Notices by Schrödinger's Prat (rhodium103@mastodon.social)

UK Gov: "We'll ban under-16s from social media!"

People: "Why?"

UK Gov: "Because it's dangerous for them."

People: "Why?"

UK Gov: "Because of bullying, and algorithms that promote hate."

People: "Have you considered holding the bullies and those who tweak the algorithms responsible?"

UK Gov: "..."

People: "..."

UK Gov: "..."

People: "..."

UK Gov: "Well, clearly you're anti-growth and anti-business and anti-Britain and anti-semitic."

@ChrisMayLA6
I remember a flurry of journalists coming a few years ago. Many derided the lack of quoting, lack of deep text search, and how they couldn't instantly get 100k followers. This interfered with doing their job, which is apparently to mine social media for free content to write up while holding court over the mortals with far fewer followers.

Not all. Obviously. But I'm quite happy for that particular class of journalism to stay away.

@falcennial
Chat?

As in "Add the appropriate HTML tags to this plain text because I'm a lazy bastard?" about once a month.

Actually have a conversation? Not since ChatGPT was first released to see what it would do and it got real boring real fast.

@TheBreadmonkey

I didn't actually see it, so was he doing a Bit and referencing Pulp Fiction, or is he that stupid and doesn't know the one single bit of trivia everyone knows about that movie?

@dalias @TheBreadmonkey

More of the latter. Though many people think they haven't put up enough of a fight against it, the simple fact is that if it did come to a fight, one side is a charity organisation with a budget written largely in IOU post-it notes, and the other has enough dark money and Harry Potter income to sustain a court case until it straight up bankrupts the Guides.

Tech companies: "We will collect more usage data than God to help push better titles and products to the right people."

Netflix: "Hey Chris, we notice that your watch list consists of Riverdale, The Imperfects, First Kill, Warrior Nun, Shadow and Bone and you're one of the 7 people who actually liked The Winx Saga. Therefore, here's a notification reminding you that Ricky Gervais has a special out!"

@Bytesnagger @babe @jomo

Fine.

@babe
Taking the feedback on board...

@babe

Would it wear them like this, or like this?

@TheBreadmonkey
[Drill sergeant shouting at a nerd doing push ups]

"WHAT ARE YOU?"

"AN ELITE MEMBER OF THE FEDIVERSE SIR!"

"WHAT IS YOUR GOAL?"

"TO MAKE MASTODON UNCOMFORTABLE FOR NORMAL PEOPLE TO PRESERVE THE PURITY OF THE BLOODLINE SIR!"

"WHAT OPERATING SYSTEM DO YOU USE?"

"WINDOWS BUT I TELL EVERYONE IT'S LINUX TO SAVE THE GRIEF, SIR!"

"WELL DONE SOLDIER! AT EASE!"

@Gargron
I came to absolutely despise that feature on Twitter.

But this level of control over it makes it a very good implementation.

The world's greatest How It Started vs How It's Going just arrived.

It's important to recognise the difference between a test and a real alert.

@skinnylatte
Is it the more expensive tier, because I'd pay it.

A few years ago, the last time I was on a plane, I noticed so many people unfussed, unfazed, or simply bored and annoyed by it.

Which leads me to a compromise that let's us keep flying but save on environmental impact: once you're bored by flying, you don't get to fly again. If the idea of a 100 ton tin can yeeting you over an ocean at 500 mph no longer excites nor terrifies you, you have flown too many times and can stop now. If you've developed an "airport routine" you're cut off.

@Nickiquote
Because our IT department are stretched to the max installing Windows 11 on everything, and there are no appointments left, it's going to be deployed "automatically" to my laptop at some unspecified random time.

I absolutely cannot wait for that experience.

I do love living in a world where I'm considered the weird, radical one for holding beliefs like "I don't think a standing army should bait civilians with aid then gun them down" and "I'd rather you didn't subject my child to a genital inspection before they're allowed to participate in a sports team" and "maybe maximising shareholder value isn't more important than preserving the biodiversity required to pollenate food crops".

@pvonhellermannn

A short thread on science research and "overhead".

The image below is of three NMR spectrometers (the shit I actually have a PhD, incidentally). They're routine and essential instruments for chemical and biochemical work. The structural information you get out of them is borderline unrivalled, and you'd struggle to do any molecular research without one.

1/n

I want to emphasise at this point this is *one* type of instrument. One of the most expensive, yes, but there are many others that you need to do research into anything chemical or biochemical.

This stuff is expensive. And it adds up fast. To run a proper research project, you need access to all of it. All of the spectrometers. Anything you can put on the roof and calibrate to gamma rays, you want it.

3/