Lemmy Today

Following change in Twitter's ownership and subsequent changes to content moderation policies, many in academia looked to move their discourse elsewhere and migration to Mastodon was pursued by some. Our study looks at the dynamics of this migration. Utilizing publicly available user account data, we track the posting activity of academics on Mastodon over a one year period. Our analyses reveal significant challenges sustaining user engagement on Mastodon due to its decentralized structure as well as competition from other platforms such as Bluesky and Threads. The movement lost momentum after an initial surge of enthusiasm as most users did not maintain their activity levels, and those who did faced lower levels of engagement compared to Twitter. Our findings highlight the challenges involved in transitioning professional communities to decentralized platforms, emphasizing the need for focusing on migrating social connections for long-term user engagement.

Up until now, I've never bought a brand new guitar, so I figured I could make up for all those savings and get something nice!

“If you come back, you will be executed. You will be killed immediately.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20059165

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20059022

September 6, 2024

The press announcement below was released by the United Auto Workers (UAW) on September 4, 2024. It reports a union organizing victory by Ultium car battery manufacturing workers in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

One month after a judge declared Google’s search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.

The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.

The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends.

Dallas Humber, 34, and Matthew Allison, 37, face 15 counts including soliciting hate crimes and support for terrorism

A white supremacist group that branded itself the Terrorgram Collective drew up a list of high-profile assassination targets including at least one senator and a district court judge, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Monday.

Prosecutors allege that the two leading agitators of the group incited followers on social media to commit hate crimes against Black and Jewish people, immigrants and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Dallas Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, California; and Matthew Allison, 37, of Boise, Idaho; face 15 counts each of soliciting hate crimes and providing material support to terrorism. US justice department lawyers filed the 37-page indictment in district court in the eastern district of California on Thursday.

It alleges the pair encouraged attacks on government infrastructure, energy facilities and other buildings “to ignite a race war and help accelerate the collapse of government and society”.

Calling it “unserious and unacceptable,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries rejected on Monday a proposal from Speaker Mike Johnson that links continued government funding for six months with a measure to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

The response frames the spending battle to come over the next weeks as lawmakers work to reach consensus on a short-term spending bill that would prevent a partial government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Lawmakers hope to avoid a shutdown just weeks before voters go to the polls.

Johnson is punting the final decisions on full-year spending into next year when a new president and Congress take over. He’s doing so at the urging of members within his conference who believe that Republicans will be in a better position next year to secure the funding and policy priorities they want.

A man on trial in France for drugging his wife and inviting dozens of men to rape her over a decade told a criminal psychologist that his wife was to blame for his actions because she wouldn't go swinging with him. 

Dominique Pelicot, 71, was excused from sitting through today's hearing after his lawyer told the trial judge that he had suffered 'medical problems' over the past 48 hours for which he had not received 'adequate treatment'.

But psychologist Annabelle Montagne told the court in Avignon this morning that she interviewed the retired electrician in December 2020 - a month and a half after he was taken into custody - where he admitted to carrying out the campaign of abuse of his wife Gisele.

'Pelicot said: ''My wife and I had a discussion about swinging but she didn't agree so I drugged her'',' the psychologist recounted.

Madame Montagne said Pelicot maintained he loved his wife, but she added: 'He sees his partner as an object to satisfy his sexual and narcissistic needs. His wife is then a partial object and no longer an object of total love.'

Made for the 52weeksofbaking Regional Favorites challenge.

James Earl Jones passed away today. I wish the best for his family and may the force be with him

I made this myself on GIMP with some wallpaper

Former Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Monday after being convicted of four counts of sexual assault in attacks on women in his Toronto office building that in some cases date back for decades.

The 11-year sentence is reduced to take into account time he has already spent behind bars. Nygard has about 6.7 years left to serve and will be eligible for full parole after one-third of that.

Nygard, 83, was found guilty by a Toronto jury on four counts of sexual assault last November. He was acquitted of a fifth count of sexual assault and one count of forcible confinement.

Toronto police laid their own charges against him about a year later. Nygard also faces charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement in Manitoba and Quebec.