sidereal

@sidereal@kolektiva.social

Hi! Freelance union organizer, cybernetician, thalassophile, bicycle rider.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

sidereal, to random

Apparently during the 1997 #UPS #strike kids would ride their bikes around town looking for #scab drivers, then get in front of them and go really really slowly. Just something to think about

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

When I tell you that police are not designed to do what you think they're designed to do, you don't believe me.

81 kids, zip tied for hours, until some peed themselves.

While in other parts of the city, car break-ins happened.🤡

Later, you'll ask me why they don't trust cops.

https://www.tiktok.com/

sidereal,

@mekkaokereke When I was a teenager this one time I overheard a bunch of pigs in public. There was a big protest coming up. They were bragging about how they were excited to get hazard pay to "beat up hippies."

I will [never] trust any cops after that. The fact that these guys knew they were safe saying stuff like that in public tells me everything I need to know. #defund #disarm #disband

sidereal, to random

"Cybernetics is now seen as having to do with artificial intelligence or something, it's boring as hell." -- Stafford Beer in 1994 (for real!)

sidereal, to random

So NYC's population has gone down by 7% since the beginning of 2020 (mostly due to people moving, but also covid deaths) but those apartments are still there, right?

¿So how are there still houseless people in NYC?

¿Are there not a shitting ton of empty apartments everywhere?

These are rhetorical questions you know there already fucking were

cypnk, to random
@cypnk@mastodon.social avatar

Privacy booths have a lot of untapped potential, being wasted in offices (because corporate)

They belong in busy areas, in public. Have a sound-isolated getaway with a bench seat and small table

Maybe like one of these (just have a door with a vertical window to show occupancy)

Interior side view of the privacy booth
Overhead view showing the interior layout of the privacy booth. A few personal items like notebook, pen, and mobile device on the table.

sidereal,

@cypnk I think all the time how we got rid of phone booths because we didn't need payphones anymore. But we didn't actually get rid of the need to have a relatively private phone conversation in public. We could have left the booths and just let people talk in them on their cell phones

mekkaokereke, (edited ) to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

🤔 and meteorologists only please:

If hurricanes are fueled by ocean heat...

And this is the hottest year on record by far...

And the oceans are heating up faster than any of us expected...

Does that mean that we're about to have the worst hurricane season in history? Are we likely to see the biggest storm ever at some point this year?

Or does the variance within years make that unlikely? Is there some feedback that makes it hard for storms to get bigger than cat 5?

sidereal,

@mekkaokereke Texted a bud of mine who works in that field but won't join Mastodon (I'm trying, lol). Asked "Are higher ocean temps going to mean a worse hurricane season" He said:

"Most likely. More thermal energy -> stronger weather events is a general rule of thumb

Oceanic evaporation is absolutely a function of equatorial water temperature and as my advisor put it 'more energy means more mixing'"

HeavenlyPossum, to anarchism

When people find out I’m an anarchist, a question I frequently get is “how would people with chronic illnesses like diabetes access treatment under anarchism?”

There are a lot of unspoken assumptions packed into that question that I thought I’d explore a bit.

The first is, of course, that people with chronic illnesses can access treatment in the context of capitalist modernity. Not everyone can! Many people in the world of states and capital suffer and die from lack of access to treatment.

Not because the treatment is unavailable, but because access is mediated through capitalist gatekeeping. People, today, right now, in allegedly rich countries, die because they cannot afford insulin. For them, the question of “but how would we access insulin under anarchism” is moot. Many others access it only at the cost of medical debt and other forms of indenture.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/rise-patients-dying-rationing-insulin-u-n-tries-new-solution-n1083816

#capitalism #anarchism #diabetes #diabetic #disability #disabled #ableism #chronicillness

1/7

sidereal,

@HeavenlyPossum Sometimes it feels like 80% of all criticisms of anarchism boil down to "but who will take care of all these people that we currently make no effort to take care of?"

sidereal, to legal

Is there an #author you want to #support, but you don't have spare cash to buy their #book ?

Request a copy from your #local #library I didn't know you could do this for years. Some libraries call it "suggest a title." There's no guarantee they'll get it, but in my experience they often do. The more people who request a title, the more likely they are to pick it up. Authors get royalties from this! 🤝

Adam_Cadmon1, to random
@Adam_Cadmon1@mastodon.online avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    sidereal,

    @kkarhan @linuxduck @Adam_Cadmon1 This was basically what my old boss said to me when I worked at a liquor store.

    We made zero attempt to stop shoplifting and it also wasn't really a problem.

    Sometimes a bottle or two would go missing from the shelf but like. Not more than we would typically break while restocking or moving things around in the cellar. I'm 90% sure it was my coworkers anyway and not the general public

    sidereal,

    @kkarhan @linuxduck @Adam_Cadmon1 Eventually the owners got sick of the few bottles that were going missing. We got cameras. Turned out all the "shoplifting" wasn't even my coworkers, it was just my bosses' poor bookkeeping skills. They were forgetting to update the floor numbers in their spreadsheets so it looked like bottles were going missing on paper, when those bottles were actually just being sold.

    Whenever I hear business owners complaining about shoplifting I think about this.

    feoh, to accessibility

    Partially blind guy here with an PSA:

    I'm seing a trend away from "Text Size" sliders or old fashioned font dialogs and towards a few set choices "Default", "Large","Larger", etc.

    This is a HUGE step backwards. Your 'larger' is never large enough for my crazy busted eyeballs when I'm using my 34" monitor.

    If you must do this, please be sure to add "Largest" and even "ZOMG ARE YOU SERIOUS LARGE" options. Some of us REALLY need them, even if it seems insane to you.

    sidereal,

    @lilo @feoh As a person without vision issues, I use this feature often when connecting my laptop to a projector while making a presentation. Being able to enlarge just the font size without breaking the layout of, say, a wikipedia page, can make it easily readable to an entire auditorium. More flexibility/granularity and CLARITY with font size outputs is good because as a web dev one never has any idea what kind of a display someone is connecting or broadcasting to.

    sidereal, to drama

    The current #Kolektiva #Drama is a perfect example of why I tried for years to convince people in the #IWW that #Volunteerism is a #Bourgeois #Fetish and paying people to do difficult/necessary work is a good thing, actually, and can encourage accountability without concentrating power (while also allowing the activist community to function more independently from the capitalists)

    but maybe that is just a series of hot takes, IDK

    sidereal, to random

    I don't like seeing people on fedi saying that liking posts doesn't do anything. Maybe I'm shallow but I like it when people like my posts...

    sidereal, to random

    Holy shit the US Navy basically had a kill on sight policy for orcas until the 60's

    "As an indication of the intensity of shooting that occurred until fairly recently, about 25% of the orcas captured in Puget Sound for aquariums through 1970 bore bullet scars. The U.S. Navy claimed to have deliberately killed hundreds of orcas in Icelandic waters in 1956 with machine guns, rockets, and depth charges."

    "Between 1954 and 1997, Japan took 1,178 orcas and Norway took 987." Wikipedia

    sidereal, to random

    The CEO of Reddit said, “These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free.”

    Couldn't we turn this on its head, though? People were providing content to reddit (posts, comments, up/downvotes, and moderation) for free. Now reddit is turning around and trying to "sell" that content back to people with ads, in an interface that is frankly lackluster. And the CEO is mad that people are cutting off the free content hose.

    mekkaokereke, to random
    @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

    Juneteenth (June 19th) is not a "holiday celebrating when news of the end of slavery finally reached Texas." No. Just no. Y'all make it sound like network latency! Like we were playing Fortnite, and all the Black players were lagging.🤡

    Juneteenth is when the racist state of Texas took another very public L. Texas did everything it could to keep slavery going as long as possible. They gave up land to Oklahoma, so they could be below the slavery line. The Alamo was a victory for abolitionists.

    sidereal,

    @mekkaokereke I think about stuff like this when racists say stupid stuff like "everyone was racist back then!"

    helenczerski, to climate

    I keep thinking back to this Microlino at Fully Charged Live. Reusable water bottles became acceptable, being vegan is now cool, and so is wearing vintage clothes. So who is going to step up to the critical task of making small cars fashionable? The trend towards giant SUVs is ludicrous, incredibly wasteful and dangerous, and bad for our cities. If you must use a car, it should be as small as possible. Where are the micro-car visionaries/influencers? WE NEED YOU. #cars #SUV #climate

    sidereal,

    @helenczerski Japan has a simple, elegant solution: no free parking anywhere. There is no street parking in the whole country, and before you can buy a car, you have to get a certificate showing you actually have a place to park it at your home/apartment building. This incentivizes small cars because people want their parking space to take up as little area as possible, and discourages car use in general since you have to pay for parking everywhere you go.

    mekkaokereke, to random
    @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

    Happy !

    I'm still not talking about Black history. I'm still talking about white US history.

    Q: Why do Black kids not do well in school? Is it because their dads are uninvolved and uncaring parents? Bill Cosby and Herschel Walker told me that, and they are good and wise men that we should listen to! It's Black dads' fault! Boo Black men!

    A: No. Black kids only do poorly in school in extremely racist countries.

    sidereal,

    @jmkoni @mekkaokereke When I was in high school things were so obviously de facto segregated using the "advanced" or "gifted" classes. The school my friend went to was four stories. Two stories were the "gifted" classes, almost 100% White and Asian. The other two were the "regular" classes almost 100% Black and Latinx. It was basically two totally different schools stacked one on top of the other.

    This was Seattle in the mid-00's. I remember being surprised it was so blatant

    sidereal,

    @jmkoni @mekkaokereke Meanwhile people in Seattle congratulate themselves on how much more enlightened we are than "the south" while perpetuating the exact same shit.

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