Reach for the Stars @antares@qoto.org

Fedi is the most strange thing in the world.

On normal social media, you write a message and people just ignore it forever.

Here, you write a message, it stays ignored for 1 or 2 years, and then all of a sudden, for no reason, with no explanation, someone finds it somehow, boosts it, and it gets 200 likes and 120 boosts.

What the fuck.

I'm sure someone will boost this message in 2021 or 2022.
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It’s awesome to see so many great people in #Astrodon lately. Even more, many of these people are amateurs like me, so I really appreciate their posts. Keep them coming! ✌️

The difference between Twitter and Mastodon right now is stark.

Twitter: Tons of stochastic retweets and "people follow this person" algorithm nonsense. This only started happening in the last 2 weeks.

Mastodon: Only content from the people I follow!

I almost thought Mastodon was broken for a little while until I realized... the people I followed just hadn't posted in a few hours!

Twitter nervously tries to fill that silence with the algorithm to keep you engaged, while Mastodon is like:

#ESPN3 is currently airing the #MicrosoftExcelWorldChampionship (not even joking)

Posted this as a locked post, maybe I will get an answer faster if it is open.

A #fediverse #tech #question on #boosts: I keep seeing boosts of posts I have already seen (it looks like lots of my followers like the same things I do 😛 ). Is there some setting that stops this, so I don't see something three times, but just once? I can't find anything like this.

Thanks!

Wow! Once in a lifetime shot!

This amazing image of a meteor was captured by Jonathan Eggleston in West Virgina, USA, during the recent lunar eclipse.

#Photography #Astrophotography #BloodMoon #Meteor #Meteorshower

ActivityPub doesn’t seem like too heavy a protocol in terms of coding up some basic bots or servers. Mulling over the possibilities!

M1, the Crab Nebula shot in dualband ... almost too snall for my telescope 😊. Total exposure time was around four hours with single exposures of five minutes ... #astrophotography #astronomy #universe #cosmos

You will find I'm occasionally geeky about my Hauptwerk organ. #organist #churchmusic

Happy Harding Whalebomb Day from #Oregon!

It is the birthday of infamous figure skater Tonya Harding and the anniversary of this unwise application of TNT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuaSY0cMK8

#Jekyll is kicking my ass right now. I’m trying to put some html code as a code block into my article but Jekyll is rendering the #LiquidCode in the code block and not leaving it as just code. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Any Jekyll/Liquid folks out here?

Sometimes I also dip my toe into #solarphotography .

This kind of #astrophotography requires a lot of safety gear and you should never do it unless you know what you’re doing and have the correct equipment. Nobody wants to set their eyeballs or #telescope on fire right? 😁
Here’s a couple of solar shots from a while back, one showing a #sunspot and the other a prominence! They were shot using a specialised #hydrogenalpha filter and a mono camera

Well dang.. #NASA #Artemis1 #Astrodon..

Jim Free - NASA’s Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development.

Update on our #Artemis I mission:

Having been here since 2016, I can tell you there is definitely no such thing as a consensus on usage of content warnings on the fediverse. It's a decentralized network that doesn't belong to any one party, so by definition there is no single culture on it. Different corners have different expectations and customs.

Guide to Content Warnings

On qoto, the only toots that require a content warning (CW) are:

- Spoilers
- NSFW (Not Safe For Work) – this is up for interpretation, but I assume refers to tits and dicks
- Using a derogatory epithet or racially charged language in a toot that itself is not racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise hateful speech (such as quoting a passage from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for critical purposes)*

Other reasons someone may want to use CW’s here on qoto:

- Strobe effects (to avoid triggering an epileptic seizure in people who are susceptible)
- Violence, accidents, rape, suicide, self-harm, death, etc., including to non-human animals (PTSD, etc.)
- Food (pics of food can prompt people with metabolic syndrome, eating disorders, which are relatively common)
- Pics of drugs (may trigger use by people who are addicted)
- Very long posts (so uninterested readers don’t have to scroll through them)

It’s better if the CW description is more specific (without itself containing CW-eligible content). Instead of just “Spoiler”, say “Spoiler – The Wizard of Oz”. Also, it’s generally a good idea to repeat the CW description within the toot itself at the top of the toot for those who may have the auto-open feature enabled.

What doesn’t need a CW:

- swear words
- content that might hurt someone’s feelings
- unpopular opinions
- political content
- pictures of animals (that are alive and well)
- content from those with autism or who are otherwise neuro-atypical
- using the CW as a title or heading for your toot or trying to place actually content into the CW description is irritating for others

Overuse of the CW feature ultimately undermines it’s usefulness because it forces people to have to click on each toot or just enable the auto-open feature. However, someone with a condition like epilepsy or PTSD, the auto-open feature is not really an option so CW overuse effectively forces people with disabilities to click each toot while everyone else can just enable the auto-open feature, which doesn’t seem fair.

Other Mastodon instances have varying rules and views on CW use.

Note: I’m not an admin or moderator here, this is just my opinion. I don’t always adhere to these guidelines and you can do what you want.

- - - -

* This epithet restriction isn’t listed in the rules, but it was adopted as a compromise in response to some specific events. Of course hate-based speech such as sexist, racist, homophobic or anti-trans speech will not be tolerated. (Note: I personally block anyone who uses epithets in any context because the intent is often ambiguous and you can communicate the same info without explicitly using the epithet.)

RT @MorePerfectUS@twitter.com

Eli Lilly apologizing for a fake tweet but not for charging $714.87 for a carton of insulin. https://twitter.com/LillyPad/status/1590813806275469333

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1590843427855663115