Tom Foale @askquantum@qoto.org

Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement promises ‘big bang’ deregulation https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/17/jeremy-hunt-autumn-statement-deregulation?CMP=share_btn_tw That should guarantee a future crash then

Might we stop talking crypto for good now? Some of us always realised it was a con. We need no such thing, just as we do not need a central bank digital currency, unless it was designed to take private sector banks out of the personal banking market - which I would support

Deeply disappointed to note this from the Scottish Greens. I wish that one day we might have some politicians who understand economics but it seems we are a long way from doing so as yet. https://www.thenational.scot/news/23120814.not-rushing-scottish-currency-vital-winning-independence-voters/?ref=twtrec

Ha-Joon Chang is one of our best economists and he is spot on here. An economy focussed on shareholder rewards has stripped businesses of cash and failed to invest. Many pay out more than they earn. No wonder we are in a mess. The way out is more gov’t investment, not austerity.
---
RT @BBCNewsnight
"If you cut that [spending] too much you actually make it worse"

Economist Ha-Joon Chang warns against austerity, saying that Britain ha…
https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1591203593335738368

🧑‍⚕️Average salary of an NHS nurse: £33,384

💼MP basic salary: £84,144. Plus £67,505 if a Cabinet Minister.

🧑‍⚕️NHS canteen prices: £7.25 for macaroni cheese

💼House of Commons Members' Dining Room: £5.67 for a gourmet roast rump of beef dinner

🧑‍⚕️NHS parking: £25/day

💼MP travel: expensed

NHS nurses have been refused inflation-matching pay rises for 12 Tory years. It’s time to pay them properly.

#NHS #UKpolitics #nurse

Some Mastodon thoughts, for bird-site expats (which include myself). I'm aggregating these from posts I've boosted before, so little of this is my own brain.

- There's no algorithm here. That means favoriting/liking doesn't do anything except communicate approval to the OP and others (which is still nice!).

- No algorithm means boosting ("retweeting") is the true method to increase a post's visibility. Do that more than you did on birdsite.

- There's no post-quoting here, and that's by design. Look at quote-tweets on the birdsite; it's a feature primarily used for toxicity.

- There's no direct word-search here either; that means you want to use hashtags to make posts more searchable. This is also intended, since word-searching posts was often used to harass/stalk on the birdsite and elsewhere, so that was left by the wayside here. This also means hashtags are much more a thing here than any of the algorithm-powered sites.

- It's encouraged to put in text descriptions when you post images; a lot of Mastodon users use screen-readers due to various disabilities, and getting an image description read out loud helps them immensely.

- Speaking of screen-readers: using capitalization in your hashtags allows the screen-readers to read them more easily, especially if you're smashing multiple words together. #rockmusic = unreadable. #RockMusic = readable.

- The best way to make threads is to make set your first post as public, but "unlist" all of your replies. This prevents your whole thread from clogging up feeds.

- Content Warnings should be used more liberally here. If you haven't gotten the impression yet, much of Mastodon was built and populated by marginalized groups who were harassed/bullied off of other platforms. This is the culture they built, to respect each other's mental health. It's not a rule, but it's well-appreciated.

- Consider chipping a few bucks towards whomever runs the server you're on; the strain is real, and most server admins were likely paying out of pocket before so don't have an existing donation base. The growth here has been extremely fast, and that means money's needed.

- DMs are just posts with privacy settings. So if you @ someone in a DM, you pull them into the thread. That could be embarrassing.

- Also, no, DMs aren't end-to-end encrypted, but they aren't on Twitter either. Don't use either if you want true privacy.

- Including your Mastodon handle in your birdsite profile will help people find you here; there's a tool (pruvisto.org/debirdify/ is one of them that's used) people can use to pull Mastodon handles from Twitter profile.

- Use the blocking and reporting features liberally, if needed. This should go without saying, but they work, and work well!

- If there's an entire Mastodon server you don't want to hear from, you can block the whole thing too.

- Preferences -> Appearance -> "Slow Mode": this can make larger "Local" feeds and any "Federated" feed much more readable.

I'll reply with some more as I see them, or reply here too. I've only been here 4 days but I'm loving it so far.

Hi, this is Greta. You are welcome to follow me here, if you prefer planet earth to planet mars.

I've become somewhat fascinated by how the removal of Quote Tweet type functionality forces a behavioural change here.

When it came time to reckon with social media’s failings, nobody ran to the “web3” platforms. Nobody asked “can I get paid per message”? Nobody asked about the blockchain. The community of people who’ve been quietly doing this work for years (decades!) ended up being the ones who welcomed everyone over, as always.

Migrated from Twitter to Mastodon but finding it hard to find the folks you used to follow?

Fedifinder can help. https://fedifinder.glitch.me

Cool tool for finding your old Twitter buddies that have moved to Mastodon (and what you can do on your Twitter account to help others find you here)

Please reblog/boost to spread the word. (Liking/Favouriting won’t help)

Energy efficiency has a vast potential for reducing energy demand and emissions.

It is the single largest measure to avoid energy demand in the @IEA@twitter.com Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario.

https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-efficiency