Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es

Saved @naomikritzer 's new @clarkesworld story "Better Living Through Algorithms" for a quiet Sunday morning https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_05_23/ . It's as charming and inspiring as others have said.

In a similar spirit to her "Cat Pictures, Please" short story and Catnet books; also engaging with some of the same ideas as https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/maneki-neko/ Bruce Sterling's "Maneki Neko" (a story I find way less engaging) and Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age".

#scifi #shortstories

H/T @anildash

Incomplete thread of recent/current (AFAIK) information on long covid probability, prevalence, and prevention.

Because the gaslighting is getting to me.

1/N

looks like the votes are for the debugging manifesto poster (this one: https://wizardzines.com/images/debugging-manifesto.pdf). I'll set up preorders once we figure out how much it'll cost to print & ship them.

SCOTUS rules publicly funded charter schools in North Carolina can't force girls to wear skirts as part of the dress code. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1183781580/supreme-court-dress-code

All this conversation about #Meta on #Fedi feels like the worst parts of geek culture. So technical, without understanding context or what strikes can actually do. My thoughts:

Meta will make a great app for Fedi because it has more money to throw at the task. People will start using that because it's better. It will have QTs and an algorithm. People they want to follow will be there.

🧵1/6

I made a spline guide

Ok so let's get a few things straight.

1. "Big admins" complaining about the community being pissed at them for meeting with meta under NDA is their fault and their fault only. Some admin blocking mastodon.art for being vocal about this is bullcrap. If you could not anticipate the fact that bragging on Mastodon about having a secret private meeting with Meta would spark anger, that's on you. Isn't the first rule of NDA "do not talk about NDA", by the way ?

2. Meta has no good intentions, they don't plan on "playing nice" with smaller actors. Thinking otherwise is very naive. They plan on nipping potential competitors in the bud and make a profit. If they cared about anything else than big players and their user base and wanted to embrace the Fediverse as a concept, they would not discuss their plans only with big actors behing closed doors would they? They're trying to "join" a community that identifies as a healthy alternative to them and start with an NDA. What. Could. Go. Wrong.

3. Meta is the company that allowed meddling with elections. They're the company that slowly removed from your timeline everything you loved to replace it with things they think you would be stupid enough to click on. They're a company that followed suit with Musk's "premium verification" concept to propose a similar product. There is NO REASON to trust meta and "wait and see". We ALREADY KNOW that Meta is evil and have had proof over and over.

4. How arrogant do you have to be to think that once you allowed a company like Meta in your garden, you could reverse everything and undo any harm they're doing with "just 2 clicks" (sic) ? This is hubris.

Block Meta. "Big admins", in their arrogance, are playing a very dangerous game for all of us and they did not consult the community before doing so, which is kind of telling as well.

#BlockMeta #SaveTheFediverse

It’s like the US is the same country with the same horrifying problems we’ve had for ages, but circa 2016 somebody enabled verbose logging

The fediverse was never going to be a hockey stick. In the end it's more like a katamari. Picking up people left behind by the corporate internet into a messy ass ball that grows in fits and starts, but can keep on rolling past obstacles that closed systems can't.

Its lack of clearly defined shape is at once its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.