#hattip — Public Fediverse posts

"Scientists in London have invented what they claim is the world's first fully biodegradable party balloon.

Researchers at Imperial College London say standard balloons can take years to break down and can release harmful chemicals.

But their new balloon biodegrades within nine months."

#LuxmyGopal, 2026

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78gqw3w6v5o

#HatTip to whoever posted this earlier. I forgot to bookmark it, or I would have Boosted it instead of posting it again.

#PartyBalloons #balloons #biodegradable

"Below, we take a look at some of the policies proposed by 2026 primary candidates in the 'far right' camp versus those coming from candidates who’ve been labeled 'far left'. Some of these things are not like the others."

#AllegraKirkland, #LaylaAJones, #DerickDirmaier, 2026

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/the-weekender/lets-take-a-look-see-at-what-far-left-vs-far-right-candidates-actually-want

#HatTip to YahooNews (yes they still exist!) where I initially found this, although via web search rather than browsing there;

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/let-look-see-far-left-110000006.html

#USPolitics #OvertonWindow #PoliticalFraming

"This resource has been developed to support trade union organisers dealing with the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace. It outlines existing laws and organising tools relevant to AI and how collective bargaining can be used to ensure workers benefit from and are not harmed by AI."

#NZCTU

https://union.org.nz/artificial-intelligence-in-the-workplace-a-resource-for-new-zealand-trade-unions/#ai-principles

#HatTip to AUT journalism student Kyla Jade Blennerhassett, who mentioned this here;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5JB0-fl7pk

#TradeUnions #unions #WorkersRights #AI

Also, #HatTip to whoever came up with this modern re-use of a Te Reo Māori word;

"Ipurangi

1. (noun) source (of a stream).

2. (noun) Internet."

This usage is now extremely apt, thanks to the popularity streaming music and video, but it's origins go back at least as far as the late 1990s;

https://web.archive.org/web/19990116224451/http:/www.isoc.org/isoc/whatis/conferences/inet/97/proceedings/E1/E1_1.HTM

#HatTip to the Te Aka whānau for a website that works without JavaScript, including a simple and very effective internal search. Perhaps there are extra functions that depend on JS, but I don't notice their absence.

https://maoridictionary.co.nz/

This is proof that you don't JS nor a Trained #MOLE to make functional, easy-to-navigate websites.

#MakeJavaScriptOptional #TeAka #TeReoMāori

I forgot to link to the source of that quote from Maximilian Negele about China's "Open Source" generative models;

https://www.techpolicy.press/is-europe-getting-ai-wrong/

#HatTip to @n_dimension for pointing out the omission.

#TIL about #DeclarativeLanguage;

"Declarative language is a comment or a statement that shares what one knows, observes, or thinks. It emphasizes shared observations, thoughts, and experiences rather than directives or demands. A lot of communication approaches rely heavily on questions (who, what, where, when, why or how) or instructions; declarative language does the opposite."

#MaureenBennie, 2026

https://autismawarenesscentre.com/what-is-declarative-language/

#HatTip to Anissa Ljanta's Wild of Brain where I learned about it.

#Listening to Braindrops, a 2019 single by Melbourne band Tropical Fuck Storm;
https://tropicalfstorm.bandcamp.com/track/braindrops

Like a lot of my favourite music, this is really hard to pigeonhole genre-wise. How to describe it? Almost like spoken word, with a shambling, spiky rhythmic and pseudo-melodic backing that reminds me of nothing more than The Shaggs.

#HatTip to the Cobain 50 podcast for introducing me to them;

https://www.kexp.org/podcasts/cobain50/2024/5/15/the-shaggs-philosophy-of-the-world-1969/

#TropicalFuckStorm #music #Melbourne

"Or is it because we, as a society, do not want to look too closely at the powerful? Is it because we've handed our economy to men that get paid $79 million a year to do a job they can't seem to describe, and even that, they would sooner offload to a bunch of unreliable AI models than actually do?"

@edzitron, 2025

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/

#HatTip to @iris_meredith for the link, found in a post at;

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog

#AI #CEO #BusinessIdiots

"I would like to relieve the tedium of this posturing by making a suggestion that everyone can hate together. Or, more seriously, I would like to go through a short exercise to demonstrate that it might not be the dumbest thing to pay a little bit more attention to interesting architectural details. This can set the stage for a broader discussion of social media on the Web."

@robin, 2023

https://berjon.com/ap-at/

#HatTip to @elgg for the link.

#SocialNetworks #FediDevs

#HatTip to James Borrowdale's Weed for quoting;

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? ...We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities."

#JohnEhrlichman, 1994

https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

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Some #GoodNews for a change, via the OSI. #HatTip to folks in the #dccp-policy:matrix.org room for the link;

"This week, the European Union (EU) published its “Tech Sovereignty” package, with a vision that puts Open Source at the heart of the EU’s digital sovereignty ambitions, while addressing many concerns and requests of Open Source communities."

https://opensource.org/blog/osi-welcomes-the-european-unions-tech-sovereignty-package

(1/?)

#DigitalSovereignty #OpenSource #FreeCode #EU #TechSovereignty

"One of the things they [Te Hiku Media] did was build their own cluster, which is kind of like a small data center, instead of using Google and Amazon and whatever other cloud services. It reminded me that there is a lot of stuff that you can do with a small budget."

@timnitGebru, 2025

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/timnit-gebru/

#HatTip to @dayvblack for sharing the link.

@zl2tod @keoni

#TeHikuMedia #CommunityHosting

"The NJO [New Joule Order] framework has always rested on a single observation: the world underpriced physical commodity security for a decade, and the repricing would be non-linear. The Hormuz crisis has confirmed the thesis; the abundance illusion has merely delayed its financial expression."

#JeffCurrie, 2026

https://www.carlyle.com/carlyle-compass/the-abundance-illusion

#HatTip to whoever posted this link here today (me memory is crap, or I would be adding this quite as a reply to your post)

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"We got our hands on four components from BYD's lineup and put them in our CT scanner: a lithium iron phosphate battery cell, a window switch panel, a portable EV charger, and a key fob. They reveal as much about the company as they do about what’s inside the parts."

https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/byd

#HatTip to the Hacker News feed where I found this;

https://mastodon.social/@h4ckernews/116682527254564359

#BYD #CTscanning

#HatTip to @VeroniqueB99 for sharing the page where I found the link to that article about the #MOLE flavoured enshittification of Goggle Search.

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#HatTip to@[email protected] fr letting me know about the union organising going on at WikiMedia Foundation. Please support Wiki Workers United;

"... the prospective union of Wikimedia Foundation staff ..."

@JakeOrlowitz, 2026

https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/wikipedia-runs-on-people-it-shouldnt-run-over-people-48823f4238bb

(2/2)

#WikiWorkersUnited #TechUnions #UnionOrganising #unions

"Our lives are tough enough as it is, I'm not looking for ways to get rid of the few things that provide relief and comfort. I mean, on the contrary, I'm looking for more comfort, because the world is very abrasive. I mean, I'm trying to protect myself, because there are these abrasive beatings to be avoided, everywhere you look."

Wally, My Dinner with Andre, 1981

https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/25468-my-dinner-with-andre

#HatTip to Iman Vellani who mentioned this movie in an online video.

#ArtHouse #MovieQuotes #movies

#HatTip to @kiffie, who has a link in their profile to the BrandCramp account for The Weapon and The Shield. Which is how I stumbled upon it.

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@autistics

#HatTip to @digitalcortex for the infographic;

https://mastodon.social/@digitalcortex/116507222057290945

... and @ashiel for the transcription I used as alt text;

https://eldritch.cafe/@ashiel/116509700956338464

#TIL about @TechFreedom;

"... a three-session programme for social purpose organisations who want to understand their technology risks and do something about them. Working as a small cohort, you'll audit the tools you rely on, explore practical alternatives, and leave with a plan for reducing your dependency on Big Tech."

https://techfreedom.eu/

We need something like this in Aotearoa.

#HatTip to @dajb for linking me to the blog post where I found a reference and a link to it.

#Listening to Philosophy of the World, from the 1969 album of the same name by The Shaggs;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQqK1CjE9bA

This album makes Pure Guava era Ween sound like classical music by comparison. But it has an off-kilter charm that instantly appeals to me

#HatTip to Curt Cobain for championing this album, and the #KEXP podcast The Cobain 50 for introducing me to all the great albums on his infamous list.

#Cobain50 #TheShaggs #LoFi #punk #music #CurtCobain ##podcasts

OK, wait. Ich grabe weiter.

git blame liegt falsch, denn ich habe nur den Source code umformatiert. Habe mir jetzt die gesamte Historie dieser Figure gezogen und sie stammt tatsächlich von @frederic_horn !!

Er hat im November 2019 den Commit "Grafik mit 'F' zu 'Determinanten und Orientierung" verfasst und \pgftransformcm aus https://tikz.dev/base-transformations gefunden!

#hattip

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"This leads to three possible outcomes:

* no government dares to take action, and they keep to calling things “completely unacceptable” ...

* One government takes action against X, and the US regime retaliates so hard that no other government will dare ...

* One government takes enforcement action against X, creating a permission structure for other governments to also take actions."

@laurenshof, 2026

https://connectedplaces.online/reports/a-power-problem-not-a-platform-problem/

#HatTip to @wedistribute for the link to this article.

#HatTip to @blocsonic for releasing music by Louis Lingg and the Bombs. Also, to Donnie Ozone and the crew at Tha Bloc Report podcast. Who introduced me to the band by playing a whole bunch of their tracks - including Freaky Deaky and Nowhereland from that 2021 album - on an April 2024 edition of the show;

https://blocsonic.com/bloccasts/episode/the-april-2024-episode/

(2/2)

#CCMusic

#Listening to Straightlining by hardcase #Otautahi rockers AVON DADS, released in 2025;

https://avondads.bandcamp.com/album/straightlining

#HatTip to Freak the Sheep, who played this funny and rather catchy track on the March 12 edition of their show on 95bFM. Which I catch up with from The Tron via their podcast feed;

https://feeds.95bfm.com/link/16767/16982213/freak-the-sheep-w-chris-cudby-march-12-2025

They've been playing a lot of hardcase tunes on the show of late. Long may this continue!

#music #rock #comedy #NerdRock #AvonDads #Aotearoa #NZ

While adding @endurain to the ActivityPub watchlist for fediverse.party, I noticed that @forgejo has added code enabling me to add a fediverse address to a wiki page on @Codeberg, and have it automatically become a link to the profile for that address. Great stuff!

#HatTip to whoever had that idea and coded it, and also to @smallcircles for tipping me off about Endurain, and supplying the info about on the Delightful list that I was able to draw from for our listing.

#FediverseParty #CodeBerg

I just started reading the blog of @gilles. #HatTip to @mayel for the link to Gilles' homepage.

Anyway, I read this blog post;
https://blog.gillesdutilh.com/2025/03/the-pain-in-mansplaining/

... and saw "fediverse reactions" at the bottom. So I tried putting that URL into the @Mastodon search bar. No dice.

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#UX #FediverseUX

#Listening to Skip That Shit by Raiden Freeman, from the 2023 album DF2;

https://bankruptworldwide.bandcamp.com/album/df2

This is some funny shit. I dare you to listen to it. I double dog dare ya!

#HatTip to Chris Cudby of the Freak the Sheep kiwi music shop on 95bFM, for introducing me to this crackup track.

#music #comedy #electronica #RaidenFreeman #95bFM #FreakTheSheep