ML2 @mathlover@qoto.org

I once read a story about how the Tuareg people of the Sahara improvised a vast sneakernet file sharing network using Bluetooth.

This was needed because there's not a whole lot of cellular networks over there. And some Tuareg are nomadic, so WiFi isn't an option either.

Some incredible music was shared this way. I think it's how Mdou Moctar for discovered.

A how-to on doing #Water #ResourceManagement as badly as possible.

"Kevin Rein, who oversees water rights, made a similar sentiment clear to the Colorado River District board last July. “There’s nothing telling me that I should encourage people to conserve,” Rein said. “It’s a public resource. It’s a property right. It’s part of our economy.” "

And that right there is how the colonizer always destroys the Earth.

A cautionary tale future generations.

#Environment

https://www.propublica.org/article/colorado-river-water-uncompahgre-california-arizona

Tiny, Endangered Manning River turtle hatchlings spotted in the wild after four years of surveying

:-)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-22/endangered-manning-river-turtle-hatchlings-spotted-nsw-survey/101777512

As a human rights lawyer who has done extensive immigration work, let me make something absolutely clear.

Asylum is legal immigration.
There's no "port of entry" requirement.
There's no "visa" requirement.
There's no "first country" requirement.
You enter the United States, and you apply for asylum.

Because asylum is legal immigration. Period.

Period.

the sad reality of open source software development

In short: folks love the amazing decentralised encrypted comms utopia of Matrix. But organisations also love that they can use it without having to pay anyone to develop or maintain it. This is completely unsustainable, and Element is now literally unable to fund the entirety of the Matrix Foundation on behalf of everyone else - and has had to lay off some of the folks working on the core team as a result.

https://matrix.org/blog/2022/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-update-2022

‘#Amazonia, you beauty!’ How the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira renewed the fight for #Brazil’s forests - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/dec/25/murders-dom-phillips-bruno-pereira-brazil-amazon let's hope so - it's probably our last chance to keep it reasonably intact...

REMINDER: Corporations shouldn't be exploiting volunteer instance admins, and demanding white glove treatment on the Fediverse for free.

Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas🎄

To be fair, and as the article acknowledges, #Mastodon *is* harder to use than #Twitter or #Facebook. A lot of the difficulty is in deciding where to get started, the paralysis of choice, and that can leave a bad taste in your mouth which affects the whole experience. First impressions matter.

But it isn't *that* much harder, and there's real value in choice too. More to the point—again as the article says—there's value in, well, values. Nobody's getting rich off Mastodon. It exists because people think something like it would be neat to have, and they want to share that neatness with others who think the same. There are egos involved to be sure, but no one person's ego can bring it all crashing down.

As a practical matter, it is AFAICT the first and only open-source, distributed, not-for-profit social media platform that registers as a threat to the big players. That counts for a lot in my book.

Remember when the internet felt promising instead of overwhelming, depressing, and sometimes terrifying? Mastodon's bringing some of that back, at least for me.

Last night on Christmas Eve TX Gov Abbot sent asylum seekers to DC with no winter clothes or shelter. What "Christ like" behavior.

If only the Bible had a story of a mother fleeing tyranny w/her infant for refuge in a foreign land—maybe GOP would welcome refugees fleeing tyranny w/their kids for refuge in USA. Amazing how the same GOP extremists who demand the Constitution be based on the Bible, suddenly forget ever Biblical principle about serving humanity.

The dangerous hypocrisy of it all.

"Is Elon Musk going to turn into the same sort of joke that Trump has become? Musk’s cult-like fans haven’t entirely lost faith in their leader yet, but it’s getting a lot harder for him to keep up his image. | by Arwa Mahdawi https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/24/is-elon-musk-going-to-turn-into-the-same-sort-of-joke-that-trump-has-become

A lesson of the past few years in tech is that it’s possible for an entire industry to gaslight you.

Whether it was the usefulness of crypto, the competence of certain billionaires or that unviable businesses were worth billions. There’s a lot that common sense said didn’t make sense that an entire industry of VCs, media and opportunists told us did.

It’s been a lesson in trusting your gut and not being afraid to swim against the current of popular opinion.