Notices by Björn Brembs (brembs@mastodon.social)

"Es kann eben nicht ausgeschlossen werden, dass Elon Musk morgen #BlueSky kauft. Aber das Mastodon-Netzwerk kann niemand kaufen."

https://www.riffreporter.de/de/gesellschaft/aktionsbuendnis-mastodon-wissenschaft-hochschulen-x-twitter-abkehr

Link zur Petition:
https://www.openpetition.de/petition/blog/appell-an-die-hochschulrektorenkonferenz-zur-nutzung-sozialer-medien#petition-main

#unisinsfediverse

[The academic publishers now] "not only provide tools, they also collect user data. They log everything a researcher does, every keystroke."

https://ukrant.nl/magazine/elseviers-stranglehold-on-academia-how-publishers-get-rich-from-our-data/?lang=en

This is not emphasized nearly enough: when ideology clashes with science, "neutral" science means condoning the abuse of science.

"Science journalists can either challenge abuses of science or look the other way."

https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/scientific-american-loses-its-bold-leader

@BorisBarbour @pluralistic

Precisely.
Why people with enough neurons to form a synapse who leave X go to BlueSky will forever remain a mystery to me.

@cian @BorisBarbour @pluralistic

Really? That's it? To me, this sounds a lot like:

"sure, there is no water in the Namib either, but at least it's not the Sahara! Doesn't that count as an improvement? Oh and now I have a lot of thirsty people with me in the Namib, when I would have to drink water with so much fewer people outside of deserts."

Sorry, but I can't make heads nor tail of this. My interest to go over there and interact with people whose minds operate like this is quite low.

@cian @BorisBarbour @pluralistic

I study learning and memory (in invertebrate animals). I guess part of it is my bewilderment as to how many triels some people need to actually learn something 🤣

Then again, when email came, had there been only GMail initially, some people would probably still today struggle to understand what they would need a private and a work email for. 😆

For really no reason at all 😇 here's why I find the user experience on #Mastodon better than in that Nazi Chatroom when it was still called "Twitter":

- 500+ characters
- post editing
- follow hashtags
- better s/n ratio
- no ads

Plus, https://quintsns.pianeta.uno/ does a pretty good job at replacing paper.li

So I wouldn't go back, even if someone resurrected Twitter. Now, FriendFeed on the other hand... 😆

@pluralistic says it best, why #BlueSky is no alternative:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

@mloxton @pluralistic

Pretty much how I feel and why I think scholarship is the best place to adopt the Fediverse, see e.g.:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230207

We even started a petition to the German Rector's Conference to leave X and support Mastodon instead:

https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/open-letter-to-the-german-rectors-conference-hrk-on-the-use-of-social-media

The consequences of quantitative research assessment today:

- Impact factor: fake data, irreproducibility, et al.
- h-index: citation cartels, paper mills et al.

So sure, yes, let's think of yet another external motivation to incentivize researchers to cut corners: welcome the s-index!

https://www.thetransmitter.org/open-neuroscience-and-data-sharing/the-s-index-challenge-develop-a-metric-to-quantify-data-sharing-success/

🤦♀️

Scientific American saying it like it is:
"The Supreme Court’s Contempt for Facts Is a Betrayal of Justice"

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-supreme-courts-contempt-for-facts-is-a-betrayal-of-justice/

Now that's a long overdue initiative! Please help spread it!

Public Money? Public Code! - FSFE-Tube

https://media.fsfe.org/w/7cH6EATpmPwaMsEZN8vfyj

Trying out the #openscience group @open_science and seeing if we can get a significant share of the open science community to participate.

If you haven't already, please consider signing our petition to the German Rectors Conference, urging them to transition all university social media presence in Germany to #mastodon and the #fediverse. You can find the petition here:

https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/open-letter-to-the-german-rectors-conference-hrk-on-the-use-of-social-media

Boosts are greatly appreciated!

@pfefferle

Thanks, that's what I thought, I just wasn't sure I had understood it properly. I think I'll unistall the plug-in again and search for one that simply posts the links to Mastodon for me.
I'm also considering setting up my own instance as a subdomain and then migrate there from here, but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle.

Thanks again!

@pfefferle

I have a question: I have a WP blog with the plug-in:

https://bjoern.brembs.net/

Somehow, I managed to create two Mastodon users that post different posts:

@bjoern
@brembs@bjoern.brembs.net

How can I adjust it such that these posts all shw up under this account instead? The way I understand it, it is not possible? If so then what would be the use case for the plug-in?

How the death of Twitter and the continuing enshittification of X is reviving the academic blogosphere:

https://jabberwocky.weecology.org/2024/01/08/return-to-and-of-the-ecology-blogosphere/

and

https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2024/01/08/dynamic-ecology-is-back/

#academicchatter

I have co-signed a petition directed at the German Rectors Conference to convince them to migrate all #university social media presence to #Mastodon:

https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/open-letter-to-the-german-rectors-conference-hrk-on-the-use-of-social-media

Please consider signing it!

Where are our rich scholarly societies when you need them? Oh, yes, I forgot, they are busy counting their publication income!

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/11/30/the-fediverse-is-an-opportunity-learned-societies-cant-ignore/

#mastodon #openscience #publishing

Maybe scholarly societies have taken the instruction to follow the money too literally? There now are societies that make 83% of their nearly $700 million in revenue from publishing (American Chemical Society). Or 88% of $130 million (American Psychological Association). Or 91% of $5 million (Biochemical Society). In essence, societies like these (there are hundreds predominantly in STEM subjects) are publishers first and societies second.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/11/30/the-fediverse-is-an-opportunity-learned-societies-cant-ignore/

#mastodon #openaccess

YES!
This is precisely what every university (and scholarly society!!) should be doing: have their own instance and drop X like a hot potato:

"an instance has been created [... ] on university servers, which is open to the university's organizational units. The active use of X will be significantly reduced."

https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/newsroom/2023/university-of-innsbruck-focuses-on-mastodon/

We detail all the arguments about precisely why that must happen here:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230207