Tag: Merged

Over on birdsite, I just read a thread about people not bothering to look outside …

Over on birdsite, I just read a thread about people not bothering to look outside their bubble to see the general discourse* that the OP was complaining about.

Over here, I’ve seen a few complaints over the last day or so about *something* in the general discourse here…but because of the way Mastodon is structured, I don’t know *how* to look for it other than to ask.

(*Also, I’m not sure I’m using the term “discourse” right here. I mean the overall conversation on each platform.)

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I mean, I get that the point of a subtoot is to *not* call attention to something specific when you feel you just have to say something, and figure those who know about it will understand.

But when it’s clearly commenting on a problem with the platform or community, I kind of struggle with:
– Is this something I should be aware of?
– Is this none of my business?

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Flickr Hot Take

When Yahoo realized they’d missed the smartphone shift, they tried to make Flickr something it wasn’t suited for (Instagram! Look, filters!) & couldn’t sustain (cloud storage for ALL your photos, just like FB!) Maybe chasing FB kept them alive for a while, but it put them in a bind down the road.

It sucks that SmugMug is deleting pics, but taking it back to basics might make it more viable long-term.

Maybe they can become a 1st-rate Flickr instead of a 3rd-rate Instagram or FB.

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Expanded on my blog:

https://hyperborea.org/journal/2019/02/flickr-purge/

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It’s like…Sauron ran a Palantir botnet…

@hummingrain IIRC the palantir weren’t intrinsically evil either, it was just that Sauron was on the network and was really good at manipulating people by figuring out how to exploit their psychology.

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@hummingrain It’s like…Sauron ran a Palantir botnet that spewed out propaganda to convince Saruman and Denethor that his victory was absolutely certain, and Saruman decided to join the winning team while Denethor lost all hope.

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Vaccinate. Your. Kids.

“After smallpox was eradicated in 1980, measles became the leading killer of children globally”

Measles outbreak hits children in Portland due to low vaccination rate.

Vaccinate. Your. Kids.

Vaccinating your kids won’t make them autistic. That’s been tested over and over again, and there’s no link.

It will protect them, their classmates & their friends from potentially deadly diseases.

And honestly…even if there was a tiny chance that vaccines caused autism (again, all the research shows that they don’t)… Wouldn’t you rather your child be autistic than dead?

I suggest that a deep orange moon right before Christmas be called a #PumpkinPieMoon.

I suggest that a deep orange moon right before Christmas be called a #PumpkinPieMoon.

I was coming home shortly after sunset, got to the top of a hill and saw this deep orange moon, flattened near the horizon. By the time I found a place to stop, it had risen high enough that it was mostly round.

Composite of a background shot (the moon was waay too bright!) and a close-up of the #moon. I apparently moved a little bit, so the wire passing in front of it doesn’t line up exactly. #photography

On Photog.Social
On K2R

Obviously I should’ve said “zoom” and not “close-up” of the moon… 🤦‍♂️

On Photog.Social

Comparing Voldemort and Grindelwald

Voldemort’s basically about power: people follow him because they see they’ll gain in the power structure he’s setting up, or figure that if they get on his good side, he’ll protect them.

Grindelwald is a demagogue, telling people what they want to hear in order to get them to support him. He still wants to oppress people, but his power base is built on persuasion rather than intimidation.

#HarryPotter #FantasticBeasts

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But since both villains draw on WW2 parallels, both wizarding wars have a strong element of metaphoric racism. Grindelvald’s followers & Voldemort’s both believe their genetic group is superior and should be in charge.

And having said that, now I’m reminded of the line in Catherynne Valente’s “Space Opera” about how *all* wars are about deciding who counts as a person, and who’s just meat.

It tracks.

#HarryPotter #FantasticBeasts #SpaceOpera

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I’ve been at home, sick, for the last 2 days, which means when the SSD …

I’ve been at home, sick, for the last 2 days, which means when the SSD for the new computer FINALLY arrived, I spent the afternoon installing the drive, Windows, all the drivers, and key applications, including a game the kiddo has been wanting to play for ages (but couldn’t due to hardware specs on the old PC).

And coughing and sneezing a lot.

This afternoon, after school, he finally got to play it!

For 10 minutes, before the power went out.

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To my amazement and relief, he took it in stride, even as the power kept fluctuating for the next hour.

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@FiXato The weird thing is, he usually isn’t. I think maybe he’d gotten used to waiting for the specific thing, so it didn’t bother him so much. 🤷‍♂️

But yeah, the first time your kid gets sick can be nerve-wracking.

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@sohkamyung Thanks.

The power did eventually stabilize, and he got to spend some time seriously playing.

Then I went to lie down for the rest of the afternoon. @&*$! cold.

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The latest episode of @readlesmispod covers the amazing scene where Eponine single-handedly stares down 6 hardened criminals and wins. As always, their analysis turns up some really interesting connections with other parts of the book!

The latest episode of @readlesmispod covers the amazing scene where Eponine single-handedly stares down 6 hardened criminals and wins.

As always, their analysis turns up some really interesting connections with other parts of the book! https://readlesmis.libsyn.com/ep40-iv8i-v-the-dangers-girls-face

…like the fact that Eponine channels both Javert and Thenardier, the two main antagonists, but uses their traits to act heroically.

Backdating posts?

@blog@blog.keysmash.xyz:

What happens if you import an old post from somewhere else (manually or otherwise) – does it show up as new in the ActivityPub stream? Is it available at all in ActivityPub?

@blog Looks like it does get broadcast to followers. This might get kind of annoying when I split old posts in two (which I haven’t done in a while) or pull them in from another blog (like, um, this one!)

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@blog Then again, my (limited) understanding of ActivityPub suggests that it doesn’t really have a concept of “Add this to our local record of this account, but don’t add it to readers’ timelines”

And I don’t think I would want it to backdate things in ActivityPub either.

This is a fuzzier issue than it seems to start with.

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Rain! I was literally about to hit the send button on this when it started: …

Rain! I was literally about to hit the send button on this when it started: No rain here, unless you count a smattering of drops that have already evaporated from the windshield, but clouds in the distance are lighting up with occasional flashes of lightning.

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Downside: I’m in the laundry room, starting a load of laundry.

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Kiddo came out with an umbrella. Then wanted to walk in the rain. (It’s southern California, we haven’t had any rain since spring.) The lighting was far enough away that I agreed, and as it turned out the rain stopped by the time we reached the corner.

But we were able to find a halfway decent vantage point to watch the lightning off in the hills.

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The GOP keeps saying they aren’t anti-woman. They could show that by putting this nomination on hold and let the FBI investigate the sexual assault claims before they vote on confirmation, instead of pushing ahead over objections.

The GOP keeps saying they aren’t anti-woman. They could show that by putting this nomination on hold and let the FBI investigate the sexual assault claims before they vote on confirmation, instead of pushing ahead over objections.

I mean, it’s not like there’s a deadline for Supreme Court confirmations that they’re up against. They held a seat open for almost a year in 2016. They can hold off for the results of an investigation.

But of course they won’t, because this is the party of “fuck you, I do what I want.”

Sometimes literally.

There’s some manipulation inherent in any structured interaction

@Satsuma Of course – that’s a large part of why a lot of us are here on Mastodon, after all.

But there’s some manipulation inherent in any structured interaction.

The fact that we can boost, favorite or reply, but not quote, is a deliberate choice on Gargron’s part.

The character limits, the number of images, visibility of CWs, the size of the edit box, column width, all of these things influence how people use the app.

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@Satsuma I remember @anildash mentioning changing the size of the text box on (presumably) Movable Type & finding that people would write longer or shorter posts based on that, even though the length limit itself hadn’t changed. The UI influenced people’s choices.

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The monster/human relationship in Monsters, Inc. is upended when it’s discovered that laughter produces more power…

The monster/human relationship in Monsters, Inc. is upended when it’s discovered that laughter produces more power than screams of fear.

It’s like the opposite of social media discovering that anger produces more engagement than cat pictures.

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Imagine if social media discovered something *positive* that drove more engagement than anger?

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@Virelai I believe it searches posts that the instance you’re on knows about already, without …

@Virelai I believe it searches posts that the instance you’re on knows about already, without calling out to other instances. So it’ll show you hashtagged posts from:
– the local timeline
– remote users that local users are following.
– remote toots that have been boosted or searched by URL on this instance.

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@VirelaiI’ve found that searching on a small instance like booktoot.club turns up fewer results than searching wandering.shop or mastodon.social, but if I search for a hashtag on a bigger instance, then copy the URL of a toot over to the search box on the smaller instance, the smaller instance will find it the next time I search for that hashtag.

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Some of the comics I’ve read on that list…

@lapis @zephasaurus_hex
Some of the #comics I’ve read on that list:

Daytripper is amazing.

I quite liked the original Elfquest.

Fun Home is really good.

Planetary is a fascinating exploration of superhero/scifi tropes, but works best if you know the references.

Transmetropolitan is really good, but not everyone’s cup of tea.

Sandman is epic, but start w/the 2nd collection & go back for part 1 if you like it.

Astro City is a great reimagining of superheroes, hopeful & standing on its own.

On BookToot.Club

@lapis @zephasaurus_hex To clarify with Sandman: It took 8 issues for the series to find its voice. So while the first collection establishes the setting and characters, it’s a very different tone from the rest of the series.

On BookToot.Club

@lapis @zephasaurus_hex Oh, and Hark! A Vagrant! is a lot of fun also, especially if you like literary and historical humor. It’s a collection of unrelated comic strips rather than an ongoing story.

On BookToot.Club

I installed Instagram on a Chromebook to see if I could.

I can.

Um, now what?

When I first used Instagram, I really wanted to be able to upload photos from my camera & type captions with a real keyboard. But it’s been built around uploading from phones since the beginning, and it just doesn’t lend itself to any other use case, even when you can get it to run on another form factor.

Plus phone photos are a lot better now, & it’s just as easy to transfer pics from the camera to the phone.

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@brion In the specific case of Instagram, the website doesn’t offer full functionality: you can browse & update your bio, but you can’t add new photos.

I haven’t tried any game apps yet, partly because I just got an underpowered one to use as a second laptop. (I figure if I get nice hardware, I want a real OS.) It’ll be interesting to use touch apps w/a trackpad…

But I’ve had success with utility apps for Dropbox, KeePass & a VPN.

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@brion I was surprised that the Android layer was thorough enough for a VPN app to work, but after looking around the Chrome app store a bit, I think Google decided it was better to leverage the more mature ecosystem than try to push something that never really took off.

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After listening to the audio version, I re-read Final Crisis…

After listening to the audio version, I re-read Final Crisis, Rogues Revenge & Superman Beyond, plus read some of the tie-ins for the first time.

– Superman Beyond is essential.
– Submit (Black Lightning/Tattooed Man) adds a lot by showing the personal impact of the event, plus fills in plot.
– Resist (Checkmate) broadens the scope but can be skipped. (I do like using the captive villain AIs as a way to get around the ALE’s control of communication channels)

#AmReading #comics #FinalCrisis

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Rogues Revenge was in the works before Final Crisis, and it shows. It still works as Rogues: Rebirth, but now I think the FC connections hurt more than they help.

Revelations is a much tighter story that weaves in and out of issues 2 & 3 (if not seamlessly), picking up the Crime Bible & Vandal Savage and showing the early stages of Darkseid’s takeover. I didn’t read it originally, but I’m glad I finally got around to it.

#comics #FinalCrisis #AmReading

On BookToot.Club

I didn’t re-read Requiem. I still haven’t picked up Rage of the Red Lanterns. (I’d forgotten the Alpha Lanterns were involved in Final Crisis.)

I also didn’t re-read Legion of Three Worlds, which IIRC has nothing to do with Final Crisis except Superman passes through it between Superman: Beyond and his return to Final Crisis when Braniac 5 shows him the Miracle Machine. (3 versions of the LSH, none of which were the one that I actually followed).

I do want to re-read Multiversity now, though.

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Expanded on Speed Force

Surely a coincidence this is increasing under the administration of a man who launched his political career by accusing the President of falsifying his natural-born citizenship.

Surely a coincidence this is increasing under the administration of a man who launched his political career by accusing the President of falsifying his natural-born citizenship.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/us-is-denying-passports-to-americans-along-the-border-throwing-their-citizenship-into-question/2018/08/29/1d630e84-a0da-11e8-a3dd-2a1991f075d5_story.html

It’s never been only about hardened criminals or “illegal immigration.” They’re deporting undocumented people w/no criminal record & legal immigrants w/past misdemeanors. They’re revoking naturalized citizenship & deporting natural-born citizens, claiming fraudulent birth certs.

They’re not even claiming the certs are forgeries. They’re real, official birth certificates. The claim is that the midwives or OBs put false information about which side of the border the baby was born on.

The people caught in this have lived their ENTIRE LIVES as US citizens.

Even if they’re not deported, this rejection of their citizenship status puts them in a legal limbo, and of course disenfranchises them from voting.

And you know how much the GOP loves to stop people from voting.

Finished listening to the Graphic Audio adaptation of FInal Crisis. It actually flows better than …

Finished listening to the Graphic Audio adaptation of FInal Crisis. It actually flows better than the comic, especially toward the end, when the comic starts fragmenting the narrative (which is great metatext, but there’s a lot of “what just happened?”). Scenes are fleshed out, and the multi-flashback structure of the last chapter is made linear instead.

#amreading #comics

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A lot of that is probably the novelization it was based on (it credits the story only to Greg Cox, with no mention of Grant Morrison or any of the artists, which seems a shame), but I don’t think it would work well as a book.

The voice acting, music and sound make up for a lot of the lost visual punch and visual structure of the story, and it needs more than just the words.

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Expanded on Speed Force

I’m also listening to the audiobook of Final Crisis, which is adapted from the novelization …

I’m also listening to the #audiobook of Final Crisis, which is adapted from the novelization rather than directly from the #comicbook. It fixes a lot of the choppiness and sparseness that made the original hard to follow at times. Narrative fills in which details you need to glean from the artwork.

And of course having it all together avoids the problem of delays between chapters that plagued the original release, though that’s true of the collected edition too.

#comics #dccomics

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But wow, I’m really seeing the parallels with Dark Knights: Metal even more strongly than when I was just comparing to memory.

Barbatos, like Darkseid, takes over the world between issues, and we jump to a handful of heroes mounting a desperate resistance. The lynchpin of the multiverse – conveniently the main DC Earth – is in danger of being pulled “downward” into an unending hell.

They’re a lot more alike than any of the Crisis events are to each other or to Metal.

#comics #DCComics

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Oh, can’t forget fighting twisted versions of the heroes. Except in Final Crisis, it was the actual heroes having been brainwashed, not expendable alternates.

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Expanded on Speed Force