Mike Capern @mikecsees@qoto.org

I...do not understand how electricity works.

"Bye Bye Birdie" - It's a musical. It's the end of a social media firm. It's BOTH!

Greetings. I'm an armchair student of history (not just tech history), but given that I've been involved in the development of the Internet continuously since the early DOD ARPANET days (so, technically before there *was* an Internet) I'm watching the Twitter->Mastodon migration (and the nightmarish, shameful disintegration of Twitter itself) with considerable interest indeed. There is no historical precedent that I know of, and what's happening is even more remarkable given that it has been precipitated by a single chaotic individual in a matter of weeks.

The high speed with which I see social graphs rebuilding here is fascinating, and we can be sure that there are a bunch of PhD theses and books in the future that will attempt to explain all of this for future generations.

Sometimes when you're living through significant historical events it's not obvious except in retrospect, often many years later. What we're living through now with Twitter is clearly significant history, from technology, business, social, and other standpoints.

And even if Mastodon turns out ultimately to be a steppingstone on the way to other social media models able to scale far upward more easily, it is playing a crucial role now in providing a "lifeboat" for Twitter users who are unable to stomach what is happening to that firm with every passing day.

For all its many faults over the many years, we built the Internet to be resilient. And what we are seeing today is that not only has the technology met that goal from ARPANET onward, but thanks to the Internet's vast numbers of dedicated and caring users, even a monstrous train wreck like Elon's Twitter can't bring it (or us!) down.

Thank you all! -L

#FoodEnvironments
“When I asked many of the researchers how they’d tackle #obesity, given the uncertainties, they pointed to policies that would alter or regulate our environment, like outlawing junk food marketing to kids, banning school vending machines and making neighborhoods more walkable. They talked about changing the #foodsystem in ways that also address #climatechange.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/opinion/obesity-cause.html

Seeking advice, particular from comms folks who may be struggling with similar questions:

if you were a small Canadian research institute looking to flee the #BirdSite dumpster fire, what instance would you choose and why? Boosts and suggestions appreciated.

#Communications #Advice #TwitterMigration #NewHere #NonProfit #ClimatePolicy #ClimateChange #Canada #cdnpoli #Research #Journalism #Comms

Shoutout to Judd Legum @juddlegum and Wendy Siegelman @wendysiegelman

While many #USPol journalists have set up accounts on Mastodon, most are not very active here yet. Judd and Wendy are posting regularly.

Please reply with any other #USPol accounts that you would like to recommend.

Note it is courteous to use include #USPol and use CWs with descriptive headlines.

#twittermigration #mastodonmigration #USPolitics #Politics #shoutout

Take action. Invest in the future of STEM. Donate to support first-generation underrepresented
students of color. I'll match it. https://www.smash.org/match

On Sol 3658 (yestersol), the Mars Curiosity had a checkup look at its wheels using the arm-mounted MAHLI camera. Those wheels have seen better days, but they're holding up and have many more kilometers of driving left in them.

Fun fact: See the holes in the second image? Those leave marks in the sand and are used to determine distance. They also spell out "JPL" in Morse Code:
.--- J
.--. P
.-.. L

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

#Space #Science #MSL #CuriosityRover #Astrodon

Pals, I see a lot of people copy-pastaed their Twitter bio here - you can have longer and even formatted bios here, and remove all the kludges you did to make them fit on birdsite if you so desire! Remember, hastags of interests, groups, and topics help people find you. ​

There are also custom emoji on your server (they vary) that you can utilize! (Here's a lookup to check a server's https://emojos.in/).

#MastodonTips

"... openness isn’t just about getting more help to implement your evil plans for world domination. It’s also about allowing participants to change your evil plans for world domination."

https://blog.waynebeaton.ca/posts/opensource/rules-of-engagement/

Again, a quick and dirty analysis, but if I have no bugs then the 1% largest #Mastodon instances accounts for 84% of all users.

The top 5% accounts for 97% of all users.

We can say that the system is effectively centralizing around a few instances, and this might be a problem for the overall stability and sustainability.

@tiago @lmrocha @estebanmoro @hirokisayama @PessoaBrain @danielemarinazzo

#MastoStat #ComplexSystems

Suggestion that if you've recently joined the #twittermigration, please consider keeping your #Twitter account active for a while and put your full mastodon handle in your #Twitter profile so that apps like debirdify (https://debirdify.pruvisto.org/) can help your followers back there to find you over here.

Seems Impressive: @CMSGov@twitter.com reports #ACA FFE improper payment rate less than 1% (by contrast, Medicaid is 15.6%, CHIP is 26.8%, Medicare FFS is 7.5% & Medicare Advantage is 5.4%): #xp
https://acasignups.net/22/11/21/cms-ffe-improper-payment-rate-less-1

👆 agree, and welcome.Hari!

@Joel Just checked, my venmo account is @freemo. You are welcome to donate there and ill will ensure it gets transfered to the QOTO account.

I have an important request.

Bad actors will soon figure out - if they haven't already - that setting up impersonations of important organizations now will allow them to set off an explosion of chaos and confusion at a time of their choosing.

So if you run an account for an organization, please set up link verification between your Mastodon account profile and your organization's website.

If not, please boost.

Instructions are here under "Link Verification":
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/

The custom is:
• Reply to the toot, remove any @, set to global.
• Set appropriate CW on your toot.
• Mention in your toot to see the one you’re replying to 👆🏻; Mastodon will thread it.
• Send toot
• Boost your own toot.

Like I’ve just done here.

Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man Month, has died at the age of 91. This classic was my introduction to managing complex software projects. Its many insights and lessons still apply today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks

Regardless of whether you are staying on Twitter or migrating, now would be a good time to review apps and accounts linked to your Twitter account and revoke access for anything you no longer use.

#ITSecurity #privacy #Twexit