I have encountered more image descriptions on Mastodon in 24 hours than I have in Twitter in a couple of years. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating.
As a blind person, this means a lot to me. If you read this and you describe your images, thank you so, so, so much on behalf of all of us. If you don't, now you know you'll be helping random Internet strangers make sense of your posts by typing in a few more words than usual.
@caseynewton This is the number of followers I have on my French speaking Twitter account (@ EcoSceptique)
If I don’t have a viral tweet, I’m losing followers. It’s not that they unfollow me. It’s that they delete their account.
I track this number since 2017. Never seen something like this.
And if you’re wondering: it started at the end of October 2022
I don’t know how generalizable this dataset is. But it definitely adds credence that Twitter is, indeed, dying.
One of my favorite out of date technologies is the MP3 player. I have an iPod classic from 20 years ago, and a simple speaker and I use it every day. So good.
The other one I love is the Alphasmart Neo. I bought a second one just in case they get harder to get or mine breaks.
Deep in Florida, an ‘ecological disaster’ has been reversed—and wildlife is thriving.
20 years and $1 billion dollars later much of Florida’s Kissimmee River has been restored to its natural state. 40 square miles of wetlands have been reestablished and rehydrated. A milestone worth celebrating.
Anarchists, preservationists, protesters and parents - this is a fantastic history of how the Netherlands went from car culture to bike culture. It was no accident - it was an amazing, long, brilliant campaign.
The thing about Twitter is that it really lacks a lot of the features you'd expect from a true Mastodon replacement.
For example, there's no way to edit your toots (which they, confusingly call "tweets"—let's face it, it's a bit of a silly name that's difficult to take seriously).
"Tweets" can't be covered by a content warning. There's no way to let the poster know you like their tweet without also sharing it, and no bookmark feature.
There's no way to set up your own instance, and you're basically stuck on a single instance of Twitter. That means there's no community moderators you can reach out to to quickly resolve issues. Also, you can't de-federate instances with a lot of problematic content.
It also doesn't Integrate with other fediverse platforms, and I couldn't find the option to turn the ads off.
Really, Twitter has made a good start, but it will need to add a lot of additional features before it gets to the point where it becomes a true Mastodon replacement for most users.
Slowly but surely journalists are finding their way to the Fediverse. These tech & digital media reporters are already active on Mastodon:
@couts — Wired
@caseynewton — Platformer
@mimsical — WSJ
@pierce — The Verge
@drewharwell — Washington Post
@harrymccracken — Fast Company
@jank0 — Lowpass
@joannastern — WSJ
@jr — Computerworld
@mathewi — Columbia Journalism Review
@stshank — CNET
@taylorlorenz — Washington Post
@willoremus — Washington Post
#FollowFriday to these accounts from #PBS and #NPR, we are very glad you are here!
(and if i missed anyone add them in the comments and I'll add them!)
Local PBS stations:
NPR folks here:
@timkmak
@nellgreenfieldboyce
@casey
@eric
@shannonpareil
@steveinskeep
And PBS folks here:
@laurasanthanam
@philmeyer
@skrishna
@petertubbs
@Trailanderror
And in Germany, we welcome public broadcaster @NDR
& from Canada: cbcworld@botsin.space
🚨🚨New Working Paper🚨🚨
Check out our new working paper looking at teacher turnover, changes in teacher quality, and possible causes of turnover during the COVID-19 pandemic
https://edworkingpapers.com/ai23-757
At Opera we built MyOpera, a community site focused on serving the Opera community. It reached 35 million users and 35 million monthly visitors.
After I left Opera, MyOpera was dismantled and Opera went for Facebook and Twitter instead.
At @Vivaldi , we have built Vivaldi.net, with more than 1 million active accounts so far.
We have now made our own Vivaldi Social Mastodon server.
When you make your own server, you are more in control.
Are people learning?
Hey Fediverse, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is doing a large batch hire of data scientists to fill positions across the agency! If you want to work with some of the largest sets of healthcare data in the country, please apply! The position is GS-13 and remote-friendly. Announcement closes 4/14 or at 250 applications.
https://www.usajobs.gov/job/718410300
(If you're not a data scientist, it would be rad if you gave this a boost to find some awesome folks.)
Not sure I have any #EventPlanning friends on here but interested if you have written anything up about visiting #WashingtonDC for the first time (esp coming from international). e.g., "you will see homelessness and you don't need to be overly worried."
You folks were super enthusiastic about my posting more on Mastodon, so let's try this.
RT/boost and let's see if there's interest in a regular #Ukraine thread!
Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
For the last year, I've been tracking a notorious Russian unit known for its role in killing 100s of civilians.
This past month we published how we found them.
The new team in charge of the FTX bankruptcy have released their first interim report on the failures of control at FTX and related businesses.
It's 43 pages long, let's go through it 🧵
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65748821/1242/1/ftx-trading-ltd/
Heterogeneous treatment effects from The Onion's perspective.
https://www.theonion.com/researchers-clarify-health-warnings-against-too-much-ex-1850262542
i also think it's worth mentioning that like... i have thought specifically about stuff like a11y with my gay ipod. the whole reason it's got a bunch of side buttons instead of just touch is so that you can use it without fine motor control! or without needing to see the screen! there's a lot of product-ness that i haven't seen in existing solutions
Economist. Antitrust policy; industrial organization; history of economics