zebrask @zebrask@schelling.pt

"Hey, can you switch instances? Your admin favorited a joke that I didn't appreciate once. Might need to block you otherwise. Oh, and that crowdfunding platform you use? Back in 2006 they let an organization I don't personally align with use their platform. You should abandon that. Also, -"

Shhhh. Let people enjoy things. I am all for being socially conscious but we can't boycott everything. We are so tired. Please go outside.

mastodon.art has blocked outerkosm.us for (officially, per their website):

Federates with the usual suspects

I don't know what this means, but I believe it's essentially a form of penalizing coercion tactic/justification used to leverage other instances into joining the sanctioning of whatever entities they believe deserve sanctioning. Expressed here: https://outerkosm.us/notes/9arsonzgmy

Worse is that mastodon.art did not only block my instance---mastodon.art publicly slandered my instance as harboring child sexual exploitation material (CSEM), Naziism, hate speech. ---And, encouraged other instances to join them in #fediblock! Post found here: https://mastodon.art/@Curator/109799802882253307

mastodon.art's claims are a complete fabrication. At the time of their decision to maliciously slander/fediblock outerkosm.us, the instance itself wasn't 36 hours old! Not only do I not tolerate any such content or behavior, but I know for a fact that no such material exists, nor has ever existed, on my instance.

I never once received any reports, complaints, or communications from mastodon.art administration, nor any other administrators or users of remote instances, regarding any controversial, objectionable, or offensive content from my instance or the users therein. In fact, at the time of writing this, I've not received any reports or complaints from anyone whatsoever about anything!

I replied to mastodon.art's post asking for clarification and expressed how upset I was that they would do something so arbitrarily cruel to a brand new, small instance such as my own: https://outerkosm.us/notes/9asjjhl7me

I messaged the administrator of mastodon.art and furthermore emailed their administrative account again asking for clarification and expressing my discontent. I never got a response.

Blocking an instance is fine, it's part of the administrative process of the fediverse; It's a fact of life. But, to publicly lie and cruelly slander an instance is another matter completely. ---Especially when doing so to abuse the Mastodon #fediblock weapon. For an instance like mastodon.art, with nearly 8,000 users, to do this... it's the fediverse equivalent of dropping a nuclear weapon on a tiny country. And, for no reason, at that! I do not understand why they would do this. My instance did nothing to them!

I can't interpret the actions of mastodon.art here as anything short of completely random cruelty: purely motivated by a desire for sabotage. A brand new instance joins the fediverse and a giant Mastodon instance immediately broadcasts fraudulent claims to over 8,000 people---to the entire fediverse---that this new instance is harboring or disseminating CSEM, Naziism, etc.. And specifically tells users "not to interact". Doesn't elaborate further. Doesn't respond to questions. Doesn't explain anything.

I just don't understand.

I'd be lying if I claimed I wasn't upset, or that this didn't bother me.

10 Image #CaptionTips from a transcriptionist:

1. Any words are better than nothing.
2. You don't need to say it's "a picture of…" screen readers will already say it's an image.
3. Start with the framing or format (i.e. close up, landscape, meme, text).
4. Think about the reason you're posting the pic and describe that first, add background details if you have time.
5. Pretend you're talking to someone on the phone and want to tell them about this cool thing you're looking at.
6. Transcribe any and all text in the image, even if it's the only thing you do.
7. If you've described the image in your post, you don't need to copy and paste it again in the caption. But again, don't leave it blank, just put something like "as described."
8. You can add small subjective notes, but don't give too much interpretation of the image in your own opinion.
9. Caption jokes are fun, as long as they still describe the image objectively.
10. Use punctuation, and capitalize words properly. A lot of us have interacted with this tech when calling customer service or talking to Siri, so keep in mind that you're writing for a computer to read, and it needs all the help it can get.

@zebrask so by analogy, you could do something similar for Sunni/Shia. Start with geography, then go to culture, then draw cultural comparisons across established dimensions.

@zebrask It seems like the most resonant way to draw the Cath/Prot distinction -- in the modern day, for practical purposes -- is to point to the cultural-ethnic geography:
Prots carved off lots of northern/Germanic cultures, and so have a lot of ethnic norms you'd find there (in Hofstede's dimensions, those include higher individualism and lower power distance).
By contrast, Caths kept lots of southern/Med cultures (collectivism, high power distance).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory

I looked at 325 psychology study replication results today, and the best simple rule I found for telling if a study would replicate is this:

When the original study's p-value was at most 0.01, about 72% of the papers replicated.

Whereas when p>0.01, only 48% replicated.

Others have found similar results.

For instance, @uebernerd has suggested p=0.005 as a cutoff:

https://replicationindex.com/2021/05/10/osc-pm/

I made an open source mastodon web client with a user-controlled algorithmic feed and threaded posts. It's not done yet, and has some rough edges, but it's to the point where I'm using it as my main feed reader. https://www.jefftk.com/p/introducing-shrubgrazer

If artistic *style* gets copyright-level protections, most of the styles will be owned by corporations within a generation, and there's a decent chance you'll end up needing to pay a licensing fee or something equally absurd to publish your own art.

Just, like, before you go driving that direction.

The phrase "attention passengers" makes sense for auditory announcements, but not for textual signs. https://www.jefftk.com/p/attention-passengers-not-for-signs

@zebrask "Yes. Yes. I *have* been traumatised by living in a society without priorisation or numeracy. I would like to see someone."