, if you strip that all away, it just becomes very basic, and very sanitized, and sterilized.”
“Brewing is an art.”
XhAle Brew Co.
XhAle is not just a craft beer company. We are a company comprised of majority equity-deserving folks, and have been and still are marginalized in this industry. We understand and have personally...www.facebook.com
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Elon Musk's SpaceX and xAI are buying Tesla's unsold Cybertrucks | Electrek
Hmmm, Musk getting desperate and now shuffling losses between companies?
electrek.co/2025/10/13/elon-mu…
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and xAI are buying Tesla’s unsold Cybertrucks
Hundreds of Tesla Cybertrucks have been spotted being delivered Elon Musk’s private companies, SpaceX and xAI, as Tesla is having...Fred Lambert (Electrek)
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in reply to 🌴 Seph 💭 👾 • • •A dark, moody image featuring a full, orange moon in the upper left corner and a silhouetted, bare tree branch extending diagonally across the frame. The background is a gradient of dark brown and gray. White text is overlaid on the image, arranged in a stacked format.
The text reads:
“SAMHAIN
A GAELIC WORD MEANING ‘SUMMER’S END’
IT IS PRONOUNCED:
‘SOW-IN’ IN IRELAND.
‘SOW-EEN’ IN WALES.
‘SAV-EN’ IN SCOTLAND.
‘PUMPKIN-SPICE’ IN AMERICA.”
The image appears to be a graphic presenting the pronunciation of the word "Samhain" in different regions.
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