Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@social.cleverlibre.org

50 WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR TWITTER

You just pin your last tweet, Pete,
Request your archive, Clive,
You don’t need a blue tick, Vic,
Just get yourself free.

Hop on the tusk, Gus,
You don’t need to delete much,
Except your DMs, Jen,
And get yourself free.

Use Debirdify, Di,
Provide some alt tags, Mags,
Add a content warning, Tim,
To post sensitively.

Remember to boost, Ruth
You don't need to deny truth,
Just drop off the perch, Dirk,
And get yourself free.
#VerseThurday #TwitterMigration #FediTips

Not long ago white people discussed having same-race spaces because white women (and white men) were afraid of being in the same spaces as Black men. Then we moved to straight people being forced to shower with gay people. Today transphobic folks are using the same argument.

Virtual Reality is important -- but Meta's "Metaverse" is a mess. Meta/Facebook are undergoing significant layoffs, and the actual extent to which this is related to CEO Zuckerberg's "Metaverse" push is unclear.

What is clear though, is that his Metaverse emphasis may turn out to be one of the worst decisions in tech business history.

Virtual reality -- even at this early stage -- is amazing. The Meta (formerly Oculus/Facebook) Quest headsets are miracles of 21st century technology. It's really impossible to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it directly what VR on these platforms is actually like. "Extraordinary" doesn't even come close.

However, there probably aren't a lot of people who want to live in these headsets -- even if over time they become significantly smaller and lighter -- pretty much all day long. And use for a large part of the day is a foundational assumption of Meta's Metaverse. Nor are there obvious benefits in most cases to interacting with coworkers in that virtual space, vis-a-vis in-person or conventional work at home video meetings and the like.

It's difficult to see how the Metaverse can fly as other than a novelty, except in limited educational, industrial and medical applications, for example. A very, very expensive novelty for Meta and its employees.

Again, that's not to say that virtual reality won't massively impact future lives. It will. Today's systems will appear unbearably crude when viewed from the future. Sci-Fi is replete with tales of how virtual reality -- especially via direct brain interfacing -- might pretty much destroy society entirely -- or perhaps save it.

But that's not where we are now, or in the short or medium-term. And the current Metaverse hype is not really helping much to advance practical virtual reality applications, when it has most people laughing at Zuckerberg's VR avatars.

They are pretty hilarious at that. -L

#VirtualReality #Facebook #Quest #Meta #VR #Oculus

These brave men and women risked their lives to report on enemy activity during WWII using this crude suitcase radio and Morse key. Photographed at the WWII museum in New Orleans, LA

ham radio family history. this is my French great uncle, Georges Destuilliers, amateur radio call sign F8DF. the family lore is that my grandfather F8CW, his brother in law, got him into ham radio. the photos of him at the controls are from 1926. i love that he seems to be in slippers. the QSL card is from 1929. some of these photos survived in a suitcase through WWII even though my grandparents fought in the resistance and moved a lot. #hamradio #amateurradio #qslcard #history

On this day, I am thankful that I am not a turkey.

When I get to 100,000 followers on Mastodon I will officially bring Mastodons back from extinction.

Boost and favorite this post to help make this happen ASAP.