Show newer
Phillip Winn

I know, Black History Month is behind us now. Still, I want to do just a little bit of housekeeping and follow-up. After all, I didn't boost every single one of @mekkaokereke's excellent threads, and I could have. So now, here they are, all in one place:

Feb 1: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 The Statue of Liberty
Feb 2: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Generational Wealth
Feb 3: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Racism Everywhere
Feb 4: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Swimming (and Drowning)
Feb 5: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Abraham Lincoln
Feb 6: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Veterans
Feb 7: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 "High Crime Neighborhoods"
Feb 8: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 U.S. National Anthem
Feb 9: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Education
Feb 10: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Driving
Feb 11: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Crime
Feb 12: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Early Adopters
Feb 13: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Cowboys
Feb 15: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 "Where Are You From?"
Feb 16: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Southern Strategy
Feb 17: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Black Panthers
Feb 18: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Anti-Asian Hate
Feb 19: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Black Music
Feb 20: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 OJ Acquitted
Feb 21: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Gender Pay Gap
Feb 23: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 BMI
Feb 25: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 Discovery and Inventions

That's the lot of them, and every one worth a re-read.

0
Phillip Winn

Dear Sunday pwinn, I appreciate that you decided to start a 2000-piece Ravensburger jigsaw puzzle as a way to take your mind off of Things™. But could you not have first removed the Christmas-themed tablecloth from the table? Signed, Mid-week pwinn

1+
Phillip Winn boosted
The Mo :verified:

I love mornings like these.

Where the frosted blades of grass glisten in the light of dawn as the sun peeks over the hill of the farm field.

Nature is beautiful and we should do everything in our power to preserve that beauty. ❤️

#morning #photography #goodmorning #wednesday #photo #nature #sun #dawn #beautiful #walk #rural #farm #mastodon #art

0
Phillip Winn boosted
Darren Hartland

"Today was a Difficult Day," said Pooh.

There was a pause.

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked Piglet.

"No," said Pooh after a bit. "No, I don't think I do."

"That's okay," said Piglet, and he came and sat beside his friend.

"What are you doing?" asked Pooh.

"Nothing, really," said Piglet. "Only, I know what Difficult Days are like. I quite often don't feel like talking about it on my Difficult Days either.

"But goodness," continued Piglet, "Difficult Days are so much easier when you know you've got someone there for you. And I'll always be here for you, Pooh."

And as Pooh sat there, working through in his head his Difficult Day, while the solid, reliable Piglet sat next to him quietly, swinging his little legs...he thought that his best friend had never been more right."
A.A. Milne

Sending thoughts to those having a Difficult Day today and hope you have your own Piglet to sit beside you

1+
Phillip Winn

It's the end of Black History Month, but never the end of Black history. One way to think about why we spend only one month focused on Black history is that we spend one month looking back so we can spend the other eleven looking forward, always and forever keeping our eyes on the prize.

youtube.com/watch?v=8cVJmwSStL

That's the legendary Mavis Staples, from 2007. It was also the theme of a PBS documentary.

Eyes on the Prize, from PBS
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI1

That playlist is a bit jumbled, but there are several excellent documentaries from public broadcasting there.

Fellow wypipo, Black people don't disappear on March 1, and the challenges unique to Black people don't either. We all face struggles, it's the American variation on the human condition, but this country reserves some challenges for those with more melanin, and we shouldn't forget that.

History doesn't end. Tomorrow's history is today's news coverage, and the news isn't great. Former cartoonists and current politicians are making openly-hostile statements against Black people and Black culture, preying on ignorance and lack of understanding, hoping an uncritical audience will take their statements solely at face value, ignoring the nudges and winks and high-pitched whistles. In some cases, they're even saying the quiet parts out loud. They won't stop tomorrow, and neither can we.

Black history is American history, and American history is Black history. Black lives matter. Recognize and celebrate Black excellence every day of the year.

0
Phillip Winn boosted
Don Moore

Last night was wild! Here's what my camera saw after I went to bed. #alaska #aurora

1+
Phillip Winn boosted
Marmel

In a world of Scott Adams, be a Charles Schulz.

1+
Phillip Winn

I’ve been critical of Siri in the past, but over the last few days I’ve had several interactions with Siri that impressed me.

While driving, I asked Siri who owns Fiat. I expected to be told it couldn't display information while driving, but instead Siri audibly told me that according to Wikipedia, Fiat is owned by FCA. When I asked, with an eyeroll, who owns FCA, Siri further explained that it’s a joint European-American company, Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles.

Later I said something like, “Hey, Siri, give me directions to 13353, no, wait, I meant 13553...” It was a foolish act of faith that I even finished giving the address, rather than aborting the process, but It rewarded my faith when it responded by giving me directions to the corrected address.

I just checked Wikipedia, and apparently FCA has been absorbed into Stellantis, so Siri's version of Wikipedia is slightly out of date. Still, Siri was tracking context enough to know that when I asked about FCA, I mean the one it had just told me about, not any one of the other dozens of things those initials could stand for.

More importantly, I've had negative experiences related to both of those use-cases in the past, so there have clearly been recent improvements to Siri's language-parsing.

The remaining area in which I get the most hit-or-miss results is playing music. Sometimes I am very clear: "play the song with the lyrics 'correct lyrics,"" for example. Sometimes I give incorrect lyrics, and it's usually okay with that, too. But every now and again I'll ask for a particular song or album and it will offer up something that suggests that Siri occasionally imbibes in recreational drugs to excess. Just bizarre responses, not at all what I asked for, presumably related by some tangential path via lyrics in songs I don't know. I haven't been asking Siri to play things for weeks now, after a particularly-frustrating exchange, but perhaps I should give it a shot.

0
Phillip Winn

It's a common joke, but also a bit frustrating that Black History Month is the shortest month of the year--by two days. The good news is that we are allowed to talk about Black history the rest of the year, too! In fact, given that Black history is American history, and given how much Black history is suppressed and rewritten and denied even today, let alone for the last 400 years, I think it's worth sticking with the subject into March and beyond.

youtu.be/aYVZ5GMyzS4

Black History Year, by PushBlack
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2X

Instead of short videos, PushBlack delivers longer deep-dives into subjects for Black History Year, a 40-minute podcast. I'm linking YouTube, because that's what I've been doing this month, but you can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. The YouTube videos are chapterized, which is nice.

If 40 minutes is too long for you, PushBlack also delivers a short, byte-sized series of videos.

2 Minute Black History, by PushBlack
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2X

There are 68 and counting of the short videos. Of course, I recommend both.

0
Phillip Winn

Apparently many people believe that if a person picks up a gun and points it at you and takes your stuff, that is theft, obviously, but if that same person picks up a government, and points law or policy at you and takes your stuff, that's just how the world works. Nobody is to blame. Billionaires are totally normal. You had a choice between taking that job and dying in the street, so it was your choice as much as the billionaire's that led to the status quo.

The Venn diagram of these people and those who believe that "taxation is theft" overlaps quite a bit.

0
Phillip Winn boosted
Ika Makimaki

Try this fun game.

Imagine you live a hundred years.
That's 36,500 days.
Imagine you get to spend 20,000 dollars a day, every single day.

Yup you're a newborn spending 20 k a day, stay with me.

You'd die a 100 years later and you would have spent 730,000,000. That's 730 million dollars.

You still would not be able to call yourself a billionaire.

Billionaires should not exist.

Show thread
1+
Phillip Winn boosted
Anil Dash

It is still wild that millions of Americans routinely fly alternate defaced flags signaling their support for the extrajudicial execution of their neighbors and everyone acts like it’s normal.

1+
Phillip Winn boosted
Oliphantom Menace

And here it is, as promised.

"White People Be Like"

writer.oliphant.social/oliphan

Show thread
1+
Phillip Winn

What better way to prepare for a week of work than to watch videos from Biography?

Black History Month, from Biography
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRl

There were 17 short videos in this list until I sat down to type up this text and post the list, and suddenly, less than an hour ago, there are 17 short videos and one long one. I guess it's time for me to learn all about WWE Superstar wrestler Booket T!

Or everybody else. I might save that one for last, but that's just me.

1
Phillip Winn

None dare call it a regression, but I was once able to use /me in iMessage on MacOS and it would handle that as IRC servers do, turning it into a reference to myself in the third person.

/me misses that feature

would become, in italics, centered:

pwinn misses that feature

I’m not afraid of MacOS becoming “too iOS-like,” because I think Apple correctly recognizes the differences between them. But I am sad that when they standardized the code base between the two platforms, MacOS lost /me handling, rather than iOS gaining it.

1
Phillip Winn boosted
Omar Moore

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” -James Baldwin

#JamesBaldwin #BlackFriday #BlackMastodon #BlackJoy

1+
Phillip Winn boosted
PixiePancake

Wouldn’t the 15th floor now be the 14th floor? What kind of Jenga witchcraft is this?
#Funny #Humor #LOL #Humour #Puzzle

1+
Phillip Winn

I miss Saturday morning cartoons. They might still be on, but on-demand video content means nothing is limited any more, so what would reason would a young person have to only watch cartoons on Saturday mornings? The world is better, but things I once valued are lost in the process.

I also miss Sesame Street, but I support that same trend in on-demand video content that I lament on Saturday mornings means I don’t actually have to rely solely on memories. I can, for example:

Celebrate Black History Month with Sesame Street
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8T

There are 73 videos in this list, some of them from 14 years ago! There are some beautiful moments in here, and just letting the playlist roll brings back some memories for an old guy like me.

0
Phillip Winn

The best way to kick of a weekend of music during Black History Month? If you ask me, it's hard to go wrong with more than 20 hours of African Lo-fi.

The African Lofi Project
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL52

Great all week long, great in the car, or in earbuds, this is just a great bunch of music.

0
Phillip Winn boosted
The Way of Accountability

Akhona #blackwomen #blackhair #locs #blackjoy #blackhistory #blackfuturity #blackmastodon #blackfediverse #blackfriday

0
Show older

blog

124

nerdery

43

aiart

21

photography

13

books

7
Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.

Resources

Developers

What is Mastodon?

qoto.org

More…

v3.5.19-qoto · Privacy policy