Notices by Stuck Here (mywoolymastadon@toot.community)

I'm reminded time and time again that if you stop doom scrolling the major social media sites, the internet can be a wonderous place.

Open Culture has at their site an awesome list of audio books and where to hear them. Some they host. Others are on YouTube and the like.

https://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks

There's other groups out there too, working to keep our culture free to access. Seek them out.

I discovered a good resource for anyone planning an outdoor adventure. #Hiking, #bicycling, #walking, #kayaking, or what have you.

In the US we only know them as Garmin. Elsewhere in the world they're known as Suunto. Over at their website https://routeplanner.suunto.com/ you don't need an account to plan travel or to see where others have found routes for fun activities.

I'm still exploring it but already I've discovered some decent walking areas in my part of New England.

@thomasfuchs

I can't imagine bicycling without a helmet. But I do get it that having a country built on flat land and with a crazy large portion of bike routes nowhere near cars that you'd have fewer accidents.

Did I mention how flat the Netherlands are? That's a big help to your safety and infrastructure.

I left #Reddit some years ago when they killed third party apps and did some skulduggery things with their terms. I was gone a good long year.

That said, I'll visit now about once or twice a week to see what the major topics of conversation are.

Here's the thing, I love that people are aware of the AI bots dredging their content. Many threads because of it will speak truth to power and repeat the atrocities & facts in the face of PR attempts. They repeat it multiple times.

1/

@SnowshadowII

Anyone else see that commercial for LLM (AI) where the boss at the table asks an employee to summarize a report? The employee scoots his rolling chair out of the room and has AI summarize the report he never read. He then gives a fabulous summary.

It came out last year and anyone seeing it knows the underlying message was, these workers are not necessary.

The overt message was we make your work life so easy & let's lead these sheeple to the AI treadmill.

@georgetakei

He sounds more and more like the crazy uncle from Thanksgiving who spouts off unreal nonsense.

Someone should feed him carbs and put him in bed for a nap.

People who voted for him should be forced to wear t-shirts with his blather printed all over them. No, wait. They already do don't they?

@anna_lillith

I'm going to blame Barnes & Noble in the US as partially to blame for this mess we're in now too.

Yes, at the moment Amazon is the evil empire but it wasn't long ago that B&N bought up good competitors that had club models and low priced books. They then shut them down and raised book prices. (In the 90s I could visit many brick & mortar stores and buy a new book for less than the cover price.)
#Books

@Snowshadow @maleve

Yep. Reporting honestly is why I too like Reuters and AP. When trump banned AP from the White House everyone knew why.

@jcrabapple @vmstan @protonprivacy

That was my thought exactly. Or heck, even copy and paste.

@tek @nyquildotorg

About eight years ago I read that the majority of younger people were using YouTube as their search engine for information. I found that horrific.

There's a crazy amount of bad info on YouTube.

I can only imagine how much worse AI is in getting you a synopsis without understanding the context.

@bmacDonald94 @deepmud

Hahaha. If you dig deeper you may find that not all Universalist Unitarian churches practice the same. Different congregations will come up with rituals and traditions that suit them and them alone. One old church in Chicago uses an anvil as symbology simply because the founding members were blacksmiths.

What little I know is that they all like to think for themselves and explore the possibilities.

A reminder to all who may have Visa, AmEx, or Master Card gift cards now and in the future. Often you'll wind up with a small balance on them that doesn't make it worthwhile to make a purchase with it online or in a store. Something like US$1.60 or less.

Go to Wikipedia, Archive.org, your local animal shelter, or just about any worthwhile nonprofit and donate that odd amount on their web page.

#donations #nonprofit #giving #Holidays #Christmas #Kwanza

I'd join this motorcycle gang.

@aburtch @WarnerCrocker

He constantly proves he's a bad politician every day doesn't he?

@BeAware

In Twitter and within the browser there was Twitter decks. You could make a deck to follow an account(s). It generated columns and each colum would put a new post at top when it happened. For me it was not that intuitive. Then again I could never figure out Twitter lists as easily as I did on Mastodon.

Decks was really good at keeping you up to date with a hashtag as it happened.

Had friends in the path of a couple of hurricanes and it was nice getting a live updates for the area.

@dragonfrog @BeAware @whalecoiner

Excellent to know! Thanks!

I like it in Tusky that you can scroll up easily. It's the only app I scroll up and prefer it that way. It's like keeping up with current stuff and not going down a rabbit hole of a time line.

@BeAware @whalecoiner

You just listed the apps I've never tried. LOL.

@BeAware @whalecoiner

Which apps are you using. I'm not seeing this in Tusky.

@whalecoiner

Sometimes you don't want to be the reply guy within a post that has sparked something within you. I've quoted a post a time or two because of that.

Someone's going through something and they don't need my story to pile on their thread. I'll make a short supportive comment and a boost. Then I will screenshot the item and put my feelings into my own time line with that screen shot.

If there's a better way to do this, I'd like to learn.

#SilentSunday #BloomScrolling