Micah Pollak ☃️

@pollak
9 Followers
739 Following
569 Posts

Hi there! I'm an Associate Professor of #Economics at Indiana University Northwest in the Region (Gary, #Indiana). I'm interested in #Teaching, #Pwdagogy, #RegionalEconomics, #History, #HealthEconomics and more!

Also known for #Gardening and #RainGaugeContent, as well as hot takes on #apples and #chili (no beans!). #HoosierMast

Websitehttps://www.micahpollak.com
Twitterhttps://twitter.com/MicahPollak
Google Scholarhttps://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=NjtFn_wAAAAJ
@drsdon @lynneverson @stux I think Mastodon works best when you're on a smaller instance (maybe <10k users?) which aligns as close as possible with your interests. That way moderation is most effective and personal. Plus the "local" feed becomes much more useful.
@lynneverson @drsdon @stux I'd actually prefer to to migrate to mastodon.coffee if I could, but it's been closed to new accounts for some time.
@drsdon mastodon.social is just too big (being the "flagship" instance and all) and with so much growth it's impossible for moderation to keep up. It's blocked by a lot of instances as a result. Also, whenever there's a new influx of users, it gets overloaded for hours/days since so many think they need to be on the "flagship" instance. Mstdn.social is much smaller (1/6 the size, but still really way too big) and I really like the administrator @stux over there.
Getting ready to migrate to mstdn.social so I might be somewhat discombobulated for a bit.

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Max Headroom signal broadcast intrusion.

1st incident lasted 25s during the sportscast on the 9PM news on WGN-TV; The 2nd, 2hrs later, lasted ~90s on PBS affiliate WTTW during Dr. Who.

Video: https://youtu.be/oqgeM6rWSkw

Never forget 11/22/87.

Max Headroom 1987 Broadcast Signal Intrusion Incident

YouTube
Well, "Snowie" lasted a surprising amount of time (six days!) before suffering a noble death. #DeathOfASnowman
It’s really interesting to see how much media awareness there is these days in Denmark when it comes to the immigration from Twitter to Mastodon. Below is a link to an article from DR (the Danish BBC) who talks about how Mastodon is the civil society’s response to the privatization of the democratic communication infrastructure. Good stuff (sorry it’s in Danish): https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/danske-twitter-brugere-flytter-til-det-mindre-sociale-medie-mastodon
Danske Twitter-brugere flytter til det mindre sociale medie Mastodon

"Der kan blive delt porno og grænseoverskridende ting, uden at nogen griber ind," siger forsker om mediet.

DR
This week Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. How did a sixth-century Roman give thanks? One way was a charitable gift that commemorated the event for which the donor wished to express gratitude. In this 🧵 , examples of Belisarius and Theodora.
#Roman #Byzantine #History #Thanksgiving #Gratitude
summoning my twitter friends like
@gbosslet That is a great way to think about it. We're old enough to remember an internet that was true peer-to-peer, not peer-to-firm-to-peer. It's an idea which I think has slowly and almost entirely eroded during the gradual commodification & monetization of the internet over the last few decades. It took Mastodon to remind me how The Internet was supposed to work.