As the [AJC](https://www.ajc.com/news/fulton-board-to-consider-10m-tax-break-to-x-formerly-twitter/4V66VOJ73RCFPA5DI54FAFVLBA/) reported, X (formerly Twitter) appealed to the Development Agency of Fulton County to try and grab over $10 million in property tax breaks on their data center here in Atlanta to upgrade the server farm... But providing no additional jobs... which is why the tax breaks are there in the first place! 🥴
source: Atlanta Journal Constitution dated 3 Dec 2023
Everyone knows that these tax breaks should be going to fund any development that directly enhances the livelihood of Atlanta residents and for no other purpose.
Over the past few days, the “Father of the Beltline” himself, Ryan Gravel, created a massive 70-something-odd long FAQ in response to the NIMBYist action group that popped up opposing the transit portion of the Atlanta Beltline.
His post is massively detailed and as pointed as one would expect of having to literally defend their graduate thesis even after half of it has been edified. It’s also a masterclass in how to keep fighting tooth-and-nail without resorting to name-calling and pettiness which seems to be the norm these days.
Last time in this series, I talked about an organization called Better Atlanta Transit that counter to its name, wants to end all talk of having light rail alongside the Beltline Trail, the very popular, used-to-be-murder-tracks encircling central Atlanta that’s now a multipurpose trail, linear park, and real estate gentrification money printing machine.
Of course in a way only Upside/DownLand Atlanta could do, we somehow got the multipurpose trail part built first, and are behind in the light rail installation.
Yikes 😬
My second-most used Mastodon instance is @starrwulfe@vivaldi.net… I hope its scheduled downtime and not a DDOS or worse.
The good thing about federation is they're not the only game in town. My main instance is @starrwulfe@starrwulfe.xyz (which is actually a Wordpress powered blog as well). I practice POSSE so the majority of my nonsense emanates from here and radiates out into the interwebs via syndication thanks to Bridgy and Micro.
Its_happening.exe just got loaded!
Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association,” an Apple spokesperson tells 9to5Mac. “We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.” Now whether that means I can go and become a black sheep by adding an Android phone into my very iPhone carrying family’s group chat on iMessage is up for debate, but just being able to have richer green bubble convos is a good first start finally.
A rollover event is about to take place and geeks, nerds and neckbeards around the world will be refreshing their datecommands tomorrow evening to check out the counter tick over from 1699999999 to a cool 1700000000 seconds. The current Unix epoch time as I slave over a hot keyboard is: Unix date epoch time is a way of measuring time that counts the number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 at midnight UTC time, not counting leap seconds.
At some point yesterday, my Wordpress instance (thus the place where the thing you’re reading right now came from) ran out of memory.
🤔 I suspect it’s because I’m asking it to do too much:
Basic Blog stuff Webmention/Indieweb/Microformats stuff ActivityPub/Mastodon stuff And all on a tiny underpowered VPS instance.
Now if I could have things my way, I’d really prefer a clean install of GoBlog like I had before but with an easier way to post photos, follow people thru RSS/#Fediverse, and connect to different networks in the same manner.
Dropping a note here to make sure my site is back up – Things got crash happy overnight with the database eating all the RAM for some reason. Bad garbage collection or a missed chronjob maybe. The joys of wordpress adminning. So as soon as I’m done with the day job (where I actually do DevOps/PMing believe it or not) I’ll be doing a post-mortem on this thing too.
😣 I just want my $#：＋ to work seamlessly!
I really hope the author of this blog indeed does come back to chronicle the changing landscapes of Atlanta’s Beltline.
While I don’t have any “before” pictures to pull, I may consider doing this sort of series myself to at least give feedback from my memories as an on/off/on/off/on again resident here. I remember the Atlanta of the mid 1980’s in my childhood, then again starting 10 years later in my early adult years until 2000– then again for 3 years starting in 2005, and finally the present.
ICYMI:
There’s a way for you to crosspost to BlueSky from your own #indieweb enabled website thanks to Joel’s (@joel@otter.garden) additions to Bridgy (created by Ryan (@snarfed.org@snarfed.org).
Also, I’m actually doing it right now and have been for about a week or so. So you’ll notice likes/reposts and comments coming from over there on my site and can interact from there, as I craft my one-man SNS outpost on the innanetz.
I want to jump into the world of ortho keyboards and start trying to learn a more ergonomic key layout. I happen to have a small foldable bluetooth keyboard that is around a 40% size, is regular QWERTY layout but only has 60 keys so there's a Fn later that puts some of the symbols, all the F keys and media scroll keys on a different layer. I'm kind of used to using it after 6 years and realized "
In the spirit of POSSE, I just spent 3 hours trying to get some backfeeds from silos like Instagram and Facebook going… I made it work before, but I can’t remember what I did with my last website that made it work.
It's a real head scratcher. I guess I'll need to ensure crossposting is turned on here at StarrWulfe HQ then I won't have to deal with this foolishness again.
If anyone has some experience with Brid.gy and how to do this effectively, please give me a shout. 🙇🏾♀️
Yesterday was NYCMTA’s Subway Day– On October 27, 1904 the New York City Subway started running it’s then total length between City Hall downtown and 145th Street uptown past Harlem (which was literally countryside back in those days)
Here’s a video they posted on their Threads/Instagram account showing all the different trains they’ve run throughout their 119 years. My personal fav, the R33 Redbird is shown with the ⑦ train mark, just as I used to ride it 35 years ago when I was a kid heading to Corona and Shea Stadium with my dad.
I really hope Chris doesn’t mind me borrowing literally 90% of his layout, formatting and general overall aesthetic from Boffo Socko when I’m ready to smooth out the edges of my site here. They way it looks and how information is presented is just what you’d expect of a person who is rather efficient at capturing and categorizing information.
My whole presence in the #fediverse is predicated on POSSE (and PESO) principles along with federated posting and SNS. I'm a semi-active part of the Indieweb community where this grassroots methodology sprang forth. It's one of "build your own website and have others comment on it -- that's the network right there" simplicity.
Just like email is still the most universal messaging app, websites are still the least silo'd SNS app.
I usually go and buy a new computing device once every 6 years or so. This year my trusty Late 2017 Apple MacBook Pro i5 8GB/500GB is officially sunsetted. While I’ve been eyeing a new Macbook to take its place, it would be one of the newer Apple Silicon M2 joints. But I really want to jump back into doing all my computing in Linux full time and also game more so… I’m taking a chance here.
I’ve always dreamed of a modular laptop since it’s kind of the only way I can get the specs and ports I want. Framework makes it possible by having this form factor that should never be obsolete; all the parts are user serviceable and replaceable including the motherboard, ports, screen, keyboard, and so on.
My config is the 16 inch Ryzen™ 9 7940HS - Radeon™ RX 7700S - 180W. That’s right, there’s a kick-ass discreet graphics card in there and it’s user swappable! Whenever the new hotness comes along, or other modules like an extra battery or whatever is needed, its a simple 10 minute swap out needing only a screwdriver (which is also included).
The bad news: I gotta wait until Spring 2024. The good news, I can save up the rest of the money by Spring 2024– this thing IS NOT cheap; about $1000 more than my current Mac was when I bought it new in 2017. BUT it will basically become the workhorse PC as I plan on using it for work, home-labbing, and gaming. Any tool you use to make your livelihood off of should have no expense spared (within reason.)
