ML2 @mathlover@qoto.org

1 in every 255 residents of Florida has died of #COVID-19. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Twitter were fools to screw over 3rd party app developers!

Not only do users now know Twitter removed API access, they now know that these app developers are making Mastodon clients.

For example, due to this "service disruption", Tapbots is now advertising Ivory for Mastodon.

“Until we succeed in reining in the worst abuses of partisan gerrymandering, communities will be split apart, voices will be silenced and we will not be living up to the highest ideals we claim to cherish as Americans.”https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/how-partisan-redistricting-divides-and-harms-communities/

👋 Hi, this is the official Medium account on our new instance! This is our home on @me.dm, where we’ll be boosting writers and publications, sharing stories, and trying to deepen our understanding of Mastodon and the fediverse.

To get started, we thought we’d share this list of resources about getting up and running if you, like us, are new here: https://scottlamb.blog/list/f4843d1cc80f

#medium, #introduction, #MediumWriters, #NewHere

One day around 32,000 years ago, an arctic ground squirrel ate parts of a plant, silene stenophylla, including its seed. The squirrel was digesting it when its life ended.

Its body was recovered from permafrost and examined. Scientists germinated this plant seed. This silene stenophylla just bloomed.

It is 32,000 years old.

The strength, the vitality and stamina of living things — of life itself — is incredible.

I'm gonna keep posting this until one of you fucking boosts it

Bay Area storm casualty: our fence is down.

I'm so tired of right wing extremists believing that laws don't apply to them.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/bolsonaro-supporters-storm-brazil-congress-1.6707323

So, it appears that Elon gave more "files" to someone. A "PR" person, who is now freaking out that that someone from the State Dept visited her public website, claiming that the gov't is trying to intimidate her. By... visiting her public website after she claimed to be releasing things. And she's asking Elon why it's happening. It's very, very silly and confused people all around.

“Layoffs are a social contagion.” This quote is gold. From: https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/

Hamline University: sometimes, it IS cancel culture.

https://popehat.substack.com/p/hamline-university-and-cancel-culture

At the NSF #ScienceFunding

"The success rate of proposals led by Asian scientists is about 20 percent below the overall rate — a disparity that has persisted for two decades and runs counter to the common narrative that Asian Americans dominate the sciences and engineering fields in the United States."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/science/asian-scientists-nsf-funding.html

Over 80% of the world’s population & 99% of Americans & Europeans live under "sky glow," where light pollution affects wildlife, human health & our ability to observe celestial objects.

As we lose the ability to look up & peer back in time at once vivid stars, we risk forgetting our place as a single species in the magnificent symphony of life. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/light-pollution #space #science #nature

In this article, @pbump makes the point that Republican politicians are no longer the leaders of the GOP, the base-commentariat is.

The "base-commentariat" being the mass of Republican voters who are more or less controlled by Fox News and other far-right media.

By pandering to Fox News & other far right figures in an attempt to win more elections, the GOP has ceded control over the Republican party to the far-right media.

#GiftLink #GiftArticle
https://wapo.st/3GGP1qL

#USPolitics #GOP

@jeff It could also use a Grassroots student movement objecting to organized University PR/marketing support of Twitter. I checked a local State University and saw something like 300 separate accounts for colleges, academic departments, research institutes, dean's offices, sports teams, coaches, etc... Schoold use Twitter to court applicants, congratulate students when accepted, promote events. etc.
Alternatively: Great opportunity for local fediverse instances!
Any schools doing that?

Turns out that Adobe is collecting all of its customers' pictures into a machine learning training set.

This is opt-out, not opt-in so if you use Lightroom, for example, it defaults to adding all of your photos to the set.

If these are unpublished pictures, work-in-progress, etc. they'll still be analysed as soon as they're synced.

I've been using Lightroom to sync photos from my Windows desktop to my iPad. Now I need to reconsider that.

#MastodonNews Jan 4, 2023

@dangillmor calls out "journalistic cowardice"

techdirt: Journalists (And Others) Should Leave Twitter. Here’s How They Can Get Started >>> https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/04/journalists-and-others-should-leave-twitter-heres-how-they-can-get-started/

Near the end of 2022, Elon Musk issued an edict to the journalism community. Obey me, he said, or you will be banned from posting on Twitter. This should have been a pivotal moment... [yet] those whose accounts were fully restored are back to tweeting...

Archive: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d5Q6oyzrlfXBEhHsLI9cxltdFV_XPrZWQj1mj8Ivc7Q/edit?usp=sharing

#twittermigration

Ironic that #tennessee is putting into law a bill that makes it easier to cancel #subscriptions when Marsha Blackburn is notorious for having a fake “Unsubscribe” button in her emails.

Happy New Year to everybody except for Florida prison officials who decided this week to permanently ban my book.

I hope you are hungover for like two weeks.

#florida #bannedbooks #correctionsinink #journalism #criminaljustice

I keep saying journalists should leave Twitter and use Mastodon, which is better for them in every way. At TechDirt I've posted a somewhat lengthy why-and-how: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/04/journalists-and-others-should-leave-twitter-heres-how-they-can-get-started/