Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es

Y'all duking it out over whether Mastodon should have the QTs are focusing on THE WRONG THING

What we NEED is markdown support up in this joint

FACTS ABOUT MASTODON

If you are curious about leaving the cooked turkey site and going to the elephant site, here are some important tips:

1. It sucks. But then, so does every site.

2. You can still shitpost. Take great glee.

3. Picking your server is super important.

Ideally you should start at a large instance, and leave because it's full of white suburban NIMBY shitheads who joined in November because they were promised 0 uncomfortable experiences in their lives and lash out when this turns out not to be the case.

Then you move to a smaller server where suddenly you can't talk to your friends because your admin is feuding with the admin of their instance. Then you wait a month before you can move again.

In this regard, the feudal structure of Mastodon instances is very like early 2000s message boards, whenever the admin got drunk and deleted the site.

4. You can work around the feudalism by running Mastodon yourself. It's the size of a mastodon and costs a fortune.

You can run Pleroma, which is smaller, and is also favoured by Nazis for unfortunate historical reasons. Pleroma is perfectly good software that fulfils a need for something smaller than Mastodon, but also the devs are definitely not Nazis but are the other ten guys at the table.

There was a hilarious moment where the guy behind Spinster was so obnoxious he got kicked out of Pleroma and did his own fork called Soapbox/Rebased. He is now known as Soapbox Terf.

The nice people went to Pleroma fork Akkoma, which Soapbox Terf calls the "tr***y server", a review I understand they were delighted by. Try that.

There's also Misskey, which is a bit weird and Japanese, and supports cat ears right there in the protocol.

5. Any bozo who makes assertions about the Fediverse that assume it all runs on the rules of mastodon.social is one of the suburban NIMBYs and invariably joined in November. Block and don't look back.

6. If anyone annoys you about your posting, you can improve their feed for them by blocking them from ever seeing your posts. The blocking tools are marvellous.

7. There are NO QUOTE TWEETS on Mastodon and anyone who wants QUOTE TWEETS is an invader, pollutant and corrupting influence despoiling the suburban vistas of Mastodon who only wants quote tweets to wreak EVIL.

So quote-tweeting is well supported in Akkoma and the Calckey fork of Misskey, is in live trials in the Treehouse fork of Mastodon, and will be coming to more Fediverse software soon.

8. In Mastodon, Eugen Rochko has achieved the creation of something greater than himself. And he will *never forgive it*.

9. The Fediverse interprets Website Boy as damage and routes around him.

10. Mastodon is yet another demonstration that worse is better. So come onto Mastodon, and *be* that worse.

This is how it is.

I just really like most of you if i have you listen to 2 hour monologues ;)

Stolen from Discord:

doctor: you have synesthesia

me: I see what you’re saying

doctor: yes I know, you can stop telling me that

Was listening to a tech news podcast. One of the guests said they forgot on what Mastodon server they’d signed up and had to ask some folks out of band to dig up some old toots for a reminder. The other guests were like "hmm yes this is complicated"

And I'm like... Maybe you should give a shit and remember. Especially you, expert guest on a tech podcast. Like you know where your house or apartment is, you know where you parked your car (usually). You give a shit about those, give a shit about on whose server-couch you're crashing.

Maybe not giving a shit about where your eyeballs are harvested is a big reason we're in so many messes?

And then they talked about how fraught it is that these Mastodon servers are run by unpaid volunteers - and I'm like yeah so the fuckin least you can do is honor that work by remembering where you signed up and maybe toss a coin to your hosts sometime.

I know it’s a good thing to smooth over the rough edges of Mastodon and Fediverse UX, but these are basic things. And if remembering where you signed up is too steep a hill to climb, maybe the network shouldn’t work so hard to acquire or retain that particular participant

Gonna start by posting some recent "Riveting Tales" comics.

I started these as a creative playground without many rules, where I can draw anything.

#comics #rivetingtales

As another xennial who was burned by the demise of LJ and later twitter, this is a wonderful rant... https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

both were the only social media I ever had multiple accounts on... they were in a sense a home for multiple facets of myself.

(thanks to @beccadax for the link)

Giving a new developer the grand tour of the legacy code i’m supporting.

How to have a "beach body":

1) You're already 70% water, which is a good start

2) Replace the other 30% with sand

[Postal Service]
Me: *hands over change of address form*
Clerk: Ma'am, this just says "bathtub”
Me: I live there now
Clerk: We can't send mail to a bathtub
Me: Yay