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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • A bit meta: That people who were wrong or mistaken about something just needed it explaining more clearly, and then they would stop saying things which are wrong or mistaken.

    I wasted far too many years of my life trying to convince father-in-law of so many things, only to realize there is nothing that can be said to disabuse him. The problem wasn’t the lack of facts or clarity of explanation, it’s that he is fundamentally incapable of acquiring new information if it’s inconsistent with his prior understanding or belief.

    Moreover I realized that where I am ashamed of being inaccurate or uneducated about something (and so am keen to correct myself), for him it’s always the case that I must be wrong or mistaken, because he can never be wrong or mistaken.






  • I think the USA’s National Weather Service Twitter presence is a good example.

    If you look deep enough you’ll see caveats like “supplemental service provided by NWS” and “Twitter feeds and tweets do not always reflect the most current information”, but the truth is that a lot of people (and news organizations) depend on Twitter as their main interface to the NWS, and rarely if ever go to their website.

    That obviously creates a tension, which bubbles up in scares like this:

    Before last weekend’s storm, the National Weather Service’s Baltimore-Washington office sent this tweet saying that because of a new Twitter policy, automated tweets that show advisories, watches, and warnings might not load.

    Contrast that to a world where NOAA (the federal administration which runs NWS) has their own instance: they get the benefit of being able to disseminate updates in a consumer friendly ‘social media’ style and they retain full control of platform and can be sure the service won’t be held hostage, or go down in the middle of a storm.

    Finally: if you’re reading this from the USA, consider contact NOAA/NWS to let them know you’d like a fediverse presence, I did!