Brian Beach @bwbeach@social.cleverlibre.org
- GitHub
- https://github.com/bwbeach
- Lame website
- https://www.beachfamily.net
Proud papa/dad/husband. Choral singer. Aspiring linguist. CTO at Backblaze. Usually in Indiana, sometimes on Maui. He/him.
Joined Nov 2022
Ramona matches the new rug. And she thinks it’s comfortable. #dog
I've been procrastinating, but Twitter may not last much longer, so I finally ran Debirdify today.
It did a really good job finding the folks I follow. In fact, it found some that I'd forgotten about.
Twitter had stopped showing me Papers We Love (@paperswelove), with links to cool academic papers. Now that I'm here, I'll be able to see it again.
Brian Beach
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Let’s try this again. Where you at #fediverse? Boosts welcome so we can get the best sample size.
Brian Beach
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"Mastodon Is 'Antiviral' Design"
My essay on this: https://clivethompson.medium.com/mastodon-is-antiviral-design-42f090ab8d51
Twitter (and most big social media) is laser-focused on creating virality -- i.e. training the joint attention of millions of people on one hot post/meme/story/event happening *right this instant* ... and doing it over and over and over again
Mastodon really isn't -- for lots of rich and interesting reasons
It's why some emigres from Twitter find Mastodon so baffling
This place embraces slowness and useful friction
US Politics
I highly recommend this video. Jon Favreau interviews Anand Girihdaradas about his new book, "The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy". I've just downloaded the book onto my Kindle to read on the plane Monday.
Based on the interview, I gather that the book argues that we all need to put in the work to persuade (or be persuaded) on the issues facing our society. Disagreements in a democracy are healthy. What's not healthy is disrespecting the other side, and not acknowledging their humanity.
Girihdaradas says that the aim of the Russian interference in our elections was not to stoke anger and disagreement, but to encourage contempt and dismissal. If we don't think the other side is even worth talking to, there's no hope for effective politics and government.
Brian Beach
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Because I'm on a German server my trending topics are #keinVergessen and #niemalsVergessen. This is because 9 November is the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
These brass plates in the pavements memorialise Jewish people at what were their addresses. I saw this one in Berlin in the spring. #NeverForget
Brian Beach
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Timely paper on #Mastodon and 'innovations in #platform
governance that go beyond the corporate/alt-right platform dichotomy' by @robertwgehl & Diana Zulli
Brian Beach
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Mike Amundsen
The fall of Twitter and the work of creating democratic social spaces https://b.mamund.com/3TmZpXH
social media sites are "...more like a government than a company. And governments that are unaccountable to people are autocracies."
Once in a while, #veritasium creates a video that is stunningly good. This one on #FFT and #nuclear #disarmament was one.
FFTs are something I wish I'd learned in school, and have never taken the time to really learn. This video was the best overview I've seen yet of #fourier transforms. And it also covers the application of FFTs to nuclear treaties, as well as a connection to #Gauss I'd never heard before.
Brian Beach
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Hey, if you want to be "verified" on the fediverse as being _actually you_, you don't need some third party to verify you or to check some list.
Got a domain you own, that's obvs you?
Paste `<a rel="me" href="https://your.server/@your_username">Mastodon</a>`into the html on that domain, add that domain to your profile links, bam, verified at least as comprehensively as a lot of folks on birdsite.
If this seems hard, I will help you! You can verify yourself, promise!
(boosts for reach a-ok)
Brian Beach
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Often times people ask me, "But how do I learn about how ActivityPub works? Where do I get started?"
Friends! The ActivityPub spec itself is here to help you! There's a really lovely story-driven tutorial about ActivityPub right at the top of the spec in the "Overview" section! https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#Overview
Give it a read! I tried really hard to make it easy to follow, and it has beautiful illustrations from @mray!
Brian Beach
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Did you know that if you capitalize each word in a multi-word hashtag, #ScreenReaders can read them as words, but if you leave them lowercase, they can't? Well, now you know! So, for #accessibility, please capitalize words when there's more than one in a hashtag.
Brian Beach
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Hi, this is Greta. You are welcome to follow me here, if you prefer planet earth to planet mars.
I'm a #choral #singer -- baritone.
I've decided to #sing with #BerkshireChoral again next summer. This will be my third time: a week of Haydn and Dillworth at UW in Seattle in June.
You're expected to know the music when you show up. There's a week of rehearsal and classes, then a performance with an orchestra.
It's a little expensive, but I really enjoy spending a solid week doing intensive music.
Brian Beach
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I’m quite impressed by (a) how helpful existing users of Mastodon have been for all of us noobs trying to learn a new system, and (b) by the deep and widely-held sense of a Fediverse culture (the fact that there’s a “we” that uses content warnings more liberally, alt text more frequently, etc) - it’s complete with a sense of place, ethics, identity. It’s fascinating, and makes me glad to have had the good fortune to stumble into it.
Brian Beach
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During the lead-up to the presidential election of 1800, Aaron Burr's followers fretted because unlike other NYC political sects, they had no newspaper dedicated to their cause.
As they put it, without a place to network & communicate, they were "uninfluential atoms."
I think about that all the time these days, when I ponder the savaging of Twitter, & what it's seemingly supposed to accomplish...
Last year, I did [#AdventOfCode](https://adventofcode.com) as an exercise to learn #rust. It's a sequence of daily programming puzzles in December. I'm thinking of doing it again this year and learning #haskell.
I don't try for speed, and I don't try to be the first to solve a problem. I take my time and solve each day's problem a day or two later. It would be nice to have people to chat with about solutions if anybody else is interested.
Brian Beach
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Just kicked off a canvas in Beaverton with elected officials and local Oregon #MomsDemandAction volunteers who are getting out the vote for #TinaKotek, gun sense candidates up and down the ballot, and #Measure114. #orleg #momsareeverywhere
Brian Beach
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📣 For fellow Mastodon rookies - I understand that ‘favouriting’ things doesn’t amplify them to your followers in the way that ‘liking’ would have on Twitter
So if you want to share something, you need to ‘boost’ it
Trying to get my head round a different threshold for sharing things on here!
Brian Beach
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Science weights in on the twitter migration by scientists.
https://www.science.org/content/article/musk-reshapes-twitter-academics-ponder-taking-flight
- GitHub
- https://github.com/bwbeach
- Lame website
- https://www.beachfamily.net
Proud papa/dad/husband. Choral singer. Aspiring linguist. CTO at Backblaze. Usually in Indiana, sometimes on Maui. He/him.
Joined Nov 2022
