It’s not reasonable, but it is understandable. This is why FOSS is the only viable alternative for sustainable computing.

My favourite type of posts is the ones by people signed up in one instance, posting in a community hosted by another instance about how they don’t understand how they are supposed to make use of federation. And then often still not getting it when people from all over the web tell them that they already are.

It makes sense though - federation is sold as a feature for users, but when done right the users should hardly notice it at all. So of course people end up a bit confused.

Seems like a community that has it’s natural home at programming.dev.

There’s a genocide going on with what appears to be more or less the full support of the countries that make up the defence union my country is a part of.

There’s war in Europe.

I find those topics worthy of discussion, and any social media where this is not actively discussed seems to me to be a smokescreen more than anything.

Of course tragic realities like the genocide we are complacent in, climate change, war in Europe, Russian propaganda and the rise of the far right is going to be actively discussed. It concerns more or less everyone who uses this platform, and they are the most important issues of our time. It’s not about negativity, it’s about coming to terms with reality and seeking to understand it.

That said, the communities I follow are largely apolitical stuff that interests me. Woodworking, knitting, gardening, owls, art, and the Fediverse. With the exception of !europe@feddit.de and !energy@slrpnk.net, I let the political stuff come through the cracks rather than actively following it.

I also have a Piefed account on which I follow news communities but actively filter out Trump and Musk. I can see how Amercians still feel the need to talk about these men, but at the end of the day they’re just fascist attention whores.

At some point recognisability is also worth something. I can immediately read this graph, I understand it, it’s good.

Occasionally it’s used in a confusing way where people assume it starts at zero despite it not being the case, and sometimes intentionally so. But that’s just the case here.

Well, it does make sense, doesn’t it?

What we’re interested in is not the number of users, but the trends: whether the number is increasing or decreasing over time. Starting the axis at 0 would not be useful in this regard, as the trend would be almost completely obscured.

It varies everywhere, even from state to state in the US.

The US system is kind of broken - they ask you to vote for way too many things. Where I’m from I just vote for a party - I basically say “yeah, the green party are cool”, and then the party decides who to put in which position should they get enough votes. I can give a +1 to candidates I like personally, but I don’t have to.

In the US you might be asked to vote for school boards, a sheriff, and a bunch of weird positions. There’s no realistic chance you’ll make an informed decision for all of them.

Sadly, it’s very important you still vote, because the republicans are using this broken system to fill these positions with far-right lunatics. So basically seek out information as much as you can, but at the end of the day just vote for whichever Democrat is on the ballot whenever in doubt. They’re not guaranteed to be good - in fact they’re likely to be pretty bad - but they’re pretty much guaranteed to be the lesser of two evils.

Still might vary though - local politics are weird, and there are no rules set in stones. Some places you still have decent republicans on the local level (or so I’ve heard).

Yeah, I think the problem here is a lack of distinction between different types of bike paths. All things considered it could have been a lot worse than this.

How bad is it when you end up cycling into a pit like this, potentially at some speed? Has the water made the soil soft in the road leading the front wheel potentially getting stuck and throwing you off, or will you most likely cycle through with a significant splash and be on your way?

I guess a huge part of it might be the problem of not being able to see so well what’s under the water, in case the road has been damaged?

Fascinating how the federated Bluesky spam came from Nostr. Dorsey’s lovechild vomiting crap all over his disowned brainchild. Clearly he bet on the right horse.

I could read the full article, not sure what’s going on.

Anyway, the journalist is writing about the Verge and 404 Media, and the more general potential benefits for the industry. There’s nothing about Digiday.com following the same path.

It’s a nice write-up. The main things I learned is that the Verge is transitioning to WordPress, and 404 is using Ghost. Both hope to activate the ActivityPub capabilities of these platforms when they’re ready - the Verge when it finishes transitioning, 404 when Ghost implants AP support.

The vikings got a bit of a bad reputation, probably in large part because they were not too popular amongst munks in England (who were avid writers). Sure, there was raping and plundering, but not necessarily so much worse than other peoples, and there was also trade and coexistence. We had particularly close relations to Scotland, and England is hardly in the position to accuse anyone else of plundering! ;)

Fun fact about the word viking: It literally means someone from a “vik”, which is contemporary Norwegian for a cove. More traditionally, it’s a dwelling by the coast, which explains the many -wich-towns in northern UK: The vikings would settle, usually for salt supplies, and name the place something ending with -vik.

So a Viking is not a job description as much as someone dwelling by the sea!

Norwegians are generally leaning pro-Palestine.

In a recent survey, 46% of Norwegians responded that they have more sympathy with Palestinians, whereas only 12% have more sympathy with Israelis. 32% responded that their sympathy with Palestinians has increased in light of recent events.

I can imagine several reasons why Norway is so different from for example Germany and France in this regard.

One is that we have a pretty well-organized civil society, including an organized Jewish community that is actively outspoken about Israeli extremism. My impression is that leading voices in the Mosaic community in Norway are frequently outspoken on the side of humanity.

Another reason is of course that we are still bitter about the collapse of the Oslo Accords. There’s simply no question Israel were the ones who killed it.

Even before this, Israel might have had less goodwill in Norway following the Lillehammer affair where Mossad murdered some random waiter who was on his way home from the cinema with his pregnant wife. One of the agents involved in placing 13 bullets in Ahmed Bouchikhi has since stated that they knew they were shooting the wrong man.

More importantly however, it probably relates to the story we tell ourselves as a nation.

We’re in all likelihood prouder of our war efforts than most of Europe, and certainly more than pro-Israeli countries like Germany and France. A lot of us (myself included) have family members who helped Jews flee the country following the occupation, at the risk of death penalty should they get caught.

The author of our national anthem took active part in the Dreyfus affair, among other things writing in a French newspaper that the French government was the “most shameless of any civilized people”.

Other important national poets dedicated their lives to giving Jews right to statehood, wrote poems urging people to wake the fuck up to the horrors of nazism, or died bombing Berlin.

These people, among others, make up the core of what we consider Norwegian national identity. As a result the average Norwegian might be less afraid of criticizing Israel than the average German (or French), as we consider ourselves to be firmly footed on the right side of history.

Of course, history is more complicated than that. A lot of us will simply not read Hamsun, and never mind that Jews had to be allowed into the Kingdom in the first place. History is complicated, but the stories we choose to tell and the ways we choose to frame them matters a lot.

Also, Norwegians are pretty left-leaning, and we put a lot of effort promoting ourselves as a peace nation. Probably doesn’t hurt either.

I think a good approach could be to think about how you could reach users of different platforms.

A lot of Mastodon users follow hashtags, so including relevant hashtags (#accessibility and #blind seem like good starting points) might be a good idea. Tagging groups, such as @accessibility@a.gup.pe, might also help.

I think Kbin/Mbin might be better suited for this than Lemmy, as it integrates better with other federated networks. You can follow microbloggers and boost content, which in turn makes them likely to follow you back and creates a community beyond which Lemmy community you choose to post in. Your Mastodon followers will see your posts, but it won’t matter to them which community you post it in.

It’s hard for content to make the jump from Lemmy to Mastodon as Lemmy does not make itself discoverable, but as soon as content reaches Mastodon users nothing stops them from interacting with it (by boosting or replying).

Sadly Kbin.social lacks sufficiently active moderation these days, so you might be better off with an mbin instance. I also have no idea how accessible Mbin is to blind users.

Edit: I over-emphasized the point about reaching a broader audience. If you want to discuss a narrow topic but you don’t want most ActivityPub users to see it because you don’t value their input, I guess Lemmy is as good as it gets.

I remember checking out Lemmy in December 2022, it was barely even a proof of concept. Now it’s a whole ecosystem.

it’s incredible how far it has gotten in a short time. And while commercial platforms will only get worse with time, open source platforms will only get better. Growth might not always be a linear process, but I’m feeling optimistic. :)

City of New York, independent press.

Not exactly subtle either.

I’m not entirely sure how hashtags render in Lemmy, but I added that one because I think fundamentally it’s what the picture is about: Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, press freedom, freedom from arbitrary violence.

Of course it’s a case of freedom being infringed upon, but I nevertheless think it’s a central theme.

If anything, this proves that forking Mastodon is a great idea. Not because any useful software would come out of it, but it would distract some of the annoying armchair managers out there.

The biggest problem with Mastodon isn’t the lack of feature X or the presence of feature Y; it’s those exact assholes, draining the energy and enthusiasm from anything that crosses their path while scaring away anyone looking for a meaningful conversation.

I hate to break it to you, but if you genuinely think you’ve figured it all out, chances are you’re a fucking moron.

Also sounds like an Ukrainian national.

Or an American one.

What a headache! I’m sure the cops asked her politely to clarify before brutally arresting her. :)

I don’t see how the outlet she represents is relevant at all. The cops shouldn’t be violently arresting peaceful protesters, and they should not be violently arresting people with press credentials for pointing their camera in what they consider to be the wrong direction.

She has NYC press credentials, she’s press. It doesn’t matter that she’s not from your personal favourite newspaper.