@nickcolley@toot.cat @rachelcoldicutt I think that should be done carefully. I picked Qoto as my initial instance, only to realize afterwards that I'm effectively shadow banned from parts of the Fediverse because of it.
If niche communities want to defederate, that's one thing. But if larger instances defederate, it creates fragmentation of the overall community.
But generally, I don't think new users have a good way to know which parts of the community they will have contact with, let alone why, when they join an open instance. I think that's a really bad thing and it's also only weakly correlated to managing abuse.
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Imagine you're a visually impaired Mastodon user and your screen reader encounters a post that says something like "A stunning view I saw this morning" or "This is hilarious." But the image is the equivalent of what you see below: a blank. Wouldn't it be frustrating to encounter post after post like that?
Describe images. It's an act of love. Describe them as you would to a dear friend you were talking to on the phone.
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🚨 Heroku free tier warning 🚨
Heroku will start deleting apps on their old free tier on November 28th 2022 - that's Monday coming up
If you have old projects that you need to archive this weekend is the time to be doing it
(Not a great time to find out that the accounts you created to help out various non-profits a few years ago can't be signed into anymore due to changes to the Heroku/Salesforce login flow...)
@juddlegum I also think of it as being just like email. Although, that doesn't exactly make it simple. Email's pretty complicated when you dig into it. But most of us figure it out and just use it without thinking that much about it.
I've been watching this damned Michigan-Ohio St game since noon. This is why I don't watch football anymore.
@Ilovelemons I think prescriptions could complicate this. I've never been 100% sure how they're handled w.r.t. deductibles and out-of-pocket maxes and such.
@Ilovelemons I didn't predict anything, I just mapped out a table of different in-and out-of-network expense levels. Here's what it looks like for my current benefits options.
@truthsandwich@masto.ai @drvolts It's a bit more generic than that. It's a desire to preserve and restore historic power structures. So, yes, white supremacy, but also patriarchy, Christian supremacy, heteronormativity, etc.
It's sometimes driven by conscious bigotry, but it's also the sense that replacing those power structures is threatening to peoples' sense of "normalcy".
@darnell Damn, that's pretty cool! I've never tried Tumblr before. Might have to check it out. It's cool that Mastodon users might soon be able to follow Tumblr users. It would be interesting to merge my blog and social media.
@Ilovelemons It really depends on your plan choices.
At Better, I modeled out the in- and out-of-network expenditures for each plan to figure out which had the most out-of-pocket cost, and in almost every scenario, the HDHP/HSA won. But that's also because the company paid 100% of the premiums plus made an HSA contribution, so we were starting from negative cost.
The analysis could come out differently for a different company's plan offerings.
Generally, I think of these things in terms of risk tolerance. Rule out options that have an intolerable worst case scenario, then optimize for the expected case.
I agree that you don't want to get caught up in the hype of fringe benefits, like an HSA. That's a nice-to-have after the main analysis.
@truthsandwich@masto.ai @drvolts There are certainly some real fascists in the bunch, but to a large extent, I think right wing elite are mostly opportunists. They grift on the social conservatism that is inherent to a fast-changing culture.
@drvolts I think that's kind of beside the point. The reality is the culture is changing rapidly, and the right wingers see the Dems as complicit. The right wing wants to use state power to fight the change, even though the change is not happening due to any sort of government action. In the places where the Dems oppose action to restrict the rights of marginalized people, they can be painted as extremists.
This works so well because things *are* changing quickly, and a lot of folks feel unmoored.
So it doesn't matter how much you tout the policy victories. They seem small compared to people feeling kind their social reality is being upended. I think we have to understand what we're up against in order to create effective strategies.
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It's perfectly reasonable and possible for *both* of these statements to be true:
* it is better here than on Twitter
* this better *isn't good enough*
Federation and decentralization *as currently and inconsistently and idiosyncratically practiced* while better, are not good enough.
Digging in and saying that decentralization and federation *is* good enough is really, really unhelpful.
Also, the potential for better does not mean the practical experience is better.
@finity @RabBrucesSpider1 it would also be cool if pictures could be edited to add it, or if people could propose Alt text
@gpowerf I don't necessarily mind drama, if I think it's a useful discussion. But in this case, a lot of it impacts which parts of the Fediverse you belong to, based on which instance you're on.
@darnell makes sense to me! I kinda like the idea of having a single identity, but maybe that's not realistic
@finity @RabBrucesSpider1 do you think there would be any appetite for adding a warning to Mastodon itself that you're about to post an image without alt text?
Maybe everyone really should host their own instances.
It took a couple weeks, but now I'm seeing the instance admin drama. And I just don't have the time or ability to figure out who's right about which things.
I see on your blog you've got 3 different Fediverse identities
– @darnell@one.darnell.one 🐘 (Mastodon)
– @darnell@darnell.app 📸 (Pixelfed)
– @darnell@darnell.day 📝 (WriteFreely)
I'm curious if that's necessary, or is it possible to run all these services on one identity?
I am now @acjay
Joined Oct 2022
