Michael 🏴‍☠️ Fleet @f1337@librem.one

Greetings. The term "spam" in the context of the Internet has a fascinating history. While some historians point to an email sent by a salesman for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to a then available list of ARPANET users (and yes, if you look at that email as archived, you can find my old UCLA email address on it!), the term actually comes originally from Usenet and later was adapted to its more familiar use relating to unsolicited email.

The problem was Usenet users who would "cross-post" the same messages to multiple newsgroups, causing significant irritation. The word "spam" was adopted for this annoying, repetitious behavior, drawing from a classic "Monty Python's Flying Circus" skit where a bunch of Vikings invade a cafe (that featured spam in most of their menu items) and repeatedly interrupted everyone with a loud song celebrating spam.

Many years later Python member Terry Jones told me that one of the things he was most proud of was their contribution of the word "spam" in this way to the culture of the Internet! -L

RT @albertfong@twitter.com

When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them – and that is of course because they fully accept the system and identify themselves with it.

- Thomas Merton (1967) https://twitter.com/TheRaDR/status/1602342704402337794

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/albertfong/status/1602440085974257666

One cool thing about Mastadon is that it doesn’t fill me with murderous rage every time I open it

Shared by my Daughter
"I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgement and intentions are"

In response to "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear"

RT @longislandtonv@twitter.com

@bintalshamsa@twitter.com @TheRaDR@twitter.com Absolutely. I often remind people that there's a reason that particularly on the East Coast major cities had ethnic neighborhoods, Jewish Irish Polish etc. All of those people were not considered white until their utility was needed from WASPs in power. Only then were they White.

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/longislandtonv/status/1600597865499197440

Yup.

Watch till the end.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRVeMGWJ/

Man, fuck ‘grind culture’ and everybody who glamorizes it.

People need to stop putting value on working so hard they destroy their brains, their bodies, and their relationships.

Just do what you have to do to enjoy what little time you have in this world.

A good holiday reminder that when you see someone stealing food, no you didn’t.

There are a lot of problems with an approach to AI centered on using language to interact with humans. Firstly, language is absolutely great at building consensus and persuading people. That seems to be what it excels at. Language allows lying and insincerity. Language is pretty awful at logic. It is bad at sharing facts (e.g. describe a face so that someone else can recognise it). See: Language vs Reality, by NJ Enfield.

Secondly, the entire field is terrible. See: Your computer is on fire, by Thomas Mullaney et al.

https://mastodon.social/@intelwire/109457359779504693

The members of a Christian Nationalist movement are disgusted that a rising star within the Christian Nationalist movement wrote a bunch of things that were definitely anti-Christian.🤔

Which boggles my mind b/c by definition, a "Christian Nationalist Movement" is entirely anti-Christian.🙄

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/former-christian-school-headmaster-scrambling-to-defend-ugly-racist-twitter-account-report/ar-AA14T1PA?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=521b07209d5246afbd661114a1576958

OH! That explains a lot! #Autism

At some point, y'all are going to have to accept that the problem is not Ye, or Nick Fuentes, or Richard Spencer, or Tr*mp, or Elon, or DeDesantis, or Stephen Miller, or any of the n*zis, fascists, racists, or white supremacists.

The problem is the fact that you all *repeatedly* give these worst elements of society an outsized platform to speak on. Every element of US politics and society, from the electoral college to "rules of civility," are designed to give them more voice than Black folk.🤷🏿‍♂️

RT @get_soled@twitter.com

Crazy how accurate this tweet became @zackfox@twitter.com https://twitter.com/rexchapman/status/1598371503652933647

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/get_soled/status/1598381834416623616

@PadreSJ I typically have seen over my life the people who pound the table the loudest against XYZ are typically XYZ.

@GeePawHill I once worked on a web application project where we maintained a `humans.txt` file. https://humanstxt.org

Militant decency.

#Gnu #TerryPratchett

Weeks the median male worker needed to work to afford a year's worth of major expenses (house, a car, health care and education) for a family of four in

1985: 30 weeks (out of 52)
2018: 53 weeks (out of 52)

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/02/the-cost-of-thriving/