Jens Finkhäuser
Jens Finkhäuser@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social Indeed. https://www.w3.org/standards/history/xhtml2/
Jens Finkhäuser@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social WHATWG started in 2004, with Mozilla, Google, Apple and Microsoft.
Apple forked KHTML into WebKit in 2005.
Jens Finkhäuser@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social Consider that Mozilla being cooked has a few decades of history.
Back around 2007ish, I was working with a few folk who either came from or later went to Mozilla. Anyhow, some of them were involved with the XHTML 2.0 spec.
Which was finished.
But then got ditched.
Because Googleites insisted a "living spec" was the right thing, which can only be implemented by whoever throws the most money at it, and we now have HTML5 and a browser engine monopoly.
And Mozilla?
Jens Finkhäuser@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social Mozillans didn't like it, but Mozilla also considered a unified web more important than open standards, where the definition of "open" includes practically open to implementors.
So fuck you very much for two decades running, Mozilla.
Jens FinkhäuserWaiting for a podcast in which Trump insists US troops were just defending against Greenland's invasion, but then someone in the GOP accidentally invites a reporter to some chat room in which they discuss how they told US troops to put on Greenland's uniforms to stage an attack.
Wait, no, nobody would be stupid enough to believe that, right?
Jens FinkhäuserYou might have noted that the triangles in the previous post have side lengths of 7, 9 and 11 (in holes). The alt text goes into some details on that.
But I didn't pick this particular triangle at random. You could easily form others.
I picked this because of the piece below. This is said to be bent at 53°, though that's imprecise. This also just happens to be related to the previous Pythagorean lattice.
Jens FinkhäuserIt helps to know that the 53 degrees are not measured between the two arms in the beam, but that they describe how much the beam is "bent". That is, it's measured from the imaginary line formed if the beam was straight.
The 53 degrees are also the angle at which the hypotenuse is inclined in the triangles.
In other words, you can plonk this piece onto e.g. the middle of the red points on the bottom of the grid, and rotate it to align with the beams.
Lego did not pick this angle by accident.
Jens FinkhäuserTired: I'm playing with Lego.
Wired: I'm exploring the geometry of Pythagorean lattices.
Inspired: I'm playing with Lego.
Jens FinkhäuserYou might have noted that the triangles in the previous post have side lengths of 7, 9 and 11 (in holes). The alt text goes into some details on that.
But I didn't pick this particular triangle at random. You could easily form others.
I picked this because of the piece below. This is said to be bent at 53°, though that's imprecise. This also just happens to be related to the previous Pythagorean lattice.
Jens FinkhäuserTired: I'm playing with Lego.
Wired: I'm exploring the geometry of Pythagorean lattices.
Inspired: I'm playing with Lego.
Jens FinkhäuserSo on the one hand we can build a matrix here and put visibility or exposure on one axis, and perceived safety on the other, and e.g. place intimacy or torture in various corners, and do the same with other social interactions and so forth. Fine.
And to reiterate: the specifics of this are highly individual. But we'll all be able to make such a personalized matrix, and so can generalize that the extremes on the matrix exist in some form for everyone.
So what this comes down to is that we...
Jens Finkhäuser... seek to be able to control where on this matrix we exist.
The paper is quite correct in that mastodon's "blocking" as in blocking out what you see of others essentially misses the point; what people need is the ability to control our visibility or exposure, i.e. what others see of us.
But this isn't about moderation or that paper or anything else. This is about what I like to nickname "the sofa model".
Technical details notwithstanding, all social media fucks with our heads.
Jens FinkhäuserWe enjoy visibility, because being visible in an accepting environment is affirmation that it's OK to be who we are. An extreme instance of this, in the sense that it maximalises this affirmation, is intimacy.
But being visible in an unaccepting environment conversely is terrifying. I read a paper about torture once (in the wake of 9/11) which highlit that torture is fundamentally about forced exposure without feelings of safety. The specific techniques all aim to achieve this combination.
Jens FinkhäuserSo on the one hand we can build a matrix here and put visibility or exposure on one axis, and perceived safety on the other, and e.g. place intimacy or torture in various corners, and do the same with other social interactions and so forth. Fine.
And to reiterate: the specifics of this are highly individual. But we'll all be able to make such a personalized matrix, and so can generalize that the extremes on the matrix exist in some form for everyone.
So what this comes down to is that we...
Jens FinkhäuserPeople are social animals. We each have our different needs when it comes to social interaction, but the fundamentals are the same: we all need the safety of groups. And we all need privacy.
This seems like two contradictory requirements, and a lot of moderation discussions focus on balancing those two, and for good reason. The underlying commonality here are visibility and control.
Jens FinkhäuserWe enjoy visibility, because being visible in an accepting environment is affirmation that it's OK to be who we are. An extreme instance of this, in the sense that it maximalises this affirmation, is intimacy.
But being visible in an unaccepting environment conversely is terrifying. I read a paper about torture once (in the wake of 9/11) which highlit that torture is fundamentally about forced exposure without feelings of safety. The specific techniques all aim to achieve this combination.
Jens FinkhäuserFascinating morning reads.
I stumbled on a thread about ableistic behaviour this morning, which was, let's say, not awesome. In my (unsuccessful) attempt to find the post triggering the thread, I came across a paper on moderation issues on mastodon, which is undoubtedly correct, but... le sigh
It frames the problem as both technical and social, but it misses - as most such discourses seem to - a simple psychological root cause.
I'll explain. I keep explaining this.
Jens FinkhäuserPeople are social animals. We each have our different needs when it comes to social interaction, but the fundamentals are the same: we all need the safety of groups. And we all need privacy.
This seems like two contradictory requirements, and a lot of moderation discussions focus on balancing those two, and for good reason. The underlying commonality here are visibility and control.