Because seismic waves are slower than internet signals, it’s possible to send an alert after an earthquake starts, but before the shaking reaches you. A few seconds’ warning is enough to pull over to the side of the road, climb down from a ladder, step away from a high shelf or window, put down a scalpel, etc.
Mexico and Japan both have systems like this, and Los Angeles has launched a pilot program with apps for both Android and iOS.
I often see conservatives say that they see individuals where liberals see groups. But it doesn’t track. Conservatives are regularly willing to exclude whole groups of people, then allow exceptions. On the same issues, liberals often allow groups, then exclude individuals.
Put another way, liberals want to ensure everyone eligible is allowed access, and conservatives want to ensure everyone ineligible is denied access.
Voting rights, immigration, social programs… Even if they agreed on who should be eligible, the priorities are different.
Of course, we don’t agree on who is eligible, for a lot of issues. And some of those issues are who’s eligible to be treated humanely.
Anyone familiar with what Facebook Pages considers to be a “business?”
Facebook decided to group my “business pages” (two blogs, neither of which is a business, one of which I had already marked for deletion a few days ago) into a “business account.” I thought maybe they’d flattened their definitions, but another page (for a long-defunct user group that I also marked for deletion this week) didn’t get lumped into it.
“Help” hasn’t been terribly helpful.
Knowing Facebook, I half-suspect it’s some weird “Oh noes, he’s deleting pages because he thinks he doesn’t have the tools he needs! Let’s change his settings so he’ll see that we do offer the tools!” I deleted the pages because they’ve been inactive for years, not because I don’t have advertising tools for them.
I don’t need a “Facebook business account,” but I’m reluctant to delete it unless I can be sure I won’t lose access to the active blog’s page. And again, “Help” has been spectacularly unhelpful.
A couple of weeks ago, the almost-8YO found my old manual SLR camera – the 1967 model my grandfather gave me. I bought some film, and picked up a light meter app while waiting for the battery to arrive (the light meter is the only powered part of the camera), and I showed him how to load the camera, focus, choose the shutter speed and aperture, etc., and the two of us shot a roll of film, trading off between us.
As I showed him how to unload the camera, I managed to knock it off the table, where the open camera crashed to the floor.
I couldn’t believe it! This camera is older than I am, and I was fairly certain it still worked…until we shot one roll of film!
Amazingly the lens didn’t break, and nothing seems to have damaged the shutter mechanism either. The only thing that I’ve noticed is that the door in the back of the case is bent slightly. I can still close it, but I have to shift it about 1/8″ to do it. I hope it’s still light-proof…
We shot another roll of film, again taking turns, and tomorrow I’m taking it into a photography store to get them developed. I really thought the slow turnaround would be frustrating to him, but he’s finding it fascinating.
Working through a book on modding Minecraft with the kiddo. It knows its target audience: the first few lessons are all about explosions!
It’s written for 1.8, which is a problem because a lot of the structure has changed between then and 1.12, but a decent IDE with auto complete and a sense of common naming schemes has made it relatively easy to adapt the simple lessons so far. We’ll see how well that works as they get more complicated.
Now that Pixelfed federation and Pterotype are taking shape, I can hook up my photos and blogging directly into Mastodon and the Fediverse, but you know what would be even cooler?
Connecting them to each other.
A lot of my blog ideas grow out of photos or statuses that I’ve posted previously, as I find more to say or a better way to say it. And while it’s always possible to just post a comment or reply with a link, imagine posting them into the same federated thread.
Here’s a scenario we can do today:
This is already pretty cool, but it still creates three separate discussions. The best I can do is add a “Hey, I wrote more on my blog over here: <link>” to the first discussion.
What if there were a way to publish the blog entry as a reply to the PixelFed photo? Or to publish the second photo as a reply to the blog?
And that opens up other possibilities where people can reply to other people’s photos and blog entries with their own. (Webmentions sort of do this, but they’re not going to create a single federated discussion.)
I’m not sure what form this interleaved discussion would take, or what the pitfalls might be. (Visibility might suffer, for instance.) Blogging and photo posting tend to be platforms for an original post that can have comments, rather than platforms where a top-level post can be an OP or a reply, and this would change that model.
For today’s daily blog, I was thinking about posting something about getting out there and voting in the midterm election tomorrow. Aside from the fact that I already posted about elections a few days ago, I realized another problem: who’s going to read it?
I mean, K-Squared Ramblings doesn’t seem to have many regular readers as near as I can tell. And Key Smash! is for testing – I’m not really expecting to pick up many regular readers there. So a call to action isn’t going to reach many people on either of these blogs.
Of course, that brings up the question of why am I blogging these days? Who is my target audience?
