‘In this area of healthcare, like no other I know of, the professionals with the requisite expertise are positioned by their critics as having been “captured by ideology” and therefore lacking in credibility. Meanwhile, those without the expertise are positioned as “independent”, which critics argue makes them better able to evaluate the evidence – despite having never worked in the field and having no understanding of its complexities’

Dr Aiden Kelly, clinical psychologist

#Trans

people often ask me if my radio software's badass unicorn mascot is trans-coded

well duh, it's radio software, everything on it gets transcoded

"To deter long-distance travel, the band offered an initial presale of tickets for local postal codes only.

#MassiveAttack are giving train travellers special privileges: access to a VIP bar with separate toilets, extra pre-sale tickets and free transfers to and from the train station via electric bus. They are also working with the local train network, Great Western Railway, to lay on five extra trains for travelling fans."

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240717-the-band-that-doesnt-want-you-to-travel-for-their-tour

The band that doesn't want you to drive to their concerts

Massive Attack have been campaigning on environmental issues for years – and are now fixing their gaze on the music industry itself with a groundbreaking Bristol show next month.

^{Daniel Stables (BBC)}

Haroon Siddique sums up the problem with the Just Stop Oil sentencing:

'Individual comparisons, while also imperfect, can also pose questions. Can it be right that protesters who forced closure of a motorway will be locked away for so long, when in March a woman was given a six-month suspended sentence for causing death by careless/inconsiderate driving?'

And if you think this is just 'whataboutism' then you've missed the point about property & life in law!

#politics
https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/jul/19/just-stop-oil-jail-terms-questions-harsh-treatment-protesters

Just Stop Oil jail terms raise questions over harsh treatment of protesters

Lengthy prison sentences seen by many as heavy-handed and prompt comparisons with other offences

^{Haroon Siddique (The Guardian)}

So managers are starting to spew the whole "well I didn't do anything wrong, it affected everyone else, so we're not liable" bullshit.

Did you allow a third party vendor to have the highest privilege access to all of your systems AND let them run Remote Code Execution on your systems whenever they want?

You didn't have a test environment set up to test each update or patch that is applied to your systems before you push them to prod? No? Just let it auto-update?

Yeah, that "Risk Transference" didn't work so well as your GRC policy seemed to think it would, huh? I know they're a security company and they SHOULD have tested it, but they didn't, did they?

I know everyone else does it, but if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?

Just because everyone else fucked up, doesn't mean you didn't fuck up.

There's gonna be a lot of deep discussions in this post-mortem and hopefully orgs will change. Those that don't will just be hit again... and again... and again.

#crowdstrike

Wow! 😲

CrowdStrike’s CSO sold $1.5M worth of stock right before the outage today!

I repeat, the Chief Security Officer sold $1.5M worth of stock!

https://www.barrons.com/articles/crowdstrike-insiders-sold-stock-cac5e509?siteid=yhoof2

Note that the BBC didn’t go offline today.

That’s because their entire operation is run from a bank of half a million BBC Micros all linked together in an enormous basement under Broadcasting House.

The whole of greater London takes its heating from that basement.

If a hacker had done this, we would be trying to put them in prison forever. If this were a company making a physical device that happened to kill people, the settlement numbers would be astronomical.

I predict that *at best,* there will be some kind of "hearing" along the lines of the Boeing inquisition, but I doubt even that will happen.

Which makes me wonder (among other things) why we have allowed software bugs and errors to occupy their own special moral category.

Something I love bringing up again from time to time: a little more than five years ago a friend and I found a functional microphone in a smart kitchen appliance that wasn't advertised to have one. The product in question was being promoted hard by Lidl because they sold it at a fraction of the price of similar devices.

https://www.numerama.com/tech/525214-monsieur-cuisine-connect-micro-cache-android-non-securise-les-dessous-du-robot-cuisine-de-lidl.html

It made national & european news and I was interviewed by the biggest TV news show at prime time.

All we wanted was run Doom on the thing. We installed Discord on it and hopped into a call because we thought it would be funny and fell off our chairs when it turned out the person on the other side could hear us just fine

Monsieur Cuisine Connect : micro caché, Android non sécurisé... les dessous du robot cuiseur de Lidl - Numerama

Le tout nouveau robot-cuiseur connecté de Lidl fait un carton en France depuis début juin 2019. En voulant s'amuser à détourner son écran tactile, deux Français ont découvert plusieurs éléments curieux dans le fonctionnement de l'appareil.

^{Marie Turcan (Numerama)}

"Please allow me a moment to clean this up. Rest assured, I will let no harm come to you."

I've been swooning over Von Lycaon for a while now, and @gearwurk surprised me with this awesome art of Von TK! I guess Mr. Von Lycaon decided it was time for a new recruit. ^^

Thanks again so much! ^^

defying physics really strengthens your core

@ lexbu

Trump now bleeding support in GOP-dominated state as more women voters gravitate to Biden

#formerpresident #trump

https://www.alternet.org/women-voters-biden/

Trump now bleeding support in GOP-dominated state as more women voters gravitate to Biden

Former President Donald Trump's political hopes may be in danger in a solidly Republican state with a significant haul of Electoral College votes if current polling trends stay consistent.

^{Carl Gibson (Alternet.org)}

My latest post on where we are with Covid and Long Covid...

https://christinapagel.substack.com/p/englands-ongoing-covid-wave-and-new?r=8zv6v

England's ongoing Covid wave and new Long Covid research

We're still in a significant wave & important new research on long covid

^{Christina Pagel (Diving into Data & Decision making)}

Basalt and Bat-tery

✂️ @thatsfurredup
📸 http://www.blyzephotos.com/
🦌 @GaleFrostbane

#FursuitFriday #fursuit #fursuiter #fursuiting

Two incomes are better than one so make certain your partner has two jobs.

If your partner doesn’t have two jobs, then get two partners.

Follow me for more financial advice.

Content warning: crowdstrike Reveal/hide

Thriving in a hyena’s unnatural habitat

📷 @hyenaholes.bsky.social

There are honestly so many things that are dystopian and mind-bendingly wrong about this story, I dunno if I can properly process them all.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/18/five-just-stop-oil-supporters-jailed-over-protest-that-blocked-m25

"Five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for planning to block M25"

"Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were found guilty last week of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for coordinating direct action protests on the M25 over four days in November 2022.

Hallam received a five-year sentence on Thursday, while the other four were each sentenced to four years.

The sentences are thought to be the longest sentences even given in the UK for non-violent protest, exceeding those given to the Just Stop Oil protesters Morgan Trowland (three years) and Marcus Decker (two years and seven months) for scaling the Dartford Crossing.

All five had spoken on a Zoom call trying to recruit potential volunteers for the actions, which involved activists climbing gantries at strategic points on the London orbital motorway."

Okay so first up here is the fact that these folks just caught 4 and 5 year raps for, organizing a protest on a zoom call. Not actually protesting mind you, but "conspiring to protest." The second issue of course is that the protest in question wasn't some kind of violent terrorism or anything - they were planning to block traffic, to protest fossil fuel companies and the governments that serve them in boiling us all like soup for a few extra points per share. This is of course bonkers, but also completely indicative of the fascist police state the UK has become after the Tories greatly enhanced police powers to prosecute protestors in response to student, BLM, anti-Tory, and anti-genocide in Gaza demonstrations over the past few years.

Please of course keep in mind that there is no jail time coming for fossil fuel executives who are knowingly driving us all towards a mass extinction event for profit. Conspiring to kill billions? Not a crime. Conspiring to block traffic? Well, read for yourself:

"judge Christopher Hehir said: “The offending of all five of you is very serious indeed and lengthy custodial sentences must follow.”

Unbelievably the judge also chose to frame the existence of fossil fuel caused climate catastrophe as a matter of opinion, while acknowledging the near unanimous scientific evidence it is not:

"Hehir admitted there was a scientific and social consensus that human-made climate breakdown was happening and action should be taken to avert it. “I acknowledge that at least some of the concerns motivating you are, at least to some extent, shared by many,” he said."

He then put down protesting actions that are killing people, and will kill billions, as grandstanding:

“But the plain fact is that each of you has some time ago crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic. You have appointed yourselves as the sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change, bound neither by the principles of democracy nor the rule of law.

“And your fanaticism makes you entirely heedless of the rights of your fellow citizens. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide that your fellow citizens must suffer disruption and harm, and how much disruption and harm they must suffer, simply so that you may parade your views.”

Which of course brings me to the extremely fucked up reason this trial is even happening at all. Because the zoom call was infiltrated by Sun (a UK news rag) reporters who literally RECORDED it and CONTACTED police. This is a private newspaper. Journalists are supposed to PROTECT their sources, they're not supposed to function as unofficial secret police on behalf of a capitalist state that acts wholly in the service of billionaires trying to kill you for money.

Finally of course, we have the fact that the trial ITSELF appears to have been a complete sham with the verdict largely already decided by a hostile judge who denied the defendants the right to make reasonable legal arguments and told the jury they weren't allowed to consider the idea that climate catastrophe is real and caused by fossil fuel production and consumption:

"Supporters of the defendants expressed outrage at the sentences, which came after a two-week trial in which the judge denied them any of the defences in law for causing a public nuisance.

Hehir ruled that the jury should not take into account evidence about climate breakdown, which the defendants wanted to point to as the key motivation behind their actions, and which they said provided them with a reasonable excuse for them."

Folks, this too is fascism; and it's fascism in service of some of the largest, most murderous corporations on Earth. The new Labour government in the UK needs to intervene IMMEDIATELY or they're proving to you they're no better than the Tories and serve the same masters.

#ClimateCrisis #Oil #JustStopOil #Fascism

Five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for planning to block M25

Campaigners receive longest ever sentences for non-violent protest after being convicted of conspiracy to cause public nuisance

^{Damien Gayle (The Guardian)}

Sometimes the colours just coordinate themselves!

#FursuitFriday ft Draks by @PascalFarful at Cabincon last week

Happy #FursuitFriday from two fluffy doggos!

Left: @akaruwolf.bsky.social
Right: me
📸: @Jraxal

Behold, the most random prop I've gotten, a common brick (plushie)! Had to show it off for the #FursuitFriday

#fursuit #furry

Content warning: uspol, this election, actionable advice Reveal/hide

U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA has acknowledged that while the CrowdStrike outage is *not* a cyberattack, it has observed malicious actors "taking advantage" of the s(h)ituation for "phishing and other malicious activity" and warned organizations to "avoid clicking on phishing emails or suspicious links."

More: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2024/07/19/widespread-it-outage-due-crowdstrike-update