Tootfinder

I've worked on community groups for a long long time, and the only good thing I can say about most codes of conduct is that their existence proves the group fought past the army of dudes who think they get in the way of important things like letting them dominate the group.
But seriously, most codes of conduct are worth about one bit of information: "has cared at all (y/n)”
There's a single code of conduct document that was extremely influential by being designed to be copy-and-pastable: the document was given a specific name, work was done to propagate the idea that all you had to do was adopt it as-is. Drop in and ready to go!
The only problem there is that doesn't work. A long, legalistic set of rules about what's Not Allowed with no actual policy for enforcement invites a bunch of problems: a long list can be treated as exhaustive, so people will do things not on the list then cry foul when you tell them to stop. A lack of enforcement policy invites a binary approach: is a person good (did nothing on the list) or bad (did something on the list)? If they're bad, kick them out, if they're good, keep them.
This is bad.
The actual rules that will be enforced will be much more subtle, will favor people in positions of power, and will not yield results consistent with the stated values of various factions of the group. Arguments will ensue about whether or not something "really counts" as an item on the list, because often the actual decision being made but not explicitly stated is “do we kick out some important person to the group for some broken way they relate to others in the group?”
The other way they get used is "here's a person doing something some part of the group doesn't like, which rule can we use to kick them out?”
These are both broken approaches that don't actually reflect the relations of the group, and they lead to punitive and destructive methods of enforcement, rather than healing and reparative methods. This leads to conflict within the group being turned into a code of conduct violation while at the same time allowing outsiders to weaponize the code of conduct by provoking those conflicts.

Soooo....I'm doing a thing...🤭😏
As a lot of you know, Tooters shut down recently and the way it was handled in the end is regrettable.
However, I felt for longest time while it was up, that it was consistently one of the BEST run instances on Fedi with how they protected their users from some of the insanity that happens here.
That being said, with Tooters being gone, it leaves a bit of a hole in my Fedi heart and I know a lot of others as well.
So, I'm creating a new, very limited for now, politically-light (as little politics as possible locally), AI friendly (AI art welcome), Sharkey instance for some folks within my circle that I've grown to consider my friends.
The Social Zone is meant to be a place to escape the very political society we currently all live in and just be social with one another about our hobbies, interests, and day to day lives.
I'm still working out all the details but when I launch it, it's going to be invite only because I'm new to something like this and I want to get it right. Especially because those I will invite are people that are close to me and I don't want to disappoint them.
Depending on how things go for the next few months, including if I can even get this thing started correctly, I MIGHT be open to allowing more members in, down the line.
But, this is just getting started. I registered the domain yesterday and just started researching Sharkey today and how hard it would be to spin something up. Then, of course, there's configuration settings and administration with Sharkey that I have to familiarize myself with.
All in all, I'm very nervous, but excited that I decided to take this next step in my Fedi adventure and hope to eventually "give back" to the entire community, the same positive energy that you've all given me over the past wonderful year of being on this amazing platform.
Please do not ask for invites. I will not be handing them out anytime soon. I've already asked about 5 of you along with some IRL folks and I feel I would like some time to get this right for them first.
Thanks for reading. I hope you understand why I'm choosing to do this and hope you're as excited as me to see where things can go and understand why I feel it's important to have these types of "politically-light" spaces so people can escape such topics from time to time.
Keep on keeping on, Fedi. The future is bright and I'm ready to learn along with you. More info about TheSocial.Zone coming soon!
Your friend,
B.A.

So there was this #Android app that I've used to keep track of carbs in my meals, for #diabetes management. I like it very much — it was lightweight, clean and it worked. It had all I needed; I've basically copied meals, adjusted significant ingredient weights and got total carbs. It had some minimal diabetes-related features, but I've never used them.
It used to be your average AdWare, i.e. free, but showing unobtrusive ads (though probably tracking). Then, it started turning into NagWare, starting to obtrusively invite you to go "premium", to remove ads and get future features. It started being buggy, even though no new features were added yet. Then I've finally visited their ravamped website. Of course, they are aiming for the "#AI" boom: "Community and AI driven platform for diabetes control". They've literally went for Anguillan TLD (".ai").
Now I really need a new app. I don't want to have any part in this.

$125K stolen in 10 minutes
From Kim Komando's newsletter —
"Feb. 16 was a typical Friday night. Barry and I decided to stay home, grill chicken and make a salad for dinner. At about 6:45 p.m., we heard some loud rumbling overhead.
We walked onto the back patio, and two police helicopters were shining lights all over our property. A recording echoed, “Police. You are under arrest. Stay right there and I won’t shoot you.”
As I looked across the fence, a swarm of armed Phoenix SWAT team members with a few dogs were circling our property. One of the guys said, “Yeah, there’s a jammer right here.” He picked it up. I leaned over the patio and asked, “What’s going on?”
The police told me to go inside
When I asked again, a SWAT member said, “Ma’am, it’s a South American gang targeting homes to steal from. The jammer says you might have been next. Do we have permission to enter your property?” I said, “Yes!” and then he asked something like, “If we find anyone, will you pursue charges so we can arrest them?” I replied, “Of course!”
I opened the driveway gates to our property and the guest house while Barry tossed the police keys to open the security gates. People asked me if I was scared. How could I be? There was a team of really professional police officers protecting me from who knows what.
Turns out, when the gang saw we were home, they likely diverted their attention to the house next door. A house four doors down from us wasn’t so lucky.
The homeowner left at 5 p.m. to have dinner and got a notification his security cameras were offline at 5:05 p.m. He thought the internet went down. Nope, the gang broke in and took $25,000 in cash and valuables worth $100,000. They were in and out in under 10 minutes.
How are they getting away with this?
The gang places cellular and Wi‑Fi jammers around the homes they’re targeting. This way, security cameras and phones are useless. A Phoenix police officer told me the gang probably noticed nothing was down in our house.
We have our cameras and internet hardwired. Even when they tried to jam our signals, the red lights on the security cameras still showed they were recording everything.
But how frightening is that? Your phone doesn’t work. Your cameras aren’t recording anything. On the upside, the gang doesn’t carry guns. This way, if they get caught, they’ll spend about six months in jail before being extradited to Chile.
Nothing is random
The gang scopes out homes beforehand. They drive the neighborhood and look up houses on real estate sites to get an idea of where the primary bedroom is located. They look for dogs, too.
It’s not just in Phoenix, by the way. This is happening all over the country. A friend was robbed by this gang, and he lives in a guarded, gated community in California. Kudos to the Phoenix Police Department — they arrested three members of the gang who were in my neighborhood that night.
So, what can you do?
☑️​ Wireless cameras go kaput with no signal. Try a wired camera for a backup.
☑️​ A cam with SD card storage will still record if there’s no Wi‑Fi.
☑️​ Put up motion-activated lights; they make it harder for anyone to sneak around.
☑️​ A femtocell (think of it as a mini cell tower) could be enough to keep your connection if thieves use jammers — T‑Mobile or Verizon.
☑️​ Have an Amazon Echo? Away mode lets you control your lights so it looks like someone’s home.
☑️​ Make it look like someone’s watching TV at your house when you’re not there with a Television Simulator.
☑️​ A University of North Carolina survey of over 400 incarcerated burglars found security system signs deter thieves.
☑️​ Check Zillow, Realtor⁠.⁠com and Redfin for photos of your house. The more crooks know about the layout, the better for them. Ask to have them removed.
☑️​ Blur your house from Google Maps and Apple Maps while you’re at it.

I grew up in France, in a Jewish community where unconditional love and support for Israel were the norm.
The term Zionism, the movement for the establishment and support of a Jewish state in present-day Palestine, wasn’t even used because that’s all we knew.
Jews had been nearly wiped out by pogroms and repeated holocausts, and a Jewish state was the only way to keep us safe.
Antisemitism wasn’t just a fact of history; we all experienced it in our daily lives.
Zionis…

Zionism cannot produce a just peace. Only external pressure can end the Israeli apartheid.
This article was originally published here in the Washington Post I grew up in a Zionist household, spent 12 years in a Zionist youth movement, lived for four years in Israel, and have friends and family who served in the Israeli Defense Forces. When that is your world, it’s

@… is be interested in giving the discord a try.
https://mastodon.social/@flexghost/112074388664725564

flexghost. (@flexghost@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Fuck the OSCARS 3 invites to my private Discord server 😀 >> Its a small, tight knit community with rooms for: Politics Chat Games Pokémon Movies Music Food Geopolitical issues …And porn! Nerds like you are standing by Private Message to apply for invite codes. We keep it Quality > Quantity I’ll leave this up for 30 minutes.

In a change to our regularly scheduled programming, in about half an hour (18:00 GMT) we're going to keep playing Murder Guess Who
It's The Return of the Obra Dinn!
Join me https://twitch.tv/djnrrd

“We increase our risk of cardiac events and speed up cognitive decline, studies show, if we believe getting older is a time of suffering and diminution. More important, the opposite is also true: Those of us who view later life as a time of growth and vitality are more likely to stay healthy and to keep senility at bay. We may also end up living a whopping seven and a half years longer.”
#Longevity

Opinion | Becoming a Cyclist In Her Sixties Changed My Mom’s Life
When it comes to aging, avoiding risk may be dangerous in its own way.