fun fact: Egypt has some of the cheapest metal foundry services in the world, contributing to a good chunk of their GDP. they mostly run arc furnaces and their grid distortion is often horrendous as a result. I've heard tell of equipment failures coming solely down to how noisy the grid power is. not all that surprising when your industrial loads primarily consist of pseudorandom megawatt pulses. kind of amazing that the grid stays functional at all really.
Primary offender (but not the only one): spurious claims about supposed 'human nature' that really are just someone's one-dimensional personal belief that they're projecting on everyone else.
Web search engines suck so much these days. I've found so many useful resources not through Google et. al., but through old-school surfing the web and the Fediverse.
I encourage everyone to share their #favouriteWebPages and #blogs, which might be difficult to find through search engines.
Some of my favourite sites that took some effort to find:
- https://embrace-autism.com/ is a great resource and #blog about #AuDHD, #actuallyAutistic , #ActuallyADHD; the blog has an #RSS feed
- https://genderdysphoria.fyi/ is a great multilingual resource for the basics of #gender and #genderDysphoria
- https://thisismold.com/ is an interesting online #magazine about #food, #design, and #sustainably; also with RSS feed
- https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ is a #solar-powered magazine about #lowTech; with RSS
- https://www.radio-browser.info/ is a wiki-like page for finding streaming URLs for #radio broadcasters; requires JavaScript
thoughts on computers
I don't think I like computers anymore, because the magic is gone. Not in the sense that I've become disillusioned or anything, but rather because the magic has been taken away by a cocktail of influences that mostly revolves around capitalism.
They're not really personalizable anymore, everything must be in a perfectly 'professional' (read: deathly boring and homogeneous) style. Customizing and personalizing things is now a high-spoons time and energy investment, not a thing you do on a lark in a few minutes.
They don't really empower anymore, instead you are perpetually battling an ever-tightening net of scams, deceptions, data greed, enshittification, and good old exploitation.
They don't really emancipate anymore; the cliff between "those who use computers" and "those who make computers do things" is only becoming bigger, and nobody really seems interested in genuinely changing that, other than to 'make everyone a programmer' (usually with profit-minded purposes like labour cost reduction).
Every new system is more locked down than the last. It feels like anything you do still have control over is on borrowed time; until it gets replaced by something you don't control, which you will have no choice but to adopt (see: eg. companies and governments that require you to use Android/iOS apps).
What is the fun in computers anymore? Where's the magic, the wonder, the discovery? What "computers" are today, holistically speaking, has absolutely nothing to do with personal enjoyment or empowerment, and everything with being a tool of control, a tool of oppression.
Can that magic be brought back?
Responding to this by trying to re-litigate the allegations, when that wasn't the point of the post to begin with, is not how you gain trust with me. This apparently needs to be said.
If nothing else, the response in various communities to the ruckus at #38c3 (basically, a protest regarding CCC's poor response to sexual violence) is telling me a lot about which communities I should probably stop bothering with.
health, immunosuppressants, meta-ish but personal
Soon, I'll be receiving a kidney transplantation. A kidney transplantation doesn't just mean that you get a new kidney - it also means that you will have to take immunosuppressive medication to prevent it from being rejected by your body as foreign matter.
How long will I have to take that medication? For the rest of my life, most likely.
Here are some of the consequences that immunosuppressive medication will likely have for me (not exhaustive):
1. I can no longer get vaccinations.
2. I can no longer attend events with high risk of infection - for me, that means eg. hacker events like Congress with no safety precautions, *especially* as long as COVID is a thing (which seems like it will be around for years to come).
3. There are certain medications for other health issues that I will never be able to take because of interactions.
4. I will be dependent on the *availability* of immunosuppressants for the rest of my life. If there is a shortage, there is a pretty good chance that I will die.
5. There are certain categories of foods that I will never be able to eat again; including grapefruits and adjacent fruits, smoked meats, and a couple of other things.
6. An assortment of different side-effects from the medication itself, ranging from mild to pretty serious.
The exact degree of some of these things will vary, depending on the needed dose I end up with.
But however it goes, this transplantation is a one-way street that means I will never have a 'worry-free life' again, from a health perspective, not even temporarily.
De aalscholvers weten de molen weer goed te vinden.
Mijn collega was ooit met zijn kinderen en een natuurgids aan het wandelen. Toen de een grote vogel zagen vroeg de gids aan de kinderen "Weten jullie wat voor vogel dat is?"
Één van de kinderen herkende hem en riep enthousiast "Schijtlijster!"
"Ja", zei zijn vader, "die hebben we op de molen ook."
Sindsdien is dat dus onze officiële naam voor de aalscholver.
My kingdom for a science YouTuber that biases towards research documenting failed experiments.
I just watched a video on a very new model called Time Scapes that tries to do better than λCDM. It was interesting, and described (from a lay person perspective) an easier to understand model than "oooh it's spooky dark energy 👻". But, I was left with this feeling that the two videos I watched, were hype in the way that Popular Science is hype. And, it left me wondering if there's science reporting (video preferred, oddly) that covers content more in the vein of "here's this idea everyone liked a lot but it turns out it's probably wrong the authors are doing 'something' about it" for some value of something.
So idk tell me about videos or blogs I can go to and/or boost?
(It's important to note that I'm very much a lay person in this subject. I like hearing about it because I like being immersed in the vibe and I pick stuff up.)
I hope #Costco is rewarded many times over for standing by their DEI initiative with a surge in new memberships. People should be as good at thanking companies when they do the right thing, as they are at calling out companies when they fail to do so.
Context here on “saying grace”. It’s not a tradition here in Iceland to say grace before dinner, even among the religious. My late grandmother was a religious fanatic. At one point she had two of her grandchildren christened without their parent’s permission, for example. But she never asked any of us to say grace before dinner at family gatherings
So, when somebody unprompted asks for this at a dinner among relatives here, odds are they’re either born-again or in the early stages of extremism
I WILL NOT repost things here if they don't have image descriptions.
I end up adding the description myself, and frankly I pass over MANY posts that I would have quickly shared but I don't have the time to be everyone's mom and describe everything. (I just do that for the really great posts I can't pass up.)
Please, put #alttext on your images! It will make you more popular. It's polite. It makes your posts higher quality and easier to understand. It's cool. Just describe the images.
Gelukkig zijn er ook schapenhouders die ook dierliefhebbers zijn.
Hoiting heeft geen hekel aan de wolf gekregen, ook al is hij er meer dan 150 schapen aan kwijtgeraakt. "De wolf vind ik een hartstikke leuk en intelligent dier. Ik probeer dat dier te begrijpen. En van wie is dat mooie bos nou? Van ons of van de wolf?"
Deze schaapherder houdt wolven op afstand met zijn eigen uitvinding | Wolf | NU.nl
https://www.nu.nl/wolf/6340097/deze-schaapherder-houdt-wolven-op-afstand-met-zijn-eigen-uitvinding.html
I was *wondering* why Beyoncé went so hard on the country theme for her big half-time show on the Christmas football game. I mean she *is* from Texas, but that was the most "country" thing I've ever seen in my life. (The halftime show was more popular than the game, which also tracks since it was the only part of the game I watched LOL)
Turns out the Country Music Awards snubbed her, and probably for reasons you can guess. #beyonce #BeyonceBowl #Beyoncé #countryMusic #cma #AmericanFootball
racism, fedi, specifically for people who want to or are currently fighting racism
I need to write a proper post about this at some point, but for now, here's the short version:
If you're purportedly fighting racism on fedi, purportedly trying to make it a more diverse space, purportedly trying to make it a more welcoming space to people that aren't white, etc, stop assuming people that don't have their race plastered in all caps on their profile are white, k? (*especially* if you're a POC yourself)
Because you know what that is? White-washing, an example of the very racism we're trying to fight, and something that makes a space seem less diverse than it actually is
The fact that it's used against POC to discredit what we have to say is just the cherry on top (and often even a wonderful example of lateral violence )
Technical debt collector and general hype-hater. Early 30s, non-binary, ND, poly, relationship anarchist, generally queer.
Sometimes horny on main (behind CW), very much into kink (bondage, freeuse, CNC, and other stuff), and believe it or not, very much a submissive bottom :p
Feel free to flirt, but if you want to actually meet up and/or do something with me, lewd or otherwise, please tell me explicitly or I won't realize :) I'm generally very open to that sort of thing!
Further boundaries: boosts are OK (including for lewd posts), DMs are open. But the devil doesn't need an advocate; I'm not interested in combative arguing in my mentions. I am however happy to explain things in-depth when asked non-combatively.
My spoons are limited, so I may not always have the energy to respond to messages.
Strong views about abolishing oppression, hierarchy, agency, and self-governance - but I also trust people by default and give them room to grow, unless they give me reason not to. That all also applies to technology and how it's built.