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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 9th, 2023

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  • wtf kind of lame criticism of mastodon is this…there are constantly cute pictures of pets being posted on mastodon… and like anywhere else with humans these posts are very popular on mastodon.

    I would say these posts are MORE popular on mastodon because without an algorithm cute animal photos are going to stick out as popular even more.

    This is all nonsense anyways, Bluesky is considered “cooler” by techy types with a childlike awareness of history, politics and power because the tech is cooler when considered in the abstract.

    Coincidently none of these technical details have the capacity to make bluesky a truly open and free place otherwise those investors would sue bluesky for purposefully and willfully not pursuing profit for shareholders. This won’t stop certain types from pointing at pictures in the sand and reciting idle words thrown to the wind by the people in charge for now.

    Bluesky exists as a legal instrument of profit, all else about bluesky is malleable and changeable and will eventually be bulldozed or undermined in the pursuit of profit for shareholders.

    edit 2 this is a real human, and I was grumpy and while it was satisfying to point fingers it just makes me into the asshole so I removed that, but my broader point still stands






  • I think the delusion that fuels this insanity is western car companies understand the future is no longer defined by visions of the car but they can’t admit it. They can’t make cheap, reliable ev commuter cars because from their perspective that would be admitting the truth they can not accept to themselves.

    I don’t even think this has to do with money, surely there will be big markets in ev vehicles long into the future, rather it is about something deeper, it is about refusing to participate in any future that doesn’t unquestionably place cars at the center of it.

    To western car execs a simple, reliable compact electric commuter car isn’t a car, zero percent of them drive anything other than sports cars and massive trucks/suvs and they see one of the fundamental utilities of a car is to seperate oneself from the city of dirty working class people between your mansion and executive suite office (who would actually benefit most from said practical small electric commuter cars).


  • “What you think about them, they think about you”

    No, this is precisely the issue. Any leftist worth their salt can’t fucking stand conservatives and YET we will still protect their basic human rights and accept them into a collective society.

    Conservatives on the other hand are perpetrating violence every single day against leftists and minorities they LOUDLY do not accept into a collective society. They deny abortions for women who are on the verge of death, they advocate for draconian health care policy that massively raises the suicide rates of trans kids because they hate trans kids and they believe deep down in their racism with an unshakable fervor that makes their meager spiritual practice of christianity look sad and pathetic in comparison.

    It is far past the point of having a debate with rightwing conservatives, what is left is to intimidate them into shutting up, drowning out their voices and laughing at their tiny hateful visions of the universe.

    The social fabric of the US is being ripped apart by conservative white men because they can’t handle how scary using pronouns is and frankly the solution is to activate everybody else, not humor these people yet again with another discussion they are going to approach in a fundamentally disengenous way.


  • I’m sorry I am not trying to dispute the spirit of your respose but I have to disagree, freight trains are thousands of feet long and haul unbelievably large quantities of material, the idea that it is inefficient to have a human (really a pair of humans) oversee and be responsible for a machine that large is laughable honestly.

    …so is the idea that there is a genuine shortage of people willing to work as conductors, it is a convenient lie companies tell to rationalize why nobody wants to work for them because they pay shit and respect their employees so little that they won’t even give them unpaid time for necessary doctors appointments (see recent action of US train workers).

    This point is even more true for passenger trains.

    It is a massive responsibility we can afford to pay two humans to do it, a certain micro amount of inefficiency is ok.



  • the big appeal of BlueSky is the initialization of the interface. It defaults you to “Following” rather than “Discover” and isn’t jamming a ton of ads in your feed. There’s basically no algorithm. Its a very basic service, rather than an engineered mess. More akin to Facebook or Twitter from back in the '00s, before monetization ruined them.

    The big appeal of bluesky is that it is in the early stages of monetization that hinges on effectively enclosing a commons so that everybody chooses the product and everything else effectively dies off. The next stage will come, which is when the enshittification happens.

    Do we honestly believe there won’t be enshittification because the priorities of the current development in the near future is focused on benefiting users?

    …or to put it another way, do you set a mouse trap with food a mouse finds miserable to eat? Do you think that first bite of cheese accurately depicts the reality about to unfold?

    Here is some more food for thought, given the fact that large western social media corporations and the investors behind them have the equivalent power and cash of small nation states… why all of a sudden the interest now? If Bluesky is a genuine vision of the future why did all these prestigious, highly paid people with more power and R&D resources at their disposal than any of us could hope to ever have…show up AFTER the fediverse already did the R&D, created the vision and took the impossibly hard step of breaking ground and fighting up hill against the network effect and a generally dismissive tech press?