Notices by Thad (thad@brontosin.space)

@georgetakei I've heard antivaxxers claim that it's actually because we don't have horses leaving waste in the streets anymore.

That's right: their justifications are literally horseshit.

@letsbekind2 I think often of how the people screaming about how masks are tyranny were the same motherfuckers ready to throw out half the Bill of Rights over an attack that killed a fraction of a percent of the number of people COVID has.

@hacks4pancakes "Nihilists. Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude; at least it's an ethos."

That might just be my favorite line in The Big Lebowski.

@jacklaridian Yeah, clear and to the point. Like they used to teach us in the days of the Old Web.

@jacklaridian I guess I don't see a lot of that in my feed, but I can understand why you'd get a lot more of it than I do.

Yeah, I hate stuff like that where they don't at least give you something useful in the headline or lede, enough to decide whether it's something you want to read or not. Linking to articles is fine, but don't waste my time or try to manipulate me.

@jacklaridian Disagree. Microblogging is a terrible format for long-form articles. Even on instances that don't have a character limit—say, Cory Doctorow putting his 4,000-word blog posts up on Mastodon in their entirety—I'd still rather read them on the original website, because Mastodon frontends aren't built for that kind of longread.

Now, if your blog post is only 500 characters long, then yeah, you could have just posted that on Mastodon. Pick the right medium for the message.

@glynmoody *"worst person you know" meme*

@c0dec0dec0de And I think one of the major lessons in the recent Hollywood writers' strike is that in many instances AI won't really replace humans but will be an excuse to pay them less. (You're not the screenwriter anymore; you're revising the AI's script.) @drunkenmadman @pluralistic @markotway @nullagent @cstross

@glynmoody *Purposely*, surely, TechCrunch?

@MediaActivist Can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to use Mastodon when it's got delightful people like you.

@mekkaokereke One of the things I've noticed about dudes (and it's almost exclusively dudes) who preach the importance of markets — whether that's literal free markets or the marketplace of ideas — is that they really seem to have a lot of trouble understanding that the point of a free market is that nobody has to buy shit they don't want.

@PJ_Evans I don't love Harris's concessions to the right either, and whatever difference they may have made it clearly didn't win the election for her.

But it seems pretty plain from the numbers that the base turned out, and Biden voters staying home weren't Harris's problem, Biden voters switching to Trump were.

I wish Harris had been more progressive too, but nobody chose Trump over Harris because they wanted a progressive. @mekkaokereke @zakatak

@clive Yeah, I'm of much the same mind as Doctorow. I like a lot of what Bluesky's doing, but until you can actually choose from multiple instances it's just one more silo, one more single point of failure. @pluralistic

@StillIRise1963 My county elected Joe Arpaio 6 times. I knew about the cruelty. I just thought most of the country was better.

And I guess *most* of the country is, but by way too slim and majority for comfort.

@thomasfuchs I can understand why some communities have chosen to stay on Twitter, but arguing that companies shouldn't leave Twitter because that's where the people are because of "companies that aren't on anything else" seems like circular reasoning.

@thomasfuchs Is it? I'm not seeing a primary source saying anything about the House vote as yet.

@jacklaridian Okay, but I can't help but notice you saying "another candidate" and not actually naming one.

@jacklaridian
The comics haven't always done him right, but of the original team he was the standard tormented Marvel hero. He's Peter Parker without the wisecracks. While Hank, Warren, and Bobby are fucking around and Jean's barely a character, Slim's the one who's carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He understands the stakes and feels their gravity in a way nobody else does. And also he could kill somebody literally by looking at them the wrong way.

@jacklaridian I do think they've done a really good job threading the needle and keeping him true to the kind-of-terrible version from the original TV series while putting some effort into showing him be competent and badass instead of just whining "But Professor!" all the time. He's still not a fun guy to hang out with, but you get a clearer idea of why he is the way he is.

More than anybody else, this is his life.

@LexPendragon It would be pretty funny if she ended up with "blind lady in a Marvel adaptation" on her resume *twice*. @jacklaridian