Notices by myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)

@foone

Uh. Weaponized WHAT? Against what?

Do not help them to build any more of this machine.

Depending on your job you probably have in the past made compromises. Maybe to keep your job. Maybe to survive. This is a bright line. If you are asked to be the one to update the table don't let it be your fingers typing those changes.

If you can't just say "No I won't do that." Stall, run away, feign incompetence. Just don't let it happen.

I suspect this might be where the rubber hits the road first for us around here.

Nothing has changed. You do not have to do it. It is not even ordained.

If you work with a database and are asked to alter the table structure to comply in advance for citizenship or gender categorizations it's really important to NOT do it.

"The governor is concerned about all this stuff they want us to update our record keeping so we store both gender AND biological sex."

"We need fields to store the country of origin of people's parents."

If you don't have the power to rebuff this yourself, ask for help. At minimum ask for help online anonymously.

@aral

I am the coach of my school's robotics team. Robotics is very hard. Non-trivial. It's an exciting field and can fill me with hope at times.

But, is it really so bad to have two lads on a truck of asphalt with shovels?

Why can't MAGA people be angry that the US has *weak* power outlets and why can't they all get mad about it and switch the country to 220v? Seems very unpatriotic that European power outlets and Chinese Power outlets have twice the voltage.

Why couldn't they just get fixated on that issue and forget the rest?

"liberals think 220v is too dangerous for you! They don't want you to be able to make poptarts too fast!"

@foone

It also sounds like there is exactly ONE guy who can use it... And like the programmer is mad at him for some reason.

One of the strangest things about house cats is how often they seem to love to be talked to. Pica loves it if you talk to her and she will say things back. She has no idea what you are saying, but nonetheless is very engaged in "conversation"

I'm convinced she thinks what she's doing is all there is to talking, she feels she's mastered it. It's a take turns making noises game. She gets jealous and butts in when my husband and I "play" without her.

Do your cats love "talking?"

Many science fiction stories are what we call "cautionary tales." They are called "cautionary" because the things that happen in the story are bad. Part of the reason authors write stories like these is so that we can *avoid* things like that happening.

The stories show how people were short-sighted or made mistakes with technology and science and the horrible things that can happen.

IDK... I just suddenly felt the need to explain this very clearly for some reason.

The most true and terrible ‘one-sentence horror story’ goes like this:

We can get used to anything.

A brisk cool morning in the lovely South Bronx & the ants who live in the strawberry pot in our roof garden are moving slowly. (same same, girls) These are pavement ants (Tetramorium sp.) When I repotted this plant I saw their queen & managed to save & rehome her. I gave her a cricket leg, since then they have been thriving.

There was a violent thunderstorm and my sweet husband asked “should we bring the strawberry ants inside?🥺” But of course they are fine— they were made for this. #tinycore

They had the signs printed in advanced. Hired a graphic designer. (Wow he did a good job.) Handed them out. Waved them proudly on television. Like they say "Lower Taxes" or something.

There is no neutral way to read this sign. It's about getting rid of people because of who they are. There is no gray area. No fig leaf. Just eliminationism.

It doesn't even say WHO or WHY.

@mistergibson @wa7iut @wmd

I don't have a good feeling about this. "Planting trees" is almost a red flag for me at this point since very few people seem to understand how complex and the real investment needed to plant a tree.

You can't just spam saplings and expect a forest. A forest is a living complex system easier to preserve than it is to build.

"planting trees?" Really? What kind? Are they native species? Who will care for them in the critical first years? Who owns the land?

@mistergibson @wa7iut @wmd

This is why I'm deeply suspicious of anyone who claims to be "planting X trees when you do Y"

These are just indulgences of our modern time.

I decided to find out if any progress had been made on the science behind why some ants are attracted to electrical fields. After filtering out exterminators (it's so demoralizing to search for information on creatures you love and find nothing but people who know nothing about them boasting about how they will kill them all) I found what looked like a blog. But, who the heck is "James Brown"? Never heard of the dude. Maybe he could be my new friend if he likes ants enough to blog about them!

As far as I can tell these people are phantoms. That's cruel on multiple levels. If I was not familiar with this SEO trick I'd spend time looking for them both (to politely tell them about the errors in their blog... which I would assume they would care about since they love insects.)

But I know what this is now. It's probably the exterminators. To get their page ranks up they need "legitimate" pages... like personal blogs by enthusiasts to link to them.

They are pretending to be *ME*😡😳😩

We are expected to take this kind of BS as "harmless gaming of the system." but I find it incredibly distrustful and hurtful. It's making it harder for people to find each other by putting all these fake people in the way. It's LIES the pages are full of half-true nonsense. It's making people know less and filling their heads with false facts.

And this kind of page is what you find FIRST. You won't find @alexwild or the formiculture forum.

You find these mendacious SEO ghosts.

@wmd @alexwild

These fake pages ought to be blacklisted to oblivion. But I don't see any search engines taking this seriously at all.

Not really in their interest to do that. We need to make more noise about just how terrible these pages are. Fake experts? Fake people? Fake images? Fake facts?

Information pollution & fragmentation of natural networks of human learning. A rot on the body of human knowledge: any search engine that puts such pages at the top should be ashamed.

@mistergibson @wa7iut @wmd

Tree planting schemes have been used as green-washing more often than they have been sincere or effective means to care for the earth. Some "tree planting" operations are just logging companies who sell the rights of their monoculture fields to companies who want to claim they planted trees. The trees are harvested years later.

In NYC we planted millions of trees. But they just sent saplings and let amateurs spam them wherever. Years later they have all died.

I'm so sick of "big men" enamored of the trappings of power & anyone impressed with them. I'm sick of the mystique of "all he had to do was wave a finger & you were dead" & that is supposed to be impressive rather than terrifying & childish. I'm sick of their entourages, and the way they stick out their lips, pout, posture, bluster. The way they use other people as decorations.

They way they lie to your face as a power play.

It's all... so embarrassing for the human animal of which I am one.