Notices by Space Catitude 🚀 (terryhancock@realsocial.life)

Banning TikTok because of their Chinese connection is extremely dumb policy.

This is basically the Russian model of internet regulation: OUR propaganda is fine, but not those *foreign* people.

It's just nationalism.

And hasn't that turned out great for us all?*

They do some nasty stuff, just like Facebook, YouTube, Google, X/Twitter, Instagram, etc...

Ban THAT if you want, not who's allowed to do it.

[*Yes, for the affect-impaired, this is sarcasm.]

I think we need a Fediverse Family Tree to show the relationship between the various platforms. 🤔

I doubt it's widely known, for example, that "Iceshrimp" Is a fork of "Firefish" which was a rebrand of "Calckey" which was a fork of "Misskey" -- which was an original microblogging platform prior to being adapted to ActivityPub for federation.

It'd be nice to have a chart that laid out these relationships. But I fear I will have to draw it myself.

@alcinnz

IMHO, "apps" are just a way to circumvent security measures in browsers.

But I LIKE my security measures!
:raccoon_cool:

I'm seeing a lot of talk about #Pixelfed this week. Many regard it as a viable alternative for Instagram.

But it also works very nicely for a graphic art portfolio site, which is closer to how I'm using mine:

https://px.filmfreedom.net/@lunatics

For this, the "Collections" feature is very nice. I have collections for "Tests", "Stills", "Characters", and "Design", and I can add more.

And there's a "Portfolio" view, accessible from my profile.

More restful than a site always pushing stuff on you!

Interesting -- I pasted the URL into my own PeerTube search bar, and so now, I can watch @karen and @pluralistic on my *own* PeerTube server:

https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/q1AAL629GYMFtN6nCy15WE

How about that?

Has anyone come up with a good #Wordpress solution for putting #Fediverse sharing links on articles, yet?

Right now, my Wordpress still shows these "share to" link icons -- but in addition to being dated, it's not obvious to me how to make this work for Fedi platforms, since platform, instance, and user all need to be given (maybe some kind of Cookie could remember the user's preferences?)

@cstross @fatsam

Yep. That's the big one. The past wasn't better, but I sure was younger.

Medical billing in the USA is utterly ridiculous.

You get a statement that says, bascially:

We billed $725 to your insurance.

Your insurance company said "nuh-uh", you can only charge us $50 for that.

Then the insurance company pays $40.

And then they still bill you $10.

So... $675 just vanished into the ether, but it's absolutely critical that I pay $10.

Because, we absolutely could not have the abomination of me getting something for free, just because I already paid for it, could we?

Oh, by the way, this is for a routine blood test that probably took the technician doing it no more than five minutes.

We actually got separate bills once for "a shot" and "administering the shot", as if those were separable.

Oh, also, they've spent hours of clerical time and at least a few dollars in postage to send me multiple bills and reminders to get me to pay the $10.

Honestly, I'm kind of hoping to cost them more in process overhead than they get from the bill, because I don't want them to profit from this bullshit (and hey, at least some clerk is getting paid for it, right?)

@Zumbador @actuallyautistic

One thing that works for me is setting up relational triggers and "compatible tasks".

At some point, I noticed that the time it takes for a kettle of water to boil is just about enough time to load the dishwasher. Both tea and dishes need to be daily, and I want the tea.

This avoided two BIG problems:

1) starting the kettle, getting bored, walking away ("just for a moment") and all the water boils away.

2) Never starting the dishes, so they pile up to doomsday

I guess I have an expectation that if you don't change anything, software should just work when you boot a system up again, after a few months of inactivity.

But this does NOT work for web software, because we have built in these global, centralized dependencies.

So certificates expire. Or software handshakes are out of date with some centralized repo, and somehow this is my problem, even though I haven't changed anything.

This just intuitively seems bad and fragile to me. :welp:

@evan

Seasonal Affective Disorder, maybe...? 🤷♂️

@evan
QY
If by "practice" you include "decorate", then very much so. If you mean "expect it to have supernatural effects", not so much.

I mean, the tree does smell nice, though.

Okay, NOW the holiday has officially begun...

I wonder how often a post goes past 500 boosts on the Fediverse?

It's hard to tell, because sometimes I see a post with, like 10 boosts / 20 faves on my feed, but if you click through to the origin server, it's more like 100/200. So it may be more common than it seems.

I hear people complaining that they can't get any traction here, but every so often this happens to me, and I'm not sure why or how. I NEVER got this kind of reaction on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook.

Flattering but terrifying.

So far, the replies aren't toxic.

Got a couple of nitpicks, but I don't think they were inappropriate.

Possibly I should address them, but this was kind of off-the-cuff. I wasn't expecting to re-check all the facts and proof-read umpteen times, like I would a blog entry.

I just saw an old chestnut of a myth go by on some other thread, and rather than reply, I made a post. I figured maybe a dozen people would notice.

But... 24 hrs later, the little bleeps keep coming from my browser. 🤨

The way boosts spread across the Fedi is also interesting. I once heard somebody say that posts "don't go viral on the Fedi, they go fungal" -- the comparison being to mycelium fibers and mushrooms popping up from them, I guess.

Because you have these overlapping constellations of instances, and so sometimes a boost will bring a post to a new audience.

And that often comes with delays, so there will be these little waves and bursts of activity.

@mattmcirvin @futurebird

Elders have been whining about "kids these days" from time immemorial!

And I don't think it was ever true.

SPACE MYTHS:
The Fisher Space Pen did NOT cost NASA millions of dollars to develop.

It cost them $0. FISHER put in the R&D money on that.

NASA only bought the pens as off-the-shelf products. They are nice pens.

And while the Russians DID "use pencils", they didn't really like them, and adopted the pens.

See, inhaling graphite dust and wood shavings in freefall is not that healthy.

There are a LOT of stories about "government waste" that are basically just bullshit, like this one. Be aware.