"... an unusually bad 'flu season is buffeting the country. Doctor say the strain, originating in China, is particularly severe. Children and the elderly are most at risk."
... and Sheldon, panicking, says;
"We're all gonna die!"
... then his mother Mary says;
"But you need to understand that sometimes the news says those things just to scare people."
@onepict@smallcircles Sadly, @strypey has this backwards. Masks, boosters, and other public health measures are how we get to go about our normal activities without interruption.
Instead, bands I want to see cancel tour dates because the band is sick. Friends I want to see are either temporarily unavailable because they have COVID, indefinitely unavailable because they have long COVID, or dead like my grandma who died with COVID. Each infection rolls the dice for new variants that kill & maim.
@onepict@smallcircles
If these folks who think that we go on too much about masks and boosters actually wanted to be in community with us, they'd plan COVID-safer events instead of deciding that "rational" people need to accept preventable infectious disease and that "normal" people need to accept exclusion of people with disabilities.
I've only just got back in the studio for the new calendar year, and there's already yet another online mob forming against freedom of expression, this time targeting SubStack. I agree with #ElleGriffin;
@carl_klitscher
> I personally won't be reading you on Substack for "reasons" but that doesn't negate the value
Fair enough, and thanks for the feedback.
I'm planning to eventually follow @richdecibels and @pluralistic's examples and publish the same long form writing on multiple platforms, including right here in the 'verse. I'm hoping the changes wrought by the EU DMA will enable POSSE software that publishes to a server in the verse and other platforms with one click.
I'm writing a blog piece about the Digital Markets Act in the EU, and legislation of the same name in the UK. As well as others laws in play or on the horizon to regulate digital services.
@strypey It’s worth noting that Gmail was specifically excluded from the gatekeeper definition.
My superficial knee-jerk thought was “of course, since 3rd parties can interoperate with gmail already per email standards.” But then consider that gmail imposes arbitrary restrictions on who may connect to gmail’s server. ~20 years ago gmail cut me off by deciding to reject all residential IP addresses despite RFC standards compliance by senders. Google broke email & made it exclusive. Likewise with MS.
Either way there’s something shitty here. If the EC was well-informed about gmail when they nixed gmail as a gatekeeper, then we can expect the EC to also use a very long leash with gatekeepers & allow them to maintain a certain level of exclusivity as gmail does. The only other narrative is ignorance-- that the EC is unaware that gmail is an access-restricted walled garden that discriminates on the basis of IP address. Either way, this is not good for consumers.
"After quizzing these companies about data practices, I learned that most are sharing what’s happening in my home with Amazon, too. Our data is the price of entry for devices that want to integrate with Alexa. Amazon’s not only eavesdropping — it’s tracking everything happening in your home."
#GeoffreyAFowler, 'Alexa has been eavesdropping on you this whole time'
@dsfgs
Making grand claims about how the fediverse can be used might seem like a good way to bring more people over from the DataFarms. It isn't.
If people come here with expectations the tech can't currently meet, they will feel disappointed and misled. They'll go back to the DataFarms and tell everyone how limited the verse is, and they'll be disinclined to try it again.
Right now? Some of them definitely aren't, unless you include Matrix as part of the fediverse, which I don't. The fediverse is the network of ActivityPub implementations. Matrix implementations form an entirely separate network.
Even if every feature FB offers had an AP replacement ready to use, as I said;
> For the verse to be a drop-in replacement, you'd need to be able to use one fediverse account
One of the biggest problems with the phrase "artificial intelligence" is that decades of criti-hyping sci-fi has endowed it with the meaning "simulated mind". But human technology is no closer to creating that than we were in the 1950s. As AI experts like #DavidChapman tirelessly point out, humans haven't even developed a philosophy of mind accurate enough to tell us what a simulated mind would be simulating.
@bsmall2
> Robotic Automation now will just worsen bad trends
Again, this depends on whether we're talking about robots developed by neo-feudalists or neo-Luddites.
Is the design goal collecting rents with proprietary tech, from even larger monocrop farms, employing even fewer people? Or is it a more solarpunk vision, of creating small, non-proprietary robots that can assist home growers and small farmers, making heritage varieties more economic?
@bsmall2
> Unless you are imagining a way that local communities will be able to design and produce the machines that will fit their needs
Some sort of... open source hardware... 3D printing... fab lab kind of approach to manufacture? Yes, this is what I'm imagining. It may not be viable. Semiconductors may be impossible to make without industrial society.
Just like reimplementing UNIX under a free license, we won't know if it can be done until we try. But check out;
"If you're only prepared to make popular decisions as a leader though, then what is the point of leadership? It's not really leadership is it. It's just focus-grouping. It's just polling. Instead of laying out a platform, debating its merits, and pursuing a really distinct vision, you might as well just have a smartphone app or a website, on which everyone votes for every little policy."
@strypey What I would like to see (and I realise you are in .nz and I am in .au and you have that interesting proportional system already, so its different...)
is an MP elected on the basis of "these 10K (pick a number) people voted for me" not "the most people in this electorate voted for me".
(Lots of details to be worked out. Does it need to be "you can only vote for people within (pick a number) 1000km of you"?)
but actual representation!
If you want democracy, you have to participate. Otherwise you're relying on benevolent dictatorship as a substitute. The failure modes of that form of governance are pretty obvious, and have been playing out in anglophone countries since the neoliberal coups of the 1980s. Key, Ardern, Hipkins and Luxon are all products of this rot.
Holy-christ-on-a-stick. #Listening to the Northland candidates debate is like being one of the few people at the dance party who aren't tripping balls:
Over the past few years, our rural communities have been subject to targeted media manipulation. A small wave within a tsunami of right-wing propaganda across the anglophone world. Some coordinated by state actors (particularly US, China, and Russia), but most of it coming from the think-tank-industrial-complex, funded by US billionaires like the Koch Brothers (well, the surviving one):
"... [Camus] says the conservatives, they're not happy until they get back to some golden age, and he says the revolutionaries aren't happy until they get to some utopia... then he said, but the rebel; the rebel is the one who enjoys the struggle itself, and who doesn't sacrifice people on the alter of the past or the future. But sees in the action of emancipatory struggle, liberation itself."
Tensions are running high over the imminent entry of InstaGrope into the verse, via Meta's Threads server. Some of you may have noticed me speaking up against the Anti-Fedi Meta Pact, and I want to clarify a few things I think are important.
I'm not arguing against admins moderating their servers' relationships with others. That's nobody's business but theirs. If an admin makes a case-by-case decision to defederate from Threads, well, that's fediverse moderation working as intended.
The problem I have with this, respectfully, is that it has such "Why not stay within the Democratic Party and fight for Left policies within it?" vibes, when actual experience has shown that that approach has utterly failed to achieve any progress.
The issue here is not individual instances federating with Meta/Threads; it's the aggressive threat that Meta's fundamental operational business/social media model is to the very concept of the Fediverse.
"One under-appreciated consequence of believing there is such a thing as the “one best way” in every aspect of life is subsequently living with the unyielding pressure to discover it and the inevitable and perpetual frustration of failing to achieve it."
... while many workers struggle to afford the basics of life, let alone "luxuries" like a night out. This hurts them, but also the businesses who sell those things. The grocery stores throwing out unsold food. The cinemas screening films to 2 people per session.
This is what happens when economies don't redistribute enough money to workers. Living standards of drop, and productive businesses suffer.
If it's set up so they mostly get it from investment, this has very different effects. It doesn't facilitate getting goods and services to people. It centralises decision-making about which business gets how much money in the hands of those with most money to invest. It also increases the coat of economic rents to the economy (interest, dividends etc).
This is free markets 101. It's hilarious that you think anything involving money and markets has anything to do with "communism" 🤣
BTW when Adam Smith and his contemporaries talked about "free markets" they meant free of economic rents, not free from regulation. There's a little-known quote where Smith talks about what a bad idea it is to let financiers anywhere near the levers of government. Because they inevitably distort market regulation to increase their opportunities to extract rents.
This has been happening for decades, and it's what people mean when we criticise "neoliberalism".
What's particularly sad, is former TOP leader Geoff Simmons dredging up BioTech corporate PR talking points from the 1990s.
" (GE) could be used for things like removing the genetic trigger for cystic fibrosis in a person, making manuka more resilient to myrtle rust or helping kauri trees fight dieback."
"... it has identical outcomes to selective breeding."
"[GE can help with] feeding 10 billion people by 2050 while also reducing our impact on the environment."
As I may have said here before, I support dropping the 5% threshold for getting MPs in NZ MMP elections, or at least reducing it. I also agree with Lawrence Lessig that representative govt can't work - to the degree it works at all - if the wealthy can buy policy loyalty with limitless donations to political parties.
"If you want to absolutely destroy a website that is all about building communities and meeting new people, then aim for the site and all communities to always be growing as much as possible. Make that a design goal of the site. Pump those subscriber numbers up."
"Other nations such as Norway have lived to regret the introduction of wealth taxes, as the wealthy leave for lower tax jurisdictions and take their money with them."
Really Stuart? Well I've got a message for sociopaths who profit massively from businesses built on top of public resources, then leave the country rather than contribute back to them. Don't let the door hit you in the arse on your way out.
"The National Party have been unequivocally clear about tax. We will not implement a capital gains tax or a wealth tax. We believe if New Zealanders want to get ahead, work hard and take calculated risks in investment, then they should not be punished through..."
As the recent IRD report makes very clear, the highest earners pay the least tax as a proportion of their total income. It's shocking that an MP can publish this kind of blatant lie without consequences, and get it distributed by one of our major news publishers.
@sj_zero
> It does take a lot more resources to do a milk run and presumably would also be so with a high speed rail line
I doubt it. Rail corridors run through many population centres between A and B (eg, NY and LA). To service those places, all a train has to do is stop there on the way from A to B.
Doing the same thing by air requires a scheduled flight between each place on the milk run. Using far more fuel than a high altitude direct flight.
Note to anyone who references the #ParadoxOfTolerance. What Karl Popper said was;
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant..."
With the exception of a few naive teenage libertarians, nobody is advocating unlimited tolerance. We're just arguing against abandoning tolerance to the point of dehumanizing people who hold intolerant views.
So the vast majority of handwaves at the PoT are slaughtering strawmen. The obvious response being to quote Nietzsche...
@tetrislife
I've held space many times, for friends having psychotic breaks. It's not unknown for people in that state to become violent, even deadly. If I can be patient with them, in person, there's very few people online I can't be patient with.
Now some people can't do that, or just don't want to. That's needn't be seen as a failing on their part. But it is a limitation, and I'm glad not to be limited in that way. I suspect my friends and their families and communities are too.
Many well-meaning groups run websites to support people working for social change. Often change that would threaten the selfish, short-term interests of the wealthy and powerful.
Far too many of those websites serve spyware like GoogleTagManager to their visitors, which collect their personal data. This personal data is then fully available to any governments that participates in the "5 Eyes" spy alliance, using tools like #XKeyScore:
There are many names for organizations that collect personal information about their supporters and pass them on to the authorities; none of them complimentary. The most polite one I can think of is "honeypot".
If you run websites that serve radical change-makers, please make sure they're not serving JavaScript from third-party domains. Also, please audit the JS you serve from your own domain - and all it's dependencies - to ensure it's not serving spyware. Do it regularly.
I'll have to think about this. I agree with the diagnosis but I'm not so sure about the treatment plan. Yes, even the good journalists employed by The Guardian are compromised by their owners, advertisers, and editors, as well as the self-censorship that comes with working for a comprised publication. And yet, it seems to me that refusing to link to the useful articles there is like refusing to link to good software projects because they're hosted on GH.