Notices by Dana Fried (tess@mastodon.social), page 3

@inthehands @GottaLaff gonna have to invoke Poe's Law on this one

@mekkaokereke didn't Amazon try this - and immediately shut it down for the same reason - like a decade ago?

On one hand, having a cartel of two or three megacorps handling all retail in the US is bad.

On the other hand, replacing a bunch of people driving to Wal-Mart in their gas-guzzling SUVs with a handful of electric delivery vans is kinda good.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284580/chevy-brightdrop-walmart-electric-delivery-van

Posted without comment.

It's me.

Hi.

I'm the solution, it's me.

When I described the meme I intended to create, my wife pointed out that my code still generates the boilerplate, but deterministically, in the compiler.

Which I am 100% okay with.

My wife, just now: "Our child is an independent, but they caucus with the girls."

@mcc I tried looking up the man pages for that command and I swear none of those words were in the Bible

I honestly *still* don't understand what it does.

@mcc also, after switching genders, they suddenly become better at speedrunning

@mcc could a client implement this on its own?

@simon_brooke you're not gonna gotcha me on this. I know full well that Android runs on a linux kernel. So does my car stereo.

But you also 100% know that's not what I mean when I say "Mastodon is the Linux of social networks".

If Mastodon was the Android of social networks, it'd fuckin' slap and everyone could use it.

Actually, that would be a great goal - go from being the Linux of social networks to the Android of social networks! Maye Gerard will read this and be inspired 😛

@simon_brooke actually I wanna highlight this!

The value of Linux is that it's free, solid, and infinitely remixable. It's a critical piece of infrastructure that also follows a particular philosophy of FOSS.

It is a mistake to conflate the business or moral/ethical value of the software with the usability of the software. The needs of backend and embedded system/mobile developers/FOSS advocates are not the same as the needs of the average end user.

I can value Linux and also hate using it.

Look, I love the fediverse but I am realistic in that for the forseeable future it will 100% be the Linux of social networks, with everything that implies.

And the reason I am here and not on bsky or threads is not because I think it's somehow better or more virtuous (in many ways, it's worse!) or because I think this place is any less likely to collapse or turn to shit than any other social network I've ever been on.

It's because all the other platforms are really bad for my mental health 🤷🏻♀️

Happy Indigenous People's Day!

The joke is that it was against the law for the people repaving the sidewalk to tamper with the mailbox, but it was also against the law to remove it, so they simply lifted it with the chunk of earth it was on, moved it the minimum distance required to do their jobs, finished the resurfacing, and left.

Technically, the thing is still in exactly the same state as it was when they got there; it's the sidewalk that's moved.

Artist unknown
"Compliance" 2024
Federal property on concrete

It never stops at just trans issues, or LGBTQ+ issues, or even abortion - Russia is now cracking down on people who talk openly about not wanting to have children:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-proposes-ban-child-free-lifestyle-rcna172616

This is the exact same movement and thought process that gives us Vance's "childless cat ladies". And believe me, if the natalist fascists in the US could ban the child-free movement, they absolutely would.

Case in point: Florida's insurance market is on the brink of collapse. When it does implode (this storm might be the proverbial straw that breaks its back), a lot of people are going to effectively lose their homes, or lose the ability to buy or rent homes where they currently are, with basically no backstop.

And yet, a lot of Florida's policy has been dictated by Republicans trying to browbeat insurance companies into providing unprofitable coverage rather than acknowledging climate change.

I feel like there are two ways to deal with the fallout of climate change:

One is to protect major population centers as much as possible and help people living in unsurvivable areas relocate.

The other is to just let natural disasters kill or displace millions of people and let the invisible hand of whatever sort it out.

And, like, as much as I'd like it to be the first one, we're definitely gonna do the second.

@eaton to be fair this is competing with "build a markov chain of all discussions about counting letters and have it generate whatever it likes", and "try to write and execute python code to parse a string and count characters in it".