@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

nowan

@nowan@mastodon.social

Stay-at-home parent worried about the future of democracy, enjoys cooking, baking, and crochet.

#philosophy #linux #cooking #food #baking #sourdough #ryebread #crochet #amigurumi

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petealexharris, to random
@petealexharris@mastodon.scot avatar

It occurs to me what might be the reason why western authorities are reacting so brutally to protests against genocide in Gaza.

I doubt it's specifically some strategic need to keep Israel as an ally.

I think they're UNEASY that significant popular opinion suddenly objects to tens of thousands of brown people dying far away, if only in this one case.

They weren't expecting that to happen.

Their climate change strategy kind of hinges on us not caring about that.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@petealexharris Don't underestimate the role of conservative Christianity's weird (because often also anti-semitic) devotion to Israel, nor the role milenarian thinking is playing in the far religious right - Israel standing alone, surrounded by enemies looms large in such thinking. So it may not be deep strategy, but short term political gaming.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@petealexharris Good point. I (fortunately?) lack personal insight into the UK right, unlike for the US.

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

Nine times out of ten, when politicians of either party get involved with technology policy, it's a train wreck of ignorance, political grandstanding, and hypocritical ulterior motives.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@lauren Absolutely true - and yet, that's still probably better than letting tech do it's thing without regulation, even when it's incompetent.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@lauren I disagree. Like stopped clocks, even incompetents get things right sometimes. And legislation doesn't have to be perfect to do good - at the least it can set up an alternative power structure, which creates cracks in the structure where third parties (e.g., consumers) can have more influence.

Besides, if incompetent policy is bad, what does that make accidental policies set by tech companies?

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@lauren "The Internet" is making quite enough mess of itself on its own. Regulation doesn't have magic destructo-powers. Bad decisions happen, sometimes (less often than we often think in the moment) they're permanent. This is as true of the private sector as the public. Personally, I'll take public sector decision making, which I have at least some hope of influencing through democratic process, over the private sector.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@lauren Yes, even then. This country has been through far worse.

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

The Times is found out and criticized for its petulant, unethical use of news columns to punish Joe Biden for not giving A.G. an interview. What does it do? Engage in self-reflection? Ha! It doubles down, whining about Biden. The Times is broken.
https://www.nytco.com/press/a-statement-from-the-new-york-times-on-presidential-news-coverage/

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis Could someone provide a ref to the reporting this is in response to?

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

If the supreme court jumps in and overturns the Jan. 6 convictions of 100s of people who attacked the capitol it will be one of the most politically charged actions taken by this court and in a politically charged environment.

There are many laws that might need revision, scrutiny, but they reached out through space and time to grab this hot potato.

It's a joke.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@lampsofgold @futurebird Eliminating judicial review is getting ahead of ourselves, don't you think? We can increase the size of the court, we can tweak the nomination process, or we can even try to address the political dysfunction that's lead to the current court, all without taking an axe to a structural pillar of how our system of government has (more or less) functioned for the last two hundred years. Diminishing the role of the Constitution hardly seems like a win.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Sometimes I think that instead of debunking misinformation* it might be better to simply celebrate what we know and how we know it. So, rather than explain why anti-vaxers (for example) are wrong go into detail about the production process for vaccines.

*Especially maliciously constructed misinformation, that is people who use their limited scientific knowledge to add credibility to 'theories' they know aren't well supported since they want to harm 'established science' for some reason.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird @barrygoldman1 This. I personally know people who get great assurance from knowing their role and that they're fulfilling it absolutely. For someone like that, "Oh, that's your framework, I see things differently and this is mine" can be really undermining. And I don't think that's really false for any of us, but some have a harder time navigating the uncertainty of that than others. That doesn't make the work of imagining new, more inclusive frameworks less necessary, though.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Last night our cable internet box randomly died. It’s totally fried and must be replaced. This happened just as my husband got home from work, waking me up to tell me the governor of NY had issued a warning about power outages during the Coronal Mass Ejection (there was a big solar storm last night) — basically I thought the world was ending and put my laptop in the oven. (it’s a faraday cage)

I may have overreacted.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird @drakenblackknight @albertcardona Trust me, that kind of miopia is by no means limited to cities. VT is a wonderful place in many respects but has its fair share and then some of that problem.

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

"antcolonylive dot com" is a terrible content farm of a website. It has the vague shape of an ant blog, but with tons of "articles" that mention US states and particular ant species names. The descriptions are either AI generated or written by someone with no direct knowledge of the ants. Many of the images are incorrectly identified. It's garbage.

So I have to ask: why does it exist? I can only think of one reason.

1/

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@rlcw @mensrea @futurebird Alternatives face the same problem Google does - how to tell good content from bad without actual expertise. The gap between their judgement and real expertise is where SEO gets its foothold.

I've heard it suggested that digital ads are a bubble, that the info advertisers use to make purchasing decisions isn't as good as they assume it is and ads aren't driving the real world profit to justify the industry. It's a scary thought but I don't know that it's false.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@rlcw @mensrea @futurebird I'm sure there are conscientious marketers out there who understand what their ad dollars are buying them. At a macro level, though, it's hard to credit that the vast sums of money in the programatic ad industry (and paying for all this LLM-gennerated, SEO-optimized nonsense) are matched by equally vast returns for advertisers.

Unfortunately, as much as I dislike programatic ads I suspect a correction would be as bad for the internet I like as for that I don't.

lauren, (edited ) to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

If an extraterrestrial civilization ever does visit Earth, will they:

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@lauren If we look at human history the most likely answer is: all of the above, all at the same time, leavened by incompetence.

annaleen, to random
@annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

Calling fandom a "psyop" isn't just a foolish way of politicizing everything. It's also an effort to systematically deprive us of pleasure in entertainment, leaving us ravenous for joy and meaning. I talk about the implications in my New Scientist column. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26134793-500-the-taylor-swift-psy-op-conspiracy-theory-offers-a-troubling-lesson/ (sign up for a free account to read it)

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@annaleen I'm struggling with this because I think you're broadly right: there is some disconnect or confusion in what the right is saying about Swift. But the idea that culture and art can be separated from politics strikes me as wrong and dangerous. Politics isn't a rarified sphere of conflict and antagonism, it's how we (try to) get along with one another. And that ought to be informed by our cultural (including pop cultural) thinking, and even our aesthetics.

vanessawynn, to ai
@vanessawynn@metalhead.club avatar

Adobe’s new prototype generative AI tool is the ‘Photoshop’ of music-making and editing

https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/28/24085551/adobe-project-music-genai-control-prototype-tool-hot-pod

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@ninokadic @vanessawynn Another way to think of it is that it shifts the locus of trust to people and sources, not mediums - we've always had this problem with spoken language. That has serious downsides in a large, complicated society, but I'm not sure it's altogether bad.

w7voa, to random
@w7voa@journa.host avatar

A large-scale walkout by trainee doctors in South Korea is expected to intensify as new medical school graduates reportedly refused to take internships, joining an ongoing protest against the government's plan to boost the number of medical students. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20240225000854320

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@w7voa Sounds like at least part of the objections is that part of the plan involves increasing intern year from one to two years, which many feel is a grab for free labor for hospitals.

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

It annoys me how people talk about using social media like it's a vice. And a female-coded one at that.

"Spend less time on social media" is trotted out a virtuous in the same way that "not eating a pint of ice cream" is.

Imagine if in the early days of movable type, there were people going around saying "don't read pamphlets, they are full of misinformation"

Social media is the primary way news is disseminated. It is superseding newspapers and TV as the primary vector of mass media. 1/

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@silverwizard @futurebird As always with Plato, there's a lot going on there. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine when people take Plato as being against writing and story telling when he was such a master of both. Rest assured, Plato was aware of, and fully intended, the irony of a literary and rhetorical work criticizing literary and rhetorical works.

futurebird, to math
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I’m making some “fractions sensitivity training” warm up questions for grade five and six. Any particularly silly or subtle suggestions would be a big help. These are too boring.

A. How is 15min like $0.25?
B. How are three cat paws like 45min?
C. How is 12min like holding up one finger on one hand? .. or like $0.20?
D. How is one ant leg like 10 min?
F. How is holding up four fingers on one hand like 48min? … or like 8 dimes?

Ideas?

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird Why did the spider Dr try to give the penguin with a broken leg four casts? Why is a penny (not!) like a centipede's shoe? Why is a bicycle with one wheel like a clock that only goes to 6 o'clock?

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird When is a clover leaf like a chair leg? (When it's lucky)

ninokadic, to mastodon
@ninokadic@mastodon.social avatar

What's your favourite social media platform besides ?

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@maicm @ninokadic Would Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or Signal messenger be social media? There's the same possibility of data collection, though less (but by no means non-existent) chance of dis/mis information, and the same potential for corporate control and monopolization.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@ninokadic Apart from Mastodon I use signal messenger when security is my concern, and a matrix client (eg, https://element.io/ ) for normal chatting.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

The half-baked philosophical conundrum that keeps me up at night most often is simply: why is my consciousness limited to me in particular? Why am I not everyone? Or everything? or nobody? Or you? Or an ant? Or an ant colony? How did I find myself in this particular stream and what is the nature of the boarders that keep me within it?

This idea generally frustrates and freaks me out and I doubt there is a sensible answer, I doubt it's productive to think about, but I worry on it over and over.

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird The flip side to this is, is the me asking this question now the same as the me I remember doing something else five minutes ago? We share memories (or I do with past me, not vice versa) but is the consciousness the same?

stux, to random
@stux@mstdn.social avatar

Just went to the supermarket and on my way there I saw an older woman fall down with her bike, ofc I turned around and helped her get up and with me 2 other people did also :blobcathearts:

Luckily, when I see such things happening there are always some people jumping in to help right away, like they should!

Sometimes I see videos where stuff happens in public and people are just walking by without a care in the world..

That makes me very angry, one should always help another human, period

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@stux I'm not a big video watcher so I don't know how these videos work - is the victim accidentally caught in frame, or does the photographer see it too? And if so, why sit taking a video rather than helping out? Makes me a bit suspicious of the context, tbh.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

What is the best way to describe the fediverse? Some of these aren't totally accurate in all cases as an instance could be for profit if they wanted to be.

user owed social media
social media coop
user governed social media
independent social media
not for profit social media
nonprofit social media
user controlled social media
self governed social media
cooperative social media

...

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird How about community run? It's both run as a whole by the fediverse community, and instances are run to suit the choices of the instance community.

futurebird, to NoStupidQuestions
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I understand that not self-fertilizing is an adaptive benefit for plants (& all living organisms) but I don't have a scenario that shows how the benefit works.

Given a population w/genetic variations some tiny percentage of which are beneficial in the habitat, why is it such a huge boost to survival to mix your genes?

It is precisely because beneficial adaptations are rare? If beneficial mutations were common would self cloning and fertilizing. be more common?

nowan,
@nowan@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird I'm just speculating, but could it be that beneficial genes are more likely spread among the population? In that case, one phenotype conferring "too much" benefit would mean losing all the others to competition, eliminating the possibility of a later generation that includes many or all the beneficial traits.

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