timorl @timorl@qoto.org

I want David Cronenberg to design the new USB standard, so all the ports and plugs sigh and moan and writhe before finally accommodating each other’s anatomy in a blissful, disturbing union that allows charging and data transfer to occur effortlessly between all equipment.

Before I switched to programming, I was a lawyer, and imo this guide to the legal issues relevant a Mastodon instance is *really good*

https://denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.html

Good morning! A post just rolled across my fedi-timeline saying not to post about politics on Mastodon, so I'm here to remind you that:

1 "politics" refers to decision-making about how to live together in groups
2 choosing to not participate in political discussion is saying you support the status quo, and is a political stance
3 abstaining from politics because you feel safe from its impacts is a privilege and a choice to abandon your more vulnerable neighbours

@timorl I think there’s something very attractive to generalising systems, so time-invariance feels intuitively fair to some type of person, just as, for example, generalising of the “rational veil of ignorance” kind tries to make things position- or identity-invariant, or justice is supposed to apply independently of who does what. If you come to it with the timeless physics view that many long-termists have, this becomes even more pronounced.

Which platform for a platform cooperative? https://petroskowo.pl/display/810fc51c-1163-8075-8a01-e48856688673

It's spring -> I must sneeze

Modus pollens

BREAKING: Lockheed Martin suspends machine learning missile programme, telling investors that the missiles had "developed class consciousness"

#Literary dystopias are entertaining but destructive. They have crowded positive visions of the future out of the narrative and out of our minds. We might not manifest every future we imagine, but we can't create a #future without imagining it.

Mass visualizations like 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, Blade Runner, The Matrix, or even Avatar have hurt social progress. We need visualizations of what we want.

What #SpeculativeFiction have you read/seen that offers #hope for the future?

Academic theory: Polynomial long division of data by a generator polynomial over a finite field (most commonly Galois field).

Implementation: Just xor bits in a loop.

I'm not sure that we should be using “man baby”, “man child”, etc. Not only because it's one of the primary insults used against bronies, but also because, what, everycreature is supposed to Grow Up when they turn eighteen? What does that mean? Stop enjoying things? Become a miserable Adult in the sense of being a cog in the capitalist machine and nothing more? Just a husk of the former self? And with how it's inevitably gendered masculine, there's probably an element of toxic masculinity in there too. To say nothing of the littles and ageplayers, who are totally valid by the way.

There is this line of thought against CWs that: “This topic is an ISSUE, I care about it, therefor asking to put a content warning on it is unreasonable!”

I’ll deconstruct why this is mistaking anxiety with caring and action.

Recent years of eg twitter became full of this, showing things that no one denies are actually important.

But that’s the thing: important is not sufficient by itself! It has to be actionable, otherwise…

I will never understand why people are so averse to diversity.

I like seeing trans people speaking to each other with idioms I don't get, cute girls speaking a language I can't recognize, or gay dudes priming and posing in random pics.

Seeing shit that is not for me makes me feel like I'm part of a much bigger world that still has space for me to learn and grow.

That's a big place of comfort for me. The bottomless nature of the human experience means we all have space to be fully who we are.

That's pretty cool.

We're so at the beginning of trying to build social networks online.

The closest analogy that comes to my mind is medicine/biology.

For socials, we're in the victorian era of "unscrupulous proprietor puts radioactive material in it, because it glows neatly".

This thread by an ex-twitter designer reminds me of that: https://social.lot23.com/@jon/109372257422277945

It's worth a read to go through what they wrote - you need data to really mislead yourself after all.

Hello Mastodon from an A3000 running AMIX!

@prehensile I love the mix of this is a very very serious algebraic topology thing, also death to capitalism, by the way this is a realtime kernel driver for a teledildonic device, oh and I’m a cat meow meow.

We can all do with a reminder that we all contain multitudes, and the fedi certainly does that.

If X boosts their own post on Mastodon shouldn’t the timeline say “X boasted…”

Mathematicians turn every word starting with co into a shitpost. Go figure out what comathematicians do.

We're all gonna need this sooner than expected so here is my proposed APA 7 style citation format for citing a Mastodon post

Lastname, F.M. [@mastodon@handle.tld] (20XX, Month DD). Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut ... [Mastodon post]. Name of instance. [URL of post]

As with the format for citing a Twitter post, the correct reference list title is the first 20 words of the post, and the correct short title is the first 5, both using an ellipsis if necessary.