Alex Vranas @Alex@vran.as

substack feels like “what if your blog was as annoying to read as a paywalled news website”

What you see on this photo is not from the Empire Strikes Back.

No, it is German police protecting a coal mine excavator in #Lützerath - a village planned to be demolished by the energy company RWE to extract coal that is not even needed for the energy security of Germany.

#Klimaschande
#EndCoal #EndFossilFuels #LütziBleibt

Picture: @mariusmichusch

PSA: take some time in 2023 to back up your/your family's CD-Rs (and other recordable media) full of memories you threw into storage 10+ years ago; there's a decent chance they've started to rot!

the tenuously thin layer of dyes/adhesives holding the data *will* break down over time, rapidly so if their environment is uncontrolled, the surface was previously nicked/contaminated, or they were cheap ones to begin with

Attention members of the Calyx Institute! Do you want an extra month of your unlimited and unthrottled #mobile internet for free? Refer someone today and you both get an extra month of #wifi membership benefits! http://members.calyxinstitute.org/referrals. #data #digital

Ok, as promised: I created a new #bot for Mastodon.

@c64_disks downloads the latest #C64 releases from #CSDK and renders the contents of the #D64 disk images into a visual representation of the data.

Example:
https://mastodon.social/@c64_disks@botsin.space/109627125113809785

Do you know how many times I've heard over the past few days how much the media is failing to follow the money in this story about the newly elected Rep. George Santos? This story makes it clear that's exactly what happened.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/29/north-shore-leader-santos-scoop/

So let's follow the money, shall we? Starting with Mr. Santos' latest filing for The Devolder Organization, which is apparently responsible for his sudden unexplained wealth.

http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/ConvertTiffToPDF?storagePath=COR%5C2021%5C0601%5C00184778.Tif&documentNumber=L21000206150

The organization lists its address as 336 N. Babcock St. Ste 104, and says another organization at the same address but Ste 101 is there called D&D International Investment Services Inc.

Both are affiliated with an individual named Devaughn Dames, who appears to be both a physician and a CFO somehow. He's also very passionate about spreading his knowledge about how to handle your money wisely. His linkedin page mentions both companies. He also seems to be an IT expert; previous domains include https://web.archive.org/web/20160518071721/http://www.manageditsolutions.net/about.html

One of Mr. Dames' email addresses (dev.dames at gmail) was used to register the vanity domain devaughndames[.]com. Firefox didn't like what that site tried to do when I visited it, but it loaded an empty page that had the heading "Financial Educational Services." But the pop-up takes you to a domain called myuwe.net, which is for an entity called United Wealth Education.

Now, UWE is full of stock photos and videos, and there isn't much there about who runs it. And after spending a few minutes on this site, you'll probably come away with the conclusion that the site is tied to some type of scam.

Well, if you look up the name of what Myuwe.com used to be called -- Financial Educational Services -- you'll see they were shut down JUST THIS YEAR by the US Federal Trade Commission for being a giant pyramid scheme that bilked people out of more than $213 million.

How's that for following the money? :) Wait, I'm not done yet.

2023 energy

Sick of people calling everything in crypto a Ponzi scheme. Some crypto projects are Pump-and-Dump schemes, while others are Pyramid schemes. Others are just middlemen skimming off the top. Others are just standard-issue fraud.

Stop glossing over the diversity in the industry.

The internet wants to be fragmented https://slrpnk.net/post/204842