Eurostar has sent me their “you’re travelling tomorrow” email.
My train is Paris - Köln.
No security controls like London services.
Yet they’re telling me to arrive at the station 30 mins ahead. That’s not happening as I’m arriving Gare de Lyon 47 mins before departing Nord 🙂 #CrossBorderRail
@GottaLaff Loving is the only one they are not targeting, difficult to keep Thomas on overturning that one... But if I understand, they're essentially on equal constitutional footing.
The fact that every mainstream news site is now locked behind a paywall is a real boon for the spread of misinformation, because very few right wing sites have paywalls — which means their disinfo and propaganda can spread much more easily. Paywalls are a slow motion disaster.
@Green_Footballs I agree that accurate information needs to be available to counter dis- and misinformation.
But good accurate information costs money, much more, orders of magnitude more, money than fake information. And generative models ("AI") is super charging this unbalanced arms race. Right wing sites don't have paywalls because they don't do research, they're subsidized and anger drives more ads than calm reason.
Paywalls are problematic, but I'm not sure what the alternative is.
Here's a half-formed thought I need to mull a bit on:
Somehow, algorithmic (and especially "AI-driven") decision making tends to only be proposed in contexts where it can only — or mostly — affect those with the least power in the system.
Migrants and asylum seekers.
Prisoners.
Families using any form of state support (child benefits, foodstamps, etc).
Palestinians in Gaza.
It somehow never gets proposed for use-cases where it might affect the wealthy and powerful.
@rysiek Article 22 of the EU #gdpr gives people the right to not be subjected to "decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her."
Quite perceptive that they identified these risks in 2016. Of course, it's allowed if authorized by law (with appropriate safeguards).
@glynmoody The loss of ancient languages is a loss of knowledge, insight, perspective - and a piece of our humanity. Language is a link to our history and to our present. It goes through evolution, same as the selfish gene.
The development of contemporary language can tell us so much about how people see the world now, their fears, their hopes, what they think the future holds.
Language tells us how people saw the world and how people see the world. So it explains what they'll do to the world.
Reading @mekkaokereke's ongoing thread about the importance of onboarding new teammates, thinking about the three different times I was sent to get an engineering onboarding program off the ground at my last job, with a budget of zero dollars and no outcomes that ever laddered up to anywhere.
@jrconlin@mhoye@mekkaokereke I love the on-boarding, I get a chance to give everyone a good run through, answer questions and give them a human face to what can seem like an uncaring massive institution. What I will try to do is to tell them the door is open not just for it issues.
@jrconlin@mhoye@mekkaokereke Tech surely has a horrible history about mentoring (although not just tech, though), but I'm unaware of what you mean with sink or swim and the bear trap. Clearly the loud assholes are still getting too much of the glory without deserving it. Tell me about the bear trap and sink or swim from your experience.
If you ever wonder what institutional racism looks like, disgraced Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is using taxpayer funds to "investigate" whether Boeing's obvious corporate malfeasance is "actually" a result of DEI programs with their subcontractors.
Seriously.
There are now reply-guys all over social media saying "DEI is the real cause of quality issues at Boeing."
Not stock buybacks. Not profit over safety. Minorities are bringing planes down...
@DoesntExist I didn't know DEI spelled McDonnell Douglas 🤔
(as, in aerospace circles apparently they blame Boeing's long decline on a weird reverse buyout of McDonnell Douglas that ended up having MD executives in charge of Boeing)
#Alito and #ClarenceThomas want to keep the 1832 Comstock Act alive and vibrant, illustrating their continuing hostility to abortion and contraception. Whatever these two decide about standing in today’s case, that hostility remains untouched.
@heidilifeldman But somehow one of them draws the line at Loving v Virginia, allowing "interracial" marriage, that is the one right he doesn't seem to want to roll back.
In case it might be useful to anyone else, I just wrote a quick Chrome extension to download all PDFs on CourtListener when there are multiple attachments to one docket entry.
I always use the advanced Web interface for Mastodon to do my "boosting thang" efficiently.
Normally I don't comment on the software. But a sudden change to the Notifications tab in the v4.3.0-nightly.2024-03-18 build is really pissing me off.
I can now only choose between viewing "All" and "Mentions." Gone is the ability to easily filter by notification type in the column header.
WTF?!? This is a hostile UI simplification. Please revert this. Thank you.
@lisamelton@Gargron I didn't even know it existed, now I want it my mobile app! Let advanced interfaces be advanced - users who spend a lot of time with a tool tend to have diverse needs.
If they're just coming to a tool, sure give them a non-threatening interface.
But don't remove tools for power users, they are probably power users because those features allow them to be.
I'm calling it now: he won't select a VP. He's too paranoid, self-centered, and stubborn to imagine "what would we do if you couldn't be president" just as he can't admit that he lost, he can't admit that it might not be him.
@futurebird If I understand the election clauses in Art 2 section 1, the electors have to vote for two people (one from another state). The one with the highest vote becomes President and the one with the second highest vote becomes VP. So if he doesn't pick a VP and wins, Biden becomes VP!
@indivisibleteam With Thomas recused (as he should have been), the Colorado opinion would have been much shorter, just the one liner they all agreed to.
Looks like #EJeanCarroll bond was guaranteed by a subsidiary of the Chubb Group. #Trump appointed Chubb Group CEO Evan Greenberg to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations in 2018. So I guess he owes him one.
@GottaLaff Yes, having just read it, it's only unanimous (or rather per curiam) in it's judgment (that the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court is reversed).
The four women wrote separate opinions, the liberals jointly and Barrett by herself. Barrett disagrees with the majority deciding anythijg about how the federal level can enforce. But seems to decline to join the other women because the court should "turn the temperature down". 1/2
@GottaLaff The liberals have the same conclusion but explains why in detail, even demonstrating that the majority selectively edits a quote from the congressional record, reversing it's meaning. They also explain why the majority does this: "the[y] attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office" and "[they go] beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President." 2/2
We’re in the home stretch for Project Tapestry, so we’ve decided to sweeten the deal. Starting today there’s a new add-on available to all backers: Pixel Portraits! Add this item to your pledge, and one of the Iconfactory artists will create a hand-clicked pixel portrait of you, suitable for use as a social media avatar or whatever else you can think of. Head to the Kickstarter page for more info. Limited spots available, so don’t delay!
@Barredo That assumes local datetime is mostly useful. For me it's mostly not.
I want to be able to set date/time format separate from language. Usually English, sometimes another language I can speak. But I always want #iso8601 (or #rfc3339) date time notation. In windows I can set that easily. Not in browsers, on Linux, most M365 applications don't follow the datetime setting, just the language setting. Some do, some follow the location setting, meaning three different formats.
The reason there is no functional left in the US is because it was stomped on during the Cold War, it was and is opposed by white people who see it as advancing non-white interests (i.e., racism), and the mainstream liberal party attacks it every chance it gets to uphold the status quo.
What remains are scattered groups of academics, activists, writers, and the like, including many Jewish and Black women leftists, who are pointedly ignored by the white wealthy political establishment.
@gwynnion You think it'd ever be possible for anything else than first past the post in US elections (at sufficient scale)? You know, without a second reconstruction?
The “We’re a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy” crowd sure is having a hard time with the idea that the Constitution expressly bans insurrectionists from being on the ballot.
@georgetakei I never understood this (American? Republican?) idea of putting republic and democracy as some kind of opposites. Republics can be dictatorships as long as it's not a monarchy. And kingdoms can be democracies as long as they're constitutional.
A republic quickly turns into a monarchy when democracy is lost. It's only a democracy if you can keep it.
@simon_brooke@georgetakei I hear you, but I think whatever issues they have as democratic societies, and they do have their issues, countries like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada etc., mostly have them for other reasons than being being constitutional monarchies.
Being a republic is not a requirement for democracy, being a monarchy does not preclude democracy. Believing that being a republic somehow protects or makes a country better, more democratic, can be dangerous.
