Anyway I can't go into work for the next couple weeks. I enjoy the enormous privilege of this being Generally Okay And Survivable For Me, but anyone who wants to tell their friends about my web game Improbable Island, that's how I'm earning my money until I can lift heavy things again, https://www.improbableisland.com
RE: https://mastodon.social/@starlily/117485135025436370
OK cool, thanks to everyone who responded.
I guess I'll just figure it out myself, like always.
I had to tell an elderly friend that their art website that I have run for them for a decade or more had to be shut down yesterday.
It ran a very old PHP gallery that hasn't been updated in years. It barely ran on PHP7, and definitely won't on anything newer.
The site is a big part of their life. I have to get something back together for them. Change gets harder as you get older. This will be rough, but not as bad as not having it at all.
I would rather not put them on WordPress. Suggestions?
Thanks to the techfashbros for getting me to:
Vastly reduce my online activities/footprint.
Read actual physical books.
Produce art instead of just consuming content.
Buy local.
Spend more time with friends in person.
Question if the benefits of the Internet outweigh the harms.
Question if the benefits of capitalism outweigh the harms.
Bravo.
I look forward to seeing all of them getting everything they fully deserve.
I am reminded again how in 1935, the US Congress passed a tax law that created a new top tax bracket of nearly 80%.
That tax bracket contained exactly one person, John D. Rockefeller, and was designed to stop him from causing so much trouble.
In case anyone needs the precedent.
Do you know a #ContentCreator who has to deal with truly horrific hate speech, harassment and threats in their comment section?
I’m going to bet that if they’re on YouTube, the answer is yes. And we all know how frustrating YouTube’s in-house team can be with creators. If you’re under a certain size, they don’t want to know.
I’m an independent creator, and I’m part of the #LGBTQ community. My channel of 152,000 subscribers has had a lot of harassment because of who I am, who I love, and because I’m willing to stand up for marginalized voices.
It got bad. The hate. The disinformation. The attacks. I’d spend Saturday mornings in bed, weeping. I went to some very dark places. I came close to giving up on the channel entirely, and on more than that.
My wife @shirewood was done with how I - and others - were being treated. Out of frustration and anger at the way some people behave online, she built Shepherd, a comment moderation tool from #littlecollie
It never posts or replies on your behalf. What it does is make your comment section civil again, without silencing your real audience. You get to focus on the people who matter, your community, instead of the threats and hate.
Here’s how it works:
🐕 Your rules come first. Accounts and phrases you’ve blocked are caught the moment they arrive.
🐕 It sees through disguises. When someone swaps letters for numbers or symbols to sneak past YouTube’s basic filters, Shepherd undoes the swap before it reads.
🐕 It reads the hard ones in context. It looks at the comment, what it’s replying to, and the video it’s under, and asks what that person really meant.
🐕 If it isn’t sure, it holds the comment for you, or a trusted helper, to decide.
🐕 Honest criticism stays up. It acts on abuse, never on disagreement.
Comments from repeat offenders are hidden from view automatically once you’ve approved that policy. Every decision is logged, with the reason it was made.
And Shepherd isn’t just for LGBTQ+ creators. It’s for anyone who’s targeted for who they are, what they believe, or what they make. The professional moderation services out there start at four figures a month and are built for brands and agencies, not for the person who actually is the channel. Shepherd is from $10 a month per channel, and Little Collie keeps hardship spots for creators who are targeted but not yet monetized.
It works on YouTube and WordPress today, with Facebook and Instagram coming soon. Try it free on your own comments. No card, no password: https://www.littlecollie.com
Repost every post on a thread of a dozen or more posts and you are catching a mute.
Just repost the first one, or a significant one, and let me decide.
Reminder that it’s ok to go to a food bank if you’re struggling to buy groceries. At least in my part of California, anyone at all can walk in and get stuff without proving need.
And that’s why they exist!! It’s ok to make use of them.
Day Two of roofing work today. They are making good progress, it seems like they will finish up tomorrow, but today will be noisy and difficult.
A lot of cis people still think that HRT medication is something that trans people do for fun, like it's recreational drugs or something.
Instead you should really think about it like insulin for people with diabetes or L-thyroxine for people with thyroid deficiency.
I learned about the existence of Lego trains two days ago.
I might be excited and or in financial trouble.
Designers really need to stop treating user interfaces like they are fashion trends. Imagine you were learning to play the piano and every six months some dipshit from Pianos R Us would sneak into your house in the night and replace your piano with a completely different instrument. "Get excited! The all new piano is here!" Grumble grumble.
(I'm allowed one grumble post about the UI changes. 🙃)
COMMUNITY REQUEST
DivestSPD needs help buying a new (old) computer to automate data collection. We ran our old one until it literally busted open (see pic).
Unlike SPD we're good custodians of the people's money. We found a refurbbed one for $200.
Chip in at venmo.com/divestspd
If you haven't seen the Abdul El-Sayed confrontation with a far-right Christian supremacist who tried to paint him as a Muslim terrorist, it's absolutely worth your time.
Be sure to watch all the way to the end for the climax of the argument, and to see Tommy slink away in shame.
And in case you were wondering, Tommy is a professional evangelical Republican activist, and a former employee of Christian supremacist Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
Background:
https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/tommy-teepell-abdul-el-sayed-viral-video-town-hall-josh-hawley
Today is the big day! The start of replacing the roof on my house, and I am both excited and terrified.
Excited, because this needed to happen. Theres no way the 50 year old shakes were going to last another winter, or even another storm.
Terrified, because I have no idea what they are going to find up there. Hopefully it hasnt leaked significantly, or for any period of time. And its going to be busy and noisy in our calm oasis for the next week.
I'd like to talk a little about ketchup.
If I say "ketchup is just the worst," that's an opinion.
If I say "people who like ketchup are mentally ill," that's bullying.
If I say "because I don't like ketchup, no one should have it," that's oppression.
If I say "people who like ketchup are dangerous and should be controlled," that's bigotry.
If I say "anyone who defends ketchup should be silenced or locked up," that's fascism.
This post is about trans people.
In the last few days I've seen a LOT of brand new, no pfp or bio sock puppet accounts brigading linux threads, primarily from "lemmy.*" domains, like .zip, .world, and others.
Gonna start muting these entirely.
The #BlackPantherParty, a #socialist #antiracist group, was founded in #Oakland, CA, on #ThisDayInHistory in 1966 by #HueyPNewton & #BobbySeale. It operated health clinics and provided free food to children, scaring Washington into unleashing #COINTELPRO and killing its leaders.
TG shared the text link and image below.
The collection’s 300,000 pages record the lives of enslaved people in countries including the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius, South Africa and Trinidad