nicole @nicole@myna.social

When George Hayward was as Facebook data-scientist, his bosses ordered him to run a #NegativeTest, updating Messenger to deliberately drain users' batteries, in order to determine how power-hungry various parts of the apps were. Hayward refused, and FB fired him, and he sued:

https://nypost.com/2023/01/28/facebook-fires-worker-who-refused-to-do-negative-testing-awsuit/

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

1/

People worry a lot about losing knowledge — about "burned-down libraries".

Comparatively few people seem to worry about what happens if you take a billion books full of auto-generated, often-untrue junk text and *add* them all to the library.

In theory, nothing is lost. In reality, everything is lost, because nothing useful can now be found.

Warm regards to Hypatia and to all the keepers of books from Ancient Egypt to this present moment.
If you live in a state where books are being banned, the Brooklyn Public Library offers a free eCard nationwide to those aged 13 to 21 to access their entire digital catalog for one year in an effort to combat this horrendous act.

https://www.bklynlibrary.org/media/press/brooklyn-public-library-94?s=09
#bookstodon

i mean the thing is if you just looked at "this person is head of {x} company and {x} company has done this impressive thing," i get how maybe - maybe - you might attribute that to the person

(though i still think this requires unforgivable naivete about how capitalism works)

but every time - and not just recently - Musk opened his mouth, he said something OBVIOUSLY ridiculous that betrayed he was a fantasist not a technologist

he NEVER had coherent proposals, just wild ideas. BAD, wild ideas

Man if only there were some kind of popular song about people overreacting to balloons and interpreting them as military action in need of response. Maybe in german

Q: What is a Disney lawyer's most favorite Windows command?

A: ipconfig /renew

Pictured here: A threat to the moral fabric of American society, apparently :3

#Transgender #Trans #TransSelfie #LGBTQ #LGBT #TransFashion #TransIsBeautiful #TransGirl

Making Abyss (1989)

Cartoon charicature of two smiling women unpacking a wooden crate filled with Black History books. The crate is labeled Florida Oranges.

Shameful to see the College Board cave to the demands of DeSantis and white supremacists, especially as we kick off Black History Month. Just shameful.

I’m scheduled for Orchiectomy next week and I’m super excited, but I just got my cost estimate and it’s going to be $8,500 😱

So if you want to help a trans girl out, I have my Venmo and Cash App on Link.tree https://linktr.ee/danirabbit 💕

Anything helps. Thank you!

Of all the vermin that have menaced our vegetable garden over the years, this one is the most infuriatingly cute.

Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders was released 33 years ago today.

Even the AI is not yet capable of creating such strange images.