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#Context

1 post1 participant0 posts today

#HiddenHashtags continuing to inject #TimelineIntruders.

Readers get displayed different Posts depending on their method of reading.

I can't tell why some Posts are on my Timeline with #HiddenHashtags.

My Timeline - but not easily under my control?

Hashtags can create #Context.
Hashtags can attract specific types of users.
A visible hashtag experience can be very different to a hidden hashtag experience.

Hiden or visible hashtag #TrumpIsLordJesus.
Different UX.
Client dependent.

Continued thread

Solved! 🥳

This was a pretty "interesting" bug. Remember when I invented a way to implement #async / #await in #C, for jobs running on a threadpool. Back then I said it only works when completion of the task resumes execution on the *same* pool thread.

Trying to improve overall performance, I found the complex logic to identify the thread job to put on a pool thread a real deal-breaker. Just having one single MPMC queue with a single semaphore for all pool threads to wait on is a lot more efficient. But then, a job continued after an awaited task will resume on a "random" thread.

It theoretically works by making sure to restore the CORRECT context (the original one of the pool thread) every time after executing a job, whether partially (up to the next await) or completely.

Only it didn't, at least here on #FreeBSD, and I finally understood the reason for this was that I was using #TLS (thread-local storage) to find the context to restore.

Well, most architectures store a pointer to the current thread metadata in a register. #POSIX user #context #switching saves and restores registers. I found a source claiming that the #Linux (#glibc) implementation explicitly does NOT include the register holding a thread pointer. Obviously, #FreeBSD's implementation DOES include it. POSIX doesn't have to say anything about that.

In short, avoiding TLS accesses when running with a custom context solved the crash. 🤯

I'm trying to correct a longtime gap by finally reading Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn books, and have to admit—I hate them. Yeah, there's real craft here, and some great storytelling, but OMG it's nonstop n****r n****r n****r and I'm sure Twain was trying to be on the right side of things but it's just relentless. Reminds me how we queer folk are supposed to revere The Boys In The Band, which has a similar problem, but with sad gayness.

Replied in thread

@mcc some options you may or may not be aware of:

  • switch to librewolf (recommend!)
  • set extensions.pocket.enabled to false in about:config
  • set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true in about:config and put #context-savelinktopocket { display: none } in <firefox-profile>/chrome/userChrome.css

this last one lets you hide a bunch of junk in right click menus. my current settings:

#context-navigation,
#context-sep-navigation,
#context-sendimage,
#context-print-selection,
#context-bookmarklink,
#context-stripOnShareLink,
#context-take-screenshot,
#context-sep-screenshots,
#context-searchselect,
#context-searchselect-private,
#context-translate-selection,
#context-ask-chat,
#frame-sep,
#context-savelinktopocket,
#context-sendlinktodevice,
#context-sep-sendlinktodevice,
#context-viewpartialsource-selection,
#context-inspect-a11y,
#sidebarRevampSeparator
{
display: none;
}

A quotation from Molly Ivins

That’s why it’s called Establishment journalism. You concentrate on the people at the top, the people with power; you watch, you study how they make their moves, you get fascinated by it, and pretty soon you can’t see anything else — just the top, just the power. And the others, the people, the readers, matter so little that you don’t even bother to let them know what’s going on. You start to think like the people you cover. It can happen on any beat — business, police, politics, education. The stuff you want is from the top — you want to quote the chief, the superintendent, the chairman of the board. There are no reliable sources who earn less than $10,000 a year.

Molly Ivins (1944-2007) American writer, political columnist [Mary Tyler Ivins]
Essay (1973-01), “Pitfalls of Reporting in the Lone Star State,” Houston Journalism Review

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/ivins-molly/76404/

> Top Stories to Watch/See - in the #MSM / #media / #FreeSpeech realm

CBS & PBS
1/2

#Context -
CBS has had its famed *60 Minutes* trophy 'news' show, shifted & shamed:
alternet.org/60-minutes-host-l

As told by long-time reporter Scott Pelley. the executive producer has left, out of conscience & concerns about the apparent bending of principles to help corporate Paramount be seen favorably by a tyrannical, #corrupt & #truth -averse Administration. Kissing the Ministry of #Truth & #Disinformation.

Alternet.org · Watch: 60 Minutes host issues on-air attack on bosses for bending to TrumpBy Krystina Alarcon Carroll, Raw Story

On algorithmic complacency... and context collapse.

"I am seeing mounting evidence that an increasing number of people are so used to algorithmically-generated feeds that they no longer care to have a self-directed experience that they are in control of."

"... it feels like large swaths of people have forgotten to exercise their own agency."

by @TechConnectify

youtube.com/watch?v=QEJpZjg8GuA

And this here is not only an amazing find of a #hoard of Celtic and Roman coins near Utrecht in the Netherlands, but a really great example illustrating how much more of the whole story we can tell thanks to find #context:

theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/j via The Guardian

The Guardian · Ancient British coins found in Dutch field likely to be spoils of Roman conquestBy Daniel Boffey

An alternative conversation...

> Well, it happened… Now what?

x.com/i/broadcasts/1kvJpbbEzZo

For many, it's become too painful to watch anything at all on the TV ... lists of one evil act after another.
Flooding our zones - for years past, and newly recharged and weaponized.

This from Meidas Touch, for some #Context And #Perspective - Sorry, it's embedded in #Muskville (this video)

X (formerly Twitter)MeidasTouchWell, it happened… Now what? @IAmPoliticsGirl chats with @marceelias in this must-hear conversation.

@shansterable

This is in itself alarming, & a challenge to agencies, science etc. Hate to say - on Christmas! - but this is #context for what some very wise journalists & social scientists / #media watchers are saying:

One of the most worrisome things under the incoming, anti-science, anti-logic, anti- #truth ers, is: "What if", in particular, we see a bona fide pandemic engulfing our country (besides #TrumpVirus the original) - WHAT IF an RFK & DJT & Musk triumvirate say it's fake? Deja vu?

Replied in thread

@rzeta0 @dmm

I think it's accurate to say that 'must' is too constraining, and that we usually have a one side or the other view of measurements (/interactions).

So either we'll find time dilation or length contraction (or even a blend of both) depending on the logistics/topology of the systems involved, and our choice (which can be from just 1 alternative) of framing the perspective being used. #context

Edit: The way you state part two is fine in most cases. I would say it inside out: the laws are consistent because the measured SOL, from any observer & frame, is consistent.

Being able to write laws is the result of consistent behavior/reactions to consistent/measured change (holding other things constant, as a reductive basis).

🤔🤔 2024 has been my best year in terms of number of #citations to my #research articles, with over 1000 citations this year alone.

BUT, more than an increased appreciation of my work, I think this signals a shift in the way research is published. I'm looking at you #arxiv. 👀👀

Not complaining. More #open #publication and #openscience is never bad. I'm just explaining this as #young #researchers should understand #context is always key when evaluating a researchers #CV and that citation count is always a partial perspective.

Content moderation is, inherently, a subjective practice.

Despite some people’s desire to have content moderation be more scientific and objective, that’s impossible.

By definition, content moderation is always going to rely on judgment calls,
and many of the judgment calls will end up in gray areas where lots of people’s opinions may differ greatly.

Indeed, one of the problems of content moderation that we’ve highlighted over the years is that to make good decisions you often need a tremendous amount of #context,
and there’s simply no way to adequately provide that at scale in a manner that actually works.

That is, when doing content moderation at scale, you need to set rules,
but rules leave little to no room for understanding context and applying it appropriately.

And thus, you get lots of crazy edge cases that end up looking bad.

We’ve seen this directly.

Last year, when we turned an entire conference of “content moderation” specialists into content moderators for an hour,
we found that there were exactly zero cases where we could get all attendees to agree on what should be done in any of the eight cases we presented.

Further, people truly underestimate the impact that “#scale” has on this equation.

Getting 99.9% of content moderation decisions at an “acceptable” level probably works fine for situations when you’re dealing with 1,000 moderation decisions per day,
but large platforms are dealing with way more than that.

If you assume that there are 1 million decisions made every day,
even with 99.9% “accuracy”
(and, remember, there’s no such thing, given the points above),
you’re still going to “miss” 1,000 calls.

But 1 million is nothing.
On Facebook alone a recent report noted that there are 350 million photos uploaded every single day.

And that’s just photos.
If there’s a 99.9% accuracy rate,
it’s still going to make “mistakes” on 350,000 images.
Every. Single. Day.

So, add another 350,000 mistakes the next day. And the next. And the next. And so on.

And, even if you could achieve such high “accuracy” and with so many mistakes,
it wouldn’t be difficult for, say, a journalist to go searching and find a bunch of those mistakes
— and point them out.

This will often come attached to a line like
“well, if a reporter can find those bad calls, why can’t Facebook?”
which leaves out that Facebook DID find that other 99.9%.

Obviously, these numbers are just illustrative, but the point stands that when you’re doing content moderation at scale,
the scale part means that even if you’re very, very, very, very good, you will still make a ridiculous number of mistakes in absolute numbers every single day.

So while I’m all for exploring different approaches to content moderation,
and see no issue with people calling out failures when they (frequently) occur,
it’s important to recognize that there is no perfect solution to content moderation,
and any company, no matter how thoughtful and deliberate and careful is going to make mistakes.

Because that’s #Masnick’s #Impossibility #Theorem
— and unless you can disprove it, we’re going to assume it’s true
techdirt.com/2019/11/20/masnic

Techdirt · Masnick's Impossibility Theorem: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible To Do WellAs some people know, I’ve spent a fair bit of time studying economist Kenneth Arrow whose work on endogenous growth theory and information economics influenced a lot of my thinking on the eco…