Benj @Benj@qoto.org

Stop hating on lazy people. We didn't even do anything.

The reason Mastodon and the Fediverse is spread out on so many servers is it protects it from being taken over by anyone. Not even the richest can buy this place.

Centralised services like Twitter are incredibly easy to buy out. If you move from Twitter to another centralised service, sooner or later that will get bought out too.

The point of the Fediverse is to break this buyout cycle, to let people be permanently in control of their accounts. More info here:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/mastodon-and-the-fediverse-beginners-start-here/#whyisthefediverseonsomanyseparateservers

Wife: I told you to call a plumber.
Me: I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING.

Two excellent, in-depth guides to Mastodon, which should answer many of your questions, are here:

1. An Increasingly Less-Brief Guide to Mastodon by joyeusenoelle: https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon

2. Nikodemus' Guide to Mastodon: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D9gfeKg_-hlsU66R-dLEvUeyMsqEfyIx2pnfUeX0t_E/edit#heading=h.j95atvlbfrn5

*PLEASE BOOST THIS POST* so more people can see this information in their timelines, thank you so much! ❤️

To boost, just click on the boost button below this post, as indicated by the red arrow in the attached image (the icon may vary a bit, by app):

i know i boosted something about this before, but organizing your feeds into columns (settings ➡️ preferences ➡️ appearance ➡️ enable advanced web interface ✅) and creating your own curated lists (the "getting started" option is the hamburger menu on the upper corner of your page, from there find "lists" at the bottom of its options) helps you see more of what you like versus seeing... everythiiiiing. :ablobfoxdundundunowo:

The Tadpole Nebula in Gas and Dust https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap221219.html #APOD

If you’re afraid that books might change someone’s thinking, you’re not afraid of books, you’re afraid of thinking.

Please join me and @Bluejo tomorrow for a fun free online discussion of the History of Science Fiction course we're teaching online this winter (and the essay collection we're working on in parallel)! https://graham.uchicago.edu/programs-courses/course/ffac10104-history-science-fiction

Do you know the difference between a Million and a Billion? 1 million seconds is 12 days. 1 billion seconds is 31 years.

Top tip for driving in cold weather: Birds which are puffed up to keep the cold out, are far less aerodynamic than when the temperature is higher - and it takes them longer to get out of the road. Please give them a bit more time/space to escape your car. By the way - the correct term for this phenomenon is piloerection. Here’s a puffed-up Robin.
#robin #ErithacusRubecula #piloerection #driving #wildlife #roaduse #roaduserhierarchy #BirdPhotogaphy #photography #wildlifephotograhy

The best career advice I have:

Be kind. To everyone.

Good article here on what #ChatGPT is and isn’t. It is exceedingly good at mimicry. It isn’t “intelligent” or doing cognition or meaningful semantic processing, and likely never will be without introduction of different models. Right now, it excels at guessing the right next word, so fails miserably at anything requiring reasoning.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theline/p/nestor-maslej-truly-intelligent-ai

@baratunde The best part of Iceland? Their tourist minister has a sense of humor. Check out what they posted the day after the Metaverse announcement: https://youtu.be/enMwwQy_noI

Snowball Fights in Art (1400–1946): https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/snowball-fights #art #snow #snowballs #play #illustration #histodon #history

Beauty in the chaos 🌟

These colorful shreds of cosmic material are the "leftovers" of a massive star's supernova explosion!

Known as DEM L 190, this bright supernova remnant resides about 160,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Dorado: https://go.nasa.gov/3Wi8anN
#Hubble

New in Earth’s Future: Research Priorities for #Climate Litigation, by Jessica Wentz and colleagues

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022EF002928?af=R

This is what Earth looks like from 1.5 billion kilometers away. A pale blue dot beneath the rings of Saturn captured by the Cassini spacecraft.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
#earth #space #saturn #planets #nasa

Trees reflected in a pond in heavy fog, Wharton State Forest.
#landscape #photography #pinebarrens #fog