Notices by Jürgen Hubert (juergen_hubert@thefolklore.cafe)

@rysiek @mekkaokereke I do know some Tesla owners who are having buyer's remorse. But there are still _lots_ of people out there who think him a genius who will somehow "save the world".

@jupiter_rowland #Friendica _is_ one of the #Fediverse options I am curious about for blogging, but it's hard for me to get a grasp on it. The assorted instances do not seem to have a public feed, so it's not easy for me to see how people use it in practice.

@mekkaokereke @stooovie @Remittancegirl

While #Mastodon is the giant of the #Fediverse , I am curious if any of the other projects have made better strides with onboarding, moderation, UX and so forth.

How is #Friendica on these issues? Or #Misskey ? Ideally we should have a number of _different_ #ActivityPub -based systems which all compete to make their user experiences better. I mean, isn't tying ourselves too closely to any single platform how we got ourselves into this mess in the first place?

@MisuseCase @mekkaokereke @tob @wendinoakland I am agnostic, and my stance is that I don't particularly care _how_ they justify their actions, only what they actually do.

Shitty people will always find a rationalization. But some religious groups - such as White Evangelicism - seem to attract a particularly large number of shitty people, and that's worth looking at. However, that does not mean that _all_ Christian groups are like that.

And the same approach should be taken with all the other major religions of this world. In the end, most of them boil down to advice on how to navigate this confusing world we find yourself in, and much of this advice is centuries out of date. How to adapt this to the modern world is a question for believers, but I only have a problem with that if they use it as an excuse to harass and oppress others.

@blogdiva @ckent @larsivi @mekkaokereke The vast majority of Mastodon instances are run my amateur enthusiasts.

Nothing against amateur enthusiasts - I count myself among them (albeit in a different field) - but ultimately the backbone of any system are the people who display a certain level of professionalism. And with amateur enthusiasts you never know what you are dealing with unless you observe them for some time.

A further problem is that how much time and effort you can commit to such hobby projects is highly dependent on your life circumstances. People in developed countries with stable sources of income - which statistically speaking is likely to mean "white people" - have it easier to to find the time for projects like running a Mastodon instance than people in less stable circumstances, even though the benefits for an independent social media system would be even greater for them (as the owners of commercial social media definitely don't have their best interest in mind).

@mekkaokereke @Badgardener @thisismissem I am a fairly heavy user of Inkscape for my hobby projects (mostly fantasy cartography), and this is a good model to use.

@larsivi @mekkaokereke Those were the days!

And back in 2013 I made a friend there - a black woman from South Africa who emigrated to Germany - who is still one of my best friends today.

Google+ was far more international than Mastodon is.

@ckent @larsivi @mekkaokereke Mastodon in its entirety.

It's heavily populated by Europeans and North Americans, and _white_ Europeans and North Americans at that. It's hard to find a lot of people outside of that bubble.

#WordWeavers #Writing 13 You just got a legit movie offer for your book. What do you do first?

Get myself an agent and/or contract lawyer.(*) I mean, getting some extra money for my work is nice, but I want to be _very_ careful that I am not signing away more rights than I absolutely need. My first priority is that I can continue to release translations under a Creative Commons license.

(*) How _do_ get people an agent and/or contract lawyers for such deals, anyway?

@TarkabarkaHolgy It's always something, isn't it?

One neat feature Google+ had back in the day were user-defined "Circles" - basically lists of people you followed _and could share with others_. So basically people could define lists with "These people talk a lot about science", "these people share amazing photography" and so forth.

And then they could post these Circles to their timeline, and others could follow all these users with a single click.

Is there a downside for implementing this feature for the #Fediverse ?

@mekkaokereke I've had my share of political disagreements with my (German) family, but at least all of them despise Trump, and they are not fans of the German fascist party (the AfD) either. I suppose I am lucky - discussing politics with my aging father is difficult at the best of times, and I don't know what he would do if he had gone off to the deep end

I am very happy that he is not on Facebook.

@mekkaokereke @molly0xfff

As far as I can tell, there is only one legitimate use case for crypto currencies: Payment for sex workers - because "conventional" online payment systems all seem to screw them over, a trend that is likely to continue in the next few years.

The _illegitimate_ use case is, of course, money laundering for organized crime. It's no accident that all those organized crime rings holding websites and IT infrastructure hostage demand payment in crypto currencies...

1/ My dear American readers, I feel it is time to acquaint you with a phrase that was very popular during the Third Reich:

"Wenn das der Führer wüsste!"

You see, whenever Nazis at any level of the German government did something shitty, a lot of Germans who followed them refused to believe that high Nazi leadership was in any way responsible, and insisted that if Adolf Hitler himself knew of this, he would immediately put a stop to it - up to and including the deportation of the Jews. Hence their exclamation:

"If only the Führer knew about this!"

And in the years to come, I believe you will hear a similar phrase from many of those who voted for Trump whenever the Trump government does something shitty:

"If only Trump knew about this!"

#USPolitics #Trump #Hitler #Nazis

Once, an evil spirit played a rather cruel game with a flock of geese.

#MythologyMonday #Poland #folktale #folklore #ghost #ghoststory
https://www.patreon.com/posts/headless-50176377

@mekkaokereke When I was still on Twitter, I used some mass-blocking tools to block anyone who liked certain particularly horrible opinions of particularly loathsome people. I must have blocked tens of thousands of accounts, and this was the only thing made Twitter in its late stages remotely bearable. Of course, when they changed the API and disabled those tools, that was my final cue to get out of there.

Everyone is entitled to say their piece of mind, but no one is entitled to a captive audience. And any social media which violates _this_ part of the social contract won't get any of my time.

As a reminder, disasters - whether personal, at work, or political - almost never have a single cause. Usually, a whole bunch of things have to go wrong before a disaster strikes.

So by all means do a failure analysis, but do not get fixated on one single issue which you think is to blame.

So, how are your #sleep cycles doing these days? 😩

If I understand correctly, then #Peertube doesn't allow live streaming with live chat yet, right?

Or are there options for this? #FediHelp

@Blort @vencabot@tube.vencabot.com @vencabot@mastodon.online Thanks!

Since I am leery of hosting my own instance, are there any existing instances which would be suitable?