Notices by Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 9

@Oozenet hmm. I'm afraid that doesn't ring true for me. Yes, the scientific process can lead to cults of personality around individuals who are almost worshipped for their cleverness... however, I'd argue that this is much more prevalent in a capitalist-run version of science that we see now... where a brilliant scientist attracts grant money, often from industry, and attracts others who can ride on their coattails... in my experience as a scientist the driver is curiosity, not ego. @strypey

@Oozenet I'm curious to know how you'd distinguish 'real religion' from, presumably, fake religion (?). To be up-front, I have a vanishingly low impression of theistic religion and consider them all entirely human constructs. In a sense, from my perspective, reality & fakeness of religion are entirely subjective, rendering them all equally indefensible (see the "no true Scottsman" argument). @strypey

@Oozenet @strypey ah, I've never seen that outside of imagined worlds. I have a very negative view of 'religion' in general, and so it cannot fit with any idealised worlds I imagine. So I can only assume that we have opposite views of true religion - for me, the only true religion is no religion.

@Oozenet I'll put it another way. My main issue lies with theistic religions. They require faith, and (esp in the Abrahamic traditions - see Abraham and Isaac) require *faith over reason*. In the US, where I grew up, many see blind faith (e.g. faith in a god) as a virtue. To my mind holding faith over reason is a deep character flaw. One of the reasons I moved to NZ where (based on the census trends) we became a majority irreligious nation a few years ago.

@strypey

This is desperately sad and more than a little suspicious: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/top-scientist-mike-joy-loses-role-at-victoria-university/4YJSZM2OGBCF5OQFWIUIZV4U5U/

There's never been a time we needed people like Dr Mike Joy in the public arena more than right now.

I've got an increasingly bad feeling about NZ's National party's (very thinly veiled) pandering to the racist establishment vote here in NZ. I suspect they probably think, based on polling, that getting the 'white racist vote' will carry them back into power. I desperately hope they're badly wrong as that would be disastrous and would set us back as a culture, nation, and a species far farther than we can afford or recover from.

@jxself yep. He's not wrong. Here're some more recent reckons that some making this argument might find useful: https://davelane.nz/proprietary

I'm pretty sure Canonical is on the wrong side of history with Snap... https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/05/immutable-all-snap-ubuntu-desktop I've already moved to snapless variants of Ubuntu and that sure ain't going to win me back.

@gnu2 agreed (we're using Mobilizon to augment-and-eventually-replace Meetup, which I hate as a platform) ... I haven't heard of kbin - will investigate!

Wow, does Facebook ever suck. Wow.

@christopherd I've been running a few Mobilizon instances (#ActivityPub-enabled event/group management) and need to figure out how to shift people off FB and into the Fediverse-of-groups... Any ideas?

@becha and it's fascinating to see the university lecturers who spoke in favour of Zoom... I wonder why they'd do that... I wonder if perhaps they receive some sort of reward for doing so. It'd certainly be cheap enough for Zoom to fund it...

@Ruth_Mottram @becha in my (now extensive) experience running BigBlueButton, it's easily as reliable as Zoom & it has *no* client to install (so it's *inherently* more straightforward than Zoom). Just uses a modern browser. Most people who use it with us say "why the hell are people using Zoom?". If you want to try BBB, send me a DM with your email, and I'll send you an invite to use ours (gratis). It'll be equivalent (as I understand it) to 5 organisational Zoom licenses.

@becha it's obvious that this article hits a nerve in Germany - the "Zoom representative" has struck back quite aggressively, presumably because he feels the need to 'nip this in the bud' because if it gains support, he's out of a job. I, for one, would be quite ok seeing him, in particular, on the unemployment line.

@mpanhans @becha we're fortunate that the #FOSS world has created (at least) 2 viable video conferencing platforms. My advocacy for BigBlueButton is based on it being designed for large groups (up to hundreds) - with specific tools making it ideal in an education context - whereas, in my experience, Jitsi is focused on much smaller groups (<10) and without the ed-specific-features... But that impression might no longer be current.

@becha this is what we need. I've been suggesting it here in Aotearoa NZ since before Covid... we've been offering BigBlueButton for all to use since then.

to be fair, biofuels is sorta missing the point. We need to *reduce* energy use, not switch forms (trading off fossil fuel CO2 for land use, which will also add CO2). Similarly hydrogen. But why stop the frickin' bottle return scheme?! It's already 30years overdue.

Listening to RNZ now, I'm appalled by gov't's decisions to roll back climate action commitments due to natural disasters caused by climate catastrophes. Who was it who said that 'humanity is the only species that will be unable to save itself from extinction because doing so isn't cost-effective'?

Periodic reminder: public corporations (and the policy framework that allows them) are the problem. They're not the solution. They're not even part of the solution. The solution is a world without them. That is the lesson we must take to heart.

Many of us are, often through no fault of our own, totally dependent on corporations. We need to break those dependencies as a top priority. Until then, we won't make much progress at making the world better.

@airshipper you'll notice how all AWS 'deals' involve them 'generously' providing 'training'. What you don't see is that the training only for AWS' proprietary APIs & processes, and it's largely non-transferrable. It's designed to create consutants who *only* know how to provision AWS services, thereby effectively locking them (and their customers) into the AWS monoculture. MSFT is desperately trying to copy that approach with Azure. @cjnielsen