#Fiber net

[telugutimesdigimedia]

That youth leader is sure to go to jail.. Lakshmi Parvati who targeted Lokesh!

Lakshmi Parvathi, the YCP woman leader and chairperson of the Telugu Academy, indirectly lashed out at TDP youth leader Nara Lokesh. The person who committed huge loot in the fiber net scam in the state is now coming before the people as a righteous man. They joked that it was ridiculous for a person who could not even win as a ward member to go on foot.

[tacit-semantics]

Alright!!!!!!!!!! Finished my biggest filet lace piece yet :) a big mess on the technical level because I realized at the very very end what it was that was giving me so much trouble (was failing to account for one of the threads when working around the holes (which were giving me so much trouble on the bigger part that I DID indeed just give up on but we will get em next time)) but let’s ignore that because I DID IT LOOK YALL. Thumbs up picture partially for scale but also because I DID IT

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How cable monopolists tricked conservatives into shooting themselves in the face

No matter how hard conservative culture-war cannon-fodder love big business, it will never love them back. Take network policy, where rural turkeys in Red State America keep on voting for Christmas, then profess outrage when Old Farmer Comcast gets to sharpening his ax.

For two years, the FCC has been hamstrung because MAGA Senators refuse to confirm Gigi Sohn, leaving the Commission with only four commissioners. What do the GOP have against Sohn? Well, to hear them tell of it, she’s some kind of radical Marxist who will undermine free enterprise and replace the internet with tin cans and string.

The reality is that Sohn favors policies that will specifically and substantially benefit the rural Americans whose senators who refuse to confirm her. For example, Sohn favors municipal fiber provision, which low-information conservatives have been trained to reflexively reject: “Get your government out of my internet!”

Boy, are they ever wrong. The private sector sucks at providing network connectivity, especially in rural places. The cable companies and phone companies have divided up the USA like the Pope dividing up the “New World,” setting out exclusive, non-competing territories that get worse service than anyone else in the wealthy world. Americans pay some of the highest prices for the lowest speeds of any OECD nation.

For ISPs, bad service is a feature, not a bug. When Frontier went bankrupt in 2020, we got to look at its books, which is how we discovered that the company booked the one rural customers with no alternative as “assets” because they could be charged more for slower, less reliable service:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

We also learned that Frontier had calculated that it could make an extra billion in profit by bringing fiber to three million households, but chose not to, because it would take a decade to realize those profits, and during that time, executives’ stock options would decline in value as analysts punished them for making long-term bets.

We can bring fiber to rural America, and when we do, amazing things happen. McKee, Kentucky — one of the poorest places in America — used federal grants and its New Deal era rural electrification co-op to bring fiber to every household, using a mule called Ole Bub to run it over difficult mountain passes, and the result was an economic miracle:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

The only Americans who consistently say they like their ISPs are people who live in the 700+ small towns that have run their own fiber, mostly in Red States:

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

Small wonder that rural Americans prefer muni fiber to commercial ISPs’ offerings. When Trump’s FCC Chair Ajit Pai gave them billions in subsidies to improve rural connectivity, the monopolists spent it pulling new copper lines, not fiber — which would have been thousands of times faster.

Given all that, it takes a lot to convince rural Americans that municipal fiber is bad for them. Specifically, it takes disinformation. More specifically, it takes the lie that municipal fiber would result in “government interference” in users’ communications.

Boy, is this ever wrong. Private companies are free to set their own content moderation policies, and can discriminate against any viewpoint they wish. They can and do remove “lawful but awful” speech like racist diatribes, vaccine denial, election denial, and other conservative fever-dreams.

Contrast that with local governments, who are bound by the First Amendment, and prohibited from practicing “viewpoint discrimination.” This means that if a local government allows one viewpoint on a subject, they are generally required to allow all other viewpoints on that subject. This is how we get the Satanic Temple’s excellent stunts, like demanding that towns that display Christian icons on public lands also display statues of Baphomet right next to them.

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/17/639726472/satanic-temple-protests-ten-commandments-monument-with-goat-headed-statue

When your town government runs 100gb fiber into your basement or garage, it will have a much harder time blocking you from, say, running a Mastodon instance devoted to election denial or GhostGun production than your commercial ISP will. Convincing American conservatives to hate municipal broadband was a gigantic self-own:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/17/turner-diaries-fanfic/#1a-fiber

Even worse is what rural America has been sold instead of municipal fiber: Starlink, the My Pillow of broadband. Starlink sells itself as blazing-fast satellite broadband, but conspicuously fails to talk up the fact that every Starlink user in your neighborhood competes for the same wireless spectrum as you, so the service can only get slower and more expensive over time:

https://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/starlink-nov-2022-data-caps.html

There’s been a concerted smear campaign against Sohn, and one of the major talking points is that Sohn is anti-cop because she sits on EFF’s board, and EFF wants to place limits on police access to commercial surveillance data. Which is wild, because one of EFF’s demands is limits on geofenced reverse warrants, where cops ask Google to reveal the identity of everyone who was in a specific place at a specific time. If you’ve heard about geofenced warrants lately, it was probably in the context of conservative outrage at their use in rounding up the January 6 insurrectionists.

Now, the primary use of these is to target Black Lives Matter demonstrators and other protestors, and EFF advocates for the normal Fourth Amendment rights that everyone is guaranteed in the Constitution. Conservative pundits didn’t give a damn about geofenced warrants until the J6 affair, and now they do — but they still insist that Sohn should be disqualified from sitting on the FCC because she shares their outrage at the abuse of private surveillance data by law enforcement.

All this raises the question: why have all these Red State senators made it their mission in life to block the appointment of an FCC commissioner who would deliver so many benefits to their constituents? It’s hard to say, of course, but Luke Goldstein has a suggestion in today’s American Prospect:

https://prospect.org/politics/democratic-majority-at-the-fcc-still-blocked/

“A torrent of lobbying money from the telecom industry has flooded Washington to block Sohn’s arrival at the FCC. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and T-Mobile doled out over $23 million lobbying Washington this year.”

And why would these companies spend millions to block Sohn from sitting on the Commission? Because she would help the Democratic majority pass policies that make broadband cheaper and faster for America, especially rural America where costs are highest and service is worst, and this will limit the telco monopolists’ profits.

There’s a new Democratic senate majority that’ll sit in 2023, so perhaps Sohn will finally be seated and start delivering relief to all Americans, even the turkeys who can’t stop voting for Christmas.

[Image ID: A hunter in camo firing a rifle whose barrel has been bent back to point at his own face. A muzzle flash emerges from the barrel. The hunter wears a MAGA hat. Behind the hunter is a telephone pole with many radiating lines. In the bottom left corner of the image is a 1950s-style illustration of a broadly smiling salesman, pointing at a box that is emblazoned with the logo for ALEC.]

[tetedurfarm]

having a snack on their shiny new floor ✨

[glossary2]

[ninoochat]

Oh shit so fun story. When I was like 10 I used to go on little adventures on my bike. One day I went to past the native side of town and all the way to the black neighborhood (we also had a hmong community and brazilian folks, french guiana is the best place on earth).

Saw an old guy working on a fishing net and I guess I stared too long because he called me over. He showed me how he was repairing the holes. Then he grabbed new thread and showed me how to start making one. I spent all afternoon with this random man, there was nobody around. When it started to be late he gave me a brand new spool of thread and a needle thing and I went home. I never saw him again because I couldn't remember how I got there, I was always getting lost lol.

Anyway I made so many fishing nets that summer. First ones had big holes until I figured I could make a smaller needle so I asked my father and he made me a crude one out of wood. First thing I did was lil hammocks for all my cats that I tied everywhere in the apartment. We had so many cats 🥹 I made bags for my friends and their moms, I made teeny tiny nets so I could sew beach cover-ups for my barbies. I don't remember how to start it now but I still remember how to make the holes :3

[david-box]

I'm not tagging all of them for the sake of spam even though it would be technically relevant. but I made squidward buttons for your squidward reaction needs. If I fucked up the terms genuinely my bad I'm up past my bedtime tbh. Image ID in alt text

[unicornbatman-21]

day 10: citrus🍋

i’m not doing all of peachtober this year but i always make a post for world mental health day combined with the drawing prompt so here’s a magic lemon pouch :) i hope you’re all doing well and taking care of yourselves💛

[arctic-hands]

[Image Description: a small embroidery hoop that is securing a gauzy white fabric. In the hoop is a crudely cross-stitched black outline of an uneven heart shape. Within the heart, a little bit off center, is a Palestinian flag (three horizontal stripes of black, white, and green, with a red triangle facing right on the left). The right point of the red triangle ended up being uneven and off center, throwing off the balance of the stripes, leaving the green stripe noticeably thin at the bottom. End I.D]

Fuckity. I can live with the wonky heart (I can't even draw a heart without it looking wonky) and the slightly off center flag, but I didn't realize the triangle being uneven and how thin the green is until the literal end of the flag. I'm a rookie to cross-stitch and am unsure how it would look I embroidered red thread over the white and green to even it out, or to bulk up the green stripe by going into the white. Is there any way to salvage this or do I have to start over? I've been working on this for three weeks because my health keeps interrupting it.

[Image Description: a closeup on the flag part, showing also that the bottom of the green stripe is a bit uneven. End I.D]

[tacit-semantics]

Annnd done!! Featuring some more progress pictures, and then the end result. It’s not blocked so the outside loops are a bit uneven, but these work up pretty fast and I generally like how they turn out so I’m pretty happy with it :)

[slexpi]

Hey I’m wanting to start posting themes for you guys to use! So the first one is a star one! Comment what you’d like and I’ll try to make one for you!

Lockscreen:

Wallpaper: a plain black screen or

App icons:

Soild colors for apps in folders:

Grey colors! Or any you want!

Apps to use: Widgetsmith, shortcuts

[7weaslesinacoat]

Gods:

[glossary2]

[milkweedman]

Any saving this mildew-y canvas ? There's 3 of them, they're panels for this divider my mom inherited from her dad. Cotton or linen canvas (I think cotton, doesn't feel heavy enough for linen, but who can say). This is after 2 vinegar washes and 1 normal wash, but the mildew if anything is looking darker. I hung them up to sunbleach a little bc I cant find the actual bleach, which is my next idea once I know the vinegar is gone.

My mom said if they can be overdyed to hide the mildew that would work too, but unless I could get these very light I don't think overdyeing would hide much.

I also really don't want to sew new ones. And unfortunately my mom doesn't believe in tailors or in buying custom made things, because she can just send it to me and I do it for free. But I'm thinking they may need to be replaced.