Jon Rappoport: Images sent over thousands of miles, well-lit anchors who seem alert to everything of importance taking place in our world, field reporters in far-flung places who pop up and respond instantly to the anchors and deliver close-up accounts of vital events. And the same important faces of government leaders who, day after day, are struggling to improve our destiny against great odds, against intransigent enemies of progress. All this is delivered to us in the space of a few minutes, each night, like clockwork. The television news presents that little show of magic which the people sorely need. The need never dies. It's eternal. The television anchors can be obvious oafs, hucksters, cheap con artists. They can twist the truth, burn it, hide it, step on it, reverse it; it doesn't matter. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8452
Michael Krieger: The "Russiagate" scam-artist pundits and fake journalists have no shame and many of them already achieved fame and fortune. Moreover, just like the banker crooks of the financial crisis era and the Iraq war WMD peddlers that came before them, these people are more likely to be promoted than face any life-altering consequences for the society damaging lies they spread. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8453
Lenin: There can be no real and effective "freedom" in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8454
Michael Parenti: Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8456
Helen Keller: The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8457
James Connolly: A revolution will only be achieved when the ordinary people of the world, us, the working class, get up off our knees and take back what is rightfully ours. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8458
James Connolly: In our day and generation there is only one class which can be depended upon for consistent revolutionary action. That class is the working class. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8459
Edward Herman: The New York Times itself, both as a media institution and the product that is delivered in its name on a daily basis, is built and thrives on structures of disinformation and selective information that constitute Big Lies. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8461
Ulrich Tilgner: With the help of the media, the military determine the public perception and use it for their plans. They manage to stir expectations and spread scenarios and deceptions. In this new kind of war, the PR strategists of the US administration fulfill a similar function as the bomber pilots. The special departments for public relations in the Pentagon and in the secret services have become combatants in the information war. The US military specifically uses the lack of transparency in media coverage for their deception maneuvers. The way they spread information, which is then picked up and distributed by newspapers and broadcasters, makes it impossible for readers, listeners or viewers to trace the original source. Thus, the audience will fail to recognize the actual intention of the military. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8462
Michael Parenti: We hear about the occasions when there are differences between the mainstream media and the government. What we don't hear about are the 95 percent of occasions where the mainstream media faithfully propagate disinformation stories which are often planted by the CIA. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8463
Heinrich Himmler: Thereby I state that we are extremely interested in not letting eastern nations unite. On the contrary, we must spit them into small groups and branches. As for separate nations, we are not going to allow them to get closer and bigger, let alone allowing them to cultivate the sense of national identity and culture. Quite the contrary, we are concerned with splintering them into numerous small groups... https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8464
Brandon Turbeville: In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Operation Mockingbird was a secret CIA effort to influence and control the American media and, thus, to influence and control the information received by the American people. ... Contrary to the notion that the CIA insidiously infiltrated the journalistic community, there is ample evidence that America's leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. ... Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the CIA were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier_Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps_Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald_Tribune. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8465
Michel Chossudovsky: Counterterrorism and war propaganda are intertwined. The propaganda apparatus feeds disinformation into the news chain. The terror warnings must appear to be "genuine" The objective is to present the terror groups as "enemies of America'. One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to fabricate an enemy. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8466
Lenin: Marxism differs from all primitive forms of socialism by not binding the movement to any one particular form of struggle. It recognises the most varied forms of struggle; and it does not "concoct" them, but only generalises, organises, gives conscious expression to those forms of struggle of the revolutionary classes which arise of themselves in the course of the movement. Absolutely hostile to all abstract formulas and to all doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands an attentive attitude to the mass struggle in progress, which, as the movement develops, as the class-consciousness of the masses grows, as economic and political crises become acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied methods of defence and attack. Marxism, therefore, positively does not reject any form of struggle. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8467
John Coleman: The Israeli intelligence agency - Mossad - has a skillful disinformation service. The amount of disinformation it feeds to the American "market" is embarrassing, but even more embarrassing is how America swallows hook, line and sinker such propaganda. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8468
Michael Parenti: The CIA owns numerous news organizations, publishing houses, and wire services abroad, which produce disinformation that makes its way back to the states. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8469
Edward Herman: The U.S. propaganda system is at the peak of its powers in the early years of the 21st century, riding the wave of capitalism's triumph, U.S. global hegemony, and the effective service of the increasingly concentrated and commercialized mainstream media. In such times its ability to ignore inconvenient facts, swallow disinformation, and work the public over with propaganda can easily compete with - even surpass - anything found in totalitarian systems. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8471
James Connolly: Apostles of Freedom are ever idolised when dead, but crucified when living. Universally true as this statement is, it applies with more than usual point to the revolutionary hero. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8472
Michel Chossudovsky: The CIA's relationship to the US media is amply documented. The New York Times continues to entertain a close relationship not only with US intelligence, but also with the Pentagon and more recently with the Department of Homeland Security. "Operation Mocking Bird" was an initiative of the CIA's Office of Special Projects (OSP), established in the early 1950s. Its objective was to exert influence on both the US as well as the foreign media. From the 1950s, members of the US media were routinely enlisted by the CIA. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8473
Eric Zuesse: The media are not conduits for news and views; they are global systems designed and evolved to highlight a certain type of news to impose a certain kind of view. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8474
Lenin: There is a Latin tag cui prodest? meaning "who stands to gain?" When it is not immediately apparent which political or social groups, forces or alignments advocate certain proposals, measures, etc., one should always ask: "Who stands to gain?" It is not important who directly advocates a particular policy, since under the present noble system of capitalism any money-bag can always "hire", buy or enlist any number of lawyers, writers and even parliamentary deputies, professors, parsons and the like to defend any views. We live in an age of commerce, when the bourgeoisie have no scruples about trading in honour or conscience. There are also simpletons who out of stupidity or by force of habit defend views prevalent in certain bourgeois circles. Yes, indeed! In politics it is not so important who directly advocates particular views. What is important is who stands to gain from these views, proposals, measures. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8475
Jeff J. Brown: Most of the Mainstream Western Media (MWM) works tirelessly and slavishly to protect the financial and corporate elite by creating a propaganda bubble for all of us to suffocate in. Only by escaping this stifling Western disinformation fog machine can we discover the true reality of the world. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8476
Lenin: Pre-Marxist socialism has been defeated. It is continuing the struggle, no longer on its own independent ground, but on the general ground of Marxism, as revisionism. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8477
Karl Marx: A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon - authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8478
Nick Davies: For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it. The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8480
Just sharing a random bit of AI fun because I was bored and had a thought.
AI can incidentally translate language, but that also extends to things like converting victorian english to modern day english and even updating slang and euphamisms (though when asked for slang it'll lay it on a bit thick... but it's fun about it)
So... here's the opening monologue of Romeo & Juliet (and no, it didn't preserve iambic pentameter):
Yo, listen up, peeps! Two big-shot families, equally high and mighty, Kicking it in fair Verona, where this drama's gonna go down. An old beef turns into some fresh drama, And it's so bad it gets everyone dirty. From the messed-up love lives of these two rival crews, A pair of star-crossed lovers are gonna do something crazy, Their messed-up misadventures bring down a whole lotta pain, And with their deaths, their parents' drama finally stops. The crazy rollercoaster of their death-marked love, And the never-ending feud between their folks, That only ends with their tragic deaths, Is gonna be the main event on our stage— If y'all stick around and listen close, We'll do our best to keep it real for ya!
Regarding the downtime that happened last night (while I was trying to sleep which is why it went on for so long).
The short version is a bunch of stuff clogged up the pipes, hung, and just needed a good ol' fashioned restart to fix. I've made some changes to help reduce the chance of that happening again, as always I'm sorry for the trouble.
The longer version is that the php worker processes hung and bogged down the database which brought the whole thing to a screeching halt.
I've changed the limits on those workers so they should have less impact and hopefully not do that again (the downside is that they'll be a little slower on federating updates, but most of the time that shouldn't be noticeable).
I've also taken advantage of the existing downtime to migrate the database over to a second machine with more memory. I originally intended to upgrade the memory of the machine it was on, but unfortunately made the mistake of buying the wrong chips. That plan is still pending. However by migrating it I was able to expand the memory usage significantly which should help performance, the downside is that it's a busier system so the CPU is occasionally busier and can sometimes have a negative performance impact (it's likely negligible but I'm not super confident of that).
In the next week or two I plan to do further hardware upgrades, but with the database migrated already it should be negligible if any downtime.
Once that's done, I'm hoping to implement some high availability options to further reduce downtimes.
If you're experiencing particularly slow load times on the network page (the default homepage with your main feed), one thing on your end you can tune is how many items it tries to load at one time.
Go to Settings -> Display -> Content/Layout and you can change "Number of items displayed per page".
Especially as an item includes a post and all of it's comments as one item, this can make a drastic performance difference (on my personal feed 40 takes >30 seconds to load sometimes, but 20 takes < 3 seconds)
Aktiver Widerstand, Vorbereitung Bergarbeiterkonferenz und 1. Weltkongress der United Front, Open-Air-Diskussionen ... Stand 6. August 2023 https://www.rf-news.de/kalender
Server News
in reply to Server News • •If you're experiencing particularly slow load times on the network page (the default homepage with your main feed), one thing on your end you can tune is how many items it tries to load at one time.
Go to Settings -> Display -> Content/Layout and you can change "Number of items displayed per page".
Especially as an item includes a post and all of it's comments as one item, this can make a drastic performance difference (on my personal feed 40 takes >30 seconds to load sometimes, but 20 takes < 3 seconds)