We've been watching some domestic television from NZ, and I'm kind of marveling about it.

NZ is small! About twice the land area of my home state of GA, but with half the population.

Or, compared to CA, NZ is less than 40% the size of CA, and has less than 15% the population.

(or, you know, roughly the size of the UK, but with 1300% less people.)

And they have significant domestic television production, and much of it is high quality. And also film.

This further drives home my longstanding belief that every US state, (and probably much smaller areas) could sustainably support local media production.

NEW: #Copenhagen’s new plan intends to replace 600 out of the current 1,050 public parking spaces in their city centre with wider sidewalks, bike-lanes, street trees & landscaping. That’s a great trade. It’s inspiring when great cities are still working hard to get even better. Repeat after me — your favourite cities WEREN’T “always this way.”

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/hovedstadsomraadet/halvdelen-af-parkeringspladserne-i-hjertet-af-koebenhavn-bliver

#cities #urbanism #parking #cars

Here is an incomplete list of journalists that Elon Musk has suspended from Twitter today.

He also suspended the Twitter account of Mastodon.

It's Going Down
Aaron Rupar
Donie O’Sullivan (CNN)
Drew Harwell (Washington Post)
Ryan Mac (NY Times)
Matt Binder (Mashable)
Tony Webster (award winning freelancer)
Micah Lee (the Intercept)
Keith Olbermann
Steve Herman

Elon Musk bought Twitter in order to suppress free speech and consolidate control of the spaces in which public discourse takes place, as a means to advance his authoritarian quest for profit and power. It's necessary to oppose him the way we would fight against any aspiring tyrant, any oppressor.

https://crimethinc.com/2022/12/09/canary-in-the-coal-mine-twitter-and-the-end-of-social-media

It seems no matter where I go, I find myself wishing that companies would employ (engineering) historians.

Someone who would interview employees and read docs and then write chapters about each major component of a company and how it got to be the way it did.

ATTENTION EVERYONE WRINGING THEIR HANDS OVER “#MASTODON ADMINS CAN READ MY DIRECT MESSAGES”: #SysAdmins have *always* been able to read your #email and DMs unless encrypted, including at the big #SocialNetworks and Internet providers. We used to have t-shirts that said, “I READ YOUR EMAIL.”

It’s just hitting now because you got used to places where the admins were kept away in their cubicles and data centers instead of greeting you at the front door.

#privacy #security #InfoSec #cybersecurity

The thing about Twitter is that it really lacks a lot of the features you'd expect from a true Mastodon replacement.

For example, there's no way to edit your toots (which they, confusingly call "tweets"—let's face it, it's a bit of a silly name that's difficult to take seriously).

"Tweets" can't be covered by a content warning. There's no way to let the poster know you like their tweet without also sharing it, and no bookmark feature.

There's no way to set up your own instance, and you're basically stuck on a single instance of Twitter. That means there's no community moderators you can reach out to to quickly resolve issues. Also, you can't de-federate instances with a lot of problematic content.

It also doesn't Integrate with other fediverse platforms, and I couldn't find the option to turn the ads off.

Really, Twitter has made a good start, but it will need to add a lot of additional features before it gets to the point where it becomes a true Mastodon replacement for most users.

#twitter #mastodon #twittermigration @fediverse