Mike Agg has moved @countingquoll@qoto.org

Hi. If you see "Biden only gave {tiny amount} to help {issue X} while spending millions on Ukraine" in any of your social media, that is propaganda. It's from Putin's disinfo shops aimed at convincing the west to stop supporting Ukrainian defenses against the Russian invasion.

You can and should report and block those accounts.

#Ukraine #Disinformation

Exactly 14 years ago , Satoshi Nakamoto designed the most pathetic / inefficient system ever invented by humankind : the blockchain.

Today, it weights 60 000 tons, wastes constantly 10 gigawatts .. to process less than 7 transactions per second :

Less than a 33 bps modem from 1990.

This could be joke if it didn't have such gigantic environmental impact, wasn't enabling billion dolllars ransomware industry and was not crushing thousands of lives in the process.

‘If you really can't figure out which political party or which politician to vote for, just ask if they're on the side of libraries.

Are they voting to fund their libraries?
Are they voting to keep them free?

Then vote for those guys.
They're probably the good guys.

And by the same token, the book burners, the book banners, they're probably the bad guys.’

— @neilhimself

https://ilovelibraries.org/article/i-will-always-be-on-the-side-of-the-libraries-a-conversation-with-neil-gaiman/

@bookstodon #libraries #news #reading #politics #usa #books

Did you know that cacti can be a source of water in an emergency?

If you encounter someone who won't share their water, repeatedly hit them with a cactus until they give it to you.

Follow me for more desert survival tips.

Shamelessly stolen from someone who didn’t add alt text…

Her: I don't even know what the cloning machine does

Me: well that makes two of us

This is someting I wish I'd realized a lot sooner in life.

#dadJoke

Me: The earth isn’t flat!
fiat earther: correct
me: huh?
fiat earther: it’s the shape of an Italian car
me: what?
fiat earther: you read my name wrong didn’t you?

Oh, that thing I’ve been putting off for days? That insurmountable, torturous task? The thing that’s been haunting me with every step like a malevolent wraith? It took two minutes. I will not learn from this

When I'm reflecting on #Britain' trouble(s) I'm sometimes tempted by a form of #linguistic determinism.

#languages with complex tense/verb structures, require the speaker to form the whole sentence before starting to speak (#German would be my go to example).

But #English allows a speaker to start a sentence with little idea where it will end, with sentences rambling & developing while remaining grammatical.

Making it up as we go along' served us well for generations, now not so much!

I made a page so I can explain to clients why I'm not using #Zoom.

https://the.webm.ink/not-using-zoom

#Capitalism is wild.
#Zoom, a company which came into it's own during the Pandemic now wants to destroy itself by going all in on 'AI' and also telling it's staff that "Work From Home is over"
Bye then Zoom....👋

jesus just call them cashiers

I don't use #Zoom much, and I was tempted to just delete the app after reading this post. If I do use Zoom, it will be with the camera and the microphone off; I'll just watch and listen.

https://sfba.social/@MedievalMideast@hcommons.social/110838371669792161

I checked and the terms do indeed say they can use your image and voice for training #AI; see items 10.4
https://explore.zoom.us/en/terms/

Zoom's terms of service now include training GenAI with no ability to opt out

Check section 10.2 Service Generated Data; Consent to Use.

https://explore.zoom.us/en/terms/

They say you're supposed to be prepared for anything, but I find that no one is ever prepared for chicken wizards.

“But people on the whole were pretty dim upstairs, and if you started dwelling upon this or that person’s dimness, ranking it and measuring just how dim this or that motherfucker was, before you realize it half the day is gone.”
— Colson Whitehead @colsonwhitehead