ceoln @ceoln@qoto.org

generative

Evening glories—
The cat chewing the flower
Has its mind elsewhere

Yosa Buson
(1716 – 1784)

#haiku #micropoetry #cats #flower #CatsOfMastodon #Fedicats #catstodon #sumie #猫 #俳句 #墨絵 #花

Another week, another right-wing pastor exposed as a sex offender.

A Moms for Liberty "faith outreach" leader out of Philadelphia was just revealed as having pleaded guilty to sexually molesting a teenage boy.

Reactionary Christians want to control everyone else's sex life while letting their own people do whatever they want

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/philadelphia/moms-for-liberty-philadelphia-pastor-sex-offender-20231120.html

When he tried to get his case transferred out of Georgia state court to federal court, Trump argued he was entitled to do that because he was a federal officer performing his official duties. But now that he’s facing removal from state ballots under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which forbids officers of the U.S. who have taken an oath to support the Constitution but engaged in insurrection from holding federal public office, he’s claiming he’s not an officer of the U.S. He can’t have it both ways.

I'm so happy with this Gameboy Camera shot of my cat

#gameboycamera #photography #fedicats #catsofMastodon #CatsOfFediverse

@Flipboard just announced it is ceasing support for X and focusing on Mastodon and other platforms. They just sent this to their 452,000+ X followers: https://twitter.com/Flipboard/status/1726999607866208604

cc: @fediversenews

SCOOP: An obscure White House program surveilling over a *trillion* US call records each year is under fire. Sen. Wyden is challenging its legality, urging DOJ to stop prohibiting him from disclosing info he says will "outrage" Congress.

https://www.wired.com/story/hemisphere-das-white-house-surveillance-trillions-us-call-records/

Big discussion here! https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/11/a-city-on-mars-reality-kills-space-settlement-dreams/

Pleased that most of it is quite thoughtful, and hopeful that our book will nudge things more in that direction.

YES!
This is precisely what every university (and scholarly society!!) should be doing: have their own instance and drop X like a hot potato:

"an instance has been created [... ] on university servers, which is open to the university's organizational units. The active use of X will be significantly reduced."

https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/newsroom/2023/university-of-innsbruck-focuses-on-mastodon/

We detail all the arguments about precisely why that must happen here:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230207

"Safety teams within the company pushed to slow things down. These teams worked to refine ChatGPT to refuse certain types of abusive requests and to respond to other queries with more appropriate answers. But they struggled to build features such as an automated function that would ban users who repeatedly abused ChatGPT. In contrast, the company’s product side wanted to build on the momentum and double down on commercialization."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/11/sam-altman-open-ai-chatgpt-chaos/676050/

As Google/YouTube seems to be up to new shenanigans (https://mastodon.bentasker.co.uk/@ben/111442472204337543), a reminder that the Fediverse has an alternative called PeerTube:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/peertube-video-hosting-on-the-fediverse/

You can follow and interact with PeerTube accounts/videos entirely within Mastodon, you only need to join PeerTube if you want to publish videos or playlists.

If you do want to publish videos, there's a guide here:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-to-publish-videos-and-audio-on-peertube/

If you want to see an example of PeerTube in action:

➡️ https://fedi.video

Want to hear a wild stat?

Nearly a thousand $1 million+ earners didn't file tax returns for at least one year from 2017 to 2020. Just didn’t bother.

And the GOP is trying to help them by slashing IRS funding. When the IRS is defunded, rich tax cheats make out like bandits.

The media is finally starting to report Trump’s statements for what they are: Fascist. He’s using Hitler’s own words about “vermin” and immigrants “poisoning the blood” of Americans. He’s calling for mass detention of migrants and threatening to come after his political enemies and seek retribution if re-elected. He must never be. America’s future is on the line. We all must do our part and vote.

If one more person critiques A City on Mars for not accounting for something that is in fact accounted for one the book, I am going to... feel moderately annoyed but take no action.

A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams

Let’s not send a few thousand people to Mars as a big experiment in survival.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/11/a-city-on-mars-reality-kills-space-settlement-dreams/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

"As of writing, 1/2 of the accounts MMFA screenshotted posting Nazi content still remain active.

Amidst all this, Twitter / X CEO Linda Yaccarino confirmed that the platform did show big advertisers' posts next to white supremacist content, but attempted to play it down by stating that nearly nobody saw it....Even so, the objections are likely less about how many people saw it, and more about it being a possibility in the first place."

https://sea.mashable.com/tech/29019/twitter-x-confirms-nazi-content-was-shown-alongside-apple-ads-so-why-is-it-suing

Here I explain a discovery I'm a bit proud of - probably known already, but still cool:

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2023/11/17/just-intonation-part-5/

(1/n)