Kevin C. @kcoram@librem.one

@BjornToftMadsen when I’ve had calls from my bank I always ask for a name, then tell them I’m going to ring them back from the support number on their website. General confusion from the bank, but so far it’s worked every time. Luckily I’ve not yet had a fraudulent call.

I ordered a gorgeous #lateart of #peppercarrot from @davidrevoy at Reissue Cafe in Tokyo.

It also felt cool that I was probably one of the only customers asking to reproduce a drawing they were formally allowed to use thanks to #CreativeCommons ❤️

Ready to feel ancient? Wil Wheaton is older now (51) than Patrick Stewart was when TNG premiered (47).

I'm going to do some science outreach in my son's primary school, and I've received the most wonderful advice:

'when they start speaking, first ask them if it's a story or a question. if it's a story, make sure to cut them off early or they'll talk forever.'

*it works exactly the same with senior academics after presentations*

If you actually want people to read long-form stuff you write, don’t put it on Medium. Just don’t.

There’s a whole bunch of alternatives, like these WriteFreely instances that are part of the Fediverse (the network that Mastodon also in a part of)

https://writefreely.org/instances

There’s also WordPress.com which has a pretty good free tier. https://wordpress.com/

There’s GitHub Pages which works pretty well too, if you don’t mind a little technical involvement. https://docs.github.com/en/pages/quickstart

There’s tons of affordable paid providers too. You get a lot for the cost of one bubble tea per month.

And of course there’s the option to run your own site, which is probably easier and cheaper than you think. It’s worth giving it some thought.

But whatever you do: definitely keep a copy of your writing in a place you control, even if it’s just a bunch of text files. You never known when or for what you’ll need it.

#Writing

I know, it’s just a “Someone Is Wrong On The Internet” piece, but that NYTimes piece about Why Signal Is Bad And Privacy Is Bad needs to be refuted in a compact explainer, so here’s mine: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/12/29/Privacy-is-OK

Shoutout to all the #activityPub developers that are dealing with this huge influx of people!

I have the unique privilege of running the only non-mastodon instance (https://pixelfed.social) among the top 20 most popular #fediverse instances.

Doing my best to keep it running smoothly, and also ship bug fixes, new features and the mobile apps 😅

With everything that has been going on with the influx of Twitter users pouring into @fosstodon , it got me thinking more about supporting the open source "things" that I value...

"Do You Have an Extra $10?"

https://bt.ht/$10/

#opensource #fosstodon #support

A gentle reminder to folks who are new to Mastodon. In solidarity with those in the disabled community who rely on screen readers, we ask that you:

* Add alt text/image descriptions when you post media
* Capitalize the first letter of every word in a hashtag #LikeThis

#StrongerTogether #Accessibility #Disability #Solidarity

Simply the absolute best advice. The next time someone asks me how they can become a better writer – and a better person! – I'm going to show them this letter.
---
RT @MichaelWarbur17
In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice.

Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond.

His reply was a doozy.
https://twitter.com/MichaelWarbur17/status/1561691595505864705

New article on my blog: "How proprietary social-medias are shaping the future of Pepper&Carrot"

https://www.davidrevoy.com/article904/how-proprietary-social-medias-are-shaping-the-future-of-peppercarrot

I trained Ukrainians to fight Russia. I’ve never seen a war like this. - https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/03/18/ukraine-militia-volunteer/ illuminating piece about the reality on the ground - and the importance of training #UkraineUnderAttack

@patdavid I would highly recommend looking at todo.txt. It's a protocol for saving GTD or similar project and time management todo lists in plain text files.

On my phone I use simpletask as a front end for my todo.txt file. On my computer I use my own program to manipulate the todo.txt file. Using plain text files means u can write scripts quickly to grep or >> the file.

I wrote a blog post on this recently if you're interested?
https://blog.gregoryjay.co.uk/blogs/blog.php?blog=GTD

Instant Messaging Apps: How Private Are They & What Alternatives Are There? - https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/delta-chat-and-the-future-of-messaging-apps/ good question... #pgp

The US Copyright Office is inviting comments on whether to introduce a requirement that all online services must filter all communications by users accused of copyright infringement.

This has major implications for not only censorship but it would cement tech and media giants' dominance thus killing smaller websites in the process.

Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic) makes the case into why creators and creators’ groups should oppose this: https://onezero.medium.com/nonstandard-measures-cf47c67e8f05
https://archive.fo/lqdke

This is a pretty cool project
https://github.com/Y2Z/monolith

> A data hoarder’s dream come true: bundle any web page into a single HTML file. You can finally replace that gazillion of open tabs with a gazillion of .html files stored somewhere on your precious little drive.

Escape Simulator sees over 600 rooms made by players https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/11/escape-simulator-sees-over-600-rooms-made-by-players #OnlineCo-op #IndieGame #Puzzle #Steam

Good read: No, your cryptocurrency cannot work.

Existing blockchain implementations create an incentive structure that very closely resembles a pyramid scheme and benefits the most privileged members the most. If an alternative to this is ever created (I’d like to see an alternative very much), it will likely be published in the form of an academic pdf that doesn’t want your money.

Just came across a fascinating #indie #game "Nowhere" in #crowdfunding by #Duangle games (one half of which is @sylvia_ritter here on Masto!).

It's largely procedural with each life played as an individual creature in the same organic, #scifi society, so your actions in one life will have consequences on all your future lives. This is a fascinating idea from a perspective of building empathy and society level thinking.

Take a look at:
https://www.duangle.com/nowhere

Please share more Sylvia!

I am happy to announce you the release of ox-activity-streams, which is a orgmode publish back-end to export the files as activitystreams objects. It allows to interact with your publications from the fediverse and only requires static files on the server side.

https://buron.coffee/entity/ox_activity_streams

An example of the exported post is the top message of this thread. You can reply to it directly 😉

#emacs #orgmode #activitypub #blog #fediverse #activitystreams #linkeddata