Pinned toot

I made the transition to the day Elon closed his deal. Looking back, the difference is surreal.

On Twitter, my feed was full of political trolls pushing my buttons and pissing me off and making me question my faith in humanity.

On Mastodon, I get to read opinions from many of the same people I respected over there... but also I get brief, random windows into subcommunities like , which is a delightful group of nature weirdoes and scientists posting pictures of moss they see out in the wild. It's so wholesome and positive that it restores my faith in humanity.

Pinned toot

A good way to start a feed on a new social media site is doggo pictures, right?

I am amazed that the Rock keeps flying and now is dropping hypersonic test aircraft. So cool.

youtu.be/9UYj6jOXDV8?si=hF4c1G

"Conflict of interest" is a white-glove euphemism for "corruption."
Trump’s Social Media Company Opens New Avenue for Conflicts of Interest nytimes.com/2024/03/27/us/trum

I supppose the surge in Truth Social prices can be viewed as rational if you assume that a Trump presidency makes it a vehicle for graft

nytimes.com/2024/03/27/us/trum

Just had an idea for a thought experiment. I'd like to hear anyone's answers, but I'm especially interested in how @freemo answers:

Let's say the presidential election was framed as a stock market. The market itself (equivalent to NYSE or NASDAQ) is America. The stocks are the presidential candidates.

In this experiment, each American has a net worth of $1000 and they have to spend it "voting" for presidential stocks during the election year. They can vote early in the year, or wait and see how others invest and vote later. They can split the $1000 between as many candidates as they want, or put it all on one.

After the election happens, they receive 10% of what they invested in the winning candidate each month (so if they put it all on the winner, they're made whole in 10 months). After the election, the winner's stock becomes the premier stock of the entire market and drives the market valuation based on the President's performance, paying dividends to every American when it does well.

In this scenario, you have two (potentially) competing motivations: enriching yourself and enriching the market (America).

So, the two questions that arise are:
1) Do you invest early, based on just your morals/politics, or do you wait and see how others invest first?
2) How do you divide up your $1,000?

[Mastodon]: Ugh... [Software] is so annoying because [problem]!

Someone: Yeah, it sucks, right? Here are five alternatives that work better and don't have [problem]!

[Mastodon]: FUCKING REPLY GUYS! GO AWAY! BLOCKED!

McKenzie Scott has now given away $16.5 billion from the fortune she came into after divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. She gives big, unrestricted gifts to small organizations, making a huge difference to what they can accomplish. #ShareGoodNewsToo apnews.com/article/mackenzie-s

Trump Stock 

The media, all morning: Trump stock sees huge surge!

The reality, just a few hours later:

Trump Stock 

Lol DJT is so shorted right now that my brokerage can't get sufficient shares to sell more short sale options.

"You get more conservative when you get older" only really worked for the generations that got RICHER as they got older.
The real truth was always just "You get more selfish the more money you have".

Breaking: now requires its citizens to submit photo identification to foreign websites.

Fuck's sake.

Can't wait for this one to inevitably be struck down for being unconstitutional, like most of the laws Republicans have passed in Florida under DeSantis's tenure.
QT: journa.host/@w7voa/11215750105

Steve Herman  
Florida's governor signs legislation that would prohibit most minors from accessing social media sites. https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/poli...

from #MarkZandi

this is the worst way to gauge a strong economy. when “homes are up”, people who don’t own a home are poorer, will shell out more to buy or rent shelter.

when “stocks are up” — trade a higher valuations — the public will be squezed for profits to ratify nosebleed share prices.

these prices are “wealth” to individual assetholders, but they are often the opposite of wealth in a substantive sense of wellness to society as a whole.

It's truly incredible how many people are capable of being blasé while operating the gas chamber so long as they're not the one on the inside.
QT: mastodon.social/@FrankPasquale

Frank Pasquale  
He “met “a senior person at a well-known A.I. startup” whose p(doom) was fifty per cent. If you truly believe that A.I. has a coin-toss probability...

You may or may not like AI, but I think we can all agree that AI should not be integrated into your browser or OS.

We cannot have a situation where what you are doing on your computer, suddenly is feeding into some AI.

#AI #Computer #Windows #Macos #Linux #Browser #Vivaldi

This might be the most pathetic and desperate online ad I've ever seen.

"As with Boeing in the late 1990s, Apple is financializing; it now spends twice as much on stock buybacks as it does on R&D, and that’s because it faces no meaningful competition that forces it to innovate. For sure, Apple has fantastic development capacity, as illustrated by the Vision Pro, but it increasingly degrades the quality of its own flagship product - the iPhone - for the purpose of maintaining its market power." @matthewstoller thebignewsletter.com/p/why-the

Show more
Qoto Mastodon

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