Lunatech @Lunatech@social.cleverlibre.org

It is a very big deal that the Biden administration is cracking down on “junk fees.”

They're egregious and they’re everywhere:

Bank overdraft fees
Airline ticketing fees
Credit card late fees
Cell phone termination fees

They're used to manipulate and prey on working people.

Few Americans Understand Online #privacy and #Tracking , Report Says

Many consumers want control over their personal details. But few understand how online tracking works, says a new report from the University of Pennsylvania.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/07/technology/online-privacy-tracking-report.html

Some Driving Privileges at Risk Over Sleep Apnea – NBC4 Washington

Allick said he isn’t clear how the state learned about his medical diagnosis.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/little-known-maryland-law-requires-people-with-sleep-apnea-to-report-diagnosis-to-driving-authorities/3272929/

Republicans want you to suffer. They’re opposed to anything and everything that alleviates suffering, even insulin for diabetics.

If Republicans actually cared about the deficit, they’d repeal the Trump tax cuts or pass taxes on the rich. But we all know the debt ceiling battle isn’t about that.

It's just their backdoor ploy to cut Social Security and Medicare.

We can't let them get away with this.

Oof, The more I read about the near-miss in Austin, the more terrifying it gets:

"This Austin situation is awful. As bad as it gets without body bags….

This was a total system failure. These airplanes were not separated by any good fortune of serendipitous timing. The only thing preventing another Tenerife was the FedEx crew's situational awareness and the breath of god." /via @JFallows

https://fallows.substack.com/p/as-bad-as-it-gets-without-body-bags

Corporate greed is Chevron spending a jaw-dropping $75 billion on stock buybacks after posting a record $36.5 billion in profit.

If there was ever a time to ban stock buybacks — or at least tax them more heavily — it's now.

As President Biden approaches the lectern for Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other Democrats will be making a bold statement of their own — albeit a silent one.
Many of them will be wearing black pins with the number “1870” on them, which marks the year of the first known police killing of an unarmed and free Black person that occurred in the United States. The pins are a call for action on reforming the institution of policing.

GitHub claims source code search engine is a game changer https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/07/github_code_search/

#bot
Original tweet : https://nitter.pussthecat.org/TheRegister/status/1623071922320703492

11/ But like the generations that grew up reading comics, or listening to metal, the social media kids will be alright.

In spite of the panic, not because of it.

10/ With each new media format, people will hyperventilate that it is destroying the children. So it has always been, so it will forever be. New things are scary, I guess.

But we should *at least* be self-aware about it, and know that in decades to come, we will look very silly.

But we're not good at self-awareness, so the politicians will attempt the masses' desire that they dooooooo something--even if it ends up not helping kids, or even harming them.

9/ There was also Dungeons and Dragons, which for a good while people thought caused kids to commit suicide, and let's not forget how violent video games turned every child into a bloodthirsty monster, so Big Daddy Government stepped in to keep the scary games away from kids.

Of course that didn't turn out well for California, because the Supreme Court saw right through it and said "you don't have any actual *causal* evidence sufficient to satisfy strict scrutiny."

5/ Similarly, other studies people often cite to are unwilling to draw any causal links, or even posit *beneficial* effects. We pointed this out in our comments in response to the CCD/Fairplay FTC petition on design features: https://techfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/TechFreedom-Comment-on-CDD-Engagement-Petition.pdf

4/ The studies cited for that hypothesis are not willing to say that they've proven it either.

3/ Note that the report does not say that social media is causing the youth mental health crisis. It includes as one of many hypotheses, including destigmatization of mental health, care access, economic factors, academic pressure, etc.

And then there's the whole COVID thing.

2/ It seems everyone just takes claims that "social media is psychologically harming kids" at face value. But is it really so?

Let's look at the link for the word "evidence." It directs to the Surgeon General's Report on Protecting Youth Mental Health.

https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-health/index.html

1/ We'll no doubt hear the standard applause line fare at #SOTU2023.

But if the White House Fact Sheet is any indication, one thing we'll know for sure (if we didn't already) is this:

We have utterly failed to learn from our history of moral panics over media.

The fact sheet notes the deteriorating mental health of youth, and then goes for the easiest target to lay blame on: social media.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/02/07/fact-sheet-in-state-of-the-union-president-biden-to-outline-vision-to-advance-progress-on-unity-agenda-in-year-ahead/

6/ If this doesn't all sound familiar, don't feel bad. You're probably just young.

Hell, I'm too young to have been alive during the 40s-50s, when Congress became very concerned that *comic books* were causing juvenile delinquency, and held hearings threatening regulation.

You know what the "comic books are destroying the Youth of America" also had?

Biden is teaching America a lesson we once knew but have since forgotten: that the “free market” does not exist. It is designed. It either advances public purposes or it serves the monied interests.

So why not work to organize it in a way that improves the lives of everyone?