The NOT so stealth #Neocolonialism
“Empire of AI” w/ Karen Hao on How AI Is Threatening Democracy & Creating a New Colonial World
#DemocracyNow!
#Ai #Deregulation #Extraction #Capitalism #ClimateChange
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NzW3o8zFEc
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#extraction
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Eaux et rivières de Bretagne
Projets miniers breizh ressources
Eau & Rivières de Bretagne s’oppose à ces projets et, dans l’attente des décisions concernant les PERM, invite dès à présent toutes les personnes concernées, propriétaires ou locataires, à les bloquer ainsi que le droit l’y autorise en refusant les opérations d’exploration sur leurs terrains.
https://mcinformactions.net/projets-miniers-breizh-ressources
#mines #extraction #biodiversite #exploitation
→ Course dévastatrice aux minerais d’avenir
https://revue21.fr/article/mines-course-devastatrice/
« De l’extraction du lithium chilien à celle du nickel d’Indonésie en passant par le cobalt congolais, le photographe Davide Monteleone explore les sites dans lesquels les industries de la tech viennent puiser les ressources indispensables à la transition énergétique. »
Revue21.fr · Du Congo au Chili, une course dévastatrice aux minerais d’avenirLe photographe Davide Monteleone explore les sites dans lesquels les industries viennent puiser les ressources indispensables à la transition énergétique.
[Info « Splann ! »] Un nouveau renoncement se prépare dans les couloirs du ministère de la Transition écologique. Un courrier officiel adressé à plusieurs administrations s'en prend aux règles d'évaluation européennes de la qualité des cours d'eau. Révélations.
Replied in thread
République démocratique du Congo : derrière les conflits, l’Europe ?
par Andy Storey : https://www.revue-ballast.fr/republique-democratique-du-congo-derriere-les-conflits-leurope/
BALLAST · BALLAST • République démocratique du Congo : derrière les conflits, l'Europe ?« Tenir tête, fédérer, amorcer »
The story of #Denmark's colonial #extraction of cryolite for well over a century in southern #Greenland
The Guardian · Greenland documentary forces Danes to confront their colonial heritage
Continued thread
Saviez-vous qu'une entité indépendante du gouvernement était chargée de l'évaluation environnementale des plans, programmes et projets d'aménagement du territoire ? Et que ses avis, bien documentés, étaient publics ? 
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https://disclose.ngo/fr/article/disclose-data-un-outil-inedit-pour-lancer-lalerte-sur-lenvironnement
Disclose.ngoDisclose.ngoDisclose est un média et une ONG de journalisme d’investigation.
Thank you for delivering MULTIPLE talks here in #bloomingtonIN and for signing our books!
As you signed @pluralistic , "Disenshittify or die!"
So, a story about how I #disenshittify ... by force!
This story starts when I was working at #IndianaUniversity for #UITS in IT Client Services. My job was "Special Projects". I worked for a director and basically made magic happen.
Early November 2014, someone from a human interface robotics lab handed me a new piece of #hardware called the #ThalmicMyo . It was an upper armband with 8 myoelectric sensors that could measure electrical muscle function, and do stuff on a computer with that data! The base idea was that you could do the following: hand wave outward, inward, spread out, fist, and thumbs up.
So, being CrankyLinuxUser, I wanted a #FLOSS toolchain to get and do my own thing with it. Whoops, only worked for #MSWindows .
Forum requests were met with silence. "Sorry you cant get the data", was the refrain. Lies.
So I used my #IU account and requested academic access. They IMMEDIATELY chimed up and said that access could easily be granted at $5000/year . UH huh.
So, I made them a target.
Took a few weeks. BUT I eventually got a shitty BUT working toolchain on Linux to use really basic machine learning. This is just a linear regression k-nearest-neighbors. No LLM fuckery. Theirs could do 5 gestures. Mine could do 10.
I initially released it on #HackerNews or YCombinator, not realizing that Thalmic Myo was VC funded by YC. And holy shit that was a #MartinHench moment where I fell into a WHOLE LOT OF SHIT. My article was auto-killed. My account on HN was shadowbanned. Ruh roh.
I had some contacts at @hackaday and I sent them my findings, my responses from HN, and my repo... and a really hostile Youtube video (one of my gestures was a middle finger to Thalmic).
On Nov 18, 2014, at 730am eastern, my phone blew up, figuratively speaking. Ping. Ping ping. PIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGG until 12pm.
The page is still up on HaD, by the way. https://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-developer-access/
At 12pm or thereabouts, Thalmic Myo announced that they made an official decision to "allow raw data access"! I was not only successful for my hardware, but hardware freedom for EVERYONE with this platform.
Normally, the story would stop. I handed back the borrowed hardware to the lab that loaned it to me. I know they were able to do some cool prosthetic automation with it. But that's not my specialty. I made it so they could. My director permitted me to buy a few for our office to continue and loan them out as well.
...... 3 months later
I get a call on my office phone doing a customer survey. Told them that the hardware was great. "What about our API?" I told them that I made my own, and I was the one that forced your company to open source 3 months back. Ive never heard silence so LOUD. She asked me to stand by.
She transferred me to the CTO. We had a spirited conversation. I basically told him that I think ignoring the FLOSS and hacker community was your first and fatal mistake. You were a hardware business. You can do the VC thing and gatekeep, but that just angers people. And what you were in was a MASSIVE awesome piece of unique hardware nobody else had. He told me that their original idea was a powerpoint slide advance. I gave him perhaps 6 different major ideas to jump off on.
Nothing else happened, for a while.
3 more months later.......
I get a reddit DM out of the blue. Saw my name, and connected the dots. (S)He was an engineer at Thalmic during the time I released my Linux FLOSS code. They told me that I basically flip-turned the whole company upside down. I broke their business model of #Extraction and #enshittification and forced #FLOSS on them without a choice. They thanked me for my contribution.
Later n, the company got acquired or died. I'm not sure. I moved on and no longer had any of the hardware. Although, the basic idea is actually pretty cheap to construct these days. The only hard part is the AgCl electrode plating.
So when people ask what they can do, there's a LOT we can do. And a SINGLE PERSON can change the course of history. Sure, sometimes being in the right place at the right time is a big part, but there's so many of these moments.
Just wanted to contribute back @pluralistic to the movement you've founded.
Greg Cocks Critical Minerals In Ores (CMiO) Database
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https://lnkd.in/gynRjUfn <-- shared USGS publication
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https://lnkd.in/gETca3DQ <-- shared link to open data database, web map services, etc
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https://portal.ga.gov.au/persona/cmmi <-- shared web map
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https://lnkd.in/gdmMp2zg <-- shared editorial piece on critical minerals and geopolitics
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#geology #fedscience #opendata #CMMI #CMiO #criticalminerals #minerals #ores #database #opendata #GIS #spatial #mapping #spatialanalysis #commodities #technology #components #geochemistry #deposits #mining #extraction #classifaction #nomenclature #environments #structuralgeology #exploration
@USGS | @GeoscienceAustralia | @GeologicalSurveyOfCanada
we are living through an #ExtinctionCrisis unlike anything in human history—over a million #species are at risk of disappearing in the coming decades. #ecosystems that have taken millions of years to evolve are unravelling before our eyes, driven by #HabitatDestruction, #climate chaos, #pollution, and endless #extraction. every species lost is a thread pulled from the web of life, and sooner or later, that web collapses.
Brilliant cartoon by @schloriancartoon
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Lawrence Kanyuka, un des porte-parole du M23, groupe armé congolais, gère une société de conseil minier basée à Paris, sans déposer ses comptes. Et sans que le fisc français y trouve à redire.
La France et les « minerais de sang », par Thomas Dietrich : https://www.off-investigation.fr/republique-democratique-congo-france-et-minerais-de-sang/
Investigation · République démocratique du Congo La France et les « minerais de sang ».stk-ac3e68f {margin-top:-30px !important;}.stk-ac3e68f-column{justify-content:flex-start !important;} .stk-8bef0ea-container{margin-left:0px !important;box-shadow:none !important;padding-top:0px !important;padding-right:0px !important;padding-bottom:0px !important;padding-left:0px !important;}.stk-8bef0ea-container:hover{box-shadow:none !important;}.stk-8bef0ea:hover .stk-8bef0ea-container{padding-top:0px !important;padding-right:0px !important;padding-bottom:0px !important;padding-left:0px
#extraction : the act of extracting, or drawing out
- French: extraction
- German: die Gewinnung
- Italian: estrazione
- Portuguese: extração
- Spanish: extracción
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Report an incorrect translation @ https://wordofthehour.org/r/translations
"The aid industry, in effect, inherited colonialism’s “civilising mission”. Its do-gooder image papers over the extractive nature of the international system and attempts to ameliorate its worst excesses without actually challenging the system. If anything, the two are in a symbiotic relationship. The aid industry legitimises extractive global trade and governance systems, which in turn produce the outcomes that legitimise the existence of the aid agencies."
Al Jazeera · Why some in the Global South are not mourning the demise of USAID
Continued thread
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Exactly!
Don’t know if you’ve seen this in today’s Grauniad?
It’s absolutely horrrendous & heartbreaking what the plundering US neoliberal profiteers are doing to the Gulf of Mexico and in poor Gulf states like Louisiana & Mississippi!
“Trump has brought much-needed attention to a site of great tragedy: the Gulf of Mexico”
by Greg Grandin
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/trump-gulf-of-mexico?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
The Guardian · Trump has brought much-needed attention to a site of great tragedy: the Gulf of Mexico
Another reason that humans belong WITH nature, rather than just separating from it and "leaving it alone":
"As rural places like Tyurkmen depopulate, they become vulnerable to new forms of exploitation: land prices drop, and there are fewer people around to oppose projects like mines and quarries. “What you can get is depopulation as a stepping stone to industrialisation,” Daskalova told me."
Stoyanov pointed to the reservoir below the fields. His grandparents helped dig it themselves. Then, a few years ago, a company was granted cheap contracts by the municipality to take fish from it. The process followed a brutal, short-term logic: they installed pumps, drained the reservoir, and scooped the fish out. Almost everything else died. “They got about 20 tonnes of fish,” Stoyanov said. The remaining villagers were furious, and mounted a successful campaign to have the contract ended. The reservoir has slowly refilled, with water, fish, birds. Over time, he hopes parts of the village will refill, too. They have new opponents now, including a limestone quarry proposed at the village boundary."
[Nouvelle enquête] Glomel : 1 400 habitants. Imerys : 3,8 milliards d’euros de chiffre d’affaires. Le mastodonte de l’industrie minière pèse lourd dans la petite cité du sud des Côtes-d’Armor. La multinationale y raffine un quart de la production mondiale d’andalousite. 
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https://splann.org/enquete/intoxication-miniere-en-bretagne/
Splann ! | ONG d'enquêtes journalistiques en BretagneIntoxication minière en BretagneImerys, mastodonte de l’industrie minière, pèse lourd à Glomel (22). Des analyses réalisées par « Splann ! » révèle un grave pollution aux métaux lourds dans le lits des cours d'eau situés en aval.