Alan Johnson @acjay@qoto.org
Data, software & management. Husband of Jen. 👶*4. Former teacher. Jeopardy champ*1. Uplift good ideas, support folks, and speak up against harm.
Joined Oct 2022
Alan Johnson
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https://historians.social has been live for 48 hours!
We have well over 400 members on our server and we're growing just about every minute.
Although the instance says "historians," we're really a place for history and anyone who has an interest in or works with history. So #historyteachers history organizations, #libraries #archives #museums and anyone who wants to know more about the past and the process of history is invited to join us!
Lists of professions on financial services applications are so random. One I'm looking at has maybe 50 options, one of which is "Arms/Ammunition Dealer".
Alan Johnson
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So, the European Union has set up its own Mastodon instance, EU Voice, as an official channel/platform for all its many institutions - what a great initiative https://social.network.europa.eu/about
#TwitterMigration #europe #Diplomacy #Transparency
Alan Johnson
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My favourite time of the day is “chatting” with my non-speaking autistic son as we wait for his school to open in the morning. I say chatting in inverted commas as he uses a letterboard to communicate with (as well as typing and #proloquo2go) This morning he explained that sadly his lovely friend has lots of meltdowns. I asked him why he doesn’t have many meltdowns. He told me “Because I can communicate well”
I really don’t know where we would be without robust #AAC #LISTENtoNonspeakers #Autism
Alan Johnson
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Cricut cutting machines, ubiquitous in schools, libraries and makerspaces, can be used to make embossed or stenciled tactile graphics. A Braille embosser costs at least $1500 — Cricuts cost a fifth of that or less. Today I learned that I can handle the hardware and make great stencils: all that holds a Blind maker back is a set of unlabeled controls in the software. Does anyone know somebody at Cricut I could talk to about making the interface more accessible? Boosters beloved on this one!
I find some of the arguments compelling about how AI art plagiarizes the artists whose works the models are trained on.
But I'm also reminded of the controversy around sampling in hip hop, which gave marginalized people a way to create new art, changing the entire music world.
I think of Peter Gunz and Lord Tariq's hit Deja Vu. It sampled a Steely Dan song, and Donald Fagan and Walter Becker won 100% of the writing credit for Deja Vu in court. That doesn't seem right to me, but it's unsurprising the way the courts ruled against the Black dudes from the Bronx. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deja_Vu_(Uptown_Baby)
It's not exactly the same though. Samples in music can be identified, but the training source material in AI models might not be, let alone the contributions of specific pieces to a given generated output.
Cc @mykola
Alan Johnson
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Twitter was never a healthy "public square" for most of us. Let's not rewrite history while eulogizing the hellsite.
Twitter was a frightening battleground where we managed barely to claw out an uneasy existence amidst the worst violent neo-Nazi extremists who constantly published our home addresses, threatened our kids' lives, and sent hordes of racist trolls into our mentions.
The same principles that allowed us to survive uneasily on Twitter will be required here in the #fediverse. Community defense, thoughtful pressure on moderation policies, and eternal vigilance.
There are no safe spaces but those we make safe through constant effort. We keep us safe.
Alan Johnson
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@noracodes I really resent the whole "Mastodon is too technical" thing because
1) it feels like a concerted effort by a subset of influencers and opinion leaders who have realised that Mastodon is a lot harder to game and they may not be able to preserve clout they didn't earn, and
2) I'm a music major who doesn't use cohost because I couldn't CSS my way out of a wet paper bag, and I picked up Mastodon inside a couple of minutes, tops. People are trying to speak "Mastodon is too hard" into existence because they don't want their world to change, but an unchanging world is a luxury some of us have never had.
Alan Johnson
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Noticing a lot of weekend chatter about helping new people onboard and I literally cannot stress the enough - the experience changes entirely once you follow about 200 people.
Then your home timeline fills up, and you find more people to follow/weed out some of the randos you followed at first.
This place is NOT going to get "busier" if you do not follow people; there are so many posts going on that you are not seeing.
Use "Federated" and "Local" find ppl; follow liberally. It works.
Is there a good hosted Mastodon provider that's <$10/mo and isn't full? I'm just trying to host my own account. Or maybe at most my immediate family.
Alan Johnson
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Imagine you're a visually impaired Mastodon user and your screen reader encounters a post that says something like "A stunning view I saw this morning" or "This is hilarious." But the image is the equivalent of what you see below: a blank. Wouldn't it be frustrating to encounter post after post like that?
Describe images. It's an act of love. Describe them as you would to a dear friend you were talking to on the phone.
Alan Johnson
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🚨 Heroku free tier warning 🚨
Heroku will start deleting apps on their old free tier on November 28th 2022 - that's Monday coming up
If you have old projects that you need to archive this weekend is the time to be doing it
(Not a great time to find out that the accounts you created to help out various non-profits a few years ago can't be signed into anymore due to changes to the Heroku/Salesforce login flow...)
I've been watching this damned Michigan-Ohio St game since noon. This is why I don't watch football anymore.
Alan Johnson
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It's perfectly reasonable and possible for *both* of these statements to be true:
* it is better here than on Twitter
* this better *isn't good enough*
Federation and decentralization *as currently and inconsistently and idiosyncratically practiced* while better, are not good enough.
Digging in and saying that decentralization and federation *is* good enough is really, really unhelpful.
Also, the potential for better does not mean the practical experience is better.
Maybe everyone really should host their own instances.
It took a couple weeks, but now I'm seeing the instance admin drama. And I just don't have the time or ability to figure out who's right about which things.
Alan Johnson
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There's a parasite that makes wolves 46 times more likely to lead a pack. It's tied to risky behavior generally. In humans, toxoplasma gondii is associated with less conscientiousness and generosity. In women, it's tied to increased tribalism and less cultural liberalism. Oh, and it's also been linked to greater attractiveness.
https://www.iflscience.com/a-strange-parasite-massively-improves-a-wolf-s-chances-of-leading-the-pack-66368
https://www.iflscience.com/your-political-views-could-be-the-result-of-a-parasitic-infection-65636
https://www.iflscience.com/people-infected-by-brainaltering-cat-parasite-are-more-attractive-finds-study-63735
Is it possible to proxy my Fediverse identity?
I don't want to run my own instance, but I also want my identity to be instance independent. For example, if I was @me@acjay.com, but my actually presence remained hosted by Qoto. I believe this would require Qoto to be able to publish my posts under my domain rather than @acjay.
Does this concept exist on any instances?
Note that many email providers allow this under their "custom domain" functionality
Alan Johnson
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Literally stuff people said back in the day. Blame the UX for bad conveyance.
People like to say that the instance you choose doesn't matter, but it does.
Your local instance affects discoverability—this isn't a big issue with email because we don't _want_ discoverability—and it affects the type of content you'll see in your local and federated timelines.
Those factors will play a big part in your initial period of exploration of the fediverse. Social media is only _partially_ following people who you already know. That's not so much the part that is throwing people off.
Does my instance only get copies of statuses on other instances if at least one person on here follows them?
I run into situations where I find friends on other instances and most of their posts are missing. I'm guessing it's because we're all new to Mastodon and aren't being followed by people on every instance.
Is it then not possible to reply to an older post of theirs from this account?
Data, software & management. Husband of Jen. 👶*4. Former teacher. Jeopardy champ*1. Uplift good ideas, support folks, and speak up against harm.
Joined Oct 2022
