Futurology Today

I realized that I haven't spent time on Pixelfed in a while, and that it would be great to find more content to add to my feed! So I logged in to my instance (social.photo) and then... hit a wall.

With Lemmy and Mastadon, it is super easy to peek at what is going on at other instances and find communities to subscribe to, but it looks like Pixelfed does not make this easy. The biggest issue I have run into is that many of the largest servers do not seem to let you explore what is on them unless you first create an account, and the main Pixelfed Server Directory at https://pixelfed.org/servers does not indicate which servers can be explored or not, so you have to click a few times (since the link takes you to the registration page) to even find this out for a given server. It also does not help that navigating to an instance does not show you the content for that instance, like it does for Lemmy or Mastadon, but for a login page that may or may not have an "Explore" tab at the top.

Am I missing something here? I just logged into Tumblr for the first time in years and my immediate next thought was, "Gee, I should be using Pixelfed instead!" But if in practice it is simply not possible to find content I am interested in without a great deal of hassle then it is not a realistic replacement. In particular, it seems like the way Pixelfed is set up requires me to register on particular instances to get a better view of what content is available (not just locally, but pulled in from other instances). This seems contrary to me to one of the biggest advantages of the Fediverse, which is that you are able and encouraged to pick an instance that best suits you rather than the one where all of the content lives; in particular I could not imagine self-hosting a Pixelfed instance without being left out of most of the content available.

And just to be clear, I am willing to put up with some degree of hassle resulting from the inherently decentralized model of the Fediverse, since I switched completely over to Lemmy from Reddit about a year and a half ago after the API fiasco (and the only reason why I do not use Mastadon more is because I was never that into Twitter-style content to begin with). But having to go out of my way to get through artificially constructed walls to even find content to subscribe is a bit much.

However, again, maybe I am missing here. If someone is willing to point me to a resource that solves this problem problem and makes this entire rant sound completely ignorant then that would be great! 😀

Edit: Fixed silly typo.

So the other day I was in a conversation talking about the MP for my former riding, Greg McLean. I by no means am a Conservative voter, but of the Conservative MPs I can give respect to, Greg McLean is towards the top of the list considering the social issues he's worked on, and his engagement with the community.

I was checking out his website and shockingly found that he has a BlueSky has one of his social platforms. Not only that, but he also uses it regularly, posting multiple times per day. Now this could just be his publicity team rather than him directly, but it still caught me off guard in a positive way that it was a platform he utilized.

It had me thinking. What other MPs use BlueSky and/or Mastodon? I feel having a list would be a useful resource especially in asking other members of parliament by legitimizing the idea of providing a method of following them on social media without using X or Facebook.

Gaza’s bakeries will run out of flour for bread within a week, the U.N. says. Agencies have cut food distributions to families in half. Markets are empty of most vegetables. Many aid workers cannot move around because of Israeli bombardment.

“We depend entirely on this aid box,” said Shorouq Shamlakh, a mother of three collecting her family’s monthly box of food from a U.N. distribution center in Jabaliya in northern Gaza. She and her children reduce their meals to make it last a month, she said. “If this closes, who else will provide us with food?”

The World Food Program said Thursday that its flour for bakeries is only enough to keep producing bread for 800,000 people a day until Tuesday and that its overall food supplies will last a maximum of two weeks. As a “last resort” once all other food is exhausted, it has emergency stocks of fortified nutritional biscuits for 415,000 people.

Fuel and medicine will last weeks longer before hitting zero. Hospitals are rationing antibiotics and painkillers. Aid groups are shifting limited fuel supplies between multiple needs, all indispensable — trucks to move aid, bakeries to make bread, wells and desalination plants to produce water, hospitals to keep machines running.

Walid Ahmad was a healthy high schooler before his arrest in September for allegedly throwing stones at soldiers, his family said. Rights groups have documented widespread abuse in Israeli detention facilities holding thousands of Palestinians who were rounded up after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack ignited the war in the Gaza Strip.

Prison authorities deny any systematic abuse and say they investigate accusations of wrongdoing by prison staff. But the Israeli ministry overseeing prisons acknowledges conditions inside detention facilities have been reduced to the minimum level allowed under Israeli law.

Israel’s prison service did not respond to questions about the cause of death. It said only that a 17-year-old from the West Bank had died in Megiddo Prison, a facility that has previously been accused of abusing Palestinian inmates, “with his medical condition being kept confidential.” It said it investigates all deaths in detention.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/31959167

Russia is to be put on the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), meaning anyone working for the Russian state in the UK will need to declare what they are doing or risk jail, the government announced [...]

Introduced under the National Security Act 2023, FIRS is a tool to help protect our democracy, economy and society from covert, deceptive or otherwise harmful activities against UK interests. The enhanced tier has been specifically designed to shed light on activities directed by particular foreign powers which pose a threat to the safety or interests of the UK.

Russia is the second country to be placed on the enhanced tier, following the announcement in March that Iran would be specified. The government will designate all parts of the Russian state – including its president, its parliament, all Russian ministries and their agencies, and the Russian intelligence services.

The specification of the Russian state is in response to the significant and persistent threat Russia poses to the UK and our interests, which has only increased in recent years. Russian hostile acts on UK soil have ranged from the use of a deadly nerve agent in Salisbury, malign cyber incidents - which included targeting UK parliamentarians through spear-phishing campaigns - as well as espionage and arson.

[...]

Meanwhile, Russia continues to wage its unprovoked and illegal war against Ukraine, a war which Russia could end by tomorrow by withdrawing its forces. The UK remains committed to a just and lasting peace in Ukraine and will continue to exert maximum economic pressure to stop Russia from threatening and undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence, and to help ensure Russia pays for the damage it has caused.

[...]

I sometimes have ideas for law-abiding hacktivist activity involving various political views. I am extremely liberal when it comes to support of free speech and LGBT+ rights. I have one idea in particular that I would like to do and would like others to help and don't want to do it alone. Understanding html and website development would help, as well as understanding linux. I know something about how to setup a server but not other things related to web development. For various reasons, I wouldn't want to post my specific idea on here, because although it's not illegal, it could be controversial. Where do I find like-minded individuals?

Science ‘storytelling’ urgently needed amid climate and biodiversity crisis.

https://xcancel.com/spectatorindex/status/1906563413582791151

Jamrock Hobo got a hold of an internal presentation to this cancelled ZA/UM project. We could have had a Cuno & Cunoesse game. Looks like they made pretty good progress, too.

The latest Android Auto beta has randomly led to the Google app showing up, but its purpose is unclear. Last...

What does someone have to do that means no amount of remorse or effort to fix things will get you to forgive them? I don't mean forgive and forget to the point where they can hurt you again. If someone repeatedly steals from you, forgiveness doesn't mean putting them in a position where they can steal again.

I'm asking this purely out of curiosity. I'm just wondering what the attitude in my corner of the internet is.

After being exposed for shady tactics in late 2024, Honey has now lost over 4 million users from its peak numbers.