Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

ikea stickers

There's a somewhat popular idea that "computers have become too complex for anyone to really understand them" but honestly I don't think that's specific to computers at all.

The same thing has happened for goods and infrastructure; who *actually* understands anymore how the things they use on a daily basis are created, and what social factors play into that?

You can see this in the preppers who believe an isolated bunker will sustain them, the seasteaders who believe that they can just not pay taxes and infrastructure will somehow magically exist, and yes, also in the people on fedi who would rather just move to a shed in the forest that's cut off from society, but who have never thought through the implications that that has for their ability to eat.

All of them are completely disconnected from the process by which their daily sustenance is produced; there's no recognition that building social ties is *unavoidably necessary* to maintain a society or even just one's own life, that you can't just completely isolate yourself from others and survive.

The Nation serving Google ads on an op Ed about Google’s evils is ironic and morally short sighted.

Reminds me of lefty bent liberals with a Substack, or all the environmental websites pushing people to the Nazi bird site for traffic.

We have to start expecting moral and practical voices to walk their own talk, even if it’s less profitable.

https://mastodon.green/@funkybuddha/114358936001586438

I'm not a big fan of copyright, but Meta's argument here is that they couldn't afford to pay for it and that justifies just taking it without paying. Extraordinary repudiation of capitalism from its heart.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/meta-ai-lawsuit

“Flash Games Were the Internet’s Crayon Box”

https://innerspiral.lol/Blog/flash/flash

I miss seeing the kind of interactive work and experimentation a designer could do on their own with Flash. There isn't really anything like it any more.

#spoonieTown has lots of front stoops, porches, and park benches to sit and chat with a neighbour whenever it takes your fancy.
...or to sit on, smile and nod wordlessly at passersby when yer not feeling chatty. People dig that too.

I "love" how we need to keep on studying things that are flat out good for society while bad things just get rolled out without the same onus of proof.

Things that need to be proven over and over and over:

- Universal Basic Income
- Walkable cities prioritising pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit
- Low speed limits for cars
- No-strings housing for homeless
- High taxes for the rich

And the list goes on and on... why do we make it so hard to improve our society while making it so easy to ruin it?

So… if you listen to the current govement of the United States…..

1. Covid is over.
2. The latest epidemic is how my brain is wired (Autism)

They are literally saying I am a bigger threat than a virus that has killed 7 million people.

I don’t think I’ve killed 7 million people. I don’t think all autistic people combined have killed 7 million people.

So if protecting human life isn’t the goal… what is? Oh right… Autistic people will challenge how people think because we think differently and we tend to challenge group think when we see it.

These people rely on group think because they need people to do things against their own interest and the only way to make that happen is to engage group think.

After toiling away at this for a few months, I'm releasing two new Go projects for the fediverse today:

longdistance, a JSON-LD processor.
pana, an ActivityStreams library built on longdistance.

I built these projects with the hope to make it easier for folks to get started building on the fediverse themselves. You can read a bit about this on my blog.

(If you happen to have computer touchers in your followers, I would appreciate a boost.)

#golang #LinkedData #ActivityStreams

Every now and then when my blog gets attention, *especially* when the "How Decentralized Is Bluesky Really" post came out, you get a bunch of people complaining that the site looks like it was designed 20 years ago (it was)

@mkljczk made a "more modern version" of my blog https://mkljczk.pl/uploads/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

Compare to the original https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

Big step up!

I feel like the timeline needs some gentler things on it, so important news: I saw some baby greylag geese yesterday, they were very fluffy.

#Nature #Wildlife #Cute #Birds

A feel-good story in the news today...

Residents of all ages in a small Michigan community formed a human chain and helped a local bookshop move each of its 9,100 books – one by one – to a new storefront about a block away.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/17/book-brigade-us-town-forms-human-chain-to-move-9100-books-one-by-one

The “book brigade” of about 300 people stood in two lines running along a sidewalk in downtown Chelsea on Sunday, passing each title from Serendipity Books’ former location directly to the correct shelves in the new building, down the block and around the corner on Main Street.

“It was a practical way to move the books, but it also was a way for everybody to have a part,” Michelle Tuplin, the store’s owner, said. “As people passed the books along, they said ‘I have not read this’ and ‘that’s a good one’.”

Tuplin said the endeavour took just under two hours – much shorter than hiring a moving company to box and unbox the thousands of titles. The brigade even put the books back on the shelves in alphabetical order.

concept: the 💯 emoji but for all the http error codes

can't remember where I saw it but "Using AI in education is like using a forklift in the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you" is a solid quote