I came across a neat browser extension today. It looks for "rel=me" links pointing to mastodon profiles, and puts it in a little list for you to review.
In other words, you visit a website, and if tells you if there are any mastodon accounts associated to the website.
I gave up over a 150,000 followers on Twitter to be on Mastodon full time. Yes, the engagement and reach is a lot less, but I'll build it back up and it will be worth it. I hate to see people run back to Twitter because of friends or careers or whatever. You know what changes that? Being on Mastodon and bring those people here. Musk is a horrible person, don't be one of his enablers.
Content warning: Frustrations of an USA-ican living with Diabetes
I'm a Type 1 Diabetic living in the USA, where our healthcare system is an ongoing embarrassment. Diabetes treatment comes up often as an example. It's incredibly expensive and doctors rarely inform patients of affordable alternatives. Insulin and supplies are exorbitant, while for-profit insurance has always been a cruel and contradictory joke deprived of ethics and efficiency.
I have been keeping myself alive with older generation insulins that are sold at Walmart (Novolin R and Novolin N). No doctor ever informed me that this option exists. I found out about it while researching the dates that Lantus's (a long-acting insulin) patent was set to expire. [Note 1] Unfortunately the generics that came out afterwards were not priced any more reasonably.
Short of a cure for diabetes, the next best treatment is something colloquially referred to as an "artificial pancreas". This is comprised of a series of components: (a) An insulin pump and related accessories, (b) A continuous glucose monitor [CGM], (c) A means of calculating required insulin based on carbs consumed and insulin that's already in effect. At the moment, such a solution does exist - but the pump alone is 7,000 dollars.
However, it turns out that the open source community has created software that can communicate with older pumps, and works with CGMs. It takes the form of an Android or iOS app and both are completely free. The apps coordinate doses, monitor insulin on board, lower the rate at which insulin is delivered if one's blood sugar dips, etc. It's incredible. And it was released before two years before anything from commercial manufacturers was available.
[1] Incidentally, I ran across a forum of Lantus pharmaceutical reps (a) bragging about six-figure incomes, and (b) blaming Type 1 Diabetics for their condition - all while griping about what a loss of patent protection meant for their privileged lifestyles.
the thing about most text-based communications and thus friendships is that much of the social fluff and filters are being stripped away, leaving only the essence of the other person. Their mental smell.
If you are able to connect on that level, you often mesh much more deeply than in-person would ever allow you to. Friendship spanning oceans are just as natural as ones spanning decades of age as ones spanning the starkest cultural divides.
@DrB_NY it’s not resistance when every tweet is adding to stats that help him sell advertising and boast higher engagement numbers than ever before. That’s the precise opposite of resistance - that’s you doing his work for him.
Same. To be honest, I'm trying to do more than hope. I'm willing to be here while many parts of it are not yet great for Black users, and work with all the awesome folks that are making it better.♥️👍🏿
I'm following in the footsteps of the Black Mastodon users that have been here for years, who started when it was much less welcoming than what I experienced, so that hopefully the Black folk that join after me, will have an even easier time than me.
It's fascinating to see that about half of the replies to @thetitanborn 's post, are cringe-worthy forms of "I haven't seen any problems for Black users / your post is unnecessary / we don't see race here."
any specific things allies can do to help? My brain jumped to helping finance and support primarily black or BIPOC instances but I’m a bit sheltered/privileged and there’s bound to be a lot I’m missing.
1) Don't ask Black users to CW discussions of their own racism.
2) Don't be on a server where mods mistreat Black folk.
3) Support the mods on your own server, financially and otherwise.
4) Don't engage with sea lions that say "Mistreatment? Here? prove it!" There have been enough threads shared on Black folk receiving racism. Individually convincing each one is exhausting, and expecting that is a tactic of bad faith actors.
I'm an African American woman who's been here since Nov. 20. The greatest challenge is getting used to how things work here. (I absolutely panicked when I unpinned a column and didn't know where it went.) The people here, on the whole, have been lovely. I certainly haven't encountered bad actors you'd find on the Bird Site. There is also #BlackMastodon, and we don't need normalizing, whatever that is.
It horrifies me when I hear stories from americans about their experience with the healthcare system. It is awful. You are a client there, not a patient. And even when you have a great healthcare insurance you still have to pay tons of money, even for going to the emergency room. And stories about how bad of a job doctors are doing there - of course, not all.
In any case, I am so grateful for the Spanish healthcare system where I am a patient. Not a client. I go there, they take care of me. Yes, sometimes it is slow and annoying because the GP does not give you enough attention at times, but hey it is entirely free (and side note: it is even slower I've heard in the USA....). Anyway, I feel safe and relaxed because of the healthcare system in Spain. So happy that I get access to this system. Everyone should have access to healthcare as trade-free. No need to give anything in return for that service. The fact that this is not the case, says a lot about our society.
And America....dear fuck, what's the point of all of that "wealth", the weapons, the cockyness, the money,... show more
It horrifies me when I hear stories from americans about their experience with the healthcare system. It is awful. You are a client there, not a patient. And even when you have a great healthcare insurance you still have to pay tons of money, even for going to the emergency room. And stories about how bad of a job doctors are doing there - of course, not all.
In any case, I am so grateful for the Spanish healthcare system where I am a patient. Not a client. I go there, they take care of me. Yes, sometimes it is slow and annoying because the GP does not give you enough attention at times, but hey it is entirely free (and side note: it is even slower I've heard in the USA....). Anyway, I feel safe and relaxed because of the healthcare system in Spain. So happy that I get access to this system. Everyone should have access to healthcare as trade-free. No need to give anything in return for that service. The fact that this is not the case, says a lot about our society.
And America....dear fuck, what's the point of all of that "wealth", the weapons, the cockyness, the money, the popularity, the fame and all that, when you treat your own citizens as intruders who do not deserve to be helped when they are in pain and suffering. Imagine having a terminal disease and dealing with two worries in America: 1 that you will die, and 2 how much would the medical expenses be and what's the impact on you and your family. Terrible!
Two autonomous collectives at UCSB & UC Davis have just simultaneously liberated two dining commons: De La Guerra @ UCSB & Latitude at Davis. Both are serving free meals to all until 3pm."Why it is that in the best public university system in the US, so many students are hungry?"
The fact that all it took was one foolish billionaire throwing his weight around to fuck up one of the largest websites on the internet is a perfect example of why hierarchical power is a defect, not a strength. One Black Swan event and the whole system comes unraveled.
A message to workers at Twitter facing Elon Musk's new regime and to all workers everywhere. The pressure to turn a profit is killing you, just as industrial capitalism is killing all of us. Resist and survive.
"Another century like this—another century of work—and our species will be done for, along with countless others. Work—which is to say, all activity that is determined by the necessity to make a profit for someone, rather than chosen on account of its intrinsic value—is precisely what prevents us from fulfilling our needs."
Across the nation, over 100 union run Starbucks stores are on strike today including in Portland, Oregon. If you care about worker's rights, support the strikers and don't go to Starbucks today. #UnionStrong #Union #Starbucks
And, no, I am not talking about scientists joining the Fediverse. That’s happening. I am speaking of federated academic paper management.
Hear me out.
The last great barrier to science are the academic publishers. Elsevier, Springer, and others have a strangle hold on publishing, charging both the author(s) and the reader for publication and access. My last nature.com paper cost me more to publish than I had for assistant salaries. That’s bad.
Even worse, authors, faculty, the people financing the study, the taxpayer who paid for the institution I researched in and the tools I used, they all had to pay again to read the paper.
There’s a way out: email the communicating author and they’ll happily send you the PDF for free. But there might be an easier way:
Federated academic paper management.
Here’s why: Elsevier and others are going hard against any attempt to provide science to readers. Not for free because we a... show more
Federated Academia.
And, no, I am not talking about scientists joining the Fediverse. That’s happening. I am speaking of federated academic paper management.
Hear me out.
The last great barrier to science are the academic publishers. Elsevier, Springer, and others have a strangle hold on publishing, charging both the author(s) and the reader for publication and access. My last nature.com paper cost me more to publish than I had for assistant salaries. That’s bad.
Even worse, authors, faculty, the people financing the study, the taxpayer who paid for the institution I researched in and the tools I used, they all had to pay again to read the paper.
There’s a way out: email the communicating author and they’ll happily send you the PDF for free. But there might be an easier way:
Federated academic paper management.
Here’s why: Elsevier and others are going hard against any attempt to provide science to readers. Not for free because we all, you, me, everyone, already paid dearly for the study through taxes and other means. But without further payment to a company that did nothing except to charge all sides again for a crappy document management solution.
PubMed will happily provide links to and index everything. As long as it is indexable and linkable.
Authors will love to have federated peer review and federated publication.
Readers will be able to find whatever they need, without paying exorbitant sums to a face- and soulless company.
There’s one issue: paper quality.
But federation solves this one as well: scoring information, comments, responses, metas, and reviews could be easily attached to the original paper. Author scoring (a la Advogato, a site ahead of its time) could also be easily managed by this.
Institutions (Universities, Labs, etc.) would only have to have a small federated server, federating their papers. PubMed could index them, index author scoring by reviews and impact points, and each paper would be easily linked to everything else pertaining to it: datasets, clinical trial information, reviews, meta analyses, etc.
Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest ...
There are certain inevitable trends among social media platforms thus far. Commercial Social Media Platforms "CSMPs" seek to attract as many eyeballs as possible, as well as harvest data, creating an attractive product for advertisers. Controversy drives engagement. This creates highly perverse incentives and dishonest practices.
Trust in CSMPs is irrevocably eroded . Meta/Facebook is a dumpster fire. Musk's purchase of Twitter has rendered a barely profitable mess into a debt-soaked sinking ship. It is clear that these models are failing.
CSMPs also seek to become exclusive walled-gardens to, again, retain users' data and eyeballs. We liken this to the Online Service Providers of old (AOL, Compuserv, Prodigy, etc.). The World Wide Web challenged this model and rendered it laughably obsolete.
The Fediverse's role is analogous with regard to CSMPs. Fedi is inherently interoperable and scalable in a way that CSMPs cannot swiftly address. This is as profound as ISPs and the web were to the irrelevance of walled-garden OSPs.
Now here's where the important bit comes in: Federated platforms will evolve to become the norm. Anarchistic organizing and dispute resolution, in a space that disincentives status quo propaganda (commercial, religious, political) is a real game changer. The road ahead is very exciting for us all.
This fellow's an adoptee from a cat cafe roughly six months ago. He's around 3 1/2 now, and the most loving and most mischievous little guy you could hope for. His name's Tesla (as in Nikola), but he ends up also going by Tesly, Scamp and Scampy. Perfect example of his scampishness? Sneaking into my backpack here.
Sometimes I wonder if there’s even any actual *spirituality* in authoritarian Christianity, because the one thing I understand about engagement with the sacred is that it’s a way to cultivate awe and learn to face mystery without rushing to reduce it to something comprehensible.
FediThing has moved!
in reply to Ron Gilbert • • •Numbers mean nothing if they're enabling someone like Musk.
FediThing has moved!
in reply to FediThing has moved! • • •Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox
in reply to FediThing has moved! • • •Ron, just be you, have some nice conversations, and use relevant hashtags whenever you can.