April 2022 Digest
The drama this month was mostly online with the reaction to Musk deciding to buy Twitter.
The flood of newbies into the Fediverse, the complaints of the people losing followers on Twitter, economic and political and social analysis. He sure does get people talking.
Spent a few nights with friends, but I spent most of the month in VR and animating and eating chocolate. Hope you had a nice Easter.
Me
Some stuff from my microblog on the fediverse:
Twitter’s decentralized-messaging experiment offshoot project “Blue Sky” released a plan that I glanced over and commented on and even later in the month some code and software-architecture that I looked at too. More promising than I expected. Maybe they’ll do some good work.
That’s against the background of lots of noise from Twitter proper, as Elon Musk’s offer was accepted. He’s buying the whole thing. The shit-posting troll has become the moderator
People fled Twitter as a result Even Sci-Fi author Charles Stross joined so I ranted about free speech and I spent some time writing about the Fediverse and doing outreach on twitter answering questions and objections about it.
I got a new phone. A Google Pixel Six. I pimped it out like The Tardis. The camera on it is way better than the old one and it’s bigger, and now the battery lasts more than a couple of hours. There’s also swiping gestures instead of action buttons at the bottom, but otherwise much the same.
I was testing that camera and it’s spring so the squirrels were screwing in the garden by my window. So I got some squirrel porn.
Also used that new camera to upgrade the format of the Tarot show a bit. Think the show improves from that, but I missed more Mondays than I hit this month.
The Bitcoin Conference happened, I reviewed Jack Maller’s Keynote. He asks how can we fix broken boomer-bucks?
I was confused and puzzled over some questions about the wars but no real answers came and I remain confused about why the pipelines still operate in a war-zone.
But mostly I have been in VR continuing the animation and here’s a work-in-progress shot.
Releases
In common with the theme, the new “Observers” cartoon this month is about Musk buying Twitter. The aliens discover a planet where the means of communication is monopolised and manipulated by the establishment class.
Reading
The Every
I read “The Every” by Dave Eggers. A near-future novel about the company that happens when Facebook and Google and Apple and Amazon all buy each other to create basically the only company left: The Every. And the woman inside the company plotting it’s downfall.
Hilariously well observed and frighteningly astute projects. Seems an all too likely future. Great caricature of the liberal tech-minded workers.
Watching
Titans
This month I’ve been watching three seasons of Titans on Netflix. Robin off of Batman and Robin teams up with an array of other super-heros to mostly thwart each other’s plans. Robin ends up fighting against the Replacement Robin and I can barely keep track of what the characters secret identities are as they all swap roles and costumes. Silly fun though.
Links
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Casette Boy Vs The Tories We had voting in the UK today, so here’s Cassette Boy gave us things to think about.
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Jonathan Cook on the Assange case. The Home Secretary Priti Patel will likely consign Julian to be deported this month. Johnathan’s review of a book on the case is a great recap for those not following closely how he’s been fit up and monstered and tortured by those who’s war-crimes he exposed. I wrote to Priti to ask her not to. With a stamp and envelope and everything. I doubt she’ll take note but you have to try.
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Master Data series from Cyanide And Happiness This short audience-interactive advert-cartoon for Cyanide and Happiness’s new card-game is funny and clever and made me actually make a rare youtube comment.
A few really great funny lines and bizarre premise breaking the forth wall to engage the audience interaction and drive the algorithm.
Masterstroke really.
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analysis of twitter’s algorithm One guy’s analysis of how few of his friends posts he sees and how much Twitter tends to push you outrage and adverts instead of what you ask for.
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Twitter’s Employees on Musk What if you had stock-options, and now the company is going to be private. You won’t get your stock options. And other complaints and fear from a liberal staff afraid of their new boss.
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Frans de Waal on Primates on Mindscape Great long interview about gender and apes and society. I wrote some notes after listening.
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The Doom Loop by Arthur Hayes Review on all the things broken in the economy right now. What happens as energy prices and inflation and the weaponisation of the west’s money systems play out? He reckons it looks bad for everyone who isn’t a bitcoin or gold holder.
more…
That’s just the highlights this month, remember you can always see my full public bookmarks at my website and/or follow my link-bot on the fediverse or my RSS feed of interesting links
Around The Fediverse
Some cool stuff from other people on in the social-media federation:
Eugen (who wrote and maintains Mastodon, the Fediverse client) notes There’s an uptick of signups and that his server is being slow due to massive amounts of traffic as users flee Twitter towards the fediverse.
He’s not alone, fostodon.org’s admin Kev Quirk also faught hard to keep his servers up and wrote a detailed post-mortem of what he did to keep things running.
The influx of users all liked Twister Ghost’s mastodon guide and the increasingly less brief guide by joyeusenoelle.
This month even saw The European Commission join the Fediverse.
Chris Trottier wrote a detailed look at the financials of Netflix and so did Jason Lefkowitz from a different angle on a different server. Both interesting.
Cory Docotorow is on the Fediverse, and one of his link-blogs this month was about advertising-trackers and a little ad-blocker device he helped make.
Leah Ellitot’s Contra Chrome Webcomic can teach you all about the dangers of using Google’s browser and all the ways it spies on you and betrays your trust. There are browsers NOT from gigantic surveillance capitalists, so maybe think about them?
On no-agenda-social, Furgar draws a cartoon about what Must really wants: data. Duh.