Aral Balkan

I make small things.

My posts are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

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#SmallWeb #SmallTech #web #tech #privacy #humanRights #personhood #democracy #aral #fedi22 #searchable

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npub1nk5eg4jm9ucsptghzsyq6zq6jrrhrwdmzfmdjwtetadfu9u6lq5szvmz64

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aral_at_mastodon.ar.al@mostr.pub

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Last Notes

2024-08-04 07:17:06

Liberals: we have no idea why the plebs are voting for the fascists… Maybe it’s our messaging. Darling, pass the Dom Perignon, won’t you… I must write a social-media treatise on this post-haste.

2024-07-03 09:05:13

Technology is political.
If your project or organisation has a “no politics” clause, you’re saying you’re happy to exclude people whose very existence is political in our societies.
It’s only defensible if you’re coming from a place of privilege where the dominant politics are to your advantage so you can take them as given.
There is no such thing as “no politics”; there is only “no politics other than the politics of the status quo that I benefit from, which I’ve internalised as normal.”

2024-06-16 08:55:32

Meta did this? I’m shocked!
(Meta is John Mastodon’s new bestie. https://www.platformer.news/mastodon-interview-eugen-rochko-meta-bluesky-threads-federation/) https://hachyderm.io/@det/112610136883080131

2024-05-28 08:08:30

If your justification for the genocide of the Palestinian people is that what Israel’s doing is legal, may I remind you the Holocaust was legal too. Hitler was acting entirely within the laws of Nazi Germany while committing the genocide of the Jewish (and Roma, and gay, and disabled, …) people.
Legal does not mean moral, just, or right.
If something is legal but unjust, it is your moral duty to break the law.
No social progress has ever come about without moral people breaking unjust laws.

2024-05-24 13:40:29

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Israel to halt its Rafah military offensive.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/may/24/israel-gaza-war-live-icj-rafah-benjamin-netanyahu-latest-live-news-updates
#israel #palestine #gaza #settlerColonialism #apartheid #ethnicCleansing #genocide #rafah #ICJ #InternationalCourtOfJustice #UN

2024-05-24 08:38:49

International law is whatever the Unites States says it is, you fucking communists. Don’t make us nuke you again!

2024-05-23 07:47:13

Duck Duck Go is down because Bing is down.
(Also, you saw the recent AI stuff, right?)
Folks, I know… I use Duck Duck Go also but remember they have venture capital. Enjoy it while it lasts (or let’s fund and build alternatives differently that aren’t temporary businesses with profit motives and exits but commons-owned institutions working for the common good).
#DuckDuckGo #bing #microsoft #ventureCapital #DDG

2024-05-18 09:15:20

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@npub18ph…gd28 Also, if you get a chance, try the Edition Blanche version – harder to come by but they usually have it at airports and online ;)

2024-05-10 08:43:53

Hello, I am a new startup!
I’m funded by venture capital and free to use.
Please come and make me valuable by using me. Make my numbers go up!
Once you do, I’ll have everything I need and I can do whatever I want with the time and effort you’ve put into making me successful.
Not happy? Fuck you, I don’t need you anymore (network effects FTW, amirite?)… I’m laughing all the way to the bank.
Goodbye!
…
Hello, I am a new startup…
* * *
When are we going to learn to say “no” at the start?

2024-05-07 17:01:21

Israel insists it has a right to defend itself from ceasefire agreements
https://www.normalisland.co.uk/p/israel-insists-it-has-a-right-to
Prime satire. Read & weep.
* * *
‘…Israel said no to the deal that would have freed the hostages because it wants to free the hostages. If you question this reasoning, it’s because you are Hamas.’
‘The US doesn’t mind supporting genocide, but it draws the line at being unable to plausibly deny genocide.’
‘Twelve of AIPAC’s most reasonable politicians have taken the step of blackmailing the ICC’

2024-05-05 07:25:18

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@npub1ckm…gutz If you don’t mind, sharing the domain with the #fediblock hashtag will make other admins aware of it too, if they aren’t already, so they can block it also.

2024-04-30 07:35:57

“A lot of rich people don’t actually want an education system or the educated population that would come along with it. Sure, it would be better for everyone. But it would also mean having to share, and these people have let their greed literally drive them insane.”
https://www.okdoomer.io/im-a-professor-heres-why-im-walking-away-from-my-tenure/
1/2

2024-03-24 11:59:18

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@npub1jne…qvla Ooh, wanna make one? That would be very neat :)
(Especially since, otherwise, it is rather ephemeral.) :)

2024-03-24 10:24:38

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@npub1jne…qvla :kitten: 💕
Or should I say 🦘

2024-03-23 22:25:32

So given it’s Saturday night, I thought I’d have a little fun with Kitten and make a tiny collaborative drawing toy.
You have a 20×20 grid and only black and white to draw with and everyone shares the same canvas.
https://draw-together.small-web.org
Have fun + looking forward to seeing what we all, umm, draw together.
:kitten:💕
PS. It took about 60 lines of code.
View source: https://codeberg.org/aral/draw-together
#Kitten #SmallWeb #DrawTogether #toy #game #web #dev
https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/mastodon-aral/media_attachments/files/112/147/341/560/072/969/original/0688643b31b8d15a.png

2024-03-15 08:49:40

“The true con artist doesn’t force us to do anything; he makes us complicit in our own undoing. He doesn’t steal. We give. He doesn’t have to threaten us. We supply the story ourselves. We believe because we want to, not because anyone made us. And so we offer up whatever they want—money, reputation, trust, fame, legitimacy, support—and we don’t realize what is happening until it is too late.”
– Maria Konnikova, The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It…Every Time
#SiliconValley #BigTech

2024-02-17 22:01:32

To hide the current deluge of spam:
1. Settings -> Filters
2. Add new filter
3. Add a title (e.g., Spam)
4. Select all the context checkboxes
5. Set Filter Action to Hide Completely
6. Add keyword: 診断メーカー
#mastodon #fediverse #spam

2024-01-09 13:03:13

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@npub12jv…gf8c @npub18v0…y7yh You can’t spell startup without psychopath.

2023-08-30 10:08:27

So FairPhone are launching the 5th version of their phone and right there on the page (which I won’t link to):
“All of your favorite Google Apps will be right there with you.”
Nothing like a good bit of fair trade, environmentally-friendly surveillance capitalism, eh?
(I spoke with them when they were just starting out. They fully know and understand what #Google’s business model is. They fully understand what #SurveillanceCapitalism is. This is not an oversight; it’s strategy.)
#FairPhone
https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/mastodon-aral/media_attachments/files/110/978/014/053/383/285/original/297a45dd39df1603.jpeg

2023-08-20 16:29:12

“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.”
– Naomi Shulman

2023-08-16 06:10:23

“We rebuilt the Mastodon backend from scratch and made it able to handle Twitter-scale (500M users, 20M writes/second, unbalanced social graph, etc.)”
Congratulations, you reinvented Big Tech.
Did you stop to consider that fediverse (emphasis “diverse”) servers should not be trying to reach “Twitter scale?” That they should be kept small on purpose? That the goal isn’t to recreate Twitter but with some other asshole in charge?
(Of course, it’s a VC-backed startup.)
https://redplanetlabs.com/mastodon-clone

2023-07-19 12:23:08

Basically, what we’re saying to people today is:
You’re interested in tech and you want a nice home (or just any home) and stability? Go work at Google, Facebook, or some other surveillance capitalist.
What’s that? You want to work on free and open source? Sure, go work at IBM or Oracle… Oh… you don’t mean enterprise software? Tech to protect human rights/democracy? Not for profit hippie-dippie crap for the common good?
Oh, then suffer.
I mean, is it any surprise things are as they are?