Pat @Pat@qoto.org

@nullifidian

>"I wonder* if this will apply to, say, political action groups that scam entire populations with lies on billboards and buses [cough] brexit [cough]." (re new-uk-fraud-strategy-aims-to-shut-down-scammers-at-source)

I hope not. Freedom of speech is a fundamental principle of liberal democracy. The way to counter lies in political fora is with more speech -- expose the lies -- not censorship.

@lupyuen

>'"LLMs hallucinate when their training dataset has limited, outdated or conflicting information about the question asked of them"'

Sounds like MAGA folks.

***** spoilers *****

A little bit more on the economic and political situation around the time that this film was made... There was a deep recession in the early 1990s, and then the Rodney King beating and riots occurred during the recession in 1991. So Hollywood, which had pretty much excluded black people from their films up until that time, changed things up very quickly because they were afraid of a revolution. So they started putting more black people into their movies, and this film, 12 Monkeys, was one that had a lot more black people in it than many mainstream Hollywood movies.

I don't know if the title of the film relates to that or not. It's possible. If I knew for sure that it did, I would not recommend the film at all for that reason alone. But I’m not sure, thus the ambiguous sarcasm in the original post.

Also of note is that Frank Gorshin played a supporting role in 12 Monkeys. Gorshin was a guest star on Star Trek in 1969 in an episode titled, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, which was one of the more memorable episodes of the original series. The narrative of that episode, which featured aliens who were black on the left half of their bodies and white on the right half, and vis-a-versa, was a naked metaphor for the absurdity of racial prejudice, which was a top issue during the revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the US. This indicates to me that race was on the minds of the producers of 12 Monkeys, and they wanted to send a hint to that effect to their audience. Also in the film was a quick image of a TV screen showing news coverage of the riots – another hint about the undercurrents surrounding the making of the film.

This type of major change in the way that Hollywood treats black people in film has happened at least three times in history that I know of. It happened near the end of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s; it happened after the Rodney King beating and the subsequent riots; and it happened most recently again in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. But in between those inflection points, Hollywood has been really racist. The racism got even worse during Obama’s presidency.

This film is also partly about animal rights activists, which were very active during the time the film was made. I think some of the people involved in the film are supportive of animal rights. Even though the activists were portrayed as crazy people (along with just about everyone else in the film), ultimately in the story they were mostly benign, and were not the ones who released the deadly virus which caused the pandemic.

Both the fight against racism and the animal rights movement share a common philosophical core tenet, which is opposition to the oppression of individuals for who they are – speciesism and racism are cut from the same cloth. Alice Walker has written some about this and there is a book on the subject titled, “The Dreaded Comparison” (1988; Marjorie Spiegel, Alice Walker), and some more recent titles, too.

@dbread

😂 I think people are going to want to smack it with a fly swatter.

@pj

>"There is no good reason to allow the discharge of firearms in residential areas."

If you're nearest neighbor is a quarter mile away it's not a problem, just use common sense and follow the law.

>"And you'll have to explain to me the mass murderers from area code 202."

I said, ..."what about those guys in the 202 area code who just killed over a million Americans? Why isn't anybody talking about that?"

This link explains some of it...
https://qoto.org/@Pat/109690264430646689

@freemo

https://qoto.org/@Pat/110297928538191481

@voidabyss @trinsec

#covid19 #covid #vax #respirator

More people died last week in the US from COVID-19 than were killed in the 9/11 attack. Every week, another 9/11 attack.

Please wear your respirator when you are around other people.

Do a seal check on your respirator when you wear it.

It is more dangerous to be in public without a respirator than it is to drive without a seatbelt.

A properly worn respirator, like a N95 mask, prevents infection and spread of disease from all variants of the flu and COVID-19.

(right image: attribution Ryssby, CC-BY-2.5)

@jillianne

>" guess if you're so concerned about his regime, you can move on."

I already did, when he de-federated qoto from his instance.

@freemo

Being retired and at my advanced age I'm not sure I want to climb the python learning curve at this time, but count me in to help in any way I can. (especially after the power grab that Eugene just did)

@voidabyss @trinsec

@jillianne

>"Are you serious? Eugen has proven himself to have good intentions."

You know what they say about the road to hell...

>"Having to choose a server is the main reason so many people give up on Mastodon immediately."

Really? What study came to that conclusion? Who conducted that study?

That's like saying, "Oh, democracy is so hard, I can't chose a candidate. Please just give us dictator instead."

>"This is a simple solution."

Assuming there was an existential problem, in 20 seconds I could come up with a half dozen better solutions that would be more in line with the philosophy of Mastodon than a dictator assuming total control of everyone who comes into the Fedi...

- assign newbies to a random instance
- ask a couple of questions about the new user's preferences and assign them to an instance that matches those preferences
- show them sample toots from instances and let them click on the one they like
- let them supply their user name from another social media site and scan their status there and pick an instance based on that

and so on...

But he just happens to pick a "solution" that gives him all the power. This is after he has already arbitrarily banished qoto and a bunch of other instances from his list of instances. (qoto was in complete compliance with the requirements for being included on that list, but he unilaterally removed qoto and other sites without notice and with no transparency whatsoever.

No, based on what I've seen, he has not "proven himself to have good intentions."

I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but this move proves exactly what his intentions are.

-
For those of you who are unfamiliar with George Orwell's Animal Farm here's a quote from Wikipedia about the novella...

"It tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed, and under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon, the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before."

https://qoto.org/@Pat/110297899836118447

#mastodon #authoritarianism #fuckup #blunder #fedi

@jillianne

Authoritarian power grab.

Fuck that shit.

There are literally dozens of ways to do this. He's trying to be just another centralized platform like Twitter.

-
Here's an archived link to Eugene Rochko's power grab. Just in case...

https://web.archive.org/web/20230501170049/https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/05/a-new-onboarding-experience-on-mastodon/

#mastodon #authoritarianism #fuckup #blunder #fedi

@lupyuen

"All Mastodons are equal, but one is more equal than all the others."
- paraphrasing George Orwell, Animal Farm

Fuck that.

@twitskeptic

Why are you promoting that here on Mastodon?

@pj

Also, gun safety 101 says that you don't handle firearms when you are impaired which includes being drunk or angry. So someone '... accidentally "unwinding" too much in their backyard, especially after a beer or two' is not possible when following basic gun safety protocols.

@pj

In Texas local jurisdictions can regulate when and where firearms are discharged. I don't know what the rules are where that guy was but from the video in the news coverage it looked like it wasn't a densely populated area.

Even in places that are friendly to gun owners they generally have restrictions that prohibit the discharge of firearms within a certain distance of occupied buildings.

And law enforcement in those jurisdictions take gun safety very seriously and anyone who's negligent with a firearm gets in trouble.

Everyone's all concerned about this one guy who killed a few people, but what about those guys in the 202 area code who just killed over a million Americans? Why isn't anybody talking about that?

@acjay

Why do you keep promoting this here on Mastodon?

@acjay

>"How would that be any different?"

Exactly. So why do it, except to undermine the Fediverse, so they can hang on to their monopoly and control the content that is available?

If they really had altruistic motives and wanted a better decentralized social network, why didn't they just set up an ActivityPub instance and contribute to the development of the existing Fediverse instead undermining it?

What is your motivation for promoting Bluesky?

@bonifartius

I know someone who lives in an area that sees winter temperatures below -30C and they did that trick of putting the outdoor unit underground in a cellar near the house and it worked. They were able to use the unit everyday in the winter because the cellar stayed well above -15C. And it was a fairly small cellar too.

Even with the small space, the fan in the outdoor unit caused air circulation against the walls of the cellar which readily transferred the heat from the ground to the air in the cellar.

This technique probably only makes sense in areas where it gets really cold, below -15C, and there are a lot of things to consider including the thermal conductivity of the ground and many other variables.

It would probably work even better if the heat pump manufacturers specifically designed the outdoor units for underground operation.

Regarding population control, that idea came from another thread recently here on qoto. Having fewer babies not only reduces demand for energy and other resources, but it also mitigates the amount of suffering that humanity will face decades from now when there is less food to eat and more migration because of the consequences of climate change.

But yeah, expectations about what is normal will likely change significantly.