Notices by Kunal Mehta (legoktm@wikis.world)

@nemobis I'm optimistic too, the ball is really in the MTA's court now to actually use the $15 billion to improve transit.

Time will tell if Hochul made the right move; it was all already approved, she delayed it purely because of the Nov. election and to her credit, Dems picked up most of the winnable House seats. It's hard to tell if lowering the price afterwards actually assuaged any of the backlash, I haven't seen any evidence that it did.

Happy #NYC #CongestionPricing Eve!

There's about 100 people in below freezing temperatures at 60th and Lex to celebrate, also a few counterprotesters.

#NYC #CongestionPricing

Cars cross 60th St and pay the #CongestionPricing toll that kicked in at midnight.

Loudest cheers are whenever a bus passes by.

#NYC

Some profanity aimed at NJ Gov Phil Murphy for all his (failed) last minute lawsuits to try and block #CongestionPricing

An ambulance crosses into the #CongestionPricing zone. EMS and FDNY response times have gone up over the past decade because of increased congestion - the toll should help speed them up:
https://abc7ny.com/post/nyc-emergency-response-teams-set-record-slow-times-due-increased-congestion-report/15331864/

I've uploaded my photos and videos from tonight's #CongestionPricing launch to Commons; you can find them in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:New_York_City_congestion_pricing along with other folks' media. All are available under a 🇨🇨 license that allows for free reuse (usually only requiring attribution)

Streetsblog has a really nice explainer and summary for everyone who hasn't been closely following the #NYC #CongestionPricing saga: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/01/05/congestion-pricing-has-begun-here-is-the-only-explainer-you-need

New #Wikipedia article: 12345 hotline, which as I understand it, is China's equivalent of 311.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12345_hotline

I saw this tweet (https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1869971055206658177) earlier today about how most people haven't heard of it how useful it is and there is no analogue in the West. My impression about the latter is that it was overblown (there weren't enough non-state media sources to tell), but I definitely didn't know about it until reading the tweet so now it's in the English Wikipedia!

At 10am ET, I'll be speaking about "10 years of Toolforge" at WikiConference North America!

https://wikiconference.org/wiki/Submissions:2024/10_years_of_Toolforge

It'll be streamed at https://room3.wcna.wiki/ (and recorded too)!

#Toolforge #WikiConfNA

@tchambers @fediforum hey :) unfortunately I'll be at RustConf then and tbh I haven't much opportunity to promote Fedi in Wikimedia circles recently - maybe @taavi, @theresnotime or @annierau would be interested in participating?

"Lessons from the death and rebirth of Thunderbird" - https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/982610/77a9168c2a079ae6/

I've been a monthly #Thunderbird donor ever since they kind of spun out of Mozilla and this recap is absolutely fantastic.

> Another thing the project did to draw attention was to give the next release after the new logo a "fancy cool name". The Thunderbird 115 release was called Supernova, though there was no particular reason for the name choice. "I just thought this sounds cool, and people will want to know more."

New blog post: "Building a less terrible URL shortener" (for #Wikimedia projects)

https://blog.legoktm.com/2024/07/23/building-a-less-terrible-url-shortener.html

I started writing this blog post back in 2016 and never finished, so here it is, the basic principles behind the w.wiki URL shortener.

Reply to this thread if you want the connection details for my #SignalProxy, or send me a DM so I can share the link with you.

(#Signal is asking for people to run more proxies in https://signal.org/blog/proxy-please/ - it's relatively straightforward)

#Signal usernames are nearly here! And extra privacy controls to hide your phone number

https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/

Wordle 1,000 🎉 2/6*

🟦🟧⬛⬛🟦
🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧

Not ready to fully advertise this, but since the spam wave is picking up again, here's the tool we're using for automated reporting of spam: https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/legoktm/masto-monitor

everything is still human moderated, this is just helping us detect it as soon as it appears on the timeline.

and as always, thanks to the humans who unfortunately see the spam and are reporting it!

@evan agreed, and that's basically what South Africa is saying.
https://accuracy.org/release/world-court-orders-israel-to-abide-by-genocide-convention-and-stop-killing/ had an interesting perspective on this:

"A ‘ceasefire’ is what you demand in an armed conflict. In a genocide you demand an immediate end to all genocidal acts and that is exactly what the ICJ ordered with immediate effect."

https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-genocide-court-south-africa-27cf84e16082cde798395a95e9143c06

This is huge despite not outright calling for a ceasefire; I'm not sure how many more wake up calls the Biden administration needs to realize how isolated and *wrong* the US is on the Israel/Palestine war.

Lightning talk intro: "I've been editing since 2005, 9k edits, and one block for edit warring, which was totally worth it"

#WikipediaDay