Notices by divya (divya@sfba.social)

@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

Wow Ravi Bhalla is the Mayor of Hoboken (about 61,000 people live there) and there has not been a single pedestrian fatality in 6 years!!!

This is the real vision zero plan. Not whatever our Mayor is promising but never delivering on.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-11-20/this-new-jersey-mayor-ended-traffic-deaths-with-a-vision-zero-plan

this man does what @SafeStreetRebel does, but officially:

"So there could be something as simple as repaving a block in the city of Hoboken: When we repave that block, usually in the springtime, and do the routine things like road resurfacing, filling potholes, we kind of take a bird's eye view of that area and see what low-cost, high-impact measures we can implement in order to make that part of Hoboken a little bit safer. So just with a bucket of paint, you can actually create a curb extension; you can create high visibility crosswalks, which create a much safer environment at a very cheap cost. And then when you do the next iteration of repaving, you can really amplify and increase on those improvements that you've made. So this is change that is not happening within a day or a week. It's very incremental. But it's also very impactful.'