surprise spring parts

Anna and I were getting ready to bike first to exercise then to go to the grocery and I noticed this metal ring on the floor of the garage and looked at it and thought, “uh, that looks automotive,” which was bad given it was next to Housemate Paul’s car.

Right where Bilbo left it

So I looked at it and looked at his car and didn’t see anything before I turned to where Anna had already gone outside with her bike, and that’s when I saw the big garage spring just kind of dangling there by the door – a place it should certainly never be.

(That’s bad.)

You know the little coils at the end of a long spring that is like at 90 degrees from the rest of the spring, and that’s where you hook it onto things if you’re using the spring that way? That’s what had broken off.

So I left it for the moment, but once we got back I started working on it, and it took a few tries but I settled on something which I think is a pretty good fix. The first couple of fixes absolutely worked, but I got worried about the tension strength and how it would interact with edges of connected materials. The spring does have a little bit of an arch now, but I think that’s actually okay? I mean, before, it had a 90-degree turn in the metal, and, well, that made fools of us all, now, didn’t it.

everything here is original except the D-shaped, uh… hook? with the two nuts. Originally the S-hook was just hooked onto the structural metal and you can see how it kind of marked it up, so I went with better.

I also shortened the run a little bit to make up for the reduced spring length, and I got the tension pretty well equal with the rest of the springs. The door opens and closes easily now. But if I’m hideously wrong about something for a very specific reason, let me know.

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A wrap-up on the first week of Threads

This is probably the final post I’m going to make about Threads unless something substantial changes.

Based on information I was given about the product just before launch, I had hoped – well, I’m not sure “hoped” is the right word, but maybe it is – that Threads would be something other than just a Twitter clone. That they were trying to build a system which would internally silo off bad actors, in the way that the Federation – Mastodon, et al – uses defederation to turn the Nazi Bar phenominon against Nazis.

While you can see evidence of this other platform that I considered possible, it’s clear that if that ever was the goal, a course-correction got applied once Musk started destroying Twitter. Zuckerberg wanted those users, and unlike the Federation’s 14 million or so, 300 million accounts isn’t scratch marks.

I’ve been watching – anonymously, through a browser view, christ no I’m not installing that app – and the usual crowd of fash all signed up on Threads, did a bunch of their usual crapping in the pool. A fair number but by no means all have since gone idle, possibly due to what looks like to me to be very, very low interaction rates. However, the vicious attacks on trans people, the nazi memes posted as threats, all of that has been allowed to stay up. How visible it is – how well it’s being shared or not shared – is an open question.

But it’s been allowed to stay up, regardless. There are unconfirmed reports that some fash accounts are being protected from user reports, and newtype blood libel like calling all LGBT people child molesters is allowed to stand. I read elsewhere that Meta/Facebook also said that the “this account posts disinformation” warnings that I reported a few days ago were accidental and have been removed, so that one somewhat hopeful sign is now gone.

However, there are supposedly over 100 million users on Threads already. Whether that’s actually true is a very good question, given reports of people finding their friends have Threads accounts, but who actually do not. They have Instagram accounts, and have never installed or tried to use Threads – but still show up as Threads users. Always remember: Facebook / Meta has a very long history of massive and complete lying about numbers, and this may be another case of that.

Regardless, the userbase is most likely actually substantial given the falloff in Twitter usage. There is some actual “there” there. As such, the press are coronating it as the Twitter Replacement.

Even if it apparently feels like some sort of cross between a shopping mall and the incarnation of depression – and I have to say that for me, even anonymously through a web browser, it’s felt really awful hanging out there, not as bad as Twitter but bad in the same way – people would rather be there than on a site where “verified” users with hundreds of thousands of users post explicitly anti-Semitic hate propaganda, and where people in replies post polls where most people answering say the Nazis were the good guys. People are tired of playing Elon’s Performative Dominance Game, so they’re moving on.

So. Me, I still say “join us in the Federation,” be it Mastodon or Calckey or Lemmy or one of the other services – it doesn’t matter, they all intercommunicate. What’ll happen – assuming you put in some effort and explore – is that about a week to ten days in you’ll suddenly take a deep breath and remember oh right, this shit used to be fun, that’s why we did it.

But if it’s only Twitter or Threads for you no matter what, pick Threads, solely because Musk’s plan to turn buy a social media platform into a fascist disinformation and propaganda fountain has to fail.

Just remember these warnings:

• Threads WILL out you. They’ve already done it, pulling in real names and assigning them to pseudonymous accounts without permission.
• Threads WILL give private messages to governments to aid in abortion convictions, just like its parent, Meta/Facebook.
• Threads, like the rest of Meta, will crawl your intestines for data if they figure out how, and until then, they’ll slurp up literally anything and everything they can. In the past that has literally included installing malware. (eta: And stealing all your tax data!) Use at your own very real risk.

Or for the gods’ sakes, don’t. Just don’t. Remember who Mark Zuckerberg is, I beg you, and step back.

Seriously. It doesn’t have to be like this.

Walk away.

Let it all burn down.

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Remember, Threads is Facebook

I know, I know, last post, but I put that thing up and this shit happens:

Yesterday, Congress members revealed the results of a seven-month investigation into tax-filing companies. Lawmakers found that H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer “recklessly shared” potentially hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ sensitive personal and financial data with Google and [Facebook] “for years” in apparent violation of laws prohibiting tax preparers from sharing tax return information without customers’ consent.

And Facebook won’t say what they did with the data.

Remember who Mark Zuckerberg is.

He owns Facebook. He owns Instagram. He owns Threads. And he is not your friend.

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oh goddammit dreamwidth

I think that if I edit a post it gets marked as what Livejournal used to call “backdated” and is no longer visible in reading lists. I’ve just found out about this being an issue thanks to canyonwalker telling me a bunch of posts weren’t showing up in Reading.

I think I have a fix for it, I’ll just have to edit posts twice under certain circumstances to remove the stupid “backdated” flag.

So if you see me posting a lot but it’s less than you’d expect and you want to check, to look at my journal directly, there’s probably more stuff. I’ve edited the last couple of weeks of posts to clear the backdated flag/enable visibility on the Reading page so they should I think also be there, though with only the one account I haven’t confirmed that yet. But I’m like 99% sure that’s what’s going on.

eta: Yep. That was it, and clearing the flag fixes it. Thanks again for the report, I appreciate it.

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