@cdarwin@c.imDecentralized social network Mastodon says it can’t comply with Mississippi’s age verification law
— the same law that saw rival Bluesky pull out of the state
— because it doesn’t have the means to do so.
The social nonprofit explains that Mastodon doesn’t track its users,
which makes it difficult to enforce such legislation.
Nor does it want to use IP address-based blocks, as those would unfairly impact people who were traveling, it says.
The statement …
@hex@kolektiva.socialAs a security engineer, whenever anyone talks about a control it's always important to ask "by what mechanism?"
> "Oh, that can't happen because we have a system to stop it."
By what mechanism?
> "We have documentation that says...."
Yeah, that's not a mechanism.
People keep saying, "Trump can't do that!" But like... by what mechanism?
> "The constitution says..."
Yeah... a documented list of rules is not self-enforcing. What is the mechanism?
What makes this impossible? Oh, it's possible under certain conditions? Oh, it's always possible and you're completely relying on the idea that there will never be a malicious actor? Yeah, that's gonna get exploited. Oh shit, now you're owned.
What do you do with a system that's completely owned? Once it's compromised it can never be trusted again. What would you tell a client who told you, "Patching is really hard, so we're just gonna ban the attacker's IP."
What, you're not even gonna reinstall?
I assume we've all had the "burn everything down and start again" client. I wonder how many of us thought we would see the US government ask for them to hold it's beer.
#USPol
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialJust finished "Concrete Rose" by Angie Thomas (I haven't yet read "The Hate U Give" but that's now high on my list of things to find). It's excellent, and in particular, an excellent treatise on positive masculinity in fiction form. It's not a super easy book to read emotionally, but is excellently written and deeply immersive. I don't have the perspective to know how it might land among teens like those it portrays, but I have a feeling it's true enough to life, and it held a lot of great wisdom for me.
CW for the book include murder, hard drugs, and parental abandonment.
I caught myself in a racist/classist habit of thought while reading that others night appreciate hearing about: early on I was mentally comparing it to "All my Rage" by Sabaa Tahir and wondering if/when we'd see the human cost of the drug dealing to the junkies, thinking that it would weaken the book not to include that angle. Why is that racist/classist? Because I'm always expecting books with hard drug dealers in them to show the ugly side of their business since it's been drilled into me that they're evil for the harm they cause, yet I never expect the same of characters who are bankers, financial analysts, health insurance claims adjudicators, police officers, etc. (Okay, maybe I do now look for that in police narratives). The point is, our society includes many people who as part of their jobs directly immiserate others, so why and I only concerned about that misery being brought up when it's drug dealers?
#AmReading
@aral@mastodon.ar.alLook, Jeff Atwood, it is difficult to take you seriously when you write authoritatively on a subject you clearly don’t understand.
GDPR doesn’t mandate cookie notices.
Cookie notices are *malicious compliance* by the surveillance-driven adtech industry.
If you’re not tracking people, you do not need a cookie notice, period.
If you’re only using first-party cookies for functional reasons, you do not need a cookie notice, period.
If you’re using third-party co…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotI know that in principle it's possible to compute the sine of an angle from first principles, because I'm pretty sure I could do it at school when I was twelve.
I know that in principle it's possible to compute the sine of an angle from first principles, because some clever bugger did it in 6502 assembly code fifty years ago.
Can I do it now in #Clojure
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialJoin us for a casual Scrappy Hour bike ride on Sunday, August 31st. 🚴♀️
We'll roll out from Rocket Baby just after 9am and head to the Domes... There's about four or five of us so far but we welcome anyone to join us! 🚴
https://www.instagram.com/p/DNvbxVRXHS1/
@unixorn@hachyderm.ioNew work laptop. I don't want to sign it into my #Apple account for obvious reasons.
Connect my Apple trackpad to the new work machine and it works fine.
Try to reconnect the trackpad to my personal Mac so I can do some homelab stuff over the weekend, not so fine. It shows up in the BT menu, but won't actually connect until I have the laptop forget the device.
Ok, I think, I'll just connect it wired since I only use the trackpad at my desk at home anyway.
That doesn't work because why would you want to be able to plug in a device with a wire and have it Just Work when instead you could get to fuck around with Bluetooth.
And of course I get to do the forget device bullshit again in order to use it with my work laptop today
@catsalad@infosec.exchangeI love it when cats do this!
🎨by pfeffaroo
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itSooooo.... UN Open Source Week 2026? What do you suppose the odds are of it not happening in NYC?
https://mastodon.social/@progressiveparker/115288358676220071
@callunavulgaris@mastodon.scotI think it's time to crack out the daylight lamp. I'm not feeling low - stressed to the eyeballs but not flat - but I do feel like I haven't woken up yet and I've been at work for two hours 😄 My daylight lamp was about £25 and it's been money very well spent. I use it as the light on in the room when I'm getting ready in the morning, rather than sitting staring at it for 20 minutes, and it just works.
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systems1. Order two bags of cat litter.
2. The seller doesn't send it on time. No matter, you're not in a hurry.
3. Recall that they still didn't send it. Decide to resign.
4. Turns out they send it just before you resign.
5. The parcels come. Open the box.
6. Discover that the bag is damaged. Take a photo just in case.
7. Carefully take it out and check how damaged it is. Well, it's only ripped at the top, no point in returning it over that.
8. Notice they've sent the wrong litter (you've ordered non-scented) 🤦.
9. Call them asking whether there's a point in opening the other box. They say it's going to be the wrong litter too, just make a return request and attach photos.
10. You do that, requesting money return. They request you to make damage protocol from delivery company.
11. You do that. Maybe you'd agree to a 20 PLN discount for next shopping instead of returning two bags of the wrong cat litter?
12. They finally accept the return. And they prepare the return… for one bag 🤦.
So I was supposed to work less today. Instead, I've wasted a lot of time on dealing with damaged parcel and the vendor. And a lot of tape, so it wouldn't fall apart on the return journey.
@memeorandum@universeodon.comICE Is Using a University Building as a Deportation Office and the University Says It Can't Do Anything About It (404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/ice-is-using-a-university-building-as-a-deportation-office-and-the-university-says-it-cant-do-anything-about-it/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251028/p98#a251028p98
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioRe this post from @…:
It •is• overwhelming, and none of us can or should take on all the pain of the world. We can’t carry all that weight ourselves; we can’t fix it by carrying it.
It is essential that we all continue to make music, cook tasty food, post cat videos, do the daily mundane things, nerd out, laugh with the people close to us, all that.
We just need to hold space to remember that there is suffering in the world too. We do not turn away; we live in defiance of it.
https://social.vivaldi.net/@SnowyCA/115454954431006301
@tante@tldr.nettime.orgThis article about a liberal reporter dating MAGA men really shows some of the core of what's breaking this world right now. And it's not just the US. Men are not okay. Like at all.
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/love-sex/rela…
@cheryanne@aus.socialWhat's Fear Got To Do With It
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: #GreatAusPods…
@lilmikesf@c.im#ICE Is holed up in a #Milwaukee bldg owned by a local Universisty and despite previous 2023 assurances it would soon move on , are now refusing to leave.
The local Milwaukee School of Engineering is now in an awkward position as it's planned expansion site is now engineered to be off limits to them as it is a…
@compfu@mograph.socialThe "write my own render manager" itch is getting harder to ignore. I think l'll scratch it if I have some slow days at work before Xmas :-)
Will it look like Deadline and use mongodb like Deadline? Sure. Do I know anything about writing networking code or other database options? Nope. Do I think I can write something better than a Sony-born ASWF-backed open-source project like OpenCue? Well that would be hubris.
But I think it'll be a fun side-project 😁
@bthalpin@mastodon.socialOh FFS! #Brightspace is fucking up my #Julialang teaching materials for tomorrow by being too clever.
It can interpret latex code and show formula. Brilliant.
It just can't not do it, so my regular expression example of
r"\([0-9] \)") is showing up as below, a…
![Code example
r"[0-9]+" where the [0-9]+ is in Latex format, Computer Modern Roman font, instead of the r"\([0-9]+\)" required.](https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/295/891/517/106/795/original/5bbab8b61b17dbad.png)
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries A, Episode 12 - Deliverance
ENSOR: I'm on three-quarter boost as it is. She's not responding! I'm going to maximum. It's all right. It's all right. She's slowing. Compensators beginning to hold. [Ship starts to steady.] Come on, come on, that's my beauty. That's...come on. Pull us back, pull us back. All right, she's coming back. We're all right.
MARYATT: Don't do that too often, will you? I'm a very nervous passenger.
@hanno@mastodon.socialI was recently asked where I would see useful applications of CCS. My answer was: Cement🧱🪨 and Biomethane🐄🌱🏭
Most won't be surprised that I said Cement. Yet, Biomethane is not what people usually have in mind. But bear with me, it makes a lot of sense.
CCS is a controversial topic to begin with. That has a lot to do with the fact that many see it - often rightfully so - as a delay strategy by the fossil fuel🛢️ industry.
@servelan@newsie.social""Well, the Democrats want to shut it down, so when you shut it down, you have to do layoffs. So, we'll be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected and they're Democrats. They're going to be Democrats," said Trump."
Trump raises eyebrows with 'revealing answer' on who exactly will face shutdown layoffs - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-shutdown-2674141030/
@adrianco@mastodon.socialFrom my LinkedIn post: “Telling your dev team to use AI coding tools is like telling your 2010 ops team to use AWS. They didn’t know how to code, they were ticket and click-it VMware people… developers who don’t have product management mindset or have never managed a dev team will fail by trying to micromanage the output of the tool rather than specifying the outcome of the product and managing the agent team to deliver that outcome.”
@karlauerbach@sfba.socialHow do Monarch butterflies survive?
I've planted several California native milkweeds - the Monarchs have a definite preference for it. (It's fun to work in the garden and have Monarchs flying around me.)
Eventually the milkweeds are covered by very healthy looking, strikingly patterned caterpillars. The caterpillars consume the milkweed plant until the plant is a leafless hulk. And the caterpillars vanish.
But I have yet to see a chrysalis.
I'm going to…
@unchartedworlds@scicomm.xyzWhat happens when you don't vet sign-ups is that mods on other instances who value the safety of their users have to pick up your slack.
The extensive work illustrated in the linked post (from @…) is also taking place to varying degrees on every other instance which still federates with mastodon.social and the other open-sign-up ones.
This is like house-sharing with someone who repeatedly leaves the front door unlocked.
Yes of course there are much horribler instances, but those tend to be blocked wholesale in my part of Fedi. Among the instances we do federate with, the spam & scam accounts I see are nearly always on m.s.
If mastodon.social mods (who apparently are paid!) were to make people introduce themselves before approving new accounts, then a lot of this spam wouldn't be getting in the door. Quash once at source, save multiple other people from having to repeat the same work.
I appreciate that they're trying to make it easy for newcomers to join, but at what cost? And is an intro message really beyond the typical non-techie person? I think there are some considerably higher barriers to adoption than that. Not convinced it's a good tradeoff.
I don't actually want this instance to defederate from m.s, because lots of the people I follow are on there. But I can really see why people sometimes do.
#FediMeta #moderation #OpenSignups
@samir@functional.computer@… @… I do this at work. I call a colleague so I can narrate my programming at them. Very helpful if I’m finding myself unable to do it solo.
@grumpybozo@toad.socialThere's a simple way for instance operators to comply: trust your users. Demand that they positively assert that they do not live in North Korea, Iran, Mississippi, etc. as a condition of joining. This creates a legitimate good faith belief that users are not legally barred from the system.
ALSO: No one should ever take advice from me as grounded in legality. I have no legal education beyond what life has forced upon me without my consent, and I am ill-suited to teach.
@hex@kolektiva.socialThe fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol
@detondev@social.linux.pizzaWe left our money in the box and set out for a town you love where something positive happened to someone else but you heard it’s true. With a straight face on the radio, school behind and up your ass, no one can tell your name isn’t American pronounceable. We found our cars in parking lots with signs around it, I don’t know. We heard it was OK to do if you had a good grade, and I don’t. About fifteen years ago, you left yourself a note about crying in the dark. I said that’s dumb enough to …
@tezoatlipoca@mas.toI'm not even a developer (used to be), I'm the technical writer - so I know as much, sometimes more (been here a while) than they do. So I am frequently Tier 2 support.
If I had $1 everytime _"they"_ came upstream with "its not working", I'd be retired.
What, specifically, isn't working? What product? Version? Clean install or upgrade? logs? diagnostic dump? snap of the license page? Does it start or not? If it starts, is a particular feature n…
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.comI just spent ~20 minutes trying to find information on how to do something in a Golang library on my client computer, before I decided it was worth pulling up @… on my personal computer to look it up instead.
Immediately found the answer I needed to get me moving.
We don’t need “vibe coding”, we need search engines that actually work.
@whitequark@mastodon.socialwhat do you think is the least used ASCII C0/C1 [see below] control code?
edit: i misremembered the definition of C1 control codes. this is easy mode, nobody uses that entire block. let's just limit it to C0
@timbray@cosocial.caA few days back I tweeted and blogged about the brand-new RFC 9839, and also published the first draft of tiny Go library to help enforce the subsets defined in the RFC. Got lots of useful input on the library and have progressed it enough to do a v0.8.0 release: https://github.com/timbray/rfc9839…
@hllizi@hespere.deOne thing I really don't get: making a privacy-friendly age verification system doesn't seem like it should be hard to do with a little cryptographic juggling, but it seems like everything actually deployed is a nightmare. Why's that?
@alexanderadam@ruby.social@… if I understand this correctly, your visitor experiment is simpler.
But if I see this right, then you didn't do a PR for it to Ameba, right? Or is it integrated in one of the others?
@davidaugust@mastodon.online
@raiders@darktundra.xyzDid the Seahawks do it again? What's the key to moving on from a winning QB? https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6672778/2025/09/29/seahawks-sam-darnold-geno-smith-russell-wilson/
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzJerry Jones Selling Cowboys as Better Without Micah Parsons, But No One's Buying It https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/jerry-jones-insists-cowboys-better-without-micah-parsons-no-one-buying
@bourgwick@heads.socialdo you teach public school in nyc? very excited to be on a panel at this day-long event for educators about using the grateful dead as a primary source, next friday, 11/7 at brooklyn bowl. (think it's only open to nyc teachers.) https://nycdoesocialstudies.eventsmart
@cdarwin@c.imDemocratic Representative Sara Jacobs said she was told in a Pentagon briefing
“that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes”
and that was part of the reason why the administration has not sought to detain or prosecute the survivors of the strikes,
“because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”
“There’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal,
that it is unlaw…
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it
@aardrian@toot.cafeThree old post updates:
1. Alexander Lehner’s styles for accordions:
https://adrianroselli.com/2023/08/progressively-enhanced-html-accordion.html#Update056
2. Devin Prater asking for Google to do better:
@arXiv_csCL_bot@mastoxiv.pageHow Well Do LLMs Imitate Human Writing Style?
Rebira Jemama, Rajesh Kumar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24930 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.24930
@Stomata@social.linux.pizza....💭
🤔 I'm thinking.. Why to buy a smart TV (smart shit) if I
can just buy a monitor and a mini PC and install linux on it. Now I can do anything with it.
@kurtsh@mastodon.socialMan, what I wouldn't do to have FasTrack Express Lanes on I-5. Southbound towards Anaheim.
It's like the Kryptonite of my driving route .
@thomastraynor@social.linux.pizzaOne of my options for a replacement PC. It will plug into the UPS so that when I lose power, I can do a safe shutdown.
https://flip.it/xKF142
@mlawton@mstdn.socialThis marketing image for a garage door keypad's tech support is perfect in its soulless vapidity. Yes, it lacks any sort of subtlety in the ludicrously homogenous selection of people. 😠
However, my initial gut reaction was a fascination w/ reconciling the man on the left's impressive promontory of hair & his headset.
Does he have a single thin indentation in his hair plateau after a long day's work? The equivalent of a hat head, but thinner? Is there a horizontal…
@ginevra@hachyderm.ioThinking about #DiscoElysium succesors(?), including ones with heavy ethical concerns. A lot of them have gone for female protagonists: Good! There could have been a couple more leading women in DE. But the reveal trailers are mainly voiced by men... men berating or mocking the central character.
Longdue's Hopetown has a father figure voice over, berating the protagonist: "Who do you think you are? [...] You don't understand the forces at play" Infantalised, she doesn't get to respond.
ZA/UM's Zero Parades VO is also a man, initially flattering the spy protagonist "brilliant, relentless" ... then saying she came after him and "everything she touched, written into failure". Again, no chance for the female spy to tell her side of the story ... And there's an objectifying/threatening section about how her fair hair is like a dandelion. Tangeant: what's with the heavy/bad pseudo-German VO accent?
Do I bother mentioning DarkMath's XXX Nightshift? Yes, for once a woman's VO, but (as you'll have guessed from the name) a porn-like, male-gaze view of what a woman would say and think.
So, don't be fooled that a female protagonist means we're actually getting a woman's POV. It's just a cosmetic change. Dora Klindžić's https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:rx3zlqzbjylvtyg6siikaouq experiences as a writer at ZA/UM show how women struggle to have a voice and stay employed in these types of studios. Many of the senior men she mentions are still at ZA/UM.
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.caWhat do you think? Did Venezuela just “thwart” a false flag?
“Venezuela says it has thwarted what it calls a CIA-linked plot to attack a US warship anchored in Trinidad.
It claims the US would have blamed Venezuela for the attack on the USS Gravely, a guided-missile destroyer, to justify aggression against it.”
Australia Broadcasting reporting: #usa #venezuela #war
@markhburton@mstdn.socialThis is a good outcome.
Now the government must give asylum to all likely to get it anyway, allow asylum seekers to do paid work, and advocate positively for their right to come here and seek sanctuary.
(Not holding my breath as Starmer is a Reform / #POX enabler).
Asylum seekers to remain at Epping hotel after court of appeal revokes ban | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian
@msokolov@fosstodon.org
@losttourist@social.chatty.monsterI don't spend all my (non-work) time on Mastodon. Sometimes I use my RSS reader to find me great blog posts to read instead 😄
@… has a wonderful blog going into great detail in dissecting rare old video game consoles. I love reading the articles but I do accept it's quite a niche little area so don't usually share much from there.
But the latest post on that blog had a little aside while trying to find information on an obscure integrated circuit. And I think this will be appreciated by much of Fedi.
(full blog post is at https://nicole.express/2025/a-very-fuuki-circuit-board.html)
@nobodyinperson@fosstodon.org
@southernwolf@furry.engineerPlease Note: If you receive a reply that looks like this, it is fake and a malicious scam. Do not click on the links in the post. Report the post for spam to the Pawb moderation team and we will handle it.
Mastodon will never ask for your identification on our servers (or in general). On Pawb servers, we control the operations and we also will not ask for identification in this manner either. If that was required for some reason, we would contact the user directly and …
@chrysn@chaos.socialWhy do I find myself more and more often in presentations on regulation? Maybe it was the wrong move to let people from Legal into the Treehouse…
Anyhow, still looking forward to the Embedded Austria event on October 14th in #Vienna: https://www.…
@kcase@mastodon.socialWhy did we add Planned Dates to OmniFocus 4.7, when we already have both Due Dates and Defer Dates?
Defer Dates and Due Dates express constraints: you can't work on something before a date, or you need to finish something by a date. They affect the task's status: it's not available until its Defer Date, and it's overdue after its Due Date.
Planned Dates don't affect a task's status, they simply schedule when you currently plan to do the task. Goodbye, fake…
@jtk@infosec.exchangeThis is not the first time for #Microsoft #DNS-related problems. As I recall, the first one I remember from 2001 had something to do with their authoritative name servers residing on the same IP4 /24 that had an access or availability problem.
It was a rookie mistake even then, and they were …
@al3x@hachyderm.ioIs everyone using Reeder (classic) for reading RSS? Or do you have a secret app that you love? I want to know about it ☺️
#RSS
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialBikes with tiny wheels always look so weird to me. (I mean weird as a 6 foot tall adult. I rode 20" BMX bikes when I was a kid.)
Do these 20" bikes feel like riding a "normal" bike? Is it weird? Is it just me?
#biking #bikeTooter
@UP8@mastodon.social🦊 Not such a pretty picture, but I was out walking and found a place where a fox left three turds in three spots exactly in the middle of the trail as they're prone to do
#sliceoflife #fox #foxwork
@PaulWermer@sfba.socialPodcast host Jon Lovett, a former aide to former President Barack Obama: "This is an emergency. We should all be freaking out about how urgent it is to do anything humanly possible to build housing,” he said, “and you’re worried about whether or not there’s a place for a few senior citizens to sit outside a building.”
Think about that for a moment. How does this align with all of the research around outdoor access, windows with views, and general health? How does this address th…
@paulwermer@sfba.socialPodcast host Jon Lovett, a former aide to former President Barack Obama: "This is an emergency. We should all be freaking out about how urgent it is to do anything humanly possible to build housing,” he said, “and you’re worried about whether or not there’s a place for a few senior citizens to sit outside a building.”
Think about that for a moment. How does this align with all of the research around outdoor access, windows with views, and general health? How does this address th…
@laxsill@social.spejset.orgBra exempel på en av mina stora samtida pet peeves: varor som görs till subjekt och tilltalar en.
https://mastodon.social/@mogwai_poet/115453315237969031
@ErikJonker@mastodon.social"People notice that while AI can now write programs, design websites, etc, it still often makes mistakes or goes in a wrong direction, and then they somehow jump to the conclusion that AI will never be able to do these tasks at human levels, or will only have a minor impact. When just a few years ago, having AI do these things was complete science fiction!"
@samvarma@fosstodon.orgI am really really TIRED of Democrats telling us what's happening as if we don't have eyes of our own. The only reason they exist at all is to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
I have yet to witness any Democrat calling people to arms in any way, advocating for any kind of or resistance, putting themselves out there as leaders around which we could rally.
Kamala is out on a book tour. @…
@catsalad@infosec.exchangeWould it surprise you to find out I carry cat treats on my person at all times?
I'm not saying I do... you know, just hypothetically. >_>
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialDay 7: Brenda Romero
I hinted yesterday I'd be moving beyond a narrow definition of "author," so of course that means I'm going to include game designers. I'll definitely get back to some more traditional authors before I hit 20, but I wanted to mix things up early.
Brenda Romero is something of a celebrity in the niche culture that is the Game Developers Coherence, I like to imagine. Of course the misogyny there likely means many just pay attention to who her husband is, but she's a terrific designer in her own right, if not prolific.
Content warning: the Holocaust
To me her most outstanding game has always been "Train," which is an exhibition tabletop game in which players collaborate to load and unload cargo and move train cars around a board, with the stated objective of efficiently delivering cargo to meet certain collective goals. However, through both physical cues and in-game reveals, it becomes clear to players that the game they are playing stimulates the Holocaust, and the cargo they're moving is people being brought to extermination camps. The actual goal of the game is for the players to stop playing and walk away, or perhaps to play against the stated objective and gridlock the trains. Romero supervised play at the expos where it was presented, and intervened to stop the game if the players continued too far (in some cases not picking up on the hints offered because they had very little knowledge of the Holocaust as a historical event). I've never played the game myself; just heard Romero give a report about it, but the sheer genius of designing a game meant not to be played to help educate about a system within which defying the rules was the only ethical action earned her instant respect from me. Romero has a whole series of games in this vein about didn't historical events (not necessarily all designed to not be played), although last I checked in most are just at prototyping stages.
I've got other non-man game designers that will appear on this list, but Romero stood out to go first because she's a good example that you don't need to be someone prolific or widely-known to do great work; I'd bet most people have an author or two they respect who is not widely known (and I'll include at least one more from that category on this list).
#20AuthorsNoMen
@cdarwin@c.imNobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka said his non-resident visa to enter the U.S. had been rejected, adding that he believes it may be because he recently criticized President Trump.
The Nigerian author, 91, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, becoming the first African to do so.
Speaking to the press on Tuesday, Soyinka said he believed it had little to do with him and was instead a product of the United States’ immigration policies. He said he was told to reapply if he…
@servelan@newsie.social“The only time that we diagnose intersex is if you show external signs, if you have genitalia that gives an impression” she explained. “And then, do you know what they do? The parents and the doctor choose the baby’s gender, and they perform genital reassignment surgery on the baby.
“That sounds like what [we transgender people are] being blamed for doing,”.
Jinkx Monsoon: It's really cis white men performing genital surgery on kids - LGBTQ Nation
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/08/jinkx-monsoon-its-really-cis-white-men-performing-genital-surgery-on-kids/
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itDamn, do I want this job! https://nlnet.nl/foundation/jobs/assessor.html
@grumpybozo@toad.socialThe Internet has ruined headlines.
It used to be that headlines had names. Now they carefully DO NOT on purpose, because using a generic role description is more likely to get a click-through to see who it is. The problem has bled into ledes as well, which are no longer synopses of stories but rather secondary teasers. You may be a few paragraphs into a story before you can get the information that every Journo 101 teacher would have demanded be in the first 3 lines.
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.comTHEY KILLED THE LAUNCHPAD!?!?
Yes, I have used my mac for almost a week without needing to access the launchpad (I don't do it often, but I do).
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netD02 - Power
VILA: I thought you were a lady gunfighter. Ohhh. Just a minute, who are you? Where do you come from? Ooohh. [cradles hand, blows on it.]
PELLA: Let me. [Takes his hand, strokes it] I am Pella, of the Seska people. Does this hurt?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/402/97 B7B4
@aral@mastodon.ar.alIs it so hard to not compliment a fascist? Apparently so.
FFS! https://norden.social/@SheDrivesMobility/115450690359236978
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioAny sort of •actual• strength is a threat to that illusion. A real strongman makes the photo cut-out look cheap, laughable.
Say what you will about US imperialism and the military-industrial complex, but the military is truly full of people who possess actual strength and discipline and do extremely difficult jobs well. It is full of people whose daily life makes a mockery of fascism’s cartoonish masculinity. And — devastating!! — many of those people are women! brown people! Black people! with all kids of bodies! who look all kinds of ways! The existence of a competent military is a threat to fascism that must be contained for fascism to spread.
4/
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzMailbag: Should offensive game plan be changed? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-should-offensive-game-plan-be-changed
@whitequark@mastodon.socialPSA: there is a PyPI phishing campaign ongoing! if you see a link to hxxp://pypi-mirror[.]org do not click it.
(i think it's already blackholed but on the off chance it's not, don't touch it)
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it13yo: "Dad, can I [do a thing]?"
me: "*sigh*, fine."
13yo: "Thank you, love you, and all that shit."
@karlauerbach@sfba.socialIt takes a surprising amount of work (and time) to prime and paint a new horse trough.
(And I've got six of 'em that need to be painted. And they need to be carried down sixty stair steps.)
I am sore.
I've got three more to do later in the year.
@detondev@social.linux.pizzawhen i was younger, id basically dm an rpg with my little brothers. all my system was: describing shit, guessing how likely it was they could do something on a six-sided-dice-stolen-from-a-board-game-scale, occasionally bothering to record their items and state on a piece of paper but mostly not even that. to this day this has been infinitely superior to every single rpg system i have ever touched.
@tante@tldr.nettime.org"So the next time you find yourself asking why you're being inundated with AI wherever you go, remember that the answer is that someone with millions of dollars to spare paid for it on the off chance that it will yield a nice return."
(Original title: a16z Is Funding a 'Speedrun' to AI-Generated Hell on Earth)
@servelan@newsie.socialTrump admin must restore school mental health funding: Judge
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/no-evidence-the-department-considered-any-relevant-data-judge-rubbishes-trump-admin-argument-that-it-can-do-what-it-wants-over-canceling-grants/
@hex@kolektiva.socialThe American Democratic Party, and the concept of "Democratic Socialism" within the US, comes largely from an authoritarian political tradition where the state offers services in exchange for the population allowing elites to continue parasitize the system. Then it is critical for Liberals to consume and destroy popular mutual aid, because real mutual aid undermines their carrot.
Democrats tend to imagine that anarchists want to destroy "all the good things" that governments do. The reality is that we want to build those good things ourselves so that we can reject the offer of those same good things, less well managed, with all the bad things attached.
Anarchists want to build pro-social systems (what if we didn't *need* snap, but just made sure everyone was fed?) while eliminating anti-social ones (do we really *need* to kidnap children, or could we just kind of stop doing that?).
@cdarwin@c.imIt would be great if there was one simple trick for winning elections. But 'just be more moderate' isn't it.
In fact, you can use the NYT's exact method to 'prove' a 'Progressive Advantage' of 1.4 pts.
This piece shows what's really going on: funded candidates do better than unfunded ones.
-- Adam Bonica
@thomastraynor@social.linux.pizzaThe reminder popped up for me. Last Sunday of each month, I was reminded to back up my files. Doesn't take much to do. Turn on the machine, plug in a drive, and run my script. It takes a bit of time, but I am doing other things, so it isn't a problem.
External drives are not that expensive, and earlier this month, it paid off as my old laptop failed. Nothing was lost as I had backups. I also popped the laptop drive out, plugged it into an adapter, and extracted all the di…
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itI've given job interviews, and I'm currently doing job interviews. They really do suck for everyone involved in the process.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotWell, having been miserably unwell all weekend, I got up today and made some useful progress on the new workshop. It's not as much as I'd like, but I've used all the energy I have so it will have to do for today.
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzMailbag: Should offensive game plan be changed? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-should-offensive-game-plan-be-changed
@aral@mastodon.ar.alAnd still: “Palestinians say”. It’s on video. All of it. To the world’s media: What do your own fucking eyes say? https://mastodon.social/@EndIsraeliApartheid/115105303439614782
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialOkay, here's the promised follow-up with more authors I respect who didn't make it onto this list. I won't do deep dives but I'll list at least one work per author:
YA novelists:
- Randi Pink ("Girls Like Us")
- Louisa Onomé ("Twice as Perfect")
- Emery Lee ("Meet Cute Diary")
- Robin Benway ("Far from the Tree")
- Angela Velez ("Lulu and Milagro's Search for Clarity")
Children's book authors:
- Jacqueline Davies ("Bubbles Up")
- Freya Hartas ("Slow Down in the Park")
Novelists:
- Rimma Onoseta ("How You Grow Wings")
Graphic novelists:
- Linda Medley ("Castle Waiting")
- 🖋️Magsalene Visaggio 🖌️Paulina Ganucheau ("Girlmode")
- Ursula Vernon ("Digger")
- SJ Sindu ("Tall Water" w/ Dion MBD)
- Hope Larson ("Be That Way"; "Salt Magic" w/ Rebecca Mock)
- Lily Williams Karen Schneemann ("Go With the Flow")
- Maia Kobabe ("Gender Queer")
- Kay O'Neill ("Tea Dragon Society")
- Marjane Satrapi ("Persepolis")
Mangaka:
- Kaoru Mori ("Young Bride's Stories")
- Ryoko Kui ("Delicious in Dungeon")
- Natsuki Takaya ("Fruits Basket")
Anime writers/directors and/or Japanese light/fantasy/SF novelists:
- Nahoko Uehashi ("Moribito")
- Sayo Yamamoto ("Michiko & Hatchin"; "Yuri!!! On Ice")
- Mari Okada ("Ano Hana: The Flower we Saw That Day"; "Toradora!")
Game designers/programmers:
(Upon review I was pretty remiss in skipping over a few of these people, some of whom I wasn't aware of but most of whom I just didn't remember when writing my short list. Subconscious misogyny in action. Short & Thorson probably would have squeezed out some of the YA authors I included, although I have no real regrets.)
- Junko Kawano ("Suikoden")
- Elizabeth LaPensée ("When Rivers Were Trails")
- Momo Pixel ("Hair Nah")
- Zoë Quinn ("Depression Quest"; narrative designer on "Solar Ash")
- Kellee Santiago ("Cloud"; "Flower")
- Tanya X. Short ("Moon Hunters")
- Kim Swift ("Portal")
- Maddy Thorson ("Celeste")
- Andi McClure @… ("Jumpman")
Note: I haven't included composers or artists here, but there's a deep bench.
Games journalists/steamers:
- Tanya DePass @… (#/INeedDiverseGames; twitch streams)
- Anita Sarkeesian (Feminist Frequency)
Game/play scholars:
- Mary Flanagan ("Critical Play")
- Tracy Fullerton ("Game Design Workshop")
- Brenda Laurel ("Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System")
- Janet Murray ("Hamlet on the Holodeck"l
- Susana Tosca ("A Pragmatics of Links")
- Jichen Zhu ("Agency Play: Dimensions of Agency for Interactive Narrative Design")
- Magy Seif El Nasr ("Design patterns to guide player movement in 3D games")
- Kate Compton ("Causal Creators"; also "Spore")
P.S. upon consideration I've decided not to include any authors who are men in this coda.
There are definitely others who probably deserve to be here that I'm forgetting...
#GsmeDesign #Authors
@grumpybozo@toad.socialMost of the responses seem to be for coders.
I hope I won’t ever need to do another sysadmin interview but I wonder how silly it would be to have someone using a LLM to respond.
I ask wildly open questions because I don’t care as much about what they know as I do about how they think. Come back with what reads/sounds like LLM output and I don’t care where it came from or even if it’s technically correct.
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries C, Episode 02 - Powerplay
TARRANT: It was an even bet.
AVON: Quite.
TARRANT: I still don't know who the girl is, though.
AVON: Her name is Dayna, she's not one of us. Where is she, by the way?
TARRANT: Do you care?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/302/352 …
@karlauerbach@sfba.socialPsalm 58 is about the maga-klan... Here it is (slightly shorted to meet my Mastodon site's posting length limits.)
...
Do you rulers indeed speak justly? Do you judge people with equity?
No, in your heart you devise injustice, and your hands mete out violence on the earth.
...
Break the teeth in their mouths, O God;
Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions!
Let them vanish like water that flows away; when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall s…
@servelan@newsie.socialAI is ummasking ICE officers. Can Washington do anything about it? - POLITICO
https://archive.ph/VjfDO
@cdarwin@c.imDo you believe that climate facts should remain free from political interference and easily accessible?
If so, watch the climate.us video and consider supporting our initiative.
Find out how you can support: https://donorbox.org/climate-us-protected-by-you
@aral@mastodon.ar.alHey everyone, every Tuesday, my friend @… asks for your help to feed her family. She can’t do it today (they’re trying to stay alive during a genocide) so she asked if I could do it on her behalf.
They need $500 each week for their family of 6.
Every single dollar makes a real difference
If you’re unable to donate, please consider sharing – it might r…
@cdarwin@c.imIf you're completely overwhelmed by the suffering of the world and a feeling of hopelessness,
do one small thing locally.
It's basically the antidote.
https://bsky.app/profile/elleisanisland.bsky.social/post/3m3vcmb5tg22j
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itA: "Sometimes I feel like we take my mom's crepes for granted. Like, 'oh blah, grandma made crepes again...'"
8yo: [simultaneously] "I do not!"
me: [simultaneously] "We appreciate her crepes!"
A:: "Okay, okay"
me: "Besides, I know better than disrespect your mom's crepes"
me: "I wouldn't want to anger her"
me: "Otherwise I'd be facing the Crepes Of Wrath"
A: &q…
@cdarwin@c.imI say it after every shooting, but it doesn't need to be this way in America. There is much we can do to make America safer. We just choose not to.
Live updates: Grand Blanc, Michigan, church shooting and fire | CNN
https://share.google/9u16abDy8OboamCeQ
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itI never tried the official Mastodon android app. Just tried it now, and its actually pretty nice (and fast). Unfortunately it doesn't do quote toots yet (and somehow just disappears the links?), so I'm sticking with tusky and phanpy for now. But I could see switching to it once mastodon officially gains quote support.
