IMHO. I personally think that it's past time for all#Film#Media#News orgs etc. to SHOW what #Authoritarianism looks like ""in real life"" and what actually happens to people, their property and their freedoms.
-You, we, us, the people, own nothing and live in constant fear. PERIOD.-
"Something dangerous is happening in America"
-President Joe Biden
@LorrieW@msnbc@WagnerTonight@nbcnews@jackyan
Have a good look at what the brutal life is really like outside Moscow, or in occupied Ukraine, for the exploited masses, which the Moscow Security Services & their oligarchs parasite off. The rampant corruption, absence of justice, failing crumbling infrastructure, & terrible quality of life.
This will demonstrate pretty well what Tories or Republicans turning democracy in to a shamfront for autocracy, will actually do to a country.
@LorrieW@msnbc@WagnerTonight@nbcnews@jackyan
Precisely! Ppl think war crimes in occupied Ukraine villages etc are about psychological warfare, or organised brutality. That may be true in cities, but in the villages...
It's quite likely also about how ppl with power can behave in Russia, and how people denied power (military is LOW on the scale, well below mafia), may suddenly behave once they have unconstrained power over others.
Is the problem exclusively capitalism, or the breathless obsession with "small government" and the insistence that regulation is "socialism" (when it isn't, and is actually necessary for capitalism to operate in a healthy way that benefits humanity)?
@tokyo_0
Business, responsible small & medium tax paying business is probably the best antidote to the ruthless tax dodging, subsidy hoovering, resource squandering, built in obsolescence, reckless relentless obsession with building huge corporate growth & wealth extraction pyramids.
I'm giving Catodon.social a go.
Unfortunately Firefish.social has become so broken it doesn't even respect migration requests (let alone post downloads). So a lot of people will miss seeing my move 🫣. I suppose people will find me again over time, but that's a real shame for a server to get that neglected.
I do also have my @ArtBear account which I won't be migrating (it's just offline for DB maintenance for a few hours, don't freak out anyone).
Why Catodon?
I'm sure other projects are interesting too.
I liked how @panos interacted & was committed to community building on #firefish.social. I feel like it's important for any dev team to have in mind Community, not just features, nor just admin, nor just moderation it's all really important but community is the base. I liked how he posted his frustrations with the very large parts of the firefish project that were not a team endeavour that could be picked up & redistributed, but solely resting on only 1 individual. I like the Catodon mission statement about being a team wanting to dev for a lot of servers, and not dev for some mega flagship server (which is a vulnerability of fedi. decentralised & well distributed is good). Also the 1st set of improvement notes were really good at logical cleanup, changes & taking the good parts of stalled firefish forward again, but in a more streamlined direction.
Right away #Catodon feels like an old friend, I really missed:
markdown!
awesome super customisable UI!
properly rendered links so you don't have to click away!
multi links in a single post!
proper quote posts! (really it's users, not features!)
threading display so you actually know if you're in a thread & where!
floating user info cards with actions like follow (not clicking away to a profile)!
custom emoji reactions! (like 😻 or 🥴not just ⭐!)
custom feeds & also lists, are amazingly flexible, you really need to try them!
widgets!
storage with all media for re-use (with editable #altText!!)!
search your contentsearchbox [search]post controls!
blogs (pages)!
forums (channels)!
8000 word limit (be afraid, be very afraid muhahaha!)
and so much more...
Anyway, here's to a new #Fedi adventure! :catodon:💜🐻🎉
@reflex@ArtBear@panos
I was quite excited to read, #Catodon is planning to work with the #Mastodon front end apps I believe, which would be pretty cool.
Today, 15 years ago #OTD the person or group with the fictive name of “Satoshi Nakamoto” created the first cryptocurrency named Bitcoin with the thought of it becoming a secure and fast alternative to fiat currency.
Now it's known as the most wasteful use of electricity, inefficient and limiting capability/functionality, as well as being among the most insecure and de-anonymizing ways to transfer money.
However, what Satoshi Nakamoto probably hasn't expected is how many scam-currencies would come after theirs, and how their invention would create a new breed of the most annoying people known to our species: crypto-bros.
When the US loses the race to the moon, they decide to do something unprecedented: Send cats to live on the moon. The cats revolt, completely changing the course of history.
Perennial wheat. Drought, erosion and soil depletion resistant, increased yield after 2 seasons on left.
vs.
Annual wheat. Seeds bought at high cost from agri-industry. High pesticide needs & costs.
I'm almost 49 now so it's only a few more years until I start shrinking & become almost hobbit in size. I remember joking with folks in my mid 20s that I was ripped off my 2nd growth spurt(waited til age 39 for it - never got it!). I am going to be 3' tall by age 65 because of the shrinking factor in older years 🤣
I want my old person wizard cape. I lived long enough to earn one, on Earth. I will be short & small enough to sneak into concerts 😄
@RickiTarr
Well I'd say the words.
"I accept Jesus as my saviour"
After we'd landed alive I'd say 2 more things.
a) We're never going Skydiving together again.
b) If He-Man, Pingu, Dr Manhatten, DangerMouse or Scooby Doo want to show up as my saviour, I'll accept them too.
Alright, now that catodon.social is live (welcome new members!), let me explain some of the first changes we've done so far in #Catodon, compared to #Firefish.
We really tried to make the platform easier to understand and less overwhelming for new members. So we changed some icons and also some basic terminology:
Antennas are now Custom feeds
Channels are now Forums
Pages are now Blog posts
Boosts are now Reposts
Local timeline is called "This server" and Global timeline is called "All servers"
We also tried to cut down on menu items. So Lists and Custom feeds are now only accessible from the timelines, Groups are only accessible through Chat (which is the only feature they are used in anyway), Clips are now called Collections and are placed in a tab under Bookmarks. That's four menu items less, without losing any functionality! But we also removed a fifth item, Gallery, which was very half-baked and rarely used in most Firefish servers. Its functionality can more or less be covered by Blog posts.
There is no "Social" timeline: Instead, we have incorporated Social's functionality in Home. Posts from the local server are now displayed by default in Home, so that new users aren't greeted with an empty timeline. You can change that in Settings, so the Home timeline either works as follows only, or as "Social" in Misskey/Firefish.
There are other changes as well and there are more coming as we're preparing for our first official release, but these are some of the most striking ones you will see!
@panos
You're probably being swamped atm but, 2 quick suggestions for 'one-day' with regard to your commendable stance on: multi not flagship servers, user retention & onboarding, having active not empty timelines....
A referral sign up page which you can give out to people to come join the server you use. It should also let people experience an extra feed, the follows list of person that referred them.
Any sort of join Catodon website should direct people to middle populated & below servers.
@panos
Some kind of personalised touch to inviting someone can make a difference to retention. (& create a bit of buzz / FOMO / investment feelings for new arrival from the outset)
Ugh, I really tried to stay out of #fediverse drama but I guess I have to say a few things. Most of you know me as a #firefish core team member, so I think I owe it to the admins of almost 500 firefish servers out there and to the almost 5000 members of firefish.social.
So, yeah, if you haven't noticed, things aren't looking good for firefish. Its owner, Kainoa, has practically abandoned the project, which had its last stable release out on July. My last message to them was a week ago, and I haven't heard back since. Firefish.social, besides the other severe technical problems it's had due to mismanagement in the last few months, now also has serious federation issues. I hope Kainoa is well irl, but this is irresponsible and unacceptable.
I hear some of you saying "but you're in the core team too, don't try to put the blame elsewhere!". So I have to explain what being a core team member in firefish meant. Kainoa invited me, Namekuji and a few others to be part of the "core team", but kept all decisions and responsibilities. We didn't co-own this. We never shared donations. We were just volunteers, who were honestly trying to make it a great project. This didn't work well due to concentration of power to one person, who didn't keep their promises. I don't mean to be harsh to Kainoa, I mean we knew they were only 19 when they started the project. Still, it's a bummer to anyone who chose to trust and support Firefish. This includes myself.
I don't know if it's early to consider firefish a dead project, but it sure seems like that for a few months now. Maybe it can be resurrected, idk. It's all up to Kainoa.
In the meantime, Namekuji and I are starting #Catodon, which will have some differences with Firefish, and will include many changes I had discussed with Kainoa but were never implemented. If you decide to stick with us, we promise to be serious about this. I strongly believe in the fediverse and its potential, and I want to build a great platform for it. This was my goal when I chose to be involved in Calckey/Firefish. It's still my goal with Catodon, only this time I can stand behind it 100%, as the project will be co-managed by Namekuji and me. If Firefish left you with a bitter aftertaste, we hope we can build a better relationship and prove ourselves worthy of your trust. Catodon will go public in a matter of days, possibly even hours. We'll have more to say about its direction then.
In the meantime, I just wanted to share my apologies for any inconvenience regarding Firefish, as I'm still technically a core team member, whatever that means. But frankly, I tried so hard to make things go differently - but there's only so much you can do when it's someone else's project. I'm really sorry for how things went.
But this is not the end of the fedi journey for me. I'm super excited about the chance to do some things right this time with Catodon. Life goes on, I guess! Hope to see you soon on our #codeberg repo, so we can start a new creative adventure together =)
So I am just hearing about this odd sign off for BBC Newsnight - Done in character of someone on Succession (Not something I've seen) but supposedly done on purpose due to cutbacks for the program.
The loss of jobs and reduction of what they do sucks and has been a big part of the BBC for many years.
But IMHO the writing has probably been on the wall for years. The younger demographic simply aren't interested (though i did buck the trend in my late teens/20s)....
@jackyan@bengillam@selzero
Newsnight was about the last straw holding me paying a licence fee. I cancelled when Maitlis and Sopel left (Watt Esler etc so many pushed out it's been trashed).
It's no surprise that investigating things (including the government) has been gutted in favour of studio debates where no doubt flat earthers will get their 'equal air time' opposite NASA astronauts.