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Matthew Abbott

@matt.oliphaunt.social
17 followers 1 following 63 posts

Your friendly neighborhood admin of oliphaunt.social. Talk with him about software, accessibility, and inclusivity—or frankly, anything you think is neat about […] [bridged from oliphaunt.social/@matt on the fediverse by fed.brid.gy ]

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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
Misinformation-Superhighwayman @damienwise.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026
Vale Margaret Hamilton. She was a Software Engineer. She was the _first_ Software Engineer because she defined the term, Software Engineering: "When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a […] [Original post on aus.social]
A B&W photo of a person standing next to a stack of printed paper as high as the top of their head. This is Margaret Hamilton, at work as a Software Engineer and the leader of a team of extremely specialised programmers who worked for NASA. The photo was taken in 1969, and it shows a physical form if her work since she joined the Apollo project in 1965 (she joined at the age of 29 by my calculation). My interpretation of the expression on her face is a mix of pride and mild amusement.  She has glasses, long, straight hair, and neat office attire. Margaret Hamilton has her hands placed gently on the stack of printouts to keep it all balanced upright. The pages appear to be arranged in bundles, ranging from 8-10 centimetres thick, to 20cm thick or more. The resulting stack of printouts is physically impressive for being an unusual feat, and it represents something even more impressive: it's the printed form of the source-code she and the team she led wrote for the NASA Apollo project. Their software ran on the Apollo Guidance Computer that was that on board each Apollo command module and Apollo Lunar Module. The Apollo Guidance Computer onboard the Eagle was an essential flight instrument for Neil Armstrong when he piloted the craft to land on the surface of the moon.
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Matthew Abbott @matt.oliphaunt.social · 09/10/2026
I’m down to one last functional lightning cable. Is this a sign that it’s time to replace my 14 Pro?
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
Mx. Aria Stewart @aredridel.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026
Hot take, the web is dying because people do not respect or even know that information architecture is a thing, and that there are experts in the field.
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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 30/09/2026
He releases this even with Third Way, a centrist org, telling dems to stop doing this. bsky.app/profile/erin...
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
Chuck Darwin @cdarwin.c.im.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026
RE: c.im/@cdarwin/117315309662544272 Over three days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Honolulu, Kao laid out in devastating detail how his operation worked. He gave agents a 50-page document naming dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers and members of Congress who he said helped […]
c.im
Original post on c.im
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Matthew Abbott @matt.oliphaunt.social · 17/09/2026
[Sex work; human trafficking] The victims are human trafficking victims forced to engage in bestiality on camera or on stage. Donkey shows don’t exist because there are tons of women excited to exhibit the act. mastodon.social/@wklj/1172785546734…
mastodon.social
Bill Lloyd (@wklj@mastodon.social)
“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked…” I’m not sure I understand… are they literally hiring pigs now? Who are the victims here? https://apple.news/AQSHb03c3QeWXaIrimBsUjQ?highlight=%0A%E2%80%9CWe%20did%20not%20want%20to%20punish%20victims%20of%20bestiality,%20victims%20who%20were%20trafficked
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Matthew Abbott @matt.oliphaunt.social · 16/09/2026
Pro tip: if you’re going to use a large truck as compensation for some other aspect of your life, at least learn how to parallel park it.
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
tante @tante.tldr.nettime.org.ap.brid.gy · 07/09/2026
While CEO's see "AI" as the tool to ensure they no longer have to pay people or depend on them, many workers adopting "AI" get taught through that use that skills they don't have/other professions are worth less. This destruction of worker solidarity and interdisciplinary collaboration is a core […]
tldr.nettime.org
Original post on tldr.nettime.org
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
From the official DHS account. Doesn’t get much more un-American than this. If you’re not alarmed you’re not paying attention.
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The Gneech! Awww Yeah @the-gneech.meow.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/08/2026
Well ouch.
Screenshot of a post by someone named arahir:

"i just can't convey the frustration and sorrow that it's been to grow up at first without the internet and then watching it bloom into this useful, fun, connecting force you sometimes spent time on, only for it to degrade into this constant oppressive waste of time and energy where people are constantly pumping out algorithmically designed content for max algorithmic appeal and even the most simple search generates either no results or an infinite abyss of ai generated slop none of which is usable or correct. we briefly had a library of
alexandria and then fed it into a paper shredder so advertisers could sell a random mash of pulp back to us at a premium.
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
Pulchra :100_Agender: @nerts.yiff.life.ap.brid.gy · 14/08/2026
everything I hear about openAI feels like the guys who were electrocuting frogs legs to make them twitch and thinking they were real close to curing death
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mx alex tax1a - 2020 (6) @atax1a.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026
oh sure when _we_ depart from reality on some kind of psychotic break that's a "medical emergency" and "acute crisis" but when the entire tech field does it that's "just innovation" and "the future"
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Jones Murphy @jonesmurphy.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/08/2026
Most of the world’s 1.3 billion black people are banned from even visiting the US. In addition, those who aren't banned face steep, racist fees not charged to non-black people, particularly white people. That's what they mean by #MAGA […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Chuck Darwin @cdarwin.c.im.ap.brid.gy · 29/07/2026
Anthony Fauci, the former veteran director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid), invoked the Fifth Amendment during a hearing before the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. During his long history in the government, he many times […]
c.im
Original post on c.im
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
Heidi Li Feldman @heidilifeldman.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/07/2026
Trump brazenly threatening actions that are likely war crimes. Trump threatens to destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant for each strait of Hormuz attack – Middle East crisis live […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Genuinely terrifying. And remarkably similar to how the Nazis began their criminalisation of dissent and their dehumanisation of any who resisted. It's happening. In the US. Right now. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Three speeches on a single day signaled a dying American democracy | Robert Shpiner
Stephen Miller warned of a leftwing ‘cancer’ threatening civilization. As a critical care doctor, I have a response to his diagnosis
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
After I wrote last week's column, I learnt that a neighbour with severe disabilities, an extremely tough & resourceful woman who lived to the full, died in the heatwave. Everyone here is devastated. I can scarcely express my anger towards a mindset that treats people like her as collateral damage. 🧵
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Benjamin Geer @benjamingeer.piaille.fr.ap.brid.gy · 05/07/2026
The Moroccan geographer Mohamed Berriane just told me an amazing story: About ten years ago, in Corsica, he talked to some Corsicans who had been hiking in the mountains in Morocco. On a high mountain slope, they encountered some bad weather and got lost. So they did what Corsicans do in that […]
piaille.fr
Original post on piaille.fr
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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
We should make room in our definition of "scandal" for the things that the Founding Fathers wrote in the constitution prohibiting because they believed it to be so scandalous: self-dealing, self-enrichment, and corruption. prospect.org/2026/07/02/p...
prospect.org
Platner, Collins, and the Peculiar Definition of Political Scandal - The American Prospect
What most people would consider a scandal from a public official isn’t always depicted as scandalous.
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Adam Kemp :apple_inc: @adamkemp.oliphaunt.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/06/2026
This architecture is perfect for Anthropic, which charges by the token. mas.to/@carnage4life/11669430925194…
mas.to
Dare Obasanjo (@carnage4life@mas.to)
Attached: 1 image These images posted by the Claude Code team are so amusing to me not because the perfect architecture is just Claude talking to Claude talking to Claude but instead that you have layers of Claudes whose job is to fix the errors and hallucinations of the other Claudes.
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
Hunter Walker @hunterw.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Few people know this, but the New York Times is actually contractually obligated to hype up MAHA and right wing Christianity on a monthly basis.
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Glyph @glyph.im · 26/06/2026
As a former Texan, I want to stress this for any of my European friends that this is *in no way* hyperbole: “literally actually dead” means dead. Not “they might be sick if you don’t make sure to go quickly” but “you will rush back to your car and then you will have to plan a funeral”. It is […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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@RonSupportsYou @ronsupportsyou.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/06/2026
Ron Wright: "Elon Musk once jokingly offered to end World Hunger, asking how much it would cost as if it would be some incalculable number. When the United Nations replied saying $6.6 Billion would be enough to immediately end famine for the year, Musk never responded, and a few months later […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
Chuck Darwin @cdarwin.c.im.ap.brid.gy · 17/06/2026
RE: c.im/@cdarwin/116766378633760247 I find it telling that they are going after unionists, including educators They are going after workers. I’m really pissed off.
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
Adrianna Tan @skinnylatte.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 14/06/2026
Notes from a former U.S. immigration officer writing about his thoughts on the immigration process and the severe changes made to ‘legal’ immigration “Finally, what does all of this mean for those of you trying to “come the right way” and those of us whose job is to help you do that? Delay […]
hachyderm.io
Original post on hachyderm.io
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
myrmepropagandist @futurebird.sauropods.win.ap.brid.gy · 14/06/2026
When an ant colony is threatened or excited they can enter what I call "the boiling display" this is just ants moving in all directions, biting and climbing everything they encounter so that the impression they make is one of a living mass filled with energy. It is joy? Is it rage? What does an […]
sauropods.win
Original post on sauropods.win
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Chuck Darwin @cdarwin.c.im.ap.brid.gy · 07/06/2026
Given the ease with which many of Trump's false statements are debunked, I think it's unlikely that he aims to deceive anyone. No one really believes that Trump has stopped eight wars, defeated inflation, brought gasoline prices below US$2, cut a deal with the CEO of Sharpie or has 100% […]
c.im
Original post on c.im
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Simon Brooke @simon-brooke.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 07/06/2026
The Guardian has published a new map of the #Gaza yellow line. You can see that #Israel has now ceased more than half of the entire strip. But this is also the very substantial majority of all Gaza's agricultural land. This means that even if peace is restored […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]
Map of Gaza, showing the 'yellow line' now runs through both Gaza City and Khan Younis, and is generally just east of the central Gaza highway, the Salah al Din road. The map does not distinguish between urban and rural Gaza, but in fact the area west of the highway is heavily urbanised.
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wakest ⁂ @fedi.wake.st · 02/06/2026
The last CEO of Wikimedia Foundation was ex Mckinsey, the current CEO was a senior advisor at the US National Security Council. Can we maybe stop having these sorts of people in charge of our commons?
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Ahimsa @ahimsa-pdx.disabled.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/05/2026
RE: disabled.social/@tomkindlon/1166405… Quote: "Long COVID did not create medicine’s discomfort with invisible illness. It exposed a preexisting pattern that millions of patients had been navigating for decades. Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) […]
disabled.social
Original post on disabled.social
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Matthew Abbott @matt.oliphaunt.social · 14/05/2026
I want so badly to shove this article under Roberts et al.’s noses and demand they explain how we’re supposedly post-racism. mastodon.social/@IveyJanette/116562…
mastodon.social
Ivey Janette McClelland (@IveyJanette@mastodon.social)
White Republican Allegedly Tells Black Democrat, 'Shut Up, Boy'. Fuck off,Jim Bob.. #blackmastodon https://newsone.com/6860088/white-republican-jay-morris-shut-up-boy-black-democrat/
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
Quixoticgeek @quixoticgeek.v.st.ap.brid.gy · 12/05/2026
Because "the flu" has been downgraded so much, people don't take it seriously. So while experts are prepping for a bird flu epidemic that can become a pandemic, people aren't concerned. Cos they think it'll be like that 3 day cold they had. Now that low cost lateral flow tests are available that […]
social.v.st
Original post on social.v.st
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Reposted by Matthew Abbott
Heidi Li Feldman @heidilifeldman.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/05/2026
“Roberts was raised in the 1960s amid lily-white affluence in a tiny Indiana beach town where property deeds long forbade selling homes to Black or Jewish people.” slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/05… Deep dive on John Roberts’ […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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CM Harrington @octothorpe.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy · 05/05/2026
I’m just saying it’s REALLY telling how *intensely* racist the US is when there are states *in the middle of an active primary* that are shutting it down so they can redistrict to prevent Black people from representation because SCOTUS said it’s OK to do a racism. This is like racism speedruns […]
mastodon.online
Original post on mastodon.online
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Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉 @migueldeicaza.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/05/2026
This is beautiful: forums.swift.org/t/pitch-narrowed-a…
forums.swift.org
[Pitch] Narrowed Any
Pitch: Narrowed Any — closed-class-of-conformers existentials with A | B Hello everyone 👋 — it's a real pleasure to bring this to the community. The "type-only unions" line of pitches has bounced off this forum many times, almost always on the same set of pre-judgements (TypeScript-style erasure, structural-union member synthesis, unsoundness with nominal typing). The shape proposed below is deliberately not any of those — I've spent the last several months designing and prototyping ...
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Cameron Watters @watters.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 04/05/2026
@b0rk The USWDS has a large palette of colors along with guidance about how to combine them in a way that is accessible: designsystem.digital.gov/design-tok…
designsystem.digital.gov
System color tokens
USWDS makes it easier to build accessible, mobile-friendly government websites.
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Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 04/05/2026
i've been working on moving away from Tailwind, and one thing I'm realizing I appreciated about Tailwind is having a basic color palette (blues, grays, greens, indigos, pinks, purples, reds, yellows) I could use while prototyping […] [Original post on social.jvns.ca]
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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 30/04/2026
In the past we had “Jim Crow“ laws. The next phase should be called “John Roberts” laws
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J Palmer @jpalmer.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy · 29/04/2026
Liberals are now considering privatizing airports. The phrases "broadening ownership" and "getting full value of our assets" are doing a lot of ideological heavy lifting. Translation: The things the public built together are being sold to people who can […] [Original post on mastodon.online]
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Paco Hope @paco.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 28/04/2026
Time to update the guidance from IBM: A manager can never be held accountable. Therefore a manager must never make a computing decision.
Text with an old timey typewriter font. It says what the post says: “A manager can never be held accountable. Therefore a manager must never make a computing decision.”

It’s a play on a famous quote in an IBM manual from 1979: “A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore a computer must never make a management decision.”
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Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/04/2026
Don't worry, Sam, SpaceX won't ACTUALLY launch 7,000 satellites! (There are currently 10,296 Starlink sats in orbit) Don't worry, SpaceX said they'd get their satellites below magnitude 7! (They have not […] [Original post on mastodon.social]
A picture of the night sky completely full of satellite streaks criss-crossing at random angles across the whole image, to the point that it's hard to see a comet or any stars behind the streaks.
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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Stephenson King was killed by a cop in Boston and there's been almost no national coverage of it. Boston native Naomi Bethune reports for us on a story reminiscent of the George Floyd case: prospect.org/2026/04/22/b...
prospect.org
A Black Man’s Death at the Hands of Police Is Going Unacknowledged - The American Prospect
Stephenson King Jr. was shot and killed by a Boston police officer last month. It hasn’t yet made national headlines.
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myrmepropagandist @futurebird.sauropods.win.ap.brid.gy · 21/04/2026
The venn diagram of the "spare the rod and spoil the child" people and the "threatening to bomb a country into the stone age is good and moral foreign policy" people is a circle. It's the same error in the nature of power, in the exercise of control. The same confusion between might and […]
sauropods.win
Original post on sauropods.win
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Matthew Abbott @matt.oliphaunt.social · 17/04/2026
I’m feeling a strong urge to pick up expensive plastic. I already have expensive plastic at home but what if I want to play a *different* game I don’t have time to play??? 😫 #warhammer #wh40k #whaos #whtow
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Matthew Abbott @matt.oliphaunt.social · 17/04/2026
I can totally see Eevee doing this in a few years (Copying the linked image to add alt text) mastodon.social/@booknotification/1…
A social media post by a user named writing_natali. The circular profile picture appears to be a woman with dark brown hair, glasses, and a red top. She is smiling coyly.

The post reads as follows:

My 6yr old got her glasses last week and she needs to wear them at all times.
They're pink and cute and she looks adorable, so it hasnt been a battle. She also loves to wear fun cardigans with her outfits, she calls them her "comfort cardi's". Today the librarian at our local library told her that she looked like the cutest librarian she'd ever seen. Her reply?? With the most serious face she could muster.
"I would never have let anything happen to the Library of Alexandria. Never."
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