ML2 @mathlover@qoto.org

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.

I find it a bit concerning how mastodon talks about their software and new features as if they exist in a vaccum. They talk about implementing a QT feature and forcing people to opt-in or not... Meanwhile the rest of the fediverse has had the QT feature since forever, including modified mastodon instances. We already have a standard, no you cant force opt-in.. .either implement it or dont, you cant force other software to block a feature just because you on your server didnt "opt-in". Its literally equivelant to a link to the original post...

There's an ongoing effort called the #UFoI, United Federation of Instances, with a website on https://ufoi.org/. Perhaps a community driven, well defined process such as this is the way to go. I'm not sure the UFoI defines a body to make the decisions or handle complaints, but perhaps it should?

Currently finalising my #python introduction unit using #turtle. The unit is designed for flexibility, this is crucial since students will be entering the classroom with a wide range of prior knowledge. It will also address problems of Covid related absenteeism.

I will live-code and didactically present the unit in class. This will be a base-level of where students should be up to. In addition, all lessons will be available to student in both video and text instruction. This way, students are welcomed to race ahead, especially those with prior knowledge.

I'm hoping that the #python, #education, #edutooter community can point me towards some extension exercises that I can present to the early completers.

By the end of the course, they have been introduced to:
- turtle
- for loops
- while loops
- if statements
- functions
- variables and data types
- input (terminal and mouse)

Any suggestions would be appreciated. 😎

@anellawrites @HeterodoxThis
Yes you're right. Only sociopaths would do something this heinous. These poor people are suffering for political theater. The #gop is a sociopathic group.

“Were Jesus, Mary and Joseph refugees? Yes.”

“Later in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us that any time we ‘welcome the stranger’ we welcome Jesus himself (Mt 25).”

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/12/27/were-jesus-mary-and-joseph-refugees-yes

There are lost people who actually love seeing this. They, and the people behind this cruel busing tonight, will probably be going to church tomorrow to commemorate the birth of another refugee.

CNN is reporting that two busloads of migrants, including children, were dumped in front of Vice President Harris’ residence tonight. During this freezing cold weather.

Texas’ Greg Abbott has been doing this for some time as a political stunt, but it’s not yet confirmed who is behind tonight’s busing, happening on Christmas Eve.

Like DACA recipient Astrid Silva tweeted, evil doesn’t rest.

Lawmakers are pretty upset that TikTok spied on my friends and me!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2022/12/23/lawmakers-outrage-tiktok-spied-on-journalists/

Smart piece on my colleague @drewharwell and other journalists who remain shut out of Twitter. https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/23/musk-twitter-journalists-suspended-elonjet/

I had switched to another service a couple years ago, but stupidly never deleted my LastPass account, so I just had to spend all day changing hundreds of passwords and finally was able to nuke LastPass.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.