strypey

strypey, 5 days ago (edited 5 days ago)

That said, there's a fine line between satire and snobbery. Idiocracy manages to stay on the right side of it by making its protagonists a working class grunt and a sex worker. Ben Elton's growing disdain for infotainment ("Reality TV" and "social media") pushes some of his later books onto the snobbery side of the line, starting with Dead Famous in 2001. Sadly, for all its aspirations to be Brave New World for the digital age, I think Blind Faith is firmly on the snobbery side of the line too.

strypey, 5 days ago

I'm in two minds about Blind Faith. I really enjoyed the sci-fi satire in Ben Elton's earlier novels, especially This Other Eden and Stark. But I find The Circle - the Dave Eggers novel not the lame NetFix adaption - to be much more effective as a dystopian projection of privacy-dissolving "social media". On the other hand, Eggers' novel was published in 2013, while Blind Faith came out in 2007, when FB, YT and Xitter were only just appearing. Making Elton's dystopia much more prophetic.

strypey, 6 days ago (edited 5 days ago)

"Broadcasting from inside corporate occupied territory, Pepperspray Productions Video Collective formed shortly after the WTO protests in Seattle, in response to the Independent Media Center's call, "don't hate the media, be the media!". We believe that the Corporate Media is not telling us the whole story, and that the people must make our own media if we want our voices to be heard. Be the media!!!"

https://yewtube.com/channel/UCsxg1_0iWd_txFKNnvyLYVA

strypey, 6 days ago

"Those missing out on tax relief are the 17 percent of Kiwis who receive a benefit or don't pay income tax."

#JoMoir, 2024

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/516388/explainer-nicola-willis-pre-budget-speech-what-we-learnt

Well that's bullshit Jo, benefits are taxed. As is any part-time paid employment we can find, and for the record, our purchases are too (GST). Also, it's gross to see a journalist using the propaganda phrase "tax relief" instead of calling tax cuts what they are.

strypey, 5 days ago

I may have misread Jo Moir's intention there. But it just infuriates me that not only will those on benefits not get anything much from NatACT First's tax cuts, they're also effectively cutting benefits by changing the way benefit rises are calculated. All while restoring prescription charges and increasing the cost of public transport. So their answer to a cost of living crisis, is to take money from those with the least, and give it to mainly to those with the most.

#FacePalm

strypey, 6 days ago

@mpesce
> By default, and without requiring users to opt-in, Slack said its systems have been analyzing customer data and usage information

I have no time for centralised, proprietary platforms like Slack (in the non-SubGenius sense of the word), but I'm not sure this is an accurate summary.

strypey, 5 days ago

@polotek
> My understanding is that pleroma has it's own flavor of ActivityPub?

It's a distinct implementation in a different language (Elixir). But it uses the same client>server API as Mastodon. So in theory you can swap out the backend for Pleroma and keep using the Mastodon web app, or any apps you normally use with Mastodon. That's what we intend to do for instances hosted by Bridge Seat Co-op.

strypey, 5 days ago

@RickiTarr
> If the gods exist, it's mighty presumptuous to think they have our best interests at heart, or even think about us at all

If Terry Pratchett's Small Gods is to be believed, they think about nothing else, but they care about our interests only when it serves their own best interests.

strypey, 5 days ago (edited 5 days ago)

@lhgmk2
> Only thing that can remotely frustrate that is voting third party

... and/or campaigning for proportional representation. A Labour party that swung wildly to the right, followed by a tory one that went even further to the right, was a key part of how NZ got MMP for general elections.

FYI After having experienced a number of NZ elections using both MMP (central government) and STV (local government), I'd suggest pushing for the latter.

@seawall

strypey, 5 days ago

@sj_zero
> The fundamental issue of governance on the fediverse seems to be that somebody on earth disagrees with you and might say so using their own hardware and software, and you don't want to let them

As a generalisation, that's a strawman. Yes, there are a tiny minority of people this bloody-minded, and I disagree with them as much as you do. But the debates around moderation in the fediverse are generally far more nuanced than that.

(1/3)

strypey, 5 days ago

@sj_zero
But the tools for enabling people to enact such choices can also, if poorly designed, be used to control or limit what people see without their consent. I presume we agree that this is undesirable.

So it's good there's an open debate about moderation, and how the tools for doing it can and ought to work in a federated network. Don't you think?

(3/3)

strypey, 5 days ago

@sj_zero
It's not about giving people control over what other people say...

> using their own hardware and software

That's obviously impossible.

Rather it's about giving people control over what slice of the verse they see, at any given time. I defend anyone's right to post Goatse memes. I equally defend anyone's choice not to see them. I defend their choice to Mute instances known to host spammers, or Block those known ot host doxxers. At an instance as well as a per-account level.

(2/3)

strypey, 5 days ago

@billyjoebowers
> I saw this movie as an adult when it came out and had different feelings at the time

What sort of feelings? I was a teenager the first time I saw it. I thought it was a clever script. It made me question my assumptions in all sorts of areas. Take that climactic scene where Bill asks Prendergast something like 'how did I become the bad guy'? I really felt for him, despite my natural inclination at the time to write off someone like him, even without the violent rampage.

strypey, 5 days ago

@billyjoebowers
> As an aside, not sure about the accent, but the only people I knew who loved it at the time were from Ireland

The Drinker is Scottish. Getting them confused is as understandable as confusing USAmericans and Canadians if you're not familiar enough with the accents. Also just as likely to cause offence ; )

strypey, 5 days ago

@box464
> Still getting my bearings about how to make a smaller instance just as vibrant. Relays? Being more lax about who I follow?

One thing I would definitely do if I started my own instance is to have 2 accounts on it.

With one I'd curate selectively, as you've been doing. With the other, I'd follow as widely as possible, while still filtering out noise. The first account is where you live. The second populates your federated timeline, hashtag searches etc.

@newsmast @Flipboard @mammoth

strypey, 5 days ago

@cliffwade
> This isn't a paid position unfortunately as it would be volunteer just as is running most every instance here in the Fediverse

For now. If we want to avoid the verse being taken over by predatory corporations, just like the web in general, we need to find ethical ways to pay people working on programming, hosting, moderation etc. Bridge Seat Co-op is our attempt at that;

https://bridgeseat.substack.com/p/coming-soon

strypey, 5 days ago

@jackyan
> Broadcast

So if the same TVNZ midday news you used to watch was streamed online instead of broadcast, it wouldn't fit the bill?

strypey, 5 days ago

@sj_zero
Wow! That's an incredibly thorough explanation. Thanks for putting in the effort. I hope you've put it up as a blog piece or somewhere less ephemeral than the verse, as it's a valuable contribution to the debate on the logistics of passenger rail.

Obviously I'm going to need to think about it deeply and carefully before responding, because you've covered a lot of ground there (pun intended).

@fgraver @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf