It is definitely more exaggerated through the phone. In person, it was about half as bright/vivid — though still incredible.

Thought I did look for a suitable dark site/sufficiently low enough Bortle-scale value area. Rather difficult in the DMV.

I’m not an astronomer/astrologist, but as far as I’m aware, this isn’t due to the Earth’s magnetic field weakening; instead the string of aurora borealis events we had last year are attributed to especially strong geo-magnetic storms as a result of heightened (near-peak) solar activity.

Just like Earth, the Sun has its own “seasons” where the amount of energy and radiation it outputs varies and cycles from “decreased”, or low, and “increased”, or high, every 7 years or so.

Thank you! Yea it was insane to see the northern lights in-person considering I’ve never been North of Buffalo, NY.

The lights kept fading then surging, with nothing really all that strong — but then the sky lit up with this and it was absolutely stunning!

Here’s another shot about 90^o to the right!

And another that was directly overhead!

Confiscations? I’m unfamiliar with the term

Well that’s what I mean by “good faith participation” — usually that includes showing off what you are doing/creating to a community you are a part of.

The problem, that you acknowledge, is that some businesses (in reality a majority) do purely advertisements. It is indeed a slippery slope.

However, I’ve seen small businesses/individuals post content that gets praised by the general population of a community and then people start asking “Hey, where’d you get that? Where can I get that?” And then the OP is like “Well I actually make it myself, I sell them as a business but also engage in the hobby myself”. THAT is the most successful way I have seen a business interact in an online forum.

Thank you! Shame about the clouds, definitely recommend it if you make it out again. Harper’s Ferry is similarly beautiful!

I shouldn’t be required to take extra steps to mute advertisements I didn’t ask for, consent to, or otherwise search for.

If small businesses want their own instances, that’s in their power to do so, willing participation in those instances will be difficult to accumulate I suspect.

They should leave it alone. I don’t want to see ads everywhere or worse, ads disguised as content. Reddit has been going to shit due to, in part, the rampant commercialization of the platform.

If a post puts out a call asking for a product that your SB can provide, feel free to post that you have the answer. Beyond that, don’t inundate us with attempts to see your product.

Edit: That said, I do agree with the other commenter who says be an easy-to-contact support account.

You work with model train products it seems, so good-faith, non-advertising participation in such communities is the best way to engage. That’ll do more for your branding, reputation, and business profits that shoehorning ads in.

Lmao consider me pre-seed then, where’s my money lmao.

I’m a sane leftist (idek how to label myself anymore in light of current politics and global divides), so also pro-2A.

It feels like there’s a billion false flag attacks within left-leaning online spaces that have completely fractured it. I get that that’s not new, but it feels like we are accelerating in a very negative way lol. I personally think that the abuse of the doctrine of intersectionality and use of identity politics by my peers have destroyed any hope for a strong progressive front.

Wtf is a “pre-seed founder”?

I’m stalwart enough in my leftism that anything that corpos love makes me question it immediately. I’ve nothing inherent against immigrants/refugees who come here through the (very flawed) process or even those who don’t but come here, integrate, and then contribute/participate positively within the communities they immigrate to.

However, the H1B shit just seems to a) exploit minorities/immigrants while holding their visa over their head (dems shouldn’t like this based on their principles) while b) outsources jobs that could likely be given to existing, qualified citizens (republicans shouldn’t this based on their principles), c) all to ultimately benefit a corporation’s quarterly earnings.

I dislike Trump as much as the next guy but I don’t currently have an issue with him obliterating the H1B program.

Fully agree, especially with your list. Tragically that frequently leads to nuanced opinions, and those can cause social friction since it appears strict conformity to one of two “sides” is required to participate in (at least online) society.

Don’t even need a slur.

“Steve I’m gonna say… ‘unemployed leeches upon society with an apparent allergy to proper social skills and hygiene?’”

“Let’s see what the survey says… give me an unemployed leeches!”

DING

crowd goes wild

If the subs have banned you, then the site-wide suspensions will come soon.

I pissed off a “super”-mod and got banned from like 10 subs at once and then I got banned or blocked far more often. Then I got perma-banned sitewide for criticizing the concept of the average Redditor.

Try bringing up luigi mangione or criticizing Islam in any of the major subs and you will get perma-d pretty quick.

“They carved out a path of stupidity…”

Beautifully put. Great phrase.

I’m so glad to see other’s possess this opinion. The mental gymnastics they do to try to justify their insane positions and rhetoric dumbfounds me. Made the mistake of making my first account on that instance and was getting downvoted left and right for pushing back on Pro-“USSR” (they don’t even bother calling it Russia) and Pro-“DPRK” or “Korean” (because they act like North Korea is not a separate state run by dictator at the suffering of their people) content.

I thought I was taking crazy pills until another kind user said I’m not crazy, just in the wrong instance lol. Life-saver.

No real commentary on what you said, but excuse my recovering-Redditor-pedantry. In my experience/opinion .ml is EXTREMELY far left (to the point of almost horseshoeing back to being far right) but in reality they’re simply just far left and EXTREMELY authoritarian. So Auth-Left if you’re looking at the political compass (not a perfect compass or representation of the political ecosystem but I’ve not seen one that’s better).

Yea one of the admins/founders of this platform, I think his username is Davel(?) is SUPER pro-censorship of whatever he doesn’t like and will just remove non-violative stuff that doesn’t conform to his myopic worldview. There’s definitely still tyrannical mods/admins here, but credit where it’s due to the founders — it’s easy enough to just make a new account or find a new instance lol.

I’ll always say fuuuuuck Spez with my wholllle chest. He’s such a little cretin.

Fantastic photos!

Hiked in Shenandoah this past spring break and it was awesome. My favorite trail was the Hawksbill, a rather strenuous hike up, but the views are incredible and nearly 360degrees. Theres also a trail going down the other side of the mountain that you can hike down that loops back to the start that has some rock scrambles.