@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

MichaelTBacon

@MichaelTBacon@social.coop

Day job: #geospatial #datascience
Academic research: #LandReform #STS #Scotland #Ecology #Landscape #CommunityOwnership

STS, planning geography, ecology, geospatial data, stuff.

I live and raise a fuss in #Durham #NC

MA Geography
Ph.D. Constructed Environment

He/him http://git.io/vxjC7

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RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Friends: Who are you listening to right now?

Me, very hip: Oh, you wouldn't know them.

This is a song playing the piano and howling and barking, and legit, he sounds pretty good. I've heard much more insane Mingus albums

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@KydiaMusic @pattykimura @latelesley @stevenray

Yeah, I was into it at first but the uncanny valley of there being too many actual chords and the tones being off threw it off.

I honestly like the original audio better. Mostly because the dog is clearly into it.

https://social.coop/@Carnivius@masto.ai/112529858734038207

jonny, (edited ) to random
@jonny@neuromatch.social avatar

Dear computer friends - as information workers on strike at , im trying to think of some digital picketing strategies. Ways of incurring additional costs and disruptions to operation that are within the bounds of the law. One of the biggest levers we have is grading, and UCLA uses a fork (?) of Canvas (bruinlearn). Does anyone have any bright ideas for how to run up a cloud bill? Something along the lines of uploading enormous files to course pages, asking students to download a directory with millions of files as a .zip, that kinda thing. Something thats an arms length shy of CFAA but something that could let our students and remote colleagues help with the strike. Any ideas? Boosts welcome. (I do not speak for or represent UAW 4811 in any way as a rank and file member)

Edit: dm me for my signal if you are curious about such a topic and are not necessarily volunteering any information in the affirmative or negative

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@jonny It depends on how their install is configured. Storage usually isn't that expensive and neither is networking. However, large numbers of instances running are. Thousands of simultaneous logins might do the trick.

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@jonny Generally apps are scaled to handle average load, and the thing that has broken apps since time immemorial is sudden simultaneous use of by lots of users.

sue, to random
@sue@glasgow.social avatar

Folk using "algorithms" to refer to everything that's wrong with the web the way folk believed "miasma" caused the spread of disease pre sanitation

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@sue

It's an ongoing frustration for me that federation is seen as the end goal, instead of something that opens other possibilities for improvement.

Federation could be a really good first step, but we need to follow it up with assemblages of federated instances that collectively make agreements on rules and norms that provide safety.

And we keep, you know, not doing that.

GeePawHill, to random
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social avatar

People advise one not to use Chrome -- I don't -- but they also advise to use Firefox, instead -- I do -- but for the record, it is not clear to me that any of these browsers can be trusted.

It feels more like Chrome is just a chapter ahead, and the others will soon catch up.

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@GeePawHill

It's never going to be a pure experience, but I find that Firefox with Privacy Badger installed and a generous use of account containers to segment your life a little bit is at least considerably better than many of the alternatives.

sue, to random
@sue@glasgow.social avatar

Not linking directly because I don't want to shit on projects I believe are genuinely trying to make the web better, but every time I see a post about "the small web" or a more "humane" web or whatever that includes phrases like this about content: "created without the motivation of financial gain" I sigh so deeply lol

I am begging ethical web enthusiasts to understand what an extreme privilege it is to spend time working on something without worrying about money

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@sue I absolutely see where you are coming from on this, but some of the web that the nostalgia threads are talking about refers to a time when the software on the Internet was produced by people being paid By government or private grants in aid of research.

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@sue I fully realize that version of the web necessarily served far smaller population, but I don’t think it’s wrong to want to the money that underlies the production, care, and feeding of the web to not come from defense contracts, privacy invasions, and pyramid schemes.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want state funding mixed with cooperative sources to create at least a larger corner of the web that is apart from all of that.

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

The headline on @404mediaco 's podcast about how Google just got worse again with AI (which I didn't listen to because I almost never listen to podcasts but anyway) just made me hit upon a question:

Is Google the new GM?

This would have seemed ridiculous just a few years ago, but the combination of rent seeking, incompetence, and chimera-chasing is starting to seem, well, familiar.

amcasari, to random
@amcasari@hachyderm.io avatar

Sam Altman may not be able to eat in SF, but Bernie Sanders can waltz in your froyo shop in Vermont and no one blinks an eye.

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@amcasari I saw Bernie in a Columbia SC hotel getting breakfast from the hot bar. Apparently the staff said he was a dick to them. But it was still low key.

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

It's not an ethics crisis; it's a structural, corruption-by-design crisis

#SCOTUS #uspol

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@inquiline We should openly talk about the Federalist Society as a successful decades-long conspiracy to corrupt the judiciary.

aral, to SmallWeb
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Code drunk, debug sober. Bah! Just fixed three bugs after a pint of Tundra.

(This is in no way meant to be role model behaviour. There just happens to be a lovely pub by the seashore in Bray where you can sit outside and it’s a nice distraction in the evenings when the weather is good and I don’t feel I’ve done enough in the day* and need a change of scene.)

  • It doesn’t help that I never think I’ve done enough in the day. 🤷‍♂️

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@aral I have written some amazing code between the hours of 1 and 4 in the morning. Seriously.

Binder, to random
@Binder@petrous.vislae.town avatar

Linux doesn’t need to change to win the desktop wars. It just needs to hold steady while Windows shits itself to death trying to swallow AI.

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@kithrup @Binder

IKR?

I was trying out different Linux desktop options in the mid-90s, thinking, yeah, this just needs a few tweaks, but in a few years this'll be everywhere . . .

And TBF the cores of open source OSes are everywhere, they're just called ChromeOS, iOS, Android, and MacOS.

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@Binder

Linux is 3-5 years away from totally owning the desktop, just as it has been for about 30 years now.

pvonhellermannn, to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

Anyone else struggling to see any prospects for turning things around? I will keep on trying to do what I can. Of course. But 2024 is challenging.

Last year did a post about how I wasn’t motivated by hope but by . I now realise i got that wrong. Hope isn’t just fluffy “things will be alright”. Hope is some flicker of belief that you and others can change things; I did, actually, have “hope”. Less now, but will keep going.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/13/banks-almost-7tn-fossil-fuel-firms-paris-deal-report

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@pvonhellermannn

I have been saying "hope is both irrational and necessary" for several years now, but I will say that I was despairing for about a decade that we weren't taking the first steps that we had to in order to get the snowballing sociotechnical change that would stop.

The last few years we've finally started taking those steps. I don't know if we'll keep going or if it's too late. But I'm at least encouraged that that's happened.

indivisibleteam, to random
@indivisibleteam@mastodon.social avatar

Before us are two very different visions for our country. We can win this election, defeat Trump (again) and protect our freedoms — if we do the work: https://act.indivisible.org/survey/majority_over_maga_signup?source=mastodon&medium=directpost

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@LinuxAndYarn

FWIW I had to look it up but they tried and it failed because of the filibuster. They can't change the rules without 51 votes and that means the SineManchins can't just be out of town, but have to agree.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-senators-go-on-the-record-with-their-stance-on-abortion

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

A periodic boost to Anera, an organization that does an immense amount of aid in the occupied Palestine territories and has been confirmed by my friends who used to live in the West Bank as a very effective organization.

(I have a monthly donation to them.)

https://www.anera.org/

MichaelTBacon, to uk
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

To all the folks in the , does anyone know of an STS treatment of the Horizon scandal?

MichaelTBacon, to sts
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

Oh, man, it's happening. There was an @sts article (or book?) that I really thought was Maria Kaika but very apparently isn't about three phases of modernist water management—something like ascendant, triumphant, and chastened, or some such.

I went to look it up tonight in the old references and I cannot find it.

irizoris, to random
@irizoris@hcommons.social avatar

@futurebird Brood XIX cicada and ants at my Nashville bus stop this morning

Cicada and ants

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@futurebird @irizoris I don't know of any rigorous work on it, but I assume the basic eco-evolutionary theory on why the broods come out so rarely and in such numbers is the same as trees masting—that the sheer abundance of a prey species all at once and not that often just overwhelms the predator ability to consume, so that even though it's a feeding bonanza more cicadas get to mate and reproduce than get eaten?

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

I realize that the Fedi at this point, at least my network, skews pretty anti-religious, and fine. But please realize how much this means to so many people and how much it will mean to people in the future. You don't have to agree with an institution's theology to celebrate people no longer feeling hurt and hated and excluded.

https://www.theassemblync.com/culture/religion/united-methodist-church-charlotte-gay-marriage

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

“This is a day of rejoicing. But, my God, this is a day of lament,” Ryde told the circle. “There are so many who weren’t here for this moment because they had to go somewhere else to care for themselves. … I am so grateful right now. But I can’t rejoice without naming that.”

Parker stood beside Ryde and, for the first time during the conference, he let himself cry happy tears. “This is a space of trauma and pain,” he later told me. “This moment was the first time I could let that go.”

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar
MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

Side rant: You know what's really stupid about "microblogging" the way it evolved under the bird site and continues under many Fedi instances, including @social.coop? I can only post 500 characters of text, which is literally smaller than the minimum file size on most operating systems. But I can post a damn screenshot and put 1500 characters in the alt-text, which even with low res and grayscale is probably 100k.

Just let me write actual text!!!

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

Anyone know WTF is happening at UNC or why we just went to critical emergency response?

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar
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