This is the way.
fross
joined 1 year ago
I thought you were eligible for settled status after 5 years of living in the UK for 6 months or more each year? Assuming you don't get citizenship through your wife. (Edit: I see you've explained this in another comment further down, that sucks)
Sorry to hear about your redundancy, that does suck.
Friend of mine got covid and it just sent her sense of smell completely out of whack. Nothing smelled like it did before. A curry smelled like wet trees, she said. My leathery / amber perfume smelled like talcum powder to her. It was so weird!
Honestly, I'd plumb the depths of nostalgia with these, find some of the stuff you used to use as a kid. Imperial leather, Badedas, whatever it is. It's a cheap and fun way to really evoke some memories, smell is so powerful.
I grew up in Italy so it's Borotalco for me.
I have a fondness for this soap's smell as well.
Was just talking to a friend today about the "satanic panic" around D&D in the 1980s, as I lived through that. Amazing there was so much pearl-clutching, I guess at the time people were just trying to find stuff to be aghast over, such as this and rock music. Twisted Sister and Kiss just look like theatre now.
Yeah, that's an affair.
Possibly an affair constructed to lead toward a killing.
I think in terms of link aggregation, there is going to be a fair amount of duplication necessary to get a critical mass of links/content here, that people can interact with. After all, 1% post, 9% comment, 90% lurk.
I'm not suggesting we automate it, but in order to kickstart some communities I'm certainly going to be copying links from some good subs on reddit (if they're open) over here. After all they're just links to other articles/media/etc, they're not exclusive to reddit.
It would be good if everyone who comes over here and subscribes to some communities sees that there are posts going on there. It only takes a couple or a few active people to make a buzz.
This. I mean, you have to expect the community who built the thing to be excited by the thing, but if they want it to be a broader community, then the emphasis has to be on what gets the crowd engaged.
Having said that, I don't think this or any platform should try to be all things to all men. It should have an identity and a focus, and it may not be for everyone - other communities will be right for other people.
Scon to rhyme with gone is how posh people say it - the Queen said it that way herself!
Hey, I've been on the internet for a very long time, 31 years and counting (as an adult - on BBSes before that). I used to mod some popular subs on reddit, then life got too busy to keep up, and a few years ago I went casual. I hadn't bothered with the fediverse until a brief look at Mastodon when it first released.
IMHO, the fediverse needs to make a bigger deal about its federated nature, to help people understand what this means to them, as users. Either it should work hard to have all content equal in all places, thus the choice of where you connect from is just convenience/aesthetics/UI, or it should lean in to having a different experience from one server to the next - and I don't mean just UI, I mean identity in terms of content, what is prioritised, what communities you will interact with.
I think it should move toward the latter. It would be great to have servers with communities that tend toward certain topics or behaviours - perhaps some longform and others short, some serious and others not, some tight communities and others shitposting, some focusing on some sets of topics and some on others. The federation can still pull in content from elsewhere, but the priority and identity would be primarily based on the instance and who else uses that one directly. I can even see communities vetting their members to make sure that they add to a particular experience.
At the moment, it's all a bit of a mess and indistinct. Most pre-existing users are focusing on technical differences of protocols and content dissemination. Which is fine - this is all new, and being built by that community. I see this as a really good opportunity to have a loosely-coupled collection of content, with priorities given to certain aspects of it based on the instance.
A better version of social media doesn't focus on protocol OR platforms, it focuses on enabling different types of communities to be what they want to be.
Honestly, after literally over 30 years on the internet, I can safely say that this idea of bringing everyone together into one space, that will make both the space and the people better, does not work. Even back in the 90s it affected the signal to noise ratio badly. Now there are significant sets of bad actors, shitposting/meta and general noisy ignorance and hate that can easily, easily drown out any decent signal. It's like a permanent Eternal September.
Think of this like the subject of tolerance - typically criticised that as a philosophy, in that it would thus tolerate the very things that would undermine and destroy it. Rather, it is not a philosophy, but a social contract - if you don't use tolerance yourself, others are not bound to be tolerant of you. Of course, I'm not talking about being tolerant/intolerant here, but using the quality of engagement and participation in a community, as a barometer for whether that user should be engaged in that community.
Some barriers to entry are self-selection for appropriate users, and therefore a good thing - whether through obscurity, level of engagement, education or whatever. Without these, everything gets overrun and crushed. We haven't yet found a good self-moderating system for online communities that provides everyone with a positive and fulfilling experience.
Threads can be Threads. The fediverse can be the fediverse. No-one is forced to choose just one, and trying to force them together is going to crush the fediverse. Lemmy has about 20,000 active users. Threads got 30 million signups in 24 hours.