This might just be because of the change I’ve made in my online behavior, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

I’ve talked many many times about my long stint on Twitter. Specifically the brief stint where I was highly active on leftist twitter from early to mid 2020 (where I managed to get around two thousand followers which seems crazy to me now considering I’m just a random guy). Back then tensions were high. People were getting laid off, high profile civil rights protests were happening, and there was nothing much to do but to be online. Personally my internship I had lined up during the summer (since I was just about to graduate college) ended up getting cancelled which led me to a period of depression. It’s also the reason I started spending so much time on Twitter and what led me to drink heavily and gain a bunch of weight. I imagine a lot of people who became extremely online during this period were in similar boats.

Anyways, I made a couple of online friends during this time period. It initially started as “Bernie” or “Rose” twitter. We were all pretty normal social democrats supporting Sanders for the presidency (which before Super Tuesday seemed like a big possibility). And then when it became clear that Biden would be the democratic nominee, a lot of people ended up going to the dark side. They started using hammer and sickle emojis on their display name. Started talking about how they were going to read Marx and Lenin (but they never did). They started making memes about how awesome Castro and Mao were. Bios went from “BernieOrBust” to “Marixst-Leninist-Maoist.”

A lot of talk started happening of “grow your own garden the end of the world is near” and also “arm yourselves comrades the class war is among us.” Somehow everyone became very fond of the second amendment. There were twitter accounts LARPing about joining the Socialist Rifle Association, e-girls were taking provocative pictures of themselves posing with automatic rifles in front of a Soviet flag. It became a whole thing. Some of this online behavior was covered in articles like The Cut's Before We Make Out, Wanna Dismantle Capitalism?

I ended up disconnecting from all this around September/October of 2020. I actually ended up voting for Biden in November which I wasn’t planning on when I was addicted to Twitter. I go a little bit into this detox here.

Fast forward to this year. A wave of mass shootings happen. Something that used to be a normal thing pre-pandemic but which stopped/slowed down thanks to lockdowns and schools remaining closed. With all of this in the news again, I start thinking back to the friends I used to have. And their gun loving, revolutionary wanting, “libs get the bullet too” type of tweets that they were writing back in 2020. I don’t remember most of them let alone their names. But I do remember a few.

I look them up. And there are dozens of tweets about the need for gun control. They’re talking about how nobody actually needs guns, and all of the typical liberal arguments in favor of gun control. A stark contrast to what they were saying before. They still have “socialist” in their display names and bios, though from the retweets I saw of them they were no longer following the “Mao is cool” type of people. For lack of a better term, they calmed down. They don’t long for a revolution to happen. They don’t want blood on the streets.

I think what had happened is that they all forgot what mass shootings were. How destructive they were. And now that society is mostly back to normal, including mass shootings, they remembered what that was like.

Now this is too niche of a corner on twitter to talk about in terms of larger online behavior. But back in 2020, I did predict that when Biden became president a lot of these online socialists would retreat into the liberals that they used to be. And it seems like that has happened, at least to some extent.

I mean, I’m glad for them. They seem more balanced, and it’s good that they eventually found themselves like I did (even if I did it a little quicker than they did). But it is still an interesting progression that a lot of my former online friends took.

Ten years ago, I got my first job in the field of languages. I was a "translation engineer", working on tooling for translators. I very quickly was told to never represent a language by a flag.

I'm sharing this here because this is something you either know, or don't, and many people don't.
Why is simple: languages do not map 1:1 to a country.

• A country can have multiple languages
• A language can be spoken in multiple countries
• A language can exist without being spoken in any country
• A country can exist without an officially recognised language

Today as I sit here, I'm at a language meetup where language tables each have a flag on them. Well, none of us at the Russian table are comfortable with that Russian flag, so we just turn it around and write "RU" on the other side.

Wikipedia has an article about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_icons_for_languages

So how are you supposed to do this correctly ? ISO 639 has a list of 2-letter and 3-letter codes for languages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes

• You want to represent a language, use ISO 639-1: a two letter code. For example, "English" is "en" and "French" is "fr".
• You want to represent a language, but wish for a larger code for some reason (such as disambiguation with state or country codes)? You can use ISO 639-2/T: 3-letter codes for the languages. For example,
  "English" is "eng" and "French" is "fra".
• You want to represent a language, as spoken in a particular country? ISO 639 and ISO 3166 work together. You can represent "English as spoken in England" as "en_GB", "American English" as "en_US", "Canadian French" as "fr_CA", and so on. (This is a very flexible standard, allowing for a lot of variations and a topic for a more motivated person than me. Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IETF_language_tag)
• You want to represent the abstract notion of translations or internationalization, such as for an icon to change the language? This wikipedia article may help. The two most common variations I've seen are an icon that has "A" and "文" together, or some kind of globe icon.
• You want to represent a currency? Use ISO 4217 currency codes: "USD" for US Dollar, etc. Some countries have multiple currencies, don't use a flag without disambiguating somewhere.
• You want to represent a country? You can use a flag, I don't care. But even then, ISO 3166 will probably be less political :)

This thread is posted weekly on Thursday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

If you'd like to help support Ukraine, please visit the official site at https://help.gov.ua/ - an official portal for those who want to provide humanitarian or financial assistance to people of Ukraine, businesses or the government at the times of resistance against the Russian aggression.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I have a work-related ethics question, and I thought the fine people here on tildes were perfect to give feedback. I'll try to be brief but still give all of the information.

Background

I work for an energy utility. This company isn't a charity, but it is a non-profit. We are owned by the people who buy power from us (called "members"). We don't profit off of the electricity we sell to our members, but we do generate extra electricity to sell to other utilities (mostly to for-profit ones). Any profit we make is either set aside for future use or is sent out to the members as a check. Yes, our members actually get a check each year. This cooperative was built to serve rural communities since at that point in history profit-driven companies weren't willing to spend the money to run electricity to these communities. We cover 90% (geographically) of our state, along with portions of a neighboring state. We generate using wind, hydro, solar, coal, and natural gas. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I believe roughly 30%-40% of our generation comes from renewables, and we now have a dedicated team researching nuclear power (SMNR) and energy storage (which would allow us to further shift to renewables).

Context

There is a PAC (an entity that throws money at politicians in exchange for votes) for rural electric cooperatives that we participate in. This PAC can only accept donations from our members or employees. While the stated purpose is to advocate for rural cooperatives in general, I personally think that largely translates into advocating for fossil fuels.

Every year there is a 10-day period in August where they start asking us employees to donate. Anyone can donate at any time, this is just the time that they emphasize it. Leadership has REPEATEDLY emphasized that there is no pressure and that our supervisors can't see who has and hasn't donated. I've been here nearly five years, and they've said this each time. I know that under the previous CEO (he left ~10 years ago) there was pressure to donate, and that's probably why they emphasize this now.

Issue

I've discovered however that the leadership CAN see information on who has donated and how much. PAC donations are public information, and the names and amounts can be easily seen online if you know where to look. I do believe that my division leader didn't know this, though I can't really know whether the other leadership did or didn't. There's no way to know if any supervisors have looked at this data or made decisions on it. After I brought it up to my division leader he thanked me and said he will send this new information out to our division.

However, communicating this to the rest of the company is beyond his control. He's alerted the people who can do this but what they do is up to them. While my division doesn't really care who donates, I get the impression that other divisions feel differently. IT has a profoundly different culture than the rest of the company. Senior leaders say there's no pressure, but that's not neciserily the case for supervisors and managers. It's been implied to me that the teams that work in power production, transmission planning, etc still have expectations about donations.

What to do?

So here's the core ethics question: Is it unethical for senior leadership to withhold this new information about the visibility of donations from the rest of the company? The assurance of anonymity was intended to reassure us that there would be no retaliation for those who don't donate and that there would be no favoritism for those who do.

Is this just a small thing that's not really important? If this is an issue, how significant is it? It's obviously not "dumping toxic waste in the river" bad, but it still feels like it must have some level (or potential level) of impact. If this is an issue, what actions would you personally take? How much would you be willing to risk taking action on this?

Thanks in advance, I just want to do the right thing.

I wouldn’t be doing an update this early on but there were recent news of many movies being delayed to 2023 including Killers of the Flower Moon and Rustin.

Here’s the last one: https://tildes.net/~movies/11ix/early_predictions_for_the_2023_oscars

Picture:

1. The Fabelmans
2. Empire of Light
3. Bardo
4. Avatar: The Way of Water
5. Babylon
6. The Whale
7. Women Talking
8. Elvis
9. Everything Everywhere All At Once
10. White Noise

Director:

1. Steven Spielberg - The Fabelmans
2. Sam Mendes - Empire of Light
3. James Cameron - Avatar: The Way of Water
4. Damien Chazelle - Babylon
5. Alejandro G Innaritu - Bardo

Original Screenplay:

1. The Fabelmans
2. Babylon
3. Empire of Light
4. Bardo
5. Everything Everywhere All At Once

Adapted Screenplay

1. White Noise
2. Women Talking
3. The Whale
4. The Son
5. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Lead Actor:

1. Austin Butler - Elvis
2. Adam Driver - White Noise
3. Daniel Cacho - Bardo
4. Brendan Fraser - The Whale
5. Hugh Jackman - The Son

Lead Actress:

1. Margot Robbie - Babylon
2. Cate Blanchett - TAR
3. Michelle Yeoh - Everything Everywhere All At Once
4. Olivia Colman - Empire of Light
5. Naomie Ackie - I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Supporting Actor:

1. Paul Dano - The Fabelmans
2. Seth Rogen - The Fabelmans
3. Ben Wishaw - Women Talking
4. Colin Firth - Empire of Light
5. Brad Pitt - Babylon

Supporting Actress:

1. Michelle Williams - The Fabelmans
2. Jessie Buckley - Women Talking
3. Sadie Sink - The Whale
4. Laura Dern - The Son
5. Greta Gerwig - White Noise

Animated Feature:

1. Strange World
2. My Father's Dragon
3. Turning Red
4. Pinnochio
5. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Best Original Score:

1. The Fabelmans
2. Avatar: The Way of Water
3. Women Talking
4. Babylon
5. Empire of Light

Best Sound:

1. Avatar: The Way of Water
2. Top Gun: Maverick
3. Elvis
4. Babylon
5. Bardo

Best Production Design:

1. Babylon
2. Amsterdam
3. Avatar: The Way of Water
4. Empire of Light
5. Elvis

Best Cinematography:

1. Avatar: The Way of Water
2. Bardo
3. Babylon
4. Empire of Light
5. The Fabelmans

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:

1. Elvis
2. The Whale
3. White Noise
4. Babylon
5. The Batman

Best Costume Design:

1. Elvis
2. Amsterdam
3. Babylon
4. Empire of Light
5. The Fabelmans

Best Film Editing:

1. Avatar: The Way of Water
2. Babylon
3. The Fabelmans
4. Everything Everywhere All At Once
5. Elvis

Best Visual Effects:

1. Avatar: The Way of Water
2. Top Gun: Maverick
3. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
4. The Batman
5. Everything Everywhere All At Once

I have a burner phone for the next month.

(Lately a number of services refuse to accept my google voice number, and I refuse to share my actual number.)

Are there any cool services I should try out that maybe require a phone number to sign up?

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.