Shane Raynor @shane@austin.community

It occurs to me that I've never done an official #introduction. I'm a writer and editor ... privacy advocate ... political centrist ... a huge sports fan, especially #baseball and #soccer (aka #football). I'm the admin of a relatively new Mastodon instance for people who live in or have a connection to #Austin or central #Texas. I'm hoping to eventually build this into a healthy regional server with a strong local focus as well as world and national content via the #fediverse.

I’m convinced that Tom Brady is a cylon or vampire or something. #superbowl

PBS, NPR, VOA, local public radio and TV and nonprofit news sources like the Texas Tribune need more support. NYT and WSJ are solid corporate outlets (for now) but they’re not completely immune to advertiser interference and inordinate influence of profitability considerations.

Public-funded (but *not* state-controlled) and nonprofit news outlets are the future of journalism. Corporate-run news, especially in the United States, has become subpar. The big three cable news outlets are horrible. Newspaper chains like Gannett have gutted local news gathering operations.

Interesting concept... “inoculating” people against fake news and misinformation, especially where public health is at stake. #COVID19 #fakenews
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-02-08/covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine-misinformation-inoculation-theory/13125164

It occurs to me that I've never done an official #introduction. I'm a writer and editor ... privacy advocate ... political centrist ... a huge sports fan, especially #baseball and #soccer (aka #football). I'm the admin of a relatively new Mastodon instance for people who live in or have a connection to #Austin or central #Texas. I'm hoping to eventually build this into a healthy regional server with a strong local focus as well as world and national content via the #fediverse.

The BBC World News anchor just said “glacier” and you can add that to the list of words that sound really cool with a British pronunciation.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/glacier?q=Glacier+

Good for Liz Cheney for sticking to her guns. Trumpism and rabid partisanship need to go away.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-censures-wyoming-liz-cheney-impeachments-d65d65b10763462a4a1dc0f65a85a36d

To celebrate this special day, here's a photo essay from the Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2021/02/photos-superb-owl-sunday-v/617957/

It's Superb Owl Sunday. #SuperbOwl

Interesting analysis of party influence and American political dysfunction from a Canadian perspective. #politics
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-party-discipline-too-much-1.5902998

The U.S.won't seriously consider any demands from a leader who promotes Holocaust denial and has said that Israel is a ‘cancerous tumor’ that ‘must be eradicated.’
https://www.dw.com/en/us-must-lift-all-sanctions-irans-ayatollah-khamenei-insists/a-56485807?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf

If your primary source of investment advice is someone on TikTok, maybe rethink that.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55948550

Earthquake strikes the southern Philippines
https://www.dw.com/en/strong-earthquake-strikes-southern-philippines/a-56484365

The Republican Party has gone off a cliff. Since we need at least two viable parties for a healthy republic, the GOP needs to either be rebooted or replaced. While we’re at it, let’s replace our political duopoly with a multi-party system.
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/06/964933035/wyoming-gop-censures-liz-cheney-for-voting-to-impeach-trump

"Wisdom of crowds" is sometimes more like "a pooling of ignorance."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gamestop-reddit-and-the-wisdom-of-crowds-11612621311

The answer is yes.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/06/is-big-tech-now-just-too-big-to-stomach

4 years of detention with no trial. Unacceptable for anyone to have to experience ... especially a journalist.
https://www.voanews.com/press-freedom/egypt-frees-al-jazeera-journalist-after-4-years-detention

A permanent move to a decentralized server model would pretty much eliminate this problem for Signal.
https://signal.org/blog/help-iran-reconnect/