Mastodon will still be the biggest fediverse service. It will remain a niche player in the microblog world, as Bluesky gradually becomes the big player by stealing users from the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The rest of the federverse will (hopefully) coalesce around fewer projects. Development is massively fragmented right now. I’m very curious to see which projects flourish, and which projects die.

I do not expect the federverse to unseat large corporate social media and become home to the masses. And I’m okay with that.

Beauty Revealed is an 1828 self-portrait by the American artist Sarah Goodridge, a watercolor portrait miniature on a piece of ivory.

Goodridge gave the portrait to statesman Daniel Webster, who was a frequent subject and possibly a lover, following the death of his wife; she may have intended to provoke him into marrying her. Although Webster married someone else, his family held onto the portrait until the 1980s …

Imagine holding on to the nude pic that dad’s old crush sent him.

Your last paragraph is a good one. I fell in love with Sweden when I was there. Then I talked to some teenagers and they said they really wanted to live in America. It caught me off guard. I didn’t understand why they would want to leave a place that seemed so safe, secure, and comfortable. They said they wanted more flexibility and opportunity. Sure, they could get a stable living-wage job and keep it for their whole career, but in America they thought they would have more chances to try new things and reinvent themselves.

Whether our perceptions of each other’s countries are correct or not, for all of us the grass certainly looked greener on the other side of the fence.

That mug is 🤌

I wondered if the Turbo button on the computer really did anything.

Fantastic resource!

You need to grease some palms. Lay it on thick.

I think they’re hoping to attract remote workers from the cities. It’s a historic town in a scenic area, so it has that going for it at least.

I don’t know where in the world you live, but here in the US there is a decades-long trend of people abandoning group social activities in favor of individual activities. Robert Putnam wrote a whole book about it called Bowling Alone back in 2000. Organizations of all kinds have seen declining membership, from adult sports leagues to scouting organizations to PTA groups. If you can find a group of people dedicated enough to form and maintain a club, then you are bucking the trend.

I was working for an HVAC contractor and we did a job at a prison. We would work at night while all the residents were locked up and sleeping. We had a corrections officer escorting us the whole time. The hallways were all on the exterior of the building and lined with large windows. That allowed the guards in the towers outside to watch people moving within the building.

One night, in the wee hours of the morning, we’re walking down the hallway when a red laser dot appears on the wall next to us. All of us contractors freeze instantly. We don’t know what is happening and we DO NOT want to get shot. Our escort gets on his radio and tells the guys in the tower to stop fucking with us. The little red dot disappears and we go on with our night.

We were briefly afraid for our lives because some bored asshole prison guard couldn’t resist flagging us with the muzzle of his rifle and teasing us with the laser sight.

Users’ aggregate post and comment score has been entirely removed from the Lemmy API (as of version 0.19.0 if I remember correctly). It is not easily accessible to anyone, including admins. You could write a script to sum a user’s aggregate score.

I hear some of the old exploding-heads crew is back as hilariouschaos.com

https://hilariouschaos.com/comment/9332

It’s like they want to inflict him on the people they’re angry at, as if he’s a weapon

This completely nails it. Trump’s lack of a filter and eagerness to pick fights makes him look like a fearless champion for his followers. He isn’t going to pull punches or compromise with anyone.

A very conservative relative of mine likened supporting Trump to hiring a sleazy but effective lawyer: his personality and methods are irrelevant; you hired him to achieve specific results and the only thing that matters is his ability to achieve those results. If it makes the opposition scream then that’s just added entertainment.

Source: https://www.tumblr.com/twisteddoodles

The impact of the outbreak on the U.S. Hygienic Laboratory, with 16 of its workers affected, including two deaths, led to the formation of the National Institute of Health.

Wow! Today I learned.

Also lotide, if you’re into a minimalist text-only interface.

For a FOSS but not federated option there’s Discuit.

I agree it would be nice to have a product like that available as an option. I think the masses would still prefer a monolithic tool like Chrome for its convenience, though. I still remember all the annoyances of “You need a new plugin to view this content. Go get it and come back once it’s installed.”

they can do more than viewing websites

The question is: should they? There is a larger philosophical divide about whether software tools should be small and purpose-built, or monolithic. Having one do-it-all tool can be convenient but also creates a huge amount of overhead and complexity.

I go back and forth myself. I love the convenience of monolithic tools, but miss the way a small, purpose-built tool can really do its job well.