Glass Half Empty 🇨🇦 @YUL_native@qoto.org

A number of people have asked what I could have done better. In particular, I should have set the first post in the thread to public and the rest of the posts as unlisted.

Here's a fantastic explainer from @djnavarro via @flodebarre:
https://blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2022-11-03_what-i-know-about-mastodon/#how-can-i-make-threads

(It's worth reading the entire thing. I learned a ton.)

I tried to switch to another "instance" to see what it was like. Alas, none of my follows or followers were migrated over, and Mastodon says my "backup" of my old account to import was corrupted. Hoping it will just take a while to migrate over but starting to think I'm going to be starting from scratch as the new Instance is pretty sure I'm only following one person.

I keep seeing people say Mastodon is nothing like Twitter. And they’re right.

Mastodon is an echo of the old internet, it’s decentralised, chaotic. What you get depends on your sysadmin. You can’t search, everything has to be shared to you by a human. Networks split apart and rejoin. What you see is your unique connection to it.

Is this good? Maybe. But for me that’s the internet I grew up with. No algorithms, no targeted adverts, just human interaction, and it was glorious.

No joke: The Secrétariat du Québec aux relations canadiennes has mailed me multiple physical copies of the province's consolidation of the Constitution Acts and I'm 90% sure it's to troll me about the Bill 96 provisions being included.

(They're still unconstitutional, by the way).

One of my friends asked "Where the journalists at?!" and I'm glad there's now a journo instance, find journalists to follow here: https://journa.host/explore

If "immunity debt" explained the current rise in infectious illness, then we would have seen this a year ago, after most of the isolation and masking ended. We didn't. It's happening now, after repeated infections with #COVID19 are leaving many with weakened immune systems.

Here’s a tool for finding out any instance’s custom emoji. Mine (mastodon.social) doesn’t have the “verified” check like some others, but it does have the Rocinante , so.
https://emojos.in

One of the nicest things about Mastodon so far is having a very scientific and academia focused feed where I can discover and follow those working in fields where I don't have a background.

It is wonderful for seeing the diversity of research and being inspired by the works of others.

Interesting fact of the day: The same effect that cuased light in a prism to split up into different colors is what ultimately caused the first transatlantic telegraphic wire in 1858 to fail.

Morse code is transmitted as on-off signals, effectively square waves. Square waves are in fact made up of many different frequencies. Like in a prism different frequencies move at different speeds through a wire. Therefore as the on-off pulses traveled through the transatlantic telegraph wire the signal spread out like it does in a prism and ultimately the pulses would overlap and be indistinguishable.

The effect was so extreme that it took a message of only 98 words (the first message sent) over 67 minutes to send one way and a whopping 16 hours to confirm the message.

Whitehouse, a doctor with little mathematical understanding, thought he could solve the problem by increasing voltage, which we now know was a futile effort. He increased the voltage to the point he managed to short out the cable entirely and made it useless. However Lord Kelvin had already warned of the problem as was ignored and he came up with the law of squares to describe the problem which later was refined to give us the telegraphers equation. The telegraphers equation is still used today to model feedlines in radio transmitters and receivers.

#Science #STEM #Physics #History @Science #QOTOJournal

Seems the exodus from twitter is accelerating rather than slowing down. Last 24 hours has been the largest influx so far!

This is very good from @jeffjarvis

'Hope for post-Musk net'

#Mastodon #Fediverse #Twitter
https://buzzmachine.com/2022/11/05/hope-for-a-post-musk-net/

one thing I think that might be lost on newcomers is the fact that this past week has been BANANAS for everyone who's been on the site for years, and if you feel like people are being snippy or pushy about social norms, that's probably why.

on a normal week when people talk about "hey please CW that" or "please don't spam your tweets here with a crossposter" or whatever they're more likely to do so patiently and explain the reasoning behind why we do things that way but on a day like today things are more likely to get a little snippy or terse.

don't take it personally! the old timers are trying to maintain social norms in the face of a flood of change, and they're worn out. keep that in mind if you think to yourself "hm; this place doesn't seem that friendly". give it some time to get back to normal before you bounce.

CBC Power and Politics is hoping to have myself and Leah West on every Friday to talk about the Public Order Emergency Commission and the Emergency Act. https://twitter.com/davidwcochrane/status/1588910690395643904?s=46&t=7gihXm0x2OcQbk07oVWjbg

OMG Mastodon has an Edit feature!

Long story short, the move toward algorithms was never about making a better social network, it's always been more about making a better environment for injecting external advertising, extracting more personal data they can sell, and keeping you glued to it so it can do more both

Grumpy face test.

Aside from it being hard to search/find people occasionally, I like that more and more people seem to be joining this place. Hopefully it continues to improve and grow a bit.

Frustrating that I'm still struggling to share photos on this platform. Hoping that gets worked out soon.