Remote

Nelson

@skyfaller@jawns.club

mastodon 4.7.3

He/him. Fighting for climate justice. Jawns.club admin

#cyclist #cyclejawns #Philly

1771 Followers

2317 Following

50 Posts

Joined August 27, 2018

GoToSocial (private):

https://go.ungovernable.love/@skyfaller

Pixelfed:

https://pixelfed.social/skyfaller

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Skyfaller

homepage:

https://www.skyfaller.space

Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 1w ago

Replying to

@xgranade@wandering.shop @cthos@mastodon.cthos.dev @nivex@tenforward.social I still believe that anything without a policy against slop has to be assumed to be slop. My personal betrayal of the week was Lagrange, the best (actively maintained) Gemini client in my experience: https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/issues/801 https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/blob/dev/CONTRIBUTING.md I'm not sure how much slop is currently in the repo, but it's now clear they are fine with future slop code. This has made me less interested in the Gemini protocol. Now I need a slop-free stack for Gemini, more extra work.

explicitly reject LLM contributions · Issue #801 · skyjake/lagrange

Could Lagrange take a clear stance against LLMs? Something simple may be best/easiest, like this in the README or in a CONTRIBUTING.md: Strict No LLM / No AI Policy Use of generative AI/LLMs is str...

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 2w ago

Replying to

@xgranade@wandering.shop I don't fully agree he has no obligation to his users. He has no obligation to serve them, he doesn't work for them. He has no obligation to provide software to any standard, or to make decisions the way they want him to. But generally we all have an obligation not to harm other people. The more direct and significant the harm, the greater the obligation to avoid the harm. Your right to swing your arms ends at my face. What level of betrayal is acceptable? Not all levels.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 3mo ago

I'm a parent with a 9-month old baby looking to chat with other parents. Can you recommend fedi accounts of parents with younger children who talk about parenting? (There may be many silent parents on here.) Bonus points if they ride bikes / avoid cars, are passionate about climate justice, are COVID conscious / interested in public health, or concerned about LLMs & surveillance capitalism (all relatively common on fedi no doubt, despite conditions in the outside world). #parenting #babies

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org The study I continually cite is empirical research from Penn State, which suggests 87F wet bulb (roughly 31C) kills even young, healthy adults: https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/humans-cant-endure-temperatures-and-humidities-high-previously-thought

Humans can't endure temperatures and humidities as high as previously thought | Penn State University

Humans can't endure temperatures and humidities as high as previously thought | Penn State University

Penn State researchers found that the maximum wet-bulb temperature humans can endure is lower than previously thought — about 31°C wet-bulb or 87°F at 100% humidity — even for young, healthy subjects. The temperature for older populations, who are more vulnerable to heat, is likely even lower.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 1mo ago

Hi Philly COVID conscious folks, would you like to be part of a list or "collection" of Philly CC accounts?

I haven't tried making a "collection" on Mastodon yet, but apparently each one is limited to 25 accounts, so I thought this Venn diagram of people who

* still acknowledge the pandemic
* live in / identify with the Philly area
* use Mastodon
* want attention

may be small enough to fit.

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/client/collections/

#Philly #Philadelphia #COVID #CovidIsNotOver #CovidIsAirborne #Collections

docs.joinmastodon.org

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@xgranade @jwz Fundamentally the argument is "fedi must become exactly like every other space that is overwhelmed with slop". Like, name another network or website that is generally negative about LLMs. This is like arguing every restaurant should be McDonald's. Let fedi be different, please. https://webcomicname.com/post/185588404109

webcomicname.com

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 2mo ago

Should pet peeves be allowed in public areas, or only trained service peeves?

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 2mo ago

Relative sent me this pic from a bike path in Middlesex county, and it's possibly the most fedi-coded graffiti I have ever seen. Which one of you did this? #graffiti #bunnies

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 2mo ago

Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social

Supra-supramaximal inspiration! An exercise that is 100% effective in treating hiccups for everyone who is able to do it (according to the one study we have):

First, exhale completely, then inhale a deep breath. Wait 10 seconds, then—without exhaling—inhale a little more. Wait another five seconds, then top up the breath again. Finally, exhale. Generally, you will find that your singultus is gone.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/scientific-hiccup-cures-hiccaway-straw-ssmi-breathing/673151/

Works for me and my partner. Imagine if science had funding.

theatlantic.com

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@mcc@mastodon.social @sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social I do think that even if Servo succeeds, there would be a benefit to preserving Firefox/Gecko as an independent implementation that isn't surveillance capitalism slop. Just as I don't think *all* FOSS should be hosted on Codeberg, let's not pin all of our browser engine hopes on Servo and have a new single point of failure.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 3w ago

@NiwlCraft@mastodon.art The two static site generators I'm looking at right now are Makko and Zine, both projects that ban LLMs, written in Zig, a language that also bans LLMs.

https://makko.starlightnet.work/

https://zine-ssg.io/

Makko is simpler and perhaps more user friendly, but might be too simple. I've used it to build a simple site and it worked fine.

Zine may be more powerful but I don't understand it yet.

I have no ideas for a good WordPress replacement yet, they all seem compromised.

makko.starlightnet.work

makko :)

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 2mo ago

Has anyone participated in a COVID conscious reading group? What did you read / are you reading? Alternately, if you were going to run or join a reading group about the ongoing pandemic, what would you want to read together? #CovidIsNotOver #COVID #ReadingGroups

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

I'll be attending this Philly Mastodon Migration Party a week from Wednesday to represent Jawns.club and invite people to join our server (among other options). There will be several activities to help people socialize while learning the basics of the fediverse.

This post may only reach people already on fedi, but if you have friends who are not here yet, this could be a fun way to get them on board, so please spread the word.

https://www.phillyethics.org/event-details/zuck-off

#Philly #Philadelphia #JoinMastodon

phillyethics.org

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@troed@swecyb.com @eco_amandine@mastodon.cr Note that data centers use water for cooling to reduce energy use. If they are not using water, then they are using more energy and therefore increasing greenhouse gas emissions. This is a zero sum game. It does not matter if a data center is using "green" energy so long as the AI industry continues to consume more energy. Increased energy use delays the transition away from fossil fuels, keeping gas and coal plants active. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/11/how-not-to-resolve-the-energy-crisis/

solar.lowtechmagazine.com

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mayintoronto@beige.party You cannot use LLMs to understand what you have found because LLMs don't understand anything. LLMs are incapable of summarizing a document, they can only bullshit a shorter document that appears related. They don't know which parts are important and therefore can't only show you the important parts. In fact they are incapable of preserving facts and will deliver meanings that did not exist in the original or are the opposite of what the author meant.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mayintoronto@beige.party I don't accept some parts of this premise. The models would only remain "useful" for most tasks people use them for today if someone continued to scrape the entire internet and retrain the LLMs constantly. If the local models were stuck in their state on the date of the LLM bubble bursting, even LLM boosters would quickly find them no longer fit for purpose. So long as mass scraping and training continue, the environmental impact would still be bad. Without, what are they for?

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@TheBreadmonkey@beige.party @babe@glitterkitten.co.uk "Mr. Wombat, why do you keep a cube on your desk?" "Are you familiar with the concept of a memento mori? This business empire, like everything else, is ephemeral, and I keep this as a reminder that death will come for me and my works. Someday something will eat my remains and poop them out, just like I pooped this cube. Even I, perhaps the most successful wombat of my generation, am mortal."

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mayintoronto@beige.party I think this is a gross misreading of summaries. For example, a well-written abstract for a scientific paper is essential for readers trying to find papers that discuss something they are interested in. LLM-generated abstracts will frequently include subjects that don't exist in the original or leave out topics that were central to the paper. Without people knowing what papers are relevant to them, learning is hindered. Incomplete is different from wrong.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@davidak If I can't run a computer without LLMs I will throw my computer in the river and finally be free. People lived without computers before, we can do it again. Get out of my mentions and touch grass

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@jalefkowit I know this ruins the joke, but the problem is everyone else leaving their computer on. Doesn't matter if I'm cheerfully tending my garden if all of my neighbors have had their brains rotted by Facebook into supporting concentration camps and the total destruction of the ecosphere: they'll kill me and my garden.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Fountain pens are probably the sweet spot of practicality and sustainability (dip pens give you more ink options and have less moving parts, should last forever, but no one will carry them around in daily life). The problem is that most fountain pens will also dry out and need to be refilled again, at the least convenient moment. The exception I've found is this expensive model local to Philly: https://www.schondsgn.com/collections/fountain-pens/products/engineered-plastics This seals well enough it doesn't dry out or leak, always ready.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mayintoronto@beige.party Before LLMs, it was possible for people and institutions to develop reputations for good faith and competence. Sometimes those reputations were undeserved, but people sometimes misplacing trust doesn't mean that we should give up on trust, human civilization and survival is impossible without some trust. Now it is impossible to assume good faith or competence of anyone unless you are certain an LLM did not interfere at any point in the process. That's an existential threat.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mayintoronto@beige.party Summaries can be subjective, since what I find important in a document or meeting is likely different from what you might find important. That could make my well-written summary incomplete or misleading for you. But if I just added random shit or ignored sections I don't like, that would be a sign of bad faith in a human summary, while that's just every day for an LLM. LLMs mean you must check *everything* if accuracy matters, while losing the skills that would allow you to check.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai But including little kids in transportation plans would be "Inclusion", part of DEI. For all of DEI's problems, I don't see how you have a society worth living in without defending the basic concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion. If you can't defend diversity in humans, how are you going to defend biodiversity, for example? These are basic building blocks for many ethical foundations. (And we do see assaults on biodiversity, with e.g. attacks on endangered species.)

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@CindyWeinstein@zirk.us Plant diverse native plants to attract wildlife that will take care of plentiful pests, and generally rewild at least some of your yard by leaving leaf litter etc. Pests may remain, but if your yard is sufficiently welcoming to wildlife, parasitic wasps etc. will find any pest that's growing out of control and use it for their own purposes. When I moved into my house, scale was out of control on my hydrangeas. Now there are many native plants and very few scale insects.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@jacqueline For anyone questioning if Claude was used for selecting targets during the US attack on Iran, including bombing a school, here are some sources showing that Claude was used (and is still in use): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthropic-claude-ai-iran-war-u-s/ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/01/claude-anthropic-iran-strikes-us-military

Anthropic

Two sources familiar with the U.S. military

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@vantablack@cyberpunk.lol @chu@climatejustice.social You could say the same about wearing masks and taking COVID precautions, since most of society has given up on preventing infectious disease, and taking precautions makes you look weird and interferes with "normal" social activities like indoor dining. Yet failing to take such precautions makes you and your kids complicit in eugenics and mass death. Could there be other things more important than the approval of your peers?

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

if you complain about how data centers are bad for the local communities and the environment, but then go to the supermarket and buy some beef, i don't even want to talk to you

First, this is whataboutism: people do not have to behave perfectly to criticize bad behavior, otherwise no one would ever be able to criticize anything.

Second, I've been a vegetarian my whole life. I have never eaten beef. Will you listen to my criticisms of LLMs now?

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@paparatti@phire.place Don't jinx it, they'll just spam AI-generated slop images of moss until people give up on following mosstodon

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@nelson@shrimp.starlightnet.work @realtegan@wandering.shop I want to try all of the non-Linux OSes on the No AI list, including:

OpenBSD
Haiku
RedoxOS
9front

But I haven't had the time yet, and I'm not sure where to start first because I'm not sure which has the best hardware support on bare metal (as opposed to virtualization, where I understand they all perform pretty well).

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@strangefour@retro.pizza @Taweret@timeloop.cafe Wait, this is genius. This can't be the only film within a film. How many double features could you run this way, cutting to the other film every time a character goes to see a film?

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Seems I have three basic paths forward:

Continue looking for a PAPR unit, stick to PAPR stroller plan
Throw a tiny HEPA filter in my existing stroller and call it a day
Buy a double stroller and use the empty seat to hold a larger HEPA filter

(2) Is the cheapest but I have the least confidence in its effectiveness.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@alreadydeadxd The really short version is that the tech industry was already an accelerating environmental disaster: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/10/why-we-need-a-speed-limit-for-the-internet/ LLMs caused the tech industry to give up on all of their sustainability/emissions goals. At a time when we need to be zeroing out emissions from every source, LLMs and techbros are doing their part to make the world uninhabitable. The climate crisis really ought to be enough to end the conversation on LLMs. I resent having to come up with other reasons.

Why We Need a Speed Limit for the Internet

LOW←TECH MAGAZINE

Why We Need a Speed Limit for the Internet

The energy use of the internet can only stop growing when energy sources run out, unless we impose self-chosen limits.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mcc Red usually means some sort of emergency, and if people are locking me in a room without my consent or any explanation, that constitutes an emergency in my book.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@grumpybozo@toad.social @paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange @ryanprior@mastodon.social @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org you absolutely can directly measure Wet Bulb Globe Temperature, you just need special equipment. I have this relatively inexpensive device, although I can't say how accurate it truly is: https://sperdirect.com/products/wearable-wbgt-heat-stress-meter-with-tripod-mount You can pay this shop extra to certify the accuracy of each device, and although that would make it significantly more expensive, I'm kicking myself for not doing it, because I'd like to trust my gear more, given life-threatening danger.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@jameshowell@fediscience.org @FlipperPA@fosstodon.org I really think it's worse than "AI" doesn't work. Heavier than air flight didn't work, until it did. LLMs *cannot* work. LLMs are categorically incapable of doing almost everything our society is trying to do with them, if reliability is necessary. Bullshit engines should never be trusted with anything, but we are entrusting them with everything. They're irresistible as accountability sinks in a society that was already avoiding accountability as much as possible, tho.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@tay@transfem.social These countermeasures might prevent children still under adult supervision from participating (wrongly, perhaps), but that might be counterbalanced by attracting rebellious teens

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@upmultimedia@mastodon.gamedev.place This doesn't sound right. Art is a matter of interpretation and context, as famous examples like "Fountain" (attributed to Duchamp) have demonstrated. A urinal may normally be purely functional, but stick it in an art show and you can make it art. More recently, Dwarf Fortress (a computer game made of code) appeared in the MoMA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_in_the_Museum_of_Modern_Art So by your definition, perhaps most code that we encounter is craft, but that same code could be transformed into art whenever.

en.wikipedia.org

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@buttercables@made.asterism.gay @ahihi@anticapitalist.party Is this the bat symbol? Batman will be very confused

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@baldur@toot.cafe My favorite thing by Björk is the music video for "It's Oh So Quiet": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htobTBlCvUU It's just full of joy, she looks like she's having a blast, and that's timeless, kind of like the Beach Boys sounding like they're having a great party while recording "Barbara Ann" (I like when they crack up for some reason while singing about Peggy Sue... I guess someone made a mistake? But I didn't hear it.)

Björk - It's Oh So Quiet

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@baldur@toot.cafe Bjork is great, don't listen to the haters. Or, well, maybe she's played out for you and that's also valid. But like if people find her weird, and she is weird, that's a silly thing to dislike a pop star for. If you want a pop star who is boring and incapable of surprising you, you can just have generative AI produce statistically likely pablum from the corpus of actual artists. Were these haters all guys? Did they simply hate her because she's a woman who is famous and successful?

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@jwisser@wandering.shop Kirk just hacked the test instead, you might just make all the gifted kids hackers. Now I'm wondering, did Kirk display any affinity for computers before or after hacking the Kobayashi Maru? Was hacking the test trivially easy, security a joke so anyone could do it, but only Kirk cared enough to try? Is Kirk a multi-talented genius who can pick up computer intrusion techniques overnight? Or was the sysadmin a hot lady who Kirk seduced, employing social engineering techniques?

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@alexia I don't use this editor, but I came across Leo while researching literate programming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_%28text_editor%29 I decided not to spend time on it because I don't think literate programming can be done properly with only a text editor, I think you need support from the programming language itself or some software for "weaving" the documentation with the code etc. But you might disagree! I do think literate programming could be a good response to slop, helping people understand code.

en.wikipedia.org

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@guilhernunes_@mastodon.art Liking even the bad art, or even art from the bad friends?

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@vees I graduated from law school, I understand they always throw lawyers out of the pool if they can. (I didn't pass the bar, I can't practice law, but maybe that doesn't matter.) I have never served.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@stumblewyk@jawns.club ssh, isn't your wife on here? She can hear you!

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@futurebird@sauropods.win The modem choices would have been more competitive in the dialup era. I don't have a modem anymore so being able to understand it (or imitate it) isn't very helpful. I also don't spend much time with cats, but when I do I think being able to understand them is more useful than being able to tell them stuff. I think cats understand people perfectly well surprisingly often, they just don't care, and I don't think I could make them care by talking to them.

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@emma@assemblag.es Some people seem to find fedi very helpful for their businesses, but I'm not sure how they are different from all the people who find fedi unhelpful. @hootalex@mastodon.social mentioned they get a lot of business from fedi, and I've bought bird art from them: https://mastodon.social/@hootalex/116035922330481606 I also recently acquired ollas from @potterybyosa@mastodon.social (although I haven't had a chance to use them yet), so I don't how fedi is affecting her business in general but it worked for me.

mastodon.social

Alex Tomlinson 🦉: "Mastodon really punches above its weight for me a…" - Mastodon

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Nelson @skyfaller@jawns.club

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@cayhorstmann@foojay.social One source for the April 24 deadline: https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/26/github_ai_training_policy_changes/

theregister.com

Are we human?

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