@acjay@qoto.orrg has moved @acjay@qoto.org

@trinsec Thanks!

Looks like all of them are either not taking new users or not in English, with the possible exception of Cloudplane, which might be more of a Digital Ocean type solution. I can't quite tell yet. I'm hoping for as managed as possible, ideally. Like a wordpress.com style solution.

I might go with the Digital Ocean fully baked image solution, even though that's not as managed as I was hoping for.

@marathon0 That's not loading for me. If you meant masto.host, they're not taking sign-ups currently.

Is there a good hosted Mastodon provider that's <$10/mo and isn't full? I'm just trying to host my own account. Or maybe at most my immediate family.

@atomicpoet @whatabouttheken I would think the mix down to 16-bit is a one-click thing at this point. But I'm not a mastering engineer :)

At this point, I don't think bit depth or sampling rate are what holds up back from life-like sound. It's stuff more like reproducing a spatial sound field that you can inhabit.

But I'm probably just salty over the way audiophile culture sometimes sells stuff on specs that don't matter.

@atomicpoet @whatabouttheken But they'd probably be mastered the same as a CD, I would think. 24-bit is great for recording, but I wouldn't think it is useful as the final format.

@nickcolley @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.

@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 @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.

@jdp23 @Are0h @portmantony@writing.exchange What functionality is this?

@truthsandwich @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.

@finity @RabBrucesSpider1 it would also be cool if pictures could be edited to add it, or if people could propose Alt text