Notices by Srijit Kumar Bhadra (srijit@shonk.social), page 4

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social

You stated here:The more intensely capitalist we become, the less revolutionary our scientists are able to be:Can you please provide an explanation?

@Amelia@transfem.social @Marie@transfem.social

I do not see Bookmarks. Instead I see only clips which can be treated as a superset of Bookmarks.

Is there any setting to enable plain vanilla Bookmarks?

A person dies twice. Once when the person biologically dies. And the final death happens when somebody on this earth remembers the person for the last time.

I was not aware that the Egyptians also believed that a person dies twice and the spirit of the person lives on as long as people kept remembering the person. Others have also expressed their views on this on perspective of mortality and the enduring legacy of individuals.

Banksy, a well-known anonymous England-based street artist, is often attributed with the following quote.I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.Ernest Hemingway also expressed a similar sentiment, stating that Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal Irvin D. Yalom echoes my thoughts when he says the following.Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead – when I exist in no one’s memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?#Death #Memory #Mortality #Legacy #Human #LivingMemory

cc: @srijit@mas.to

@Amelia@transfem.social @Marie@transfem.social

Suggestion

I cannot see my private clips from my profile. Please refer the attached screenshot. If this is only for public clips, I suggest that the user interface be made more user friendly for normies to quickly grasp it.

I stated here the following.There is no sign that the [2023 Israel–Hamas war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israel–Hamas_war) will stop soon and peace will prevail on either side.
This Israel-Hamas conflict is fueling profit machines. Therefore, the war will continue to rage as thousands of civilians are getting killed as collateral damages.I made a mistake here by only stating the economic aspects. The Israel-Hamas war has complex dynamics. It is important to consider the broader political, historical, and ideological factors that drive the Israel-Hamas war in addition to potential financial gains. These factors are interconnected and influence each other.

Now we see that Netanyahu says Gaza war on Hamas will go on for ‘many more months,’ thanks US for $147.5 million emergency new weapons sale to Israel.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is worsening, with hunger and mass displacement is deepening as fighting rages on across the strip. The ongoing conflict may have resulted in the displacement of 85% of Gaza's 2.3 million residents, leaving Palestinians feeling unsafe and lacking basic necessities such as water and food. The economic costs of the conflict are also significant, with Israel estimated to lose around $400 billion due to the war. For Palestinians, the costs may be so large that they undermine the possibility of an independent Palestinian state.

How can such a situation persist without profits which will be related to ideological, political and financial aspects? The ideological, territorial and political aspects are well documented. Despite the ongoing conflict, there are business and financial benefits for certain industries as mentioned in this article. Additionally, the coastal strip of Gaza and Israeli occupied Palestinian territories sit above sizable reservoirs of oil and natural gas, which offer an opportunity to distribute and share $524 billion among different parties in the region.

The war has caused significant human suffering and loss of life, and, as stated before, it is not appropriate to view it only through an economic lens. It is important to focus on finding a peaceful resolution to the conflict and supporting the humanitarian needs of those affected by the violence. Is war a prelude to peace in this case? In some cases, war can lead to further instability, violence, and suffering, making it difficult to establish a lasting peace. The relationship between war and peace is complex and depends on various factors, including the involvement of international actors, regional dynamics, and the will of the people to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

I conclude this article by quoting Anthony H. Cordesman from his article titled Gaza: Why the War Won’t End (dated 02nd November 2023).What does seem clear, however, is that both sides now have no good options that will bring lasting peace or stability. Israel will almost certainly be able to contain Gaza and seriously weaken Hamas. At best, Israel can use force to occupy and control Gaza but never be accepted by Gaza’s population and able to offer successful development or a decent life. Israel’s actions have also, however, sharply increased Gazan, Palestinian, and Arab hostility to Israel and undermined the sympathy and support it gained after the initial invasion by Hamas. The best outcome from Israel’s current offensive seems all too likely to leave Israel either as at least a partial occupier of a hostile Gaza or create and maintain a far larger set of security barriers that may have to extend well beyond the present border and require a much larger forward-deployed security force. As for Hamas, some three weeks after its attack, it was still unclear what its strategic objective was in launching an attack whose very success was certain to provoke a massive Israeli military response without achieving any clear strategic gains for Hamas. Given its long history of defeats in previous fighting, Hamas had to realize that Israel’s almost inevitable violent response might limit or end the progress made in improving Arab-Israeli relations and the Abraham Accords; and it had to realize the result would sharply weaken or destroy Hamas and lead to massive damage to the civil population in Gaza. To quote Henry Kissinger in a very different context, “The threat of committing suicide is not an adequate deterrent to being murdered.” #IsraeliLivesMatter #PalestineLivesMatter #Gaza #Palestine #Israel #HumanRights #MastodonIndians #MastIndia #India

cc: @mastodonindians@a.gup.pe @srijit@mas.to

@Marie@transfem.social
Thank you. 😃

Unanswered questions

I appreciate the concerns and possibilities stated here. It is not just about Instagram or Threads. Any profit driven commercial social media will focus only on the following:1. Obtaining your personal data to sell, and2. More eyeballs in front of more ads.I still do not have clarity about the business motivation of Meta in this case. I am aware that if Meta has to maximize its profits through Threads, it has to find ways to maximise data harvesting or data exploitation. As on today Threads has 141 million users. Bluesky currently has over 2.4 million users, and the waitlist has ballooned to over 1.9 million people. Fediverse has 13.84 million users with 1.73 million active monthly users.

Is Meta so concerned that this small user base could create momentum on a variety of issues because those issues don't typically disappear via an algorithm like they do in other spaces? By supressing the voice of this small user base will advertising revenue of Meta increase? There is already lot of anit-capitalism in commercial social media. Many users of Fediverse are also active in other for-profit social media. Will Threads also interface with Bluesky? Or will Bluesky and Fediverse become interoperable in near future?

I still prefer to wait and watch this space with caution. "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" or "embrace, extend, and exterminate" (EEE) cannot be ruled out since my level of visibility is very limited. Although Meta has apparently taken steps to enhance transparency and trust, there are still concerns and negative perceptions regarding its trustworthiness, particularly related to data privacy and user trust.

#Mastodon #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Threads #Meta #EEE

cc: @srijit@mas.to

John Gruber shares his insights regarding ActivityPub based Fediverse (which he appropriately refers as Mastodon) in this post.I enjoy Mastodon, and love Ivory, but Mastodon has seemingly peaked in popularity. It’s a niche for nerds. I think it’s a successful niche for nerds — I still see a stream of interesting content in my feed there, and enjoy thoughtful engagement from readers — but Mastodon has seemingly no mainstream relevance, and I don’t think ever will. Regular people do not want to use social networks without algorithmic feeds, and do not want to use social networks whose basic premise they do not understand.Now that we know that Threads has begun federating via ActivityPub, we will end up with a confluence of two opposite cultures. One one side there are huge number of regular people who depend on algorithmic feeds and on the other side there are a niche set of nerds who may mostly believe the following, as outlined in one of my earlier posts, without caring for mainstream relevance.Social networking in Fediverse is like a little argy-bargy (talkathon) in a village square or a downtown or a pub or a corner of a road. Here one talks publicly while being fully aware that the content is ephemeral and not archived.One would not mind being overheard in a local or even remote community. The expectation is that good content will be appreciated and carried forward by humans instead of appearing in a newspaper or getting discovered by searching though archived and persistent databases. There are no third parties monetizing the conversations. In most cases, the conversations are unlikely to have the polish and maturity for a publication.I am not considering the common users who are active on both Fediverse and Threads.

Instagram and Threads are products of a profit driven organization with advertisements as the main source of revenue. So there are recommendation algorithms to drive user engagement, through personalization of content and, hence, revenue. There is nothing wrong here. It is a business model. Since algorithms play a key role in driving user engagement and visibility of posts, conflict and polarization can dominate personalization due to dopamine effect.

So a post in Fediverse, when reflected in Threads, will become the feed of the recommendation algorithms while being exposed to the visibility of the mainstream audience. The long term outcome and impact is unknown as of now. We have wait and watch this social experiment.

#Mastodon #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Threads

cc: @srijit@mas.to

I have broadly observed that many tend to believe that ActivityPub-based Fediverse is associated with liberal or left-liberal political discourse. This perception may be due to user demographics and community norms or guidelines.

It is not fair to carry such a discernment in one's mind. The design and architecture of ActivityPub based Fediverse are politically neutral. However, the way it is implemented and used by different platforms and communities can reflect varying political ideologies. The Fediverse is a collection of interconnected social networking platforms that use ActivityPub, and these platforms can cater to diverse communities with different political beliefs and values.

It is important to re-emphasize that the Fediverse is a disparate ecosystem with a wide range of users and viewpoints. While there may be a prevalent perception of a liberal or left-liberal discourse, it does not mean that all users or instances within the Fediverse adhere to those ideologies.

#ActivityPub #Fediverse #Politics #PoliticalIdeology #PoliticalDiscourse #PoliticalThoughts