Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 71

@aral @bhaugen this can easily turn into a 'how many angels on the can dance on the head of a pin' thing, and get lost down a rabbit hole of abstraction, but ...

I've argued many times that an unusually self-sufficient individual can exist independently of a community, at least in the years between adolescence and decline But I think it's worth asking if an individual without a community is more *free*, or less? The older I get, the more I've come to the conclusion that the answer is "less".

If you are a scientist or other academic who wants to publicly protest the censorship #Elsevier is trying to get away with, there is an open letter you can sign here:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Open_letter_to_FCT_and_Elsevier_signatures.php

This really is the last straw. It's already unacceptable that an oligopoly of publishing corporations are making enormous unearned profits from their control of academic journals. But when they start actively sabotaging the integrity of the peer-reviewed literature, it's time for the editorial staff of every corporate-owned journal to quit en masse, and set up new #OpenAccess journals to continue their work as a #CreativeCommons, or even in the #PublicDomain.

On top of all their other questionable business activities, leading to boycotts against them by academic institutions in both the EU and US, I just learned that #Elsevier is also trying to censor peer-reviewed science that goes against the PR line of other corporations:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Retracting_Serallini_study_violates_science_and_ethics.php

Investment capital tries to make digital platforms achieve "scale" as a #biomimicry of cancer, making small things grow forever at exponential rates. If we're going to mimic anything in the natural world, it ought to be the fungal mycelium that connects to the roots of all the plants in a forest, and exchanges resources between them. A mutually beneficial network, loosely joining many small things, which becomes more than the sum of its parts. In other words, #federation.

'Killing ...', released in 1992, expresses a blistering anger, borne of a feeling of powerless, and directed outwards; "fuck you I won't do what you tell me". 'Tubthumping' was released 5 years later, 2 years before the massive, networked civil disobedience shut down the 1999 #WTO meeting in the US city of Seattle. The song is a triumphant celebration of working class resilience, and says a lot of about how our sense of our collective power had changed since 1992. (2/2)
http://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/digital-document-libraries/world-trade-organization-protests-in-seattle

'Killing in the Name' - #RATM:
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ

'Tubthumping' - #Chumbawumba:
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=2H5uWRjFsGc

Both these deeply political songs have similar underlying messages, encouraging people to stand strong in the face of repression. (1/2)

Throughout over 20 years of making art and trouble, I've often had days where I feel like it's all too much, and I'm not helping anyway, and I might as well just give up and smoke ganja on the porch for the rest of my life. But every time, I rest, and reflect, and then I get up and keep trying to make a difference. I can't fix everything by myself, but I can't turn away and pretend it's all OK either. It so clearly isn't. But maybe, if we all do what we can, it could be.
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=RAogHx7Sl8k

@ciaby worth noting that the "Immunisation Advisory Service" running the site at that link has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from #GlaxoSmithKline and other pharmaceutical corporations:
http://www.immune.org.nz/sites/default/files/IMACSponsorweblistAugust2018.pdf

When I see a group taking serious money from fossil fuel companies I tend to take their comments on climate change with a grain of salt, regardless of how independent they say they are, so ...

@ciaby not exactly. This is just a list of claims, with no links to primary evidence. If I just believe them, because it says "University of Auckland" on the page, that would be an 'appeal to authority' fallacy. What people promoting vaccination need to create, and link to every time the subject comes up, is the equivalent of this:
http://skepticalscience.com/argument.php

Click on any one of those links and you get a detailed explanation, including links to primary evidence.

@ctrlaltchaos exactly.

@sajith seems both reasonable and necessary. The critical thinking skills that could allow us to have co-educational exchanges online are the same ones that inoculate us against anyone trying to play #DivideAndRule games, or game "social media" and other online discussion forums to push a hidden agenda. For example:
https://www.prwatch.org/news/2019/03/13455/who-bankrolls-tucker-carlsons-hateful-propaganda-why-kochs-course

'Social Justice Needs Free Culture'
https://rosenzweig.io/blog/social-justice-needs-free-culture.html

I agree with pretty much everything Alyssa says in this piece but I can't help noticing that this:

> The final strategy, abandoning corporations, is scarcely talked about, yet it provides a glimmer of hope for us. We do, after all, have a small but thriving movement succeeding at this exact idea.

... seems to contradict her antipathy to #decentralization as an emancipatory strategy in 'The Federation Fallacy':
https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html

@Shamar do you know of anyone using #GNUnet in the wild? What do they use it for? I'm intrigued by the concept, but I don't understand the purpose.

@Wolf480pl ok, why do you think that? ;)
@RandomDamage

@dansup another way to approach it is to set the user population limit as a multiple of the number of moderators. As the number of people formally acting as moderators goes up, more registrations can be allowed. For example, 150 users per moderator, although different numbers could work depending on the character of the instance. I guess you'd still want to set a hard limit though, for cases where you get a rash of moderators volunteering and then quitting too fast to be replaced.

'Valuable Intellectual Traits'
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/valuable-intellectual-traits/528

TL;DR includes concise definitions of intellectual humility, intellectual courage, intellectual empathy, intellectual autonomy, intellectual integrity, intellectual perseverance, confidence in reason, and fairmindedness.

@eric thank you for these references, this is very helpful :)

@RandomDamage
> There's also a bit of intellectual laziness out there.

You mean the same way there's "a bit" of global warming going on ;P I think there's a huge and dangerous lack of #CriticalThinking skills at play, especially #IntellectualHumility and #IntellectualCourage:
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/valuable-intellectual-traits/528
@Wolf480pl

random person on social media: opinion, noise, opinion.

me: ok, why do you think that?

random person on social media: that's just established truth according to the proper authorities on the subject.

me: but what about this dissenting point of view, that is supported by this evidence?

someone on social media: angry denouncement of non-conforming heresy ...

yada yada yada

@Wolf480pl @RandomDamage