The week's doomscrolling in review: issue 6
This is the Final week's doomscrolling in review for 2024.
Welcome to The Boxing Day doomscroll!
It was going to be the Doomscroll Before Christmas, but a few too many minced pies and mulled wines got in the way. Also, I have not kept this very 'weekly' in December. As we leave 2024, one blog resolutions for 2025 (which may or may not be broken) will be to make this one weekly.
On the blog...
Yours Truly
Blaming is pivotal to the stages of grief, and this post has something to throw at nearly everyone over the 5 November election results. I'm going to try to compartmentalise my politics posts in 2025. When I started this project I had not clocked the likelihood of a Round 2 of Trump America, but it generally is going to be something that is on the beat of something called a Dystopia Report.
Yours Truly
I suppose now it's a Boxing Day sales post, though I doubt any of the shops linked to in it are offering any deep discounts. While you can't really buy good digital security (there are some good practices that are all free!) there are some gadgets and software that can help out. Also, in that post are some ways to help EFF and ACLU, which will really need it in the coming years.
From the wires
- Now is not the time for Surrender, by Jamelle Bouie (NYT Gift Iink). I would have called this one 'How to be In the Opposition,' because that's where we are, and what he's describing.
- Don't Despair, We Got This, on the Fire These Times podcast. In this episode, Elia Ayoub chats with Margaret Killjoy about her piece "The Sky is Falling; We've Got This," written shortly after the 5 Nov. election in the U.S. I'm linking to the Patreon page, but you can find it on Apple, Spotify, or many other platforms with far easier user experiences and run by tech giants that don't pay fair rates for content. In the bad times, find your reasons. This discussion is about optimism when the world is trying to knock it out of you.
- Societies of perpetual movement. This long-read in Aeon by Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias, a PhD candidate at the Human Evolutionary Ecology Group at University of Zürich, is just really absorbing. I was published earlier this year (March) but I just read it this week so that's what counts. Central Africa has the largest population of roving hunter-gatherer communities in the world, and their way of living is more like how we all once did it about a 100,000 years ago give or take. This report shows a far more sophisticated, cosmopolitan outlook than would be drilled out of people when we eventually became more stationary and territory minded.
- Another one for the ACAB Files: Pregnant Kentucky woman cited for street camping while in labor. How can we combine the U.S. war on homeless people with its increasing attacks on women? Leave it to the pluck and determination of some cops in Louisville, Kentucky, who issued a citation for 'unlawfully camping' to a homeless woman whose water had broken and was going into labor on the street. One officer is recorded saying into his own cop cam that he didn't believe she was about to give birth. She now has a new child and a court date for being guilty of homelessness. The cop who initially didn't believe her has been congratulated by the mayor's office.
- Elon Musk Takes Aim at Wikipedia. The petulant billionaire man baby who bought Trump back into office so he could have a department to gut American social safety net programs for the benefit of the uber rich fucks like himself is aiming to do to Wikipedia what he did to Twitter: Trash it. When not fan-boying racist white Afrikaners on 𝕏, Elon is accusing the site of 'woke' bias, trying to get people to boycott the site, and allegedly also trying to buy it for a mere $1 billion. Oligarchs hate what they can’t buy.
- Why has DRC filed criminal charges against Apple over ‘conflict minerals’? Apple is the new De Beers. Think about it, th company is a seller of upscale, luxury goods that's pushing out ideas of a lifestyle or image as much as it is just trying to peddle products. And it's also accused of using conflict minerals and obscuring that fact. Our technology facilitated society is still the product of outsourced misery somewhere, and it seems that still originates with child labor used in mines amid war zones. Global Witness traced supply chains of smuggled conflict minerals ending up in Apple, Intel, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola and Tesla products. This, combined with other reports, has led the Democratic Republic of the Congo to sue Apple’s subsidiaries in France and Belgium accusing them of “using deceptive commercial practices to assure consumers that the tech giant’s supply chains are clean” when it comes to the coltan, tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold minerals in its hardware.
- 'Expulsion to Spain': Israeli Hackers Flock to Barcelona in Big Spyware Shift (gift link) In which Haaretz reports how a number of Israeli software vulnerability researchers who sell to the highest bidder are upping stakes and moving shop to what's emerging as the cyber offensive capital of Europe, in Catalonia. This is possible exemplifies how full of holes EU regulation is on the subject of business that feeds spyware that's as likely to be used against journalists, dissidents, human rights activists as others as it may be for anything that's about national security or crime.
- Judge rules NSO Group is liable for spyware hacks targeting 1,400 WhatsApp user devices. Staying with related spyware events, some good news: A Northern California federal judge has set a precedent (that should have happened years ago) by ruling that NSO Group can be held liable for damages for infecting the devices of a group of 1,400 WhatsApp users with its Pegasus spyware. Here's hoping that lawyers around the world now just sue NSO Group founders and employees in every jurisdiction possible.
- These are the cybersecurity stories we were jealous of in 2024. TechCrunch does this annual post of the last year's scoops published by its competitors. It's a refreshingly congenial way of giving a well-deserved nod to giving credit where credit is due in the hyper competitive online news game and also re-surfaces some of the biggest headlines in exploits, corporate malfeasance, government shenanigans and sometimes just a heist you've got to respect.
That's it for 2024. Much more has taken place than I have the time or energy to drop in here. We got a Trump back, we lost an Assad regime. Luigi, Luigi, Luigi. Etc. The site has a comments section for each post. Drop your additions there. Have a happy new year and let's follow the shit show next year together!
