The existence of baby spinach suggests the existence of sporty spinach, ginger spinach, scary spinach and posh spinach.

A few street photographs of New York from my recent visit.

https://merlin.rebrovic.net/blog/new-york-again/

Also, here is one photo not in the post:

"God! Why the fuck is everyone on the Fediverse so WEIRD?"

Shut up. It's a feature. It is the best feature.

I follow a lot of people who make me feel ignorant.

I highly recommend you do the same.

If you say "keep politics out of tech/software" i'm just going to assume you're a horrible person because no-one says that honestly with good and well meaning intentions,

Fuck off with that shit.

Software is political. Open source is completely irrelevant if we allow Nazis, misogynists, abusers, racists, and ableists to thrive while people who believe in human rights and accessibility are made to feel unwelcome and unsafe.

Refusing to use commercial software does not make you a good person.

here is a non-exhaustive list of people who have been defended in open source communities:
– serial rapists. Yes, that's a plural.
– people convicted of possessing child abuse materials.
– people defending lower ages of consent
– a guy with a massive Nazi swastika tattoo on his chest.
– people who have made blatantly dehumanizing statements about people with disabilities.
– people who have made blatantly racist statements in public
– People who are the system administrators for far right terrorist groups.
– people who have doxxed and swatted women for existing in public, developing free video games, or documenting hatred of Black women online

for every one of these cartoonishly evil people, there is an army of "both sides" defenders who oppose the existence of a code of conduct of any kind. For every one of these cartoonishly evil people, there are men (and a fair number of white women) who defended them and kept their jobs in positions in open source communities, while everyone who spoke up for human rights was ostracized.

I don't care about your open-source license unless you get your attitude towards human beings in order.

Today in 2000, 25 years ago: in the United States, the press recognizes that during the Vietnam War (1955-1975) the US military used the defoliant "Agent Orange", which caused deformations to more than 0.3 million children in that country in the last 25 years.

#OnThisDay

2/2
The naive view of information is that more information in a network will lead to more knowledge and wisdom, that information leads to truth (which is a correct representation of reality), and that truth leads to power and wisdom while ignorance leads to nowhere; delusional networks can occur, but they'll wither out. The problem with the naive view is that most information out there doesn't aim to represent reality—there is intentional misinformation.

#Meta won a legal victory this week against #Sarah #Wynn-#Williams,
a former employee who recently published a memoir of her time at the company titled
“Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.”

An arbitrator ruled that the company has made a valid argument that Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook (now Meta) from 2011 to 2017, may have violated the
non-disparagement agreement she signed when leaving the company.

The ruling states that Wynn-Williams is temporarily prohibited from promoting
— or, “to the extent within [her] control, from further publishing or distributing”
— her book until private arbitration concludes.

However, “Careless People” remains available for purchase,
and may in fact be benefitting from the “Streisand Effect,”
in which attempts to suppress information only serve to further publicize it.

As of Sunday afternoon, “Careless People” was the number three bestselling book on Amazon.

Macmillan, which published “Careless People” through its imprint Flatiron Books, said in a statement that
the arbitrator’s decision “has no impact” on the publisher
and that it will “absolutely continue to support and promote” the book.

The publisher added that it is “appalled by Meta’s tactics to silence [its] author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement.”

“To be clear, the arbitrator’s order makes no reference to the claims within Careless People,” Macmillan said.

“The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this.”

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/16/meta-takes-aim-at-ex-employees-memoir-careless-people/

@GNUmatic

I would like to caveat this slightly (there is no real disagreement).

It is still valid that there are factors that drive the anger of those people. *points at everything* Pointing out that these are valid, real reasons that form the grounds fascism thrives on is fine.

Especially you and me know, Dirk, that this is a huge driving factor behind the huge wins for the fasch in East Germany.

But I think Nina said it best: Becoming a staunch fascist requires at some point the conscious decision to hate. A pointed decision to declare groups of people 'not human'.

And once you made that step, you deserve no redemption arc, you get no quarter. Once you are there, you have forsaken humanity and I am fine with humanity forsaking you. Go die in a ditch.

Everything before that step I am willing to forgive and explain. Everything after that is on the monster you have become.

And I think we all go d'accord that voting for explicitly fascist parties by now is that step. You cannot feign ignorance on that front anymore.

@AnarchoNinaWrites

Naw, they really did say "the leopards won't eat my face" and voted in a fascist because they were *big mad* about not being able to drop racial slurs at work, having to work alongside women and LGBTQ people, and think any program that isn't STEM should be cancelled. No really, it wasn't any more complicated than that.

Source: noted fascist "intellectual" Richard Hanania was reportedly given this by a fellow Trump-voter. PS: big shout out to Vox Media for rehabilitating that nazi two days ago.

Someone reminded me today 9 years ago I submitted my first post on Mastodon—using curl on the command line, since there was no interface at the time. That's how the journey began! 9 years is a long time to be doing something. Those early years are still fresh in my mind though.

@cdevroe @merlinrebrovic Yep, I do have backups, but I can't remember how old. 😇

By now, we should know that in the United States, some people have more rights than others. The only people whose constitutional rights are routinely respected are rich, white, and backed by an army of lawyers. Even some of the most blatant copaganda out there—shows like Law and Order and its many permutations—don’t shy away from this.

Even so, this is a new low. Mahmoud Khalil is not an undocumented immigrant. He’s a legal permanent resident. That didn’t stop ICE—little more than a state-sponsored terrorist organization filled with America’s most vitriolic racists—from going after him.

And for what? Advocating for Palestine. Advocating for Palestinians. Advocating for human rights. That’s not antisemitism, and it sure as hell isn’t a crime. All he did was exercise his First Amendment rights—he spoke his mind and protested non-violently.

These far-right fucks who are going after him, these morally bankrupt little shits, whine like fucking toddlers when they think their views are being suppressed. “FREE SPEECH!” they scream. “FREE SPEECH!” But when it comes to the free speech of people who disagree? Oh no, can’t have that! If someone says something we don’t like, the hammer must fall! Call the cops, BRING THE PAIN!

This is what we’re dealing with, America. This is what we’re dealing with, DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS. This is what we’re dealing with, CORPORATE MEDIA. These are not loyal Americans who ultimately want what’s best for this country, even if they want to go about it differently. No, these are not reasonable people. These are weak, petulant, small-minded arsonists bent on burning everything down and taking us with them.

This arrest, what we’re witnessing here—if you needed a sign that we’re living in an authoritarian regime, HERE IT IS. And if you think this is bad? If y’all don’t respond to this like the existential crisis that it is, it’s only gonna get worse. And by worse, I mean they’re gonna go after citizens, and then after political opponents, and then anyone who looks at them wrong.

Trouble is, I’ve seen how y’all respond to existential crises. I’ve seen how y’all responded to climate change and every other thing that led us here.

So yeah, I’m fucking scared out of my mind.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/10/palestinian-activist-mahmoud-khalil-reactions

A reminder we've created a search platform with no ads, no tracking and no AI. Just relevant search results hosted in Canada.

https://maapl.net

#ElbowsUp

https://merlin.rebrovic.net/blog/backup/
A reminder for future me that sometimes it pays off to be paranoid. Because I just had a massive technical failure.

So I tried #freshrss and #tinytinyrss yesterday in my search for a #selfhosted #rss reader.

While both are relatively easy to set up (even for someone who has never actually used Docker, like me), both are missing a feature that I'm used to in #inoreader.

That feature is the ability to set different views per-folder.

I have some folders where I just want to see the titles, and some folders I want to be displayed as cards, showing the first image in the post and the title.

I did see that one of the readers has a "experimental card plugin", so I'm going to try that out today, if I manage to figure out how to install plugins when using #Docker.

This is actually a great test of how much I'm ready to compromise just to use #oss , non-AI software.

Does anybody have a recommendation for a #selfhosted #rss reader?

@Inoreader just added AI to theirs, and I don't want to use it anymore.

#birdsofmastodon #Birds #bird #Pic #pictures #picture #pics

【 Eis von nahem 】 #FotoVorschlag

🧊 Ein „Eistropfen“ ❄️

#foto #photo #photographie #fotografie #photography