Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

What movie was this? Old campy sci fi movie, probably b/w, a group of scientists (?) traveling down through a planet (earth?) in a shaft and they pass a copy of themselves in another shaft going up. The second group is trying to wave them off, to go back, but to no avail.

They say that elephants never forget, so what movie was that, Mastodon?

"Smash RWE!"
Graffiti in Buir denouncing the German energy conglomerate which owns Garzweiler, the opencast lignite mine which is being expanded to engulf the village of Luetzerath.

For the past few years activists have occupied the largely abandoned town to prevent it's demolition.

In recent days police from all over Germany have converged on the village as part of a major operation to attack the fortified protest encampments.

There are still ongoing battles in the area, as thousands of armed police are attempting to evict the remaining defenders.

#Luetzerath #LuetzerathBleibt #LuetzerathVerteidigen #SmashRWE

I think my favorite use of emoji responses on Slack/Discord/etc is when someone just latches onto a particular word in a message and attaches its emoji, with no semantic content intended. E.g. someone'll say "Sorry, the bus is running late" and someone else will just slap a 🚌 on there to confirm that they did indeed notice and recognize the word "bus"

anyway. give people money if you have it

not non profits. People.

Dear fellow techies:

If you have a great idea for a fediverse tool, and it's amazing that nobody's done it yet... ask around. Especially ask PoC and LGBT folks.

There might be very good reasons it hasn't been done yet.

Or--it might have been done already, multiple times, and raised a storm of protests that drove each developer into shelter. You don't want to be that person.

The fedi needs tools! The fedi needs activitypub hackers! Don't waste your time writing code nobody wants, work with the community.

Hint: we don't want indexers or search engines.

The most blatant and yet pervasive lie is that neurotypicals are well-organised. Complete fabrication! Neurodivergent folk will send you all the info. More, actually. In advance. They're probably sending it later than *they* had planned, but still earlier than NTs. NTs just *seem* more organised because they don't stress about it because they themselves don't care all that much about timely information.

There. I said it. And I stand by it. Get it together, NTs!

#neurodiversity #ADHD #Autistic

Maybe a better analogy for people who still think "chat AI" knows what it's saying is that it's like a parrot. Parrots can talk like humans but they don't have any idea what they're saying. They're just repeating patterns of sound they've heard us make. If you ask a parrot a question enough times it can even learn that after the sound pattern that your question made another pattern follows that makes up the answer. It still doesn't know what you're asking it, or what the answer means. It's just making sound patterns

These AIs are doing the exact literal same thing with letters. It doesn't mean anything, because it doesn't understand any of it, because IT'S A FUCKING PARROT, BRENT

and the brain-genius typed "no one would do anything without a profit motive!" and hit send on a button rendered by an open source front end framework firing off an event handled by an open source programming language that sends a packet in a format conforming to an open specification over a protocol developed at universities with public funding until it reaches a web server running an open source operating system that files the hot take away into an open source database for safe keeping

here's the really crucial parallel which i am sure will infuriate many a techbro:

the essay linked has this bit of

The engineer can resign himself to the truth that there are some things he doesn’t know.

techbros fail this the way many a fundamentalist does. they don't actually want to acknowledge there's something they don't know. he doesn't even go to something as elegant as denying the concept of a holy mystery. the fundamentalist doesn't want to acknowledge that there's things he doesn't know, or didn't know, when he first read genesis - he doesn't want to know about the minutiae of translations, or even that maybe something could be a metaphor. whatever he first imagined in his head at the time is his absolute truth. he is not inclined to ever think about how he could be corrected, because that would be showing ignorance - and he is more interested in the vanity of being always right than actually learning, or especially actual truth.

a techbro takes the same sort of approach to technology. he may say that he doesn't know things, but rarely does he actually act like this is the case. if it's not something that is just as he first imagined it, he ignores it. to admit that maybe he was wrong would be to admit fault. he's not actually interested in being correct, or truthful, or helpful. he's interested in the vanity of always being right, where always being right also includes thinking of himself as this brilliant paragon and all-knowing dictator of electrons shepherded around a rock we tricked into doing math.

it's not actually about anything truly important. it's about having power and not giving it up.

that's why the techbro always leaps at the chance to use his power to oppress others. he's not actually interested in helping. he's interested in having the power to hurt other people, and will take any excuse to do so.

if techbros have been mad after being called techbros, i'm gonna laugh

but here are several definitions of the term "techbro" for those who may be confused:

what happens when a script kiddie gets older, but doesn't mature in the least
guy who thinks he's the main character of all technology and thusly the entire world must be solved with his applications of technology, and everyone else must be condescended to
person who has outsourced all morality, ethics, and thought to the computer, and then wonders why his attitude of "the computer lets me so it must be correct" makes shit programming
the sort of "brogrammer"/programmer bro that makes sillicon valley hellish
a compulsive programmer as per this essay https://www.sac.edu/AcademicProgs/Business/ComputerScience/Pages/Hester_James/HACKER.htm
to elaborate on 5, it's someone who only likes technology because he can order it around, and that's the only real thrill he gets from it. he doesn't truly think they're tools to solve problems. they're the means to a power trip. and in his interactions, he makes sure people know that technology is a power trip for him and only him - which is why he'll belittle and mock you to make sure he has the power and you don't.
imagine the very worst stereotypes of the most annoying and obnoxious computer science student you ever had the misfortune to meet in any of your classes, just fifteen odious fuckers combined to create the most odious one imaginable. focus in on that mental picture. yep, you got it, that's a techbro

This has been a blight on #OpenSource software for a long time.

33% of the web is run on #Apache web server.

My web server runs on it. It's offensive.

Please sign the petition in this article to "End ASF Mascotry"

#NotYourMascot #Native #Indigenous #NDN #NativeMastodon #IndigenousMastodon

https://blog.nativesintech.org/apache-appropriation/

this whole post is great but the last line KNOCKED ME OUT

Any Mastodon instance that is acquired by a for-profit organization should get an immediate fediblock.

#fediblock pawoo.net

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mask-network-acquires-pawoonet-one-of-the-largest-mastodon-instances-301707919.html

@mhoye and also with a litany of references of the historical usage of that phrase, because "nobody wants to work anymore" has been in newspapers and many other places for a good couple centuries at least.

It's the fundamental litany of capitalism, trying to guilt people into accepting less than their labour's worth.

One thing I will say about that chart going around that shows monkeypox in rapid decline:

I can't help but notice that all the media outlets that bought into the gay disease panic narrative are reeeeeeeeeeal quiet about how effectively queer community mobilized to shut that danger down.

I would love to see someone list general-interest tech media which published articles describing Mastodon/the fediverse as complicated and confusing, a couple of months after assuring readers that crypto wallets and apps were “not that hard to get the hang of”.