A lot of people like to speculate about the future, but usually, it's meant to be a reassurance: "It couldn't happen here!"

It's often that we see that such speculation was horrendously naive. All of it was built on assumptions like "people can't be that stupid" or "people wouldn't just let that happen". Yeah. About that.

This may be basic stuff, but people tend to forget the basic stuff.

I can see them.

Or at least I could. When LGR recently made a video about them, I was having a very bad time viewing them. I was either too drunk or not used to seeing them with this TV setup or I just need new glasses. Probably the last one.

Dunno about that. Most reptiles I've seen don't really give a damn about ephemeral human concepts like "borders". Now, they can be territorial but it's usually in the sense of "you go there and I go here and we'll be fine OK? OK." Just neighborly behavior really.

Computer science: 2+2=4 (for integers at least; try this with floating point numbers at your own peril, you absolute fool)

The way copyright law works, by default you don't have any right to make use of anything, even if it's posted publicly. Why do people allow Fediverse platforms to do the thing they do? Leniency on their part.

Gathering data from Mastodon for AI training is technically feasible, but that doesn't mean it's legally justified. Many people will object to that. Many already do!

I've seen Americans start explaining how the geography in Spaghetti Westerns doesn't make sense, so we in Europe have to go "oh, but you see, the film doesn't take place in real America, it takes place in America of myth and legend."

Sir Cumference the sphere

Oh yes, and the monastery near Camelot also had a nearly spherical oblate

Speaking of US space program, Clickhole also revealed the greatest presidential speech ever that was never delivered. ...oops, this isn't quite like I remember reading it - maybe this is a different draft?

The fact that the larger the subreddits get more picky they are about posts isn't a new problem, but it has apparently gotten a lot worse in last few years. Apparently a lot of subreddits now have automoderator rules that just nuke posts based on karma or "contributor quality", whatever the hell that means.

Speaking in general: Creating communities/instances is easy. Moderating them is hard.

In particular: I would love to create women's spaces. But then I'd have to be on the lookout for the Knights of the True Fedora. They're out there. Somewhere. Now now, I'm not suggesting it'd be a daily problem! ...But the actual daily problems (regular spam and whatnot) would suck too.

Because it has potential for spoofing.

"Hey, download this press kit from https://totallylegitsite.com:stringofnonsense@document.zip/" looks like it's going to a legit site, but it's not.

Maintaining paper notebooks and almanacs and a giant crazy-wall of Post-Its is very fruitful and calming.