Notices by Ethan Schoonover (ethanschoonover@mastodon.social)

Stop thinking of Twitter, TikTok, IG, (et al) as social media sites.

They are **Content Refineries.**

Like processed food manufacturers they take user content & extract the most addicting/engaging content. Brains eat it up but in an unhealthy “devour the whole bag of chips” way.

They make hyper-processed social media junk food.

Mastodon is more like a potluck. We're all bringing dishes. It's a mess. Kids are running all over. But we are, at least, real people sharing real things.

My cat is really not very smart as you can see by how easily she was taken in by the French Defense.

That's close enough, friends.

(Virginia forest in autumn, #Fujifilm X-E4 16mm ƒ2.8)

Threads and Instagram (the attitude is the same) look at the Internet as little more than TV 2.0. Specifically REALITY TV. "Creators" isn't everyone. "Creators" are the "we will pay them for garbage content that is JUST enticing enough to keep the scroll going." Nothing more than TV.

Bluesky,
2/6

I'm going to break down why Bluesky is beating Threads. It comes down to one thing: ATTITUDE about what the Internet IS. Threads management, Mosseri Zuck et al, have a fundamentally LOW OPINION of what the internet can be and of their network's participants.
1/6

The techno-utopianism of the early Internet was naïve and often misguided but we shouldn't throw out the principles and aspirations wholesale out of cynicism. Threads, IG, and Facebook are the HEART AND SOUL of cynicism.
4/6

Mastodon, and Twitter of yore, have a fundamentally different attitude toward content and users. Users are PARTICIPANTS and on equal footing. They are deemed and viewed as a true part of a CONVERSATION, not just eyeballs on the reality-tv2.0-feed.
3/6

I am at that precarious moment of every beard owner where the length is good but if I don't trim it WITHIN THE NEXT 12 HOURS I will immediately look like I have written a conspiracy manifesto.

How I taught my kids to check their email:

(this is a regular email I send with slight variability on timing, this time leveling things up to include proper format challenge and some friendly sib rivalry)

Did you know that #AppleReminders is sort of a secret power tool for projects and todos?

It even has a kanban view.

And clicking any one of those icons on the reminders shown? Opens the project note in #AppleNotes. Easy. Simple built in tools.

Apple Reminders > View Menu > as Columns (you can make new columns which show up as sections in list view)

Running an " email over #hamradio " station from a #Seattle Fire Dept. battalion station for this morning's earthquake response exercise. Part of my volunteer work with https://www.seattleacs.org

(simulating a quake and internet outage and assisting to coordinate incident response)

every time I log on to a discord server with too many channels

Someone gave us a towel with our cat's photo on it and now she sleeps exclusively on top of it like some sort of degenerate narcissist 1970s movie star.

@chargrille @bhawthorne It's always amazing to me how blue Wisconsin was when I was kid vs now (am in WA now). Unions, progressive policies. All feels very much washed away. My hippie WI parents are still out there canvasing for progressive causes though.

@chargrille @bhawthorne junior high for me in Wisconsin in the 80s. All students took both home-ec and woodshop.

@bhawthorne @chargrille Yeah agree. I've actually taught some of these (some of the home repair stuff and spreadsheets) as part of other classes to middle schoolers and I think that's the better age.

Classes I'd like to teach to high schoolers:

CHAOS MITIGATION: Stay organized, fight digital & physical entropy (replaces home-ec 101)

THE BOX YOU LIVE IN: Wire outlets, unclog drains, fixit stuff (replaces woodshop)

SPREADSHEETS: Before code learn this (replaces any intro class teaching Java)

My lower back just wrote me a letter

The story of the internet is never let the money guys in

Running my MacBook pro off one of my DeWalt power tool batteries. There are USB-C adapters for most major tool battery brands out there, many of which (like this one) will both power devices and charge the tool battery from a standard USB-C power plug. YMMV in terms of quality/safety (this is the official dewalt adapter which works great).

Great for power redundancy, etc. A no brainer if you already have the batteries for tools.