Toots đ from 04/10 to 04/14
As discussed previously, on Fridays, I present my weekly social media roundups. Note that toots of articles generally include header images from the articles, which I donât include here unless their creators happen to have released them for use under a free license, and I notice. Most have not, or I donât notice. But I now add my commentary here, where I donât feel restricted by message length.
Also, I donât generally attach pictures to posts with quotations.
9:04 â Mon 10 April 2023
Image Not Shown: A hand holds up old computer equipment that zaps various Capitol buildings with the word "no" written in large 1980s-era science fiction type
Elizabeth Warren on weaponized budget models from Pluralistic
No business leader assesses their capital expenditures without thinking of the dividends from those investments. No firm decides whether to open a new store by estimating the rent and salaries and ignoring the sales it will generate.
Hashtags: #USPol #Economics #Models #CBO
For at least a decade, I canât think of a more frustrating aspect of American politics than politicians who demand that we ârun government like a business,â but have apparently never seen a successful business.
12:01 â Mon 10 April 2023
By whichever method the ray is moved, it will be noted that the apparatus includes no material moving parts and hence no inertia effects have to be considered. The only moving element is the cathode ray and this is adapted to respond instantly to the deflecting force.
Hashtags: #Quotes #ArabAmericanHeritage
If you have an interest in twentieth-century technology, look up this engineer. He died at the age of forty, but still somehow managed to get a pile of patents to his name, describing almost every detail of building an old tube television. And showing part of how he must have lived, the Patent Office consistently gets his name wrong, even though he (necessarily) lists it on the documents that he submits.
9:07 â Tue 11 April 2023
Content Warning: Ethiopian Civil War
Image credit: Unsplash license
Ravaged by war, Ethiopiaâs Afar minority face lengthy recovery during peace from Global Voices
With the peace deal, scarred communities across northern Ethiopia began the lengthy recovery process. Famine, atrocities, and mass displacement impacted millions across northern EthiopiaâŠ
Hashtags: #Ethiopia #Recovery
I donât think that I knew that Ethiopia had a shockingly bloody civil war in recent history. While I do realize that certain conflicts almost automatically get better media coverage than anything happening in Africa, this still feels like something that should have gotten some coverageâŠ
12:06 â Tue 11 April 2023
âIslandâ though it was, the [ancient] Arabian Peninsula did not escape the attentions of the outside world.
Hashtags: #Quotes #ArabAmericanHeritage
15:46 â Tue 11 April 2023
I see the anti-#Mastodon people, after spending months whining about every single difference from Twitter, now find it offensive to type hashtags as part of their message.
Donât get me wrong. I like a separate space for tags. But I only use one site that has that, and have never seen anybody complain about the lack before today.
Damned if Mastido, damned if Mastodonât?
For the record, I do not regret the pun. I do regret that the pun makes it look like the point of the post, rather than my annoyance at people who declare Mastodon âunusable,â every time a feature confuses them. It seems especially embarrassing, when they still spout their âyou need to pick a server, and nobody has ever faced such a difficult decisionâ nonsense.
9:02 â Wed 12 April 2023
Image Not Shown: A cartoon person in a ponytail tries to cut a chain between a ball labeled "debt" from a square academic cap ("mortarboard")
Student Debt Forgiveness Is a Win-Win for Our Country from OtherWords
âŠthe long-term consequences of having so much of the population so deeply in debt could ultimately be more expensive.
Hashtags: #StudentDebt
See the foregoing about running government like a business. Even literal Nazi-sympathizer Henry Ford wanted to help his employees out of debt with good wages, so that his employees could become customers.
Personally, I donât need to worry about student debt. I went to school on a scholarship, and paid off my minimal loans shortly after graduation. If I hadnât, I graduated long enough ago that I either would have paid them off or, if my career hadnât gone so well, at least had the opportunity to give up and declare bankruptcy. Regardless of the lack of impact to me, I support debt forgiveness for the same reason that I support any public service: Investing in public infrastructure means increasing economic activity.
12:04 â Wed 12 April 2023
I will not leave this place until I achieve one of the two highest levels; martyrhood or victory.
Hashtags: #Quotes #ArabAmericanHeritage
9:05 â Thu 13 April 2023
Image credit: CC-BY
New York City Is Dismantling Low-Cost Community Broadband from the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Now PCC is now being told to take down their infrastructure, while this low-cost community broadband program is being scrapped in favor of a deal that potentially lands Charter half of a $90 million dollar contract.
Hashtags: #NYC #CommunityBroadband #Cable
I only live near New York City, not within its borders, but I will never understand how Eric Adams made it through the mayoral primary, with a basket of policies that all seemed directly antagonistic to his constituents. More ârunning government like a business,â particularly a failing business that wants to spend more while alienating its customers.
12:02 â Thu 13 April 2023
To line a hat is a very simple matter, though, from the trouble most people make of it, one would think it very difficult.
Similar to Al-Sabbahâs engineering wizardry, you can probably consider Ben-YĂșsuf one of the most famous photographers who youâve (probably) never heard of. This quote comes from an earlier career, writing for Harperâs Bazaar, which influenced her post-photography career in fashion design.
Hashtags: #Quotes #ArabAmericanHeritage
16:33 â Thu 13 April 2023
In case anybody wants to know, Cohost got a mention in a fairly mainstream article on âTwitter alternatives,â which I find inaccurate, but I neither write news articles nor have ownership for the site, so⊠đ€·
https://www.fastcompany.com/90879914/your-guide-to-twitter-alternatives
I donât know what their readership looks like (other than me, occasionally), so I donât know whether âearly adopters could help shape it into becoming the social media site theyâve been hoping forâ is a threat or just idle musingâŠ
I do occasionally worry about influxes of new Cohost users, potentially turning it into yet another space where people compete to post the most incendiary meme about politics, instead of having conversations. But I also realize that I donât follow any politics tags over there, and unless I follow someone, I donât see posts without tags that I follow, so it should have some level of safety.
Regardless, it does please me to see âseriousâ people start to recognize the site as useful for some types of people. While privately owned, they organized Anti-Software Software Club as a non-profit, so I doubt that a billionaire will buy Cohost to silence its community. I canât say the same about Post, Spoutible, or any others beyond decentralized Mastodon and (not that itâll ever show up in an article) Scuttlebutt.
9:01 â Fri 14 April 2023
Image Not Shown: Stacey Abrams speaks at a campaign rally for Joe Biden at Turner Field in Atlanta, Nov. 2, 2020
Georgiaâs Stacey Abrams to Join Faculty at Howard University from Voice of America
Howard, one of the nationâs top historically Black colleges, said it was appointing Abrams as the Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics beginning in September.
Hashtags: #HowardU #StaceyAbrams
I donât imagine that either could have made a better choice.
12:05 â Fri 14 April 2023
Ask not of things to shed their veils. Unveil yourselves, and things will be unveiled.
Hashtags: #Quotes #ArabAmericanHeritage
Bonus
Because it accidentally became a tradition early on in the life of the blog, I drop any additional articles that didnât fit into the one-article-per-day week, but too weird or important to not mention, here.
Content Warning: A laugh at the expense of bigots
Image Not Shown: Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, looking confused
Mississippiâs GOP governor signs Confederate Heritage Month proclamation and dates it ⊠April 31 from Daily Kos
[Celebrating the Confederacy] would be like a white person throwing an elaborate party in 2023 to commemorate the time their grandpa got ferociously drunk at the county fair, screamed racist vulgarities at a group of Black children, and then proceeded to lose an arm on the Tilt-a-Whirl.
I think that I can set aside April 31st for celebrating Confederate Heritage. Certainly, I didnât have other plans, what with the date not existing, and allâŠ
Content Warning: QAnon, Twitter
Image Not Shown: A person's car references the Q-Anon conspiracy theory (identified by the FBI as a domestic terror threat before a campaign rally) for U.S. President Donald Trump on October 19, 2020, in Prescott, Arizona
How QAnon went from the fringe to the mainstream from Futurity
The studyâs results show that the overwhelming majority of stories that quoted QAnon tweets appeared in partisan news outlets. Those tweets embedded in other outlets used the Twitter content mainly for analysis.
Long-time readers presumably already know that I use stories like this as an opportunity to take a grim âvictory lap,â since Iâve often talked about how corporate social media gets its value from wild assertions that anger supporters and frighten opponents. Even long before Twitterâs change in âahemâ âmanagement,â QAnon-like material would have quickly climbed up the priority list.
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Credits: Header image is Circular diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week from a manuscript drafted during the Carolingian Dynasty.
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Tags: linkdump mastodon socialmedia week