Notices by stuart (stuart@social.brainsys.com)

Mark Carney's speech yesterday was both a succinct summary of realpolitk today and how we should pivot from the old order. What a contrast with today's - well I do not have words sufficient to describe this afternoon's rambling.

Canada's gain was Britain's loss. Maybe we should send a SAS team to kidnap him back so he could help fashion the new world we are otherwise blindingly entering.

#ukpolitics #uspolitics #canada #mark_carney

@bmacDonald94

It's a substantial Mastodon instance. About says:

Truth Social Coin is an Indo-American social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology

Instances.social adds:

9859 Users

0.03% of total (36177203)

71755 Statuses

0.01% of total (1338692063)

114499 Connections

@SeanPLynch @bmacDonald94

It points to DigitalOcean US server. It could be a joke or maybe Trump got confused with Indiana.

#ukpolitics #uspolitics #afd #Twitter #fascism

85 years ago today my country and my father went to war on fascism. Six years later they thought it had been defeated. The suffering was unimaginable.

How horrified he would feel today to see it creeping back in Germany and all the western liberal democracies including my own. Today's bastardised version of Oswald Moseley sits in parliament, is a subsidised TV presenter and is feted by the media.

Memories are short.

#elonmusk #musk #twitter

No comment ;-)

#brexit #Art #France

Yet another Brexit Benefit:

"British tourists will pay more to visit Louvre, says Macron

French president targets non-EU citizens to help fund ‘special area’ for Mona Lisa"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/01/28/british-tourists-pay-more-for-louvre-macron-announces/

@dbattistella @Radical_EgoCom

Good point. I guess the Dems can organise their lot, the GOP theirs. But who is to organise the disaffected? Herding cats methinks.

Sorry if I sound like an armchair general but when the only defence you have against tyranny is your constitution, albeit with a dodgy SCOTUS, then defence is the least worst if difficult option. Attack without overwhelming superiority is brave (aka foolhardy).

Remember if the US goes then so does liberal democracy in europe and elsewhere. Learning Mandarin may become not an option.

Oh, and the final triumph of Chinese state capitalism which is, arguably even worse than our version.

@Radical_EgoCom @dbattistella

Few revolutions work out and the human cost is always horrendous.

Not worth the risk (2025 me tells 1968 me).

Besides with the NHS we don't have this particular problem. Taxes can be cheaper than premiums. Not that many Americans may know that.

@Radical_EgoCom @dbattistella

1789 was the people against the aristocracy. In that sense it was democracy denied a vote. But even so post-1789 wasn't prdtty.

2025 US is the opposite in the government is what the majority think they want and voted for. They massively outgun the progressive half so would a revolution be a massacre leaving an even more reactionary state?

Be careful what you wish for.

@dbattistella

They will just get bigger and better bodyguards around them further isolating them from reality.

The only solution is to get their companies to act ethically, if not, hit them where it really hurts in the pocket. Regulation and taxes.

If only those that would benefit would vote for it...

@WetHat @juergen_hubert @mastodonmigration

I see a contradiction. Following the commercial monetisation route as #BlueSky must will lead to a poorer user experience. But Twitter/X is different. It was on that route but no more since Elon.

He is using Twitter/X to spread his worldview, not for profit. The proof is its capitalisation. No matter how bad the commercial route of others - Twitter/X is at a different sphere of disinformation, hate and blind prejudice than would make no sense to a purely commercial operator maximising profit.

@MediaActivist

That's unfair - Classic Coke v Pepsi Lite ;-)

@TJ1001 @DigitalTaoist

Littlejohn never did bridge-building. This week those were all shot away condemning both into camps where the most aggressive appear to hold sway. Until both sides accept there is no final solution there can be no final solution which is an eventual reconciliation or at least acceptance of co-existance.

Nieve I know but Northern Ireland and South Africa found a way to achieve the impossible in my lifetime. Imperfect I know but perfection is the enemy of good.

@arinbasu1 @Tony @Bloomfer @maegul I run a small instance as @admin. Running your own independent server or vps does require basic SysAdmin skills (and mindset). People who do will almost certainly have a domain or three so adding on a 'social' subdomain and point it at the server is trivial and free.

Reducing that to an app is imho a pipedream. More promising is a hoster offering a managed vps with Mastodon or whatever as a service. Taking responsibility for backups and managing data storage.

@arinbasu1 @Tony @Bloomfer @maegul @admin Adding to this even experienced SysAdmins who celebrated getting their Mastodon instance running (not without incident) suddenly hit the harder problem of getting it to federate successfully. Six months on I'm only just succeeding - yesterday we only hit 50% of known instances. This required extra software.

Running your own instance is great and rewarding. But be careful of building unrealistic expectations, fragile servers and disappointing results.

@Bloomfer @Tony @maegul @arinbasu1 Certainly not. I'm advocating against monolithic instances. I'm thinking along the choices non-IT people have with, say, WordPress. A multiplicity of hosters offering managed solutions including a domain or sub-domain.

People who have a #RaspberryPi and a decent broadband connection, on the other hand, also have scripts and videos to get them going. Great for a personal instance. Most will have the required skills (or the #RPi will still be in the drawer ;-)

@Bloomfer @Tony @maegul @arinbasu1 That's a reducing issue these days as IPv6 becomes more prevalent as it is (with the UK providers I've worked with) effectively gives a fixed large range. You need to use Cloudflare or other CDM to proxy it for IPv4 users but that's free for small instances.

More to the point Mastodon is reportably difficult to install without a IPv4 connection. But that should be fixable by the developers. Hopefully soon.

@Bloomfer @Tony @maegul @arinbasu1 Anybody who can spin up an Apache/Nginx instance can proxy it for you. Opposite of centralisation which is the whole point of being here.

'Free' tiers of commercial providers tend to go non-free over time. Hence use 'em when free but build an independent alternative. for later

Do we need for some sort of Trade Union for us little instances - to challenge any decisions the majors might make that effectively isolates or makes second class netcitizens of us?

@Bloomfer @Tony @maegul @arinbasu1 Have to differ with you as a veteran of this war which was won by the little people against the megacorps and a corrupt management only two years ago: https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/15/nominet_second_agm/

The major beneficiary was not us but the public.

We hopefully, will never get into the same position with Mastodon/ActivityPub but always be prepared. I need smarter guys than me to be watching, advising and, if necessary, warning.

@GottaLaff

I'm guessing they won't ban access to Twitter. There are simply too any reasons, like it's an important info outlet for so many EU organisations.

What they are more likely do is to fine and/or ban EU advertisers from using the platform.