Notices by Stefan Bohacek (stefan@stefanbohacek.online)

"These examples show that when democracy deteriorates, its fate is not sealed, and democratic institutions can be reclaimed."

https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/four-countries-that-have-successfully-reversed-democratic-decline-in-recent-years

#democracy #autocracy

"As the internet became more interactive over 1995, it became a more attractive place for musicians to set up a web presence. David Bowie was one of the first to do this."

https://cybercultural.com/p/david-bowie-website-1995-1997/

#internet #TheWeb #EarlyWeb #music #musicians #DavidBowie

65% of Wikimedia's most expensive traffic comes from bots.

"Since January 2024, we have seen the bandwidth used for downloading multimedia content grow by 50%. This increase is not coming from human readers, but largely from automated programs that scrape the Wikimedia Commons image catalog of openly licensed images to feed images to AI models."

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/04/01/how-crawlers-impact-the-operations-of-the-wikimedia-projects/

#wikimedia #wikipedia #AI #GenAI

"thetrilliondollardinner.gov"

What?

https://mastodon.social/@botgov/114263375336442235

#TheTrillionDollarDinner #USGov #domains

Wait. Is this reading correct?

"Under current law, content produced entirely by AI immediately enters the public domain, allowing unrestricted commercial use."

https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2025/03/20/ai-generated-works-are-public-domain-court-affirms/

Other news coverage:

"Because many of the Copyright Act's provisions make sense only if an author is a human being, the best reading of the Copyright Act is that human authorship is required for registration."

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-appeals-court-rejects-copyrights-ai-generated-art-lacking-human-creator-2025-03-18/

#news #technology #TechNews #copyright #PublicDomain #AI

On this day in 1915, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the "original soul sister" and "Godmother of rock and roll" was born.

"Rock 'n' roll was bred between the church and the nightclubs in the soul of a queer black woman in the 1940s named Sister Rosetta Tharpe."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9a49oFalZE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Rosetta_Tharpe

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/544226085/forebears-sister-rosetta-tharpe-the-godmother-of-rock-n-roll

#music #history #MusicHistory #WomenInMusic #BlackWomen #BlackHistory #RockNRoll #RockMusic #OnThisDay #OTD #SisterRosettaTharpe

"Of course, what [the British-American academic and author Alice Mary Hilton] defined as cyberculture — an automated society where mankind is freed from drudgery by computers — is very different to what it ended up meaning in the 90s."

https://cybercultural.com/p/cyberculture-alice-mary-hilton/

#cyberculture #technology

"In the summer of 1959, [American NASA astronaut and physicist Ronald Erwin McNair, 8 years old at the time,] refused to leave the segregated Lake City Public Library without being allowed to check out his books. After the police and his mother were called, McNair was allowed to borrow books from the library; the building that housed the library at the time is now named after him."

✊

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_McNair

#BlackHistory #racism

Happy 9th anniversary to the first Mastodon post!

Via https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/110985808809440467

#mastodon #fediverse #anniversary #OTD #OnThisDay

In 2019, Iceland became one of the first countries to approve a four-day workweek. Here's how things have been going for them.

2021: "Trials of a four-day week in Iceland were an "overwhelming success""

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57724779

2024: "Iceland’s economy is outperforming most European peers after the nationwide introduction of a shorter working week with no loss in pay."

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/25/business/iceland-shorter-working-week-economy/index.html

2025: "The effects of the shorter workweek in Iceland have extended far beyond the office."

https://www.wecb.fm/in-2019-iceland-approved-the-4-day-workweek-nearly-6-years-later-all-predictions-by-generation-z-have-come-true/

#news #labor #WorkersRights #FourDayWorkWeek #work #iceland

Happy 24th anniversary to Daft Punk's second album, Discovery.

"Discovery was vigorous and innovative in its exploration of "old questions and spent ideals", hailing it as "a towering, persuasive tour de force" that "transcends the dance label" with no shortage of ideas, humor, or "brilliance""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(Daft_Punk_album)

#OTD #OnThisDay #music #DaftPunk #discovery #anniversary

@clacke @liaizon Some relevant conversation in an adjacent thread:

https://xz.vc/@wysiwyggins/114150275285237406

@liaizon Ha, noticed that too, very interesting!

Here's the actual proposal, from https://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html

A piece of history.

@clacke @timbl That's a nice milestone!

It was on this day 36 years ago when @timbl submitted his proposal to CERN for an "information management system", precursor to the World Wide Web.

"In the proposal, Berners-Lee modestly spoke of wanting to use hypertext, a.k.a. links, to help CERN deal with information storage issues.

[...]

His boss’s response?

“Vague, but exciting.”"

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/12/18260709/30th-anniversary-world-wide-web-google-doodle-history

#OTD #OnThisDay #internet #TheWeb #history #VagueButExciting

Oh nice, with the latest Mastodon update (shout-out to @Claire!), we should start seeing proper capitalization of hashtags more often.

"e.g. if the client had previously used # ClimateCrisis and the server is suggesting # climatecrisis, the UI will suggest # ClimateCrisis"

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/34070

#mastodon #MastodonUpdate #fediverse #hashtags

Ha, this one might be my favorite. "Gulf of Starship Debris."

#GulfOfMexico #GulfOfAmerica #maps #SpaceX #starship

"A week ago, transgender Representative Zooey Zephyr delivered a powerful speech against a bill that would create a separate indecent exposure law for transgender people. [...] In a stunning turn, 29 Republicans defected, killing both bills. One Republican even took the floor to deliver a scathing rebuke of the bill’s sponsor."

👏✊

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/powerful-speeches-from-trans-dems

#news #USPol #USNews #TransRights

@aral Wishing him a speedy recovery!