FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org
Exploring, failing, backtracking, just to identify the only viable path forward. And then scarred, stumbling forward into the future. Learning.
Boring and steady. Knowing little and questioning a lot. Mostly harmless.
***
This is an experimental scrapbook space. A collection of stuff I want to keep in a form somewhere on the spectrum between a blog and a shoe-box full of scraps, cut-outs, quotes, links and reading notes and sometimes my own silly thoughts about them.
Perhaps it might be of marginal interest to others too, but I don't care that much.
Joined Jan 2021
FailForward
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Eventually Mitch McConnel did find his political spine and declared that Trump did it and that he was responsible. Then in a swift Mitch move he presented his spine as a token of his loyalty to Trump and the party and pleaded not guilty. #impeachment #MitchMcConnell #Trump #trump
FailForward
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I wrote a thing for my friends not on the Fediverse.
imakethingswork.com/blog/socia…
Social Media Alternatives
imakethingswork.com/blog/socia…
Social Media Alternatives
FailForward
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Tradition of removing shoes in home. Green: shoes removed; Blue: shoes not removed.
https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/176735487615/world-map-of-tradition-of-removing-shoes-in-home
# Not everything is bleak, there are simple joys out there
This morning I walked the dog and listened to radio, as I often do. There was this lady in the news fragment on Deutschlandfunk Kultur giving a "bad rapport" (Zeugnis) to Western countries on Corona. In a call-in she enumerated all the bad stuff which (allegedly) went wrong. And I listen in disbelief: all those are just imperfections to me, but all in all we are doing well, dear lady!
The other day, I spoke a friend who tried to convince me that social networks are all bad and he's quitting Facebook. I tried to point out that there's a lot of good stuff happening thanks to social nets too, it's just the small stuff we do not read in the news about, but which is often way more important than the "big" failings of our societies. Again, imperfections all around, but all in all I try to see a positive vector of development in the long-run.
Another friend expects European Union to go down the drain soon, especially because of the economic issues. I repeatedly fail to convince him that of course things are not perfect, but in general there's more robustness and positive developments than all teh negative.
Maybe I am just a naive, overly optimistic bloke somewhere. Dunno. But I can tell you what cheers me up on Saturday morning. Reading the society & lifestyle column in The Guardian, especially the Blind Date section (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/feb/13/blind-date-steph-will). It's so nice to see people opening up about what is positive and good about each other. This is perhaps silly habit of mine, I am well beyond "blind dating" age and stage of life (but who knows!), what I like is to get a weekly dose of positive humanity from there. People genuinely try hard to be good to each other and find joy in each other's presence. **_Not everything is bleak out there! Actually, to the contrary!_**
FailForward
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@kattascha Reaction to a toot https://qoto.org/web/statuses/105716541289609969
Thanks again for your inspiring thoughts.
I am not going to argue with you, I'd rather like to share a thought which I think is relevant for your toot-thread and which intrigues me since a couple of years. First a brief summary of your position:
> Wenn man nicht mit Leuten reden wollte, deren Anhängerschaft einen mit dem Tod bedroht, sah das quasi nach Diskursverweigerung aus.
> Menschen haben ernsthaft diskutiert, ob man quasi schon moralisch verloren hat, weil man sich den „Argumenten“ der AfD nicht stellt. Wahnsinn.
Yours is a perfectly understandable position. But I am not sure whether it's a constructive one. By not engaging and being absent, we let them win by default whatever screwed up game they constructed. I am not sure whether that is a good thing. Certainly it lets them collect some electoral points this way too. And just to clarify, I think morals have nothing to do with this. I care about pragmatic steps here.
> Denkt ruhig mal daran, wenn es darum geht, ob Verschwörungsideologen ein Podium gegeben werden sollte.
So here's a story. In Czecho-slovakian space there is this guy Fedor Gal (https://www.memoryofnations.eu/en/gal-fedor-1945) you probably never heard about, but who's quite a famous person in your neighbouring country. A Jew born in Konzentrazionslager/ghetto Theresienstadt in 1945, later a dissident against communism, scientist, sociologist, one of the leaders of the '89 revolution in Czechoslovakia, later a politician and by every means still a very active public person. This guy is hated by all neonazis of both countries, in 90's he became an anti-symbol for the extreme right and for many he still remains such, even though it's 25+ years since he left active politics.
Now this person's motto is this: **_"We have to keep dialogue open across the fences"_** and he lives up to it. He engages the right wing scene a lot. From public persecution of neo-nazi attacks on Roma minority, through active support to oppressed people and so on. Up to a point, that he patiently went into an e-mail exchange with an active neo-nazi, sustained it for several years and in the end published a book of their conversations with that guy - who still was at that point and probably still remains a skin-head/neo-nazi!. Fedor Gal even went on a tour with that person and engaged on stage in discussions with him for everybody to see. Long story short, the neo-nazi guy got so scared and ashamed that soon he stopped with it and quit.
So what is the point of this story? This person, Fedor Gal does not believe in disengagement with people who actively wish him harm and actually tried to do so many times. He well understands that giving right-extreme scene a platform is a bad thing. At the same time, he's a fighter and will not back off from a conflict. In a way, he's out there to take these extremists down. He clearly recognised that at the core of these people's beliefs is **dehumanisation** of others - extreme _us vs. them_ distinction. He also recognised that **you cannot win by letting yourself to be drawn into their game of us vs. them**. It's their turf, their game, they will win it. His strategy of engagement of these people and groups is based on **putting in contrast his (your) humanity and decency against their brutality and lack of empathy**. People are not emotionally blind. If you show them this contrast, they get it on the emotional level (as far as they are capable of empathy), even if intellectually they have qualms about the persona of Fedor Gal. He's not fighting to convince the right wing guys to stop thinking the BS they do. They are probably lost to us. My understanding is that he's fighting to save the silent majority not to be drawn closer to them and do their bidding, or voting for them. And that is a fight worth fighting. At least if I want to think about myself as an upright and decent human being. For this to work, one needs to let the strategy work again and again over longer periods of time, maybe decades. I consider this to be a very brave way of living.
I also believe that we shall keep dialogue open across the fences. And I try hard to find at least a fraction of Fedor's courage in my life, even though unlike him, I do not actively seek those confrontations, I have more important stuff to do in this stage of my life. But I encourage you and people who listen to you to find the courage to re-engage too.
(from a guy once beaten up by skin-heads in daylight and plain sight on one of the most busy streets of a town somewhere)
> Baby cries are an equivalent of C++ compiler error messages in the real world.
> -- Colleague of mine in a recent all-hands meeting
Bah! My writing is indeed very sloppy this morning. I shall invest in better configuring (and listening to!) a spell checker in my editor.
Show thread
# Reading notes, scrapbooking, social media reposting and copyright
**_How does Fediverse feel about copyright infringement running rampant on social media? Think quoting, linking to visuals, boosting, reposting, etc._**
I am thinking about publishing my reading notes frmo the last year. It's not a blog, rather a collection of excerpts and quotes I want to remember and refer to later on. The purpose is to build a pile of material from which I then synthesise. Because that's how I work and thing - any many others too (see the boom of interest in Zettelkasten, note taking etc.).
I keep my notes privately and that's OK. I also realised that there is an ingerent value in making them public. It forces me not to be too sloppy and get to the point. All is good.
Now, I am a smart guy too and I heard about this thing called copyright. And fair use. And right to quote policy. Etc.
The problem is this:
1. extensive quoting, excerpting and annotating from 3rd party materials is a useful way to study and do research.
2. private note taking like this is protected by copyright limitations in most (if not all) jurisdictions.
3. making such notes public, can be quite useful for fellow souls on a similar research journey.
4. publication of such a scrapbook, however, infringines on copyright of the original authors. One can argue about subtleties here, but copying whole paragraphs (which is useful!) clearly is a potential problem.
Which leaves me with several options:
1. keep the notes private and thus make the world somewhat poorer (in eyes of the note-taker)
2. perform a risk analysis and if the assessed actual risk is relatively low (such as e.g., a requirement to coply with a potential DMCA notice), go ahead and see what happens.
But it also leads to a bunch of interesting questions. Twitter, Facebook or Mastodon are full of quoting, reposting, boosting, linking to 3rd party images and videos, etc. All that, effectively constitutes copyright infringement. **_How do we feel about all that?_** Are there any useful reading sources on this?
FailForward
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> "it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility"
> -- [Moravec's paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec's_paradox)
# On wants and asks in human interactions and relationships
Healthy relationships in the end boild down to transactions like this: _Tell me what you want, I will tel you what I want and we either meet in the middle, or realise it won't work this time and can move on._ No need to argue in vain.
Now, I can well understand why sometimes people are unable, uneasy, or unwilling to communicate clearly what they want. Yet, I still find it stunning how often people do not even know what is it what they want, yet get angry if they don't get it.
A lot of pain and hurt could be saved if we dedicated more time to introspection and listening to our own emotions.
# Infinitely zooming picture
This is fun. Infinitely zooming generative scene. It's not the first one I encountered, but one of the most captivating. Worth storing a bookmark to brighten somebody's day...
FailForward
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RT @jtannady
Re: impostor syndrome. Someone once said to me
"You think that you don't belong here and that everyone is smarter than you. But do you really believe that you are clever enough to trick all these smart people into thinking that you deserve to be here if you don't?"
> A set of brackets is a barrier to understanding between the reader and the writer.
> -- [https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/02/stop-defacing-quotes-with-brackets.html]
The quote in itself is a standalone reminder of presence of friction in writing. Any writing.
The linked story is also interesting, but this quote just jumped out of the text as I was reading it. Probably (am I just being apologetic?) because I tend to (BS! I do it all the time and with passion (whatever that means)) overuse(!) parentheses (and other fancy characters on my keyboard) and such (but I do not do it on purpose - well, it just feels right (sometimes, obviously)).
> “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
> ― [Mae West](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1598-you-only-live-once-but-if-you-do-it-right)
# European Space Agency (ESA) seeks new astronauts - applications open 31 March 2021
> For the first time in 11 years, ESA is looking for new astronauts. These recruits will work alongside ESA’s existing astronauts as Europe enters a new era of space exploration.
Hey fediverse folk! Is there somewhere a map of federation/defederation of fediverse? I mean which instances see/listen to which other instances (since the relationship is asymmetrical). Does not have to be graphical, but ideally searchable (text files?).
Point is, I suspect my home instance might be blocked by some other instances I am interested in and I have no way to know whether people out there will even see my toots if I speak to them first.
Any explanations and pointers appreciated. Thanks.
# Mercator map projection distortion animated
Anybody who deals with maps and geospatial data knows that different projections distort the world map in different ways. Still it's instructive to see it in an good visualisation.
Animated maps of Mercator projection distortion of country areas in two maps by Neil Kaye.
Static version:
https://mobile.twitter.com/neilrkaye/status/1050722881657864192
Animated version:
https://mobile.twitter.com/neilrkaye/status/1050740679008296967
Mercator projection was designed to preserve angles of straight lines on a map. As a side-effect, it inflates sizes of objects farther away from the equator on the map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection
# SKATEBOARD SLIDE GUITAR! | Justin Johnson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUoI8omxf7Q
So yesterday we had a shovel guitar (https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105675348623260571). Let's have an awesome skateboard guitar today! He plays it like a dobro. Fun!
# On awkwardness of boosting one's own toots vs. the scrapbox idea
Mastodon has this funny aspect that public timeline of an account is a completely separate beast from the Home timeline. Apart from all the foreign toots, the home timeline includes also all the responses by self to other conversations.
This led me to an idea to treat the public timeline as an archive of stuff I want to keep "for posterity" - the scrapbox idea. It is turning out to be a limiting feature.
Specifically, it leads to confused use of the toot boost facility. Originally, the boost of a toot is meant to make it visible to one's followers. In turn, the public timeline turns into a set of toots one wants to "broadcast". Complementary, "favourite" facility is useful as a signal of :thumbsup: emoji: "I read you!". It's more of an acknowledgement, rather than saving into a box of "favourited" toots. Simple "like".
So far, so good. The problem starts with my idea of "misusing" the publicly visible timeline as a curated sequence of notes to keep. It makes it impossible to "boost" a toot to one's followers with an intention to instigate a conversation. Additionally, if I want to keep some of my own comments which I make during an interesting conversation, I have to boost it. That is a somewhat socially awkward thing to do. It's like screaming: "Hey, look what smart thing I just said!". Now, that is silly...
## Lesson learned
Clearly, Mastodon (and in fact any Fediverse tech, such as Friendica) is best used as a discussion tool: "broadcast stuff you want to be read and discussed". My one month attempt to turn it into a tool for central storage of public notes of mine is turning negative.
While I still want my notes to be discussed, it's clear it cannot be the primary purpose of my Mastodon account - if I want to use it for communication with people too. Proper use of Mastodon would turn my notes (kept in my account's public timeline) into a mess.
A better idea is to keep notes outside of Mastodon and semi-automatically import them from outside. That seems to be a better design.
Either way, I like this Mastodon thing for communication. But not for my original idea of notekeeping.
Exploring, failing, backtracking, just to identify the only viable path forward. And then scarred, stumbling forward into the future. Learning.
Boring and steady. Knowing little and questioning a lot. Mostly harmless.
***
This is an experimental scrapbook space. A collection of stuff I want to keep in a form somewhere on the spectrum between a blog and a shoe-box full of scraps, cut-outs, quotes, links and reading notes and sometimes my own silly thoughts about them.
Perhaps it might be of marginal interest to others too, but I don't care that much.
Joined Jan 2021
