librarypunk - 099 - They Put a Mastodon in the Netherlands feat. Leòn

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

This week we’re joined by Leòn from The Left Page & Here Be Media to talk about Da Netherlands, Mastodon, and tech policy in Europe. https://shows.acast.com/63bb2e28364f560010c45f46  https://bsky.app/profile/leftpagemedia.bsky.social https://twitter.com/leftpagepod  Media mentioned https://www.al.com/news/2023/07/lawmaker-calls-for-changes-at-archives-and-history-after-lecture-on-alabamas-lgbtq-history.html  https://fediversereport.com/dutch-government-officially-launches-mastodon-server/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2022/11/22/the-copyright-challenge-with-mastodon/ https://www.copyright.gov/dmca-directory/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5bHLrGBUKo https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/kids-online-safety-act-still-huge-danger-our-rights-online  https://twitter.com/tender_subject

I grew up with fairies, so like everywhere I've lived, you can always just hear the fairy horn. Yeah. So it's just like, for the listeners at home, we all just did Olympris at the same time. This is not a visual podcast. And on that bombshell. I'm Justin. I'm Scalcom librarian. My pronouncer E and they.

Hi, I'm Sadie. I work I-A-T at a public library, and my pronouns are they them. I'm J. I'm a music library director, I guess, and my pronouns are E.m. And we have a guest. Would you like to introduce yourself? Hey, I'm Leon. You have heard me before.

My partner is Zahide. And I do social science, I guess, question mark. But truly, I contain multitudes. So, you know, but none of them are anything. I don't know if an applause was necessarily that guy won't. I'll take it. Just in a rhythm. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I was on here last time with my dear, dear co-host. I don't know where they are. I've lost them along the way. But so is life. No, we're still doing fine. You still have the two podcasts. Yeah.

And I'm here alone because I'm going to talk about something my co-host would not necessarily be very helpful with, I think. So, yeah, I'm here again. We talked about media and stuff and a preservation of it. That was fun. Yeah. Okay. I've got something to help you feel more at home. So I brought this.

What's that Danish? Yeah, okay. Yeah, go fuck yourself. I didn't recognize it. I thought it was going to go over Belgian. I was like, This doesn't sound like Belgian stuff. And they're like, oh, fuck, it's the Danish, of course.

Okay. No, no, that's good. I did bully Justin a little bit because in the episode description, he thought that the Netherlands starts with the D because he could use Denmark with the Dutch. But the Dutch don't live in Dutchland. So. They should. Okay.

No, no, mine. I believe it's talking about it. I'm getting into European geography. Yeah, well, a little bit, but mostly, mostly your kind of. So the structures, the intellectual and informational structures, if you will, of data. To just tie a little bit into the thing that we talked about last time. We were right about everything, as it turns out, because yeah, no, totally. I don't know if you know, Justin, but Ubisoft servers are like, yeah,

we're going to delete your account if you're not going to play for 30 days or something. Once again, they might not, that is a rule that they have. They might not enforce it, but if you don't spend time on your account, on your Ubisoft account, they might delete you and you access to all your games that you bought on there. So I thought that was a nice tie-in to show that we were right last time when we talked about subscription models and online service. Like, it's happening. I feel like that's a trend.

Like everyone is like, we're going to delete all these old accounts. Like Twitter started it. And then Google was like, actually, yeah, we're going to delete your old Gmail too. We're going to delete your fucking grandma's Gmail. And then she's going to find out in three months. And you're going to have to deal with the whole fucking thing. I feel so bad for every public librarian in this country. Yeah.

Yeah. What I find remarkable about it is that, and once again, feel free to chip in here. But the way I understand it is that data space now has become cheap, essentially. It is comparatively to what it was, let's just say that. It is easy to run a server essentially. Talking about, we're going to talk a little bit of Macedon and stuff. You can run a methadone server off of like very small hardware, I believe. That's correct.

So I'm surprised that people are so eager at delete. leading stuff, scrapping stuff, throwing away stuff. I know if you guys ever read on that? It doesn't make any sense to me. Okay. Because preservation is, yeah, preservation is bad. Okay. When you are a company where, like, things that could be held against you are preserved,

and you don't want any sort of historical, you don't want historical memory for things. So this is like, this, like, erasure of our culture or memory is on purpose. Yeah. I saw people react to it, especially with the Twitter stuff. I was like, okay, sure, delete them, I guess. And then there were people like, oh, yeah, well, enjoy your dead friends' tweets being gone forever now. Like, screen save them, I guess. I was like, oh, right, that's a nice thing maybe to not do or something like that.

And I was like, oh, yeah, there's a lot of things to this. Oh, Christ, yeah. Heritage accounts. Sorry, we shouldn't call Twitter anymore, right? I don't care. It's X. It's X going to give it to you. Jay and I were joking earlier about the.

That's the only thing he does, knows how to do. He buys into company and names things X. That's the only two things, including his own child. It's the only two things Elon Musk knows how to do. It's 1990. Cartoon Network had a good post, which was when Robin becomes Red X. It's like Elon whenever he buys a company and it's just Red X holding a dozen like X batterings. Oh, God.

I'm not sure whether or not. I'm not sure whether or not it's actually real, but there was a little Nossack tweet that was like, I'm really flattered, but it's very overwhelming. Like, you named the whole website after me and I'm like, I love that kid. Yeah. So I've got a news story. How fucked is shit. This one's pretty, pretty dumb. Alabama.

Lawmaker wants changes at State Archives after LGBTQ lecture. So as you may know, Alabama is in session right now. because the Supreme Court said that their electoral map was too racist. And so... And that's something coming from the Supreme Court. Yeah. You're being too obvious at that point, you know? And so they're in session, and they found out that there was a one-hour lecture about gay Alabamaans at the state archives.

And they were like, you can't do that. And the head of the archives was like, yes, I can. Watch me. Yeah. And then they tried to pass a bill to defund the state's whole archives. And they were like, we're not in session to do that. This archivist is based. Get him on the show.

This archivist is very professionally like, fuck you. Yeah. Better than the fucking Montana librarian. Yeah. What's his name? Murray something. Shout out to Emily. What's this guy's name?

Steve Murray, Archives and History Director. And he's like, yeah, we're, we don't care. We're going to wait till regular session. and we'll let them know what's going on. But it was literally like a one-hour session of a, and the people were like, well, the legislator just said, well, we don't, this isn't Alabama values. It's like, these are literally Alabama people.

Your value is people. The literal history of your state. About that. So technically you're wrong, but even they couldn't get it through their stupid special session because they're too busy not redrawing their map right. And that's going to go to the Supreme Court again. And actually, I don't know what is going to happen because, like, from what I can read?

Because someone asked me, like, what happens if they don't redistrict right? I tried to look it up, but apparently it's like it just goes back to the Supreme Court, but there will be elections between then and now. So I don't know, like, when do you send in the National Guard to, like, redistrict Alabama? Restoration, too. Let's do it, baby. Reconstruction, sorry. Just skip the whole Civil War and go straight. Yeah, this is your reconstruction again. Yeah.

I'm in favor of this. Fuck those lines in particular. That was the news And more news Europe's got states Apparently sure I wasn't taught about it in school That's that shows

Yeah Denmark, Dutchlands You know Yeah who does Where does Greenland belong to you You know That's uh Belongous to the Netherlands

Not other ones Denmark And that's a thing No we do We do still have a lot of those little pieces of and that's people seem to forget that. Yeah, colonialism. No, yeah, it's a neo-colonialism, but

do we really need a neo? It's all masking. The Dutch shit's a fucked up shit. Oh, European countries did. It's a discussion that I often get, like a question I often get. Like, oh, which European country? You're European, you know history. Which European country did the most fucked up shit?

I was like, don't, please don't ever ask. Like, it's Belgians. No, it's, don't ever ask me. whichever, no. Officially, there's nobody who did, like, it's weird, it's weird, don't ask it, please. It's a question of the law. Not a competition.

Yeah, no, but precisely, it's a very team sport mentality, I would say. It was a team sport. Yeah, in an area of history where you really should not want to do that. But yeah, very polite, he didn't say anything about the Alabama situation, because I get to, well, I get to show how not nationalist I am, I suppose. That's why I'm here.

Yeah. Look, I mean, we're in the middle of a lavender panic. I don't know if you didn't notice. But we're freaking the fuck out. People losing their goddamn minds. McCarthyism, too. Electric boogaloo, speed run. Yeah.

About that, to tie in and to share the suffering a little bit. I was wrong on one account. I was when I was here last time. I would say like, oh, I'm so happy that I'm from a country doesn't demonize all these sexual, sexual logical stuff because we talked a little bit about like sex education in libraries which was like a minor segment on the last time I was here and well I was wrong um we we now have like our far right has copied the american far right playbook and it's about drag queens and children's sex education and are actively threatening people who are teaching kids about their genitals so

that's great USA number one baby yeah so well yeah it's fucking um He was number one. Well, it is interesting that, okay, so once again, Americans might not know this, but we know this, which is pathetic. But the Netherlands is a longstanding ally technically of the United States. Only in a history book shows that only France held with its independence, Netherlands was there too. And all that. We both just needed England to lose. We didn't like you guys per se, but we just wanted England to lose.

That was how that started off. And once again, Netherlands has then always had very close relationships. With the United States, and we have like economic friendship treaties. That's literally what they're called. With the United States, which shows for like free labor movement or like simplified, making it more smooth the transaction between labor and capital and goods and whatnot. Between the two countries, it's very easy to get like a work visa as an American here. There's a bunch of you guys here.

That's fine. I don't feel one way or the other about that. But no, it's a, we have the expert culture. It's really big over here. It's a bunch of the big economic cities in Europe have ex-pat. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you, Justin, for beating me through the punch.

Sorry. No, exactly. I was taking five minutes, so thank you so much, truly. Yeah, well, that is a problem of this. Yeah, and that is big over here. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, Pennsylvania Dutch. Which case, German. Yeah.

That's just like talking German, and then they'll say things like Minecraft. in like a southern accent because anytime I've like taken the Amtrak anywhere that's not between where I live in Boston, it's just it's just Minanites who speak Pennsylvania Dutch and it's just German and then they say Minecraft and then like that's what that's what Pennsylvania Dutch is. They're very rowdy boys. The conductors get onto them all the time. And they say Fortnite and then they dab. They're wearing like the outfit. Oh no. And they just do like a little jig.

I imagine they have little funny dances they like to do. You got it. They've got fun hair. Lots of them in Sarasota, Florida, too. There's also German speakers in Texas, but their German is incomprehensible. Oh, yeah. It's like a couple hundred years removed from the source, but they just like keep, they like, they keep doing it. Yeah, well, it also like fused with a bunch of other things also down there.

I saw a documentary on it a while ago in Texas, and it's like one of those endangered languages as well. Yeah, it's its own thing now, but it's like, I don't know, like Pennsylvania, Dutch, Texas German, I suppose. There's another name for it. I forgot, I'm sorry, but I don't remember. I'm not from here. People are always like asking me like, did you take this class back when we were Pan Am? I'm like, I'm not from here, dude.

People like, don't even assume you're from Texas. They assume like you're from here. Like, who would move here is the whole like vibe of the city. And so they don't understand it. People move here for jobs. How are you doing, Jay? He's grumpy. Very grumpy.

Reasons we won't get into on air. Okay. Okay. So wrote a nice introductory paragraph for us setting the scenes. So we're going to be talking about Mastodon. The Netherlands is running their own Mastodon server so they can post their own memes. Yeah. So you started off with the background and sort of Dutch corporate climate, which I imagine is...

You actually brought up Ireland, I think. Yeah. Oh, I have a bit. I turned it down, but I do have a bit of comparisons. So this is a sketch of two people doing the Irish immigration questionnaire. The current Irish government is a coalition of which three parties. Apple, Facebook and Google.

Yes. Where will you go if you defraud the government in Ireland? Prison. Where will you go if you defraud the taxpayer in Ireland? Spain. Yes. What is Ireland's biggest export? Nurses.

What is Ireland's biggest import? Landlords. I do know those guys. They're pretty good. They're pretty good. They've done a bunch of countries. So it's not just Irish. They're not pulling the Irish.

I didn't know what it was from. I've only just seen that clip. But I knew I had to get it to bring it in. So from what I understand, the sort of embrace of tech is similar in the Netherlands. Oh, yeah, I would say it's even a bit more vervent in the Netherlands. The Netherlands has also a very strategic position, like just geographically. Like, it's a very clear gateway into Europe from an Atlantic point of view. So Ireland is an island and it's just kind of over there and is a great first stop. But the Netherlands is part for those who skipped geography

class since, I don't know, middle school. It's part of the European mainland. And also, also a part of like, I would say, and I ascribe no virtue to this, it's just a statistical thing. But it's also in between the big two European EU countries, France and Germany. We originally were created and enforced because we were supposed to be a buffer zone between those two giant European powers. So Google the Treaty of Luxembourg, if you want to know more about that, I guess. But so once again, we have a slightly bigger tech sector, I believe, than Ireland would. That's not a hearing or there. But both are very big, and both have shared a lot of characteristics, like you pointed out, Justin.

And so why is the tech sector so how has it made such a good coalition there? You mentioned it has something to do with national identity. It has to do with a bunch of factors, I would say. There's a very simple ones. Like, we all speak English over here. Like, it's a plague. 95% of Dutch adults can speak English, which is almost close to Ireland. And Ireland is 97%.

And in Sweden as well, like, you know, those, this corner. of Europe all speaks like English very well, but we were the first to do it because we didn't want to translate the movies we imported out of the United States. So that's why we all speak English, not to any kind of virtue, just laziness. That's it. That is a virtue. Well, I suppose, but it's, so this, at this end, like, we were the first to, like, really embrace, like, economic labor movement. This sounds cool, maybe it isn't. We just, like, preyed on poor countries for cheap labor. And therefore, we also learned English.

There's a large wave of Spanish and Italian populations first. Now it's Turkish and Moroccan. And also Suriname, which is an ex-colon, and so forth and so on. So we have a pretty diverse populace, I would say, for where we are situated, which also helps with just speaking English. But this infrastructure was then later used to draw expert, but they call experts jobs. And we, like, you know, got Eastern Europeans that are very good in IT, in tech and we're like oh come over here come in absalom isn't amsterdam so cool and other places like

the other big cities in the netherlands but yeah so there are a couple of factors here at play you mentioned something about holland but i wasn't sure if that was a joke uh it's okay this has nothing to do with anything but i'll just talk about this for quick um so a lot people call us holland and i um it's fine we marketed ourselves as holland uh we uh we yell holland during our soccer matches uh a lot and this is just the two it's like calling United States California it's just the West Coast that's Holland it's it's

understandable to be confused by because once again Amsterdam is in Holland rather than the biggest sport in Europe and like top five biggest sports in the world is in Holland so once again historically it was Holland who was like the biggest province in the Netherlands

and it has like you know it has the capital is there the parliament is in Holland and the biggest export the big economic hubs are in Holland. So this way, this is why they refer to the Netherlands as Holland, but we are the Netherlands. So that's just a small thing, not very important. Yeah, but you also have like very important exports from Holland, like Holland oats. Yeah, yeah, no, I guess we do have a bunch of exports as a small country.

We are one of the leading agricultural exporting countries, which makes no sense because we are the size of like, if America was a body, we are like the size of his left hand, not even that much, I would say. I don't know, I'm trying to think of, like, in American state, but I don't know. Google it. Geographical size, square, sorry, I was going to say square kilometers, but you guys don't know what it is. I mean, square miles.

Is that like acre feet? Yeah, yeah, sure. Let's go with that. But, no, I'm sorry. Yeah, no, so we are very small, but 18 million people live in this little corner of the world, which is a lot. And like GDP-wise, which I have to say as disclosure, it's a shit economic measurement. But just to like as a gross indicator of things, which is what it's meant for, our GDP is in between like Illinois or Florida.

So like, you know, for like such a small country, it generates a lot of things. That's all I'm trying to say. So yeah. Larger than Maryland, smaller than West Virginia. I don't know what that means. I don't either, actually. I don't think about the size of Maryland ever. I know West Virginia because of the song.

Actually, that song is about the western part of the state of Virginia. Anyway, it's, no, thank you, Jay. But I do know, I know where the points. I can point to Western Virginia on the map. But Maryland, no fucking clue. Sorry. It's just, it's just a little under, it's under Virginia. Oh.

It's above Virginia, actually. Oh, I got it. Well, you know. They're next to each other. Sorry, I went to school in Virginia. Okay. No, yeah. No, I think that was totally right.

It's where it was the split during the Civil War. So it's Maryland on top, Virginia, the bottom. And then they were basically at war, and then the rest of the country went to war about it. D.C. was in the middle. Kind of an insane geography for a war when your capital is right on the border of both warring countries. Yeah. Yeah, where I went to undergrad got kicked out of the Ivy League because it was the only one of the Ivy League to side that the Confederacy instead of the Union, all the rest of the ivies are in the northern half. Yeah. I'm talking about a lot of civil war stuff today. I didn't expect that as a theme.

We don't have a civil war yet. Oh, you really should. You might import that out of your country as well one day because we have very definitely important. Yeah, you should have one. You must try it. For some reason, we don't, even though we do have like a lot of cool old school factors, like we have part of Catholics and a part of Protestants. Oh, because we like Ireland. Get them to fight. I don't know if I can say. Okay. You're too hard.

Classic. It's a bit. It's especially unlucky time right about now. But yeah, we have a bunch of, like the United States. Because our old right has like so eagerly identifying with all these online old right American trademarks, if you will. We are like growing into this more despondent, dare I say. Not that I think things were great before.

I'm not coming at this from an Arab and European angle far from it. I would have loved to see what they made them come up with by themselves. instead of just copy-pacing everything from far-right online Facebook memes. I don't know. Sadly. So learning English is the worst. Don't do it. That's the main takeaway.

No. It's done us so well. Yeah, no. I would argue, and this is not, well, I think I'm right. And I will just say very politely, it's slightly speculative. But I think a lot of people would agree that the Netherlands doesn't necessarily know what it wants to be. And in typical European on way, we don't necessarily care all that much either, but in the same time, there is a hole that needs to be filled. And there's not a lot of

conscious thought going on about that, but we do feel like, well, what should we be? Once again, Amsterdam, everybody knows Amsterdam, but it's a relatively small city. There's like one million people in it, which is nothing compared to like, once again, United States cities. My co-host is from Sao Paulo. It's one of the biggest cities in the world. It's one of the biggest cities in the world. So everybody knows Amsterdam and well, they might not know where it is, but not everybody knows South Paulo, which is funny because

it has like two thirds of my entire country's populists living there. So not the actual Dutch people, but you know, it's just the amount. It's like those countries in like India or China, the city in India or China, you're just like, yeah, it has like 50 million people in it or whatever. Yeah.

Well, that's why they don't speak Dutch in Amsterdam is of their role in South Paulo. Yeah, because we moved. No. I keep having insomnia and I started reading Marx to fall asleep and I don't I just wanted to see what I was reading last night. But anyway, Marx was making a point about spiritual emptiness. Well, how socialism is like not just an economic thing, but it's sort of like a holistic religious movement because like it doesn't even matter if you're an atheist anymore. We're all like rationalists. So like atheism as a thing doesn't really matter.

And so there's going to be a void no matter what. And so the next stage of human society should be conscious attempts at socialism is a holistic thing. This is like Young Marks. I'm going through some Young Marks stuff. So I don't remember. It wasn't the firebock. Young hot marks. It was whatever after that?

I don't know. Was Marks hot when he was young? I don't know what he looked like. He looked like Aaron Hanson from Game Grumps. It's been way too long since I've watched Game Grumps. Easily more than a decade. He's the Grump one. Okay.

Not the not so grump one. Gee, that cleared it right up. He's the guy from the I could be your angle or your devil. That's Aaron Hansen. That came from Game Grumps? That came from him. He's just a crazy person. Incredible.

That's not the Bienvenu Power Bottoms, is it? That is, yeah. That's Be Invenu Power Bottoms? He was an, yeah, he was an animator for years before doing Game Grumps. He was like famous as like a teenager. Hair? Yeah, he's got a little streak in his hair. He's got a blonde streak in it.

Yeah, he was kind of hot. Wait, are we talking about Marx? Marks had a blonde streak? Yes. Yeah. Did you see the anime? Him and the girlies to go get their highlights done. So why did the Dutch government launch a mastodon?

Generally, I think one of the main reasons why to do it is that we are all experiencing, namely that Twitter is getting fucked, as in, you know, well, I'll let it speak for itself. Once again, no need to tell you guys about that. I think everybody listening is well aware at this point. Justin, you need to get an ex going to give it to you, drop. Yeah. Also, I fucked that up. He looks like young angles. Okay.

But yeah, no, it's funny because I just listened to the digital labor episode of you guys today about you ruining your Twitter account, Justin. And you can't, you can't, Zete. How do we say this? X-E-C-T-T? Because they want to call it Twitter or tweeting anymore. You blog it and you re-blogged it. Okay, well, thanks.

And so the more, the less than the last time, know about it's the better actually so it's good so that that's that platform deteriorated and i don't think necessarily that the dutch government cares that much about it but it does care about reliability uh you have this rhineland economic model that's like oh well growth but not too fast we care for more stable uh more reliable type of angle and this is then still i would argue very dutch as well and so once again a macedon apparently point was pointed out as this more reliable successor, quote-unquote, if that's what we're going to call it, to Twitter. So they were like, well, we don't want all this noise, as we call it in a communicational science

between medium and sender and recipients. Mass. Macedon is just then a lot more clear and reliable, according to them, especially if you're on your own server. I suppose that's a good argument to make. I am really sorry. I don't necessarily understand Macedon that well, but I do think that's the reason why the Dutch government launched one. So feel free to fill in anything. What do you guys think about mastodon or something? I don't know. It's for nerds. Okay. I have not used mastodon at all. I'm a good company.

That's good. Yeah. It's been like a year. It's been like a year since I've used mine. I have it, but server I was on was closed because people started threatening to kill each other over the Harry Potter game. Oh, okay. Well, so now I'm on one for H-Commons. Okay. Mine is Laserdisc.com. I think is the one I'm on.

It's for people who like movies. And I think it's a closed server. They're not accepting people anymore. It's special. I think it's, once again, it's just it's clarity that the desire that they have a way to communicate to its citizens. And because Maston does allow linking to other platforms,

I believe it can link to threats as well. Yeah, I mean, you can federate between them. So you can view what people are saying on other servers. What I understand from the piece that you sent us is, I don't know if this happened in response to it, but there was a major storm and the fire department sent out an emergency text telling them to check Twitter for latest updates. But that happened to coincide with the time when Twitter was preventing people. You didn't have accounts from being able to retweets. So the government wants to have a alternative social media platform that all the government agencies can use as one server, which makes total sense to me.

especially if Federation does become a thing. I don't really think it will. But we'll see what happens once Blue Sky opens Federation. We'll see what happens. It'll be an interesting experiment. Yeah, the argument from Macedon is that it was there, I would argue. They're inaccessible. And I saw a lot of government officials promote their Macedon on their Twitter

before this whole shift happened and this server was launched. So I think there was internally already like, okay, well, it doesn't really matter what platform we go to, but we need to all know we're going to go to Platform A, B, see. And I think that's what happened. It's all a bunch of European officials in general, not just Dutch ones. And it's not any different from, it's not any different from maintaining like a government website that you, if you text someone and say, everyone go see updates at emergency services website. If you say there's going to be live updates on a Mastodon server, that's no different. It's just a slightly different technology, but it's just web technology.

The United States is notorious, better government is notoriously bad at being able to do that, though. Yeah. One of my, like, graduate assistantships when I was in grad school was working on, like, updating, like, our Gov docs, like, lib guys and stuff and checking all the Sudoc, like, permalinks, like pearls. And every single one of them was just broken, dead link, even though we weren't getting the physical things anymore. But all the links they were sending us just didn't work anymore because the United States

federal government doesn't maintain that shit. Well, they reorganize every presidency. So whenever the president changes, they move agencies under, each other and they and so then their websites get all fucked up yeah and so the pearls don't work like they're supposed to which fucks over your sudox someone has to update the pearls and it's nobody's job because the government printing office doesn't have any authority to tie then really quick into once again dutch culture we do have a longstanding archival element to our culture i don't associate with it fondly because um it's how a lot of people were found during world war two

But it is a Dutch tradition to like just note things down. You might know the Dutch if you paid attention during history lessons by creating stock markets. We once again, which tulip belonged to which person. You know, you have to keep track of those things. And in a more serious fashion, we don't know. There's a longstanding tradition of writing things down, I suppose. That configures into a bunch of things. And with Twitter being Twitter, I was once again to argue.

That's why we launched on Server, I guess. Do we think that's more or less stable than like nerds who argue over the Harry Potter game and then close the server down? Like, I don't, to me, it's like, part of me thinks that would be more stable, but then part of me is like, that's inherently antithetical to the spirit of Mastodon.

This is why I don't think decentralization, it's like good in concept, but then it's like, yeah, but to have any stability belies the sort of like anti-authoritarian decentralization concept. Yeah. You need bureaucracy to maintain things long term and that you would have to have like one government office maintaining the Mastodon. If you if you have like multiple people given ownership over it, then like nobody's going to do it. Right.

It has to be somebody's job. You know, it could be one dude. Like a lot of internet infrastructure is like one dude. But. Yeah, it's just a furry into Linux. Yeah. I thought it was interesting though because they had this note about digital common goods. And they were saying that the government might want to support alternatives.

to private organizations, which I think is an interesting idea. So if you just ran government, some government services free, like open source things and then just hosted them on government servers and said, like, we're going to keep this open. Library of Congress kind of does stuff like that when it comes to preservation. They're not really open for anyone to use, but it's not terrible. Yeah, no, it's interesting mainly because what I started off with, the cheapening of space online and data, we built a lot of data centers,

like like a lot. Once again, small country, we just put them kind of in the middle of nowhere and it's like, oh, good luck. And then we sell them to Facebook or sorry, meta and Google.

And the Google is then Bons again buying up large swaths of land in the middle of fucking nowhere around here and putting data centers there. And we are fine with this because as I like put in my little, sorry for all the information in the little setting the scene part by the way. It was just there. Yeah, we love doing that for big companies.

We love creating dependability as well, like countries depending on each other in a type of new age, what would you call, Woodrow Wilson kind of way, like this web of interdependence. I know, now nobody's favorite president. I know, I'm so sorry. But yeah, we do kind of believe in that in a kind of savvy business type of way, which is terrible. I know. It is as terrible as it sounds. But I guess there's another argument once again for the server being there. I'm having the realization that Infinite Just is just about the Netherlands.

Have fun with that. About two people will find that funny. No, I just, I missed her. I didn't react because I misheard you because when you said Woodrow Wilson, I thought you said bourgeois realism. And I was like, what is the good name for European independence? Bushwar realism. Oh, God.

Okay. Yeah. Maybe that's a thing. Well, yeah, realism is kind of that international school of politics. It's like everyone is going to point nuke set each other and then we'll all get along. Yeah, mutual assure destruction is indeed a classical realism notion. Yeah. You have neoliberalism, which is then a hegeman's point nukes at each other and everybody will get along.

It's somehow. No, if you encounter a political scientist is going to be, this is the one political science thing I'll say. If you encounter political scientist and beliefs and realism, just disregard anything they say. I'm so sorry. Maybe listen to the liberalism. I don't know, but the realism people are like, let me put like this. when I didn't study for an exam, and the exam question was like, argue from one of the classical perspectives for this?

I picked realism because is that fucking stupid? That everybody can just write out an answer to an exam question for. So that's all you need to know about realism. Sorry. I went to a small liberal arts college, and so I had a lot of horses with the same professor, and he was a realist political science scientist. And so I don't think we even learned about, like,

socialist theories of international relations. We just learned about realism. He was Italian. So realisma and Geptelism and Baschism. That's great.

I don't think you should be allowed to be a university professor if you're a realist, but that's okay. Or Italian. Yeah. No, no.

I don't. Wait, Leon, say Italian real quick. No. I'm not going to edit anything. No, I'm not good. You have to go to my cameo. That's at

No, I'm saving up for Badlands Chugs. I'm going to get him to say something cool. It's like $200. Man, knows what it's worth. Shout out to my boy Badlands Chugs. Who is that? He's a big, big dude, and he chugs stuff on YouTube. Sounds hot. Can I date on?

Yeah, probably. Cool. Okay. He's famous for one meme where he chugs the ocean. And it's just him putting a straw into the ocean and then, like, watching the, so it's like a time motion laps the tide going out. That's what I like in a man. Chugs the ocean.

He chugs. He's like chugs heavy water and he chugs the crazy stuff. He's a madman. 90% of men stop chucking the ocean right before they chucked the whole ocean. No, if you know that. Thick water, not heavy water. I'm misnaming everything. It's government publishing office, not government printing office.

I've fucking put Maryland in the wrong spot. Listen, the other day I said night no freest crawler. Instead of a Fresno night crawler, so you know, you're not in the phone. No, no, Nedo Fresh Crawler is way better. It's way better. You want to Taco Bell to get the Nando Fresh Crawler? Tinkle outside the binkle. Jay, my wife, had about the same reaction.

Yeah, I don't know if you guys feel strongly about decentralization of, once again, these big platforms, or is anyone who wants to, conjecture wildly about the state of informational storage. People who have a big heart on about decentralization don't know what they're talking about. And I say this as an anarchist. I'm like, that's actually not how that works, actually. Yeah, I will say. You need a little structure, a little bit. I will say, I'm more positively associated towards it than fucking blockchain.

Yeah. We're talking about it. But that's the problem. I heard people talking about it the same way. I'm like, ah, that that already tingles my senses in a way that I'm like, no, thank you. But yeah, no, structurally, it sounds slightly better than all that jazz. But we are talking bottom of the barrel of shit here at the same time. So I don't know.

Yeah, and it's like the vibes on Mastodon was just a bunch of like IT guys. No offense, Sadie, talking about Mastodon. That's all Mastod on it. is just people being dorks about mastodon. Blue sky's almost as bad, but at least, oh, yeah, let's cook. Let's cook on that one. No, because that's good. There's a lot more dicks on Blue Sky.

Oh, yeah. My feed is just like hogs and then like naked trans women as far as the eye can see. It's a paradise over there. Wait, where are y'all? Where are y'all? I haven't found my way there. You have to go onto what's hot classic. The hot classic.

That's the dick feed. Fat cock Friday, baby. My favorite day of the week is fat cock Friday. Until 11 p.m. Then it becomes Arabic feed. Oh, exactly, yes. Pulling up blue sky right now. Yeah, it's just trans women, fat cock Friday.

I was there when Chick-Cum sandwich happened. Yeah. We talked about that on under subject. That hasn't come out yet. I support Chick-Cum sandwich. I don't. Well. That's what you come for your hot takes, baby.

This is the T for Tee for T pervert Solidarity Corner, okay? Can't do that to a chicken. Chickens are meant to be like chickens. Chickens are friends, not food. I wish I had my soundboard. I have a clip of Werner Herzog complaining about chicken, and I don't know what they're fucking stupid. How easy it is to hypnotize the chicken, it's amazing.

I just like Werner Herdssock, that's all. I love her. You know what I'm talking about? Yes. Okay, good. I love Verna Herzlake. He ate his own shoe one time. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. My favorite story is that I forgot her name, but this actress was asking, like, oh, have you ever seen Ghost? He's like, I don't want to talk about it. And then he's like, no, we're doing this weird scene, telling me about ghosts. And he's just like, I don't want to talk about it and stoned off. And I don't know. I feel that's so on brand. But, okay.

He's directed opera before. I love him. That's also, once again, very on brand, I would argue. Yes. That's me when I grow up. I'm just a Verna Herzlug. A really faggy Werner Herzlach. That's me, in about 40 years.

The problem with decentralization, though, is duplication is better than single decentralization, I think, is the main problem. So you want, because lots of copies keep stuff safe, right? So you want to, like, make redundant backup. So if every time you made an instance of mastod on it, like, back. up like a trobe of other mastodon. It would use up a lot of computing space, but it would also make the platform more stable in the long term, because you'd have lots of independent backups, right?

But usually you want those like kind of running off a centralized kind of thing. So like in long term digital archiving, there are multiple data centers in like, you know, high places because like we know ocean levels are going to rise or not going to do anything about it. So there are multiple data centers if you send them off to like Chronopolis or whatever. and they're all across the United States, right? But they're all, like, centrally controlled. They're the same copy.

It just goes to multiple data centers. So if you had a decentralized web, it should be people cooperating through Confederation rather than competing through Federation, I think is the problem. Confederation should mean redundancy and duplication. Like torrenting, but. Yeah.

No, that's actually a pretty good model. As long as the torrent points to, like, the right place, it doesn't matter if the data moves around. You can still get the data from someone. It's a good technology. No. And they don't want you to have it. That's why they put you on an iPhone.

That's actually, oh, one other thing about Mastodon, though, before I go, like, what I wanted to close on. When you run a Mastodon server, you are now sort of running an internet service, which means you're most likely governed by the DMCA now. So you have to have a compliance officer registered with, you have to have a designated agent. Thanks, Prince. Yeah, with the copyright office. So if, so that could be like any, this is the problem with the, the, the, the Mastodon model is like, legally there's so much liability. Yeah.

It would keep a lot. Either it's going to be unenforced like a lot of copyright stuff, which is good. You know, they're just going to fuck over like one or two people and just like sending them to jail for a million years for no reason. Or no one's going to do it because the risk is too high. Oh, yeah. So once again, I don't know if the LDMCA stuff, which it was indeed very interesting. I saw it in the notes. I don't know what the exact laws are for governments who do this type of thing.

I imagine, once again, there's a lot of stuff between EU law and American companies and American DMCA. There's a bunch of fun stories about that that will not get into. Okay, maybe one. But the point being here is that I'm going to assume that they are just like, well, if they don't do anything too outrageous, which the Dutch governments by far and large can be depended on, not because of virtue, because we're fucking. boring, but they probably won't do anything outrageous DMCA-wise. And it's mainly there for Dutch government communication and clarity of that. I don't think it's going to be one of those unwritten agreement things that you see so often in this weird copyright landscape.

Also, I don't know how that would be enforced, if anything, for American DMCA stuff. Yeah, international copyright is so fucked. Yeah. Well, the thing is, like, when a country runs something, it has sovereign immunity. Yeah. Which is the same as a state, too, because that's what happened when Virginia just stole a dude's documentary. They're like, we're sovereign. The copyright law doesn't apply to us.

Yeah, no. Once again, it has been very interesting with this whole Western economy unity, where we see this, which has recently been reaffirmed through the conflict in Ukraine, for example. We see a lot of Western companies pulling out of Russia as a economic sanction, for instance. Once again, the Netherlands would never, we're not going to invade Belgium or something. I think. So I don't foresee any scenario where like a lot of American companies would have to pull out of the Netherlands. So there's this, I don't know how to necessarily say this politely, but there's this assumption. Let's say assumption. That's, oh, well, the Netherlands is part of the civilized world. Russia isn't there for we don't really have to worry about Netherlands pulling some kind of weird shit.

Regarding the copyright stuff, I know just give you an idea how crazy it is sometimes. There's a very small little shack of, like, what do you guys call it? Where it gets fries, essentially. And it's called Wendy's because that's also a Dutch name. And it's stopping the giant food chain of Wendy's, United States, to coming over here. Because there's one little corner in Amsterdam that has the name Wendy's. And they've been, and he doesn't want to sell it for some reason, just because he gets like an interview every few months because somebody recovers the story. So I don't know. He just also wanted to do it.

You like giving fries to people. Yeah. I mean, I can do it. Yes. More power to him. Yeah. When Wendy's gets de-verified on Twitter, I'm signing up for when at Wendy's. You will find me on Twitter at Wendy's.

Okay. And I'm going to be fucking posting all kinds of bullshit. Six, six. At Ted Cruz until I'm banding it. It's so hard not to keep doing it. Because you ride that high and then I'm like, I see something. Then I'm like, I still got all those photos saved. I can still send them.

Also, Twitter in Netherlands is only celebrities and conspiracy theories are on there. It's not a popular platform. We are all on Instagram and, like, other stuff. Like, all people are on Facebook still, and the young people are on Instagram. That's the rule. And nobody goes to Twitter. I don't know why this happened. It's just one of those social evolutionary things.

Yeah. But Twitter took a long time to actually take off. Oh. It was like a weird place for a long time where no one was really like interesting. in posting. We do like pictures because we want to show we have nothing to hide. That's a very interesting element of Dutch culture. Jay, you have watched the...

All those flowers. You have watched the... What's the YouTube series again by Kyle? Kyle Ken Green. Oh, Kyle. Kyle Grin on the Brow South High episodes on Starship Troopers. Yes. And Paul Verhoeven.

I would humbly suggest, if you want to know more about how fucked up Dutch culture is, I would very humbly suggest these YouTube videos, these video videos, these Fiatessay, because I can't jam it in. to here because that would be disingenuous, I suppose. But it's great. It does make a couple small errors, but that's fine. It's okay. He tries from the heart. I appreciate that. Yeah, he lived

there for a long time. In West City? Don't, don't make fun of me. Try it. I'm going to type it out in the chat and we're all going to have to try this. Savieninger? Did I say it right that time? Go ahead. Everybody gets a turn. It's good. I speak Irish. All right. Jesus Christ.

That's how you say that. Yes. So even the Germans can't speak this We use it in World War II As like a secret code to like show you're not German agents You have to say this city's name Yeah I'm going to try my best this time Skaveninger

Uh huh Okay Justin Yeah You want to Sprit Yeah Skiet

Skeet Skeet Skiet Schreveningen It's that's what's called Schreveningen That's that Yeah

You're getting there Something Schreveningen Okay that's fine Skaveningen. Schraveningen. Okay. That was my...

It's your Dutch lesson for the day. Yeah. That was my... My torturous entertainment. I'm so sorry. That's the blood money I wanted for being on this episode. You're very mean. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. What else is there? What else all that I be? I'm trying to look up what the DMCA in the EU is, and it's the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000. It's not the same ring to it. No. Have fun waging your way through multiple treaties, buddy.

Yeah. It's a reason why I didn't look it up. I'm so sorry. But that's going to take a month for research. And that's once again, very European documents of own documents of like jazz. And nobody really knows what's going on. And we kind of get off on it in a weird twist a little way. So you're all perfect.

I love yelling at each other about like produce laws. Like you fish too many fish. You pick too many bananas. Those bananas are bendy bananas. We don't have bananas over here. I appreciate, yeah, importing. Importing rules. Because you're all queer Dutch socialists or whatever.

A lot of people also lie about it. Yeah. England loves to lie about it to, like, exit the European Union, which has a work out great for them. But that's not again there. I don't like the European Union, by the way, but it's not here or not there either. But lying about it doesn't really help anybody. There's another choice to say that it does, like flooding the Mediterranean with warships to shoot down refugees.

I hate it. I hate it for it. But to lie about it. about Spanish fishermen fishing in Indian trees. Stealing our little Kepler fish. Yeah, go fuck yourself. No, that's not, that's not a real thing to get mad about. So, yeah, but we do get mad about legitimate reasons as well with the whole fishing and producing stuff.

Are there orcas fucking out billionaires yachts? Oh, hell, yeah. I thought that's what's happening the whole time. Yeah, around Spain and Portugal, we have like a bunch of them. And they are like bring more rich people. We support them. Yeah. I think they were American workers.

Obviously not. We don't have an ocean gate, sadly. They are not one of the companies that do tax break in the Netherlands. So you don't get billionaire submarines here. I don't think Jeremy Clarkson would lie to me about the EU. No. Seems like a straight of fellow. Yeah.

Only yells at the help and is such a decent person. Then you throw food at one. Isn't that why he had to leave top gear? Oh, right. He punched somebody. That's how he has to leave top gear and does the Amazon thing now. I forgot what's called Grants to Yeah, and no one watches it.

Yeah, no, besides. Everyone's like top ears over. Yeah. And something else. I thought about doing a rewatch on some old episodes, though, because it's an entertaining show. Are we seeing the end of the open web is kind of the thought I was having? Zoomers, we all, as millennials know that they don't know how to work file systems.

That's the thing everyone makes one of them for, because they all got the iPads. And iPad doesn't show you the file system. And Zumers are too dumb, chew gum. But I mean, I really think like the destruction of the open web is sort of like an eminent thing. They've kind of already done it in some countries. But right now we have COSA, which is very popular among our lawmakers. It will probably pass. They got Lizzo.

It got her. Lizzo's like, yeah, yeah, COSA. If you don't know what COSA is, it's basically just a, it's kind of like the UK's porn passport. but for everything. Oh. So you have to put your driver's license in to go on the internet. Yeah, so basically every website would have to do like age verification. And the only way to do that is through government identification.

So it doesn't say that you have to do driver's license, but it's like there's no other way to do it. Sick. Yeah. I say not hate it. Yeah, it's bad. Aren't I glad I moved out of Utah when I did, you know? Louisiana has a law like this already, I believe. Yeah, because that's my porn hubs blocked Louisiana PPs for a while.

I don't know if they, yeah, I don't know if they unblocked it. Yeah, they might not have. But yeah, it's the Kids Online Safety Act. It's the Heritage Foundation has already said we're going to use this to censor queer people. So that's what it's for, but, you know, we're in the middle of a lavender panic people. Like, this is how this two or three years is going to be described is as the 2020 lavender panic in America, all in it. now and that I'm going to write a paper called the 2020 Lavender Panic and everyone's going to cite it. Oh, sick.

Yeah. I'm going to post it on on bread. The Netherlands Mastod. Yeah. The Netherlands Mastod. Me and all my homies are on the Netherlands Mastodon. I was really big on weird. I can't wait for Justin to end up in a Danish Mastodon server for some reason.

No, I'm in the Danish Discord. Do they have one? Do they fight? Do they kiss? Danish Discord. Me and all my homies are in the Danish discourse. Bro, the bro, they're getting your ass on Danish. This is course.

It's a big up, bro. Bro. So COSA would lead to loss of access for anything, anything dangerous for kids. Also, it would let every state attorney general be able to hold, like, any website liable. So I think this would end Section 230, basically. Which is what they've been trying to do all along, right? Yeah, when Section 230 is gone, there's really, like, no open web anymore. because then it's just an unending series of lawsuits.

Yeah, it's just vomit after vomit of liability. Yeah, that's Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, it prevents you from liability when you're hosting a service for what your users do, as long as you are acting sort of in good faith, which is legally difficult to prove that someone isn't. So it's a good gray area legally to be in. But this is very much like every state attorney's general is going to be just suing the shit out of everyone they don't like.

Yeah. I mean, isn't that what the legal system's for? It really makes me think, like, I should go to law school because the only people who have, like, any rights in this country are fucking people trained in law school. You'd be, like, the most absurdist lawyer. No. I wouldn't practice. I would just yell at cops.

You'd be that guy on TikTok that's like, don't ever talk to police with his rings. Yeah. That'd be you. I'll just, because cops always, because I'm near downtown. So cops are always going past doing bullshit and like going past the consulate or whatever, whatever. I'm just going to stand like right legally where I can and make the most obscene gestures I legally can. And then when they come up and yell at me, I'm like, when you yell at them and some legalese, and I'm where put up surveillance cameras all around my house and then I'm going to get shot and it's not going to matter.

Get shot to own to cops. Yeah. That's a takeaway here, guys. But at least I'll know I was right and a law will prove it. Oh, yeah. That's what going to law school is all about. Being right. I mean, they always told me when I was a kid that I should be a lawyer.

Oh. Yeah, because I was just a fussy little mean child who was always correcting people. I mean, like, no, it's actually this. Somehow, I'm not surprised. I know. The ADHD, baby. That was a mean little bitch, and I'm a mean little bitch, and I always have been, and they told me, you should be a lawyer. But lawyers, like, were mean to me as a kid.

And so, I was like, no, lawyers suck, and I never liked them. Yeah, custody battles when you're a child are very fun. This is why I wouldn't be a therapist. Yeah, no. Leon, where can people find you? Well, I have two podcasts. Justin is on there. Jay will be on there.

I've been on there once already. Yeah, but will I be on theirs? Well, never mind. I was trying to do foreshadowing, Jay. Christ. Okay, fine. Anyway, it's the left page, and you can find us, on wherever podcasts are found nowadays.

I believe we just got a blue sky up and running for the left page, blue sky, blue sky, whatever we want to call it. Just left page and it's also called hearing media, which is where we talk about media in the same way. We talk about literature. So, yeah, that's what I do. Otherwise, click your heels together three times and turn around and I'll be there. That's how you can find me.

What am I doing here? In the middle of the ocean, alone in a boat surrounded by frozen corpse? Yes. Was that our boy? Yeah. Yeah. Our boy, derogatory. That boy.

I liked him until he got into the whole transphobia thing lately, and that's a bit unfortunate. I know. I was like, Slavov. The most cancelable opinion is I do think that the movie that the clip was from still kind of slaps, sadly. But I like, I like, I like, ah. His takes out Buddhism are interesting. I'll take your word for it. Yeah.

It's a RIP, Chenate O'Connor Yeah As we close out You were a real one Nothing will compare To this podcast

A Let's all rip up a picture Of the, of the Pope Yeah In her honor But it has to be What's his name?

John Paul II John Paul the second Yeah I don't know Catholic shit Who is the Pope For fucking ever It's not

Yeah I don't I'm a filthy little Protestant I don't know this shit He wears He wears a stupid hat Like

The only pope I recognize his The young Pope. Yeah. The young pope. It's my rapper name. Okay. Well, thank you so much for having me.

I'm so sorry if this was hard to follow, if anything. But I also have ADHD like Jay. So when people are asking me, what's relevant? Yes. Yes. All of it's relevant. It's all built together. It's all terrifying.

We all have ADHD. We stuck for the outline. It'll blow. Okay. Yeah, no, it's always episodes that I think are going to like blow chunks that turn out great. Okay. Well, thank you for coming on. It's been fun. Thank you so much.

If something Brazilian happens, I'll toss Frank in your direction. Well, Frank, next week is going to be on my cannibalism sicko mode podcast talking about the cannibalism manifesto. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, no, it's going to be fucking sick. It's great.