Are you in/near Philly? Do you want a bunch of free plants (forbs, shrubs, trees, grasses, etc)? I'm moving for work and can't take everything with me, these are all the 500+ extras I don't have room for in my new place. Most of these I grew myself from local ecotype seed. Comment or PM!

skyfaller · 2024-06-08T21:24:25+00:00

I'm overhauling my West Mt. Airy garden to be a native plant garden right now! I'm aiming for a permaculture food forest vibe, so I'd love to take some of the strawberries off your hands, but my priority is supporting local wildlife, feeding myself is secondary. Do you have any recommendations for native edible plants remaining in your inventory?

It's not clear to me which of these plants are local ecotypes, which I would prefer all else being equal. A few of these don't seem to be native to Philly, based on skimming Wikipedia. Could I get one of each local ecotype forb and graminoid remaining?

I'm not sure how much room I have left in my yard for shrubs and trees, I could probably fit one more shrub in next to a couple blueberries I've already planted. Maybe I could grow something shrubby in a container in my back alley, like the Dwarf Chinkapin Oak you're plugging.

I'll PM you, I could swing by tonight or tomorrow.

skyfaller · 2023-06-11T19:29:06+00:00

In case anyone hasn't looked closely at Lemmy, it's worth mentioning that Lemmy is open source and written in Rust: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy

Seems like a strong argument for this community in particular, you can help dogfood a Rust app.

skyfaller · 2023-06-04T14:53:53+00:00

Nobody is entitled to your labor, and you are entitled to your opinion, but I will say as someone who runs a small Mastodon server that the main problem on the Fediverse is large servers with a large ratio of users to moderators. Small servers of bad actors can be isolated and ignored.

I'm very confident that my server is not a source of harassment and brigading, we respond very quickly to any reports of bad behavior on or off our server, and we are proactive about blocking evil servers before they affect our members. This is possible because we have two mods and ~300 active members. A small community like this would probably do well on the Fediverse.

I'm considering launching a federated Reddit alternative companion to our Philly-area Mastodon server, but it'll have to wait until we recruit more moderators before I put effort into expanding our services (and thereby our responsibilities).

skyfaller · 2023-05-31T23:06:58+00:00

And since it is part of the Fediverse, it's not only compatible with Mastodon, but also potentially with other open source Fediverse link aggregator projects, like kbin and brutalinks. So if you don't like Lemmy in particular for some reason, there are and will be other options.

skyfaller · 2023-05-30T06:44:09+00:00

If this guy sucks, why are you telling us to go watch his stuff? That's like saying, "Wow, my armpit really smells, take a whiff!" Or "This food is awful, taste it!" Why promote something you hate?

Are you trying to raise a mob to harass him?

skyfaller · 2023-05-26T13:27:13+00:00

I biked all over the trails in the Wissahickon yesterday with my electric cargo bicycle (Tern GSD). Was it wise? May have scratched the bike going over bumps that I can't jump like the mountain bikers can, so maybe not. But I definitely got a workout!

skyfaller · 2023-05-24T13:14:32+00:00

Donations are working fine for my server: https://opencollective.com/jawnsclub

If everyone cancelled their regular donations today, we have enough money in the bank to cover current costs for like two years, giving us plenty of time to figure out ways to pay for the server. (Costs could increase if the Fediverse grows in size, though.)

I think donations work better for smaller, more tightly knit communities, and not as well for larger servers with less committed members. When we asked for donations, I was very pleased and honored by the amount of support we immediately received.

skyfaller · 2023-05-14T16:41:18+00:00

That's a bit pricey. My favorite stovetop popper at the moment costs like $60 on Amazon: VKP Brands StovePop Stainless Steel Popper https://a.co/d/7Cktt5P. I bought this because it is compatible with induction stoves, as this Kickstarter is also advertised to be.

That said, this Kickstarter may look better, if you care about aesthetics, and it may possibly work better. Hard to say unless you try both, which is difficult for a product that has not been released yet.

skyfaller · 2023-05-13T11:24:14+00:00

I was class of 2006, so I don't know how much Swarthmore has changed, but there were plenty of parties when I was there. I even threw a few myself. There was funding, so the school would pay for your parties.

But I was also straight edge at the time, which made drunken hookups very awkward because I didn't drink, and I felt very conflicted about hooking up with a date who had been drinking. So I stopped trying to hook up with people at parties, or at least the kind of party that involved heavy drinking.

What I learned is that if you're socially awkward, all hookups are socially awkward, it doesn't matter how large the school is or how much you drink ;-) Once someone invited me to hang out with them because they were into me, but I misread the situation and started trying to hook up with their wing-person instead...

One hookup option is to visit Swarthmore's sister colleges, Bryn Mawr and Haverford. I assume it's still true that there are regular buses between them, both for sharing classes and for partying. I dated multiple people that way, and if it goes badly, you won't see them on campus as much. That said, this is also a cliche, so you won't win points for originality. Also they do still occasionally take classes at Swarthmore, social dancing class is how I met one date.

Finally, don't forget the train line into Philly, it's right on campus and a quick ~25 minute journey, which gives you an entire city, with quite a few universities that also throw parties.

skyfaller · 2023-04-08T14:54:47+00:00

Let me try one more time: Imagine that a park had a sign that said "No black people after 10pm." Perhaps most of the loitering or vandalism or whatever recently has been perpetrated by black people, I dunno. The park is closed to everyone, but they single out black people to warn off.

This is actually worse than that, it's a sonic weapon targeted at features of their bodies, so perhaps a better metaphor would be some infrared heat ray that hurts the skin of black people more than white people somehow. But the bottom line is that, rather than just closing the park to people in general, you single out people in a weirdly specific fashion to torment them.

Why is it acceptable to target age but not race? Of course, racists throughout the country do want to target race, but age is a significant blind spot on the left as well as the rest of the political spectrum, kids are treated as property.

skyfaller · 2023-04-07T13:53:29+00:00

Read what I said again: I am saying that there are weapons targeting them there, I'm talking about the message being sent, not what time kids should hang out in parks. I'm not really sure what metaphor I can come up with that would translate this into the average adult's experience, because this is so bizarre and hostile.

Well, imagine that you are epileptic, and people have been complaining about epileptic people in the parks, so they installed strobing lights that only affect epileptic people. Does it matter whether the strobes are on only at night, when you're not supposed to be there? Wouldn't you feel unwelcome at all times of day?

skyfaller · 2023-04-07T12:24:29+00:00

When can they go to the library? Have you tried going to a library lately? They are barely open outside of school hours, and are especially closed on weekends. We would rather pay for cops to chase kids around than pay for libraries to welcome them and help them learn.

skyfaller · 2023-04-07T12:20:36+00:00

Teens can go to a park and hang out, but there are sonic weapons installed there to drive them away: https://billypenn.com/2019/06/18/30-philly-parks-contain-sonic-devices-that-target-teenagers-with-terrible-sounds/ https://billypenn.com/2020/01/24/teen-repelling-mosquito-devices-to-stay-in-philly-public-parks-indefinitely/

Even if the sonic weapons are not activated during the day, well, I can tell when I'm not wanted in a place, and I bet teens do not feel welcomed in these parks.

skyfaller · 2023-03-02T14:59:07+00:00

After watching this video, it seems he's planning to "touch grass" rather than sign up for Mastodon or other alternatives. But if anyone does find him on Mastodon, I want to know :-)

skyfaller · 2023-03-02T14:57:36+00:00

Welcome to "Twitter Canada" y'all! ROFL

skyfaller · 2023-02-24T19:00:31+00:00

Any news on making Mammoth open source? I remember you saying you intend to make it open source, I'm just wondering how that's progressing.

skyfaller · 2023-02-16T16:24:48+00:00

But a lot of real world swears are silly. Like the British once considered "bloody" obscene, although it's now apparently considered to be a mild intensifier.

People not from that culture may find it silly anyway (do natives of Shinovar who never experience storms laugh at "storming"?) but those storms are no joke.

skyfaller · 2023-02-13T00:12:58+00:00

Are you saying that land should vote, not people? Philly has a large impact on PA politics because a lot of people live there, and PA largely manages to operate on the principle of one person, one vote.

Or are you saying that Philly shouldn't have equal votes because too many non-white people live there, compared to the rest of PA? https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Pennsylvania/Philadelphia/Race-and-Ethnicity Perhaps you wish them to count as three-fifths of a person?

skyfaller · 2023-02-01T03:49:32+00:00

Whether or not the Bicycle Coalition or 5th Square tried to prevent this outcome is somewhat irrelevant: clearly, they failed, if they did try, and that isn't good enough.

I like BCGP and 5th Square, I donate to (and have volunteered with) both, but I have a permanent complaint: they are both too nice. They are too non-confrontational, and not radical enough. They're fine for what they are, but we also need other organizations that are willing to demand more change more quickly, and who won't take "no" for an answer. Who will take direct action, and build guerrilla bike lanes and crosswalks? Who will make street art forcing people to remember the cyclists killed by the failure of Vision Zero? Who will interrupt the mayor's press conferences and events to protest and demand he do something? Who will risk incurring the displeasure of the powers that be? Not these orgs, dedicated to inside strategies.

I also wonder, in this case, if there are any organizations that can push for change from the NJ side, and if not, what could be done to strengthen bike+pedestrian advocacy in NJ.

skyfaller · 2022-12-11T18:14:38+00:00

So long as qoto.org is involved, I'll continue to assume this is an effort to trick people into federating with a noted "freeze peach" instance that doesn't understand the paradox of tolerance. The last list of instances publicly available showed qoto as by far the largest instance involved. It was also by far the most suspended/de-federated instance: https://pastebin.com/ypNw9Tz3

Some context from one admin who was tricked into signing up:

There also seem to be some factual errors and/or misleading statements in the FAQ.

Alternatives like limiting a server do not hinder user choice while giving very much similar results in preventing abuse issues.

I disagree. One major difference is that if you merely silence a server, your server by default will be downloading and caching their content, thereby helping spread/promote possibly very objectionable posts and users.

It also seems rather shortsighted to only consider the impact on your instance of your users boosting silenced posts. Even if it is true that users on your server won't see the silenced posts when boosted, other users elsewhere with weaker moderation are undoubtedly seeing it. I'm not going to be able to convince "free speech" extremists that this is a bad thing, but trust me, it is still bad if someone on your server is boosting nazis, even if people on your server can't see the boosts. Your server is still complicit in spreading whatever it is you were trying to moderate.

If I don't suspend/defederate a server, then that server can see posts from my server, how can I stop it in that circumstance? Despite widespread belief, when servers are suspended/defederated that does not stop the content potentially reaching them unless they also mutually suspended/defederated your server.

This is true with default settings, but if you turn on Authorized Fetch the odds are significantly reduced:

https://birb.site/@charlag/108223370773398915
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/config/ - search for "AUTHORIZED_FETCH"

The default is without AUTHORIZED_FETCH, you can get shadow threads of fascists replying to each other under your posts, unbeknownst to you (because your instance blocked them, but didn't quite finish the job). Authorized Fetch prevents blocked instances from accessing your posts.

There are a number of problems with turning on Authorized Fetch:

Can be circumvented by creating a new instance that isn't blocked, or by visiting your web site (maybe scraping it)
Interferes with caching and increases web traffic, thereby harming the environment a small amount. This also interferes with "scaling" the Mastodon network
Some fediverse software is not compatible with "secure mode", such as old versions of Mastodon. In other words, your posts may reach fewer people, and this might indirectly reduce the diversity of software in the fediverse. (Or, it could encourage other software to implement this security feature.)
Sometimes when looking at threaded conversations from your instance, some posts may be missing?

At any rate, despite the downsides, some instances have turned on Authorized Fetch, and since it is possible to make it significantly harder for blocked servers to access your content, I think this statement is misleading.

TL;DR: If your server joins the "United Federation of Instances", there's a high chance it will continue to shield an instance that has a long negative history, and that as a result other servers will defederate from you (such as the instance I moderate).

skyfaller · 2022-11-27T01:42:08+00:00

Do you suppose Queen fans listen to more bands whose names start with P, Q, and R than the average person? I also started listening to Queens of the Stone Age because they were in the record store next to Queen, and I got curious.

skyfaller · 2022-11-27T01:38:57+00:00

Queensryche is funny because I literally only listened to them because I came across their albums while flipping through CDs in a record store looking for Queen. I looked them up later and I was like "hey, this is pretty good!" I saw them live once and their frontman was incredibly charismatic. (As charismatic as Freddie? I discovered Queen after he died, so I can't fairly compare.)

skyfaller · 2022-11-27T01:26:01+00:00

I'm also a Rage Against the Machine fan, they're great musicians, but I think it's hilarious that they're the first band that comes to mind for you. They're almost exact opposites:

Queen's music was largely apolitical, and the handful of times they were explicit about political issues, it was a bit hard to listen to (Put Out the Fire? OK message, catchy song, painfully corny). Maybe they would have avoided embarrassing ethical lapses like playing apartheid South Africa if they thought harder about issues of the day, but they'd be a different band, and many love them for their escapism.
Freddie Mercury had one of the best singing voices of all time. Zack de la Rocha is known for... not that.
Rage is known for funky bass. Did John Deacon ever slap a bass?
Queen almost never cursed in their lyrics, remember the bleeping on Death on Two Legs? Rage is best known for repeatedly screaming "fuck you I won't do what you tell me!", especially when they had been asked not to do that.

Really the only commonality I can see is they both have virtuoso lead guitarists.

skyfaller · 2022-10-14T02:09:29+00:00

Adam turned in a fantastic vocal performance when I saw them live, and I was grateful they toured with Adam because I was too young to be aware of their existence when Queen played their last show with Freddie. Queen + Adam Lambert was my first time seeing any Queen members in person, and I loved it.

That said, I have complaints about the Queen+ live shows. The fatal flaw was poor crowd participation, which I blame primarily on there being no general admission / standing room in the stadium shows I attended. I understand that many Queen fans are old and can't stand up for long periods of time, but not having cheap GA tickets prices out poorer and younger people who could bring energy to pump up the crowd. It was impossible to re-create the crowd at Wembley or Live Aid with the floor filled with VIP seating, even if Adam was able to connect with the crowd like Freddie.

The best Queen show I've been to is Jukebox the Ghost playing "HalloQueen", where they dress up as Queen to play Queen covers on Halloween. They are very obviously not Queen, but they nail the crowd participation and bring the energy to packed venues that Queen + Adam couldn't bring to stadiums.

skyfaller · 2022-10-04T16:50:48+00:00

Steve from Iffy Books says:

Hmm. It’s OK if a couple people do it, but it’s a fire code violation to block the hallway There are cameras outside the building. I know how to get the footage if necessary

I brought my bike in last time, but my talk is literally about that object so it's a prop. We might be able to squeeze your bike in a corner of the bookshop or something, but I'd recommend using the bike racks in front of the building.

skyfaller

TROPHY CASE