This article is filled with good lines. I particularly liked this visual describing the communities and audiences built by artists being taken over and destroyed by Musk:

“You have to be very famous to be safe from the effects of your biggest microphone being crammed up a rich white man’s ass and set to reverb. I am certainly not. Few of us are.”

How dare you. As a former redditor now lemming I would wilt into a shriveled, frail, incontinent, barely conscious entity without the ego-fueling fire of my all-powerful downvote.

/s

I was going to say that I don’t think being isotonic had any relation to how refreshing a drink is except in terms of taste. But then after thinking about it, salt does affect the rate of water excretion into the urine and water retention in blood. And because of this phenomenon they always recommend low salt diets for people with high blood pressure. So I guess in a way, a low salt diet would be considered more “isotonic.” But solid food will inherently not be isotonic due to containing more carbs and amino acids than water.

Wait what? Please elaborate. Are you saying churches in Europe GET tax money? And not just don’t have to pay taxes like in the U.S.?

I have no interest in hearing anything about Elon Musk but I would 1000% watch this movie.

I’d rather be tracked by apple than google.

Ok this is embarrassing but as an old person, how does one get ringtones on an iphone when I only use streaming music services so can’t use an itunes library?

The first link requires a paid subscription to see historic data and the second link only has visitor data up to May.

I’ve been playing around with kagi and am actually super impressed with the search results for finding info about a product to purchase. Google results were full of your-search-term-best-reviews.com SEO crap but kagi found info that didn’t pop up even several pages into google search. So it might be how popular/commercial the search term is and google is still better at finding obscure niche things.

I have to stop auto play for my podcasts for this reason. You can stop autoplaying the next episode on Netflix too if it helps: On an iPhone, iPad, Android phone or tablet: From the Netflix app home screen, tap the profile icon or More . Tap Manage Profiles. Select the profile you want to edit. Toggle the switch next to Autoplay Next Episode to turn the setting on or off. Tap Done.

Unlike the poster above, I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong in theory to eat meat. It’s just how blatantly violent and inhumane the industry currently is, with minimal laws and even less actual oversight that I find abhorrent. Sure it might be better to be vegan to avoid just the possibility of contributing to animal abuse, but I have other issues to balance. So instead I try to find local eggs and other alternatives that are less likely to involve abuse.

I like how no one cares anymore about animal abuse as long as it’s not a dog or cat. I thought free range was supposed to be better than cage-free but turns out they both suck especially since the federal agencies responsible for investigating claims of animal abuse have been completely stripped of ANY power. I read an article a few months ago about a slaughterhouse near my hometown where an animal rights activist had taken an video showing cows being gutted WHILE STILL ALIVE AND CONSCIOUS because whatever the used to stun them wasn’t working properly. People just turn a blind eye to this and then go and mock vegans for whatever reason. I eat meat and I used to work with research animals where there was actual effort to reduce animal suffering. But clearly I need to be more selective about where I source my food. I don’t want to become a vegan but it’s becoming increasingly clear that given the state of regulations of the animal industry that is the only moral option (with maybe the exception of actually knowing and seeing where the product is coming from)

Etsy is a shell of what it once was. If there ever was a need for a decentralized coalition, it is here. I want to find and buy handmade creations. Artists want to sell handmade creations. Yet etsy makes me wade through pages and pages of the same mass produced crap that you can find on amazon and ebay, but ten times more expensive because they claim it’s “handmade” “from the U.S.” And report all you want etsy doesn’t do shit because that’s where they get their money.

Lol. Ty now I understand. 😆

All that’s missing is the “You are here” pointer at the second to last step.

There’s no summarizer bots here and this article is fascinating but long. Here’s a slightly shorter version:

##Network by Ploum on 2023-06-23

With debates around Twitter and Reddit, the Fediverse started to gain fame and attention.

Capitalists Against Competition

Instagram, WhatsApp to name a few, were bought only because their product attracted users and could cast a shadow on Facebook. But the Fediverse cannot be bought. The Fediverse is an informal group of servers discussing through a protocol . Those servers may even run different software . 

You cannot buy a decentralised network!

That’s exactly what Google did with XMPP.

As MSN was part of Microsoft, Google wanted to compete and offered

Google Talk in 2005, including it in the Gmail interface. Applications had to be installed on the computer and Gmail web interface was groundbreaking. MSN was even at some point bundled with Microsoft Windows and it was really hard to remove it. Google chat with the Gmail web interface was a way to be even closer to the customers than a built-in software in the operating system. 

While Google and Microsoft were fighting for hegemony, free software geeks were trying to build decentralised instant messaging. Which is still how ActivityPub and thus the Fediverse work. In 2006, Google talk became XMPP compatible. Google was seriously considering XMPP. 

So Google was really embracing the federation. It meant that, suddenly, every single Gmail user became an XMPP user. 

In 2013, Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between

Google Talk users anyway. They didn’t care about respecting a protocol they were not 100% in control. As expected, no Google user bated an eye. While XMPP still exist and is a very active community, it never recovered from this blow. 

Too high expectation with Google adoption led to a huge disappointment and a silent fall into oblivion. XMPP became niche. That it would be the default decentralised communication platform. What Google did to XMPP was not new. 

It was not the first: the Microsoft Playbook

« By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS project’s entry into the market». Microsoft put that theory in practice with the release of Windows 2000 which offered support for the Kerberos security protocol. But that protocol was extended. This anecdote was told Glyn Moody in his book «Rebel Code» and demonstrates that killing open source and decentralised projects are really conscious objectives. 

Microsoft used a similar tactic to ensure dominance in the office market with Microsoft Office using proprietary formats . When alternatives became good enough at opening doc/xls/ppt formats, Microsoft released a new format that they called «open and standardised». The format was, on purpose, very complicated and, most importantly, wrong. Microsoft Office. 

Meta and the Fediverse

Which is exactly what is happening with Meta and the Fediverse. There are rumours that Meta would become «Fediverse compatible». I don’t know if those rumours have a grain of truth, if it is even possible for Meta to consider it. If that happens, this would mean a fragmented, frustrating two-tier fediverse with little appeal for newcomers. 

I know we all dream of having all our friends and family on the Fediverse so we can avoid proprietary networks completely. But the Fediverse is not looking for market dominance or profit. The Fediverse is not looking for growth. Fediverse are those looking for freedom. 

We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it. By competing against Meta in the brainless growth-at-all-cost ideology, we are certain to lose. Fediverse can only win by keeping its ground, by speaking about freedom, morals, ethics, values.

Sweet, thanks! I love ionizing radiation!

Based on how well the post was written contrasted with their claimed lack of thought processes I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was half tongue in cheek. But also I agree with not answering just yes or no.

As the official Fediverse Overlord I say yes whatever that’s fine do what you want.

Oh man that sucks. I’ve been using mlem from the beginning since it’s nicer to browse from than the website. I hope this doesn’t sour your experience of this growing community and I hope you recognize your contributions to it and how many people you’ve helped get here.