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The Internet Archive losing its appeal means one thing: pirate stuff. Pirate brazenly. There’s no point trying to do it the nice way - you’ll get shut down anyway. Copy, share, and archive to your heart’s content. It’s the only way we’re keeping digital media and our cultural memory intact.

Not to treat privilege like a scarlet letter. But it's just like I want ppl to be reminded that the act of not needing mutual aid is a privilege that many in this economy don't have. They don't have a choice to just not get needs met. Or that ends in social death and actual death.

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DIY medicine discussion 

@afewbugs I certainly agree on the end goal :) But yeah, I *would* also like to see that 'metaphorical' reduction from 4 to 2.

Regarding the analysis - it seems that the objective is to provide a toolkit for figuring out manufacturing procedures for a wide variety of drugs, but with the expectation that any one single user of said toolkit would only be manufacturing one or a few types of drugs (and so would repeatedly carry out the same process).

In that context, would it not be viable to extend the toolkit so that it can also determine drug-specific validation mechanisms with simple/affordable tests? As opposed to a universal(-ish) tool like a mass spectrometer. Or is that not something that can be automated/assisted to the same degree as the original biosynthesis calculations?

@afewbugs I mean "DIY" in a very broad sense, in the sense of "existing outside of the existing for-profit pharmaceutical system" - obviously there's only so much that a single individual can do, purely by constraints of time and money. But what is possible collectively?

There is probably a limit to how safe it can be made, purely because having permanent controllable infrastructure makes you a legal target for patent enforcement, and informal things are easier to get away with legally but harder to make safe. But I also doubt that there's no room for improvement at all compared to what we have now, with some collective work.

So yes, the safe options *should* be made more accessible, but I don't think it's an either/or. Fixing those systemic issues is likely going to take a very long time, and in the meantime, ideally the DIY processes would be made as safe as they can be within the constraints. But that will require expert input and collaboration to achieve.

(An additional complicating factor is that you'll find many people who believe the nominally 'proper' way to be a dead end, and that is why they prefer to focus on improving DIY processes. This sort of thing is why diversity of tactics and mutual support is important.)

@afewbugs (Relatedly, I think "working on concrete ways to collectively improve the safety of DIY medicine" is a more productive endeavour than "critizing people being hopeful", even if the criticism is nominally correct)

@afewbugs I expect that the people celebrating this development broadly understand and agree that it's not a true solution, and that there are significant risks.

But people have been arguing for true solutions for many years now, to complete disinterest from those in power (formally or otherwise), so I can definitely understand people just focusing on the short-term solution and its positive implications here. For them, the conversations about the systemic issues have already been had.

I really feel like "whether or not you will shut down or transfer ownership of the instance, and to whom, and if they will move your data to a new legal landscaped region, if you want to stop running it" is something that should be thought about ahead of time and put in your instance info, and updated if that changes.

@lina In my (limited) experience it's better than HN... but not anywhere near enough better for me to willingly spend my time there 😐

a while back, I started asking people "what do you like to do?" or "what excites you?" or "what kind of stuff are you interested in" instead of the tired old "what do you do for work?" and the way they light up is pure gold.

on the flip side, when someone opens with "so what do you do?" I intentionally talk about my hobbies and interests instead of work. they always get startled at first but the conversation inevitably turns warmer and deeper.

OK, this is a twist in the NaNoWriMo controversy I didn't see coming: apparently the "criticizing AI is classist/ableist" line was a bridge too far *even for the 'AI' company*.

archive.is/DYqsA

longpost on the fantasy of a company burning down without its tech staff 

In 99.9% of cases the fantasy of the engineers, sysadmins, SREs, etc getting up and leaving, or being axed, leading to the complete destruction of a corporation is just that: a fantasy.

What happens instead is things get very very painful, and corporations roll that pain to their individual employees and, if they have to, their customers. Reality doesn't stand in the way of managerial demands and there's an infinite supply of people who are in a position where they need to take even a painful job to keep food on the table.

You cycle through enough grist and burn enough people out and eventually the pain of a burning down infrastructure is bandaided enough to just be normal day to day operations pain again, and there's plenty of people jumping to show off how culture fit they are by throwing themselves on the altar of pager and overtime.

Perhaps if we could all as a unit say no, no one is gonna do the the shitty work of cleaning up after you exploded your team of talent by being capitalistic fucks; but in the position we're in now that's not likely.

This is where I start on my "We need a union" speech again.

Say, what *was* Cory Doctorow doing at the REBOOT Conference, an explicitly right-wing tech conference, in 2022?

web.archive.org/web/2022032922

@natty If it's any consolation, the corporate stuff often isn't any less mismanaged, they just have more money to throw at the problem

It's always very amusing when shower gel and cosmetics claim shit like "98% natural" or "99% biodegradable". Like, yeah, it's mostly water...

Is there a website where companies can only publish job offers which don't come with any requirement towards experience?

#AskFedi #jobseeking

food, instant meal replacements 

@sharkNserg My experience so far is that Joylent powder (now called "Jimmy Joy", I still hate the name) is a very good option from both a cost and nutrition perspective, although the flavours are a bit bland. I've found Queal powder to have very nice flavours, but it's more expensive. Leaving it in the fridge overnight, prepared, makes both a lot nicer.

The 'hot pots' from Jimmy Joy (not technically a drink) are also very good, but unfortunately very pricey.

I've tried pre-made drinks from Saturo and Jimmy Joy, and hated both. Felt greasy and uncomfortable to drink.

no no no *you* can't freely scan through the collected works of humanity, that right is reserved for the large language models.

fandom.com 

PSA: fandom.com runs a honeypot to trap wiki admins who try to leave Fandom.

As mentioned
in this article, you can submit a "request" to Fandom to close your wiki.

If you submit such a request, Fandom will
not close your wiki. Instead, they will
a)Remove your admin status to prevent you from deleting articles,
b)Keep a close eye on your wiki to make sure you aren't trying to migrate away from Fandom,
c)Possibly ban your account from Fandom.

There
are ways to essentially trick Fandom's automated system into closing your wiki. All such methods are against the rules of Fandom and rely on your wiki avoiding the notice of any human employees of Fandom.

If you want to know how I got them to close Pandora's Tale Wiki, DM me, either here or on Matrix. I don't want to post the explanation publicly in case Fandom notices and changes their system to prevent my method from working for future wikis.

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