Incidentally, happy Armistice DayVeterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in former British territories—where depending on your circle, either celebrates peace or military service.

As discussed previously, this is my weekly Twitter roundup. Note that tweets of articles generally include header images from the articles, which I don’t include here unless their creators happen to have released them for use under a free license. Most have not. But I now add most of my commentary here, where I don’t feel restricted by the message length.

diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week

I also don’t generally attach pictures to posts with quotations.

9:03 – Mon 07 November 2022

Why there really is no ethical reason not to vote from The Conversation

But an uninformed voter can fix that problem and remove the ethical dilemma — and with minimal time and effort.

I doubt that anyone who refused to vote would bother to read this article—certainly, when I didn’t vote, I insisted that I had it right and everybody else got it wrong, without bothering to identify where I disagreed with the argument—but I assume that people who have non-voters in their lives can make better use of the article for future elections.

12:05 – Mon 07 November 2022

Oh, working man! Oh, starved, outraged, and robbed laborer, how long will you lend attentive ear to the authors of your misery?

Lucy Parsons

9:05 – Tue 08 November 2022

The US Christian Right groups actively involved in voter suppression from openDemocracy

Anti-abortion groups have made voter suppression their rallying cry because between two-thirds and three-quarters of all US citizens support the right to abortion.

All this work, and sacrificing almost every principle of their religion, for nothing more than to disempower women…

12:03 – Tue 08 November 2022

As we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand, and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your journey and return you safe to your friends.

Red Jacket

9:01 – Wed 09 November 2022

GitHub Users File a Class-Action Lawsuit Against Microsoft for Training an AI Tool With Their Code from VICE Motherboard

Other programmers who have been using Copilot have noted that it generated the incorrect license for code and produced users’ copyrighted code verbatim without proper attribution or license.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I opted not to get directly involved in the lawsuit, since I believe that any training-based use of my code—barely, and only barely—falls under Fair Use doctrine. However, I did have a brief discussion with organizers about my experiments with Copilot from about a year ago, including the point that reproducing the text of licenses shows that it violates those licenses, by not imposing proper terms on users.

12:01 – Wed 09 November 2022

There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.

Chief Seattle

9:04 – Thu 10 November 2022

The Democratic Party has a lot to learn from southern activists from openDemocracy

The judge who granted the search warrant, Mary Shaw, was chosen by Joshua Jaynes, one of the detectives accused of falsifying an affidavit, because he believed she would “not look too closely at the application.”

If you’ve read around here for long, then you know that I don’t love these “Democrats need to be more like me” think-pieces, when those people refuse to work for the party. I wrote an entire post about why political parties don’t reflect people; a party can’t represent you, if you don’t participate in it. However, this does work well as an overview of the good happening, and what other activists should learn from.

12:02 – Thu 10 November 2022

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Will Rogers

9:02 – Fri 11 November 2022

Particles in the air tied to sudden heart attacks from Futurity

This PM2.5 category of particulate matter is known from previous research to significantly increase the risk of cardiovascular, respiratory, and even ocular diseases.

I’ve heard a lot of people, recently, complaining about these sorts of problems. It might be worth it for people to start investing in air purifiers…

12:04 – Fri 11 November 2022

A very great vision is needed, and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.

Crazy Horse

Bonus

Because it accidentally became a tradition early on in the life of the blog, I drop any additional articles that didn’t fit into the one-article-per-day week, but too weird or important to not mention, here.

Why schools’ going back to ‘normal’ won’t work for students of color from The Conversation

Children’s books depict nonhuman characters, like dogs and bears, almost three times as often as they depict characters who are Black, four times as often than Asian characters, five times as often than Hispanic characters, and nearly 30 times as often than Indigenous characters.

It consistently frustrates me that people still have the nerve to talk about “getting back to normal,” as if “normal” worked for everybody. We had such a great opportunity to make lasting change for the better, and scrapped it, because media people wouldn’t shut up about wanting to hug people.


Credits: Header image is Circular diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week from a manuscript drafted during the Carolingian Dynasty.