Wendy W @WendyW@qoto.org

New Folks: if you expect this place to work like Twitter you'll get frustrated because the mechanics at #Mastodon are rather different.

Here's seven bits of advice to help you settle in:

1) Go up to the search bar in the top left and search for some #hashtags relevant to your personal interests. Cooking, cybersecurity, hiking, pets, the war in Ukraine, World Cup soccer, whatever. When you get hits, click the little follow icon. Choose some hashtags and follow them in this fashion. This will start getting interesting content into your feed.

2) While you're at the search bar, search for a few people you may know from other examples of social media -- whether it's friends or acquaintances or journalists or influencers or what. If you find them, follow them too. It's less important for your choices here to be perfect and more important for you to start getting some feedstock into your feed.

3) This is where it starts to get fun: you've made a web, now start crawling it. View what comes into your feed and start selecting additional people and topics you like to follow, based on their posts or replies or whatever. If something disappoints, unfollow it. Easy peasy. Feed your home timeline like this until it's got enough content in it to infotain you as you browse it.

4) You now have four basic varieties of browsing timeline instead of one. Your home timeline, which you are curating around your personal interests. Your local timeline, which is a precis of the other posts being made by the other people who have made their Mastodon home in the same instance as you. Your Federated timeline, which is as close as you're gonna get to the old Twitter firehose as it will draw content from across every different Mastodon instance that your own instance has elected to federate with (i.e. share its content). And your Explore timeline, which is as close as Mastodon gets to a curated exploration mode of the more interesting bits that are in the Federated firehose.

5) (This might actually be your number one!) Notice the conspicuous lack of trolls! That's also by design in the federated model. Trolls have to pick an instance just like anyone else and the way federated instances share information makes it a lot harder for trolls to get the massive exposure they want. And the federated model makes it a lot easier for people to find a place that will moderate trolls and stalkers if they place a high value on doing so. All that means that Mastodon is just less rewarding for the typical troll. Which is good for you!

6) While you're waiting for your timelines to 'mature' a bit, realize that some of that initial silence you're encountering is rooted in three things - one, a lack of drive by noise from uninvolved and uninvested people; two, much like in a neighborhood bar, people are likely to listen a bit and wait and see what you're like before they decide to chat with you, no matter how snappy your patter; and three, the larger part of Mastodon is still itself learning the ropes and finding its place. It's a lot like junior high when you interpreted silence as disinterest or contempt when in reality everyone was in the same insecure boat as you.

7) Just hang in for a while, don't try too hard, reply to stuff you like or are amused by or that you find interesting, and let everything marinate for a bit while your brain starts to go 'oh, I get it, it really IS different here' instead of clenching up going 'No one's talking to me, wtf'. It'll go at a slower course, largely because you aren't being supercollided with each other by the Twitter algorithms, but by basic conversational interest.

Aaaaanad voila! Suddenly you have an improvement over Twitter.

This is a wonderful recording EXCEPT for that EVERYONE needs a black damn folder. It's so distracting I can't watch the performance as I'm listening to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0O4YOmJOhI

#choir

About to cycle from Cambridge to Ely wish me luck in not getting lost in the fens

“Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity." - Lewis Mumford, 1955. Arguably the most important quote in city-building ever. READ my past (but still totally relevant) #Planetizen post.

https://www.planetizen.com/node/53659

#cities #cars #traffic #urbanism #congestion #transportation #UrbanPlanning #mobility

#HS2 WILL go all the way to #Euston, the #Chancellor has said - amid confusion over whether parts of the project had been scrapped.

Jeremy Hunt has said he does not see any "conceivable circumstance" in which HS2 would not end in central #London.
But lets get it all the way to Inverness so internal UK #air travel becomes obsolete with better investment more widely in public transport

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-hunt-says-hs2-go-29066243

Rainforest? Turn left after the drawbridge! Inside #Madrid’s eye-popping living #school
Pupils asked for a building without walls that was like a #garden and a #spaceship. The dazzling result, housed within a living skin for insects and fungi, is one of the most inventive schools ever built. #architecture #Spain https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/jan/17/reggio-school-andres-jaque-madrid-rainforest-zig-zag?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

#ForestFriday #ClayoquotSound 🌲🌲🌲

#SaveOldGrowth #protectOldGrowth #SacredForests #Ancientforests #WorthMoreStanding #OldGrowth #StopEcocide #StopClearcuts #PNW #PacificNorthwest #Cascadia #BritishColumbia #Canada #TemperateRainforest #LungsOfTheEarth #CarbonSinks #ClimateChange #environmental #biodiversity #ecosystems #Nature #DisabledHiker #HikingPhotos #WorldInMyEyes #samsung8 #CellphonePhotos #MyNaturePhotos #Trees #ThinkTrunks #ElderTrees #ecology #SaveOurForests #StopDeforestation

Tuesday Blues

If you enjoy this post or my work in general please drop me a #follow and consider giving this post a #boost

#DailyShots #Photomonday #Photographer #Photography #DailyPhotos #NeilEvansRocks #London #CanaryWharf #Docklands #Weather #tuesdayvibes

It’s a beautiful if very cold day in london.
The city looks beautiful, and I’ve picked up the first daffodils of the year.

#photographer #photography #dailyphoto #dailyphotos #dailyshot #creative #creator #london #cityoflondon #StreetPhotography #boost #follow

That cloud is giving the impression we’ve just avoided the apocalypse…

#DailyShots #Photomonday #Photographer #Photography #DailyPhotos #NeilEvansRocks #London #Meteor #OddCloud #NotUFO

Another #introduction I’m Neil, I’m a #photographer #filmmaker and full time #creator, you might also occasionally see or hear me on the #tv or #radio

You can follow me at:
✖️ http://YouTube.com/NeilEvansRocks
✖️ http://Instagram.com/NeilEvansRocks
✖️ http://NeilAEvans.darkroom.tech (print store)

I talk about the #creatoreconomy #food #travel #photography #films #london #politics and more. Say hello, let’s chat, let’s follow! 🏴‍☠️🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

World Leprosy Day 2023
#Leprosy #infectiousdisease

29 January 2023
This international day is an opportunity to celebrate people who have experienced leprosy, raise awareness of the disease, and call for an end to leprosy-related stigma and discrimination.

Visit the WHO information to learn more about the 2023 World Leprosy Day theme: "Act Now. End Leprosy."

https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2023/01/29/default-calendar/act-now-end-leprosy-wld-2023

Missing Radioactive Capsule Prompts Search and Concern in Australia - In the Australian Outback, authorities are engaged in an unusual search-and-recovery effo... - https://www.wsj.com/articles/missing-radioactive-capsule-prompts-search-and-concern-in-australia-11675068420?mod=rss_Technology #paid

I wrote about the remarkable, multi-dimensional progress that we've been seeing recently for engineering T cells to address refractory medical conditions https://erictopol.substack.com/p/engineering-t-cells

Elusive glass octopus spotted in the remote Pacific Ocean. Only its eyes, optic nerve and digestive tract are opaque. This rarely-seen glass octopus bared all recently — even a view of its innards — when an underwater robot filmed it gracefully soaring through the deep waters of the Central Pacific Ocean. Image credit: Schmidt Ocean Institute

I wonder how many folks out there know you can take just about any course at MIT for free.

They just post everything online after the in-person course is complete. Lectures, supplements, tests, everything.