Bobby Brown @bobbyd0g@hellsite.net

It’s horrible the media is more focused on trying to frame people who are masking as “hold outs”instead of investigating why political leaders prematurely dropped protections to serve corporate interests when polls show the majority still support mask mandates.

#COVID #COVID19 #PublicHealth

We’ve always needed safe infrastructures for people, but that need is even greater as vehicles have gotten bigger.

More cars, bigger cars, more and more space surrendered in cities to cars.

In 2000, a bike-rider next to a Toyota Camry had 18 inches on either side. Today a bike-rider next to a Ford F-150 has just 4 inches.

Stolen space.

Via #TransAlt

#cities #urbanism #cars #transportation #bike

The reason #SocialMedia is bad is because

1) it opaquely curates your feed in accordance with both its equally opaque interpretation of your own motives, and its hardcoded adherence to corporate's

2) it actively incentivises you to do as much #BitchEatingCrackers, #OhSoYouHateWaffles interaction as possible in order to boost engagement metrics to more effectively hawk those ads you ignore

Something I'm noticing is that some folks here perceive "not being actively user-hostile" as "being corporate," and as someone who is medically unemployed and does all of her meaningful work on a volunteer basis, but strives to make all of her output as user-friendly as it can be without changing its actual substance, I kind of take exception to that

not sure on the implementation details yet, but vox octopi bitches
https://tech.lgbt/@0xAFAEBABE/109573358789501020

Extinction of Indigenous languages leads to loss of exclusive knowledge about medicinal plants

#Indigenous #IndigenousKnowledge #IndigenousLanguages #Medicine #MedicinalPlants

https://news.mongabay.com/2021/09/extinction-of-indigenous-languages-leads-to-loss-of-exclusive-knowledge-about-medicinal-plants/

Matrix is doing some extraordinary work, but they’re having to lay off staff.

If your org uses it, maybe look into dropping them some funding? https://matrix.org/blog/2022/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-update-2022

We might imagine that Mastodon is safe because it cannot be acquired or controlled by any one entity, but it absolutely *can* be.

In fact, with interest in it rising, Mastodon is at its *most* vulnerable time right now. Mastodon is in many respects an inadequate implementation. All any corporation has to do is launch a major ActivityPub implementation with the features and polish people want—enough to migrate people over en masse—and they will have effectively "acquired” Mastodon. (And honestly I suspect this is going to happen soon anyway.)

Google destroyed RSS and XMPP this way. Yes, they’re still out there, but only shadows of their former selves.

Matrix gives us the rare chance to head off this phenomenon before it happens.

Within a few hours, I came across this post by @mekkaokereke and a friend sent me this screenshot from the re-release of the classic PC game 'Oregon Trail' (where the player takes on the role of a settler).

It was a beautiful reminder that it is possible to receive feedback positively, to take accountability, and to do the work to better ourselves. The outrage around "cancel culture" is largely just a way to shield all of those who are unwilling to do that work.

@adrienne @peterhil @tsetiady @creatrixtiara @futurebird @dalias

i’m all for allowing people to specify the types of interactions that they consent to. it has been a theme regarding my work in this space for the past 5 years.

with that said, the discussion of consent in the context of that mastodon issue is really focused around applying stoppage to any serious work in this space. it is not a serious discussion so much as it is a discussion intended to be a time sink for those who want QTs, so they continue to jump through hoops until they eventually give up.

the people talking about that, they fully understand that Eugen has no real interest in implementing a framework that allows users to specify their own consent preferences.

i am therefore not in favor of blocking work on a feature that is (a) already implemented in the wild by many other fediverse implementations, and (b) a marginal improvement from a trust and safety perspective verses the status quo (screenshot dunking), simply because some people think it should block on an intentionally underspecified consent framework.

if people want to talk about building a consent framework for real, they know where to find me. we can even enforce the consent framework at protocol level with the correct constructions. i have written about this extensively, on my blog, and also in various technical documentation about the fediverse.

but unless Eugen will do it, the conversation is pointless if you’re unwilling to drop compatibility with implementations which don’t buy in.