Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber") wrote:

In case you weren't aware, "lemmings" isn't actually a great metaphor, since that story of lemmings jumping off a cliff comes from a nature documentary where Disney couldn't think of a good ending so they threw a bunch of animals off a cliff to be like "sometimes nature is weird, we aren't supposed to understand" as if this was profound https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-wilderness-lemming-suicide/

Although, sometimes it ends up becoming a *great* metaphor because it points out how the person telling the "oh people are just gullible" story may be telling a story as flawed as the metaphor

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen") wrote:

This thought (most immediately) brought to you by this video of Nena in concert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGD9GDB7lhw

Which at 147k views, probably puts it in the realm of "historical interest" and unlikely to be generating much revenue, but it's still neat to be able to see it. Also, I didn't know Nena could play drums!

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen") wrote:

It seems like one subset of use of youtube is as a de facto archive. I feel like an audio/video archive is a valuable thing that shouldn't be beholden to the capricious desires of a corporation nor subject audiences (patrons) to advertisements and algorithmic manipulation.

But youtube's revenue sharing (I assume), promotional possibilities (i.e. the algorithm), and network effect seems to keep people uploading videos there.

Boosted by aredridel@kolektiva.social ("Mx. Aria Stewart"):
egonw ("Egon Willigh☮gen 🟥") wrote:

RE: https://mastodon.green/@ronanmcd/116459198153461110

Dutch cyclists, you are warned. Self-driving cars are a new risk.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
grickle@mstdn.social ("Grickle") wrote:

Desperate. #grickledoodle #wizardofoz #heart #brain #cartoon #humor #art #funny

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
Lazarou ("Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈") wrote:

RE: https://mastodon.social/@magdelenehall/116460441538380939

The USA is too busy burning books and teleporting to the Waffle house....

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
cbctop_mirror@mastodon.hongkongers.net ("CBC Top Stories") wrote:

Justin Trudeau says U.S. economic coercion risks pushing Canada closer to China
Former prime minister Justin Trudeau is warning that American tariffs threaten to drive Canada closer to China in the auto sector.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-china-economic-coercion-9.7175918?cmp=rss

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
docpop ("Doctor M. Popular") wrote:

H. R. Giger was hired as a concept artist for 1995's Batman Forever, but his mockups were just a little too... Gigeresque for the 90s.

Here’s his original Batmobile sketch, alongside a 3D render by Leon Gor based on Giger’s designs.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
pheonix@hachyderm.io ("Windy city") wrote:

The current state of the web assumes that the reader is an adversary to be trapped and monetized.

When a news website forces you through three dismissive actions just to read a headline, they are burning your cognitive budget before delivering any value. You are greeted by a cookie banner taking up the bottom 30% of your screen, a "Subscribe!" modal dead center, an autoplaying video pinned to the corner and a prompt begging to send you push notifications.

I wrote about the state of news websites. Would love to hear your thoughts✨🙏

https://thatshubham.com/blog/news-audit

#enshittification #darkpattern #web #technology #socialmedia #indieweb #ux #privacy

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Hallway, NYC, 2014.

More pixels than will fit through the door, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/13337114073

#photography

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

please do try to remember this

(courtesy patreon.com/zachweinersmith and SMB-COMICS.COM)

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

Today in History:

24 APR 1877, The Corrupt Deal was finalized, as, on orders from President Rutherford B. Hayes, federal troops withdrew from the state house in Louisiana—the last federally defended state house in the South—just 12 years after the end of the Civil War. This withdrawal marked the end of Reconstruction and paved the way for the unrestrained resurgence of white supremacist rule in the South, carrying with it the rapid deterioration of political rights for Black people.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
davidgerard@circumstances.run ("David Gerard") wrote:

> "AI" is not software as we commonly understand it.

this sentence is instantly and obviously correct

https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/116459698070759827

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

come to PL theory, we have:

• coloured functions
• functions which are coloured

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

There's a group of men who ought not to be allowed anywhere near any political power.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/04/24/revealing-photos/

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
agreenberg@infosec.exchange ("Andy Greenberg") wrote:

A newly decoded piece of sabotage malware called Fast16, created even before Stuxnet, was designed to silently tamper with/corrupt calculations in research and engineering software. Likely created by the US or an ally, and possibly used against Iran's nuclear program. https://www.wired.com/story/fast16-malware-stuxnet-precursor-iran-nuclear-attack/

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
mattkenworthy ("Matthew Kenworthy") wrote:

My all-time favourite method of debugging is going to bed and looking at it again the next morning.

Boosted by adele@social.pollux.casa ("Adële 🐁!"):
stillgreenmoss@whistlepig.social ("sgm") wrote:

i can now confidently say that i've switched full time to using self-hosted smolfedi as my fediverse client https://codeberg.org/adele/smolfedi

thank you so much @adele it is absolutely lovely!

i found an issue during install where a required php extension was undocumented -- submitted an issue notifying adele as such and the docs were updated within 12 hours

adele is there a recommended way to run a smolfedi instance but only allow access to certain people? i've currently got it behind basic auth with a single login that i can just hand out to friends to grant them access, and that seems fine enough, but i figured i'd ask if you recommend any alternatives now that i'm definitely a full-time user

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

choose your function's fursona. after typing the name of your function in the editor and hitting enter, the name morphs into its fursona which does an adorable animation and eats its arguments

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Gregor Mendel would be appalled.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/04/24/now-tempted-to-run-a-casino-out-of-my-house/

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
da_667@infosec.exchange wrote:

feeling extra spicy today.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
huronbikes@cyberplace.social ("Andrew Golding") wrote:

@da_667 I feel like I haven't gotten enough mileage out of my stamp...

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
Bwee@meow.social ("🩵 Bwee the Fluffdragon 🩵") wrote:

you better not

Edited after 21 boosts:
Everyone who boosts this is STIMKY!!!

Edited after 124 boosts:
Everyone who boosts this is a goober!!!!! A stimky goober!!!!

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

deep soul bollards

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

i have just had an absolutely amazing[1] idea.

instead of storing nodes of data for your datastructure, store nodes of code! do a quick specialisation of the branch function that reduces overhead - e.g. inline that small iteration loop and JIT-generate a new copy. branching over a node is thus just a call!

[1] hilarious, probably impractical

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

It may look cute, but it was tough enough to survive the Permian mass extinction.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/04/24/an-adorable-baby/

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

I've checked "bird" off my life-list. Now I can get back to spiders.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/04/24/not-a-spider-2/

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
david_chisnall@infosec.exchange ("David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)") wrote:

One of the weird things in our industry is how many people who participate in standards bodies have never had to maintain something with compatibility guarantees for a long time. If you go to one of the ISO groups that deals with plumbing standards, for example, everyone involved has had to deal with decades-old pipe work and has a visceral understanding of the consequences of standardising the wrong thing and having to change things during the lifespan of a building. But in every standards discussion I’ve been in, someone has proposed things that will obviously cause problems within ten to twenty years and half the group has nodded along and said ‘yup, that will definitely solve a problem I have now’. And saying ‘later we are going to want to do this other thing, and if people have built things with the assumption that putting this in the standard will create then we will have a massive migration headache’ has people complaining that I’m slowing down the process.

And that’s not to single out any standards group or process. I have had this experience in every standards process I was involved in (though, in the ones 20+ years ago, I was generally on the other side of the disagreement).

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
tante@tldr.nettime.org wrote:

My "AI as a Fascist Artifact" article is obviously massively influenced by @danmcquillan's work in "Resisting AI" but my direct references to that book had to be cut from the talks the essay is based on due to time constraints and I then didn't add any back to the text.

Big oversight so I added it back into the article. Read Dan's book, it's the best writing on the link between "AI" and fascism out there.

https://tante.cc/2026/04/21/ai-as-a-fascist-artifact/

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
rooster@beige.party ("Jessica Rooster") wrote:

Robin Hood is almost universally viewed as a hero while running an autonomous collective that violently takes money from the wealthy to distribute it to the poor.

Has the left considered hiring his publicist