OsakaJack's Spotlight

Keith’s Belated Guide to Mastodon (for Twitter Exiles)

There are a ton of “what is Mastodon” or “getting started with Mastodon” or “what is this Mastodon thing, really?” articles out there already, but this is my blog and I wanted to write my own guide, so here we are. Let’s go! What isn’t Mastodon Mastodon isn’t Twitter. Let’s get that right out here to start with – in fact, let’s say it again, but louder: Mastodon isn’t Twitter. It has a lot of…

Burned by Mastodon, AGAIN

Following on the heels of my last post about Mastodon, unfortunately it seems I’ve been burned again. Much like how when I first tried Mastodon a few years ago and the instance I joined just up and vanished without warning, today I tried to log on and found that my account just… didn’t exist anymore? I tried to log in but my credentials were rejected. I went to look at the status for the site,…

HORROR MOVIES + Titular Line

An important lesson on technobabble came to me courtesy of Terry Farrell. I was at my first Deep Space Nine wrap party at the end of second season, and it’s the first time I’ve ever been to wrap party so it was like a pretty big deal to me. I’m walking around and talking to the people I know. And I see Terry Farrell standing off by herself. I’d never actually met her, so I sheepishly go up and introduce myself to her, and I said, “Ms. Farrell, I’m André Bormanis.” “Oh, nice to meet you. What do you do on the show?” I’m like, “I’m the science consultant. I’m the guy who puts all that technobabble into your dialogue.” And she literally grabbed me by the lapels and lifted me off my feet. She’s six feet tall. She’s a very tall, striking woman. She’s, like, “You fucking asshole!” And she starts shaking me, and I’m, like, “I’m sorry, it’s my job!”

I genuinely wish I could see inside Musk’s head or at least get an explanation for how he was thinking his plans would work out.

Back when I was at SpaceX, Elon was basically a child king. He was an important figurehead who provided the company with the money, power, and PR, but he didn’t have the knowledge or (frankly) maturity to handle day-to-day decision making and everyone knew that. He was surrounded by people whose job was, essentially, to manipulate him into making good decisions.