Lisa Kalayji

Feminist sociologist of emotion turned grant writer at a legal aid nonprofit. Non-techie (but learning!) interested in privacy, anti-surveillance, and info sec. Living with Obi Dog Kenobi the rescue pup on unceded Ohlone land. She/her. FREE 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

Header image source: https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1X2uOOyRD8yD_xEPXj6HLiLVnYKePedO3

Profile photo description: A closeup photo of a white, middle-aged woman with light brown hair, in a pink sweater and glasses
Header image description: An illustration of a hijabi woman waving the Palestinian flag in front of the Dome of the Rock under a night sky. The temple's dome is vivid shades of yellow and reddish orange, and a crescent moon hangs in the sky with multicolored stars

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relay.momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2024-12-19 02:02:48 GMT

👀👀👀
#DogsOfMastodon #Blep
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2024-12-18 05:40:34 GMT

Obi was the fourth dog I applied to adopt. The first one, a Chihuahua mix named Lainey, needed to go to a household with a "mentor dog" who would teach her how to dog. The second, a pittie mix named Peanut, was scooped up by another applicant just before me, the day he went up for adoption. The third, Lucy, a terrier mix, was a possibility, but the rescue had another applicant for her who they thought was a better fit, so they asked if I'd be interested in Obi [not his name at the time] instead.
By complete happenstance, I ended up with the goofiest, sweetest, most cartoonishly adorable dog I have ever seen. There is no good fortune quite like having a dog bestie.
❤️🥰🥹
#DogsOfMastodon #AdoptDontShop #RescueDog
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2024-12-16 19:15:48 GMT

- reply

Frozen treats save our lives literally every day
#DogsOfMastodon
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2024-12-16 14:44:10 GMT

Privacy tech people: are there Android camera and/or gallery apps you like (preferably FOSS)? I don't need a lot of bells and whistles (just basic light/color correction and the ability to sort content into albums), and I don't use cloud syncing capabilities. What are your faves?
#Android #Privacy #InfoSec #Apps #Camera

2024-12-10 05:54:33 GMT

So many people think that the guy who killed a health insurance CEO is a hero that politicians have to make public statements contesting the idea. 😆
We laugh, but honestly this is one of those powerful flashpoint moments that can change the political landscape if we insist on it doing so. With one move the conversation went from "healthcare denials by insurance companies are wrong" to "the people who run health insurance companies are mass murderers." A critical mass of *ordinary people* are saying this, not just movement organizers. This is a big deal.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/josh-shapiro-unitedhealthcare-shooter-no-hero_n_67578e57e4b09f860cac332e
#Health #HealthInsurance #UnitedHealthcare #HumanRights

2024-12-10 01:14:58 GMT

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Good!: no bloatware, extremely intuitive, very clean interface, sandboxes Google Play (i.e., Google can't colonize the entire phone), apps get bare minimum permissions by default. It's basically like any good OS but without the avalanche of privacy violations and pushy software making you want to scream all the time.
Bad: My mobile data (provided by Tracfone, using Verizon infrastructure) is non-operational on the device. It seems there might not be a way to fix this. I saw a forum convo where someone may have found a fix via changing the APN settings, but I have no clue how to do that, and it's not clear that even that works? The OS installation instructions (using the web-based installer) are really good for beginners, but I'm not sure at this point whether non-developers are able to sort out these kinds of snags. Basically if you want to try it out and you're not a tech expert, I'd recommend planning on spending time doing research and working out kinks for the first few days.

2024-12-09 21:08:08 GMT

You guys, I got Graphene OS onto my Pixel yesterday, and it is SO GOOD. There's really no reason to use Android OS when this alternative is available. 💯 The developers making this thing are absolute champions ❤️
#Privacy #Google #Android #GrapheneOS

2024-12-04 18:33:41 GMT

It's worth thinking about this policy change alongside the news of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare being shot dead in NY outside a conference of the insurer's investors. The specific individual human beings who run health insurance companies and other institutions of class war wage that war in the smug certainty that they will never be among the scores of casualties.
"In an unprecedented move, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield plans representing Connecticut, New York and Missouri have unilaterally declared it will no longer pay for anesthesia care if the surgery or procedure goes beyond an arbitrary time limit, regardless of how long the surgical procedure takes.
“This is just the latest in a long line of appalling behavior by commercial health insurers looking to drive their profits up at the expense of patients and physicians providing essential care,” said Donald E. Arnold, M.D., FACHE, FASA. “It’s a cynical money grab by Anthem"
https://www.asahq.org/about-asa/newsroom/news-releases/2024/11/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shield-will-not-pay-complete-duration-of-anesthesia-for-surgical-procedures
#Health #Capitalism #ClassWar #HumanRights

2024-11-23 01:16:40 GMT

So I guess we're doing this now! He's mad at me because we're not going on evening walkies through the atmospheric river downpour that he definitely would not want to walk in if I tried to take him.
#DogsOfMastodon #HappyHolidays #MerryChristmas #AtmosphericRiver #Winter
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2024-11-19 18:27:56 GMT

The people who adopted my foster dog sent me this today 😭 He has a favorite blankie!
#DogsOfMastodon #AdoptDontShop
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2024-11-02 19:26:49 GMT

The "AI" bots are *often wrong*. Often. About super simple things. ALL THE TIME.
"At a conference in Omaha, Nebraska, Air Force General Anthony J. Cotton—the man in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal—played up the importance of artificial intelligence in nuclear decision making.
The problem with Cotton’s speech is two-fold. One, it’s vague. A lot of how America’s nuclear weapons systems work, especially command and control, is secret. AI is a marketing term that describes a bunch of different systems. The mix of AI hype and nuclear secrecy makes it hard to know what, exactly, Cotton is talking about.
But deterrence only works if the people in charge of pressing the button that launches the nukes have reliable intelligence about what's going on. Every time a nuclear power has almost pressed the button in the past 50 years it's been because a machine failed, humans understood that failure, and humans decided not to press the button."
https://www.404media.co/why-the-us-general-in-charge-of-nuclear-weapons-said-he-needs-ai/?ref=weekly-roundup-newsletter
#AI #Tech #Military #War #Imperialism #Nuclear

2024-11-01 23:58:34 GMT

The thing about "don't worry, you can opt out" is that they can take that option away at any time and you can't do shit about it. Some things just should not exist. Microsoft is not going to be a viable OS for anyone with a halfway reasonable threat model for very long.
"Microsoft is again delaying the rollout of its AI-powered Windows Recall feature after announcing in August that it will be available for Insiders with Copilot+ PCs in October.
As first reported by The Verge, Microsoft said Recall was postponed for further testing due to significant customer pushback asking for more robust default data privacy and security protections.
As Microsoft explained when it unveiled Recall in May, the AI-powered feature is designed to take screenshots of active windows every few seconds, analyze them on-device using an AI model and a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), and store collected data in an SQLite database."
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-delays-windows-recall-again-now-by-december/
#Privacy #Data #AI #Microsoft #Surveillance #InfoSec

2024-10-29 16:11:33 GMT

When social scientsists say that public policy is a discursive tool, this is what they mean. Criminalizing people for being victimized by capitalists and by policy makers' failures, terrorizing them, and stealing the things they need to survive, isn't just intended to harm those people (though it is intended to do that). It's also intended to make the rest of us see unhoused people as a harm-doing scourge and the people who abandoned them to the street (and would readily do the same to any of us at any moment) as saviors rescuing us from that scourge.
"Encampment removals have become more common as local governments try to reduce the number of people living on sidewalks and in other public spaces...
Municipalities are often under pressure from business owners and residents to remove encampments, which officials said can obstruct sidewalks and pose public health, safety or environmental hazards."
https://projects.propublica.org/homeless-encampment-sweeps-taken-belongings/
#Homelessness #Capitalism #Police #Housing #PublicPolicy #SupremeCourt #SCOTUS

2024-10-25 03:37:29 GMT

"The United Nations has announced a far-reaching investigation into the involvement of private entities in international crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).
Among the issues that the Special Rapporteur will investigate are how the private sector contributed to establishing and maintaining Israel’s presence in the oPt since 1967, as well as the role of these entities... in aiding and abetting violations of international law"
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/international-crimes-unlaunches-probe-into-role-of-private-sector-in-enabling-israeli-occupation-and-apartheid/
#Palestine #Israel #UN

2024-10-20 20:54:58 GMT

#SilentSunday #PacificGrove #California
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2024-10-14 23:15:59 GMT

Looks like Google is next to clamor for nuclear power in the "AI" energy consumptions arms race. This, since it bears repeating, is to power a technology that *everyone hates*, both because it's shit and because Google has used it to (among other things) technologically enable the Israeli genocide on Palestinians.
(And because this always also bears repeating, "AI tools" consume the amount of energy they consume precisely because they are not actually artificial intelligences.)
https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-strikes-a-deal-with-a-nuclear-startup-to-power-its-ai-data-centers-201403750.html
#AI #Tech #Google #Data #Nuclear #Energy #Sustainability #Environment #Capitalism #Genocide

2024-10-08 18:24:41 GMT

TIL that on newer Samsung phones, you can't use the camera *at all* unless you give the app permission to scan your environment for other devices. There is no way to opt out of this. Little by little, inch by inch, the surveillance infrastructure that surrounds us is becoming total/complete/absolute. If you were trying to assemble a fascist dystopia, this is exactly the kind of equipment you'd make everyone carry around all the time.
I was one of the last hold-outs to finally give up my old-timey flip phone and hop on the smartphone bandwagon, and tbh I'm seriously considering going back.
#Privacy #Surveillance #Samsung #Tech

2024-10-06 17:42:33 GMT

If amidst this incredibly stressful and confusing historical and political moment, you're thinking "what do we do??", and some of the people in your IRL or online universe are like, "anarchism", and you're thinking, "but wait, isn't anarchy bad and full of mayhem and unchecked harm and murderous vigilantes?", I warmly recommend you check out the dispatches on post-hurricane anarchist mutual aid from [@igd_news](https://kolektiva.social/@igd_news )
Anarchism (in spite of the goofy nonsense you may have heard/read about it) is a political project/way of life based on the principle that people are actually pretty good at figuring out how to do things and solve problems and help each other without granting other people/institutions power to force them to do things, and that in fact granting others the power to force us to do things more often than not has the opposite effect. There are a lot of examples of this, but one of the most resounding is what folks do to help each other after natural disasters. 💗
#Anarchism #MutualAid #HurricaneHelene

2024-09-25 23:54:48 GMT

In the wake of Microsoft signing a *20-year contract* to use a decrepit nuclear power plant to fuel AI "tools" whose uniform shittiness has brought us all together in a sordid but beautiful moment of rare near-universal consensus, I am re-upping this piece by the inimitable Ted Chiang, which explains (1) why "AI" is not actually AI, (2) why its non-AI-ness means it needs way more resources to operate than anything that might merit designation as an "intelligence" would, and (3) why, for all that power consumption, you still get absolute shit for results.
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web
#AI #Tech #Microsoft #Energy #Nuclear #Sustainability #Capitalism #Environment #Data #Science

2024-09-16 23:41:58 GMT

"Ford Motor Company is seeking a patent for technology that would allow it to tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants, as well as by analyzing a car’s historical location and other data.
A Ford patent filed in July proposed technology that would enable vehicles to monitor the speed of nearby cars, photograph them and send the information to police... That application pointed to how hard it is for police to pinpoint speeding cars and said “it is desirable to provide systems and methods that assist traffic police and/or other law enforcement officers [to] perform such tasks.”
Ford quietly walked away from another controversial patent application last October after a firestorm of criticism for its plans for a system that would commandeer vehicles whose owners were late to pay and allow them to repossess themselves."
https://therecord.media/ford-patent-application-in-vehicle-listening-advertising
#Surveillance #Privacy #Tech #Transportation #Data #Cars #Ford #Police #Advertising #Capitalism #CivilRights

2024-09-06 13:52:16 GMT

"Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, an anarchist collective... has spent the last few years teaching people how to make DIY versions of expensive pharmaceuticals at a tiny fraction of the cost. Four Thieves Vinegar Collective call what they do “right to repair for your body.”
Crucially, unlike other medical freedom organizations, Four Thieves isn’t suggesting people treat COVID with Ivermectin, isn’t shilling random supplements, and doesn’t have any sort of commercial arm at all. Instead, they are helping people to make their own, identical pirated versions of proven and tested pharmaceuticals by taking the precursor ingredients and performing the chemical reactions to make the medication themselves.
‘Look: intellectual property law is based off some ideas that came out of 1400s Venice. They’re not applicable and they’re being abused and people are dying every day because of it, and it’s not OK'
https://www.404media.co/right-to-repair-for-your-body-the-rise-of-diy-pirated-medicine/
#Medicine #Health #Anarchism #DIY #Capitalism #HumanRights