Earlier this year, in February, I wrote a blog post encouraging people to donate to where I work, Software Freedom Conservancy. I've not otherwise blogged too much this year. It's been a rough year for many reasons, and while I personally and Conservancy in general have accomplished some very important work this year, I'm reminded as always that more resources do make things easier.
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| Here I am starting again with another fresh blog. | My aims for this thing have changed once again. Now I’m using Nikola, a python based static site generator. It’s a bit more complex than I really wanted but I’m less inclined to build my own scripts these …
This December, Fairytale of New York will be 30 years old. RTE marks the anniversary with a new documentary looking... Read more »
The post FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK – THE MAKING OF A CLASSIC ON RTE ONE appeared first on Shane MacGowan.
From A Pair of Brown Eyes to Fairytale of New York, Shane MacGowan is a poet of modern music and one of the great international... Read more »
The post SHANE MACGOWAN 60TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION appeared first on Shane MacGowan.
Tom Baker returns as the Fourth Doctor in a previously unbroadcast story, combining original live-action footage with hand-drawn animation. Released on DVD, Bluray and digital download. In 1979, Shada was set to be the
Donald Trump and the Republicans are trying to restrict American freedom and destroy the Internet as we know it. They want to hand control of a crucial public resource – the Internet – over to corporations. These corporations will then be able to restrict the flow of information, effectively censor voices of dissent, and charge […]
Senator Chuck Schumer warned that the Republican tax plan would deepen the deficit by $5 trillion to $7 trillion.
The post How We Think About the Deficit Is Mostly Wrong appeared first on Stephanie Kelton.
Dear Friend,
Since the 2008 Financial Crisis, macroeconomic issues have taken center stage in world politics. Increasingly, to understand what is going on in the world around them, students, academics and citizens need to grapple with questions and concepts relating to monetary and financial system design. The traditional economics curriculum and orthodox analysis is not well equipped to impart even a basic understanding of such issues.
This panel explores the relationship between modern money and the legal design of public and private ownership regimes regarding real estate, intellectual property, and the workplace/means of production.
This panel explores strategies and tactics for the popularization of MMT ideas, as well as the broader challenges and possibilities of grassroots organizing and messaging around macroeconomic issues.
This panel explores the relationship between the Modern Money perspective and policy perspectives on corporate power, especially the power of financial institutions. How does understanding money recontextualize our understanding of corporate power? What approaches to regulating corporate power become more or less viable from a Modern Money perspective?
This panel explores the legal and technological dimensions of contemporary payments systems, including the relationship between monetary law and federal budget policy, the role of safe assets in financial market design, and the implications of digital payments technology for macroeconomic regulation and the preservation of individual freedom.
This panel explores the relationship between Modern Monetary Theory and legal theory, as well as the role of legal professionals in the MMT community, and lessons from prior law & economics movements for the development and operationalization of MMT ideas.
It's fortunately more common now in Free Software communities today to properly value contributions from non-developers. Historically, though, contributions from developers were often overvalued and contributions from others grossly undervalued. One person trailblazed as (likely) the earliest non-developer contributor to software freedom. His name was Robert J. Chassell — called Bob by his friends and colleagues. Over the weekend, our community lost Bob after a long battle with a degenerative illness.
I am one of the few of my generation in the Free Software community who had the opportunity to know Bob. He was already semi-retired in the late 1990s when I first became involved with Free Software, but he enjoyed giving talks about Free Software and occasionally worked the FSF booths at events where I had begun to volunteer in 1997. He was the first person to offer mentorship to me as I began the long road of becoming a professional software freedom activist.
(and some history of Sci-Hub too) Like most people, I routinely use Wikipedia to lookup information. Sometimes however, the information … More
Putting it all together
Tom’s autograph shop is open again. In addition to the favourites, there is one new picture, sold as a greeting card. We hope to offer one or two more new pictures, but we’re not doing
Things make a lot more sense when you realise other currency areas love your savings products — a lot
I had worked a night shift. The dog woke me at lunch time. Re must have just left for work. I tried to sleep more but I was awake. I took the dog down the beach for a walk. Picked up some beer, food and milk on the way home …
Max killed himself this week. I found out from a message on my phone. I was sitting in the cab of my ute after a day at work. I stared at my phone.
I thought I’d misunderstood the message. I read it again, the words became disjointed and I …
Why is it all so fucking hard?
I am not reinventing the wheel. I just wanted a simple way to post text and the odd picture online. I do not want to post via some ‘service’ in which I end up being owned by them. I did not want to …
I encourage all of you to either listen to or read the transcript of Terry Gross' Fresh Air interview with Joseph Turow about his discussion of his book “The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, And Define Your Power”.
Now, most of you who read my blog know the difference between proprietary and Free Software, and the difference between a network service and software that runs on your own device. I want all of you have a good understanding of that to do a simple thought experiment:
How many of the horrible things that Turow talks about can happen if there is no proprietary software on your IoT or mobile devices?
There are a lot of problems in our society, and particularly in the USA, right now, and plenty of charities who need our support. The reason I continue to focus my work on software freedom is simply because there are so few focused on the moral and ethical issues of computing. Open Source has reached its pinnacle as an industry fad, and with it, a watered-down message: “having some of the source code for some of your systems some of the time is so great, why would you need anything more?”. Universal software freedom is however further from reality than it was even a few years ago. At least a few of us, in my view, must focus on that cause.