ML2 @mathlover@social.cleverlibre.org

@cadey @karolherbst @mastodonusercount Well, yeah, actually, instances.social had not been discovering new instances automatically for a long time and I fixed it a few hours ago.
While most big instances were already known (and that's why the user count did not increase by a lot), instances.social went from tracking ~ 2200 instances to almost 13000.

I'm not sure how this relates to the "active instances" count on this bot though.

@TheKinrar Never mind. I found your recent note on the matter.

This is awesome, by the way. We had way more instances than we knew about, it seems. :)
https://mastodon.xyz/@TheKinrar/109381797042523890

@mastodonusercount

Instance spike explained here: (Bugfix on instances.social)
https://mastodon.xyz/@TheKinrar/109381797042523890

@mastodonusercount Well let's hope that this doesn't end badly.

I'm not sure which would be worse, bots creating a temporary downtime, or actual users creating long-term slowdown on instances.

There's some takes about the open social Web that I'm realizing are results of the trenches of centralization in how people think people should interact. Globalism (or at least forcing _everyone_ to be subject to a set of approved communication standards) wasn't the way. It erased dozens of cultures and forces us to reintroduce them through a colonial lens. If anything, we should focus on building region-specific networks, overlayed with topic-centric ones and simplify the ability of us to form (and disband) groups. From there, it's golden, IMO. (https://jacky.wtf/2022/11/BJS8)

@mathlover @mastodonusercount Looks like a chunk switched on at 11am and then a whole *stack* at 12 GMT. Very peculiar.

There is far too little recognition of the fact that the US Intelligence Community’s ability to discover Russian invasion plans and share them with Ukraine is one of the greatest intelligence successes of the last 50 years and has had a critical impact on thwarting Putin’s imperialist ambitions.

They knew the Russian war plans better than most of the Russian military executing the invasion (who mostly had no idea they were going to war) and even members of Putin’s Security Council! Remarkable!

After using Mastodon for just one day, I gotta feeling this platform is going to give Twitter a run for its $8.

A battery filled with algae is somehow managing to power this computer for months: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2319584-computer-powered-by-colony-of-blue-green-algae-has-run-for-six-months/

No-one's quite sure what's going on. Possibly the algae is serving as the medium catalyzing the interaction between the anode and cathode in the battery.

Except research shows the anode isn't degrading, which suggests ...

... the *algae* is producing the electrons.

Some thoughts on this in my blog post here, item 6: https://clivethompson.medium.com/lavaforming-ai-writes-heavy-metal-and-drones-that-deliver-hamburger-helper-59b9bcfda9a8

https://www.ft.com/content/028e0109-6e87-42ed-8480-996cf645ce04

Throwing this into the void.

One might make the case qoto.org could use a brand renewal, due zombie issues that are haunting it a little.

So let's interrogate the current state of satisfaction with #QOTO. Let the #fediverse know what YOU have experienced.

Under the hashtag #HappyWithQOTO? (with the❓mark), let us know what you like about the instance AND what you DO NOT.

Perhaps we can crowd-source a gestalt.

#HappyWithQOTO❓

Since the holidays are coming up, I’d like to remind everyone who is thinking of getting a #pet to please consider #adoption from a local shelter. Most of them are likely already at capacity and they usually receive an influx in strays and take-ins once the “cuteness” wears off and people realize just how much of a responsibility it is to take care of them.

@soatok yeah last I checked mfers don’t shoot up gay bars for fun, so sorry if I come of rude by saying, it is a hate crime and any “cautionary wording” sounds like a down play of events, it sincerely pisses me off if I say changed my tv channel to Fox News, their downplaying it, same goes for CNN, MSNBC, because they are all using the same language, they’ve all fallen into the hands of the reactionary right, the Washington Post, NPR, etc have all posted articles legitimatizing transphobic and homophobic lies, and to be honest, we need to hold all of them accountable.

"Jin Jiyan Azadî remember? Turkish war planes are bombing the city of Kobane, which is home to this slogan, home to a revolution that brought an end to ISIS, home to a people that wants to live in dignity & peace. But the world just watches Turkey drop her bombs over Kurds, again."

https://twitter.com/rosaburc/status/1594101143759724544?s=20&t=j0n34Uz8_axlHD2ysSTV4g

I’m always taken aback by the number of True Believers and Charlatans there are in #highered. People looking to buy magic beans and those willing to sell the beans- like, there’s no secret sauce to #education. It’s hard and slow and expensive and there’s no cheating that without serious compromises.
And, I should point out, #tech doesn’t change this basic fact. There’s no product or service that you can buy that takes the place of decent #pedagogy and expertise.

#book recommendation:

Calling Bullshit, by @ct_bergstrom and #jevinwest (https://www.callingbullshit.org/)

From my point of view, this is perhaps the most underrated topic in #education today. The ability to extract valuable #information and truth out of fake news, propaganda, lobbyism and misleading advertisement is not only critical to personal development, but to the survival of #democracy itself. This bocomes today more visible than ever.
Bergstrom and West give insight into the mechanisms of manipulation and deception using data and provide a valuable toolset to dissect infoation and data to, well ... call bullshit. This is accompanied by lots of examples and additional material.
This stuff needs to be tought in school already.

#Twitter
#TwitterMigration
#twitterdown
#twitterexodus
#twitterrefugees

A recent Salon article lists 5 potential problems during a mass migration from Twitter to Mastodon:

https://www.salon.com/2022/11/17/how-mastodon-works--and-why-the-federated-network-wont-be-the-new-twitter_partner/

Despite the silly headline (we would hope it doesn't become a new Twitter) would anyone be interested in commenting on any or all of these 5?

" 1. ... finding a server to join on Mastodon can be hard, especially when a flood of people trying to find servers leads to the creation of waitlists, and the rules and values of the people running a server aren't always easy to find.

2. ... there are significant financial and technical challenges with maintaining servers that grow with the number of members and their activity. After the honeymoon is over, Mastodon users should be prepared for membership fees, NPR-style fundraising campaigns or podcast-style promotional ads to cover server hosting costs that can go into the hundreds of dollars per month per server.

3. ... despite calls for newspapers, universities and governments to host their own servers, there are complicated legal and professional questions that could severely limit public institutions' abilities to moderate their "dorms" effectively. Professional societies with their own methods of verification and established codes of conduct and ethics may be better equipped to host and moderate Mastodon servers than other types of institutions.

4. ... the current "nuclear option" of servers entirely cutting ties with other servers leaves little room for repairing relations and reengagement. Once the tie between two servers is severed, it would be difficult to renew it. This situation could drive destabilizing user migrations and reinforce polarizing echo chambers.

5. ... there are tensions between longtime Mastodon users and newcomers around content warnings, hashtags, post visibility, accessibility and tone that are different from what was popular on Twitter."

People don't realize that Reddit *used* to be open source. https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit