MBridegam

MBridegam, 10 months ago to SanFrancisco

#SanFrancisco friends --

Patrick Marks is retiring and about to close the Green Arcade bookshop on Upper Market. Everything is 40% off. The store's last day open is a week from tomorrow. Hours and info at https://www.thegreenarcade.com .

Wisely chosen collections of West Coast geography, poetry, noir fiction, radical history, local small-press works, maps, notebooks, greeting cards. Lots of good stuff left.

And they need us to spread the word here. Until today they hadn't heard of Mastodon.

ai6yr, 10 months ago to random

Hmm, the #bunker in Las Vegas is still for sale. #Zillow https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3970-Spencer-St-Las-Vegas-NV-89119/7092102_zpid/

JosephMenn, 10 months ago to random

I don’t usually gift breaking news articles before the context and analysis are added. But holy moly, a preliminary injunction against Biden officials communicating with the social media companies. https://wapo.st/44snxyc

MBridegam, 10 months ago to random

Also, owners of Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, et al seem to be intentionally, through destruction, re-creating a world where fast access to good information is expensive. Might also be economically good for newspapers and for newsletter publishers. Just bad for democracy.

MBridegam, 10 months ago to random

Today's turn of the screw on birdsite, like the others, is explained by this thing I've been saying: Owners of social media companies think that social media is mimetic.

They believe that value on social media comes from a few stars who, to them, are the only fully real people on the sites.

They think everyone else keeps showing up just to watch, amplify, and pretend to be friends with the stars.

So they keep trying to put a fence around the stars and charge for access to them.

Doesn't work.

MBridegam, 11 months ago to random

I don't know if this is obvious to Easterners, so fwiw:

Don't rely on your sense of smell to decide if the air is bad. Check PurpleAir or similar -- see https://map.purpleair.com/1/i/mAQI/a10/p604800/cC0#10.2/40.7161/-73.9928 .

Also it helps to look at how sunlight falls on something light-colored outdoors. If it has that poetic Old Master golden look to it, and the time is not near sunset, put on a damn mask.

MBridegam, 11 months ago to random

Just wrote to remind some U.S. East Coast family to wear masks with good filters when air is heavy with wildfire smoke. Realized they aren't used to this and might not remember that masks are good for filtering more than viruses.

MBridegam, 11 months ago to random

I love that the preamble to the United Nations Charter is embedded in the pavement of our farmers' market.

In the photo I posted yesterday, you can see some of the brass letters in the grey stone next to the man with the scooter. Including "...Together in Peace." https://mastodon.social/@MBridegam/110488206873623763

Text of the Charter: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text

Or, if you prefer, Sir Laurence Olivier reading it with music by Aaron Copland: https://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/asset/C106/C1065/

On the San Francisco Conference: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/history-of-the-un/san-francisco-conference

MBridegam, 11 months ago to random

Because it's so obvious as to need stating sometimes:

This high-rolling "anti-drug" propaganda campaign that has been dumped on us lately in downtown San Francisco isn't about public health. Certainly it's not about concern for the wellbeing of users or dealers or even for downtown residents of temperate habits.

It's about damaging progressive political figures in SF politics and harassing activists into silence, who might otherwise get into positions to regulate labor and real estate.

MBridegam, 11 months ago to random

Just learned the Street Spirit newspaper --https://thestreetspirit.org/ -- is about to fold, merging its East Bay distribution network with that of San Francisco's Street Sheet, the paper of the SF Coalition on Homelessness.

Announcement letter from editor Alastair Boone is here: https://twitter.com/alastairboone/status/1660763038746828800?s=20

Donations to save the paper can be made via fiscal sponsor WRAP. Scroll to the end of the announcement here: https://wraphome.org/2023/05/23/for-immediate-release-street-spirit-to-cease-publication/ .

#newstodon #sanfrancisco #oakland

lauren, 1 year ago to random

It appears that Bluesky is creating a content hellscape, in the mistaken belief that by allowing users to hide content, the ecosystem can escape the negative regulatory implications and social damage of permitting such content. Nor will their distributed/federated model prevent these outcomes.

accretionist, 1 year ago to random

deleted_by_author

phil_smith, 1 year ago to twitter

#Twitter vs #Mastodon

Twitter is like a top of the range Lamborghini but you’re trapped in the boot full of broken bottles and it’s being driven over a cliff by a madman.

Mastodon is like sitting in the back of a dilapidated VW camper van, with knackered suspension, no air conditioning, but lots of nice passengers having a sing-song and there’s a dog called Mr. Snuffles.