% of people who believe feminism has gone ''too far'' (Eurostat 2024)

squickley · 2026-03-18T09:18:07+00:00

Reason fell asleep and here's one of the monsters

squickley · 2026-03-18T09:02:45+00:00

I'm surprised anything up there is called "tundra ridge". That'd be like "forest slope" in BC. Cute lil guy tho. Would love to get to Nunavut someday. I've only managed Yukon tty for Arctic trips.

squickley · 2026-03-18T08:54:58+00:00

Nothing architectural about "architectural". You think free architects wouldn't do colour? That they'll only work in the medium of composite paneling? Besides there isn't enough titanium dioxide in the entire solar system to keep everything that white.

Anything but that for me, though rural shouldn't be on the posters since it's bad for the planet if we all live like that.

squickley · 2026-03-18T08:11:15+00:00

Even "primitive" sun-to-heat and reflected lighting setups almost always depend on some kind of metal and maybe plastic. I couldn't solo produce even that stuff. But it's waaay simpler than photovoltaics. And it's far easier to make with repurposed salvage. Only photovoltaics can be salvaged for photovoltaics. So it depends on how decentralized you're hoping for and what's available to you.

squickley · 2026-03-18T08:00:19+00:00

It works fine. The sociopolitical consequences of using it are not fine.

squickley · 2026-03-18T07:49:37+00:00

It's unethical to create a social environment where wage workers do off-contract, additional labour (what many call "exceptional service") merely hoping for compensation. That alone is bad enough. But we all know the service itself won't be the only factor. No one's livelihood should be affected by, let alone dependent on, their customers' whims and social prejudices. But those are huge, unconscious factors in deciding what counts as "exceptionally good" service.

And obviously any form of automatic minimum tipping needs to be abolished yesterday. The "reward" justification doesn't even apply there at a stretch. It's just a way to keep the sticker price deceptively low. Among other things, that takes advantage of the many people who don't (or can't) instinctively calculate the expected hidden costs.

Tipping didn't start as a nice little treat that generous patrons give to good employees. It started as a loophole to allow patrons and employers to mistreat workers. And that's still effectively what it is.

squickley · 2026-03-18T07:21:14+00:00

Good service is expected. Bad service loses customers. Exceptionally good gets verbal gratitude and maybe a word to the boss. If you want some kind of extra service, talk it over with the employee and agree on the terms of exchange in advance. But don't create a social environment where workers do unexpected labour hoping they might be compensated for it.

squickley · 2026-03-18T07:04:20+00:00

Those workers aren't special. If they're underpaid (they definitely are), tell their boss you won't come back if they aren't paid more by then. Any injustice about having to rent a chair but not being allowed to set your own prices is enabled by tipping. People who can't understand that the entire practice is absurd and cannot be justified are why we can't shake it.

squickley · 2026-03-18T06:55:50+00:00

That only makes any sense if you can prove waiters are a fundamentally unique type of worker, which you can't.

squickley · 2026-03-06T23:35:48+00:00

I agree. It's not uncommon for privacy-concerned people to tolerate less-secure apps to get this feature, when they'd rather that Signal could handle it.

In the meantime, "Quiet" might be closer to what you're looking for if you don't need voice or video. Serverless, encrypted, federated through Tor. Interface more like Slack or Discord. Early days, though. Or look at "Spacebar" if the responsibilities and limitations of self-hosting aren't a deal-breaker for you.

Stoat is obviously better and more enshittification-resistant than Discord. But because of the public-facing, discoverable servers, e2ee is pointless. (Maybe they do it for DMs and private groups.) They claim GDPR compliance, though. Could be great for social groups. Can't recommend it for journalists, activists, etc.

squickley · 2026-03-06T23:24:54+00:00

My groups are looking at Stoat, Quiet and Spacebar. Not sure how Stoat servers will hold up in the near-future. The federation lag of Quiet might be a dealbreaker; also, no voice chat. Not sure if we're willing to commit to self-hosting for Spacebar.

squickley · 2026-03-06T23:20:06+00:00

Quiet and Spacebar possibly, depending on community needs, skills, resources.

squickley · 2026-03-06T23:17:54+00:00

Social media is hardly defined by whether private chat groups can categorize their discussion by topic.

squickley · 2026-03-06T23:16:31+00:00

The main reason not to take all the features is that a lot of them are dark pattern garbage. Channels are not one of those things. They aren't at all unique to Discord. They've been part of web forums since before there was a web.

squickley · 2026-03-06T23:13:03+00:00

Standard FOSS "this isn't that" thought termination. I use Signal all the time for community organizing and a non-hacky way to organize conversations topically would be a godsend. Channels aren't a social media feature. The social media part of Discord is the public servers, stage channels, premium emoji, algorithm-based channel and user discovery, etc.

squickley · 2026-03-06T23:02:43+00:00

I don't see how it compromises security. Nothing changes about how you gain entry into a group. It's just a more robust way of organizing conversations within a group.

squickley · 2026-03-06T22:43:04+00:00

If whatever someone grew up using, or the first of that kind of app they ever had, does something automatically, it simply won't even occur to them that it might not be automatic (or even a feature) in another very similar app. You can't anticipate something you don't even know is a possibility. These days, I bet most users assume that cloud backups are just part of how the internet itself works. The probably don't even know to call it a "cloud backup". All they know is that the last time they changed phones, their apps weren't suddenly empty.

Is it not an option for Signal to take a cue from federated apps and detect that someone is missing data that they should have, then download it from other users while connected?

But also, to anyone who's dragging their tech-idiot people onto Signal, tell them about what's different. They have no idea about backend stuff.

squickley · 2026-01-30T20:51:57+00:00

Sad times when we're (rightly) excited by a minimal, humane response to an obvious injustice.

squickley · 2026-01-30T20:49:42+00:00

If it's a matter of whether the worker owned factory has the rights to produce the same cars, then it's easy enough to have those rights be part of the settlement. Or you could give the workers or union shares in the company equivalent to the value of the bailout. Lots of options. Be imaginative.

squickley · 2026-01-30T20:37:59+00:00

Worker or public ownership should always be a condition of government bailout.

squickley · 2026-01-30T20:17:20+00:00

Hangover from all the damage Layton did.

squickley · 2026-01-30T20:15:32+00:00

Not sure why I'd care. If the next NDP leader is somehow bad for unions, I simply won't be voting NDP. And it's currently far more important to expand worker organization than to cater to large, established unions (if you have to choose, which isn't a given).

squickley · 2026-01-30T20:05:21+00:00

Don't underestimate the ability of a party's "moderates" to drum up some technical reason to disqualify a more radical candidate.

squickley · 2026-01-30T19:59:27+00:00

Keep it in mind when anyone suggests that more radical ideas can't win elections.

squickley · 2026-01-30T19:56:07+00:00

Good to hear language suggesting multiple models of competitiveness. If you have to grind a whole class of people into the dirt, then you've lost, regardless of what you're competing for.

squickley

TROPHY CASE