Jules @afewbugs@librem.one

@linuxfiend after watching him, no one should ever suffer from imposter syndrome again.

Twitter users are all like “I don’t know if I can trust a bunch of career sysadmins and network engineers to run their own Mastodon instances” — meanwhile Elon is just running around the Twitter data center going “what’s this button do?”

Did you know about the Global South Climate Database? It's a free searchable database of climate experts from the Global South to help elevate under-represented voices on #ClimateChange. Check it out!

https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-south-climate-database/

Lack of language-specific moderation has literally facilitated genocide.

The only responsible action would be to disable Twitter in these regions. If Twitter doesn’t do that, governments may.

Note too that it appears that the copyright strike system is down. People are posting (in 2-3min segments 😂) commercial movies to twitter.

https://twitter.com/aaschapiro/status/1594015149311946752?s=12&t=Lzhqzc_-SzMRovspN64tgA

Possibly the easiest leaf mine to identify in the #UK, the Holly Leaf Miner (Phytomyza ilicis). These mines are caused by the larvae of a small fly that tunnels through the inside of the leaf. Very obvious at this time of year, I seldom encounter #Holly without at least a couple of mines. In #Bath, #Somerset. #Nature #Wildlife #Flies #Entomology #BritishWildlife

There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about how to set up Mastodon.

1. You do not have to sacrifice a duck. Any waterfowl will do.
2. The bit about dancing around naked in a forest glade? While dancing is fun, you may just walk.
3. When the demon appears, you needn’t chant in Latin. It is fluent in all languages.

The rest of the guide is correct.

Thinking about the adaptability of #trees today. How ancient junipers like these have flowed so differently in their centuries of growth because of pressures faced long ago, from lightning strikes and buckling winds to storms lifting them partially out of the earth. The resilience needed to remake the arrangement, counterbalancing a suddenly altered centre of gravity or reshooting from a shattered, fire-scorched crown. The stories of endurance held by the heartwood.

As a blind individual, I have to say that #Caturday on #Mastodon is far far more enjoyable then at #Twitter, where the vast majority of cat photos are not described.

It is also been fascinating for me to hear descriptions written by those who sent the image, immediately followed by Apple image recognition’s attempts to describe the same image. Only rarely does that add anything to the ALT, & often directly contradicts it.

There is no auto magical solution to image description. It is something best done by a human, for only that human can explain the “why” of the image: the reason that image was chosen to speak so eloquently without words for those who can see it. ALT allows you to provide those words.

Casa Pueblo, out of Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, is so much more than the solar-#microgrid power project or #resilience scheme you might be tempted to take it for. It’s a comprehensive “proyecto de #autogestión comunitaria,” or initiative in community #selfmanagement, developed under the dual pressures of acute vulnerability to Atlantic hurricanes and the malign neglect of the US federal government – and it’s one of the most inspiring things I’ve come across in my research. https://casapueblo.org/

"Girlfriends" by Gustave Klimt, circa 1916-1917. This painting was displayed at Galerie Welz, Salzburg, Austria, but was destroyed in 1945 by retreating Nazi forces. This painting was intended to be a display of love between women, and not just gals being pals.

RT @greenbenali@twitter.com

The Qatar World Cup has killed thousand of migrant workers

FIFA is complicit. Football fans and workers deserve root and branch reform https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/17/qatar-facing-renewed-calls-to-compensate-migrant-workers-over-uninvestigated-deaths?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/greenbenali/status/1593905794101157888

Now that we're learning this lesson that centralized silos are brittle and operate in the interest of the owners not the users...

...please note the move toward centralizing podcasts into apps from Amazon/Audible, Spotify, iHeart, YouTube, TikTok etc.

If you like podcasts, use an RSS-based podcast player. Support the open ecosystem. We can only survive if you clearly see the threat and act supportively.

Portugal's infrastructure minister gets it:

“If we simply replace all combustion cars with electric cars, we will end up with the same kind of congestion, the same huge amount of lost time in traffic, the same unsustainable levels of road accidents, and the same struggle for public space."

“The car overwhelmed city life and it is something that must change.”

https://www.euractiv.com/section/electric-cars/news/shift-to-electric-vehicles-will-not-solve-urban-transport-woes-says-portuguese-minister/

Councils often use barriers like these on traffic-free walking & cycling routes.

They say that they're to stop illegitimate users, like off-road motorcyclists, but in reality they fail to stop these.

But they do stop disabled people like me who use adapted cycles & other types of mobility aids. And we'd really like to access these safe and quiet routes too.

#CyclingDisabled

Hawthorn hedge near home.

#Sunrise #Silhouette #Trees #Galloway #Scotland

Yesterday, hundreds of people gathered outside the Finnish parliament to demand that Finland stop committing human rights violations against the Sámi people. Sámi rights belong to the Sámi people. Finland must pass the Sámi Parliament act reform! #Saamelaiskäräjälaki

Firstly, what is the Sámi Parliament Act? It is a piece of legislation which sets out how the Finnish government interacts with the Sámi Parliament on matters that affect Sámi people.

The current Sámi Parliament Act violates the human rights of the Sámi. The Act restricts and violates the Sámi people's right to self-determination, which includes the Sámi Parliament's decision-making powers in matters concerning the Sámi people, such as who is Sámi.

In 2015, Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court allowed non-Sámi persons into the parliament of the Sámi against the will of the Sámi Parliament. The Sámi Parliament considers that the court’s ruling violates the rights of the Sámi people.

The law would improve other things, such as the facilitation of Sámi's voting practices. In the current outdated law, voting in Sámi district elections takes place by mail, which means many people have to drive hundreds of kilometers in order to vote.

The Sámi region is subjected to many land use pressures, such as mining, tourism and deforestation without the consent of the Sámi people. The law reform would allow for democratic negotiations about plans that affect the Sámi people.

In the last years, the UN has criticised Finland multiple times for the ways in which it treats the Sámi people and this year a UN committee found that Finland violated the international human rights convention on racial discrimiation concerning the rights of the Sámi.

A draft to reform the Sámi Parliament Act to prevent future rights violations, adopted by the Sámi Parliament, was finished in 2021. The proposal would fundamentally reform the law, correcting the sections that have led to human rights violations.

The Centre Party is opposing this bill and calls for a ‘compromise’ that overrides the right of self-determination of the Sámi people in regard to Sámi identity and inclusion in the electoral roll. On top of this, the Centre party are spreading racist misinformation.

Finland must pass this reform, the world views Finland as a progressive country, but overlooks many negative aspects such as the human rights violations they commit. If Finland wants to be truer to this image, then the Sámi Parliament Act must be reformed.

If you would like to know more about this, I would recommend you listen to Sámi people themselves, I am unsure who to tag on Mastadon, but I have written about this topic on other social media platforms and have tagged people to follow on there for instance.

#HumanRights #Indigenous #Protest

"Beware the false hope of recycling" Very interesting piece in #Nature on pitfalls in the #CircularEconomy

"According to the #OECD only 15% of #plastic waste is collected for #recycling, and, of that, 40% is discarded from the recycling process on account of its low quality. As a result, actual plastic recycling rates are as low as 9%."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03645-0