varx - social alt @varx@cybre.space

it's happening again

This piece on citizen's assemblies is fascinating: https://newint.org/features/2021/02/08/defibrillating-democracy

Citizen's assemblies are described as groups of ~100 people put together to be representative of the diversity of a particular place (city, country, etc.), which are brought together to discuss a difficult or contentious issue.

@cidney

When I hear people loudly agreeing with each other about the evils of a particular person, group, or institution, I think one of my knee-jerk reactions is "who exactly are you all fighting against?"

What I realized during the latest cycle of RMS-related drama is that there are actually several possible answers to that question.

1) Everyone is blowing off steam following engagement on a different forum where ther are people loudly engaging in the opposite (and often more sinister) argument. The situation only looks like bashing and scapegoating because I'm not on the other forum and so don't see the other side.

2) In a context like Mastodon or Twitter, the other side of the argument is actively raging but outside of my social horizons, and I'm literally only seeing one side of an active argument.

3) What I'm seeing really is bashing and scapegoating.

There are probably other possibilities too, and I imagine the most likely answer is really some combination of all of the above.

It’s funny how Y2K is remembered as an overblown hoax and not as “for fucking once we saw a problem coming in advance, actually dedicated sufficient time and resources to solving it, and a crisis was averted before it happened.” Makes me wonder how people would think of Covid if we had handled it well.

food $200
bulwarks against the ravages of time, made manifest by the desert sand encroaching on my works and empire $150
plinth durability research $6000
utility $150

someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. nothing beside remains

im trying to get youtube to Algorithm the fuck out of this video that was posted in 2011 and has 500 views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-dWL5ehhoc

imagine a password field that ONLY allowed paste

I've run a big text adventure for thirteen years (at one point briefly it was the biggest text adventure!) and if there's one thing I've about managing a big online community in that time that I'd choose to pass on as a warning to others, it's this: remove the people who don't like being there.

Some folks just don't like the place, or they liked it once and they don't anymore, and that's fine.

You'd think they'd just go somewhere else, and most do, but some don't, and those folks are AWFUL.

This is fine.

https://apnews.com/article/legislature-legislation-local-governments-nevada-economy-2fa79128a7bf41073c1e9102e8a0e5f0

The 6yo was talking to a piece of paper, “Into the recycle you go,” then extremely cheerily, “Make new friennnnds!”

Why "data visualization engineer" and not "Dashboard Professional"?

Testing some png files on the #M5Paper, using the source material of choice in this corner of the fediverse.

It'll obviously never be anyone's multimedia player of choice unless they really like watching movies in a halting, dithered, almost rotoscoped, moving comic book style format.

so, if you need me, you know where I'll be for the next hour and a half: optimizing for that use case.

HOME BUYER: jesus christ houses are expensive
REAL ESTATE BROKER: look it's in the fucking job title