Mastodon Feed: Posts

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Courage in our time

RE: https://www.threads.com/@mrdavehill/post/DM8irF1v6hh

adele@social.pollux.casa ("Adële 🌹") wrote:

Why I prefer human-readable file formats

When I say human-readable file format, I'm referring to text-based files that can be opened, read, and understood without the need for any specific software or proprietary interface. They include formats like Markdown, JSON, YAML, INI, TOML, CSV/TSV and even fixed-width text files where the content and its structure are visible, transparent, and editable in a simple text editor [...]

https://adele.pages.casa/md/blog/why-I-prefer-human-readable-file-formats.md

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Seriously, come to the Voting Village! We’re really excited about the program this year. And we have stickers. And t shirts. Maybe hats, too.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

We can make our elections trustworthy in spite of the inevitable security weaknesses in equipment!

How? By using an architecture that *tolerates* security flaws instead of requiring you to eliminate them. This is called "Software Independence", formalized by Ron Rivest (the R in RSA) about 15 years ago.

Ron is giving a talk at the Voting Village this year.

Software Independence is achieved with something called "Risk Limiting Audits", invented by Philip Stark.

Philip is also giving a talk.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Anyway, if you're interested in actually learning about this this stuff - which is interesting and important - and you're coming to DEFCON, come join us at the Voting Village!

https://www.mattblaze.org/papers/VV2025-schedule.pdf

Boosted by aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan"):
davidculley@hachyderm.io ("David Culley") wrote:

@aral It seems you can get up to 5 years in prison for denial of the holocaust (WWII).

It's called "Volksverhetzung" (incitement to hatred) in German.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung

I'm not sure if that applies to other genocides.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
jencmars@mastodon.art ("Jen C Mars") wrote:

I hear it's #InternationalOwlAwarenessDay (that's a hashtag and a half...) so please be aware of this owl

Watercolor, gouache and pencil on hotpress paper about 11x16"

#owl #birds #painting #art

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
spaf@mstdn.social wrote:

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
zachleat@zachleat.com ("Zach Leatherman :11ty:") wrote:

I anthropomorphized my pet rock to such a degree that we are now both hallucinating its sentience

Boosted by jwz:
realhackhistory@chaos.social ("[realhackhistory@home]#") wrote:

You can find the full ABC News segment on this #hacker / BBS raid from July of 1985 on Internet Archive now.
#hacking #history
https://archive.org/details/19850717-abc-news

jwz wrote:

If you're in the US, don't expect to ever see a non-stadium live show by a foreign band ever again, for this amongst other, more obvious reasons:
https://apnews.com/article/state-department-visa-bond-d532b186abf6e39c621d1bd0995d7509

Boosted by jwz:
PhineasX@mastodon.art wrote:

Stop fucking with public media

Boosted by jwz:
indivisibleteam ("Indivisible ❌👑") wrote:

This is exactly the kind of energy we need from Democrats on all levels of government. Democratic governors and legislators need to make it clear that if Republicans redraw maps to rig the system, blue states will respond: https://www.bluestatedefiance.org/redistricting?source=mastodon

Attachments:

• video: b0dbf46614e83c2f.mp4

Boosted by jwz:
claytoncubitt.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Clayton Cubitt") wrote:

That "summer cold" you have? It's COVID. You've got COVID. It's a fact and it's still ripping through the world completely unrestrained.

Boosted by jwz:
jef ("Jef Poskanzer") wrote:

Geoerg's Market - Markets Geoerg owns 100 markets and all but this one have misspelled signs. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jef/54699995014/

jwz wrote:

DNA Lounge Update, Wherein I point at the calendar, mostly
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/08/04.html?utm%5Fsource=sp%5Fma

Boosted by aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan"):
jonGhull@electricrequiem.com ("Jøn Ghùll") wrote:

The singer of #Catharsis, Brian Dingledine, gave this #antifascist speech last year when they played in PitFest which was featuring #neonazi #blackmetal band #Marduk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZFv%5FYqm6Qg&t=1238s&ab%5Fchannel=Pitfest

RE: https://electricrequiem.com/notes/98rcfujll1

Boosted by aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan"):
HarriettMB@beige.party wrote:

Absolutely disgraceful. PSNI pandering to ingorance and hatred. How about educating people instead? If someone doesn’t like an event, no one is holding them by the neck and forcing them to attend. I more than willing to bet the people protesting did not have children listening to the stories.
The PSNI could not have made a worse decision if they tried.
One of NI’s political parties is behind this hate - the #TUV led by MP Jim Allister who sits in House of Commons.
This is the consequence of attacking trans rights; then they come for gay rights, they come for womens rights, and immigrants, and transient people. Until they have come for everyone except white men.
#Pride #HumanRights. #TransRights #Immigrants
Drag queens escorted from Holywood Arches Library by PSNI after protest at children storytelling event | BelfastTelegraph.co.uk https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/row-erupts-as-psni-escort-drag-queens-from-venue-after-protest-at-children-storytelling-event/a174642881.html

Boosted by aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan"):
burnoutqueen@todon.nl ("Jackie 🍉🏳️‍⚧️☭") wrote:

The number of people killed in Gaza by Israel should be zero. Not even a single death in this "war" is justifiable by any means. It was a genocidal rampage for lebensraum from the very start

aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan") wrote:

Isn’t genocide denial a crime in Germany? Does that only apply to one genocide? (The Holocaust?) Or does it also apply to, say, the Armenian genocide too? And, if so, does that it mean that the only genocide it doesn’t apply to is Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people?

#israel #genocide #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism #Palestine #Gaza #WestBank #StopIsrael #StopArmingIsrael #StopTheGenocide #genocideDenial #FediGenocideDenial #germany

Boosted by aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan"):
mondoweiss@social.mondoweiss.net ("Mondoweiss 🇵🇸") wrote:

The free speech organization PEN America fired me three days after I published an article about how they investigated me for sharing an article critical of Zionism. My termination is a sad reflection of PEN's censorious approach to Palestine.

https://mondoweiss.net/2025/08/pen-america-claims-to-support-free-speech-but-fired-me-for-speaking-about-palestine/

#Palestine #Israel #Gaza
@palestine @israel

Boosted by aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan"):
juliewebgirl@mstdn.social ("Julie Webgirl") wrote:

Shocked, I tell you. Shocked.

"ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results"

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/chatgpt-users-shocked-to-learn-their-chats-were-in-google-search-results/

aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan") wrote:

Meanwhile… https://mastodon.social/@EndIsraeliApartheid/114971573848166325

Boosted by aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan"):
aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan") wrote:

@GutterPoetry @a @Flux And you don’t have to ask Jewish people who oppose Zionism and Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people to publicly distance themselves from Israel. They already have. And they’re being persecuted for it as we speak by Zionists and by Israel. You want antisemitism? Zionists’ and Israelis’ disdain for Holocaust survivors (because they see them as having been weak) is antisemitism. You want antisemitism? Zionists and Israelis getting to decide who is the “right kind of Jew” is antisemitism.

Boosted by aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan"):
GutterPoetry@mastodon.me.uk wrote:

@a @aral @Flux

Zionists make such a big deal out of their Jewishness that I don't think it's unreasonable to expect Jewish people to publicly distance from them - its a holocaust. Especially when one of the main Zionist weapons is pressuring people into silence with public smears, false accusations, cancelling etc.

And while we're talking of how unfair it is to paint all Jews the same way - that's exactly what Zionists do. Or even deny that anti-zionist Jews are truly Jewish.

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

State Department to US tourist destinations: drop dead

https://share.google/An1WuNzWFVuVOoGLW

Boosted by jwz:
thetnholler.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("The Tennessee Holler ") wrote:

New York has entered the chat 💬

Attachments:

• video: 8b084bc3f5cedc86.mp4

Boosted by aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan"):
fabio@manganiello.social ("Fabio Manganiello") wrote:

@celesteh @aral @Mastodon I’m genuinely quite tired of having to defend myself from stuff I’ve never written, but I’ll try it one last time.

When I say “we shouldn’t buy oranges and dates from Israel unless we are reasonably confident that they were not grown on stolen land” would you react with a “oh are you telling me that I shouldn’t eat oranges?”

When I say “we shouldn’t allow Muslim education in our countries if they have suspicious ties with people from the Salafi movement or other hardcore religious groups that may pose a threat to the national security and cohesion” would you react with a “oh are you telling me that Muslims can’t read the Quran in your country?”

When I say “we should avoid supporting Holocaust foundations if they have IDF senior members sitting in their boards, if they haven’t taken a strong position against all genocides, including the one perpetrated right now by their own country, if they don’t even reinvest our money to keep their own records of the victims up-to-date, and if they betray their mission of peace by having social media content and tone comparable with that of an IDF general” would you react with “oh are you telling me that Jews can’t commemorate their own dead?”

Come on, stop insulting my intelligence and your own and don’t try to convince me that principles are supposed to be followed only when they don’t affect the people or topics that you’re biased towards.

Boosted by jwz:
gleick@mas.to ("James Gleick") wrote:

“If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness.”

Trump’s brain is now so scrambled that the White House has begun removing official transcripts from its website. The Guardian has some, though.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/03/donald-trump-mental-fitness

aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan") wrote:

Right, it’s time we started an initiative to find and call out (with receipts) accounts on the fediverse engaged in genocide denial and genocide apologism in support of Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

There are accounts (and even whole instances, it would seem) that are engaged in this and, further, attempts to silence the voices, not to mention threaten the livelihoods of, those of us speaking out against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and attempting to help Palestinians in Gaza who are being starved, shot, bombed, and burned to death by Israel as we speak.

Is there already a hashtag we can use? If not, any suggestions? Is #GenocideDenial? too generic? How about #FediGenocideDenial?

#israel #genocide #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #Palestine #Gaza #WestBank #StopIsrael #StopArmingIsrael #StopTheGenocide #FreePalestine https://beige.party/@mycotropic/114971291419865466