Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 69

@ctrlaltchaos did @switchingsocial think I was making some kind of death threat?!? Oh goodness! I'm a lifelong pacifist, soft as old biscuits, and a terrible shot. They have nothing to worry about. @ultimape is correct about what I meant. Sorry for the poor choice of words and any distress they may have caused! If switching has blocked me - and I wouldn't blame them given the confusion - can someone please pass on the apology? I have un-muted them in case any further clarification is necessary.

@oz the goals are similar in some ways, but for some reason we're always told not to watch video or download torrents via #Tor. I presume that's because it would tax the bandwidth available to the network? So the pitch of a decentralized #VPN network is that users can both pay for a service, or earn by supplying it, without trusting a central provider.

@ciaby hmm. So I've clicked on all the links on that article, and logged all the stuff that came up, but I didn't actually find anything resembling the meta-study referenced in the article. The article doesn't give the title, authors, or any information other than where it was published ("Vaccines"), so I'm a bit stuck. As a piece of science communication, I give it 0.5/10.

@bhaugen I'm not arguing obsessive self-sufficiency is a good idea, just that it's theoretically possible, for a fit adult. I think it's important to accept that, as a hedge against the risk of a movement drifting towards BORG-like ideologies that say because people owe their live to the collective, they owe their unquestioning allegiance to the collective, and have no right to personal autonomy (choosing which drugs to take or not take, informed consent about medical treatment etc).
@aral

@Wolf480pl
> So it would be selfish of us as a species to try to prevent the extinction, wouldn't it? ;P

If climate change was only going to wipe out humans, and leave the rest of the natural world intact, maybe so. But since climate change is now threatening a mass die-off of insects, not so much :D
http://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-killing-off-earths-little-creatures-109719

@Wolf480pl anyone who thinks government-controlled social media is a good idea needs to spend a bit of time over here in China. But no, I think what Alyssa is proposing is more like the democratization of all #fediverse instances. It's not utterly wrong, just a bit naive. Like trying to democratize all open source communities, whether that makes sense to their situation or not.

@ciaby
> There's simply too much information ...

That's even more true of #ClimateChange, given that so many different areas of science are involved, but I think the skepticalscience.com pages do a good job of summing it all up and making it comprehensible. I imagine there was a whole team of people working on it, it's not the sort of things that's practical to do alone. Believe me, I've been trying, and I desperately need more contributors:
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/drillingfortruth/vaccinations

@ciaby Thanks for the link, that's useful. I'll have a look at the study it references.

BTW Any idea who owns this site? It bills itself as a "science communicator" but it also sells space for;
> "Branded Content is content that is funded by and created with input with an advertiser:
https://www.iflscience.com/advertise/

The only ownership info I can see is a UK address on the contact page.

@MistahDarcy I love being able to link to videos on YT without actually sending people to their site. But I can't wait to be able to link to videos on #PeerTube sites more often than videos on YT.

@sajith oh for sure, the gaming of social media as a PR tactic is an effect *on* social media, not caused *by* it. Although certain aspects of the medium do make more vulnerable to such gaming on a larger scale.

@Wolf480pl @paulfree14
Your second point depends entirely on your point of view. The extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs worked out pretty well for mammals, but not so well for them. Our extinction might be great for a future non-human civilization in millions of years, but it's not such great news for us. We are a keystone species, so we'll go out long before the rats and roaches.
(2/2)

@Wolf480pl why do you think those are myths? Every nation agreed to the Montreal Protocol, which put limits on emissions of the gases that were destroying the ozone layer. Now the ozone is replenishing, and the hole over Antarctica is starting to close up. The same is true of treaties to protect whales, preventing their extinction. Why not CO2, when the stakes are so much higher? (1/2)
@paulfree14

@Wolf480pl
* we need online business models that value *quality* of user experience over *quantity* metrics like size of user base, pace of growth, number of "impressions" etc.
* we need to develop alternatives to advertising as the main revenue source for funding media (in general, and especially online)
* we need to teach network civics and critical thinking skills, value them, and reward people when they demonstrate them, even when we disagree with the content of their messages.
(2/2)

@Wolf480pl I have a lot of ideas about fixing online discourse, and articulating them is one reason I need to get back to writing my book. TL;DR:
* we need to start having a lot more online discussions in private, bounded spaces
* we need online spaces where dialogue can go deep, instead of getting constantly pulled back to basics by new participants wandering in.
* we need to spend more time in online spaces where we either already have, or can build up, ongoing relationships and trust. (1/2)

@Wolf480pl yes, and then they all got tipped into one big soup pot called "social media" ;)

When #GretaThunberg started going to the Swedish Parliament to protest the government's inaction over #ClimateChange, she probably worried that nobody would support her. Leading is lonely. It always requires you to step out on your own, and risk being ignored, or laughed at. It's always a gamble. Greta's gamble appears to have paid off. Here's hoping we can be all be as courageous, determined, and effective, as she is.

@sirenensang my request as a kiwi:

Do not refer to the white supremacists who terrorized #NZ today as "New Zealand terrorists". They do *not* represent us, or the values of our country. Otherwise, what the Muslim said, totally agree.

Maybe the next step for the kids joining in #Strike4Climate actions today could be to start supporting or joining in with #ExtinctionRebellion actions?
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/384655/contemplating-the-end-of-the-world-with-extinction-rebellion