Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org
Retired SysAdmin living in the high country of Arizona, USA. I enjoy learning about physics, cosmology, genetics, neurology, and suchlike. Deeply confused by worldwide trends towards authoritarianism. I thought we'd already learned about that stuff. But I guess not.
Joined Nov 2022
Andy Lowry
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Well, folks. I'm going to try to do some live tooting / posting of the 1/6 hearing. Let's see how it goes...I've been doing this in the Other Place up until now.
Andy Lowry
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A partial list of our reporters you can follow on Masto:
•Caroline Chen @carolinechen
•Annie Waldman @AnnieWaldman
•Perla Trevizo @Perla_Trevizo
•Jeremy Schwartz @JeremySchwartz
•Emily Hopkins @emilyhopkins
•Ken Armstrong @bykenarmstrong
•Mariam Elba @mariamelba
•Jessica Lussenhop @lussenpop
•Ellis Simani @emsimani
•Justin Elliott @elliottjustin
•Max Blau @maxblau
•Andy Kroll @andykroll
•Kartikay Mehrotra @kartikay
•Jeremy Kohler @jeremykohler
•Neil Bedi @neilbedi
Andy Lowry
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Who could have foreseen that a white South African who is obsessed with colonizing places would have had such a lack of consideration for a community he ruled over?
Andy Lowry
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@tchambers
has started a spreadsheet of journos on Masto, You can look there:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13No4yxY-oFrN8PigC2jBWXreFCHWwVRTftwP6HcREtA/edit?resourcekey=undefined#gid=1320898902
Andy Lowry
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Just downloaded a desktop client called TheDesk for Mastodon, more flexibility with my columns. Very barebones but I much prefer this
Andy Lowry
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Andy Lowry
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@juddlegum "I'm going to continue making money for Musk until I get banned." is how I heard what you just said. I subscribe to your newsletter, but journalists have to bite the bullet and leave #twitter - it's not a site of free exchange of ideas anymore.
Andy Lowry
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Elon just admitted that Twitter is a publisher of information like the NYT or Washington Post, and this Sec. 230 doesn’t apply to Twitter.
Andy Lowry
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Both Twitter and Mastodon are non-profits, but only one of them is intentionally so.
Andy Lowry
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YES! French official fires warning shot at Elon Musk that new Twitter policy could open up 'criminal liability'
Andy Lowry
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As a random aside apropos of nothing, since this is Mastodon and it's good for that, I just want to mention that my Telecaster makes me happy every single time I pick it up. This is true even on those bad days where I'm even more inept than usual.
I'm not a guitarist and never will be. I picked it up twelve years ago to see if I could make it do anything, like especially blues-related since that's a fairly straightforward style. (My training is all in classical piano, which helped me not much at all.) I've deliberately avoided learning to read music on it because c'mon, six strings, same note in four or so places, that's crazy.
Despite any lack of actual proficiency, it delights me. It feels right. It melds to me. The frets are right where I want them to be without looking (though that took a while). It feels good even when I'm struggling. Why other types of guitars exist, I have no idea, since this will do anything I want it to.*
It's a 2011 contour-back model (I think it was the first year that was available) that I put locking tuners on but have otherwise left unmolested. Natural finish with maple neck, with black pickguard, the way Mithra and Thor both intended.
If you suffer from too much stress and unpleasantness and unsightly hair loss, I prescribe a Telecaster. Try it, you'll see I'm right, and you will thank me.
* I apologize for this exaggeration-- okay, lie-- I do know what humbuckers are good for, and hollowbodies, and Strats, but I really could live without all those if I had to.
Andy Lowry
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In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice.
Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond.
His reply was a doozy.
Andy Lowry
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The new normal.
As a direct result of #Musk 's #JournalistPurge new users per hour went from about 1000 per hour to 3500 and has now plateaued at around 2000. The network has responded beautifully. Four of the largest instances closed registrations, but things ran smoothly.
What can we conclude from the last 48 hours?
1. Mastodon can easily handle moderate surges.
2. Mastodon has huge untapped capacity for growth due to the large number of small and midsize instances.
Andy Lowry
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Dear Jesus: For Christmas this year I'd like to try following your teachings without having one of your followers call me a socialist
Answer found a few moments ago! But thanks for helpful boost, I appreciate it.
Had to resort to That Other Search Engine, sadly, but finally tracked it down in a forum somewhere.
Andy Lowry
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I keep seeing that “first they came for the journalists” sign, and it pisses me off so much, because when they came for muslims, immigrants, and trans people, mainstream journalists normalized it and reported it as “both sides”. Somehow it didn’t count for them until it was happening to them personally, which is *exactly* what the fucking poem was warning against in the first place.
Andy Lowry
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Andy Lowry
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Sister Mary Kenneth Keller was born #OTD in 1913. She worked with John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz on the design and implementation of Beginner’s All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code — BASIC — and was the first woman in the US to earn a PhD in Computer Science.
10 PRINT “HAPPY BIRTHDAY”
20 GOTO 10
I'm starting a five-session radiation cancer treatment Monday (left parietal tumor, currently at about 38cc total volume) and would be happy to offer a report on the experience and outcome and such, should anyone have an interest in that kind of thing. Have already done some radiation other than my head, so it won't be a completely new experience at least. Data wasted is a terrible thing, but I understand if it's not of any general interest. 😎
Very little in the way of symptoms thus far. A slight mismatch of left hand and proprioception when not in visual field, but that's it. Not even headaches, oddly. Using dexamethasone 4mg once per day to counter swelling, and can tell it helps (better language fluency). Glad to provide any details anyone might want.
Retired SysAdmin living in the high country of Arizona, USA. I enjoy learning about physics, cosmology, genetics, neurology, and suchlike. Deeply confused by worldwide trends towards authoritarianism. I thought we'd already learned about that stuff. But I guess not.
Joined Nov 2022
