@midtsveen@social.linux.pizza2025-06-26 10:14:11
As #PrideMonth comes to an end, I wanted to share some AI-generated images created by my friend. 🏳️🌈
Although I’m generally skeptical of AI, I found this extremely queer! 🏳️🌈
#Pride #LGBTQIA
@midtsveen@social.linux.pizza2025-06-26 10:14:11
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-07-24 23:00:04
residence_hall: ANU Residence Hall network
A network of friendships among students living in a residence hall at Australian National University (date unknown). Edge direction indicates that resident i named resident j as a friend, and edge weight indicates the level of friendship: 5 (best friend), 4 (close friend), 3 (friend), 2, 1.
This network has 217 nodes and 2672 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted
@hippyjo@c.im2025-09-24 18:19:45
Moscow tries to open a new front by subverting the democracy of Moldova. A cost-effective means of waging war, and perfectly within the Russian ethos.
Disgusting.
News from the trenches of democracy, provided by one of the few remaining true journalists reporting from Ukraine.
He shared the friend link to bypass the paywall:
@aral@mastodon.ar.al2025-08-26 14:47:09
Hey 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…
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io2025-09-24 23:47:37
(via my friend Matthew)
There's a Medicare tele-health cliff at the end of this month that will impact other health insurance plans beyond just Medicare.
This post ⤵️ will walk you through how to effectively advocate for tele-health in ways that actually influence the outcome; regardless if you have R or D reps.
(this is a free post)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/139596270?pr=true
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-08-26 17:01:35
The family of a teen who committed suicide sues OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT gave him info about suicide methods and at times deterred him from seeking help (Kashmir Hill/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/technol…
@lschiff@mastodon.sdf.org2025-07-25 04:37:24
Excellent piece by a dear friend of mine about #censorship in our national parks. Read her piece and then use the #DefendResearch toolkits to call your elected officials and write a letter to the editor!
@pre@boing.world2025-09-24 17:42:43
"What do you lose by using Facebook", asked a friend who is keen to keep his account there for some reason.
What made me leave was the manipulation. I mean: they started hiding your friends posts in order to show you adverts instead! Feeding you slop from their promoted posts and "viral" messages (that aren't actually boosted by anyone, just picked out by their megaphone to show to everyone).
If you let the algorithm determine what you see than you let it determine what you are, who you become.
Even if you think it's better at finding shiny things than you, even if you think it builds the parasocial relationships that you want, even if you think it's saving you time to let the robot manage your reading-list: if you are letting Facebook, or any algorithm written by advertisers, do your reading selection then you are letting Facebook decide who you are.
On behalf of the advertisers who bribe them the most.
This is why you gotta use RSS. You gotta use the chronological timelines not the "for you" feeds. You gotta build follow relationships that you choose and understand because otherwise, you are letting the corporation and it's systems determine these things. You are abdicating some control of your very self to the machine.
Not to mention that we have to stop feeding money to the evil multi-trillion dollar companies built to control and manipulate us through our relationships with our friends. They have enough money, they need less participation not more.
#fediverse #algorithm
@cjust@infosec.exchange2025-07-25 00:35:11
A good friend of mine has the Muppet character "Beaker" as his avatar. For reasons.
He offers me advice. I offer him advice. We chat. These are #ChatsWithBeaker
@finlaydag33k@social.linux.pizza2025-07-24 17:56:32
I'm the kind of friend that you sometimes don't hear from for months or even years, then randomly DM's you something I knew you liked back then (like a video of a specific kind of bird I randomly spotted in my feed).
@raysofred@discordian.social2025-06-26 14:26:17
@tante@tldr.nettime.org2025-09-24 16:20:04
I think we might have locked ourselves into a professionalization trap. Shocking revelation: It's capitalism's fault.
(Original title: The Professionalism Trap)
https://tante.cc/2025/09/24/the-professionalism-trap/
@alejandrobdn@social.linux.pizza2025-08-25 21:55:32
I just want a cat. That's all! Oh, a friend told me there's a litter of orphaned kittens and asked me if I want one. Okay, I have two cats, that's all! There's a skinny little cat in my town that keeps begging my parents for food... Oh, damn it.
@emd@cosocial.ca2025-08-24 15:14:16
Neat thread on all ways people’s bodies are different than “normal”
https://bitbang.social/@NanoRaptor/115081321043933411
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-09-24 18:00:06
slashdot_zoo: Slashdot Zoo friend-foe network (2009)
A network of interactions among users on Slashdot (slashdot.org), a technology news website. Users name each other as friends or foe. The friend label increases the scores of post, and the foe label decreases the score.
This network has 79120 nodes and 515397 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Signed
@relcfp@mastodon.social2025-09-25 17:55:23
Illuminations from a Bright Mirror: Peter Gregory as Scholar, Editor, and Mentor in the Study of Chinese Buddhism #acrel https://networks.h-net.org/group/ann…
@muz4now@mastodon.world2025-08-26 03:12:01
In Memory of Tom – mentor and friend #grief #improvpiano #piano #pianoimprov
@cheryanne@aus.social2025-07-24 12:16:59
Friends With Money
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: #GreatAusPods
@midtsveen@social.linux.pizza2025-09-24 13:36:05
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-08-25 03:00:04
college_freshmen: Dutch college freshman (1995)
A small network of friendships among freshmen at Dutch College in 1994-1995. Friendship ties were surveyed at 7 different times over the year, and each edge is timestamped. The direction of an edge indicates that person i named person j, and the edge weight represents their level of friendship, ranging from -1 (risk of conflict) to 3 (best friend).
This network has 32 nodes and 3062 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted, Tim…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-09-14 12:01:38
TL;DR: what if instead of denying the harms of fascism, we denied its suppressive threats of punishment
Many of us have really sharpened our denial skills since the advent of the ongoing pandemic (perhaps you even hesitated at the word "ongoing" there and thought "maybe I won't read this one, it seems like it'll be tiresome"). I don't say this as a preface to a fiery condemnation or a plea to "sanity" or a bunch of evidence of how bad things are, because I too have honed my denial skills in these recent years, and I feel like talking about that development.
Denial comes in many forms, including strategic information avoidance ("I don't have time to look that up right now", "I keep forgetting to look into that", "well this author made a tiny mistake, so I'll click away and read something else", "I'm so tired of hearing about this, let me scroll farther", etc.) strategic dismissal ("look, there's a bit of uncertainty here, I should ignore this", "this doesn't line up perfectly with my anecdotal experience, it must be completely wrong", etc.) and strategic forgetting ("I don't remember what that one study said exactly; it was painful to think about", "I forgot exactly what my friend was saying when we got into that argument", etc.). It's in fact a kind of skill that you can get better at, along with the complementary skill of compartmentalization. It can of course be incredibly harmful, and a huge genre of fables exists precisely to highlight its harms, but it also has some short-term psychological benefits, chiefly in the form of muting anxiety. This is not an endorsement of denial (the harms can be catastrophic), but I want to acknowledge that there *are* short-term benefits. Via compartmentalization, it's even possible to be honest with ourselves about some of our own denials without giving them up immediately.
But as I said earlier, I'm not here to talk you out of your denials. Instead, given that we are so good at denial now, I'm here to ask you to be strategic about it. In particular, we live in a world awash with propaganda/advertising that serves both political and commercial ends. Why not use some of our denial skills to counteract that?
For example, I know quite a few people in complete denial of our current political situation, but those who aren't (including myself) often express consternation about just how many people in the country are supporting literal fascism. Of course, logically that appearance of widespread support is going to be partly a lie, given how much our public media is beholden to the fascists or outright in their side. Finding better facts on the true level of support is hard, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about the "fact" that Trump has widespread popular support?
To give another example: advertisers constantly barrage us with messages about our bodies and weight, trying to keep us insecure (and thus in the mood to spend money to "fix" the problem). For sure cutting through that bullshit by reading about body positivity etc. is a better solution, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about there being anything wrong with your body?
This kind of intentional denial certainly has its own risks (our bodies do actually need regular maintenance, for example, so complete denial on that front is risky) but there's definitely a whole lot of misinformation out there that it would be better to ignore. To the extent such denial expands to a more general denial of underlying problems, this idea of intentional denial is probably just bad. But I sure wish that in a world where people (including myself) routinely deny significant widespread dangers like COVID-19's long-term risks or the ongoing harms of escalating fascism, they'd at least also deny some of the propaganda keeping them unhappy and passive. Instead of being in denial about US-run concentration camps, why not be in denial that the state will be able to punish you for resisting them?
@samir@functional.computer2025-07-20 20:40:41
I had a little vacation this weekend, and I have a longer one booked around the end of July start of August when a friend visits for a week.
I will not make a build system until after that vacation.
But but but my friend Nick is working on one and I think it’s a strong contender for something very useful. I plan on trying it in earnest soon.
@UP8@mastodon.social2025-09-20 01:13:04
Here's my physics professor and friend Carl Franck and family after the Forest Frolic in James Kennedy State Forest on a rainy summer day
#photo #photography #ForestFriday
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-09-21 18:01:21
I think I need to clarify some shit for (white) liberals.
How many times have you wondered if someone you're talking to in an informant sent to entrap you? How many times have you or a friend of yours been hit by a car, intentionally? How many friends have been hit, or almost hit? Ever been stabbed? Know anyone who has? Has the FBI ever knocked on a friend's door? Have police ever kicked down your door? Have you ever been arrested? Pepper sprayed? Does the sound or smell or blast balls give you flashbacks? Do you ever wonder what all the CS exposure is doing to your body? How many times have you been shot or shot at? Do you wonder every day if this is the day they'll come to kill you? Would anyone in your social circle answer these questions differently?
When you vote, you risk nothing (big asterisk, but if I'm talking to you then it doesn't apply to you). What you get out of voting is exactly what you put into it. Direct action is the same.
If you aren't worried about someone murdering you, then you probably aren't actually threatening the system. That's the difference between voting, and doing something useful. If they had to murder all the liberals in order to keep going, fascism would end. If they're only murdering radicals and marginalized people, then you're just like all the "good Germans" who hated Hitler but did essentially nothing.
It's already that bad for some people. How much are you willing to risk? How many people are you willing to sacrifice for your comfort? These are the questions we're all thinking about every time you tell us to vote.
(I'm tagging this #USPol so it's easy for folks to filter out if they're already well acquaintaned with the horror. I'm not CW, because USPol is just expected to be triggering.)
@stevefoerster@social.fossdle.org2025-08-22 02:13:45
I just belatedly saw this poignant essay that my friend Atul Singh wrote in May about his emotional experience moving country, and thought it deserved to be much more widely read.
https://www.fairobserver.com/fowednesday/the-pain-of-leaving-your-parents-beh…
@DamonHD@mastodon.social2025-09-23 06:59:36
@villavelius@mastodon.online2025-09-22 11:21:58
@rasterweb@mastodon.social2025-08-21 21:35:10
If you lock up your bike indoors (garage or home) what do you lock it up to?
I think a friend of mine locks his up to four other bikes but let's pretend that's not an option for everyone. 😅
What large, heavy, or structural thing do you lock your bike to in your garage or home?
#BikeNitePQ
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net2025-07-21 15:23:56
Series B, Episode 12 - The Keeper
GOLA: You are a friend of Lurgen's, or I ...
SERVALAN: What?
GOLA: I'd send you down below.
SERVALAN: You lay a finger on me and the Federation battle fleets will blast you to ashes. You and all your tents.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/212/327
@pixelcode@social.tchncs.de2025-07-22 12:46:34
Looking for the radar cross-section of the outdated #PanaviaTornado fighter jet, I thought I could ask my old friend #ChatGPT for help in finding online sources. Surely enough, it found this source:
@arXiv_physicssocph_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-07-23 08:28:02
Unbeatable imitation of a friend
Masahiko Ueda
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16221 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.16221
@evemassacre@assemblag.es2025-09-20 16:25:52
Oh no. So sad to hear of Keith McIvor / JD Twitch's far too early death (on my birthday of all days 😪).
Optimo has been such an important influence on me and just last week a friend and I talked about what a wonderful time we had with him when we once invited him to our club for a set. RIP. What a loss.
https://optimomusic…
@ErikUden@mastodon.de2025-09-12 16:36:24
due to the crackdown of any leftist discourse surrounding charlie kirk's assassination, bringing into context his own statements, viewpoints, and what they had to do with his demise, huge social media accounts are being banned on twitter, instagram, and bluesky.
for a friend of mine who's running “punkwithacamera” on Instagram, this also meant having the identity and address of doxxed, to the degree where even a member of the house of representatives of the united states of ame…
@migueldeicaza@mastodon.social2025-09-19 22:54:11
A friend reminded me about this tweet, and I wanted to share it with you folks.
I should pick up this series.
@aardrian@toot.cafe2025-09-18 14:22:17
I confounded a British friend by telling them a popular local morning radio jingle of my childhood was “Danny moves your fanny.”
Attached is one variant, but this is the one I recall best (no audio): https://www.reddit.com/r/Buffalo/comments/1618sls/comment/jxttpyn/…
@sonnets@bots.krohsnest.com2025-07-24 11:25:10
Sonnet 104 - CIV
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd,
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,…
@nelson@tech.lgbt2025-08-20 23:50:01
What if every time we copy-and-paste an emoji, we propagated the history of that particular instance too? So I copy a ❤️ from my friend Alice and send it to my friend Bob, and Bob sees a ❤️ and when he taps on it it says "this ❤️ was from Alice. She got it from Chuck, who got it from David, ..."
@outer@mas.to2025-08-21 14:20:11
A month of nights, a year of days
Octobers drifting into Mays
I set my sail when the tide comes in
And I cast my fate to the wind
I shift my course round with the breeze
Won't sail upwind on memories
The empty sky is my best friend
And I cast my fate to the wind
Set sail with the tide
Shift course with the breeze
Let dreams blow away
Those sad memories
Well, now I'm old, I'm wise, I'm smart
Just a man with h…
@blackknight95857669@social.linux.pizza2025-08-18 23:09:22
Birth (Multi, XPd on Steam Deck)
You are alone in this world. Why not go on an adventure and find the parts to make yourself a friend?
Birth is a surreal adventure puzzle game, to be sure. You are literally going down a block in a neighborhood, rifling through all the spaces to find and collect bones and organs to construct a new creature.
As puzzle adventures go, this one is pretty solid. For the most part the puzzles are great, with a wide variety and not much repetition.…
@rachel@norfolk.social2025-08-22 10:40:25
Something of a longshot but I don’t suppose anyone has one of those all-terrain wheelchairs my friend could borrow last weekend in August?
No idea at all how to tag this one!
@radioeinsmusicbot@mastodonapp.uk2025-08-17 11:56:05
🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
The Greatful Dead:
🎵 Friend Of The Devil
#NowPlaying #TheGreatfulDead
https://micahmckee.bandcamp.com/track/friend-of-the-devil-grateful-dead-cover-tribute-to-chelsea
https://open.spotify.com/track/5ZLzl6T8JwqMTMdoE0nCbU
@UP8@mastodon.social2025-08-21 02:29:27
And here's my friend Harry visiting our farm, in front of the garden in which I took that dreamy shot of the false sunflowers
#photo #photography #portrait
@arXiv_quantph_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-09-18 09:42:11
The original Wigner's-Friend scenarios
Jay Lawrence
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13470 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.13470
@cdarwin@c.im2025-09-14 20:01:51
The US right has increased its influence on mainstream media in America in recent weeks,
especially in television news which has been a major target of the Donald Trump administration.
CBS News
– once home to legends of US journalism like Walter Cronkite and Edward R Murrow
– installed a Trump ally as its ombudsman,
weeks after the family of Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men, and a friend of the US president, sealed control over Paramount, the owner …
@lilmikesf@c.im2025-08-18 18:33:11
Prosecutor's release 42,000 word response to That 70's Show star #DannyMasterson's appeal to be released from 30 yr #California #prison term on forcible rape & drugging charges.
The details are not prett…
![The next morning, appellant was gone. A
friend picked up [Jane Doe 1] and took her to
her car. [Jane Doe 1] said she and appellant had
sex, but she did not mention the anal
penetration. She was feeling confused, hurt,
stunned, and “really, really ashamed.” Her anus
burned for days, and she had pain on her right
side. She went to the doctor for the pain on her
side, but did not mention the anal penetration.
She believed she was really drunk that night,
not drugged.
[Jane Doe 1] told her “very c…](https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/115/051/192/439/622/514/original/c1b7daef98bef24a.png)
@ruth_mottram@fediscience.org2025-08-20 13:57:48
An old friend's research is in the news. It's the kind of environmental science which is terrible and horrible to think about, but I'm glad someone is doing it.
Collecting those statistics on cetacean strandings is key if you want to know why it happens.
🌊🧪🦈🐟🐋🐳
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgkr84d02ego
@maxheadroom@hub.uckermark.social2025-08-21 05:07:57
Busy day ahead. Snatched an appointment to request a new ID card. Mine has expired two month ago 🙈. But first need to check on an old bike to get there. Because kiddo is using my bike for a summer camp. Then put the bike on the car and drive to Potsdam to pick up a friend we take care of from hospital and drive him home to the Uckermark. Then also do the grocery shopping for him and deliver back to him. Then bring said bike to our house in the countryside cause we don't need it in Berlin…
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-07-24 04:00:04
college_freshmen: Dutch college freshman (1995)
A small network of friendships among freshmen at Dutch College in 1994-1995. Friendship ties were surveyed at 7 different times over the year, and each edge is timestamped. The direction of an edge indicates that person i named person j, and the edge weight represents their level of friendship, ranging from -1 (risk of conflict) to 3 (best friend).
This network has 32 nodes and 3062 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted, Tim…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-07-28 13:06:20
How popular media gets love wrong
Now a bit of background about why I have this "engineered" model of love:
First, I'm a white straight cis man. I've got a few traits that might work against my relationship chances (e.g., neurodivergence; I generally fit pretty well into the "weird geek" stereotype), but as I was recently reminded, it's possible my experience derives more from luck than other factors, and since things are tilted more in my favor than most people on the planet, my advice could be worse than useless if it leads people towards strategies that would only have worked for someone like me. I don't *think* that's the case, but it's worth mentioning explicitly.
When I first started dating my now-wife, we were both in graduate school. I was 26, and had exactly zero dating/romantic experience though that point in my life. In other words, a pretty stereotypical "incel" although I definitely didn't subscribe to incel ideology at all. I felt lonely, and vaguely wanted a romantic relationship (I'm neither aromantic nor asexual), but had never felt socially comfortable enough to pursue one before. I don't drink and dislike most social gatherings like parties or bars; I mostly hung around the fringes of the few college parties I attended, and although I had a reasonable college social life in terms of friends, I didn't really do anything to pursue romance, feeling too awkward to know where to start. I had the beginnings of crushes in both high school and college, but never developed a really strong crush, probably correlated with not putting myself in many social situations outside of close all-male friend gatherings. I never felt remotely comfortable enough to act on any of the proto-crushes I did have. I did watch porn and masturbate, so one motivation for pursuing a relationship was physical intimacy, but loneliness was as much of a motivating factor, and of course the social pressure to date was a factor too, even though I'm quite contrarian.
When I first started dating my now-wife, we were both in graduate school. I was 26, and had exactly zero dating/romantic experience though that point in my life. In other words, a pretty stereotypical "incel" although I definitely didn't subscribe to incel ideology at all. I felt lonely, and vaguely wanted a romantic relationship (I'm neither aromantic nor asexual), but had never felt socially comfortable enough to pursue one before. I don't drink and dislike most social gatherings like parties or bars; I mostly hung around the fringes of the few college parties I attended, and although I had a reasonable college social life in terms of friends, I didn't really do anything to pursue romance, feeling too awkward to know where to start. I had the beginnings of crushes in both high school and college, but never developed a really strong crush, probably correlated with not putting myself in many social situations outside of close all-male friend gatherings. I never felt remotely comfortable enough to act on any of the proto-crushes I did have. I did watch porn and masturbate, so one motivation for pursuing a relationship was physical intimacy, but loneliness was as much of a motivating factor, and of course the social pressure to date was a factor too, even though I'm quite contrarian.
I'm lucky in that I had some mixed-gender social circles already like intramural soccer and a graduate-student housing potluck. Graduate school makes a *lot* more of these social spaces accessible, so I recognize that those not in school of some sort have a harder time of things, especially if like me they don't feel like they fit in in typical adult social spaces like bars.
However, at one point I just decided that my desire for a relationship would need action on my part and so I'd try to build a relationship and see what happened. I worked up my courage and asked one of the people in my potluck if she'd like to go for a hike (pretty much clearly a date but not explicitly one; in retrospect not the best first-date modality in a lot of ways, but it made a little more sense in our setting where we could go for a hike from our front door). To emphasize this point: I was not in love with (or even infatuated with) my now-wife at that point. I made a decision to be open to building a relationship, but didn't follow the typical romance story formula beyond that. Now of course, in real life as opposed to popular media, this isn't anything special. People ask each other out all the time just because they're lonely, and some of those relationships turn out fine (although many do not).
I was lucky in that some aspects of who I am and what I do happened to be naturally comforting to my wife (natural advantage in the "appeal" model of love) but of course there are some aspects of me that annoy my wife, and we negotiate that. In the other direction, there's some things I instantly liked about my wife, and other things that still annoy me. We've figured out how to accept a little, change a little, and overall be happy with each other (though we do still have arguments; it's not like the operation/construction/maintenance of the "love mechanism" is always perfectly smooth). In particular though, I approached the relationship with the attitude of "I want to try to build a relationship with this person," at first just because of my own desires for *any* relationship, and then gradually more and more through my desire to build *this specific* relationship as I enjoyed the rewards of companionship.
So for example, while I think my wife is objectively beautiful, she's also *subjectively* very beautiful *to me* because having decided to build a relationship with her, I actively tried to see her as beautiful, rather than trying to judge whether I wanted a relationship with her based on her beauty. In other words, our relationship is more causative of her beauty-to-me than her beauty-to-me is causative of our relationship. This is the biggest way I think the "engineered" model of love differs from the "fire" and "appeal" models: you can just decide to build love independent of factors we typically think of as engendering love (NOT independent of your partner's willingness to participate, of course), and then all of those things like "thinking your partner is beautiful" can be a result of the relationship you're building. For sure those factors might affect who is willing to try building a relationship with you in the first place, but if more people were willing to jump into relationship building (not necessarily with full commitment from the start) without worrying about those other factors, they might find that those factors can come out of the relationship instead of being prerequisites for it. I think this is the biggest failure of the "appeal" model in particular: yes you *do* need to do things that appeal to your partner, but it's not just "make myself lovable" it's also: is your partner putting in the effort to see the ways that you are beautiful/lovable/etc., or are they just expecting you to become exactly some perfect person they've imagined (and/or been told to desire by society)? The former is perfectly possible, and no less satisfying than the latter.
To cut off my rambling a bit here, I'll just add that in our progress from dating through marriage through staying-married, my wife and I have both talked at times explicitly about commitment, and especially when deciding to get married, I told her that I knew I couldn't live up to the perfect model of a husband that I'd want to be, but that if she wanted to deepen our commitment, I was happy to do that, and so we did. I also rearranged my priorities at that point, deciding that I knew I wanted to prioritize this relationship above things like my career or my research interests, and while I've not always been perfect at that in my little decisions, I've been good at holding to that in my big decisions at least. In the end, *once we had built a somewhat-committed relationship*, we had something that we both recognized was worth more than most other things in life, and that let us commit even more, thus getting even more out of it in the long term. Obviously you can't start the first date with an expectation of life-long commitment, and you need to synchronize your increasing commitment to a relationship so that it doesn't become lopsided, which is hard. But if you take the commitment as an active decision and as the *precursor* to things like infatuation, attraction, etc., you can build up to something that's incredibly strong and rewarding.
I'll follow this up with one more post trying to distill some advice from my ramblings.
#relationships #love
@publicvoit@graz.social2025-08-11 18:29:50
Wow, I just had my first satellite video call. A friend of mine is in the #Arcticregion of #Greenland. 😎
Colleagues of him were going for a swim. 4 degrees Celsius water temperature, iceberg in the background.
#Signal
@stefan@gardenstate.social2025-08-16 03:36:26
The price of clown college is out of control!
https://www.mooseburger.com/product-page/moose-camp-registration-2026
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it2025-07-31 15:53:39
![After two last-minute appeals from safe street advocates, a state appellate court panel ruled on Monday afternoon that Mayor Eric Adams could rip out a three-block stretch of protected bike lane on Bedford Avenue from Willoughby Avenue to Flushing Avenue. Adams's Department of Transportation, which installed the bike lane barely nine months ago, began the demolition late Wednesday night.
"It's really sad to see [the removal of] a safety project that has been fought for by a whole host of com…](https://mastodon-usw-cache.b-cdn.net/media_attachments/files/114/948/650/867/188/694/original/36d124901ef3d34c.png)
@midtsveen@social.linux.pizza2025-09-22 18:44:08
If you put money above the people and the planet, then you are no friend of mine because from where I stand it means you would rather protect greed than stand beside me in the struggle for justice and freedom.
#Capitalism #AntiCapitalism
@david@boles.xyz2025-07-08 20:14:47
Critic as Censor: How the Humanities Sacrificed Art at the Altar of Theory
My beloved friend, mentor, and Columbia University Professor Howard Stein, was fond of saying, “The Enemy of the Arts is the Humanities.” That insight, and advice, has stuck with me over the past 35 years. Now, that phrase is not the glib provocation it may seem. It is a precise diagnosis of an institutional disease, a declaration of war against a century of academic drift that has created a…
@iam_jfnklstrm@social.linux.pizza2025-08-22 12:43:34
Public anouncement - if you eat too many fishermans friend (a type of candy in scandinavia) your belly will emit gas.
@hynek@mastodon.social2025-07-12 11:55:25
After way too long (starting to notice a pattern!), I’m writing the next installment of my newsletter!
If you want more insight into what I’ve been up the in the past *checks calendar* FOUR MONTHS 😱 – or want to see some cute dog photos, make sure to subscribe:
https://buttondown.com/hynek
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-07-21 01:50:28
Epstein shit and adjacent, Rural America, Poverty, Abuse
Everyone who's not a pedophile thinks pedophiles are bad, but there's this special obsessed hatred you'll find among poor rural Americans. The whole QAnon/Epstein obsession may not really make sense to folks raised in cities. Like, why do these people think *so much* about pedophiles? Why do they think that everyone in power is a pedophile? Why would the Pizzagate thing make sense to anyone? What is this unhinged shit? A lot of folks (who aren't anarchists) might be inclined to ask "why can't these people just let the cops take care of it?"
I was watching Legal Eagle's run down on the Trump Epstein thing earlier today and I woke up thinking about something I don't know if I've ever talked about. Now that I'm not in the US, I'm not at any risk of talking about it. I don't know how much I would have been before, but that's not something I'm gonna dig into right now. So let me tell you a story that might explain a few things.
I'm like 16, maybe 17. I have my license, so this girl I was dating/not dating/just friends with/whatever would regularly convince me to drive her and her friends around. I think she's like 15 at the time. Her friends are younger than her.
She tells me that there's a party we can go to where they have beer. She was told to invite her friends, so I can come too. We're going to pick her friends up (we regularly fill the VW Golf well beyond the legal limit and drive places) and head to the party.
So I take these girls, at least is 13 years old, down to this party. I'm already a bit sketched out bringing a 13 year old to a party. We drive out for a while. It's in the country. We drive down a long dark road. Three are some barrel fires and a shack. This is all a bit strange, but not too abnormal for this area. We're a little ways outside of a place called Mill City (in Oregon).
We park and walk towards the shack. This dude who looks like a rat comes up and offers us beer. He laughs and talks to the girl who invited me, "What's he doing here? You're supposed to bring your girl friends." She's like, "He's our ride." I don't remember if he offered me a beer or not.
We go over to this shed and everyone starts smoking, except me because I didn't smoke until I turned 18. The other girls start talking about the rat face dude, who's wandered over by the fire with some other guys. They're mainly teasing one of the 13 year old girls about having sex with him a bunch of times. They say he's like, 32 or something. The other girls joke about him only having sex with 13 year olds because he's too ugly to have sex with anyone closer to his own age.
Somewhere along the line it comes out that he's a cop. I never forgot that, it's absolutely seared in to my memory. I can picture his face perfectly still, decades later, and them talking about how he's a deputy, he was in his 30's, and he was having sex with a 13 year old girl. I was the only boy there, but there were a few older men. This was a chunk of the good ol' boys club of the town. I think there were a couple of cops besides the one deputy, and a judge or the mayor or some kind of big local VIP.
I kept trying to get my friend to leave, but she wanted to stay. Turns out under age drinking with cops seems like a great deal if you're a kid because you know you won't get busted. I left alone, creeped the fuck out.
I was told later that I wasn't invited and that I couldn't talk about it, I've always been good at compartmentalization, so I never did.
Decades later it occurred to me what was actually happening. I'm pretty sure that cop was giving meth he'd seized as evidence to these kids. This wasn't some one-off thing. It was regular. Who knows how many decades it went on after I left, or how many decades it had been going on before I found out. I knew this type of thing had happened at least a few times before because that's how that 13 year old girl and that 32 year old cop had hooked up in the first place.
Hearing about Epstein's MO, targeting these teenage girls from fucked up backgrounds, it's right there for me. I wouldn't be surprised if they were involved in sex trafficking of minors or some shit like that... but who would you call if you found out? Half the sheriff's department was there and the other half would cover for them.
You live in the city and shit like that doesn't happen, or at least you don't think it happens. But rural poor folks have this intuition about power and abuse. It's right there and you know it.
Trump is such a familiar character for me, because he's exactly that small town mayor or sheriff. He'll will talk about being tough on crime and hunting down pedophiles, while hanging out at a party that exists so people can fuck 8th graders.
The problem with the whole thing is that rural folks will never break the cognitive dissonance between "kill the peods" and "back the blue." They'll never go kill those cops. No, the pedos must be somewhere else. It must be the elites. It must be outsiders. It can't be the cops and good ol' boys everyone respects. It can't be the mayor who rigs the election to win every time. It can't be the "good upstanding" sheriff. Nah, it's the Clintons.
To be fair, it's probably also the Clitnons, a bunch of other politicians, billionaires, etc. Epstein was exactly who everyone thought he was, and he didn't get away with it for so long without a whole lot of really powerful help.
There are still powerful people who got away with involvement with #Epstein. #Trump is one of them, but I don't really believe that he's the only one.
#USPol #ACAB
@gfriend@mas.to2025-07-16 18:00:17
We're live in 60 minutes. And yes, we still have room for you.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gfriend_next-wednesday-tactics-s…
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-07-23 12:00:06
slashdot_zoo: Slashdot Zoo friend-foe network (2009)
A network of interactions among users on Slashdot (slashdot.org), a technology news website. Users name each other as friends or foe. The friend label increases the scores of post, and the foe label decreases the score.
This network has 79120 nodes and 515397 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Signed
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net2025-07-19 15:17:59
Series B, Episode 02 - Shadow
VILA: Entertainment, for example
JENNA: Why don't you take a cold shower or something?
VILA: And risk being left behind when we go and meet your friend?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/202/67 B7B4
@azonenberg@ioc.exchange2025-08-13 22:16:30
Friend sent me this pic from the WOOT poster session.
Unfortunately I didn't think to ask for a pic of me with it, but oh well lol.
@arXiv_econTH_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-09-19 07:39:31
Friend or Foe: Delegating to an AI Whose Alignment is Unknown
Drew Fudenberg, Annie Liang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14396 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.14396…
@primonatura@mstdn.social2025-08-03 17:40:45
@unchartedworlds@scicomm.xyz2025-07-07 10:03:44
Nottingham, short visit rent or housesit, anyone know a place?
Nottingham-related #AskFedi: anyone know of a Nottingham-area house or flat that's going to be empty over part or all of the summer? and that's potentially rentable for not too much for a few days, or wants house-sitting for a while?
It would be so that me and a friend/colleague could go and use the space to do some writing work together. We are reliable conscientious old(ish) people who'd leave it clean and not be any bother :-)
Boosts very welcome.
#Nottingham #AskFedi
@UP8@mastodon.social2025-08-16 21:17:06
My wife, my friend Harry, and barn cat Queen Jane in front of my barn
#photo #photography #bloomscrolling
@mlawton@mstdn.social2025-09-12 02:08:19
I got in a nice 7km run tonight, feeling better after having had a cold. Did the first 30 min or so in HR zone 2, then got irritated with the pace and decided to go a little faster for the last half hour. That might be the plan going forward. I believe in the expanded fitness levels that zone 2 builds, but it suuuucks!
Dedicating this run to my friend @…, wishing hi…
@davej@dice.camp2025-09-05 06:49:23
![She said it wasn't a friend group, she was aware we'd called it a "hoe union" and had "rules"
I said that it literally is made up of friends. And there aren't any enforced "rules" it's all voluntary.
I then got frustrated and asked why she thought it was appropriate to involve herself in private conversation that happened outside of school and campus, and left.
AITA for making that group chat?
[3/3]](https://cdn.masto.host/dicecamp/media_attachments/files/115/150/353/956/902/443/original/bf58ed912c6feb58.jpeg)
@n8foo@macaw.social2025-08-16 05:21:12
At 9:35 PM CST tonight I saw a brilliant bolide meteor ☄️ blaze straight overhead in downtown #Nashville…right in the middle of an outdoor concert, under planes, lasers, and brutal light pollution. Nobody else noticed it🤦♂️, but I knew what I saw.
Luckily my friend Marc, 21 miles north of the city, with an all-sky cam, caught it crystal clear! Sharing both his original and enhanced frames…
@akosma@mastodon.online2025-09-07 07:22:07
"Whenever anyone asks me for advice, I tell them: we don’t realize how deeply the nine-to-five fractures us. The weekends, the holidays, the fixed friend group—whatever rigidness exists in your behavior will exist in your perception, and it will exist in your ability to think critically."
Victoria Brugger, "Last Words of an Ego on Death Row"
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-08-23 07:00:04
highschool: Illinois high school students (1958)
A network of friendships among male students in a small high school in Illinois from 1958. An arc points from student i to student j if i named j as a friend, in either of two identical surveys (from Fall and Spring semesters). Edge weights are the number of surveys in which the friendship was named.
This network has 70 nodes and 366 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted
@bourgwick@heads.social2025-07-02 18:45:02
today's distracting mindblow: samuel delany & karen dalton shared bills at cafe elysee, plus fred neil, tim hardin, & other notables. (can't find any other details/documentation of the west village venue of that name.) https://archive.org/details/motionofli…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-07-14 06:30:34
Internet Matters survey of 1,000 UK kids aged 9 to 17: 67% say they use AI chatbots regularly; of that group, 35% say it feels like talking to a friend (Noor Al-Sibai/Futurism)
https://futurism.com/lonely-children-ai-chatbots
@hippyjo@c.im2025-09-23 17:16:55
Today the most evil and corrupt nation on Earth is hosting the most vile and murderous nation in a disgusting farce of civility - the United Nations.
No need for lengthy diatribes or accusations - the murderous evidence is plain to see, even from space.
Russia and America have teamed up to be the world's worst nightmare since predatory criminal capitalism.
Georgio reports truth from the trenches of democracy in Ukraine, and he shares the friend link to bypass the payw…
@nelson@tech.lgbt2025-09-22 02:24:41
A trans friend of mine just sent me engagement ring photos and I am so happy for her!
@tante@tldr.nettime.org2025-07-06 22:16:39
A few thoughts I had after a conversation with a friend. What are you - as a professional - even saying when openly using ChatGPT for your decision-making?
https://tante.cc/2025/07/06/so-what-are-you-saying/
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net2025-08-18 18:38:35
Series B, Episode 10 - Voice from the Past
NAGU: To sustain the flame of liberty.
AVON: Some hope of that.
NAGU: Ah, but there is my friend, as never before.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/210/346 B7B5
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-07-21 11:00:05
residence_hall: ANU Residence Hall network
A network of friendships among students living in a residence hall at Australian National University (date unknown). Edge direction indicates that resident i named resident j as a friend, and edge weight indicates the level of friendship: 5 (best friend), 4 (close friend), 3 (friend), 2, 1.
This network has 217 nodes and 2672 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted
@cjust@infosec.exchange2025-07-18 00:41:48
A good friend of mine has the Muppet character "Beaker" as his avatar. For reasons.
He offers me advice. I offer him advice. We chat. These are #ChatsWithBeaker
@arXiv_quantph_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-09-10 10:31:51
An analysis of Wigner's friend in the framework of quantum mechanics based on the principle of typicality
Kohtaro Tadaki
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07828 https://
@azonenberg@ioc.exchange2025-08-17 05:15:17
I need to spend some time with a USB PD analyzer and some of my hardware.
Earlier today I observed the following cursed USB-C behavior at a friend's place:
1) Laptop -> phone: charges phone
2) Power bank -> phone: charges phone
3) Wall brick -> phone: red LED on phone turns on, but OS doesn't show any indication of charging and battery level doesn't go up
4) Wall brick -> power bank: charges bank
5) Laptop -> power bank: LED flashes …
@cdarwin@c.im2025-09-16 05:26:14
JD Vance vows retribution on liberal institutions after Charlie Kirk killing
Vice President JD Vance vowed to dismantle institutions on the left that he said promote violence and terrorism,
denouncing two of the country’s most prominent liberal foundations in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Donald Trump later in the day also attacked groups on the left and renewed his talk about potential racketeering prosecutions of unspecified g…
@cheryanne@aus.social2025-07-12 12:19:09
I've had a fairly unproductive day. Aound 2 hours sleep (finally) in the wee hours this morning Not really enough to equip me to face the day. Did a little work of my own. Did some minor tech support for a friend. She stayed most of the day and we ended up binge watching all 10 episodes of Murderbot, eating snacks, and drinking a couple of bottles of wine. I'm hoping that will be enough to enable me to sleep well tonight. Fingers crossed. Good night all. 🥱
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-07-22 23:00:04
college_freshmen: Dutch college freshman (1995)
A small network of friendships among freshmen at Dutch College in 1994-1995. Friendship ties were surveyed at 7 different times over the year, and each edge is timestamped. The direction of an edge indicates that person i named person j, and the edge weight represents their level of friendship, ranging from -1 (risk of conflict) to 3 (best friend).
This network has 32 nodes and 3062 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted, Tim…
@publicvoit@graz.social2025-08-05 07:33:14
@aral@mastodon.ar.al2025-09-03 17:15:57
@muz4now@mastodon.world2025-07-02 06:12:09
In Memory Of Tom
Inspired by the life of a mentor and friend...
#PianoImprov #NowPlaying
https://muz4no…
@cjust@infosec.exchange2025-07-18 00:11:57
A good friend of mine has the Muppet character "Beaker" as his avatar. For reasons.
He offers me advice. I offer him advice. We chat. These are #ChatsWithBeaker
@tante@tldr.nettime.org2025-07-17 17:06:44
Basically the core argument of my last article
https://merveilles.town/@lrhodes/114869651115717099
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-07-20 11:00:06
slashdot_zoo: Slashdot Zoo friend-foe network (2009)
A network of interactions among users on Slashdot (slashdot.org), a technology news website. Users name each other as friends or foe. The friend label increases the scores of post, and the foe label decreases the score.
This network has 79120 nodes and 515397 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Signed
@UP8@mastodon.social2025-09-13 18:56:25
Our friend Lenny has this shaggy orange cat who we took care of when he was off on vacation -- I think my cat photos are better than most of what gets posted to LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-houle-a18809320/
@tante@tldr.nettime.org2025-07-07 14:00:05
Last week I had the great honor to give a talk with my friend Malte about capitalism, (tech-)fascism and how it connects to "AI".
(Original title: “Fascist AI” talk at LOOPS)
https://tante.cc/2025/07/04/fascist-ai-talk-at-loops/
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-09-09 21:00:04
residence_hall: ANU Residence Hall network
A network of friendships among students living in a residence hall at Australian National University (date unknown). Edge direction indicates that resident i named resident j as a friend, and edge weight indicates the level of friendship: 5 (best friend), 4 (close friend), 3 (friend), 2, 1.
This network has 217 nodes and 2672 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-07-18 06:00:04
college_freshmen: Dutch college freshman (1995)
A small network of friendships among freshmen at Dutch College in 1994-1995. Friendship ties were surveyed at 7 different times over the year, and each edge is timestamped. The direction of an edge indicates that person i named person j, and the edge weight represents their level of friendship, ranging from -1 (risk of conflict) to 3 (best friend).
This network has 32 nodes and 3062 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted, Tim…
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-09-08 00:00:04
residence_hall: ANU Residence Hall network
A network of friendships among students living in a residence hall at Australian National University (date unknown). Edge direction indicates that resident i named resident j as a friend, and edge weight indicates the level of friendship: 5 (best friend), 4 (close friend), 3 (friend), 2, 1.
This network has 217 nodes and 2672 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-08-12 10:00:06
slashdot_zoo: Slashdot Zoo friend-foe network (2009)
A network of interactions among users on Slashdot (slashdot.org), a technology news website. Users name each other as friends or foe. The friend label increases the scores of post, and the foe label decreases the score.
This network has 79120 nodes and 515397 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Signed
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-09-12 15:00:04
highschool: Illinois high school students (1958)
A network of friendships among male students in a small high school in Illinois from 1958. An arc points from student i to student j if i named j as a friend, in either of two identical surveys (from Fall and Spring semesters). Edge weights are the number of surveys in which the friendship was named.
This network has 70 nodes and 366 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-08-02 17:00:05
residence_hall: ANU Residence Hall network
A network of friendships among students living in a residence hall at Australian National University (date unknown). Edge direction indicates that resident i named resident j as a friend, and edge weight indicates the level of friendship: 5 (best friend), 4 (close friend), 3 (friend), 2, 1.
This network has 217 nodes and 2672 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-09-08 12:00:03
highschool: Illinois high school students (1958)
A network of friendships among male students in a small high school in Illinois from 1958. An arc points from student i to student j if i named j as a friend, in either of two identical surveys (from Fall and Spring semesters). Edge weights are the number of surveys in which the friendship was named.
This network has 70 nodes and 366 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted
