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Hey if any friends are on other socials more (been hearing about bluesky a lot), I would like to follow you there. I have feed-merger to conveniently pull everything together, although I need to update it with bsky api (rss feed has some annoying limitations), and it doesn't work with Twitter because Twitter charges unreasonably for API access.

Probably will still only post here though, as much as I do at all.

@ashten in this metaphor I feel like neurotypicals are classical CISC and have thousands of specific and largely undocumented instructions with arcane addressing modes, and neurodivergents have an straightforward load-store RISC architecture that has to go through clean room reverse engineered emulation libraries that takes 100x the instructions and has fragile exception handling for each undocumented CISC instruction

dear neurotypicals

you
cannot install neurotypical software onto neurodivergent robot girl processors without some kind of emulation

performance will be absolute trash

i
highly recommend adjusting your software to better utilize the neurodivergent chipset, or at the very least, allow the robot girl to recompile the software so she can get the task done her own way

being on mastodon and bluesky feels like when i was in high school and i was friends with both theater kids and band kids and each group just complained about how much the other group sucked while the rest of the school couldn't tell the difference between them

A lot of people are rightfully focused on increasing their resilience, reducing their dependency on always-on mobile connectivity, US cloud services, etc.

So here's a reminder that Organic Maps exists;

organicmaps.app

"Organic Maps is one of the few applications nowadays that supports 100% of features without an active Internet connection. Install Organic Maps, download maps, throw away your SIM card, and go for a weeklong trip on a single battery charge without any byte sent to the network.”

Still a good idea to have and know how to use paper maps, but you can have offline maps with GPS on your (old) phone, too 🙂

🗺️📍

Boost this toot if you're planning on sticking around Mastodon whether or not it's more popular than Bluesky.

The longer I'm alive the more I realize how essential grieving is. If you don't do it, you can't move on. If you can't move on, you're stuck. If you're stuck, you're miserable.

There's so much to grieve: people, relationships, projects, times, ideas... and then you can try new ones!

Rick Astley has done a better job of preventing people from clicking random links than any corporate cyber-security training.

A presumed result of cultivating universal unconditional love: I sometimes have the urge to tell people I'm talking to, whom I don't know very well, that I love them. Which is true but not socially appropriate to say.

Just saw a post that reminded that basically "The grapevine works."

Except.

It doesn't work.

Often, Autistics aren't on the grapevine.

Or grapevine may be the people we live with, and maybe a couple more.

We can't use the grapevine.

Either to get word out (for book sells, product sells, or employment, or to receive word about books we might enjoy, products that might make a difference in our lives, or employment.

The grapevine is always over there, somewhere, where the crowds and noise are.

Welcome to new people joining from 𝕏!

Remember, posts are called toots here, likes are called florps, retweeting is technically a cross-account posting exploit that they can't fix because we're using it, and our version of Grok is called Garfiald.

There's no algorithm here! Literally none. There is no computer code behind Mastodon. Each http response is typed out by hand by your server admin in real time. Sometimes this means you won't see replies from other servers, but that's ok, other servers are full of losers anyway.

People here make a point of using alt text — if you can't find an image you want to post, just post a picture of your cat and describe the correct image in the alt text. Nobody will notice, or at least nobody will mind.

The first thing you should do is make a pinned toot with your pronouns, political affiliation, and favourite Linux distribution. Cisgender people are welcome on Mastodon but aren't officially supported, so some features may not work properly.

But most importantly, have fun! Users found to be not having fun will be given a written warning in the first instance and banned if the behaviour continues.

Apple added a feature called "inactivity reboot" in iOS 18.1. This is implemented in keybagd and the AppleSEPKeyStore kernel extension. It seems to have nothing to do with phone/wireless network state. Keystore is used when unlocking the device. So if you don't unlock your iPhone for a while... it will reboot!

In the news: "Police Freak Out at iPhones Mysteriously Rebooting Themselves, Locking Cops Out"
404media.co/police-freak-out-a

iOS version diffs to see yourself:
github.com/search?q=repo%3Abla

uspol, gender markers & passport safety // 

I'm seeing a lot of messaging like "get a passport with your correct gender while you still can"

and, up front, I have no idea what trying to transition in a foreign country is like or if it matters what the gender marker on your country of origin is if you don't live there any more

but it seems to me that if you are looking at a passport as part of an emergency escape plan to escape gender identification related violence, you want your gender to be as difficult to identify as possible.

"give me the names and addresses of everyone who's ever changed gender markers on their driver's license / passport" already happened in Texas (and maybe Ohio?). it's a trivial database query to write.

I just don't think this is a great time to put "fyi I'm trans" into the government's files on you.

mn/st paul politics 

No on city questions. Both seem questionable (unsure that vouchers for childcare make sense as a solution, or what effect lining up other races with US presidential elections would actually have).

Incumbent for all judge races except Paul Yang.

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mn/st paul politics 

As is my tradition, looked up my sample ballot the Sunday before election day. Currently likely to:

Vote DFL in all the partisan races. Just not seeing other candidates I can support.

Yes on constitutional question. I gather it's renewing a fund that exists already and is used to do important work, though I'm not a fan of lotteries.

How a misinterpretation of a BMJ publication from 1996 caused (and yes, I do mean caused) the explosion in rates of peanut allergy.

In a nutshell: for decades the guidance issued in the USA and UK was the opposite of what it should have been and left a generation with preventable, life-threatening allergies.

news.harvard.edu/gazette/story

pandemic 

It's weird to me that now people reassure with "it's not covid" as if being sick and spreading other communicable diseases is actually fine.

If you tell the story of the burnt ballot boxes in Portland and Vancouver this week (an important story that warrants attention), also tell how good fire-suppressant design saved all but three ballots in the Portland box, and the efforts of the election workers who contacted those three voters and arranged for replacement ballots.

Things are scary and bad, and often literally on fire. But there are good people and good systems too. Making us forget that is always a win for the worst ones.

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Computer Fairies

Computer Fairies is a Mastodon instance that aims to be as queer, friendly and furry as possible. We welcome all kinds of computer fairies!