Notices by Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net), page 2

Oh shit.
https://mastodon.social/@wingo/113194820738953500

I don't think fediverse is for "losers". I do think that a lot of people on the fediverse are in a constant struggle with wanting their tech to be successful while also wanting to be entirely left alone.

If you're doing something because you're hoping it becomes important enough to generate money, just say that. That's not volunteer work though. It's actually entrepreneurship. That's actually a good thing. And I wish more open source people would lean into it.

If you want people to pay for a certain future to exist, that's cool too. That's called philanthropy. Also not the same as volunteering. For instance, you really have to tell people a story about what that future looks like.

Anyway, I don't see how you can see yourself as a "volunteer" and also be mad that people won't pay money. Feels sort of contradictory.

I think many purists at the center of the fediverse movement have expectations that align more with philanthropy. But if those folks actually talked to other philanthropic orgs, they would learn something pretty quickly. If you want people to give, you have to spend *a lot* of time telling a story that makes them want to do that.

I feel like I'm gonna get into a lot of trouble if I keep asking this question. But fr fr. If this is taking up a significant portion of your time such that you can't make ends meet doing other things, is it really "volunteering"?

Many orgs that do have money still accept volunteer hours. Maybe we should be using a different word for the people who need to get paid in order to keep doing this.
https://akko.erincandescent.net/objects/4e4c1368-59b8-4223-8b4b-3278314b737c

@inthehands I mean this is just a Futurama episode waiting to happen.

@kims This is fascinating. You know private companies do this all the time. Stack ranking is a whole thing. And everybody says they hate it. Are you making the case that police specifically should be held to this standard because of the nature of their role?

Construction of the panopticon continues apace
https://sfba.social/@LisaKalayji/113149877850519460

I used to be a person who didn't have many thoughts about disability. Like many relatively healthy and able-bodied people, I had a narrow view of disability. When I heard the word, I thought about people who's disabilities were very debilitating and very visible.

But as I started to listen more, I got introduced to the understanding that disability is a very wide spectrum. And we may all find ourselves there at some point in our lives.

The more important lesson for me was understanding that many of us won't understand what's happening to us when it does. Americans especially have weird traumas around health. Because our system makes being unhealthy incredibly expensive. And our culture often stigmatizes people for being anything other than fully able-bodied. This often results in people being in denial when their health starts to deteriorate. And it's worse when it starts to threaten their livelihood.

So one of the things that is important about social media is that you can use it to really broaden your exposure to lived experiences out side of your own.

One of the many reasons this is important is because sometimes your life changes. And those lived experiences that used to seem far away from you suddenly become your own actual life.

For me, this was hearing people talk about disability.

This is what I keep trying to talk about in different ways. I believe I'm still doing a poor job of framing it.

I think there's a very strong culture among devs that says the only work that should make money is work that we all wish did not exist. If it's stuff we actually want and actually enjoy doing, then it should somehow magically be "free". Both in terms of money and labor. And that is wild to me.
https://kolektiva.social/@aredridel/113143016020333128

I talked about this a while back. So many devs who are working hard to remain gainfully employed building shit that they hate. And in their "free" time, they toil at making free software for users that are perpetually ungrateful and don't wanna pay for it. Meanwhile, there are millions of other people willing to pay good money for software that corporate interests will never give them. All of the parties involved are unhappy. And yet nobody can see any alternatives.
https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/112492234408125161

The more I talk to people about how to make software sustainable, I'm reminded that most people haven't spent time thinking about how anything gets paid for. Most employees haven't really considered exactly how it is that money ends up in their paychecks every two weeks.

It's weird that people have all of these ideas about how the world should work, but they aren't actually grounded in anything.

@ironchamber @jimfl that's not what it means.

The saddest thing is having a mutual in your feed who is trying so hard to be a poster and you know it'll never happen. They just don't have the sauce. But do you tell them or do you just mind your business?

I really hope this blows up. It has been clear for a long time that big tech companies use opaque algorithms to exploit people and enrich themselves.
https://dmv.community/@AliceMarshall/113109210769690041

Looks like #cohost is shutting down. I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of questions. But today is probably not the day to talk about it. I respect any and all attempts to bring software to the people that is not wholly owned by capital. I hope we're able to figure out how to make it sustainable.
https://cohost.org/staff/post/7611443-cohost-to-shut-down

I remember being so upset talking to people about prop 22 a few years ago. This was the vote in California to decide if gig workers like Uber and doordash have to be treated like employees instead of "independent contractors". I thought this should've been an easy decision. You wanna make these big tech companies pay right?

Nah. All they had to do was tell you that your rides were gonna get more expensive. And it actually became something we have had to fight tooth and nail for.

What I'm saying is that a lot of American Exceptionalism™ is based on sacrificing people. It is a very long tradition. And up until very recently, Black people were the default sacrifice. That was our explicit role in White American society. As soon as you understand that, a lot of American history starts to make way more sense.

And today starts to make more sense too. This is an America we're it's not so easy to designate groups for sacrifice. And we are finding it harder to get things done.