Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@social.cleverlibre.org

I've gotten a lot of responses to that Substack piece about leaving Twitter. Many are positive but some are negative. A few are saying "oh so you think free speech is nasty?"

What kind of stupid question is that? Of course I do. The Nazis marching at Skokie were nasty. All sorts of speech is nasty. Supporting free speech doesn't mean reserving judgment about it, you imbecile. It means not using the state to suppress it.

It’s bracing and inspiring, like a brisk walk on an icy day with a view, to be hated by a large number of shitty people.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/feature/mark-meadows-exchanged-texts-with-34-members-of-congress-about-plans-to-overturn-the-2020-election

At this 3rd anniversary of the start of the pandemic I’d like to thank the scientists, health and social care workers, and essential front line workers who saved millions. Many literally owe you their lives. It’s rare that I ask this but please consider reblog/boost to spread gratitude. I will never forget or forgive those who spread anti-science ignorant disinformation. Usually for financial and/or political objectives. And it continues. Vigilance is still needed. Greetings from Switzerland.

The great British public have a disturbing tendency to support trade unionism in theory, but when a #strike inconveniences them they're suddenly against it, despite being in jobs enjoying defined hours, sick pay, holiday pay, days off, all things hard won through the work of unions. If a strike doesn't cause inconvenience, then it wasn't an effective strike. And nobody on strike wants to be there, losing a day's pay, especially now. They're there because it's the only option left.

What those who want to curb the right to strike fail to understand is that legal strikes are the *compromise*. They're the incentive not to use spicier tactics like flying pickets, physical obstruction, just fucking downing tools and walking out. They've forgotten this, because it worked so well. If they successfully remove the "legal" bits, why would workers bother with the Process any more? If there's no legal picket lines, why not make your tactics the super effective ones?

“You can find us anywhere you get your podcasts.”

I *adore* this phrase, because it has been like two whole-ass decades and not one single venture capital darling has managed to unseat plain RSS as the distribution method for podcasts. Not one. (And they have really tried!)

Podcasts are just out there, like air. You don’t go to one place to get them; you get them from everywhere and anywhere. You can choose how you want to engage with them and manage them and it is legitimately heartwarming that nothing has ever gotten in the way of that being a fundamental fact.

This is the best of what the web is. It will never have a stock ticker or even a marketing scheme. Most people don’t even know it is there. But it endures (past the many, many attempts by squillionaire corporates to kill it) because of its absolute unshakable utility.

My suggestion: any time you hear “anywhere you get your podcasts”, send a little thanks to RSS for keeping the real web alive.

#RSS #Podcasts #ProtocolsNotProducts

This piece by @emptywheel@twitter.com nails it: Elon is pursuing the exact same agenda that Trump and the House GOP will for the next 2 years.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/12/11/elon-musks-self-described-crime-scene/

@JenWojcik @MeidasTouch that said, a lot of big birdsite accounts are similarly one-sided. They view this totally different experience as the same thing. I've decided I won't favorite or boost any toot that is simply a twittersite link. Either all in, or on the sidelines for me.

@MeidasTouch you need to follow, too. 44 out of 20,000 is pretty lame...

This
Isn't
Twitter

I ain't boosting your Twitter links.

Are you getting tired of all these links back to the bird site? (Consider boosting so we can get a sample of opinion.)

Yet too often...

http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery/math/math170_tell-us-in-laymans-terms.gif

It's that most wonderful time of the year when Wikipedia is fundraising hard.

They literally have hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and enough runway to essentially run the site for decades.

If you have money to donate to good causes, consider local charities; if you want to donate to an Internet thing give to the chronically underfunded Internet Archive: https://archive.org/donate

I'm a maker. I've been using your boards for years. I've recommended their use to countless people, advocated for your goals, and remained excited for everything you had done to further coding in education. You were doing good work, and had an immense amount of goodwill within the maker community. Have credit where it's due.

But your recent antics are wholly unacceptable.

Firstly, you have abandoned the maker community in recent years by prioritizing your industrial customers over them. The very same maker community that fueled the wide adoption of your products, the people who tirelessly evangelized your mission, are being left behind.

You're right - people are cross that they can't get your products any more. And that's because you're not making them for us any more. And we know it.

Secondly, your recent "Hey, we hired a cop!" post is concerning. UK law enforcement has a long history of terrible behavior in infiltrating activist circles, establishing sexual relationships with activists, and in some cases abandoning the children they fathered in those relationships.

This is a well-documented pattern of behavior, and is still playing out in the courts. The individual you hired most likely had a direct hand in enabling that behavior, as his role was in developing surveillance techniques. That history should be considered shameful, yet somehow you've decided it's a selling point.

This raises further concerns when considered within the context of your recent pivot towards prioritizing industrial customers over the maker community. In many perfectly reasonable ways, this could be considered a signal to government and law enforcement agencies of your willingness and intent to expand your business with them.

After all, you also manufacture small cameras as well as small, network-enabled computers. Now you're advertising that you've brought someone in-house with extensive experience in law enforcement under a dubious title (what exactly is the job description of a "Maker-in-Residence" anyhow?).

It's clear that your original vision has changed, and not for the better.

All of this is concerning enough. But when these perfectly valid criticisms and concerns were brought to the attention of your Fediverse instance, your brand ambassador responded with glib dismissals and began blocking the very people who have supported you for the past decade.

Not to mention the absolutely ridiculous recent claims by your co-founder, Liz Upton, that this backlash is due to not putting a CW on a picture of pigs in a blanket. That's patently absurd, and had she taken any time whatsoever to seriously look at the conversation, she would know it.

But, again - we're not the customers you care about any more. And we know it.

The fact is, you have managed to burn down a decade's worth of goodwill in the span of a day or so by being condescending, inconsiderate, and tone-deaf towards your most loyal customers and their extremely valid concerns. And on a personal level, I'm wildly disappointed and feel a certain amount of betrayal.

Of course I'll be vigorously recommending your competitors from now on, for both moral and practical reasons. There are far superior alternatives on the market already. At the basest level, I'm quite comfortable forgetting that #RaspberryPi is even an option for a single-board computer, and never mentioning the name to another potential maker again.

Not that it matters, since we can't even get your boards without an obscene markup anyways.

#RaspberryBye

In 1925, Dr. Cecilia Payne completed her PhD thesis, described as “the most brilliant ever written in astronomy.” At a time when few #women entered academia, Payne discovered what the universe is made of. Her work began a revolution in astrophysics.

Dr. Payne-Gaposchkin became the 1st female professor & 1st female department chair at Harvard. Given most of us remember names like Darwin & Newton, we should also celebrate Payne. #science #space

Read more at https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201501/physicshistory.cfm

I feel bad when I go to delete an app from my iPhone because they all start shaking with fear wondering which one is about to die.

Refuse

I'm getting a reputation here at #Mastodon as some kind of Ronco Boost-O-Matic™. And I appreciate that, seriously.

But I'm really struggling with certain posts. These are often newsworthy, interesting or just plain funny-as-shite toots. Except... they contain links back to #Twitter.

We need to stop giving #SpaceKaren any more click revenue to keep that Effin' Bird on life support.

Attribution? Sure. But please copy and paste the text or just screenshot it. Anything but a link.

Thank you.

Cyber Monday is the American holiday that invites people— from all walks of life— to fall victim to email phishing campaigns while trying to score deep discounts on last-year's hottest gifts