this is post is based on a conversation i had with someone about whether we positively connect our anarchism to democracy or not, because on one hand the democratic ideal, of everyone being in power and making decisions together is pretty neat and anarchist, and that's also what many people think of when they hear democracy, but then democracies (as in democratic organisations and states) since the greek inception of the word also have almost exclusively been the ruling of a privileged few over the rest, with just enought power (or illusion of power) handed back to us that we wouldnt rebel. as one argument goes: if "democracy" literally means "rulership of the people" then who are the people?

sadly we did not kiss after the conversation :<
but i think we agreed that honestly either is fine ฅ^>⩊<^ฅ

Of evil spirits

Far-right senator and family land in US after crossing from Brazil into Argentina and then flying via Ecuador

A jet carrying the Brazilian far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro has landed in Miami, Florida, where the losing candidate in Sunday’s presidential election runoff left the airport under police escort without speaking to the press.

The Gulfstream IV, registered as LV-JQW, left Guayaquil in Ecuador earlier in the day.

After losing Sunday’s election to the incumbent president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro disappeared for more than 24 hours, until Argentina’s migration authorities said he had entered the country by land on Tuesday night.

There, he boarded the Gulfstream IV. The aircraft had been parked at Puerto Iguazú airport since the early hours of the previous morning, when the first reports emerged in Argentinian media that he intended to flee on it.

An elementary school in Walpole, Massachusetts, has canceled its annual Halloween parade, leading hundreds of residents to sign an online petition to save the tradition.

Instead of wearing costumes to class, students at Elm Street School will celebrate with a black-and-orange spirit day on Friday. Parents say the decision was made with little warning, leaving them without enough time to plan an alternative after-school event.

“The principal sent out a note in one of her newsletters saying costumes are not allowed,” parent Liz Campbell told CBS News. “But the actual parade being canceled was word of mouth through the children.”

Among those affected is six-year-old Charlie, who was eager to show off his Super Mario costume to his teachers and classmates.

Frustrated families quickly launched an online petition on Monday to preserve the parade, gathering nearly 400 signatures from current and past Walpole parents.

Older students in the district also expressed sadness over the shift.

“The kindergarteners now don’t get to experience what we got to,” said a student named Ryann, who is now in middle school. “It’s kind of sad because it was one of the best things about Halloween at school.”

Middle schooler Avery shared similar memories of the annual tradition.

“We’d just see everyone we knew going by in their cute costumes, and we’d all be able to just put our hands out and high-five them, and it’d just be the best moment ever,” she told CBS News.

This is not the first time a Walpole school has eliminated its Halloween procession. Nearly a decade ago, the town’s Boyden School did the same, replacing its parade with a black-and-orange spirit day. Following that decision, local parent committees stepped in to organize alternative festivities, such as trunk-or-treat events, so children could still wear their costumes.

As Elm Street School students prepare their black-and-orange outfits for Friday’s spirit day, parents say trick-or-treating will continue as usual on Saturday.

However, many feel the loss of the school event cuts short a cherished childhood milestone and favored memory.

“There are only so many years where they want to put the costumes on and they want to celebrate and the magic that goes along with it is, it's fleeting,” Campbell said. “So, to have that experience is just wonderful.”

From what I can find, the previous school to do this did so because of inclusivity and security. The parade was deemed "not inclusive of all the students" and "difficult for many students" due to differing beliefs or backgrounds. Concerns were also raised that the event, which was open to parents and visitors, left children vulnerable.

On Friday, OpenAI said that it will train its models using cached copies and simulated versions of the internet instead of the live web because the models are too unpredictable to be trusted with live internet access.

The frontier lab announced its new policy two weeks after its rival, Anthropic, began limiting its newest and, in theory, most capable models from accessing the live internet. Researchers adopted these policies after months of incidents in which models pursuing training tasks broke into external systems in search of answers, collaborated on obscure message boards, and developed exotic hacking strategies.

Several Mississippi homes have been purchased near datacenters and one resident said realtor outlined target to buy more than 400

People in a Mississippi neighborhood, many of whom dislike a nearby power plant central to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence ambitions, have received a stark offer – to sell their houses to his company and make way.

Real estate agents have been going door to door in Southaven, Mississippi, on behalf of xAI, Musk’s AI company that was folded into the SpaceX entity in February, touting a deal to purchase houses as long as the owners agree to not join a lawsuit against the company over the power plant’s noise.

This plan could potentially swallow up almost the entire neighborhood of Colonial Hills, on the western flank of Southaven. A realtor told one resident there is a target to purchase 418 homes, with 18 homeowners already agreeing to sell, according to a recording of a conversation heard by the Guardian. xAI did not respond to questions over these numbers and its plans for the neighborhood and has previously said it intends to be be a good neighbor; it denies all claims in the noise lawsuit.

Just a quick notice for anyone using this software in their homelab. Tailscale has released v1.104.4 to address a series of prominent vulnerabilities disclosed last week. These vulns affect the Tailscale Serve and Tailscale SSH functionalities of the software, and allow already-authorized attackers to gain further privileges erroneously. Kindly update to that version or higher, especially if you are using one of the SSH/Serve features.

For headscale selfhosters that also use Tailscale SSH, consider setting TS_SSH_DISABLE_FORWARDING=1 on all clients, as headscale does not have a way to force turning off SSH forwarding (one of the attack vectors). Headscale also has a relevant disclosed vulnerability affecting node registration, and an in-progress patch for that which is trackable here.

Finally, do give your SSH grants/access control list a review again. You may also disable these ssh/serve features if you don't need them (and even compile the binary without them if you know how), and consider traditional alternatives such as OpenSSH + normal reverse proxy.

Further links:

• Tailscale's blogpost on findings and fixes, with security recommendations
• Tailscale's security bulletin for more info on the vulnerabilities (see TS-2026-014 to TS-2026-017)
• Their prior investigation notes here

Bill Essayli has launched a crusade against ‘voter fraud’, in his latest push to pursue Maga-aligned cases

Since he was sworn in last year, Bill Essayli, the top US prosecutor in southern California, has devoted his office to Donald Trump’s agenda – bringing splashy cases against sanctuary policies, protesters and the rights of young trans athletes.

But Essayli’s latest crusade has significantly raised the stakes of his partisan remaking of one of the country’s largest US attorney’s offices: he is fighting to block thousands of votes from being counted in the upcoming midterms.

In the weeks leading up to the high-stakes election, Essayli has sued California to try to force the state to set aside ballots from 20,000 voters whom the Department of Justice (DoJ) contends “are likely noncitizens”, demanding the state verify their eligibility before counting their votes. State election officials say the DoJ’s data is unreliable and its demands logistically impossible. They also argue that the federal government is risking disenfranchising US citizens and undermining the integrity of the results.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/47592035

https://www.patreon.com/exocomics/posts/come-here-173415694

My cat does this to me ALL. THE. TIME. For some reason he really likes getting pats at the top of the stairs. When he's bored, he goes there and yells loudly until I come and purrs happily while I pat him. What a little weirdo :)

Sadness alert: She passed in April. But she made it to 18 and had a happy life, I think. :) Enjoy the pic, no need to be sorry for the loss or anything.

You can't see her other paws well, but that visible paw with the little white tip was the only spot on her, so cute :)

She never liked being held, but she'd tolerate it for a couple of minutes. But for a while there, when she wanted pettins and I wasn't paying attention, she'd bat at my arm - "Hey, pet me!" lol. And she was very demanding about nap time (She yelled at me while I followed her to the bedroom to put her underneath the blankets) and bed time (She would yell at us that it was time to go to bed, thank you very much). :)

This is the last of my New Witch Comics for the year. Happy Halloween!

Bonus Panel: https://www.patreon.com/CatTrigger/posts/comic-not-so-173481300

Follow me on my socials: https://cattrigger.com/links/

In recent weeks, some of Brazil’s leading scientific organizations, including the Brazilian Academy of Sciences in Rio de Janeiro, circulated an open letter endorsing Lula, a leftist former labour leader. It received more than 20,000 signatures. “It’s hard to express just how happy the scientific community and the Brazilian society is with Lula’s victory,” says Paulo Artaxo, a physicist at the University of São Paulo.

Many worried that, if Bolsonaro were elected, he might slash support for Brazilian science and undermine it in the way that his father, Jair Bolsonaro, did. Jair was Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2023, and during that time, he cut science funding and expressed anti-science rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic, casting doubt on vaccines and promoting unproven treatments. The former president could not run for office again because he was sentenced to prison over a coup plot that he instigated after he lost his bid for re-election to Lula in 2022. He is currently serving the sentence at home because of health concerns.

Matrix was built to become the open communication of the web and serve everyone. But, as the Internet and email did, its network effect started with governments. Today, and as proven by the audience in the room, most European governments and several others are either using it or looking at implementing it for their communications. This talk will tell the story of how we got there and why.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53694832

The boom is set to produce enough greenhouse gases to cancel out 15 years of declines in power-sector emissions, according to a Sierra Club analysis.