sidereal

@sidereal@kolektiva.social

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

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steven, to random

Did you know there's no Unicode code point for a space that matches the width of an emoji?

Unicode has a bunch of space characters, but the size of emoji characters is defined differently so that even the full-width space character " " will cause inconsistent alignment in different fonts.

🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌
🦌 🦌
🦌 🦌
🦌 🦌
🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66496671/is-there-a-blank-unicode-character-matching-emoji-width

sidereal,

@steven That's odd, seems like an oversight. You'd think they would have like an invisible emoji spacer character. This is like the same reason as why it took people so long to invent zero

sidereal, to random

There's a certain irony in having to pay for a book about the Lumpenproletariat because I can't find a pirated copy of it anywhere. Feels wrong

sidereal, to random

Most progress has always happened outside of the copyright/patent paradigm

sidereal,

Intellectual property was never intended to support progress, and it was never intended to enrich creators/inventors.

It was created so that your employer could clarify that thinking you did while on the clock is for THEM and not you. They profit off of it, not you. Intellectual property is intellectual theft.

If you are self employed you can sometimes take advantage of this system, but it was not designed for self employed people.

sidereal,

I know a lot of people who have their names on patents. But it's meaningless, because they invented the things while they were at work. So their employers own the patents.

sidereal,

@HappyHeathen Good for you TBH. That's just asinine.

johncarlosbaez, (edited ) to random
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Vancouver may soon see a dramatic addition. It's called Sen̓áḵw, and it consists of 11 tall towers holding 6,000 apartments. It’s being built by the Squamish First Nation. Since it's on land they own, they don't have to follow Vancouver’s zoning rules. And they've chosen to build bigger, denser and taller than anywhere else in Canada.

Predictably, this rubs against a widespread belief that the Squamish, as an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast, are living fossils with a duty to embody a romantic vision of life before Europeans came here:

City councillor Colleen Hardwick said “How do you reconcile Indigenous ways of being with 18-storey high-rises?” And Gordon Price, a Vancouver urban planner and a former city councillor, said “When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building.”

Neither of these people are members of the Squamish First Nation. Sen̓áḵw existed as a city of cedar longhouses long before Vancouver was built. Its Squamish residents saw their land carved up for railways. Then their houses were burnt down, and they were loaded onto a barge and shipped away. Now they're back.

Much of my text was paraphrased from this article by Michelle Cyca, which has more cool pictures:

https://macleans.ca/society/sen%cc%93a%e1%b8%b5w-vancouver/

sidereal,

@johncarlosbaez These city councillors are hella racist. Do the white people live like it's the colonial period? This kind of double standard makes me mad.

hazelweakly, to random
@hazelweakly@hachyderm.io avatar

Core competencies are something I think about a lot. I love to dig into what makes companies or ecosystems or social groups tick. Especially when that core competency enables what they do:

McDonald's, for example, is a real estate company that happens to make burgers.

Walmart is a shipping logistics company that also sells things.

What other examples can you think of where the core competency of the company is such that the "thing" a company does falls out naturally as a consequence?

sidereal,

@hazelweakly I'm pretty sure Amazon makes far, far, faaar more money off of selling server space than they do off of retail. The retail store basically exists as a vestigial PR thing

polpo, to random
@polpo@bitbang.social avatar

The "Book386" (a Hand386 in the Book8088 case) that I've long wanted was just released (called the Pocket 386)! https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805356267711.html

sidereal,

@cstross @vga256 @polpo That's actually a great name for a laptop. Classy

timberwraith, to random
@timberwraith@mastodon.social avatar

I want to make clear that I do not buy the notion that the fascism we see is just politicians manipulating the polity by distracting them with fear and bigotry.

I know these people. I was one of them when I was growing up.

The evil was there, at their core, waiting to be accessed, and it was passed from one generation to the next via community conformity and social training.

They are as culpable as the politicians who manipulate them.

sidereal,

@blogdiva @timberwraith I agree with what Liza is saying here. Calling yourself a leftist and having a bunch of the right pins/swag is not the same thing as actually being a leftist.

Like this isn't a no true Scotsman thing. This is like. A false consciousness thing. White people who show up for the vibes but don't engage in political education are not "doing" leftism when they're making excuses for bigotry. That's why it (rightfully) irritates us.

ampersine, to random
@ampersine@mastodon.online avatar

This is why you don't play footsie with fascists!

Ronna Romney is, thankfully, gone from NBC. But details of her contract are leaking out. It turns out MSNBC prez Rashida Jones was directly involved in recruiting and hiring Ronna, and executives had indeed intended for her to appear on MSNBC in addition to NBC -- even agreeing to pay her extra for it.

Now, Ronna is gearing up to sue NBC for breach of contract.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/27/ronna-mcdaniel-nbc-msnbc-contract/

#RonnaRomneyMcDaniel #NBCNews #NBC #MSNBC #fascism

sidereal,

@hannu_ikonen @ampersine Hahaha the other day I was like whoa, her career went in a different direction. Then I realized there is probably just more than one person named Rashida Jones

sidereal, to random

Joe Lieberman personified everything that is wrong with the Democrats as a party. His actions contributed to making this country profoundly worse.

cam, to random
@cam@hachyderm.io avatar

Waiting to see a job description like

“Are you ready to take your time and get it right in the slow paced world of XYZ?”

sidereal,

@cam "Are you ready to cultivate mutual prosperity & mental/physical health in a noncompetitive, friendly environment?"

skinnylatte, to random
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

My wife grew up in France and she loves telling her family and friends ‘did you know I had to pay money to apply to university’ and ‘did you know I have to pay money to graduate’ and almost all of them are ready to flip tables for her

sidereal,

@skinnylatte This was kinda something I always took for granted about living in the USA until I got a bit older and learned it wasn't "normal." Seems like many other countries make it much more difficult to go back to school as an adult than we do. Maybe it's because of the legacy of GI loans/college education as a veteran's benefit? But yeah some countries it's like, if you don't go to university straight out of secondary school, that's it. That was your chance

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

"You'd expect this from Joe Scarborough he's a far left opinion commentator."

-Fox Anchor

Joe Scarborough served as a Republican in the FL house. And ... as a member of the far left I'm deeply insulted. As I think Joe would be too. We are in crazy town.

"far left"

sidereal,

@futurebird @alloydflanagan @hazelnot This is why I've been saying for years now that the Democrats aren't gaining anything by attempting to meet the Republicans halfway on any issue.

They scream and call Biden a communist while he busts the rail workers' unions. It's absurd. Biden could try to pass actual communist policies, and he would apparently get the exact same amount of pushback. So why not? What is he getting out of "cooperating" with people who won't cooperate back?

sidereal,

@futurebird @alloydflanagan @hazelnot They've been screaming for years about how Biden isn't securing the border enough and Biden's response is to attempt to look tougher on the border rather than say "maybe I should try to appeal to the voters on my side instead of the voters on the other side"

I actually think Republicans would respect Democrats more if they were less willing to compromise. And it just doesn't make sense to compromise on some things, anyway.

sidereal,

@futurebird @alloydflanagan @hazelnot Yes, and I'm saying right now I think the political reality is, centrism is not going to work anyway and so should be abandoned (at least temporarily) even under its own principles/logic. But you're right that utilitarianism/effective governance is clearly not the goal here.

sidereal,

@futurebird @jakemiller @alloydflanagan @hazelnot This is why I was glad that Biden didn't run in 2016 and was so irritated that he did run in 2020. Biden was a conservative compromise candidate... in 2008. It's not like his politics have gotten better since then.

I don't think Biden is going to stop American fascism. I worry he's just making it more palatable for democrats.

sidereal, to random

Martin Scorsese's advice to new filmmakers: "Make your own industry."

There's a consistent pattern where whenever young people are like "hey it seems like you completely ruined the economy for short term gains" the people who are responsible are like "Nahhh what if you just invent something completely new?"

No need for mentorship, no need to prepare things for the next generation. Just tell them to invent something completely new with no context, experience, or resources. Reasonable.

sidereal,

Literally the people who invented cinema did not make their own industry. They expanded opportunities within the theater industry by using new technology to achieve new levels of recursivity. To me, this is a meaningless statement from a man not particularly interested in the future of films.

sidereal,

@ophiocephalic I'm just sick of people with lots of money telling folks "IDK, figure it out" and that being framed as visionary advice

sidereal,

@ophiocephalic I think you're interpreting what he said in a pretty charitable way. Of course I agree that a new kind of film/media industry should be developed by workers, but IDK if Mr. Scorsese is the guy to do that. Maybe I'm wrong though and just being too cynical.

Adam_Cadmon1, to random
@Adam_Cadmon1@mastodon.online avatar

A crisis response team but instead of showing up and shooting anything that moves, they show up at a moments notice with food, medicine and first aid.

sidereal,

@Adam_Cadmon1 Me and some buddies used to just make a bunch of sandwiches and walk around town giving them out to whoever wanted them. I should start doing that again, it was fun

sidereal,

@inthehands @Adam_Cadmon1 Yeah, I knew some people who got an outdoor pizza oven during the 2020 uprising and kept doing weekly free pizza cookouts for a looong time afterwards (for all I know, they could still be doing it)

sidereal,

@saltphoenix @dan613 @Adam_Cadmon1 JFC. This is why some cultures don't allow talking at the dinner table at all

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