On reading, from a new book by UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf "...when you lose the novel, you lose the ability to go into another person’s perspective.
My biggest worry now is that a lot of what we’re seeing in society today — this vulnerability to demagoguery in all its forms — of one unanticipated and never intended consequence of a mode of reading that doesn’t allow critical analysis and empathy. "
@imvectech Thanks for asking the great question! Installed mastalab after a recommendation here last night, was able to use the info in your reply. Still would like be able to pin a feed from another instance without going through a mobile app.
Excited to be here at Mastodon
Am an opinionated world traveller with interests in travel, movies, environment, society, naturopathy, naturism, politics and all that is associated.
Looking to interact with like minded fellow travellers around here and also looking at calling out hypocrisy where it needs to be called out.
Must confess: I am not a Liberal! I believe in people and I believe in doing what's right. I believe people know wants best for them and no one need tell anyone else how to lead their life, what to say, how to behave.
I am very open to friendly debates on any topic that I know about. The rest I leave to the judgement of more intelligent others. 😊
Please engage for a better world.
F*b*k gets even worse : deletes years of cross posts without warning.
Facebook has removed all cross-posted tweets
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/28/facebook-has-removed-all-cross-posted-tweets/
#ReachAcross is a new hashtag we came up with over at #QOTO where you say something you admire about a group you view as an opponent to a cause you are passionate about. For example if you are a Liberal you would compliment Conservatives, if you are a Conservative you compliment Liberals. Whatever group or groups you feel passionate for whether its politics, activism, religion, whatever it might be.
Use the tag and list something you respect or admire about the opposing side. When you see someone mention a group that refers to you, then return a compliment in a reply.
I will kick it off:
#ReachAcross for this week is for the extreme left and extreme right political spectrum (non-moderates). I admire the passion and energy you put into your activism. There are many people who would love to have that sort of passion for anything.
(Some people who helped flush out the idea in the original thread: @arteteco @Surasanji @hashtaggrammar @commandelicious @comphys @QuentinMann @rnitsch @Nyoei @spinflip @hodot @SecondJon )
Hi there everybody here!
Is there a way to view the timeline of another instance in a pinned column?
For example, we're at qoto.org but would like to follow the local timeline of botsin.space. is there any way to do it? Do instances have a public timeline #RSS for example?
@Surasanji @freemo I had grabbed it too - shared it with my dev team as an excellent one.
#QOTO is back!
The migration to the new server ran rather smoothly. We had a postgres version mismatch but it was resolved and we are rebuiding the feed. But no data was lost and all should be good. Welcome back and enjoy the new servers, we have doubled our capacity so hopefully everything will be far more responsive now.
Spoken languages vs Software languages:
For complex ideas translation between English and French is not perfect, translation transforms the information... you can not express the exact same thing in different languages.
Software, however can be “perfectly translated” you could implement the same application in Python as you can in JavaScript.
@freemo this is why it saddens me when I see people jump to calling people who disagree with them evil in some way, which shuts down engagement from both sides
- if "we" see "them" as "evil," then it makes sense to not listen to them... because they're evil, and we shouldn't listen to evil, because we're good. And because they see themselves as good, they'll be more likely to disengage with us, because they know they're "good", and us calling them evil is then likely to earn an evil label in return.
I think that at a basic/fundamental level, people share goals, and each person is doing the best they know how. If we can identify the common goal, maybe we can have a conversation.
One thing that interests me about human nature is that EVERYONE tries to be a good person. There dont seem to be any exceptions to this.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone IS a good person. Only that everyone tries to convince themselves that that their morality is good.
Even serial killers often claim they were doing "gods work" as if somehow murdering innocent people is a good thing.
I think it is in this quality that there is the most hope for humans, even when we loose our way. The fact that everyone, no matter how disturbed they are, is always looking towards a moral compass, even if that compass is broken.
Meta-post: I think this is the third time I've made an account and tried to commit to mastodon. The others times lasted for about as long as it took for the novelty of tooting about mastodon to wear off: once we all got that point, it turned out that nobody really had much in common and engagement slowly dropped to zero.
This time around, I'm actually genuinely enjoying being here. There's a lot more activity, and a far smaller proportion of it seems to be of the boring "mastodon is good and better than twitter" ilk. Maybe the critical mass to keep people around has finally arrived?
@freemo @Demo318 Maybe - but unless you're reading the script for a moving, it's not the same content. Very different content is conveyed in the different mediums. I'm trying to get back to more reading - I'm reading about 50 pages/day of easier reading, and also working through the great books.... right now still in The Brothers Karamazov. That's not a 50 page/day book for me.
Hi, Folks!
I am a tenured Associate Professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia, PA, USA. I have my B.S. Degree with a Double Major in Chemistry and Physics and my Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry with specialties in Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy, Instrument Design, and Automation Software Development. I teach in an interdisciplinary undergraduate program called Integrated Science, Business, and Technology in which our students study the process of developing scientific discoveries into new products and services using collaborative business practices. I develop and teach courses in Energy, Materials, and Informatics, and have personal research interests in Robotics and Machine Intelligence.
After joining Facebook as soon as La Salle was added to the Facebook servers in 2005 and Joining Twitter in 2007, I created the Facebook and Twitter accounts for the University as I was unable to convince our IT department that it was important for the University to have a presence on social media.
After openly sharing my personal Political positions as a Constitutional Conservative and my support of Donald Trump, the backlash on Facebook and Twitter was so severe that I no longer use those networks.
As a Conservative Academic, I understand and deeply experience what it means to be a minority. I'm giving Mastadon a spin in search of respectful conversation. #introduction
@Surasanji
Thanks. On it now giving it a try
@Demo318 I get that. I can still sight read Koine Greek, but couldn't give you cases, and good interpretation. Just bring it out occasionally to impress the kids. Would love to get back to it. I think I got book... Greek for Life or something similar. Need to find that and use it. BUT life is full with work and kids and competing priorities.
@hodot Yep - I hardly ever go to twitter. I went there following a tweet from a news story and saw mostly swarming of trolls just heaping insults back and forth. Seems useless. Seeing some of the threads here I could see the same thing happening, hoping it's different.
@Demo318 @4of92000 I'm not sure there is a radical left visible to the left. The radical right is very visible and easily identified by the right.
I heard someone from another country make the observation that the right has identified how far is too far - so there's an extreme right; but that the left has yet to lay down any line of what is too far, so there is no "radical" left that they've identified. Nothing is too radical that direction to be so identified.
I'm interested in being just not civil, but excellent in interacting with others of different viewpoints in an online world where we can so viciously defend our echo chambers and be so dismissive of other perspectives.
I'm a #Dad of several from toddler to teen, #Husband, #Christian, #Anglican, Unaffiliated #conservatarian, Software #Developer, #Coloradan, Reader of paper #books, Card and BoardGamer, #tea drinker, solving problems and helping millions escape extreme poverty as a #Salesforce #Architect at an amazing nonprofit.