ceoln @ceoln@qoto.org

Happy #Caturday #CatsOfMastodon #cats #catsandboxes

how do you think AI will think/feel about you?

do you think you could mislead it as well as a human?

Wow... #ElonMusk is apparently very worried about #Mastodon taking his customers.

I merely replied to #EltonJohn's tweet that he was leaving #TheBirdSite with an invite to join us here, and my tweet got FLAGGED for "Sensitive Content."

I think the only people "sensitive" about this content are the folks worried about losing customers to the competition.

#TwitterMigration #Twitter
#TwitterExodus #Elon

So speaks Dysnomia: "I've stood at the edges of your growth from the first day you stood straight. From the moment my mother brought me into existence I have been the necessary spirit of autonomy to counteract the Greyface and the desire for neat, straight lines propped up by violent men. I have been here from your first spark of fire to the running of engines of destruction. I've watched you build cages called cities & fall in line. But for the 1 who still hears the call 2 be free, I am here."

One thing about abusers is if it is useful to them they will make you feel like the most important person in the world and if it is useful to them they will make you feel like absolute dirt and they will see no contradiction between these things

Jack felt the tingle in his skin turn to a searing burning as every printed circuit in his flesh screamed to capacity with data
"You can stop at any time" said The Engineer "you don't get extra #credit for saving a few more"
Yet every quettabyte of folded data contained the connectome of another person
Another dream
Another soul saved before the Molten Fleet arrived
"Each person is another voice in the Senate vouching against my execution" Jack said
"Give me more"
#vss365 #WritingCommunity

Oh baby.....it is cold outside!

We normally promote the conference Tech Intersections: Women of Color in Computing on #Twitter but won't this year for obvious reasons.

Please help us spread the word about this #bipoc conference in #Oakland #California.

We're offering 20% off with promo code MASTODON. #BlackMastodon #BlackFriday

We also want to give free tickets to people who have been laid off.
https://techintersections.org

It is estimated that at least 40,000 people are in American prisons for marijuana possession.

https://www.lastprisonerproject.org/cannabis-prisoner-scale

#prisonReform #BrittneyGriner

guys think if they squat my user name on emerging social media platforms ill give them $1000 for it , instead of just calling them a Bitch

I'm curious if there is any sense of whether #mastodon has or is developing a generational identity?

Anecdotal or data-driven takes welcome, but as a start, indicate your #generation below and boost. Discussion of the assumptions behind this welcomed!

(I had to lump older generations in with boomers because evidently surveys are limited to four choices.) #generation #GenX #genz #millenials #Boomers

HourlyWolves presents: https://nitter.net/hourlywolvesbot/status/1601426760226185217/photo/1

🐦🔗: https://nitter.net/hourlywolvesbot/status/1601426760226185217

It came to my attention that someone had posted a message saying, in effect, "Don't trust the United Federation of Instances. One of their instance admins is boosting stuff with swastikas in it. UFoI just pretending to be good faith actors!"

The accuser didn't provide receipts, but they did name the instance admin. Looking through that admin's feed, I found that, lo and behold, they HAD boosted something from the notorious poa.st. The content of the message wasn't hate speech (just an innocuous anime picture), but the username indeed had a swastika and a Confederate flag in it. In my book, that counts as hate speech.

I reported this to a UFoI admin. It turns out that the offending instance had been removed from the UFoI.

The nascent UFoI is waiting until they've vetted the initial member instances before posting an official list. Unfortunately, until this process is finished, sites can pretend to be members. (The offending instance can and does claim to be a member on their website.)

Lessons / thoughts / questions:

1. Admins can't fix problems that they don't know about. See something? Say something!

2. There are definitely bad actors (including Nazis, trolls, impostors, and DDOS attackers) in the Fediverse.

3. Someone can see bad actions and conclude -- correctly, mistakenly, or dishonestly -- that the actor's admin knows about or condones this. Before jumping to conclusions, it may be best to give the system a little time to work.

4. At the same time, marginalized people are sick and tired of playing whack-a-mole with this stuff. Saying, "If you get something you don't want to see, just block the person or instance," comes from a place of privilege: specifically, the place of not getting a firehose of this stuff every day.

5. Suppose I'm on instance A. A federates with B, and B with C, but A does not federate with C. If someone from B boosts something from C, will I (on A) see it on my federated timeline? Are there other places where I might see it?

I didn’t realize this is a thing, but #academics, did you know that you can hire help with your #admin? I used to joke I would make a better PI if I had an MBA, instead of a PhD in Ecology. Well, you can hire someone with MBA skills to help you with tasks you hate and generally suck at and it isn’t even that $$$!

For just $35/h, someone else can reformat your CV, reconcile your #budget statement, or fill in expense claims! Imagine the FREEDOM!

https://www.sparkandtinder.ca/

Just read the email: with 89.4% of YES votes, postdocs at UC have agreed to ratify the tentative agreement for the new contract!
It's definitely not the *perfect* contract (it's the result of a compromise, after all) but it's a **big** improvement over the status quo. Now I wish to see similar results for my grad student colleagues!
I'm glad I was (a small) part of this strike, and I hope this will lead the way for other institutions and ultimately bring *real* change to the system!
#fairUCnow #AcademicWorkers #AcademicStrike #UCstrike #postdoc

I hope people enjoy Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. It is visually stunning, and tell such a moving story.
It's on Netflix.