Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@qoto.org

@maxkennerly At the time of the First Amendment, a stagecoach could carry a written message halfway across the country in no fewer than 25 days. It was too slow to bother with urgent communications. Printing machines for mass distribution were unaffordable to the common man.

Meanwhile, because space is weird and distances can be absurd, this is the very best picture we have of the most massive dwarf planet in our solar system, Eris, and its moon:

For over a day now I've been trying to look up the specific orbital range of the asteroid belt only to get lost in wiki binges.

On a related note, did you know we, human beings who have never made it further than our own moon, have this super-detailed map of the second-biggest asteroid in our solar system, chock full of named features?

Meet Vesta:

I don't think I've ever actually smelled Drakkar Noir before, but judging exclusively by sitcom references, it must be awful.

@briannawu Wtf, baking a cake is an order of magnitude more effort than tightening some screws. That's bonkers!

Something strange just happened.

In December, I bought some sports memorabilia for my brother from Fanatics.com.

Since then, I've been inundated with #marketing #spam emails for the team that was branded on the item I bought, from multiple companies, mostly #Ticketmaster (who I've never done business with).

Today, I filled out a survey sent to me by Fanatics. I chose "Other" as the reason I'd rate them 0/10, and then typed in the box that they spammed me and I was reporting them to the #FTC (which I am, because the unsubscribe links don't even work).

I was then taken to a page that informed me that I was automatically being removed from all marketing lists based on my response... which was free-form text entered into a box.

In my mind, that would seem to indicate they know what they're doing is so wrong and illegal that they specifically wrote algorithms to look for related words (maybe "spam" or "FTC"), instead of offering "Marketing Emails" as a direct choice (remember, I had to choose "other" to enter this). So, they're concealing their wrongdoing too.

Anyway, I don't think any of this is #illegal, but it is #shady as fuck, so maybe don't ever do any business with #Fanatics

@mcrocker @dangillmor Which tells you that the "science experiments" offer more value to those people than they take.

For example: I don't sign up for grocery store rewards programs because they're gross violations of privacy, but most people do. They just see a different value proposition than I do.

@dangillmor Or you can just choose to opt-out of those "black-box science experiments".

If nobody used them, they'd vanish in a heartbeat.

But that requires self-control, which so few people seem to possess.

@CynicAgeing@ohai.social That would never work in America because we value free speech too much.

No, but it does become more likely as one gets older. We pine for "the good old days" and resist change. It's why every generation thinks the generation before is bigoted. Because "bigotry" meant something different to them.

And if someone tries to sell them the lie that the world can go back to how they remember it, some are foolish enough to want to buy that lie.

Made a traditional corned beef and cabbage meal for dinner tonight... delicious freshly-simmered corned beef and cabbage on dark pumpernickel with horseradish sauce and a side of boiled potatoes. Classic and delicious!

@jeffjarvis There are a number of scifi properties in which automatons use "one" and "oneself" as their pronouns for this very reason.