David Megginson

Former medieval philologist (Ph.D, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 1993). Living on unceded Anishinabe Algonquin territory.

Header picture: Large reddish-orange letters spelling "Hintonburg", some lying flat on the sidewalk for use as benches.

Me: #tea #gardening #classicalGuitar #vegetarian #language #disabled #aviation #flightSim #slideRules #tech #Linux #Ottawa

Society: #socialJustice #nonViolence #aid #urbanism #accessibility #transit #standards #FOSS

Location: Ottawa, Canada
Politics: Progressive, non-partisan
Pronouns: He/him
Languages: English, français, español, Deutsch, etc. etc.

Public Key

npub1a8vslhe6nkpp0mwraupm5mch2jdh207lsechc06y9kr00fr0njqq29w88h

NIP-05 Address

david_megginson_at_mstdn.ca@momostr.pink

Profile Code

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Author Public Key

npub1a8vslhe6nkpp0mwraupm5mch2jdh207lsechc06y9kr00fr0njqq29w88h

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Published at

2024-08-24T22:54:45Z

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Event JSON

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Last Notes

2024-07-22 17:44:23

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Yeah, I've faced real hostility a couple of times in the fedi after politely and privately asking people to add alt text because I enjoyed their posts and wanted to be able to boost them.
Apparently, asking nicely for #accessibility violates people's freedom of expression and is worse than anything Germany did in the 1930s and 40s.
Who knew? 🤷‍♂️

2024-07-09 16:39:37

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One trick of extremists and authoritarians is convincing their followers that they're in on a secret.
e.g. "*Most* people fall for Big Pharma's lies, but you, my well-monitised follower, know the TRUTH…"
@npub19zu…0jum

2024-07-09 16:37:16

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wrote
> That's because uncertainty in any area is seen as weakness.
Very true. Authoritarians and extremists (religious or secular) traffic in false certainty, and their followers crave it worse than any drug.
"I know that I know nothing" is as good a starting point now as it was 2,500 years ago.
@npub1x5z…ucxs @npub17pz…530t @npub19zu…0jum

2024-07-09 16:34:37

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I don't think "bless you" is weird at all — it's a way of signalling that you care about another human being.
When I was in hospital, one coworker (a left, socially-progressive Christian) was praying for me.
I don't believe that prayer can heal illness — a god who would let someone die unless people made a big song and dance about it is a terrifying thought — but it meant a lot knowing that the coworker was taking time to think about me every day.

2024-07-09 16:23:19

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And this isn't exclusively a religious problem. Most religions made their peace with science over a century ago, but the U.S. Religious Right uses anti-science as an identity marker.
On the secular side, political extremists (left or right, anarchist or authoritarian) have an unfortunate tendency to reject any research that doesn't support their pre-existing views. And scientists themselves have an unjustified faith in their own impartiality.
@npub1x5z…ucxs @npub17pz…530t @npub19zu…0jum

2024-07-09 16:20:21

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That's just it. I don't have to know quantum physics to build something, ride a bicycle, fly an airplane, or just set a glass on a table. But that doesn't justifying preventing other people from studying it.
@npub1x5z…ucxs @npub17pz…530t @npub19zu…0jum

2024-07-09 16:16:05

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wrote
> It's like that old joke about how college professors tend to tell you to forget everything you learned in high school because it's way more complicated than that.
You hear that again moving from undergrad to grad school. Becoming an expert in *any* field is a continual process of discarding simpler working models and diving deeper into the messy complexities.
Think Newtonian physics vs quantum physics …
@npub1x5z…ucxs @npub17pz…530t @npub19zu…0jum

2024-07-07 22:23:59

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Whether or not you accept the Lancet article's figure, it's an important reminder that the Palestinian Authority are *conservative* in their casualty counts, despite the fact that opponents and mainstream media are constantly trying to discredit them (the BBC always adds the scare phrase "according to Hamas", but never "according to Likud").
International aid agencies, including the U.N., have found the official Palestinian numbers highly reliable after extensive cross-checking.

2024-07-05 16:30:27

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The branch "shadows" are painted on the windows. The 2008 blog post that originally presented these photos is long gone, but fortunately, the WayBack Machine grabbed some snapshots:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080418073222/http://www.novate.ru/blogs/010170/7995/
Here's a translation of the Russian text: https://web-archive-org.translate.goog/web/20080617162512/https://novate.ru/blogs/010170/7995/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
@npub1et4…y57e @npub19zu…0jum

2024-07-05 16:13:25

Focusing on percentage change is a popular way to BS people with numbers.
For example, if a company barely breaks even one year ($1 profit), then nets $140 profit the next year, that's a 14,000% increase in profit!
(but it means nothing)
#numeracy #numbers #business

2024-07-05 13:06:40

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Except that it likely wouldn't look at all like that, because voters would be casting ballots knowing that there was a PR system. Currently in FPTP systems not all voters vote by party, and some of those who do vote "strategically".
Here in Canada, I never consider my vote for a local candidate as a vote for their national party, and would likely vote differently at least half the time if my ballot somehow counted that way.
#ProportionalRepresentation

2024-07-05 01:49:14

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The War of 1812 wasn't about enslavement — that was still legal in Upper and Lower Canada at the time.
The Americans were upset about the Royal Navy stopping their ships looking for deserters during the Napoleonic Wars; they were concerned (mostly wrongly, sadly) that the British were supporting Indigenous resistance to their westward expansion; and they thought (also mostly wrongly) that the Canadian settler population would embrace the American military as liberators.
@npub1ay2…exel

2024-07-04 18:13:46

Nero as a Roman New Dealer? 🙂
> (Roman historians) found Nero's construction projects overly extravagant and claim that their cost left Italy "thoroughly exhausted by contributions of money" with "the provinces ruined". Modern historians note that the period was riddled with deflation and that Nero intended his spending on public-work and charities to ease economic troubles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero#Reign_(AD_54%E2%80%9368)
#history

2024-07-03 00:17:49

Shared by my mom (source unknown).
#gardening #tomatoes
https://cdn.mastdn.ca/media_attachments/files/112/719/675/255/710/800/original/d472543719520009.png

2024-06-26 19:12:22

It would be great to protect people from being tricked into installing malicious apps on their mobile devices.
It would be fantastic if that way *weren't* giving a single company an exploitative economic monopoly over all apps for a specific mobile operating system.
This seems like a strong case for public interest: establish an independent public body to certify apps, rather than trusting it to #Apple (or #Google, or Amazon, etc).
#infosec #sideloading #apps #tech

2024-06-26 19:05:55

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That's interesting — thanks for sharing it!
I do believe that we can inherit tendencies (because of the way our brains and other systems happen to be wired), but not actual memories.
For example, I think it's likely that someone could inherit a attraction to extremism (political, religious, ideological, etc) but not necessarily a specific belief system; the direction of their extremism would depend on their environment (either following it or reacting against it).

2024-06-23 13:53:40

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Yes, agree. The sinks are safe ground for chatting with people you already know; less so with strangers.
Also, I think someone did a study once of how people space themselves out at urinals — it's an interesting optimisation problem, even if it's unconscious (the idea is to cooperate so that as many people as possible have an empty urinal on at least one side).
@npub14tw…5qwj @npub19zu…0jum

2024-06-23 02:29:58

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You know how in TV shows and on movies, guys are always having power conversations at the urinals before doing a big, dramatic zip-up? Real life is nothing like that: it's all embarrassed silence and eyes forward.
Once a manager (not mine) did try to have one of those Hollywood alpha-male urinal conversations with me, and it was one of the most awkward moments of my life. I still cringe remembering it 10 years later.
@npub14tw…5qwj

2024-03-22 22:28:13

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One site blocking Threads doesn't block other sites that connect to Threads, or sites that connect to sites that connect to Threads (etc).
That's why a pure libertarian approach won't work here in the fedi — we have some shared responsibility for each-other, just like in an offline community, so we have to listen and discuss and try to move closer to a consensus.
I support giving Threads a chance, but I'm also listening to my fellow fedizens who don't.
#fediverse #Threads

2024-03-22 22:07:48

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I'm fine with giving Threads a shot, but it's wrong to dismiss people's concerns as just being "angry".
Because we're a federation, no site/instance is an island — the choices that any site owner makes affects everyone else, directly or indirectly, and we rely on a set of loose shared principles to hold us together. The potential harm is much higher for people from vulnerable groups, and even when we disagree with them, we need at least to listen