Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

Part of what happens when stores turn into online services is you lose physical spaces dedicated to SOMETHING, and which have their own aesthetics. Like a stationery shop is a whole universe dedicated to the art of sending cards and letters. A hardware store is dedicated to fixing things. A movie shop is dedicated to film. They're like little churches, but we lose them because online shopping is easier.

No but for real:

MasterCard getting to determine what counts as "adult" content, including drawn images like figure studies?

Patreon handing your face data & ID information over to a 3rd party?

That 3rd party claiming a right to use that data to train their facial recognition "AI"?

All bad.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/88720290

In addition to the great coverage of the unionizing efforts of VTGLU and VT United Campus Workers, it's really nice to see WVTF the local @NPR affiliate, reference Virginia Tech's commitment to graduate stipend increases to a living wage:
https://www.wvtf.org/news/2023-09-05/two-new-labor-unions-rally-on-virginia-tech-campus

Some people talk about the need to fight for X but there's nothing to fight for. They won unless Musk sells it or something.

Social media before today's social media was ephemeral. It's not the same thing as sharing an internet with questionable and or legit bad folks... it's like sharing your fav hangout with them after they took it over and brought a bunch of weirdos with them.

@dan613 I got hit with five or six hardcore Nazi genocidal n-word-slinging posts in my feed a month or so ago, which I of course reported. And I don’t doubt that there are plenty of less crudely expressed racist messages slithering around on Mastodon as well.

Black Mastodon users are writing in frustration that people don’t believe that #racism exists on Mastodon. As a new moderator, I can assure you that racism is very real here. Be sure to report it when you find it so that we can stamp it out.

Greetings from the @CMSexperiment control room where I’m presently on shift. We have permanent video connections to other remote control rooms, tonight (or should I say this afternoon 😇) Jingli is connecting from @fermilab to do the data quality monitoring!

I found this a while ago and my sincere reaction was “I guess emacs needs its own power supply now. That sort of makes sense.”

https://store.cwc-group.com/emacs.html

New daily record highs at all major local stations.

DC: 98
Dulles: 99 (hottest in Sept, second in a row)
Baltimore: 99

First time DC has had its hottest day of the year in Sept since 1970.

Still at least two more days we can try for 100 ahead. #dcwx #mdwx #vawx #dmvwx

For all the folks starting their #PhD (or their master thesis) today - a reminder why your PhD advisor can solve a problem so "easily" ...

#astrodon #academia #AcademiChatter #research

Confess: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/confess
#smbc #hiveworks #comics

If any US-based person is concerned about seemingly not being able to fully, functionally, and easily delete their data from twitter in order to meaningfully opt out of having said data used to train Elon Musk's "AI", here's a helpful video on how to file an FTC complaint:

https://consumer.ftc.gov/media/video-0054-how-file-complaint-federal-trade-commission

A study on #UniversalBasicIncome #UBI from 2020 is now peer-reviewed and published. The study gave $7500 cash to homeless people in Vancouver and compared their outcome versus a control group. The result was clear:

“The recipients of the cash transfers did not increase spending on drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, but did increase spending on food, clothes, and rent, according to self-reports. What’s more, they moved into stable housing faster and saved enough money to maintain financial security over the year of follow-up.”

Further, each person who moved into stable housing one year faster saves the city over $8000 per year, which makes this program cheaper than existing housing programs.

Universal Basic Income works. It sounds so obvious when you say it out loud, but: giving people cash lifts them out of poverty. We need to do that more.

“A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it.”

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21528569/homeless-poverty-cash-transfer-canada-new-leaf-project

http://smbc-comics.com/comic/stress-2

Is there a specific term for modern podcasts that are more or less like talkradio used to be? Meaning ones that are mostly a guy talking and interviewing people?

If you want to know where a company stands on the use of forced labour in its supply chain,

Take a look at this: https://knowthechain.org/benchmark/

And, this group is working to increase visibility

https://techagainsttrafficking.org/

#supplychain #forcedlabour #equity
H/t to JShelton who posted this elsewhere