New server means a new #introduction
Hi, I am a design executive in Europe who started as a backend developer in Missouri.
My life has taken many turns, but I’ve always benefited from the advantage of being a white cishet male who is stereotyped as credible. Hopefully, I leave this planet more equitable than I found it.
I strive to apply critical analysis to everything yet also find solidarity with everyone.
While I value “strong opinions, weakly held”, I do indulge in strongly-held opinions on a few issues. I’ll thread them here so you can make an informed decision on whether to follow or block me:
#onthisday 107 years ago, thousands of white workers vented the rage of their economic oppression by rioting and murdering their Black fellow citizens of East St. Louis.
The city has never recovered, but as a white child of the region I was taught to see the dismal state of the east side as a symbol of Black failure. This local civil war of 1917 was never even mentioned.
@burningbird I'm so glad to see you're still active online. I have fond memories of blog-back-and-forth discussions of web standards with you and the likes of @simon and Clay Shirky … 20 years ago. 👴🏻
These boys and their ilk across cultures are why we can’t live in peace. Humanity needs to hold ourselves to a higher standard of civilization than this shit.
https://mastodon.social/users/burningbird/statuses/112509979549484728
I have no privileged knowledge, but suspect this work from Microsoft is a good analog for how we will see Apple approaching AI. Small models trained on focused, curated data: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/microsofts-phi-3-shows-the-surprising-power-of-small-locally-run-ai-language-models/
"As long as it takes," for Ukraine to be destroyed?
This morning, russian troops fired 15 missiles at Kharkiv and the Kharkiv Oblast, killing seven civilians and injuring 16. The missiles targeted civilian infrastructure, including a railroad facility and a printing house.
Ukraine's second-largest city is being reduced to rubble for a third year, while Ukraine is unable to defend it because of a ban on the use of Western weapons to strike missile launchers on russia’s territory
📹place_kharkiv
While I value “strong opinions, weakly held”, I do indulge in strongly-held opinions on a few issues. I’ll thread them here so you can make an informed decision on whether to follow or block me:
Seriously pissed about this. Offering $10,000 in seed funding for a Deviant Art alternative built on ActivityPub. Q&A below or email your pitch to info@moth.social. https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/deviantart-what-happened-ai-decline-lawsuit-stability.html
@calmeilles @gsuberland just because I'm pedantic about citations: that's @scottjenson
Effective tax rates before and after the Trump tax law:
Verizon
Before: 21%
After: 8%
Walmart
Before: 31%
After: 17%
AT&T
Before: 13%
After: 3%
Walt Disney
Before: 26%
After: 8%
FedEx
Before: 18%
After: 1%
This is what a corporate giveaway looks like.
Soon, I get to cast my first vote for EU parliment.
I am surprised to learn on Stemwijzer that @volteuropa@threads.net and @D66 (!) rank closer to my views on EU issues than @PartijvoordeDieren, @groenlinks@threads.net, or @Piratenpartij@social.globalpirates.net.
They're all close enough, though, that I'm tempted to choose based on their fediverse presence.
Good explainer about Iran’s government that may help inoculate us against the inevitable hot takes to come:
https://mastodon.social/users/jricole/statuses/112471889309810365
Our commitment to the fediverse is here to stay.
Today, we launched our new Mastodon instance. It will ensure a privacy-focused space to engage with and get the latest from our Commissioners, departments, and the official voices of the Commission.
We want to thank @Mastodon for stewarding us and helping us make this possible.
Fostering European digital players is vital to our strategy for a stronger #DigitalEU.
This is a unique opportunity to grow the community even more. Let's get there!
I'm still not entirely sure how *not* voting for Biden and letting Trump get elected is going to lead to fewer dead Palestinians.
The raw deal is that not voting for Biden means you're going to be complicit in killing *more* Palestinians. Oh and also all your LGBTQ+ friends you keep random generating about are also going to get royally fucked. Oh and all the Ukrainians and Baltic people Putin will genocide under Trump.
Sucks to be an American, life is hard, your system sucks, etc. etc., we know. Now just go out and vote for the slightly less bad royal asshole for the good of the rest of the world, you privileged ass.
I find it weird that newspapers characterize students as being “pro-Palestinian” as opposed to anti whatever you call this.
The flip side to “Europeans are lazy and don’t work hard” is that we’re able to maintain a modern society with a high standard of living while still being able to spend time with our families. And why kill yourself through overwork when most of the rewards go to somebody else, anyway?
I’m catching up on US political news regarding Kristi Noem. It betrays my partisanship in the dog-vs-cat culture war that I am far more sad about her goat.
A brave #Ukrainian girl cuddles and consoles her #cat Kasper during a missile attack by genocidal russians. She tells her cat, "Don't be afraid, I'll protect you."
Russians launch dozens of missiles, bombs and drones upon civilians every day, typically while they are sleeping but also during the day.
This genocidal terror kills thousands and takes a huge psychological toll.
When will the democratic world stop endless Russian horror?
All the pearl-clutching exclamations “OMG the Rabbit R1 is just a computer running Android and using cloud services” is weird. Like, what did you think it was? A pocket-sized quantum computer? A living neural net grown from manipulated bunny DNA?
I've been slow to adopt the vocabulary of "genocide" to describe Netanyahu’s so-called war, But between the mass graves at Nasser, Jabalia refugee camp strikes, systematic destruction of living space by 8219 Commando, the flour massacre, and revelations about Lavender, I'm ready.
It's time to call this a genocide. Perhaps named after Ben-Gurion.
