@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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MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

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

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

"Schedule send" is such a great email feature for those of us who actually get stuff done in the middle of the night.

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

Someone saying what's been slowly but increasingly apparent to me for a few years now: recycling plastic is just greenwashing. It's time to quit wasting our time doing it.

https://wapo.st/49O46lM

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

Hats off:

"Billionaire Elon Musk, found dead in his home last night, says it is not the role of social media networks to determine what is true or not.

The Tesla and X owner, who is believed to have died from a heroin overdose while watching animal porn, said he would fight any attempts to stop the spread of misinformation on his platform"

https://theshovel.com.au/2024/04/23/elon-musk-dead-at-52-misinformation-laws/

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@inquiline

Bill Murray, in a tux, gives a standing ovation

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

I'm seeing a thing on my feed about the GOP now turning against polio vaccines, and look, please at some point start listening to folks when we say that scientific facts not only require work in order to be made, but require work in order to keep extant.

The point of this isn't to undermine science, it's to save it. At some point after you've watched enough "indisputable facts" get pulled into dispute, maybe stop writing us off as the problem?

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

So @molly0xfff wrote about LLMs and it doesn't disappoint in the least.

And yes I absolutely LOLed loudly at this bit.

https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

Got called "unseemly and childishly ridiculous" by a man in my mentions today, how's your Mastodon going

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@inquiline

Given that my profile photo marks me pretty clearly as a white dude, I've been 'splained to in the replies an absurd amount lately. (By other white dudes, naturally, but anyway.)

I mean I'm all for egalitarianism, but that wasn't what I had in mind.

luis_in_brief, to random
@luis_in_brief@social.coop avatar

Gotta admit I found it pretty irritating, in the xz discussion of the last two weeks, that some people declared confidently "you can't pay maintainers". (cc @ehashman)

It isn't easy to pay maintainers, but it can be done: at Tidelift, we've been doing it for years. So I figured I'd write up how we do it and what we've learned. And yes, it's a HOWTO. Be glad I also avoided an FAQ ;)

https://blog.tidelift.com/paying-maintainers-the-howto

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@luis_in_brief @ehashman

Right, now I'm going to go around throwing this Shannon Mattern rticle at everyone again. (This is specifically about the built physical environment but the lessons from it are extremely relevant and the parallels obvious IMO.)

https://placesjournal.org/article/maintenance-and-care/

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

To whatever reactionary shithead called in a bomb threat to the main Durham County Library today, both interrupting planned LGBTQ+ events and keeping my kids from going to their favorite library: Eat shit.

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

Seattle Times has a new report on how Boeing's current challenges can be traced to prioritizing shareholders over everything for 25 years, slashing costs and outsourcing key work, weakening unions, and pressuring suppliers, leading to loss of its core competency.

This is a great example of how the stock market rewards short term thinking leading to companies sabotaging themselves. Intel is in the same boat.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-long-fall-and-how-it-might-recover/

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@carnage4life

It's insane -- these companies basically have license to print money for decades on end just by doing the same basic job over and over again. But the stock market gets antsy and wants higher returns. And it all comes crashing down. (Literally, in Boeing's case.)

DataDrivenMD, to random
@DataDrivenMD@fedified.com avatar

Maybe it's because I'm a naturalized U.S. citizen, but when people threaten to withhold their vote in protest I can't help but wonder what the actual fuck they think they're accomplishing by a) demoting themselves into non-citizen status and b) announcing their asinine decision

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@yaldi @DataDrivenMD

There has never been a US President who was not in some ways repellent.

Voting is if nothing else harm reduction. There's an obvious choice here.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Honest question for white people that don't consider themselves racist:

White nationalists have been vocal about their attacks on DEI. These are literally the same people that talk about Charlottesville, Jan 6th, and ethnic cleansing.

They've laid out exactly how they plan to destroy DEI.

  1. Make false claims that DEI is about giving unqualified Black people an unfair advantage

  2. Work with racist politicians to use this as a pretext to make all DEI programs illegal.

1/n

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@mekkaokereke

I have not said it one-on-one would feel a bit like the dad in Get Out saying he voted for Obama twice. Like I was asking for an anti-racist cookie.

Beyond that I have not spoken about it in employee forums except obliquely, and to mention supporting our existing DEI efforts. (As a state employee in NC, we may soon have to figure out how to do DEI without calling it DEI because of our idiotic legilsature.)

weilawei, to random
@weilawei@mastodon.online avatar

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@violetmadder @weilawei

I am no fan of Buttigieg from his campaign days but all my transpo advocacy friends have been pleasantly surprised with his USDOT. Actually doing shit we should have been doing for a long time but haven't, across modes.

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

For all sysadmins and security types out there, if you haven't seen this, you'll want to. I haven't groked the exploit enough to know exactly what the vulnerability is, but "looks bad" seems like a pretty big understatement here.

https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/29/4

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

Are we allowed to be glad Lieberman is dead on here

(affirmations only)

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@adamgreenfield @inquiline

To me he was 5x worse than Harris. I was generally a Gore fan but the Lieberman decision was absolutely horrible. Dick Cheney is a snarling, charisma-less asshole and Lieberman flat lost a debate to him, badly, then decided he did awesome and needed to run for President himself.

As far as being glad, I keep a high bar for celebrating deaths but the fucker was still heavily involved in "No Labels." There's actual tangible good in him exiting the political scene.

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

AW YEAH

hazelweakly, to random
@hazelweakly@hachyderm.io avatar

as a USER OF CALENDARS I want EVERY CALENDAR SYSTEM TO BE INCOMPATIBLE so that I can

CONTINUE TO LOSE MY FUCKIN MIND SYNCING CALENDARS MANUALLY

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@hazelweakly It’s all bad but Outlook is the absolute worst about this.

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

Assigned Shannon Mattern's essay on maintenance and care today:

"Agreements about what things deserve repair — and what “good repair” entails — are always contingent and contextual. If we wish to better support the critical work performed by the world’s maintainers, we must recognize that maintenance encompasses a world of standards, tools, practices, and wisdom.

Sometimes it deploys machine learning; other times, a mop."

https://placesjournal.org/article/maintenance-and-care/

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@inquiline

Legitimately one of the greatest articles I've ever read about architecture, planning, tech, all that. If I ever teach anything that I could assign it in I'm assigning it.

Everyone should read that article.

MichaelTBacon, to random
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

In re LRTs, if your response to empowering rurality is that this automatically means empowering white, conservative, reactionary voices, I want you to stop for a moment and rethink that.

jacob, to random
@jacob@jacobian.org avatar

There's something profoundly amazing about the fact that I've been able to work in computers for 25 years and still basically know almost nothing about how networking actually works.

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@lukasa @jacob @glyph

I took a CS course on networking in the 90s and so I have a decent idea of what's going on down there. It was a fun diversion.

There has been approximately 5 times since then when knowledge of things below the data link layer did me any good since then.

(The one lesson I would pass to everyone is, "no, TCP is not always better than UDP, there are times you really want UDP. But okay yeah, most of the time you want TCP, fine.")

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@ptesarik @lukasa @jacob @glyph

Baby steps. Just getting people to stop saying, "LOL UDP it's stupid why would you use it" is a lot.

Cmastication, to random
@Cmastication@mastodon.social avatar

Yeah, I think it’s fair to say the parasite that caused the Irish famine was British Imperialism. That seems well substantiated.

From: @sarahtaber
https://mastodon.online/@sarahtaber/112114361702852508

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@Cmastication @sarahtaber

I mean mostly yes but I gotta be slightly pedantic and say it was colonialized appropriation and exploitation of land.

Slightly less well-known is that the Highlands of Scotland experienced a similar famine and depopulation due to the blight. And it was often Scottish landlords chucking people off the land.

And the land struggles that were already ongoing that the famine hit in the middle of are still going to this day.

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@Cmastication @sarahtaber

It's very easy (and certainly not 100% wrong) to portray it as an English thing but as @sarahtaber alludes to in that thread, it was much more landlords capitalizing Irish grain exports (in the Scottish highlands it was primarily wool for military uniforms but anyway) and refusing to give up those profits.

They wanted to be part elite urban Anglicized society and land exploitation was the ticket.

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

Via Ron Filipkowski:

Co-Chair Lara says they will now be recruiting & training people to get jobs as poll workers who handle & count ballots, and says Trump will end early and mail-in voting in America if elected.

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@GottaLaff

Countercountercounterpoint: Kerry ran an incredibly shitty campaign and had idiots advising him to build everything around his identity as a veteran, which made him incredibly vulnerable to swiftboating. Also, he has the charisma of beige latex paint.

MichaelTBacon,
@MichaelTBacon@social.coop avatar

@GottaLaff Like seriously, exactly one Democratic candidate has lost the popular vote since 1988 . . .

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