@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

stefanlaser

@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de

Social scientist ✒ on 🚯🚆🐮💾. #sts #sociology #ecology #waste #energy

Navigating material politics: vital digital infrastructures, political experiments, and precarious social relations.

I use qualitative ethnographic methods but also turn to digital methods and coding to enrich the analysis. Currently following the value chain of data centres. Based in #Bochum, GER, trips to #Hanoi, #Vietnam, #SEA.

I'm also into sports, #running #cycling, #photography, and Vietnamese. #tfr

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Private
stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@MarekMcGann @jacobward @academicchatter I am struggling with Newsblur, the design on Android and my e-reader Boox Tab X is a bit frustrating, the navigation is off. But there is no good alternative.

seachanger, to random
@seachanger@alaskan.social avatar

bad reply guys are one of fedi/mastodon’s biggest problems.

I’m realizing it’s not only a demographic issue but a structural one with the platform. if people cannot easily see one another’s replies, and if the original poster can’t easily QT replies, someone with a popular post has to field dozens of nearly identical replies. if these replies enforce white supremacy or patriarchy (spoiler: they often do), the structure of mastodon tends to center and amplify white supremacy &patriarchy

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@seachanger 💯 this post by @seachanger. Not only are quote needs missing (you need web-app hacks), servers do not download all replies to a post. If your instance has no links to users, it just doesn't know. Since users encouraged each other late 2022 to take part in post-discussions, it grows into horror reply guy situations.

Mastodon has to fix this.

It sounds like Fediverse setups such as and (soon) are doing better, but still.

https://alaskan.social/users/seachanger/statuses/11072477396446548

stefanlaser, to fediverse
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

I'm looking for a customizable, resource-efficient Mastodon #fork. Somehow I cannot find a recent post on that. #Bonfire? #Rebased? Or go non-Ruby, like #Pleroma (nah), #Misskey #Calckey #Lemmy (hui)?

This is part of an endeavour to host w/ a #RaspberryPi & #solarpower. #MastodonMigration

Potential features:

  • tweaking network traffic
  • media options: off, auto compression, auto delete
  • monitoring server metrics, energy flow, sharing data through a bot
  • auto-off when battery low, sad emoji
jonhicks, (edited ) to random
@jonhicks@mastodon.social avatar

Thunderbird ‘supernova' is now out, and with it, the new logo. Here's a blog post about it, which shows all the iterations of this idea from start to finish:

https://hicks.design/journal/a-new-logo-for-thunderbird

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@jonhicks Quite appealing, yes, but the first impression is still angry. Or fierce. Not a critique, maybe that's just on point: getting at the big fish with more confidence.

And very cool to see the iterations, thanks.

stefanlaser, to ecologies
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

I enjoy reading the schöne volume of "Data Centers: Edges of a Wired Nation," by Monika Dommann, Hannes Rickli, and Max Stadler, discussed e.g. here https://www.slanted.de/data-centers/.

Beautiful type-setting, captivating photos, some poetic interventions, exploring non-American data center infrastructures, that is, Switzerland...well done. @sts @ecologies

Video of me skimming through a book, showing pictures, different chapters, pages with a white background, where text is put on a black accentuation background so that the font itself can be in white, which gives it a unique and bureaucratic, almost Security-Agency look

nicol, to random
@nicol@social.coop avatar

"you don't need you can post a link & comment"

Also, in the official ...

  • see toot that links to a toot (or Activity Pub post)
  • click it & arrive at new interface as the full web app Mastodon renders
  • click boost/fave, get asked to login.
  • click back> clk three dots menu> 'open in Ffox/etc'
  • click URL bar> select all> copy
  • back to App> Search section> paste URL
  • Toot appears!
  • boost

If you think this is optimal UX maybe you need time outside your tech circle

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@nicol Absolutely! It's almost funny how weird this is.

@elk, however, offers native and twitter-like quote tweets. And then there is , where it is perfectly implemented without hacks.

Still, you are right, relying on a standardized way to do easy things will not cater to many folks. Generally speaking, I have a feeling that the 'having no quote tweets is a blessing' argument has not aged well.

krisnelson, to random
@krisnelson@legal.social avatar

I don’t know what best to call it or what model best applies—perhaps classics like a Kuhnisn paradigm shift or the punctuation of punctuated equilibrium—but at least (and arguably, much more) seems to be at a chaotic point of transition as the old normal falls away while a new stability still seems uncertain & even impossible

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@krisnelson Indeed, a paradigm shift in social media life sounds like a good idea, just like it's fitting not to call this disruption or something else trendy.

Plus, how about thinking through Latour's Aramis? We need multiple voices to grasp what's happening, including poetic explorations, and multiple futures play out simultaneously. The failures I witness relate pretty nicely to the love (and hate) of technology.

@sts

maria_antoniak, to random
@maria_antoniak@sigmoid.social avatar

Did you know that when you view the replies to a post, you only see the replies known to your server? The rest are hidden 🤯

If you're new to Mastodon (or maybe you've been here a while but haven't dived deeper into the community's design), I wrote up a list of things I wish I had understood when I first joined.

https://maria-antoniak.github.io/2023/07/04/notes-on-mastodon.html

This doubles as a list of things that I think need to change if Mastodon is going to be a Twitter replacement. I'd really like Mastodon to succeed!

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@maria_antoniak @vegos_f06 Does Calckey do a better job? They're at least tackling the issue, it appears. https://codeberg.org/calckey/calckey/issues/9193

Private
stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@SerhatTutkal @sociology @edutooters @politicalscience @communicationscholars You can follow thematic groups, or start one. I started @ecologies, for example, to assemble social science and humanities-ish posts about ecological matters.

https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon#groups

It's also worth noting that Mastodon itself will soon offer new group features. And there will be the infamous retweet with comment feature aka Quote Tweet.

The environmental footprint of social media hosting: What about Lemmy and the like? (www.easst.net)

Social media platforms need a lot of computing and storage power provided by energy-hungry data centres that constantly have to upgrade their hardware, spitting out vast amounts of e-waste. This is particularly true of commercial platforms with their ML-driven ad systems. The fall of Twitter and Reddit would be beneficial in...

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

Talking , a fediverse alternative to . It works. During the past years, Reddit turned into my quasi-search engine. Thus, it's cool to see non-commercial alternatives.

Above is a post of mine, shared via the instance https://slrpnk.net/
👉 @stefanlaser

Half a year ago, we wrote a piece about the environmental footprint of Mastodon hosting. The same questions can be raised with Lemmy and in mind.
#e-waste @ecologies

stefanlaser, to random
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

Der Deutschlandfunk hat ein dreiteiliges Feature zu und Halbleitern. Dazugeschaltet ist Chris Miller, Autor des spannenden Buchs Chip War.

Episode 1: Aus der Dlf Audiothek | Weltzeit | USA und Taiwan | Die starke Halbleiter-Connection https://share.deutschlandradio.de/dlf-audiothek-audio-teilen.3265.de.html?mdm:audio_id=dira_DRK_a6f3064f

Auch bei mir ihm Blog angesprochen: https://stefanlaser.net/post/patchy-infrastructures/

stefanlaser, to random
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

I have an unhealthy relationship towards , it seems. We're back in Germany for two weeks, and I brought my indoor air quality monitor.

Be careful when people tell you that village air is always super fresh. To my surprise, I've just measured merely "moderate" AQI numbers between 60 and 90 in a very villag-y place in the East of Germany. In contrast, my office at the campus in the Ruhr-Valley, , has good air quality.

That's not dangerous. But it should not be normal either.

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@chran Informative and unfortunate. I wonder if the current Ozon adds to the equation, and local Bundestraßen passing by.

Private
stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@stsing Code of conducting . @sts @ecologies

stefanlaser, to fediverse
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

I might be interested in moving to another Maston instance, or even Calckey. Any experiences? More federated interaction would be neat. And perhaps longer posts.

I like waste, energy, climate and technopolitics, and a bit of social sciences on top. Science & Technology Studies might be the key reference. But it is quite narrow.

How is https://assemblag.es/home doing these days? Scholar.social, sciences.social? @ecologies @sts

(Reddit-alternatives like and are next, I guess.)

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@greenback @ecologies @sts Sweet. Is it easy and efficient to follow different groups and hashtags over there?

Barros_heritage, to socialscience
@Barros_heritage@hcommons.social avatar

One of the thinkers who has influenced me most is the sociologist John Law, one of the creators of Actor-network theory, along with Bruno Latour, among others. I especially like his book "After Method" (2004), very influenced by the amazing work of Annemarie Mol (especially her "The Body Multiple"). For those who want to know more about Law, I recommend his website http://heterogeneities.net/ There is a lot of very interesting material (papers, projects, etc.).

How to study the messiness of social realities? ➡️ "I want to argue that while standard methods are often extremely good at what they do, they are badly adapted
to the study of the ephemeral, the indefinite and the irregular".


@ethnography
@academicchatter
@sociology
@archaedons
@socialscience

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

Nice post about John Law, @ecologies

stefanlaser, to sts
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@stsing is live with the general assembly 2023. https://stsing.org

We just finished a discussion on the state of STS in Germany, w/Gisela Welz, Jörg Niewöhner and myself on a humble panel. This was fruitful and let to a collective exploration with the audience on careers, collaborative ways of publishing, and more.

And now for something completely different. Infrastructuring an organisation. No, we of course translate the needs into improving the infrastructure. True STS work 🤝 @sts

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@stsing @sts By the way, we might have the coolest hub, @tschuetz and myself are zooming in from Taipei, Taiwan

Private
stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@i_ngli @sts Yes, have this on my list as well! Theorizing energy relations is a key undertaking, I think

emergencemagazine, to photography
@emergencemagazine@zirk.us avatar

In this arresting series of aerial photos by Romanian photographer Gheorghe Popa, the horrors of copper mining are laid bare.
View “Poisoned Beauty,” by Gheorghe Popa.
https://emergencemagazine.org/gallery/poisoned-beauty/

stefanlaser, (edited )
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

I'm really happy to have found the @emergencemagazine, which features poetic renderings of ecological struggles. Like this story on copper mine pollution:

"In 1977, over four hundred families living in Geamăna village in the Apuseni Mountains of western Romania were evacuated to make room for a tailings pond for the country’s largest copper mine. Forty years later, Romanian photographer Gheorghe Popa captured the effects of the toxic runoff..."

👇https://emergencemagazine.org/gallery/poisoned-beauty/ @ecologies

jsundman, to random
@jsundman@mastodon.social avatar

Good article on mastodon tools from @pluralistic https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-make-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads-daa33943ac31

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@jsundman @pluralistic "A writer can’t make threads 'collapse' for their readers by publishing an initial post and then unlisting the subsequent posts. It would be fantastic if this was the case, but it’s not.

This misunderstanding about how unlisting works is so prevalent among Mastodon users that it might just be the first urban legend of the Fediverse."

Interesting piece on threads https://
doctorow.medium.com/how-to-mak
e-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads-daa33943ac31

stefanlaser, to sustainability
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

What worlds are possible from the ruins of Twitter? We wrote about the environmental footprint of social media hosting, wasting differently, and tinkering with Mastodon. Solar power and Pis will be set up. Yet, this is also a contribution that acknowledges the diverse knowledge that went into Mastodon and the Fediverse.

Please share your thoughts on the @ecologies of Mastodon.

🔗 https://www.easst.net/article/the-environmental-footprint-of-social-media-hosting-tinkering-with-mastodon/

@Aepasek @Melf @maximilian @erazlogo @estrid @mel_hogan

Mastodom, to random

Anyone on here know a good place to hang out for media and climate chat?

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@Mastodom I recently learned about a popular hashtag to follow and contribute to:

stefanlaser, to Trains
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

"Fieldnotes on FlyingLess Conferencing:" Our reflection on European conferencing via is published in the EASST review. This is an intervention to think about less energy-intensive forms for conferences.

have potential. Yet we inquire what's possible for whom. @sociology

This text is a collective endeavor. I'm happy to be part of a diverse crowd of authors with different routes and experiences.

🔗https://www.easst.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/review_2022_10.pdf

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