The week before Thanksgiving Twitter fires 4K workers, Amazon fires 10K workers, Facebook fires 11K workers, and Disney plans thousands of layoffs—all while US Billionaire pandemic wealth increased an absurd $1.7T.😳

A reminder that billionaires don’t create jobs—they exploit workers.

Tax billionaires. Unionize workers.

When they did an x-ray of Henry Gillard Glindoni's painting of Elizabethan occultist/alchemist John Dee, they discovered that Dee was standing in a circle of human skulls...
#art #history #occult #alchemy

EDIT: More info here: https://www.omnia.ie/index.php?navigation_function=2&navigation_item=%2F9200579%2Fzaj9njhp&repid=1

Them: "Mastodon is hard to use."
Me: _gets started easily_
#coops

Them: "The #fediverse is fragmented - hard to find anyone."
Me: _easily finds many folks here I know or enjoy_
👋

Them: "It's just white male tech nerds"
Me: _discovers fairly robust presence of non-white, non-male folks_
✊

Them: "It's set up so it's antiviral"
Me: _sees more interest in my thoughts here than ever on the birdsite_
🙃

Them: "Local servers are like isolated islands."
Me: _finds a canoe to explore archipelago_
🛶

“I would urge you to keep your eyes out for how various media outlets portray the twisted turns of a desperate man bent on regaining power—especially those that slip back into the mistaken practice of covering him as if he’s just a political candidate wanting to be president.”

https://america.substack.com/p/the-need-for-mockery-and-context?utm_medium=email&action=share

18 November 1913 | A Czech Jew, Walter Pollak, was born in Prague.

He was deported to #Auschwitz from #Theresienstadt ghetto on 18 December 1943. He did not survive.

#history #Holocaust

Here's your irregular reminder that:

Twitter was a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of employees.

Mastodon is a niche hobbyist product run by volunteers

The fact that we're being seen as a viable alternative to them is an admission that a federated, decentralized future is not only possible, but desirable.

Mastodon is not one thing, or one place. It's a network of many things and many places. We don't have a spokesperson (I mean, there's me. I'm the official spokesperson for 💯 of the fediverse, but beyond me there is no spokesperson) we don't have consensus on moderation or blocking or tools or what is good and what is bad. Some of us are professional SREs and Sysadmins, some of us aren't. Some of our instances have been around for 5+ years, some won't be here in six months.

And that's good! All of it, every last bit of it is good.

We're wrestling power away from the billionaire class, in real time, and reclaiming it for the People.

I joined this site a fortnight ago today.

I did not have a clue how it worked, or about its lore and culture.

Now, it seems intuitive - though not because I am adept but because networks and protocols are familiar and practical things.

We use them all the time: www, mobiles, emails, etc.

And this place is structured to encourage calm civility.

It was Twitter which was strange and, in many ways, inhumane - rewarding clicks and rage and vileness.

We just got used to it.

And now we are out.