Tootfinder

Re: discourse about #FediSoWhite
I'm a white man. Was on Twitter throughout #BLM and gained an awful lot of free education from Black folks on there. That was the start of me consciously following diverse folks which is a strategy that's improved my life immensely.
Back on Twitter before the Muskening, there was a lot of diversity. Black Twitter was a thing, and not just first-world (anyone else remember "O jewa ke eng?"). When I went looking for people to follow to diversify my feed, I found them in abundance.
That's why it's so clearly false to me when people claim that the fediverse is secretly diverse, and why anyone making that claim sounds suspect to me. Sure there are a ton of great Black and other POC folks you can find on here, if you look hard. But it's nowhere near the levels of diversity and community that were on Twitter. Which you would know had you been following those people before, so now I have to assume you weren't, and wonder why you feel qualified to make statements about diversity even though you haven't made an effort to engage with diverse voices before?
Also, if you were actually following some of the excellent POC voices on here, you'd know that across different servers and interest groups, almost every group has had a discussion of #FediSoWhite at some point. If all the Black people you follow are independently talking about the lack of community and diversity here, you've either got to believe them or start putting on your clown makeup, and the later is absolutely a choice.

Today, Wikipedia turns 25 years old. It's never been more important — or under more attack from authoritarians. Here's what to know about how we got here, and what we can do to push for its future and support them as they start to demand fair support from the AI companies that are profiting off of the community. There's no better example than Wikipedia of the web we make together.

Wikipedia at 25: What the web can be
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Okay, let's admit it, it's rather fun to be able to tell a machine "Let's rock and roll!" and it is able to infer that I mean, "Yeah, that design document is now in great shape, we should start generating code".

Working on improving error reporting in ngscopeclient rather than having filters simply silently produce no output, or log to stdout, when something goes wrong.
Here's my current WIP: the block that has problems displays a warning icon and summary title up top, then you can mouse over it to see more detailed error information.
Thoughts? Anything I should change before I start working on adding this sort of feedback to more filter blocks?

oooof. this incumbent running for re-election to the SF Bike Coalition board is literally a landlord lawyer.
if you're a member, the voting details are here and there are 10 candidates for 8 seats. https://sfbike.org/news/meet-the-candidat…

MEET THE CANDIDATES FOR OUR 2026 BOARD OF DIRECTORS ELECTION
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

Germany’s Rheinmetall secures site for Ukrainian ammunition plant, ready to start construction: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/15/germanys-rheinmetall-secures-site-for.html

There’s this place we walk by pretty regularly that’s semi-abandoned. The owner replaces parts when they fall off and there are lights at night, but the front and back have been left to return to nature. This chunk of land is worth ~$2.5M Canadian, so an odd situation. Anyhow, I enjoy watching the progress of the informal small-scale rewilding.
#Photography

Australia-based AI infrastructure company Firmus raised AU$500M, or ~$325M, tripling its valuation to AU$6B in two months, after raising AU$330M in September (Tess Bennett/Australian Financial Review)
https://www.afr.com/technology/oliver-curt

Firmus Technologies: Oliver Curtis’ AI infrastructure start-up triples valuation to $6 billion
The AI start-up has tripled its valuation in two months, raising a further $500 million from investors to bankroll its massive data centre developments. 

Starting the fourth chapter "The Rise of the Web" of #ThisIsForEveryone, I am pleasently surprised to find out a librarian — Louise Addis of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) — played an important, supportive role in the very first days of the web.

Polygon buys crypto startups Coinme and Sequence for a total of $250M , as it seeks to bolster its stablecoin and fintech infrastructure and compete with Stripe (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/polygon-labs-acquisition-coinme-seq…

Polygon Labs buys two crypto startups for $250 million as it looks to compete with Stripe
The longtime blockchain developer bought cash-to-crypto company Coinme and wallet infrastructure firm Sequence.