Notices by Coffee & Aspirin (deejoe@mastodon.sdf.org), page 5

Thanks for the #LibreOffice stickers @libreoffice

@kensanata Joey Hess has a collection of websites failing on dialup. https://1-minute-modem.branchable.com/

(And there are number of rural places in the US that are still stuck with dialup)

@TheGibson @willtochaos

Second system syndrome, maybe. Meritocracy built in reaction to physical prowesses became ultrainsular informationally, with all the leet and such. But it fails as "meritocracy" the basic concept fails, anyway. Because merit's a human concept, not an inherent quality.

It's meaningless until we apply meaning, and that means it's really meaningless. (Unlike, say, "green", which is defined in ways we can confirm with equipment. 'Merit' is way slipperier, IMO.)

Looks like the idea of an open source duolingo equivalent is popular around here. Anyone wanna play with writing up a list of all the things that would need to be figured out to make something like that happen? Would be really interesting to have a social component tied into the fediverse.

@TheGibson If we look at the word, to be radical is simply to to be disposed to look at the root of our problems.

To want a better tomorrow for everyone is a pretty radical position, as it cuts through bogus distinctions of race, status, gender, etc. Also, this has always been a pillar of the hacker culture: competence is essential, everything else accidental.

I've got my hands on some #Ansible caps. Doesn't it look cool? Ok, maybe depends on the wearer, but I'm sure *you* can look cooler in it especially if you're an organizer of Ansible meetups ;) Ping me for details if you have an upcoming meetup in EMEA!

..so now I have to find a pet sitter who would be willing to chill in a nice house with a huge garden 5 minutes of cycling from the city center of Amsterdam, in exchange for walking, feeding and petting an amazing dog. House comes included with food and a bicycle.

It's from August 10 until 16. Any pet sitters here?

If anything's going to keep FOSS alive it won't be web-scale upstream-owning megacorps, and it won't be yesterday's problematic icons alienating everybody they talk to today.

It's gonna be you, doing stuff you think is cool and helping other people do stuff they think is cool.

Other men who say that doing the dishes, vacuuming and other household chores, and taking care of kids is a woman's task, as well as insist that women are the weaker sex, obviously haven't tried being a #stayAtHomeDad and taken care of the household while also caring for and watching over their kid.

#parenting #rant #genderRoles

This same account has a monster thread about Kodak's nuclear reactor, the International Fixed Calendar, and Project Orion

https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1151546837578313728

tired: humanity finally discovers interstellar travel and is inducted into the galactic federation
wired: humanity finally discovers interstellar travel and is inducted into the galactic inter-library loan system

Here's an interesting failure mode for FOSS/community software dev:

Over time, the most stubborn people who are good at ignoring criticism (e.g. by not listening at all), will end up running all the projects.

The folks who actually listen to their users get burned out by all the negativity...

The deciding fitness criteria over time is not skill or competence. It's obstinance. 😱

(I'm not talking about my users. I don't have enough users for this to be an issue yet. 😆)

@eliotberriot Jaco responded with (I put his email because it's a joint account but in his name) an email that started, "This is the most confused shit I've ever read in my life, and I've seen tweets by Donald Trump. I don't think you understand security at all."

@aparrish I strongly agree.

Something else I have noticed (in Germany) is that a lot of translations in pop media (especially TV series) are done on the cheap, and there is a strong preference for computer-aided translation that also employs machine translation. This results in sub-par translation quality and, most of all, sub-par and uncreative use of the target language. Since it’s mainstream media we’re talking about here, people are highly exposed to this garbage, and it’s shaping the way they use language in some very bad ways.

There just doesn’t seem to be any awareness, and certainly no responsibility.

Decided to listen to U2's The Unforgettable Fire this morning at work, which is an album my Scottish uncle gave me on cassette in the late 80s because, he said, it was better than the albums they were getting famous with: Joshua Tree, and Rattle & Hum.

And out of nowhere, the distinct sharp memory of laying in bed reading X-Men comics.

The two are entangled in 30 year-old memories. An interesting synaptic ambush.