Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by jwz:
ryanlcooper.com@bsky.brid.gy ("ryan cooper") wrote:

worth remembering how short and simple the 15th Amendment is, as well as how sweeping its grant of congressional authority is. the idea that this doesn't cover a ban on racial gerrymanders is transparent horseshit

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
gsuberland@chaos.social ("Graham Sutherland / Polynomial") wrote:

the 555 timer is 55 years old, so if we celebrate on the 5th of May it can be the 555's 55th on 5/5.

Mastodon wrote:

You heard it here first: Mastodon 5.0 (eta Fall 2026) will introduce major improvements to the core user experience. We're making Mastodon the most human-centred software on the #SocialWeb.

That’s where you come in.

Discovery Week 🗓️ 11-15 May 2026

Join our Head of Design @imanijoy for a jam-packed 5 day sprint inviting stakeholders from within and beyond Mastodon to weigh in on the future of the product.

See how you can get involved and contribute: https://app.hi.events/events/6360/mastodon-design-team

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

TIL that before BASIC there was DOPE!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth%5FOversimplified%5FProgramming%5FExperiment

[Insert your own jokes here.]

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
vanellopemint@mastodon.art ("🦋ShouldbeWriting🦋") wrote:

Sir Belvedere studied the board. "You have me at checkmate," he said.

The dragon inclined her head. "You fought well, Sir Knight."

The knight stood. "I love what you've done. The kaleidescope of colors enhances the cavern visually."

"Thank you. A fairy taught me the spell. Until next time?"

"I battled valiantly with the dragon. The townsfolk are safe for another month." The knight paused. "Next time, shall I bring scones?"

"That," replied the dragon, "would be lovely."

#tootfic

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Apropos of nothing at all:

Quality is the integral of process + culture over time. Destroying, or carelessly disrupting, either one is an existential brand risk, and thermostatic responses which do not rebuild process and culture are doomed to fail.

db@social.lol ("David Bushell 🪿") wrote:

love this

https://tylersticka.com/journal/wicked-websites-a-rogues-gallery/

Boosted by jwz:
pheonix@hachyderm.io ("Windy city") wrote:

Given how casual these AI agents are with deleting production databases, y'all should be campaigning to put them in charge of student loans.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
charliejane@wandering.shop ("Yoko's Asterisk 🏳️‍⚧") wrote:

When people ask, "How can I promote my art when the world is going to shit"

I hear that as, "How do I have the right to make art when the world is going to shit"

And...

We need art more than ever during such times. You need to be making art more than ever during such times. And promoting it is part of the process.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
admiralwonderboat ("Admiral Wonderboat") wrote:

i've found that when i don't make room for my mental health, it forces me to make room for it

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
emilylorange@mastodon.art ("Emily L'Orange 🦆🍊") wrote:

This month's #BirdWhisperer is a Golden Whistler!

(Ref Photo by Terri Sharp)
🦢🐡 #art #birds #FediArt #MastoArt #CreativeToots

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Social media regularly makes me feel like I'm a bit of an idiot. The way these sites are structured promotes surface reading, quick replies, and poorly thought out posts, all of which combine to make it likelier that you do something that might not show you at your best. 🫤

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

ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕") wrote:

Boosted by EmilyEnough@hachyderm.io ("Emily 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️"):
rooster@beige.party ("Jessica Rooster") wrote:

The Robert’s Supreme Court has been the most effective Republican administration in my lifetime

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
grimalkina ("Cat Hicks") wrote:

RE: https://mastodon.social/@glyph/116488954108427124

As I say in a reply to this lord almighty but this stuff is really hard to think about. I feel incredibly slow in my writing and evidence-gathering vs the actual needs people have for more helpful answers here. But I am thinking about it a lot. One thing I recommend if you ARE an AI user is self-testing and cadences of understanding checking outside of daily agentic work for this reason

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

My granddad’s instoscope light meter.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
jalley@sfba.social ("J") wrote:

RE: https://flipboard.com/@associatedpress/politics-h8vn14lnz/-/a-wKChsZorRfeb3HC6obun6Q%3Aa%3A3199720-%2F0

Democracy is dead

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
adr ("john fink ok!! :goat:") wrote:

I know I've said it before but as a 30+ year Linux user it *still blows my mind* that Linux is now so much the superior OS for *gaming* that Microsoft is using it as an aspirational benchmark. like holy shit, this is real?

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Yes, overreach can happen! But unconfirmed reports of it on the left vastly outstrip verifiable sightings. Dems need (for once) to get caught trying. God knows they'll be accused of everything imaginable anyway.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
grimalkina ("Cat Hicks") wrote:

So I hope that my thoughts come with nuance and that I'm doing a good job showing that I respect these complexities. We are beings that have brains, our brains are involved in everything we do, and I want us to take care of our brains. Knowing how to do that matters to me, and I want people to be empowered to notice the things that are commonsense signals (fatigue, stress, difficulty achieving goals) for habits, behaviors, AND our brains

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
zeldman@front-end.social wrote:

“Not because AI is useless. It clearly is not. But useful and worth-a-trillion are different things.

“When the bill arrives, the industry may discover that the storm was not intelligence. It was arithmetic.” 2/2

https://www.pootlepress.com/2026/04/ai-tokens-and-the-gathering-storm/#aiEconomics

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

Anyway, just musing, and thinking through whether "boilerplate" is actually an indication of a problem or not. I think it's only a problem if you assume a certain perspective, a certain perspective that perhaps should not be given priority over other considerations.

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

When I encounter unfamiliar patterns and incantations I must perform to get to a goal, it is frustrating, but necessary. If I'm doing a one off thing, the boilerplate can feel like a waste of time, but that's just an issue of my perception and not necessarily an indication of a problem.

We have common patterns we use to solve important problems. It's like the pipes that connect from your toilet to the sewer. You generally don't want to think about them, but somebody had to or else the shit wouldn't get where it's supposed to be. If you're the plumber in charge, you have to deal with the pipes. That's part of the job. Repeatedly needing to use pipes to solve particular problems are not an issue. It's actually a good thing in this case. Use understood solutions for particular problems.

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

We've all been seeing those comments about LLMs relieving us of the burden of boilerplate and surely this indicates the boilerplate is the problem!

Maybe... In any work I've been involved in, there's "boilerplate" in that there are patterns that recur repeatedly. The patterns aren't in the way, they are a common part of the pieces I use to solve particular problems. Some patterns have wider applicability than others. And I crib from myself liberally. I have boilerplate, but I'm not rewriting it from scratch every time. Once you're familiar with the patterns, reusing them is fast.

Perhaps we take DRY too far in software. It seems the ideal we aspire to is if something is not novel to *at least one person* then *none of us* should ever see it again or have to think about it, but I'm not convinced that is a worthwhile goal.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
foone@digipres.club ("Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️") wrote:

It's amazing how fast attitudes to security in the industry has changed. Like, I remember in 2023ish spending a while working on a system to securely trigger remote builds, because we couldn't have our slack chatbots on the same network as our Jenkins server

And in 2026 they just give a 3rd party LLM write access to both + the git repo

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Biden's major failures were all acts of languid timidity: court reform, voting rights, Jan 6th culpability at the top, Ukraine supply hesitation, flinching from Gaza reality, etc.

Future political capital is a second derivative. Moving aggressively is not "spending", it's *building*.

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

i'm playing around with firecracker. anybody used it?

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
maxine@hachyderm.io ("maxine 🇵🇸") wrote:

Not to be unkind, but GitHub dying as the home of open source is a good thing for foss. We grew too complacent and dependant. Yeah it costs money and time to run our own spaces. Better than giving up.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
drwho@masto.hackers.town ("The Doctor") wrote:

https://www.404media.co/sxsw-used-ai-powered-trademark-tool-to-censor-dissent-on-instagram/

#SXSW