Mastodon Feed
jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
I am A Bad Person… this made me smile
https://www.perplexity.ai/page/ai-grandma-ties-up-scammers-yJzEm1_dT5CgYGkbzCGJUg
Mastodon FeedMastodon FeedReblogged by collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:
I don't know exactly how the next four years will go, or exactly what I'll be doing, but one promise I'm making to myself today is, no matter what, to tell the truth as I see it, everything else be damned.
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
good Q
https://music.apple.com/us/album/wholl-pay-reparations-on-my-soul/1621357715?i=1621359057
Mastodon FeedReblogged by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
GuyDudeman@beige.party ("Lord Hurkle-Durkle :bc:") wrote:
An excerpt from "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45", an interview with a German after WWII on why they didn't rise up against the regime due to incrementalism.
“Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.”
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
yessssss
https://music.apple.com/us/album/small-talk-at-125th-lenox/1621357715?i=1621358406
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
his poetry is far too applicable again
https://music.apple.com/us/album/comment-1/1621357715?i=1621358269
Mastodon Feedbcantrill ("Bryan Cantrill") wrote:
Blogging through the decades https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2024/11/16/blogging-through-the-decades/
Mastodon FeedReblogged by collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth"):
MissingThePt ("Missing The Point") wrote:
I've never felt so close to my grandparents as when I'm about to get the viruses they all but eliminated.
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
I am slowly groping my way to some better analysis of why rigid Christianity can so easily become linked to rigid ‘Constitutional Originalism’
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
“…the U.S. Constitution was fundamentally different from stories that denied their fictive nature and claimed divine origin, such as the Ten Commandments. Like the U.S. Constitution, the Ten Commandments endorsed slavery… unlike the U.S. Constitution, the Ten Commandments failed to provide any amendment mechanism…”
— Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
“History is often shaped not by deterministic power relations, but rather by tragic mistakes that result from believing in mesmerizing but harmful stories.”
— Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
https://a.co/hhMfoIE
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
“some stories are able to create a third level of reality: intersubjective reality… intersubjective things… exist in the stories people tell one another. The information humans exchange about intersubjective things doesn’t represent anything that had already existed prior to the exchange of information; rather, the exchange of information creates these things.”
— Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
https://a.co/f0lSJy5
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
‘The two levels of reality that preceded storytelling are objective reality and subjective reality. Objective reality consists of things … that exist whether we are aware of them or not… Then there is subjective reality: things like pain, pleasure, and love that aren’t “out there” but rather “in here.” Subjective things exist in our awareness of them.’
Mastodon Feedpzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:
Wow. My boomer parents' house cost them less than $30K in 1976.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/11/17/another-day-of-probate-paperwork/
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Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
“the naive view sees information as an attempt to represent reality… [says] Misinformation is an honest mistake, occurring when someone… gets it wrong. Disinformation is a deliberate lie, occurring when someone consciously intends to distort our view of reality… [and] the solution to the problems caused by misinformation and disinformation is more information.”
— Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
https://a.co/i5oWzFn
Mastodon FeedReblogged by collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth"):
lina@vt.social ("Asahi Lina (朝日リナ) // nullptr::live") wrote:
I swear that's how it works!!!
How did you get into programming? ✨
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Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
given the current rightward shift in our political climate, today’s history reminder in my mailbox seems particularly appropriate
http://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/nov/17
we had better luck last time through this lesson, I think 🤔
Mastodon FeedReblogged by cmiksche ("Christoph Miksche"):
Review of "Dove" (5 stars): One of the best sailing books
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Mastodon FeedReblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
EmilySchnall@mastodon.art ("Emily Schnall✨Commissions Open") wrote:
The new Homotherium paper has me very excited and reminded me I made a whole life-size Smilodon sculpture out of paper mache. Here’s my boy #sciart #paleoart
Attachments:
- Sculpture of a saber-toothed cat, its coat is painted in warm grays with slight rosettes. View from the side with a black cat for scale (remote)
- Sculpture of a saber-toothed cat, its coat is painted in warm grays with slight rosettes. View from the front (remote)
- Sculpture of a saber-toothed cat, its coat is painted in warm grays with slight rosettes. Close up view of the head (remote)
- Sculpture of a saber-toothed cat, its coat is painted in warm grays with slight rosettes. View from the side (remote)
Mastodon FeedReblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
foervraengd@mastodon.art ("Mirre :mastocheck:") wrote:
Vroom!! #art #mastoArt #creativeToots
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Mastodon Feedpzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:
NPR is middle-of-the-roading RFK Jr's appointment to run health and human services.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/11/17/et-tu-npr/
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Mastodon FeedReblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
tom@tomstu.art ("Tom Stuart") wrote:
I’m happy to see that the GOV.UK Service Manual’s “Building a robust frontend using progressive enhancement” page was updated this week and made it to the top of Hacker News today. The technology industry would collectively save unimaginable quantities of time, money, energy and stress if this single page were required reading for everyone involved in building a web site. https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-progressive-enhancement
Mastodon Feedpzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:
Who needs algebra to rationalize their relationships? Matt Gaetz does.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/11/17/what-do-you-call-an-innumerate-hebephile/
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Mastodon FeedReblogged by keul@fosstodon.org ("Luca Fabbri"):
benzammour@infosec.exchange ("samir") wrote:
@jfkimmes this works via a new opengraph tag, "fediverse:creator"! Sauce: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/07/highlighting-journalism-on-mastodon/
Mastodon Feeddangillmor ("Dan Gillmor") wrote:
Scientific American's editor -- who believes in, you know, science -- told some truth about the condition of America and the looming dark ages of the Trump regime. She used language that was inappropriate, and apologized. That should have been the end of it.
She "resigned" soon afterward.
@laurahelmuth's tenure at SciAm was honorable and important. She deserved better, but of course so do we all.
Mastodon Feedvioletblue ("Violet Blue") wrote:
Exciting update! It's almost pre-order time.... !
Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/violetblue/the-covid-sanity-handbook/posts/4253909
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Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
(trying this again because it was pointed out previously toot traced the old site)
Shot:
https://thenewstack.io/new-york-public-library-on-choosing-react-to-rebuild-website/
Chaser:
Main thread unresponsive until ~15 seconds in. The new version *paints* faster, but isn't usable any faster. We're celebrating this a progress?
It's malpractice to chose Next.js, or any other CSR-premised stack, for delivering public services.
/cc @ricmac
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Mastodon Feednadim@infosec.exchange ("Nadim Kobeissi") wrote:
Took the instant camera out with us this Saturday night
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Mastodon FeedGargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:
Quite pleased with my current lock screen.
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Mastodon FeedSomaFMrusty@defcon.social ("Rusty Hodge [SomaFM]") wrote:
@jwz Ooh ohh!!! Can I try!!! https://somafm.com/whoami/masto.html