Just passing through.

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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: April 24th, 2024

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  • 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 [email protected] and [email protected], 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.




  • 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).



  • 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?



  • 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.



  • 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 @[email protected], 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.



  • Well, imagine you meet a guy travelling through the US. He’s wearing lederhosen, has a freaking feather in his hat, and speaks with a heavy German accent. You ask where he’s from, and he says he’s American/Italian, as his maternal grandfather was born in the US and his grandmother on his father’s side is Italian. However, this is his first time outside of Germany, and he speaks no Italian and hardly any English.

    This is what Americans tend to look like to Europeans.