maplebar

I believe in free speech but I'm more concerned about freedom from religion than freedom of religion.

Democratic secular society is on a sharp decline all over the world.

Sure, that's definitely nice in theory.

In practice, however, because the client is closed source and there's no way to self-host and instance, BlueSky users will eventually find themselves at the whims of the people/person who controls the software. What's to stop some Elon Musk type from buying BlueSky next and then adding things to your algorithm without your consent?

That's why I'm very skeptical of BlueSky's pseudo-federation, as it feels like people are just making the same mistakes (with regard to corporate social media) over and over again. Unlike Mastodon (which I understand is less popular right now and thus the network/peer effect is weaker for people), the users have very little control over BlueSky as a platform, and that feels like a mistake.

With all that said, priority numero uno should simply be to get people off of shit like X.com and TikTok, which aren't just at risk of becoming toxic playgrounds of oligarchs, but already are. If people choose BlueSky as the next corporate platform to go to, it's a small step in the right direction, but it's worth proceeding with caution.

Uhhhhhh what does that have to do with a 7 year old starving to death in Gaza?

What does "a 7 year old starving to death in Gaza" have to do with anything we were talking about?

People have been successfully living, thriving even, on every edge of the Mediterranean Sea since human pre-history, If people who lived there ~4000 years could figure out how to fish and farm, then I'm sure the Palestinians can to, regardless of how much they've failed to elect effective and reasonable leaders in favor of Islamic militant groups like Hamas. Put down the AK-47 and pick up a fishing rod, and the starvation issue goes away.

Honestly you just showed your hand. Good bye bigot.

Like all religions, Islam is a cult, an ideology that people choose to subscribe to and potentially become radicalized by. It is not above scrutiny or criticism.

Other than that it's just a matter of historical record that the Arab League attacked Israel in the 1940s, entering a war that they ultimately lost and thus ending up in a worse position with lost territory as a result. The very definition of "fuck around and find out". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_League_and_the_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_conflict

I already have you blocked and screened

🙉

I've found tons of new "content" on Mastodon by following hashtags related to the things I like.

Personally I like the fact that I'm not being fed some corporate algorithm.

Islamists or Zionists, I know which one I'd put my money on the next time there's a random terrorist attack somewhere in the western world...

The Palestinians were handed a nation on a silver platter after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, but they were too stupid and greedy for their own good and decided to wage an unsuccessful war of genocide against Israel in 1947, only to have the entire thing blow up in their face and cost them almost half of their territory. Sound familiar?

You act as if people in Hamas and Hezbollah have no agency in the matter.

Becoming a terrorist isn't some predetermined act of destiny, it's a deliberate life choice--the cost of which is having your dick blown off by an exploding pager.

It’s those who stayed with their parents while they saved for a flat, or stuck it out in a profession they were passionate about even though the wages are chronically low.

This part in particular I find to be a strange thing to complain about... Like, some people have the option of living with their parents, so what..?

This fantasy that everyone moves out of their parents' house and becomes totally independent the day they turn 18 is just another bullshit American dream that has little basis in reality. If you happen to have the privilege of your empty childhood bedroom in your parents house, and you have a good enough relationship with your family to make it work while you follow a vocation or save up money for later, that's not something to be ashamed of--it's making the best of your circumstances and being smart with how you spend money.

Remember kids: there's no magical stat bonus for adult dignity in giving half of your monthly wages to some asshole landlord if you don't have to, so don't let people shame you out of living with family in a multi-generational household like so many people do relatively happily in countries all over the world.

Yes, it's true that not everyone has that privilege (a good relationship with their parents, an extra bedroom to sleep in, etc.), but as long as you're contributing (financially or otherwise) to the shared household in some way, there's no more shame in living with your parents than their is living with non-family roommates, a spouse, or whatever.

I think most people, whether they've experienced it or not, would agree that the privilege of living with your parents isn't exactly a luxury or an ideal way to live, but there really is no shame in it. If you're a good person who works hard and are only able to save up enough money to work towards your goals because you save money on rent by living with family, doing something like saving up for a house is still a big achievement and nobody should try to take that away from you.

Imagine being butthurt about people who live with their fucking parents and not laser-focused on the fact that a 0.1% of people have 99.9% of the money in society. It's fucking nuts.

I prefer F-Zero as it's super fast, unique and fun, but Super Mario Kart is also pretty good and has multiplayer. Both have classic music and a very memorable look.

That dipshit Putin is standing in the fire, so of course we're gonna throw fuel on it. If nothing else, I'm happy to see the world making this invasion of Ukraine as costly as possible for the Russians who started it.

There's a lot you aren't taking into consideration, for example where those users are coming from.

• Threads is just Instagram, it's essentially the same account, so its users were baked in from the start. How many of those Threads users are just people who already used Instagram?
• BlueSky really isn't pulling users from Mastodon, it's pulling them from "X.com", which if nothing else represents a breaking up of old Twitter, which is good for decentralization in general. Any fracturing of social media is good for the fediverse.
• Both Threads and BlueSky are, to some degree, copies of Mastodon in terms of their relationship with federation. Threads uses ActivityPub itself (a win for the fediverse, depending on how you look at it), and BlueSky has their own AT federation protocol, which shows that the ideas behind the fediverse are already winning out. It's entirely possible that, at some point in the future, BlueSky and Mastodon learn to speak to each other using one of those protocols (or a new one), and then the fediverse wins by default.
• Fediverse apps like Misskey are apparently doing great in Japan, which is great for the existence of Japanese artists and the international side of things.

The fact that we're here, right now, discussing this on the fediverse, shows that ActivityPub has come a long way. Bluesky is nothing more than a shallow copy of Mastodon with far less federation and far fewer features.

Mastodon is a bit like Linux, due to its free and open nature. It can be in 3rd place for 20 years, but it'll keep chugging along, improving and growing over time until it snowballs into something truly formidable. Linux doesn't need to be the most popular operating system ecosystem to be great, nor does Mastodon need to be the most popular social media server. Unlike a corporate product it's not just going to die and disappear just because it isn't the most popular of the social media platforms.

I haven't played Cyberpunk, but I already felt that way about The Witcher 3, to some extent. CDPR makes nice looking games with seemingly vibrant and populated worlds, but I feel like interaction with the world and NPCs is pretty thin and boring.

Spoiler: it was Russia.

Anyway, let's be honest, the dream of the "world wide web" is, and always was, pretty damn naive.

The internet and society at large would be a better place if we told our geopolitical enemies (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc.) to fuck off and make their own internet (which they're trying to do anyway, but today are benefiting from the best of both worlds). This one-way great firewall bullshit where foreign governments restrict what their people can see coming out of the west, while easily manipulating what our people see on social media via disinformation and troll farms, has not been working out.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but we would be much better off with multiple multi-national intranets among allied nations with shared values, interests, laws, and accountability.