Toots 🦣 from 04/08 to 04/12

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 don’t include here unless their creators happen to have released them for use under a free license, and I notice. Most have not, or I don’t notice. But I now add my commentary here, where I don’t feel restricted by message length.

Also, I don’t generally attach pictures to posts with quotations.

9:03 – Mon 08 April 2024

Image Not Shown: A person sitting on a small chair looks anxiously at boxes surrounding them

Rents Are Unaffordable Nationwide. A Renter’s Tax Credit Would Help from OtherWords

When a huge chunk of your paycheck goes to rent or the mortgage, there’s little leftover for an emergency. And most Americans — 56 percent of us — can’t pay for an unexpected emergency of $1,000.

Hashtags: #Poverty #Rent #Taxes

At the risk of talking too much about my own life, as a renter who has—with some exceptions—had less trouble covering rent month after month than most, I can tell you that it does overwhelm everything else in my budget by an order of magnitude, and I’ve never liked the idea that owners get a break for owning more property than they need, while renters pay a surcharge for owning less than we need. I don’t mind my personal situation, but it also wouldn’t take much for me to end up in a position similar to the author’s.

12:05 – Mon 08 April 2024

Quoted on Mastodon

The vision of the Perfect State, which awakens a people from the stupor of slavery, arouses them to revolt, fires them with dazzling promises, and leads them to self-sacrifice, to martyrdom, to destruction, continues, nevertheless, to leaven the aspirations of succeeding nations.

Ameen Rihani

Hashtags: #Quotes #ArabAmericanHeritage

9:01 – Tue 09 April 2024

Image Not Shown: Country musician Linda Martell at her home in South Carolina in 2021

The most important voice on Beyoncé’s new album from The Conversation

Martell was the first Black woman to debut as a solo artist at the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville’s weekly live music program that has been the most important venue for country artists since the late 1920s.

Hashtags: #Racism #Music #CountryMusic

I admittedly haven’t listened to the album, yet—I’ll get to it, at some point, but mainstream music doesn’t get much of my time—but I know Martell’s work, have listened to Color Me Country more than once over the years, and her participation will move me slightly faster towards the new album…or more likely the video thing on Disney+.

12:04 – Tue 09 April 2024

Quoted on Mastodon

No, by my God a heartless people receive only death as a gift. Let history turn a page of failure and settle its accounts. Perhaps rage, perhaps shame, perhaps fire may move the heart of a coward. All these are in us, but all they move is the tongue.

Nasib Arida

Hashtags: #Quotes #ArabAmericanHeritage

9:07 – Wed 10 April 2024

Image Not Shown: Stressed student

Too little sleep takes a toll on college students’ thinking from Futurity

In total, 62% of participants reported poor sleep. Those who reported less than seven hours a night of sleep had much lower informant ratings of the person’s working memory and executive function.

Hashtags: #Sleep

As someone who has had a career in software and worked with engineers of all sorts, this effect doesn’t limit itself to students. In my anecdotal experience, if you haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep, you should call in sick, if you can, because you certainly won’t get any useful work done.

12:06 – Wed 10 April 2024

Quoted on Mastodon

To be so reduced in power at the same time that the enemy was reinforced with a possible fighter, seemed to the Jirdaks to be a stern heavenly visitation which it was beyond their ability to bear.

Abraham Mitrie Rihbany

Hashtags: #Quotes #ArabAmericanHeritage

9:04 – Thu 11 April 2024

Image Not Shown: An small amount of the ciphertext

Cryptographers Who Solved Zodiac Killer Cipher Publish Paper About How They Did It from 404 Media

It explains how crowdsourcing on the internet helped solve it, but also made the process more difficult in a variety of ways that will probably sound familiar to anyone who has ever been on a message board or social media before.

Hashtags: #Cryptography

I have only had time to skim through the sixty-plus pages, but if you have an interest in any part of the Zodiac Killer story, you’ll want to give this some time. Next up, we’ll stop Ted Cruz for sure…

12:07 – Thu 11 April 2024

Quoted on Mastodon

He who does not acknowledge his first homeland with his love, jealousy, and inclination to support it, will not be able to praise his second homeland for his love, affection for it, and inclination to support it, for he has become accustomed to your counterparts who have migrated to it from various countries of the world, so after you have joined the nationality of this second homeland, be loyal and sincere to the covenant of your first homes.

Abd al-Masih Haddad

Hashtags: #Quotes #ArabAmericanHeritage

9:06 – Fri 12 April 2024

Image Not Shown: A lab technician with its head replaced with the Trix Rabbit's and given a General Mills patch on the shoulder, seemingly distilling a box of Cocoa Puffs

General Mills and cheaply bought “dietitians” co-opted the anti-diet movement from Pluralistic

The “body acceptance” movement isn’t merely about feeling good in your own skin: it’s also about fighting discrimination, demanding medical care and warning people away from getting on the diet treadmill, which can lead to dangerous eating disorders and permanent weight gain.

Hashtags: #Nutrition #Capitalism

One of the most bothersome people who I’ve ever had the misfortune to deal with on the Internet would constantly rail against the idea that some foods might have more nutritional value than others. Like an apocalyptic street-preacher, he’d yell at anyone who came too close, insisting—without backing—that only calorie count mattered, so dieters should feel free to get their calories however they please. This goes a long way to explaining that person…

12:03 – Fri 12 April 2024

Quoted on Mastodon

This [air combat] is just business. It’s what we’re trained for—just like you might be trained for any business.

James Jabara

Hashtags: #Quotes #ArabAmericanHeritage

Bonus

Because it accidentally became a tradition early on in the life of the blog, I drop any additional articles that didn’t fit into the one-article-per-day week, but too weird or important to not mention, here.

Image Not Shown: Bi Kidude performing with the Culture Musical Club orchestra at Afrikafestival Hertme 2009 in Zanzibar. Screenshot from YouTube video

From entertainment to rebellion: The various roles music has played in Tanzania’s history from Global Voices

Even before colonization, ngoma was the dominant form of cultural expression throughout the Great Lakes and Southern Africa. Ngoma is a Bantu term that encompasses music, dance and instruments. In Tanzania, it is also used to refer to significant life-changing events such as a girl’s first menstruation, births or deaths and other momentous celebrations, rituals, or competitions.

I imagine that a motivated person could probably write one of these articles for every country in the world…and I’d probably read and share almost every one.

Image Not Shown: An abstract map of the United States, with network connections crossing the states in red, white, and blue tones approximating the center of the flag

Could the US Government Self-Host a Fediverse Server? from We Distribute

Then there’s the choice of software itself: the platform and its dependencies need to be audited, examined, and vouched for. Off the top of my head, relatively few Fediverse platforms actually fulfill this expectation: I believe that Mastodon may be one of the few that has actually gone through this process, but there may be significant differences between a security audit by a compliance group, and a security audit by a government.

I feel like this post shows one of the bigger long-term problems on the Fediverse in general, and I’ve surely brought this up a few times: While everybody can self-verify their accounts in various ways, at an organizational level, nothing beats having your people on a server with your domain name. This goes for governments, corporations, and any other group that wants to use a platform to collectively communicate information.

I’d call it more pressing with government, because governments shouldn’t decide that you must do business with a private organization—with the authority to deprive you of access for any reason—to receive emergency alerts. But a comparable problem exists for news outlets or almost anybody else.

As such, looking at the assorted problems and potential problems makes sense, and I appreciate this level-headed rundown.

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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.