The USPS will start shipping free COVID-19 tests again. You can start placing orders next Monday, September 25
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Content warning: neurospicy, business, discrimination
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Just a reminder:
Mastodon != ActivityPub != Fediverse
It's been driving me up the wall how often people act like Mastodon is a synonym for both AP and Fedi.
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@raf@babka.social@shiri@foggyminds.com the actual thing I wanted to add but ap does not properly support is an tumblr-ask style thing. A post in wich user A sends a "dm" to user B asking one thing and user B answers publicly showing A's initial message.
Like it would require all fedi software to support this kind of stuff...
#Ther-more-I-think-on-it-the-more-I-can-think-on-a-hacky-solution-actually
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- Content warning: Adult Content
- Filtered word: nsfw
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This is totally a sub toot.
Please take care when posting using the @actuallyautistic and #autistic if you're not autistic.
You know how you're hyper aware of dog whistles about being trans, or white supremacy?
If you're not often in autistic spaces, you're probably *not* aware of abelist dogwhistles about autism.
Here are some:
Autism being a super power
Referring to using autism as an excuse
Insisting that others use "person first" language
Referring to functioning levels.
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Kinda what I'm thinking; the logistics and moderation (and managing balance without falling into the trap that US media has fallen into) is definitely the hard part.
Content warning: ?, ai stuff
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Just giving a shout out to Fediseer.com for an interesting project (and the gui project available at https://fediseer.lemmings.world
If you're an instance admin I think it's worth checking out, setting up, and bookmarking for your moderation toolkit.
I don't endorse any sort of automated blocking off of said lists, but I do endorse having a database you can reference when deciding whether to defederate an instance, especially if people have filled in proof links.
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tgirl johnny truant 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈 likes this.
Having a really low day... I could barely sleep last night, struggling with insomnia, ADHD, and pain.
Pain especially... it's finally starting to cool off a little and my chronic joint pain is through the roof, and I just got off a week of being sick with a cold.
I'm really depressed right now and feeling trapped. My car has been out of commission since February and my joint pain makes it hurt so much to walk places (and taking the bus still involves a significant amount of walking/standing)... so I've hardly left the house all year.
I hardly see anybody and I'm really lonely, if I didn't have my sibling living with me I don't know how I'd survive.
Please send some kind words to fight off the intrusive thoughts.
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ugh no car is the wooorst feeling. I feel you I have the ADHD and the insomnia it comes with and it's no joke.
Sending big old hugs and I hope the weather gives you a break soon.
I've been staving off the season change doldrums I can feel coming by buying a bunch of lava lamps, but I can't recommend my methods they are always ill-advised. 
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I'm pretty sure even AI supporters can agree we really need to institute some sort of laws around mandatory labeling of AI generated content.
#ai
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Signs that have sandals or boots, mugs or flasks
So deep in convoluted nuance no one can understand it, cis or trans
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Dear lord... I feel the need to sit people down and do a Copyright 101 class...
I just saw someone call Creative Commons a "type" of copyright...
Only half joking, if people would actually listen I'd do it in a heartbeat.
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- I will not mock people for not knowing any better, we don't teach this well and there are so many myths circling
New landing page text on my server, would love some feedback (this is the text shown at https://foggyminds.com when not logged in):
Welcome To Foggyminds!We have open registration!
We are a leftist instance aiming to just be a nice space to occupy on the fediverse. We welcome temporary exploratory accounts and small businesses.
We try to listen to minority voices. The admin is Disabled Jewish LGBTQIA, but tries to recognize that they still have white privilege. Please report any instances of bigotry, hate, or trolling, even if subtle, to our admin at shiri (at) foggyminds (dot) com. Especially if perpetrated by our admin.
You can view our public feed here and our blocklist as well as enabled addons are provided here. While we do not permit subtle bigotry on our instance we do not block other servers aggressively for it. We are more inclined to block problem accounts specifically unless it is endemic to the instance as we understand most users on that instance are likely blind to this. If this is unacceptable, we're more than happy to be a temporary place to help you find a safer instance.
Nazi's didn't just kill the Jews, we were just the biggest target. The other targets continued to get persecuted afterwards (LGBTQ people in concentration camps were taken straight to prisons after the war!)
But by god I will use Jewish-Privilege on the topic to break down misuse of Nazi threats (ie. misapplying the Nazi/Table quote).
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Reminded deeply today of the subtle insidious racism of leftists and liberals.
So many in our communities are prone to believe that they've gotten rid of their racism, and instead fuel it by demanding ideological purity and by ignoring inconvenient truths.
When a minority group says something you're doing is racist, take a minute to stop and ask yourself what you might not be seeing. And if you really can't find anything, ask for more information (but try to figure it out for yourself first, it's both polite and good exercise).
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The case in question here was people calling out anyone still using Twitter as a Nazi.
Take it from this Jew: Twitter is not the same thing as the table quote. It's a massive international platform with shitloads of social inertia. There are many many people who can't leave the platform without personal harm.
And many who did try to leave and come here? They got drove out by demands that they conform to the ideologies and culture here, subtle racism in the form of demanding that they abandon their cultural norms otherwise they'll be harassed until they leave.
So don't condemn someone for just using and being present on Twitter.
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@Runyan50 it sounds like you're saying this tongue and cheek, but it's pretty much nail on the head. Most of them that I've seen are pissed that we've taken this long to notice (Twitter has always been pretty bad).
As I understand it, it's a lot of community organizing efforts kind of stuff. And that sounds small, but we're talking things ranging from abortion care to political revolutions.
And these all need the people to work. Over here we have a lot of people who are opposed to platform growth and are hell bent on their cultural view of this space, so when they try to move those efforts here... they're too often met with intense hostility.
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@Runyan50 I unfortunately can only say in vague terms because I'm not a member of any of those communities.
I can say social inertia is a thing, it's the reason I'm still on facebook for instance. I would have never joined in the first place if it weren't for the social weight of the platform, and I hate it every single day for it.
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@Friendica Admins I'm curious for feedback about other admin's setups. I know the default choice is apache, but how many are like me running nginx + php-fpm?
I'm curious what tips and tricks people have figured out? Has anyone settled on a good stable caching config? (Last time I set up caching I tried to limit it to just static files and images, but it somehow cached some of the regular pages it seems wondering if maybe one of those css or javascript files is actually dynamic?)
As it stands my setup is two nginx webservers behind an nginx load balancer, both running php-fpm, a shared nfs media storage directory, memcached on the database server for php sessions.
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@Shiri Bailem I'm another single-user instance, but it's pretty responsive and snappy with Nginx/FPM. To be honest, I haven't configured PHP on Apache in quite some time, and I expect it would be net slower just because of how Apache functions.
It was much slower before I dealt with the activitypub-troll.cf issue (they were murdering my db), it runs quite well for my needs. Might do caching and/or db replication, more as a best practice than because I think anyone will ever sign up on my instance...
I've got a cron running a version of something @Hank G ☑️ suggested in an older thread, and a few instance blocks, that also improved response times by a noticeable margin.
I'm living dangerously on develop, though I haven't pulled in a few days since it's performing much better now.
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Been seeing the "Nazi Bar" analogy in regards to Twitter lately.
To recap: it's the suggestion that people remaining on Twitter are fascists or tolerating fascism for remaining much like those who visit a Nazi bar.
This is a privileged take and not a clean analogy. The bar is a non-vital space with plenty of competition, you don't have to drink, you don't have to go to that bar.
Twitter may not be as huge as Facebook and a little easier to move away from, but no place has really solidified itself as the place to go instead (despite what many think about Mastodon/Activity-Pub), and the communities still take time and effort to move.
On top of that, these places (yes FB included) have always been fascist leaning. It's just you finally hearing all the dog-whistles. So many of these communities were hearing the dog-whistles from the start but didn't have anywhere else to go, so they had to fight to establish themselves in what spaces they had.
Don't judge them for having difficulty moving and re-establishing in a new space when every space is a huge effort to claim. The fediverse isn't immune to racism and fascism, there's absolutely whole new fights to be had here against bigotry, especially the privileged neo-liberal sort.
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@odd_megan that's not doable for everyone, and also in regards to other spaces it's mostly transitional.
This wave is still pretty new as far as broad culture goes, many are waiting and looking to see where the space will be. They're not necessarily idling, they're building those spaces elsewhere but because you can be in two places at once online, they're still over in the Twitter spaces because it's still "the space" and they need to be there to get the necessary support and also to see where people go when they leave it.
It's crucially important to not judge marginalized groups based on the standards and experiences of unmarginalized (or differently marginalized) identities.
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@odd_megan Pikuach Nefesh is the one law of Judaism with no exceptions, it is in fact the number one exception to all other laws.
"Life is the highest commandment" - All Jewish law cedes to the health and wellbeing of people.
If leaving Twitter would cause someone harm, then they are permitted to stay on Twitter but this does not relieve them of seeking alternatives to eventually reach a point where they can leave Twitter with little to no harm.
also, Im sure the jewish community, out of all communities, has spent a lot of time thinking about fash, ones ethical obligations regarding protecting ones self and others from them, but im not familiar with it.
after thinking about it. i think this is a conversation i should back out of. I dont have sufficient knowlage expertice. its a tough question, and others have spent a lot more time on the issue than i have. sorry
@odd_megan It's okay, I get where you're coming from and it can be good to voice these discussions as it creates a space of learning, especially when you're willing to learn.
To clarify on Pikuach Nefesh what details are a little less obvious on a quick read:
* specific identifiable life is counter to arguments that some vague uncertain person might be harmed. Ie. it doesn't rule that you have to child proof a house that never expects to have children in it. It also doesn't cover vague potential life ("But if you do this you'd become infertile or could pass on genetic abnormalities to your future children!")
* life threatening isn't generally considered as "will cause death" but rather is interpreted typically as "lasting harm". For instance, losing a leg won't necessarily kill me... but if I would lose a leg following a commandment then Pikuach Nefesh kicks in. If giving food/money/shelter to those in need would risk my health and well being, then I can say no, but if it wouldn't then I must say yes.
In the topic of things like support networks in fascist spaces: if it would just be unpleasant to leave, then you're required to leave. But if it would cause you lasting harm to leave, then you are permitted to stay.
Also of note: Judaism still praises martyrs, we just discourage it. It's a great good (notably not a Mitzvah) to die to uphold justice and your faith... the real Mitzvah is surviving another day.
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Content warning: furry art, cuddling, tail touching
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Got me a site icon now, taken with permission from my sibling's art!
I should nab a bunch of their artwork to share here, especially since they offer prints.
Original:
Piece: Sad Girl (modified)
Artist: Devin Bailem (they/them)
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like journalists, X is the hell of your own creation.
It is the end result of the decade decay of journalistic integrity and standards being replaced for clicks and anger baiting.
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New release of Badger Badger to celebrate 20 years. 🤭
20 Years of Badgers
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Thanks to everyone involved includingAshens :https://w...YouTube
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In 1997 a Reverend John Papworth told parishioners at a meeting that large supermarkets are destroying community life and that it it therefore justifiable to steal from them. He said “Jesus said, love your neighbour, not Marks and Spencers”.
“I don’t regard it as stealing. I regard it as a badly needed reallocation of economic resources.”
Unfathomably based.
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Micro horror:
A historian notices that obscure old photos they have been scanning from original magazine and photo collections show signs of being AI generated (the kind of uncanny errors that give such images away, but these are chemical photos from long before computers)
At first it's just a few images in the oldest collection, but each day it seems to spread.
No one believes her of course.
"That's Nordstome the famous magician, he really had 6 fingers."
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Quoted from a facebook post by user Elraen:
I’ve threatened this digital essay for some time, and now I feel like my timeline could use some nerdom, so the moment has come: it’s time for my full defense of Frodo. 😉
I remember when I was younger, I struggled to accept and understand why a lot of my peers found Frodo either forgettable or material for mocking. I understand it a little better now: the movies DO often make him not particularly likable or watchable. The book portrays him as someone who doesn’t seem to be experiencing a reasonable range of human expression/emotion, which admittedly can make him less compelling to read about. I understand that. But I also think it’s integral to the point of the character.
Frodo and Sam are necessary for understanding each other. Sam was a character cast from the mold that Tolkien learned on the frontlines of World War I. Tolkien saw Sam as the everyday hero, the embodiment of the simple good-hearted courage of the men he watched die in the trenches. Sam’s obstacles are exterior to himself: the geography. The threat of enemy soldiers (orcs), of Shelob, of his companion's physical and mental difficulties.
By contrast, Frodo’s obstacles are primarily internal. He endured a lot of those same exterior challenges as Sam, but Sam did much to absorb their impact (see the Cirith Ungol rescue). Frodo’s challenges are the slow, steady erosion of a soul being asked to carry a tremendous internal darkness without being consumed by it. Everything he was became laser-focused on that monolithic spiritual and emotional task.
This is why, at the end, Frodo had to sacrifice far more than Sam. Because Sam’s primary struggle was against external forces, once those external forces were alleviated, he could go home, marry, have children, live as a functional member of his community. For Frodo, the cessation of exterior pressure could do nothing to mend the way his soul had been burning from the inside out.
This is a hard thing to portray in movie form (the greatest weakness of the LotR movies is their inability to portray subtlety and spirituality, two traits the narrative Tolkien crafted requires). We see Frodo’s neck chapping from the actual physical weight of the Ring as a representation; well and good. But it’s hard to truly convey the immense mental weight, the crucible of enduring without utter collapse.
If Sam is a kind of patron saint for the good-hearted soldier, I would posit that Frodo is the patron saint of the depressed, the suicidal, the addicted, the ones living with trauma. We see it best maybe at Mount Doom, where Frodo’s very self has been ground down to nearly nothing: “No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.”
If you’d ever been deeply depressed, ever lived chained in the prison of PTSD, you will have experienced that exact same thing.
And of course that’s not always the most likable thing to read about or to watch. Mental anguish has a way of stripping away so many of the human details about you, even your personality itself.
"Frodo is a study of a hobbit broken by a burden of fear and horror— broken down, and in the end made into something quite different,” J.R.R. Tolkien himself wrote.
In another letter (#246, for the curious), Tolkien addressed the concern that had been posed to him that Frodo was a weak and failed hero, that his decision at Mount Doom proved it. “I do not think that Frodo's was a moral failure,” Tolkien clarified. “At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum– impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted… I do not myself see that the breaking of his mind and will under demonic pressure after torment was any more a moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been– say, by being strangled by Gollum, or crushed by a falling rock.”
Tolkien built into Frodo a validation of the internal struggle, marking it not as weakness, but ultimately even as a special kind of strength. Through the character of Frodo, Tolkien displayed that internal anguish, fear, and pain were not moral failings. He might not have known it, but Tolkien was building an incredibly beautiful fictitious case study on the impact of trauma on the soul and the human ability to endure.
“Frodo undertook his quest out of love– to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense, if he could; and also in complete humility, acknowledging that he was wholly inadequate to the task,” Tolkien summarized. “His real contract was only to do what he could, to try to find a way, and to go as far on the road as his strength of mind and body allowed. He did that.”
And for any of us carrying a weight of horror, trauma, grief, dread, anxiety, depression, despair— maybe our hope is the same. To do what we can. To know that, even when our minds give out under the tremendous weight, we are still enough.
Mary Nikkel - I’ve threatened this digital essay for some...
I’ve threatened this digital essay for some time, and now I feel like my timeline could use some nerdom, so the moment has come: it’s time for my full...www.facebook.com
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the presence of furries in tech is problematic, but not for the reasons you might think
it's because you could probably compromise at least one multinational corporation by emailing security@ with “you'd be such a good puppy if you added me to your Okta... who's a good puppy???”
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There should be a rule that any media company that pulls that shit of canning completed work for the tax write-off has to make it public domain.
I mean, if they're saying for tax purposes it's worthless then they're not out anything by releasing it free and under Creative Commons, right? Right?? 🤨
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You want a great debate to fall into?
Start debating someone on logical fallacies and what falls under what fallacy... the conversation is interesting to say the least lol
@milquetoast :milquetoast: This!
But in this case we were debating on exact definitions of appeal to authority, and it devolved a little because I gave the example "Are you a doctor? Because Dr. Phil says..." and they called it Ad Hominem...
We settled on it depends on the context of said statement, but it's ultimately appeal to authority in both cases, just in some contexts it's also ad hominem
Apologies for the inevitable pathologizing language in this paper, but I suspect my fellow #ActuallyAutistic folks might like to know that it shows a NEGATIVE correlation between #autistic traits and so-called "black-and-white" thinking. For anyone uncomfortable with the statistics speak, they found that the higher a person scores on the Autism Quotient screening test, the lower they tend to score on a black-and-white thinking test
Nature.com: Autistic traits associated with dichotomic thinking mediated by intolerance of uncertainty | Scientific Reports
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-41164-8
Autistic traits associated with dichotomic thinking mediated by intolerance of uncertainty - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Autistic traits associated with dichotomic thinking mediated by intolerance of uncertaintyNature
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Thank you for sharing! It's a really good news for us.
I archived the paper if someone need it in the future.
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I'm only seeing the hashtag.
There's the hastag and then there's the gup.pe group. Some people follow the hashtag and some people follow the group.
Anyway thanks for sharing, this was interesting.
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Robert Guerra
in reply to Peter Butler • • •Peter Butler
in reply to Robert Guerra • • •jenifer daniels ♎ :verified:
in reply to Peter Butler • • •Gregly
in reply to jenifer daniels ♎ :verified: • • •jenifer daniels ♎ :verified:
in reply to Gregly • • •@gregly well actually
(this was an easy search to make)
@peterbutler @robert
Gregly
in reply to jenifer daniels ♎ :verified: • • •jenifer daniels ♎ :verified:
in reply to Gregly • • •@gregly no the post office employees will do that too. basically, HHS paid for the test months ago, they were shipped to central USPS location, USPS handles requests of and distribution via their database.
this was planned in advance of shut down.
@peterbutler @robert
Gregly
in reply to jenifer daniels ♎ :verified: • • •jenifer daniels ♎ :verified:
in reply to jenifer daniels ♎ :verified: • • •@gregly this is what's called "fee for service" in business.
lots of business is marketed as being delivered by one entity but that entity really farmed out the work.
(ghost kitchens are fee for service. one company provided the recipes, built in customer and brand marketing, the other provides the kitchen and chefs.)