cabbage

A friend of mine was getting married last weekend in England, so I had to pay it a visit. I am amazed at how illegal it ended up being.

The opportunity arose to go there on a small sail boat crossing the English channel, so I of course opted for that as my way of entry. That caused a pretty major problem in its own right, but more about that later. First I had to get the fucking £20 ETA – Electronic Travel Authorisation.

To get the ETA you need to fill in this pretty basic but overall dumb online form. It went pretty smoothly until the end, where I'm confronted the dumbest most open ended question imaginable: "Do you have extremist opinions". Yes/no. No definitions, no nothing.

Of course I'll say no. By my own standards I do not hold extreme opinions - I consider my opinions to be perfectly sane. You'd honestly be somewhat extreme to disagree with me. I do however also know that if I told an English policeman that I support Palestine Action they would throw me in jail. So I guess I am forced to start off the entire trip by, in the eyes of the government, lying about not being an extremist in order to enter. So far so good.

Then comes the actual sail across the channel. Smooth sailing, except for the near misses with French fishing boats fishing more or less legally with or without radios on in the middle of the night. Arriving in England we seek to announce our arrival, only to learn that they have created some fucking beta website in which you need to announce your journey ahead of time. It is not advertised anywhere, and it is impossible to announce one's arrival into the UK retroactively or in any other way than through this form in advance.

Basically the only way to legally register our arrival at this point was to sail back to France, fill in the form, and then come sailing back to England again with our newly filled forms. We of course sailed with a yellow flag and all that jazz, but none of that seems to matter without having filled in this new and completely unknown web form. So I of course said fuck it and skipped border controls.

There is a customs house in the port where we arrived, but after many years of irrelevance it has been turned into a (rather nice) pub.

For good measure I spent most of the days leading up to the wedding illegally wild camping.

I'm not sure I'll be coming back soon.

I am looking into changing my web hosting provider, as I did not research pricing sufficiently before signing up for the one I am currently using, and I have developed a preference to avoid American companies since.

My domain is registered with a separate company, and my website is completely static and home made, so I think the move should be somewhat painless. I expect that it's as easy as signing up for another service provider, and redirecting the domain to whatever information they provide. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

What I'm a little concerned about is my email at name@example.com. I'm assuming setting up a new address under the same name would be trivial under most hosting providers, but is there a good way of keeping my current emails available on the server? Alternatively, does anyone know of good options for making local backups of my inbox?

Last, if anyone has recommendations for somewhat affordable, green & European hosting providers, it would be much appreciated. I guess Hetzner is an option, but I wouldn't mind supporting a slightly smaller company if I can.

Thanks!

A call for help from @eighthave@librem.one, who among other things is associated with F-droid:

An open call to #Android #developers! The #EuropeanCommission needs help evaluating #GooglePlay's #security claims. I'm going to do what I can. Anyone with knowledge of how app installation, uninstallation, sandboxing, signing, etc. could really help here. If you want to contribute, please reach out!

I figured maybe someone around here could be capable of helping out. Note that his Mastodon instance, librem.one, does not support private messages.

Friday July 4 2:00 pm Logan Circle

This July 4th cannot be a celebration of Trump’s Fascist America. It must be a day to join our voices to demand TRUMP MUST GO NOW, in front of the White House and throughout the streets of this country – in a collective shout heard around the world.

We stand on a precipice – the Trump fascist regime has rejected the rule of law and deployed the US military and massive Gestapo-like force against the people. And in bombing Iran, in violation of US and international law, Trump has begun a war that threatens the future. We either build serious mass nonviolent struggle now or face being set back.

We pledge that we will build on the strength of millions who took to the streets on June 14 against Trump’s military parade, and advance toward a day of “Making Good Trouble” on July 17 – and beyond that to forge a fierce, unrelenting, nonviolent struggle that makes it impossible for Trump to govern the country, impose his fascist program, or hold onto power.

This is how hated tyrants have been driven out all over the world and it is what we must do here – not allowing our power to be diverted into elections in 2026 or 2028 that will be too late to stop the consolidation of fascist rule. Trump has shown, with threats and action, that he will not accept any restraints on his power to lock in a terrible future – with the largest military and nuclear arsenal at his fingertips.

No! The time to act is now. Now is the time for Trump to go.

This July 4, in D.C. and everywhere, in the name of humanity:
We Declare Our Independence from Trump’s Fascist America!
The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go Now!

– RefuseFascism.org, @refusefascism@mastodon.world

Via @youranoncentral.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy on Bluesky

John Hoiland is an ageing farmer in Montana, still running his farm the old fashioned way after the age of 90. The documentary John: The Last Norwegian Cowboy follows him for a few months, documenting his musical contributions, how he keeps his farm machinery running, how his mother taught him to make lefse, and how he once starred in a chevy commercial.

It's a really nice watch.

Lyrics in English:

It’s hard to be a real human being
Truly difficult, my dear Yosl Ber
It’s hard to be a real human being
Truly difficult, my dear Yosl Ber

You’re supposed to give grandmothers respect
Rather than throw them out of their homes
You’re not supposed to murder any children
You can’t even blind them

You can’t make and spread
Plague, and the chains of hunger
You’re not allowed to destroy a hospital
Not even just one!

Sometimes it’s hard to remain (behave like) humans
Especially when we are miserable and suffering
But there’s only one choice, my dear boy
If you don’t wish to be a swine

Yosl Ber
Serves in the military
Yosl, Yosl, Yosl Ber
Serves in the military

Words by @Geoffberner@zeroes.ca with Annie Cohen, music by Geoff Berner. Berner is a Jewish Canadian protest singer who places himself somewhere between folk, punk, and klezmer.

Yosl Ber is a man serving in the military in an old Yiddish song (cover version here) by Itzik Manger. Lyrics with translation are available here. In the current context, it's hard not to think of Yosl Ber as a person recruited to the IDF as part of Israel's mandatory military service.

As deportations continue, this is a question of some relevance to the Americans out there. Music by @Geoffberner@zeroes.ca.

I've had this plant for a while in other countries, and it was always very easy going. But after the last time I moved the sapling I took with me has started struggling.

The picture is not a perfect illustration, but you can see new leaves coming out turning black in the ends, and eventually drying out and dying. This already happened with a lot of leaves that I cut off, but now it's repeating itself with the new ones.

The plant has been in a relatively bright spot and I think it has received enough water that it shouldn't be the problem. The black parts are completely dead. Does anyone have any idea what can be done? :)

I'm sorry the picture is not more illustrative.

I recently cancelled my Dropbox subscription, and will now be running local backups instead. For that purpose I need an external hard drive.

It seems most companies (Western Digital, Kingston, Seagate) are American, with Japanese Toshiba occasionally showing up in my search results.

Does anyone know of/have any experience with European storage manufacturers? If not I guess Toshiba will have to do. :)

Nawrocki, aka the "nationalist" candidate, just won the election in Poland with a very narrow margin.

Nawrocki is formally independent, but is aligned with the PiS party of current president Duda, who were responsible for undermining Polish democracy by among other things stacking the courts with illegitimate judges. As the president has the power to block all judidcal appointments, it does not look like Poland will have their democracy back for the next five years: Duda has simply blocked all judicial appointments rendering the Polish state a lame duck, and in all likelihood Nawrocki will keep up the same obstructionist strategy.

Then again, that's what they voted for.

The thing I hate the most about AI and it's ease of access; the slow, painful death of the hacker soul—brought not by war or scarcity, but by convenience. By buttons. By bots. [...]

There was once magic here. There was once madness.

Kids would stay up all night on IRC with bloodshot eyes, trying to render a cube in OpenGL without segfaulting their future. They cared. They would install Gentoo on a toaster just to see if it’d boot. They knew the smell of burnt voltage regulators and the exact line of assembly where Doom hit 10 FPS on their calculator. These were artists. They wrote code like jazz musicians—full of rage, precision, and divine chaos.

Now? We’re building a world where that curiosity gets lobotomized at the door. Some poor bastard—born to be great—is going to get told to "review this AI-generated patchset" for eight hours a day, until all that wonder calcifies into apathy. The terminal will become a spreadsheet. The debugger a coffin.

Unusually well-written piece on the threat AI poses to programming as an art form.

A Cypriot cargo ship ran ashore immediately next to a Norwegian household today, and they are currently doing their best to get the ship unstuck. It's a surprisingly soothening live stream.

Via @DreadShips@mastodon.me.uk on Mastodon.