Do you know the TV series Game of Thrones? The nun lady walking by the naked queen in there in one of its most famous scenes is yelling “shame” and ringing her bell to underscore the shame of the naked queen on her walk from the palace. As if being walked down naked wasn’t indicative enough of that.

That’s a massive miscalculation though. This strategy is based in red team/blue team thinking and would only work on red who protect their own no matter what. The majority of blue team would happily send Bill on his naked shame walk from the palace to the citadel. That’s because they want all people in the files guilty of crimes brought in front of a jury.

I think Monica Lewinsky in a blue dress should get to walk alongside Bill with the bell and yell shame right into his ear until she got hoarse.

What they are saying ≠ what they are doing. I’m my book, this is a half-assed, poorly thought through, unadvised military campaign. Trying to grasp it with logic is as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike.

After 9/11 W was flown around a long time in Air Force One to keep him secure. After just having their old dear leader blown up, it’s highly likely they have stepped up security on junior. So junior will be moved around or hidden in bunkers and caves or moved around between various bunkers and caves, thus making a hit harder.

I don’t think the author likes mastodon dot social…

I couldn’t get through all of this blog post because it’s repeating the same point 500 times. I get the theoretical threat scenario they are painting; what’s missing are the receipts. Is moderation on that instance actually getting worse? Have we talked with admins on the record how they don’t dare defederate from that alleged wretched hive of scum and villainy? And two other angles are missing: (1) a name brand instance might be a good starting point on the fediverse. It’s still better than Xwitter. And (2) people are not donating enough to their instances, who are then run on dedication and held together by duct tape. The fear of having one’s instance shut down because the admin is out of money and duct tape makes people gravitate towards the bigger instances.

I’m not opposed to recommending people to find other, smaller instances - that is a good idea. It’s just this blog post reads more like a hit piece.

… apparently a lot of English people have at least 25% Scandinavian DNA,…

In the 9th century the Vikings invaded and occupied a huge chunk of England (mostly). They blended in with the Anglo Saxons after a while, who, btw, also originally came from Northern Europe.

A bunch of Vikings also went to set up shop in Normandy, France. That sounds very French today but when you look at it, it sounds surprisingly like “northman”-dy. These Normans also invaded England in the 11th century, stayed, and fucked around like their Viking cousins of old.

We are all blends of DNA. People moved around, also to North America. Including people from the Iberian peninsula. That’s why it shouldn’t be that inexplicable that you have some of their DNA in yours.

No, they aren’t. No, you shouldn’t care less. No, that doesn’t matter. And unfortunately yes, it is.

If it were faked, the Soviets would have had a field day. They didn’t. If all the other facts didn’t work, I find that most convincing. The nemesis had to accept it begrudgingly.

Between the 70s and today, the motivations for moon landings have changed. Back then: fuck the commies, we go first, and science. Turns out the moon isn’t that interesting to continue sending people there. Rocks and dust, yawn. Not worth the ROI. The reason why there is renewed interest now is because people think realistically they can build a base on the moon. That was science fiction in 1969.

For your own mental health, give yourself a time frame and if they still think it’s fake allow yourself to let it go. Chances are they don’t want to be convinced and you have to let nature take its course and hope the seed of doubt you have planted comes to life and blossoms.

I signed up for Ente last fall as a Google Photos replacement. The backup works fine. The Android app is prone to crashing so I don’t use it as my go-to gallery app. The process of moving a big library of pictures away from Google was painful. Ente does a lot in terms of making it easier - but it’s still a pain in the butt. Their desktop app runs poorly on old desktop hardware if you keep their machine learning on. The ML lets you search images content down the line.

I signed up for a year and I’m already looking at another solution. Laziness may win though because transferring the library was a terrible experience.

Well, he can skip the “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” one and they can just reuse his rendition from Ménage à Troi. I cannot believe he could top that performance.

The German word for what is a cookie in North America and a biscuit on the British Isles is “Keks,” which is a bastardization of the English word “cakes.” It is interesting because “Keks” by itself is the singular noun that retains the plural -s ending from English. To pluralize in German it requires an extra -e.

I would replace patriotism with nationalism. There are patriots who stand up to oppose their own leaders when their conduct is unbecoming. Nationalists would sooner bite their tongue. The lack of introspection makes them react poorly to other nationalists elsewhere.

For keeping in touch with friends I’d suggest getting them onto Signal. Until a few weeks ago maybe also Discord but that ship has sailed down the gulf of age verification to the Bermuda triangle and rests alongside Telegram on the bottom of the sea now. You’ll have more success getting people into Signal than onto the fediverse. Pixelfed DMs aren’t encrypted so for keeping in touch with friends it maybe isn’t the ideal platform either.

I only run a business account on Instagram. It’s on an old phone that never had any Meta apps installed on it, runs on it’s own WiFi via constant VPN under a fake identity. Describing this process as cumbersome is an understatement. But you could lurch like that for all the friends you cannot convince to move elsewhere and not give meta more real data.

I don’t agree with that take. I’m quite happy the celebs are not on it. It’s about appreciating nice pictures, the way Insta was in the beginning. I’m quite okay without the endless self-promotion packaged as insights into their lives #ad see link in bio crap.

The fediverse as a whole will grow slowly but steadily and one day in the future the trend will come to us. Whether it’s run on Mastodon, by extension Pixelfed, Bluesky, or something new.

I also don’t think that if, hypothetically, today Taylor Swift abandoned corporate social media and started posting on the Activity Pub branches, this would move the needle much. Yes, a bunch of people would sign up for accounts out of curiosity but they will just as quickly abandon those. Because most people are not used to or are willing to invest the time to craft their own timeline and thus grow bored. The bigger hurdle is ease of onboarding, not lack of a-listers.

Thanks for the clarification. It sounded like an “Orwell was so right” post to me. My mistake.

No, I don’t believe I can achieve absolute anonymity on the internet. But if you’re in continental Europe connecting to the onion via a VPN you are turning the odds in your favor. It’s probably not getting any better than that either.

Because you are new, you should read the forum rules before you post. Your post is in danger of being thrown out because you are asking a question in the “ad nauseam” category. It’s new to you but not to the people who are here already. I think there are also links to finding communities in the rules.

On the fediverse you need to be your own algorithm. That means you need to search on your own and try stuff. The beauty of Lemmy is that there are a gazillion communities for all the niche topics under the sun. What good is me recommending a community about paper airplanes to you when you are not interested in paper airplanes? Also, a lot of niche communities are not teeming with activity.

It takes a couple of months of trial and error, following and unfollowing communities until you’ve created a good timeline for yourself. My suggestion is you don’t waste time looking for random recommendations.

You are picking and choosing your predictions from 1984 though. The UK hasn’t become airstrip one and ingsoc hasn’t taken over. Newspeak is something we often bemoan when politicians speak but that’s more of a critical shorthand than accusing them of actually talking in double plus ungood words. There is still a royal as the head of state and the capitalists hold the power. There is no room 101 in London (except for the TV show). We are more connected to the rest of the world and aware of the shit that’s happening than in the 1940s.

Orwell may have been prescient in some areas but also wrong in others. It’s a bit like Nostradamus. Add salt to both.

I would start by suggesting we look at fewer youtubers and their views on the subject. I’m tired of dumb facial expressions on thumbnails and exaggerated video titles that do not aim for calm, measured critique but to please the algorithm. And the algorithm likes controversy. So this linked video may be the outlier - I wouldn’t know because I refuse to click through. These video links are more often than not efforts to increase views and thus nudge the video up in the ranking.

Is the death of the franchise nigh? Maybe. It wouldn’t be its first. We have had deaths after TOS S3 and ENT S4/Nemesis. There was stuff in print or in games but nothing on screen until Star Wars became a success and the arrival of the binge streaming age/Star Wars again respectively. We may be on the verge of another lull. We are very dedicated fans of a franchise that needs to be bigger to be financially viable long term. But we are a big enough chunk of the market that executives will be tempted to bring it back.

Can Star Trek tell more stories? Sure it can. It depends on the writers. I was personally disappointed with the stories Disco and PIC told. They thought Star Trek storytelling needs to be Breaking Bad’s mixed with Game of Thrones’s and that equalled universe destroying threats that need to be fought every season. For SNW they learned that you can have a season long plot but you want to be more episodic. Academy is like that as well. There is a lot of fan service in them by design and references only a subset of viewers will catch. But I don’t think that makes the shows less good or accessible to new audiences. And Marvel has established the easter-eggification of storytelling in modern franchises so a lot of viewers will want that.

Many scripts that became Star Trek stories were just sci-fi ideas that were then molded around the universe. There are still good sci-fi story ideas out there that can be told.

My fear is that we are at a ENT S3 point in time. It’s a good season but not enough people are watching. Same with SNW or Academy. That’s partially pissed off fans but also people not paying Paramount to watch it for reasons unrelated to the fandom. And the maneuvering around the Warner deal makes me fearful that all new projects will be shelved very soon for lack of funding and projected economic success. If the third lull is upon us, it’s for economic reasons, not the lack of stories to be told.

Enjoy the soothing waves and the Iranian missiles overhead! You’ll probably be safer in the water. Just saying.

Who are “they?”