Notices by Ethan Schoonover (ethanschoonover@mastodon.social)

I wish Apple would go back to the days of "let's make our apps really interoperate incredibly well". The basics are so krufty feeling right now. Groups on contacts are terribly broken and can't be shared. Notes and reminders are barely on speaking terms. Fix this stuff first.

AI can wait.

Drove down to the factory here in Seattle and got my daughter her first Tom Binh backpack for college which is definitely some sort MY BABY IS LEAVING HOME milestone 😭

Treasury has been ordered to stop making pennies and produce only $100 dollar bills which is, conveniently, what eggs cost now.

Saw this on reddit. NEVER use torque specs from Google's AI results. We're talking "wheels can come off and people could die" error here. Normal torque for lug nuts is almost never this low (normal is 80+ ft lbs depending on vehicle).

This is really criminal, Google.

Example What-ifs:

What-if the fall of net neutrality makes accessing distributed social media harder?
What-if a billionaire tries to buy out bluesky or a major mastodon instance?
What-if a primary distributed social media domain is seized?
2/4

We need FEMA for social media.

And by “FEMA” I mean structured, actionable plans for when social media disasters strike. What-if scenarios that allow us to recover without losing everything.

(And by disasters, I mean the present oligarchy.)
1/4

I do emergency disaster response volunteer work & we spend a lot of time thinking about how to educate people and prepare for disaster on multiple levels: personal level, family level, community level, municipal infrastructure level.

We need to do this for social media as well.
4/4

Example How-tos in the event of those what-ifs:

How-to maintain your existing social graph
How-to migrate your identity
etc.
3/4

low power fun: #hamradio contact with Portugal on 10 watts

This was the Big Present for my (teachers' union rep) wife this year: a TOTALLY metal pro-public school poster from self-described "milwaukee union thug" (we need more of those) Emma Roller (emmaroller.bsky.social)! Thanks to her for this amazing gift (soon to be in a classroom). This print goes hard and we need this energy going into the new year. SOLIDARITY IN 2025!

I say this as someone running a sizable Discord: We have to move past Discord for community.

2025 let's bring back BLOGS, RSS, and FORUMS

Yes, at FIRST it may seem like a contradiction that my "Billionaire Hunting Club" has no members who are billionaires but let me explain

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.