Notices by divya (divya@sfba.social)

[making this public]

Is there a good mastodon instance for Indian citizens? My mom would like to follow my private account I was thinking of creating an account for her in an Indian instance. I am happy to pay!

Beautiful work! Artist paints utility boxes on Mission St with birds found on Mission st. Some migrant birds vanish from the area because the trees they hang out in have been cut down :( But this is why this artist's work is so welcome! It enables more people to be curious about birds & environment.

https://missionlocal.org/2024/12/mission-artist-animates-green-utility-boxes-with-a-flock-of-birds/

BTW the website for Amazon strikes is https://makeamazonpay.com/

They are asking for your endorsement of your action & donations to enable them to continue these strikes & let them know of any protests you might organize. They want goverments to do better with regulations & Amazon to do better by their workers.

What they are NOT asking for is to stop buying from Amazon. I have emailed the contact information listed on the website to clarify what exactly they want us to do as customers of Amazon.

Hope this helps before anyone starts saying I am anti-union because I asked for clarification on what workers want customers of Amazon to do.

@blogdiva @futurebird @danilo #1) I think Masto SHOULD be less popular and that is okay. I think platforms at scale is what brings about all the mass outrage, trolling. It is the reason nazis are joining blue sky in droves. Bluesky is going to speed-run Twitter's descent post Gamergate very soon.

#2) Masto has not done their job making it easy for people to administer instances & be accessible to people to join and use instances. It is VERY expensive right now to run an instance for 10,000 folks or more. There are very few moderation tools that make it easy for volunteer moderators. There is almost NO training on how to manage FBI requests, court orders. So there is a HUGE heavy lifting of server management that nobody is prepared to do and yet we have outsourced it all.

I do think the fact that many white people are accustomed to gated communities plays a HUGE role in why #2 is the way it is. There is this feeling that if you make it high maintenance then the "riff raff" wont show up.

WOW what??

"Interestingly, several antihistamine drugs, including clemastine, astemizole, azelastine, brompheniramine, and ebastine, which have been approved for treating allergy symptoms without side effects for decades, have been found to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection or replication via protein-protein interaction analysis or drug library profiling (30–35). Another study revealed that the use of azelastine was associated with a reduced incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection based on an analysis of over 219,000 electronic health records"

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01088-24?s=09

/via @hugo

Maybe someone can let NPS know who these trash bags are who destroyed a historic site off roading. Another reason to dislike off-roading

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/environment/death-valley-salt-tram/

Only $10 to chip your pet at Oakland Animal Services! https://www.oaklandanimalservices.org/resources/low-cost-vet-services/

Imagine being a billionaire and then using your influence to change the law so people dont see how polluting you are. Some folks think Billionaires are harmless but in fact they are the *most* harmful people on earth.

Shame on Gavin for not advocating for giving the land back to the Indigenous people with the Feds and shame on the department of Interior for having an Indigenous head and asking for money from the same people they stole the land from.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article288482087.html#storylink=cpy

"He was evicted and his home was later listed on Airbnb. Meanwhile, his landlord hosted a charity event to end homelessness"

headline from Toronto but could be a headline from SF

https://www.thestar.com/real-estate/he-was-evicted-and-his-home-was-later-listed-on-airbnb-meanwhile-his-landlord-hosted/article_72c86bde-e162-11ee-b6d0-e3e7190ad965.html

Just now realizing NASA didn't stop Elon Musk polluting the night sky with star link but overrode the decision of Indigenous Hawaiians to establish an observatory in a sacred mountain "for clear sky". This is how you know they just love not caring about non-white opinions.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/mauna-kea-sacred-to-spiritual-practitioners-and-treasured-by-astronomers/ar-AA1lDGfZ

@interfluidity completely disagree. Government overreach due to disorder on the streets is what changes minds. AIDS didn’t vanish silently, there is actual medicine BECAUSE ACT UP caused disorder in the streets. Just like Vietnam’s war and civil rights movement.

pets interacting with public infrastructure is my favorite genre of photos. I saw an instagram post of a pitbull howling gloriously to the soundtrack of the train honking nearby (sadly it was a story).

Every time someone asks "why privacy", remember, you can be targeted for belonging to a WhatsApp group by a missile. https://blog.paulbiggar.com/meta-and-lavender/

Fascinating, people who were pro-Israel on Oct 7 have have started having doubts in their support of Israel since the air strike on World Central Kitchen staff.

Congrats to your donations to ACLU. ACLU joins trade joes in questioning the constitutionality of NLRB

https://www.nysun.com/article/aclu-joins-trader-joes-spacex-in-questioning-nlrbs-constitutionality

Here is an older article documenting ACLU's claims https://abovethelaw.com/2023/09/aclu-gop-talking-points-workplace-harassment/

Instead of crying about shop lifting, Walmart should probably stop scamming its own customers.

"In the aftermath of this crackdown, federal officials warned Walmart that fraudsters were using its stores to send and receive money transfers. Walmart assured the officials that it already had a “comprehensive” anti-fraud program and would bolster its efforts by training employees to identify suspicious transactions and providing warning signs and brochures in its stores. But those claims, according to the FTC, “turned out to be false.”

Fraud soared. Walmart outlets at one point accounted for the top 20 locations for fraud nationally among chains that partnered with MoneyGram, according to internal documents. In a single week in March 2017, consumers claiming they’d been duped into a money transfer filed 610 complaints about Walmart, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. CVS ranked second, with 47."

https://www.propublica.org/article/walmart-financial-services-became-fraud-magnet-gift-cards-money-laundering

I am reading this wiki on Equator and weather there and it reminded me, so many people live in places without summer, winter, spring, fall and yet we are all taught those are the 4 "seasons" irrespective of where we grew up. I felt so bad I never got to "enjoy" seasons coz I was told thats what people should expect from a place. It was only when I left Tamil Nadu that I missed its weather so much.

wow a recall is being prepared against California Senator Aisha Wahab just because she dared to ban caste discrimination. Congrats to the hindu fundamentalists.

https://calmatters.org/newsletter/health-care-california/#wm-story-1

"There are so many migrant child roofers in the US now, they’ve developed a whole TikTok subculture built around the hashtag "ruferitos.” All roofing work is illegal for minors. But contractors say they don't worry about hiring kids because labor inspectors never visit worksites."

My god. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/14/us/roofing-children-immigrants.html?unlocked_article_code=1.F00.xscM.RqQ5nd7I9Y0Y&smid=url-share