@richard_merren@mastodon.social
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richard_merren

@richard_merren@mastodon.social

Not internet famous and totally fine with that

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w7voa, to random
@w7voa@journa.host avatar

Trump’s shadow ‘secretary of state’ met with Arab American leaders this week. It didn’t go well, according to NOTUS. https://www.notus.org/trump-2024/like-a-lead-balloon-trump-shadow-secretary-of-state-ric-grenell-meets-arab-american-leaders

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@w7voa Trump didn't just "call for" a Muslim ban in 2016--he actually tried to create it multiple times, and was thwarted by the courts. That the three conditions this group gave for supporting Trump were all Gaza-related and didn't mention Muslim bans or Trump's relationships with white supremacists or religious freedom or Saudi Arabia or Sudan or Christian fundamentalism or racial profiling or anything else at all is incredibly disheartening.

tzimmer_history, to random
@tzimmer_history@mastodon.social avatar

The actual Kristallnacht was a country-wide pogrom in November 1938 in which the Nazis killed hundreds of German Jews, threw tens of thousands in concentration camps, destroyed hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses.

Was even a single person hurt at Columbia?

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@tzimmer_history I agree 100%. This is shamefully ridiculous. I am saddened by lots of overwrought comparisons to Nazis, the Holocaust, and genocide these days.

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

Now I remember why I do everything on a desktop computer instead of a laptop on the couch.

I have an ergonomic chair that gives me excellent lumbar support for my back. As well, I have my monitor attached to a pneumatic arm that adjusts the height with complete precision. If I’m sitting for an hour, my smartwatch reminds me to stand up and take a walk.

And to keep my back healthy, I’m in the gym three times a week.

A good chair, monitor adjustment, and exercise pay dividends. Ever since I made these adjustments, my back and neck pain has entirely gone away.

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@atomicpoet I get lazy occasionally and work from the couch, and it usually takes a couple of standing desk days to fix the lower back pain.

TonyStark, to random
@TonyStark@progressivecafe.social avatar

Kennedy used to be an environmentalist. His current positions on the environment are more libertarian, since he doesn't believe in cutting greenhouse gasses through regulation or jump-starting green energy with subsidies. He wants to let the market work its “wonders.”

He's also a crypto fan, which generates about 23 metric tons of CO2 annually.

His friends and colleagues at NRDC are right.

RFK Jr.’s onetime allies in environmental advocacy call for him to drop out |
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/19/politics/robert-kennedy-natural-resources-defense-council/index.html

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@TonyStark His bigotry and adherence to crazy conspiracy theories should be enough on their own. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/15/us/politics/rfk-jr-remarks-covid.html

serge, to random
@serge@babka.social avatar

Look folks, when a Jew says "I feel unsafe" or "Jews deserve to feel safe" and your response is "Netanyahu", understand that Jews will take this the same way as if you had said "Rothschild!"

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@serge The response should be "Jews deserve to feel safe." There is a period at the end of that and nothing needs to follow it.

lolgop, to random
@lolgop@journa.host avatar

All antisemitism is abhorrent. But people need to know when they're being played. One of the richest and most powerful guys ever to live is building a Nazi minting machine and Republicans aligned with him want us all focused on Ivy league campuses to undermine the horror at Netanyahu's atrocities.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-musk-nazi-extremist-white-nationalist-accounts-rcna145020

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@lolgop People do need to know when they are being played, and Republican focus on antisemitism on campus is naked opportunism by politicians who otherwise welcome antisemites and help spread their message. But please don't dismiss campus antisemitism as some kind of fake Jewish conspiracy just because Republicans are exploiting it for gain. That's irresponsible and does a disservice to students who express real concerns and are facing real threats and dangers.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

How many things can we monger?
• cheese
• fear
• fish
• scare
• hate

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@glennf Scara

18+ NinaBernstein1, to random
@NinaBernstein1@journa.host avatar

An eloquent protest to Columbia’s genuflection before MAGA McCarthyism.
Anti-woke Republicans attacked Columbia University. It capitulated | Alisa Solomon, Marianne Hirsch, Sarah Haley and Helen Benedict | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/18/columbia-university-congress-antisemitism-republicans-gaza

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@NinaBernstein1 This part is spot on. Jewish students and faculty are just theater props to these Republicans.

TonyStark, to random
@TonyStark@progressivecafe.social avatar

If you’re sharing stuff such as “it’s the Jews” or “it’s all secretly AIPAC”, you’re not progressive, you’re not an “indie journalist”, and you’re not digging up some underground Jewish cabal activity.

You’re a conspiracy theorist no different from Alex Jones or Marjorie Taylor Greene spreading space lasers and people drinking blood and all the right wing stuff you’ve claimed to abhor. You’re no different.

The Jews Aren’t Taking Away TikTok - The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/antisemitism-conspiracy-theories-tiktok/678088/

“Characteristic of anti-Semitic online discourse, these videos and others like them interchangeably reference individual American Jews, American Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, American pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC, and the state of Israel, as though they are all part of one single- minded international conspiracy to take down TikTok. When a commenter asked Carroll to "look into universal studios pulling their music from TikTok," a reference to the Universal Music conglomerate's dispute with TikTok over royalties, Carroll replied, "Universal CEO is a Jewish man."”
“Consider recent American history: In 2018, a far-right gunman who blamed Jews for mass immigration murdered 11 people in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue. In 2019, assailants tied to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement attacked a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, killing three; one of the shooters had written on social media about Jews controlling the government. In 2022, an Islamic extremist took an entire congregation hostage in Colleyville, Texas, and demanded that a rabbi get a convict released from a nearby prison. These perpetrators-white supremacist, Black extremist, radical Islamist-had essentially nothing in common other than their belief that a Jewish cabal governed world affairs and was the cause of their problems.”
“The reality is the reverse: Jews constitute just 2 percent of the American population, and although they exercise influence like any other minority, they frequently disagree among themselves and do not dictate the destiny of the majority. Politicians voting against TikTok are pursuing their conception of the national interest, not being suborned to serve some nebulous Jewish interest. Remove the Jews from the equation, and the situation will be the same. Conspiracy theorists typically claim to be combatting concealed power structures. But as in this case, their delusions make them unable to perceive the way power actually works. Thus, conspiratorial anti-Semitism hobbles its adherents, preventing them from rationally organizing to advance their own causes by distracting them with fantastical Jewish plots.”

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@TonyStark This is often expressed with euphemisms like "Soros-funded" or "globalists" or "industrialist" or whatever so that it is a dog-whistle--recognizable to the believers but reasonable or innocuous-sounding to others. We hear it and we recognize it, and we are told we are overreacting or "weaponizing antisemitism" when we call it out. But we have to keep pushing back on it.

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

Should gefilte fish poutine be a thing?

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@atomicpoet Gefilte fish tacos with red horseradish salsa. It's passover-friendly if they are on corn tortillas.

Jeze3D, to Nostalgia
@Jeze3D@mstdn.games avatar

Bring back the 80s/90s BBS/internet experience with this PCB wifi replacement with simulated dialing!

https://tempestfpga.com

@retrocomputing

video/mp4

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@Jeze3D @retrocomputing This is so fantastic and useless--I love it!

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

OMFG. I'd never heard it before either, Robbie.

Via Emptywheel:

This is actually one of Roger Stone's favorite slurs against women. He has used it against me at least once.

" told her: 'See you next Tuesday' – a phrase that is often used as a derogatory euphemism directed at women." https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/01/politics/roberta-kaplan-donald-trump-deposition-maralago/index.html

As for , here's what he tweeted to me in 2014, among other things::

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@GottaLaff Whenever I learn racist or misogynistic phrases that old people know but I've never heard I consider it to be a good sign that the world is changing for the better.

And Roger Stone's name should never come up without a reminder that he was kicked off the Dole campaign for being a pervert.

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

Thanks for the Dem ad, Nik!

Via Aaron Rupar:

on Newsmax: "Let's speak some hard truths. If Donald becomes the Republican nominee, we will get a President Kamala Harris. You mark my words. He cannot win a general election ... he can't get independents. He can't get suburban women."

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@GottaLaff An oblique "Biden is old and will die" reference without having to be bold/crass enough to actually say it out loud.

atomicpoet, to random

I hate how Europeans simply referred to the area between India and China as “Indochina”.

That’s like referring to the area between France and Russia as “Francussia”.

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@atomicpoet We carry on that tradition today with European-focused terms like "the middle east" and "far east" and "sub saharan africa" and "the third world" and "developing countries". The worst might be "Indian" for Native Americans. Calling Israel "the Holy Land" is a little ranking, too.

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

Classic . "As a longtime tech reporter, I thought I was well acquainted with the dangers of the internet." But...
Our kids have lived in different worlds since the jitterbug and Dobie Gillis....
Our Kids Are Living in a Different Digital World https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/opinion/children-nicotine-zyn-social-media.html?smid=tw-share

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis It's fun watching in real time while the Millennials morph into the Boomers and start yelling at kids to get off their lawn.

Teri_Kanefield, to random
@Teri_Kanefield@mastodon.social avatar

I am still absorbing the enormity of the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling that Trump is ineligible to appear on the ballot.

It was a long day, so forgive typing errors.

It seems to me that there was plenty of due process, Colorado law empowered its elections officer to determine qualification, and the elections officer did so.

I don't believe there has to a finding in criminal court that Trump engaged in insurrection for Section 3 to apply. . .

1/

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@eva_chaos @Teri_Kanefield The North, too. We are only dealing with this guy because New York State spent decades failing to enforce laws on the books and refusing to investigate or prosecute wealthy fraudulent businessmen like Trump.

jsit, to random
@jsit@social.coop avatar

A question about media outlets now having a Fediverse presence via :

How many of them know they now have a Fediverse presence via Flipboard? I would imagine a lot of these Flipboard-enabled sites are just the result of someone creating a Flipboard account 10 years ago, hooking their site's RSS feed up to it, and forgetting about it.

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@jsit @theverge To be fair, most media outlets have been dumping posts in Twitter for years and measuring engagement by how much traffic it sends to their site rather than using Twitter as an open forum they would engage with and respond to.

I'm happy to see the flipboard content available to fill my feed, and I look forward to seeing if this adds flipboard users to the conversation here, but I have no expectations that I am directly interacting with those publications (here or anywhere else).

emmalbriant, to random
@emmalbriant@mastodon.online avatar

Urgh.

richard_merren,
@richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

@emmalbriant Conservatives see no contradiction in simultaneously accusing universities of being antisemitic and cheering when an antisemite opens a new university.

KrissyKat, to random
@KrissyKat@hoosier.social avatar

deleted_by_author

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    richard_merren,
    @richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

    @KrissyKat

    video/mp4

    richard_merren,
    @richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

    @KrissyKat Lots of countries to our south have restrictions on foreigners buying land, and have simple workarounds just as you describe. They just create a middleman—usually a lawyer—who gets a fee. Aside from being a throwback to 19th century racist antichinese laws in the US (which is no small thing to gloss over) this law will be entirely ineffective. But it doesn't have to work— it is just a show to bolster DeSantis's bigot bona fides for the white supremacists he wants votes from.

    atomicpoet, (edited ) to random
    @atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

    I’m annoyed that PC Gamer says Doom is the “spiritual” start of PC gaming. No, it isn’t.

    I don’t deny Doom’s impact, or that it’s become the “mascot” of PC gaming—much like Super Mario has become the “mascot” for console gaming. But to say it’s the “start” of PC gaming, even if spiritually? No, not at all.

    Look, Doom itself had a spiritual ancestor: Catacomb 3-D released three years prior.

    But PC gaming is not about first person shooters. Other games have been just as impactful as Doom: Zork, Rogue, Castle Wolfenstein, King’s Quest, Wasteland, Civilization, SimCity, Wing Commander—all games released before Doom.

    This narrative of Doom being the “start” of PC gaming needs to stop.

    https://www.pcgamer.com/the-most-important-games-and-moments-in-30-years-of-pc-gaming-part-1-1993-2003/

    richard_merren,
    @richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

    @mighty_orbot @atomicpoet Are you nuts? Wolfenstein, Decathlon, Ultima, and even Oregon Trail drove Apple II sales like gangbusters. And they were awesome. Nerds finally had friends who wanted to spend time with us so they could come over and play our computer games. All this was a decade before doom.

    richard_merren,
    @richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

    @atomicpoet Maybe they just meant "the start of PC gaming on weird devices like ipods and refrigerators" (though that's not even accurate because oscilloscopes have had video games on them since the 50s)

    baldur, to random
    @baldur@toot.cafe avatar

    Always a bit annoying how consistently some tech types degrade themselves by insisting that language models “learn” and “reason” in exactly the same ways they do.

    richard_merren,
    @richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

    @baldur To be fair, I have had some tech coworkers for whom this is true -- they think and reason as oversimplistically and poorly as LLMs, and often can't be described as having truly learned anything at all.

    aeva, to random
    @aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

    so we've gone from people generally agreeing that google killed XMPP to some spirited debate as to whether that is still true or if XMPP simply killed itself because maybe facebook will like us more if we stop making observations about corporations - I expect that by 2033 we will have people insisting that it was actually XMPP that killed google (google will nevertheless still be alive and well having purchased 65% of congress to make installing an ad blocker a felony in the US)

    richard_merren,
    @richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

    @aeva "Ads are people, too, my friend."

    dansup, to Pixelfed
    @dansup@mastodon.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    richard_merren, (edited )
    @richard_merren@mastodon.social avatar

    @dansup @Gargron I was curious about this and so I looked at the code. The scoring for trending tags is not based directly on raw numbers of mentions but on the level of recent increase in mentions compared to historical norms. So to get a high trending score and make the boards, you need to see a big jump in tag usages over the previous day and not just have more tag usages than somebody on the board. Probably no conspiracy.

    https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/blob/main/app/models/trends/tags.rb

    P.S. open source software is awesome

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