Brian Beach has moved @bwbeach@qoto.org

What can we do for our country in 2024? Democracy is on the line, how can we make a difference? David Pepper has written an inspiring New Year’s plan for us. Please take a few minutes to read & share. #Democracy #NewYearsResolution https://davidpepper.substack.com/p/new-years-resolution?utm_medium=ios

Bring back self-hosted blogs, reinstall a feed reader, make your feed icon prominent on your blog. Blogs + Atom/RSS is the best decentralized social media system we've ever had!

And yes I am saying that as co-author of ActivityPub: self hosted blogs is the best decentralized social networking we've had

Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries. - Anne Herbert

May version 20.24 be filled with major bug fixes.

#HappyNewYear

With New Year’s Eve just around the corner, please remember those fireworks have an effect on more than you think 😿🐶 Please consider light or drone shows to celebrate…

#CatsOfMastodon #DogsOfMastodon #NoFireworks #KeepPetsSafe #SilentFireWorks

Oh my! I've found my new favorite website of all time: https://cyclingfallacies.com/

A list of all kinds of uninformed reasons people give for not making it safer and easier to bike, with rebuttals. This is exactly the kind of thing the internet is useful for!

It's available in many languages, and you can help translate it. The content is CC licensed. It's great!

Thanks to the fantastic podcast Bike Talk for letting me know about it!

#bicycle #BikeTooter #biking #urbanism #FactsAndLogic #BikeTalk

Ever wonder why when you were a kid in Oregon, you learned about the Iroquois and Cherokee tribes of the Eastern USA but nothing about local Native Americans? Why you learned about the pioneers crossing the plains on the Oregon Trail, but nothing about what they did once they arrived?
...Or maybe you didn't even notice how much was left out until this very moment, reading my words?
Here is the missing piece.
"Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley" by David G. Lewis.
Fair warning, this book made me so upset that I cried. Not at the author, he's done an excellent job. At the astonishing cruelty, violence, and dishonesty shown to native people by (many) white settlers. At how little they asked for, and still didn't get. At how little is left of the ecosystems that sustained people and wildlife and were carefully maintained by native people. At how much astonishing wealth has accrued to those who stole from natives, even to the modern day.
Land acknowledgement statements are not enough! If you are a white person in Oregon, you need to read this.

#Oregon #WillametteValley #SalemOregon #Salem #Portland #PDX #PNW #books #historybooks #bookreview

Our New Year’s resolution is simple.

My favorite mobility policy of 2023: Banning right-on-red

Inherently dangerous to pedestrians, ROR was widely adopted in order to conserve gas during the 1970s oil crisis (which, you might notice, ended decades ago).

Ann Arbor ditched ROR this year, and DC is about to. Denver, Chicago, and San Francisco may as well.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90908929/its-time-for-a-nationwide-ban-of-right-on-red

#safety #traffic #cities

For as long as I’ve been writing about vaccines, I’ve told the story of Mississippi. It was a good story until April, when the national anti-vaccine industry realized a dream for a group of white wealthy activists. I went out to Mississippi earlier this month to find out what happened and how doctors were bracing for the return of vaccine preventable diseases. It pubbed last week but the quotes from the anti-vaxxer I spoke to are still ringing in my head.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/mississippi-anti-vaccine-religious-exemptions-school-public-health-rcna130004

Podcaster A: (paraphrase) billion dollar nasa probe almost lost due to ambiguously named signals getting misswired

Podcaster B: who do you fire in this situation?

Me: (shouting at car speakers) NO YOU FUCKING AMERICAN PSYCHOPATHS. You don’t fire people for mistakes. Go to fucking therapy. And anyway you WANT an engineer who cannot forget the time they nearly pulverized one point two billion dollars.

Happy #Solstice 🌞

This animation shows how the sun’s light shines on Earth at the same time of day throughout the year, as seen by NOAA’s GOES-East geostationary satellite. Image processing by @simon_sat / NCEO.

When someone says Merry Christmas, I say Merry Christmas back, otherwise I say Happy Holidays.

Why?

There are 29 holidays between November 1st and January 15th celebrated by the 7 major world religions and I am not so arrogant that I think only the ones I celebrate matter.

There is no such thing as a "war on Christmas", there is only kind people being considerate of other people.

#NFDI and many consortia are stepping away from #Twitter / #X in favour of platforms that are currently more aligned with our values.
That's why we happy to happy our own Mastodon instance.

👋 We welcome all who have followed us from Twitter/X to Mastodon!

ℹ More about our reasons: https://www.nfdi.de/the-nfdi-association-and-many-nfdi-consortia-are-leaving-twitter-x/?lang=en

ℹ Do you already know our LinkedIn account? https://www.linkedin.com/company/nfdi-de/

ℹ Here are the consortia that are currently represented on Mastodon: https://nfdi.social/@NFDI/111092417530239023

Everything is fine.

Google makes technical changes to moot #geofence requests from law enforcement, basically deleting the data that allows for dragnet #location searches so they don't have it anymore. https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-just-killed-geofence-warrants-police-location-data/?sh=4d60a8392c86&s=03