Notices by Sally Strange (sallystrange@eldritch.cafe), page 13

I think she must be.... [wikipedia check] yes she's the daughter of former US Congressman Maurice Hinchey. A cool guy and all, but still. This fucking nepotism!

OK one more post for the morning: a teeny bit of good news. Cornell CALS (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences) has secured funding and is launching an agrivoltaics research program!

"The path to solving the climate crisis requires expanding renewable energy projects to achieve our clean energy goals; however, this effort has historically harmed our local food supply, often taking prime farmland out of production and putting farms out of business. The new Agrivoltaics Research Program at Cornell CALS will help change this dynamic by pioneering strategies and technology to facilitate vital collaboration between the renewable energy and agriculture industries."

--Sen. Michelle Hinchey

(note this is basically a press release from her office)

#Climate #ClimateChange #agriculture #RuralNY #RuralUSA #Agrivoltaics #Solar #SolarPower

https://www.morningagclips.com/hinchey-kelles-bill-to-create-agrivoltaics-research-program-at-cornell-signed-into-law/

Not sure how I feel about this... but it popped up in my climate change RSS feed and there might be someone here who could do some good with this position? Yale is looking for a Data Scientist, focused on machine learning, "to lead the design, development, and implementation of machine learning models and operations as part of an academic organization devoted to supporting academics and practitioners in climate change research and communication."

#FediHiring #GetFediHired #FediJobs #MastoJobs #JobsOfMastodon #Jobs #JobSeeking #HelpWanted #Climate #ClimateChange #DataScience #LLM

https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/employment/

The Wreath of Khan

@alien @beatrice it's just a tattoo of the diagram of one's favorite molecule. It's pretty neat actually

https://inkedmag.com/culture/molecule-tattoos/

Another thing about #Threads and #FediPact - lots of privileged people are LOATHE to admit that Gramma and Grampa are on a nazi social network

@ryanhoulihan they do... what's Arianna going to do though? This must be a lyrics reference I'm missing?

Happy solstice!

#solstice #solstice2023 #AxialTilt

@tokyo_0 @registrert I generally don't for things like this. I can see why some do though. I dunno.

oh god oh god I have to make a phone call FOR WORK 😬😬😬

Update: it went fine! *pant pant pant*

you and me both, Dessert Fridge

Did anyone ever discover what sort of animal The Cheat is? To me he looks like a giraffe with all of its limbs shrunk

#HomeStarRunner

Happy #Caturday to all who celebrate!

People who wonder whether cats are capable of love simply haven't been loved by a cat

#cats #CatsOfMastodon #FediCats #mrrp #meow #PixiePosting

My summary of the pro-federation camp's arguments:
-not every FB user is bad
-more is better
-the fediverse could draw people away from threads
-this represents an opportunity for innovation
-porting an account between instances is hard

These aren't unreasonable arguments on the face of it. However, the consistent flaw is that the people presenting these arguments studiously avoid mentioning any of the real reasons the anti-federation camp are opposed, to wit:

-FB's documented history of enabling genocide
-the obvious fact that since they allow e.g. Libs of Tik Tok on Threads, it is already in violation of most "good" instances' terms of service
-FB's documented current practices of abusing workers in lieu of doing actual moderation
-FB's documented history of doing unethical experiments on their users
-FB's documented history of of enabling illegal (in the USA!) racial and religious discrimination

The one thing that the pro-federation camp WILL mention is the concern over EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish), but I've never seen a reasonable explanation for why this is a scenario we shouldn't fear. It's just handwaving.

The pro-federation camp has also repeatedly tried to dishonestly frame the possibility of an admin making an instance block decision with which their users disagree as an example of tyranny. This, I believe, is because "porting instances is hard" is a wack-ass argument and they know it; thus they must catastrophize it and make it sound worse than it is.

So, overall, I've tried to keep an open mind towards the enthusiasts, but the more I listen to them, the less impressed I become. Over several months, none of them (that I've interacted with) have acknowledged, without prompting, that people who aren't straight and cis and Christian and white and able-bodied and moderate/liberal/conservative have a different set of risks to consider than those who are.

And that's the irritating part. Because we're RIGHT FUCKING HERE, we're your mutuals in many cases! We're doing our best to tell y'all what OUR experiences with Mark Zuckerberg's company have been like. The information is there. Thus, we can observe that you remain ignorant out of callousness and carelessness, or you are deliberately lying about our motivations. Really, one or the other, it doesn't matter: both options mean you suck.

Please suck less, #Fediverse.

#meta #MetaMeta #Facebook #FuckZuck #Mastodon #Threads

Jock-Douche fascism vs Creep-Loser fascism, by John Ganz:

https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-jockcreep-theory-of-fascism

ahhh so hey everyone

I'm back at Eldritch dot Cafe!

I missed seeing lots of French in my global timeline, and I really missed 5000 character limits on my posts!

You can ask me why I moved, and I might tell you, or I might not. It's a long boring story. It doesn't really matter. If we're cool then we're cool, doesn't matter where we're interacting from.

Be cool, spread love, move slowly and fix things.

@neonsnake rut roh

@MikeBon @PaulW They needed an instructional film:

https://youtu.be/PuYPOC-gCGA?si=TMk_VNutx8K2AzM2

@ahto @kirkman thanks. I'm actually getting pretty disgusted with the level of ignorance or dishonesty in the #Fediverse regarding the motivations of people who don't trust Meta/Facebook and think preemptive blocking is a good idea. Consistently I've seen insults and inflammatory language, not once have I seen a pro-federation person acknowledge, without prompting, that perhaps queer people and other marginalized groups have legitimate concerns about a platform that facilitated a genocide! Acting like it's childish to weigh that more heavily than people's desire (including mine!) to connect with friends who may be trying out Threads. I'm deeply unimpressed with the reasoning.

Funny how the people who are most insistent that the best response to any #Fediverse issue is "mute, block, move on" seem incapable of taking their own advice