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Richard Stallman
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This is the Mastodon account for Richard Stallman. I founded GNU & the @fsf and with them launched the Free Software Movement. Please join or donate to the FSF: https://www.fsf.org I use this account to mirror the political notes from my web site, stallman.org. Read my linking policy: https://stallman.org/linkpolicy.html The views expressed here, as in stallman.org, are my personal views, not those of the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project. #FSF #GNU #FreeSoftware

[1/2] https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/07/11/ai-coders-think-theyre-20-faster-but-theyre-actually-19-slower/

https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

An experiment asks real developers to fix real bugs in real software, each day randomly asked to use a bullshit generator (LLM) or not to use it. They generally expected that their work would go faster using the LLM, but instead it slowed them down. Side issue: I am disappointed that this article promotes the amoral "open

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/uks-co-op-to-halt-sourcing-from-countries-with-widespread-rights-abuses-including-israel/3613564

A nationwide British food co-op has decided to boycott exports from a list of countries, on account of their widespread human rights abuses: Afghanistan, Belarus, Central African Republic, North Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

https://actionnetwork.org/forms/protesting-tesla-is-not-terrorism

US citizens: Denounce any attempt to arrest and imprison nonviolent activists. Protesting Tesla is not "domestic terrorism".

https://theintercept.com/2025/04/10/congress-ban-stocks-insider-trading-tariffs-trump/

*How Much Did Congress Make Off Market Turmoil and Why're They Allowed to Make Anything at All?*

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/14/chris-rufo-jo-boaler-academics-woke

https://stallman.org/glossary.html#dei

Right-wing extremists have designed a playbook for canceling academics whose views oppose theirs. They set up an echo chamber and introduce accusations based on Republican DEI: distortion, exaggeration, and insinuation.

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/02/people-are-really-angry-fury-over-musk-and-doge-triggers-spike-in-calls-to-congress/

*Fury Over Musk and DOGE Triggers Spike in Calls to Congress.* *Members of Congress say they are being flooded with calls from angry constituents about President Donald Trump's Director of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, and what he is doing inside the federal government.*

US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators and call on them to protect FEMA from plans to abolish it or greatly cut its funding. Climatic disasters are increasing, and will continue to increase as long as we keep increasing greenhouse gases in the air. FEMA will need more funding than it needs now. If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/14/big-tech-picking-apart-europe-democracy-switch-off-algorithms

Someone else is now saying that we must put an end to big tech's use of recommendation algorithms to get users addicted (and, along the way, to push right-wing disinformation on them).

Richard Stallman will give a talk in Montpellier, France Jan 20 at 18:30 Location: Salle du Conseil de l'Hotel de la Métropole, à Montpellier. Language: En français Streaming: if this is arranged, a URL will be posted here. If you arrange a libre streaming URL for the talk by Monday, please email it to stallman-org@gnu.org. They can post it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/15/yoon-suk-yeol-arrest-south-korea-president-impeachment-police-presence-seoul

South Korea's impeached president was arrested, with a big operation that met with only desultory resistance. Perhaps his guards realized that their primary loyalty was owed to the country rather than to him.

Replying to Avatar Richard Stallman

[1/2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/06/roman-empires-use-of-lead-lowered-iq-levels-across-europe-study-finds

Roman mining activities put a substantial amount of lead into the air, which shows up in Arctic ice cores. This could have reduced the average IQ by up to 3 points. That decrease could have had an effect on society overall. If this atmospheric lead arrived in the Arctic, it may have arrived in Asia and North America too. So the effect could have reached there too.

[2/2] However, it is also possible that the level of lead in the Arctic was less than in Europe, Maybe it would have reached parts of Africa and South America too. I don't know enough to say whether this was likely to result.

[1/2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/06/roman-empires-use-of-lead-lowered-iq-levels-across-europe-study-finds

Roman mining activities put a substantial amount of lead into the air, which shows up in Arctic ice cores. This could have reduced the average IQ by up to 3 points. That decrease could have had an effect on society overall. If this atmospheric lead arrived in the Arctic, it may have arrived in Asia and North America too. So the effect could have reached there too.

https://stallman.org/glossary.html#wrecker

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/07/trump-extremism-threats-normalcy

Predicting that the wrecker will feel "second album pressure" to commit outrages that top what he did in the past.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/30/ai-tools-may-soon-manipulate-peoples-online-decision-making-say-researchers

Warning that companies that collect personal data might draw conclusions about what you might do in the future, and sell those predictions.

[1/2] https://stallman.org/glossary.html#bully

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4992787-trump-deportation-plan-immigration/

How the bully plans to strip the citizenship from naturalized citizens, even over minor harmless errors, with a funded program to de-naturalize as many people as possible. The program would be led by people have absorbed the right-wing ideology of dehumanizing hatred for immigrants. If the people targeted can't afford a lawyer, they could easily be punished by