DecaturNature @yall.theatl.social This is a sentence. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I suspect the 'affirmative action' trend also reflects the difference in ambition/drive between the low-income high achievers and the >70% high achievers. The low income group is smaller than the >70% group (look at the size of the 'above average odds' regios and the 'below average odds' regions). This is because most of the people in the low income group will never even apply for a private college -- only the strongest applicants apply. But from the >70% group, basically every kid applies to college, and they are much more comfortable applying for 'reach' colleges (even if it costs their parents a few hundred extra dollars). They've also gamed their test scores.
Rich folk are also good at gaming all the other criteria (varsity sports, extracurricular achievements). "opportunity hoarding" I think is the term that's been used, or resume padding. It's also about being able to pay full tuition.
It's apparently based on this painting (with apollo at the table, and bachus in the foreground) https://musee-magnin.fr/en/node/19
But more importantly, even if it were based on the Last Supper, I don't think this performance would necessarily be mocking Christianity.
I just don't like it
cross-posted from: https://yall.theatl.social/post/3357080
> Fixed that for you
this isn't about you
cross-posted from: https://yall.theatl.social/post/3356775
> Dionysus wants you to know...
Water crises
Atlanta is currently suffering from a major water main break that has put half the city under a boil-water advisory. The city government is reportedly bringing in pallets of bottled water, so there hopefully will not be any real crisis here. But I expect this will be a wake-up call for a lot of people who have not given much thought to prepping.
There are also major droughts in Mexico City and Bogota, threatening to dry out their taps.
Do you all have any tips for folk with how to prep for loss of water service, especially for folk in cities where they may not have a ton of storage space or land for collecting water?
I'll start off by referring to the US FEMA guidelines: One gallon of water per person per day. In my experience the best format is those upright 1-gallon bottles with the opening in the top middle (not the milk-jug style with the handle).
As pedestrian deaths surge, researchers say narrowing street lanes – and repurposing that space for cyclists and pedestrians – is a straightforward solution.
(faq.) “Can’t people disagree with you?” I’m answering those and all your top questions about transit and the Atlanta Beltline to the best of my ability. The purpose of this FAQ is to address renew…
Response to questions/complaints about the planned Beltline light rail
Transforming Atlanta’s streets into safe, inclusive, and thriving spaces for people to ride, walk, and roll.
>In 2022, 38 people lost their lives while walking inside Atlanta city limits. That’s 23% more than in 2021, and a full 52% more than in 2020. The rise marks a continued upward trend that started in 2018 in a city whose overall traffic fatality rates are already high compared with similarly sized cities.
>More than two-thirds of all Atlanta’s pedestrian fatalities occurred in predominantly Black neighborhoods, places with fewer features like sidewalks, crosswalks, and bike lanes that provide basic safety for pedestrians and people outside of cars.
World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims in the U.S. –Nov. 19, 2023– advocating safer roads through speed limits, road design, and vehicle enhancements
Dear Decaturish – To Decatur’s officials: No more death on our roads
cross-posted from: https://yall.theatl.social/post/830010
> From Decaturish: > > We accept letters to the editor. Letters to the editor are opinions of the authors of the letter, not Decaturish.com. Everyone has an equal opportunity to submit a letter to the editor. So if you read something here and don’t like it, don’t jump on our case. Write a letter of your own. All letters must […]
Report says pedestrian deaths are up and Black neighborhoods are affected the most
cross-posted from: https://yall.theatl.social/post/824731
> From Decaturish: > > Atlanta, GA — There were 38 pedestrian deaths in Atlanta in 2022, a 23 percent increase over the previous year, a report by an advocacy group says. Propel ATL, which advocates for cyclists and pedestrians, said, “More than two-thirds of all Atlanta’s pedestrian fatalities (25 out of 38) occurred in predominantly Black neighborhoods, places with fewer […]
Privacy Badger has recently started blocking Twitter embedding for me (in the past few days). Does anyone know specifically what Twitter is doing to prompt this? For instance, see this thread on the Ukraine war on Daily Kos, which includes a lot of embedded Twitter posts https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/9/2204752/-Ukraine-Invasion-Day-625-RU-may-experience-redeployment-issues
16-year-old pedestrian dies in Decatur; police cite driver in unrelated crash involving pedestrian
Even in our 'walkable' city, kids are still getting killed crossing the street.
DeKalb Trails soliciting input on master plan.
DeKalb County is soliciting input on the master plan for trails and greenways. This page has links to a survey as well as to an interactive map where you can suggest trail destinations or flag problems.
Food for thought @[email protected]
I found this comment on blocklist systems to be interesting: https://social.treehouse.systems/@adrienne/111043288202527510
How do we unblock any instance that got on Oliphant tier 0 but are later removed? Is that something that will be checked for?
Another thought -- how does blocking and silencing affect the new search system? I guess blocking is obvious...but does silence block search? If so, I think that makes silencing much more impactful and we'd need to be more careful with it.
To make it "fair", they can use it to build a new wing to hold Trump that will satisfy the secret service.
I'm pretty sure the federal government cannot copyright anything. It's bizarre that state governments can...sometime it obstructs access to important documents. It's also bizarre that a person would not have an implicit license to use their won likeness, regardless of who created it (unless they voluntarily signed it away)
Wow. This is exactly the wrong way to report on a BS from a known liar...the sentence reads as though this is a credible statement.
I get an XML doc here: https://roughdraftatlanta.com/rss
It includes a few paragraphs plus metadata for each story
Correction. There are a few trees around here that have dropped most of their leaves. One looks similar to that (growth and bark)... and I think it may be a cherry blossom tree.
Maybe water/heat stress given how bad the past couple of weeks have been. I haven't seen any other trees dry out though.
I don't have a strong opinion. The "news" community feed is a bit overwhelming to follow....so I could see the value of segregating the posts into separate communities. But on the flip side, that means there would be a bunch of news-bot communities that would be filling up the community list and obscuring the organic communities. It would be nice if there was some way to separate the communities into groups. That's a general feature I'd like to see in Mastodon and Lemmy -- better controls allowing inclusion/exclusion of posts based on a combination of criteria.
twitter is full of vapid partisan hacks. Like most other prominent media in our society...all about posers trying to get influence
Add 'Rough Draft Atlanta'?
Hyperlocal news for Atlanta, Brookhaven, Buckhead, Dunwoody, and Sandy Springs. Subscribe to our Rough Draft Newsletter!
RDA is a free-to-read local news source with an RSS feed. They put up a lot of content. Some of it may be reused (GPB). I think they have 5 different feeds for different neighborhoods, and also use tags to categorize content.
Would this be a good addition? @[email protected]
My tomato plants had a great harvest about two weeks ago and have given me nothing since then ... one seemed to get sick and wither, but the other three continued starting fruit but it would all go bad before ripening. Thinning out the plants did not seem to help. Have you had trouble like that? I think insects are involved but have not gotten a good look at the culprits.
I too am a big advocate for free speech and robust public debate, which is why I support the fediverse. But that doesn't mean that individual instances need to include access to everything that's legally published. The ability to access everything is supported by the fediverse as a whole, just as its supported by the publishing industry as a whole, not individual magazines.
Behaviors that are tolerable in individuals can become a problem when they are organized and professionalized, as Brighton has done with conspiracy-theorism (some background info here). Brighton is a noise machine. A community dedicated to conspiracy theories is a community that is not only dedicated to lies, it is dedicated to figuring out how to promote these lies with manipulative arguments and by slowly drawing people into a fantasy world. It's frankly a lot of work to assess these lies on a case-by-case basis and I don't think people will be attracted to theATL if the site expects them to do this work for themselves. This isn't a matter of letting people voice their opinions and hear other people's opinions -- it's a matter of turning down the volume on a propaganda campaign. We can see the world around us better when we filter out other people's attempts to mislead us; when those attempts to mislead us are coordinated at the community level, it's appropriate to silence them at the community level.
Tangentially, a community dedicated to conspiracy theories is bound to contain a lot of slander and antisemitism (along with other hateful attitudes).
Is there a decision tree diagram for when/where I would see someone's post on Mastodon?
I understand the big picture for how mastodon works, but I am constantly running into edge cases where I don't know what to expect. Has anyone made a decision tree diagram (or flow chart) to show how Mastodon decides whether to show me someone's post, and where to show it?
A complete decision tree would cover at least the following settings:
- Post settings: Public; unlisted; etc.
- Individual connections: Individual follow, mute, block, etc.
- Boosts and replies
- Instance-level moderation (same server, suspended, silenced)
- timelines (home, local, federated), hashtag search, thread-view
Why do kids sports teams fill up so quickly?
This may just be a Decatur thing, but I am getting pretty frustrated with how quickly the youth sports leagues around here fill up. More than once I've had to tell my kids that a league had filled up before I got them registered. And it's not just the city league -- the private leagues like the YMCA and Druid Hills Youth Sports fill up just as fast. I don't remember that ever happening when I was a kid, and that's not because my parents were especially on top of things. I can only speculate why this might be an issue, but I'd love to hear if others have noticed it and have an idea of what the limitation is. My ideas are:
- Density: Decatur has much higher density than where I grew up (Baltimore suburbs). Maybe there just are a lot more people per playing field, and the leagues are limited by space.
- Growth: Decatur's population has been growing rapidly over the past decade, especially it's youth population. Maybe the infrastructure -- both physical and organizational -- just hasn't kept pace. I hope Legacy park can make a difference.
- Popularity: Maybe more kids are playing in leagues these days (I've heard that's true)
- Traffic: Maybe I'm not willing to drive as far my parents were because there's a lot more traffic here.
Any other thoughts why this might be so hard?