The act of trolling I'm probably proudest of in my entire digital life was the time a prominent MRA kept leaving replies on my blog. Every comment was misogynistic and also flogging his book. I'd approve them, but only after quietly editing the title of his books to "I done a poo in my pants". It took him absolutely months to notice.
Having now been on #Mastodon for 1 month, a few observations:
- Mastodon makes me realize how much the #Twitter algorithm maximized user outrage to boost engagement for profit. Gross. Here, my feed is interesting & supportive.
- There's a culture of kindness - at least so far. It's extremely appealing & should be normalized on & offline.
- Beyond reactions to toots, people share songs, poetry & ask great questions. I can't remember the last time I found social media to be fun.
A.I. Art is something of a sticky wicket, as a rule. I'm very much not a fan of the "type in a prompt and get a picture" variety, because they all scrape other artist's work for the basis, which is stealing.
That said, the ones where you upload a photo and it stylizes it can be a lot of fun. This one used a collection of photos to train the AI, and came up with much more interesting results than usual.
Here are a collection of historical (and in some cases, fantastical) Maes for you to enjoy.
🦀📺 #rustlang has finally become mainstream: hackers in TV shows are now compiling Rust to look cool. 😁
(From Pantheon S1E5.)
Like and share if you agree...
Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker) is nothing more than a hate preacher and a grifter.
I had to give this its own post. #MadMonday
Here is the evidence that I once met some penguins and we became good friends.
Taken at the aquarium in Cape Town about five years ago.
#OnThisDay, 28 Nov 1967, PhD student Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers the existence of pulsars.
Not included in the 1974 Nobel prize for the discovery, Bell received a £3m prize for her work in 2018. She's using it to set up a foundation to improve diversity in STEM.
blockchain tech filtering
Blockchain, and all the flim-flam variants applied on top (crypto, NFT, DAO, Web3, etc, etc, etc), is an unreasonably high-value filter to use on tech adjacent people.
If any tech person talks in any way positively about any form of #blockchain - you now know for certain, either they don't know what they're talking about, or they are actively lying.
Filters with that level of fidelity are hard to find.
This may be about the coolest damn photograph I've ever seen!
(Photo by Lisa Bishop)
27 November 1942 | A Polish woman, Anna Smoleńska (b. 28 Feb 1920), was incarcerated in Auschwitz.
She was a girl scout, student of history of arts. During the occupation she was engaged in resistance. The author of the 'Kotwica - Fighting Poland' emblem (more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotwica).
Camp no. 26008.
She perished on 19 March 1943.
#Auschwitz #history #ww2 #WorldWar2 #woman #fighting #Poland #Nazis #Germany #histodon @histodons #design #arts #symbol #anchor #NeverForget #memory
Part one of my Comic Series "Things I love about my autism".
What do you like about your neurodiversity? 😊
1/3
Please people, don't fall for the crypto bullshit
It was a wonderful idea years ago but nowadays it's only used for quick 'gains' that need to come from somewhere
I am happy the blocks are finally falling, I am so sick of seeing a new alt coin every single day..
It's a scam, better plant a tree or something
Puberty blockers were the compromise.
The manner in which conservatives demonized them is a textbook-ready demonstration of the folly of trying to compromise with conservatives.
Any trans kids who want to skip straight to HRT should be able to.
#transkids #transchildren #letkidsbetrans #letchildrenbetrans #letkidstransition #letchildrentransition #transition #hrt #pubertyblockers #trans #transgender #transsexual #queer #transliberation #queerliberation
Aaron Swartz would have been 36 today.
Aaron committed suicide after being sentenced to 35 years in prison by US authorities for transferring and sharing scientific articles from JSTOR.
Enabling access to knowledge was one of his main goals in life, as confirmed by many projects he undertook:
He and his colleagues started a digital library in 2007 openlibrary.org with the goal of becoming an open catalogue of all works that have ever been published. More than 2.5 million books are freely available on it today.
He helped with the development of RSS and Markdown and Creative Commons licensing, all of which today plays a central role in the creation and distribution of content on the Internet.
Aaron is also recognized as one of the co-founders of the Reddit network and is one of the authors of the Guerilla Manifesto for free access (pc. if/gmanzof).
Swartz also fought for transparency and against corruption and censorship. In addition to coordinating protests and actions against internet censorship, he set up a platform SecureDrop securedrop.org which enables anonymous and safe communication for whistleblowers.
Federal prosecutors wanted to make an example out of his case, so despite the lack of evidence they wrote an indictment demanding 35 years in prison and 1 million dollars in fines. Days after prosecutors rejected his answering contract offer, Aaron committed suicide.
Limiting access to knowledge limits the development of the whole society. Free sharing and free access to content should be everyone's rights.