i can see the light at the end of the tunnel
then again it could be the train

Goes hard. Gonna save that line for later.

I found myself a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four printed by Harcourt, Brace and Company for $20. It didn’t have its dust jacket, but everything else about the book seemed quite fine. There isn’t really much on the inside indicating specifics, but everything I found about it online would suggest that it’s the first US hardcover edition from 1949. It has to be the oldest book in my collection so far and my favorite from a publishing standpoint.

That’s the wild thing—I’ve tried all sorts of ways and it reads like a viable meme whichever way I read it.

I finally have my accommodations settled with the university and I started really using them. Joined a disability rights club and I started helping out a couple friends with their Discord servers. It feels like I have things properly tuned in to my pace for the first time in a while, and it feels like I’m seeing that pay off.

Also it’s been a hot minute since I’ve been on. Glad to see things are holding up and glad to be coming back 👍.

A couple of my local groceries sell packed chicken feet, and I absolutely love them for stocks. They’re packed with gelatin and I end up with silky stocks that look like Jello in the fridge. Store rotisserie chickens are also great for stocks in my experience. I get a meal or few out of most of the meat, then you chuck the rest in a pot to turn into stock.

I think at least one of my local groceries also used to sell ox tail. Great for beef stock, but I think it got expensive after it became a trendy cut for some reason. I don’t remember how that happened, I guess people got in the know 🤔.

beehaw is only one instance, and I’d love to keep it an instance that I know is full of actual people.

That’s an insightful way of putting it that didn’t come to mind.

I think part of what Beehaw uniquely offers is the drive for its own kind of instance and user culture and a closer and more organic community. Bots, save for moderator tools, admittedly detract from that kind of vibe. I could imagine that sacrificing less necessary bots, either partially or entirely, could be an important measure toward securing those aforementioned values. Federation with more Reddit-esque instances still allows us to scratch Reddit sort of itch when it comes up.

I think this is the first piece of yours I got to see here that used both digital art and the knitting. It’s seriously cool stuff and an awesome way to get texture in!

Edit (2023-08-07 T 08:50 Z): It occurred to me that I forgot to directly mention traits that might bias what I offer. On top of a general confidence and enthusiasm for Beehaw, I’m also a moderator for !creative and !askbeehaw. I strive to keep things balanced and outside of my biases, but it feels right for me to explicitly bring that up for transparency.

I can respect it’s a tough issue to put briefly, but I think I get what you’re putting down. “Our content isn’t diverse enough”, I suppose? “We have too much news and not enough anything else”? I 'unno, but I get the impression that you’d like to see more content that isn’t news. I’m not too sure what to make of conflating that with “a more positive, uplifting, inclusive place”, but I’d think it’s got something to do with “negative to downright doomscrolling doomerism.” Do let me know if I missed the mark here or there and I’d be down to talk that out, but I’m confident enough in that perspective to run with it at least for an initial comment.

And, welp, yeah. I think there’s some truth there. What’s up with that? I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s people with a better read of the room, and there’s definitely people that are more properly active than I am, but I’d like to say I’m passionate about Beehaw’s fundamentals and continued success. Hopefully that’s good enough to say I have some theories as to what’s up and what we can do about it.

1. I’d wager there was a sort of honeymoon phase with Beehaw and the Lemmy fediverse with the initial API scramble and Reddit following through on that. I’d also wager that honeymoon phase has been over for a few weeks now. So now we might be doing things like spending less time on Beehaw than we first were, or taking off the rose-tint shades that often come with a honeymoon phase and realizing that Beehaw’s means and ways has imperfections and drawbacks just like any other platform inevitably does.
   Put another way, finding a positive sounding community is easy. Engaging and creating that positive sounding community is harder.

2. I’d think that the Reddit migration is also going to bring elements of old habits from Reddit, both in Beehaw and in people accessing it through federation. I think that Reddit’s content leaned pretty heavily on news, so it wouldn’t surprise me if a fair chunk of Reddit migrants continue to lean into posting news content.
   I’d imagine that our federated activity amplifies that aspect. !technology is a pretty good example of this. Our site sidebar stats say we clock in around 12.7k registered users. !technology has 34.2k subscribers, and that’s not even considering federated users that might be lurking or posting without subscribing. There’s like a whole 'nother Beehaw and a half in there. Admittedly it wouldn’t surprise me if these federated users are less in touch with Beehaw’s values or intentions. That’s not a knock on those that go through the due diligence to inform themselves on how we like to do things, but Lemmy makes the barrier of entry for federated users a pretty low bar without granular ways to raise it.

This is all to say that we, as in Beehaw users, might not be as active as it seems, and that something is gonna take space.
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Regrettably I’m not so sure if there’s an easy answer to this. This runs the risk of coming off a bit like a smartass answer, especially because I wouldn’t call myself a bastion of activity, but I really do think it’s the best means to help resolve this issue: use the thing the way you’d like to see it used.

Create things and share your progress and end product. Share the cool stuff you excel at, but share the small and goofy stuff and the experiments in other things too. Share the successes, share the failures. Take pictures of neat things you see in person, get the links to cool stuff you see online, and bring us in the loop about it. Give people some discussion and context in your OP’s body—some hooks to help egg on conversation, if you will—and find ways to get in the conversation down in the comments.

I was hoping to get more active after my vacation at the top of the month, but I’ve been swamped with family errands and it’s been a bit of a bummer. But I got some neat photos burning a hole in my pocket, creative projects I’m itching to get back to, a few neat links to share, and ideas of topics to talk shop with in a community or two. It’s been a kind of epiphany rocking around my mind, thinking about how to generate community engagement. We could talk days on end about stuff like our philosophy, gray areas with content, community activities, or indulging in Tea. I’m starting to think that the most powerful solution to engagement and content issues is both the easiest and hardest: just get busy posting. Gotta plant flowers in the garden to bring in the bees, y’know? 🐝

i think my first personal action towards that is to stop giving a damn about trying to aim for “Prime Time” and just start posting, even when its O-Dark-Thirty by US hours 🥴

I don’t think I have a strong opinion toward bots. They could get gimmicky and unnecessary, but I never felt like they detracted from my experience to a noteworthy degree. I don’t think I ever disliked bots too much on Reddit? But then again, I rarely liked or wanted bots, either. I have a loose leaning toward letting people reasonably experiment with how they interact with a platform online, but “bots” as in the kind of stuff I remember from Reddit seem like a relatively weak expression of that. If I had to put an opinion down, I’d say that I’m in favor of their continued presence with the caveat of some guidelines and defined best-practices. Otherwise, if I wake up one day to learn that bots are banned on Beehaw, admittedly I wouldn’t be all that bummed about it.

th3raid0r and Lionir seem to get pretty well at the kind of recommendations I’d like to see. Bots ideally should provide a meaningful contribution to communities. Bots should be clearly labelled and identifiable as such. Bot creators should have consent from the community’s moderators to have a bot interact within the community. The Cardinal Be^e Nice applies here, perhaps to a greater degree: bots shouldn’t be used to fake engagement, impersonate people, commit technical attacks on the community, etc.

the_itsb also reminded me of another aspect: we may want to consider how active and populated a community is. Bots take up the attention and visual space of everyone else browsing a community and its discussions. It strikes me as a worst-case scenario, but I could imagine it’s possible for a bot overabundance to choke out legitimate conversation. That’s enough for me to start thinking twice about whether or not I have a loose stance on this.

I worry that most Lemmy instances are too young/inactive for this kind of bot yet. I don’t think we’re past the tipping point where the people commenting will automatically outweigh the bots, and I don’t think those bots are fun unless they’re dramatically outweighed by normal human interaction.

That’s an interesting way of putting it that I didn’t immediately consider.

I don’t necessarily like them, but I’m not really all that against them, either. If we don’t have the activity to balance out bot input, however, it might be reasonable to limit them one way or another. It seems to me like a worst-case scenario, but if a community or thread has what feels like a noticeable amount of bots, that would be a turn-off for me.

If the community decides to limit bot traffic either partially or entirely, it might be good to revisit that decision later on if there’s an upward trend in users and activity.

Do spoiler foldouts maintain their functionality across UIs, either directly or in essence (eg. popup instead)?

Part of me wishes that Lemmy also had spoilers that reveal in place, but foldout spoilers have some functionality that makes me appreciate having both on hand. I’d bet bots could benefit from using that to minimize visual space if we go through with it.

Almost makes me think that we have a fighting chance to make tags on Lemmy work. Part of me would want to see tags get some unique formatting like post flairs, but even just inline tags would be a leg-up.

Or maybe both in-line and post tags. Neat stuff to daydream 🤔.

I’ve been in touch with my therapist over maybe three distinct periods since 2018. It was always surprisingly slow, draining, and exhausting to get things started for a range of reasons. Slog aside, however, it was always incredibly worth it to get a professional perspective and to begin with professional solutions. By no means has it been perfect, but it’s been much better. I think it’s fair to say it’s been life changing, even. I’d always recommend people consider professional help if it even crosses their mind and they’re in a position where they can access it. All the best in finding a therapist!
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Ditching music streaming sounds cool! I think I’ll still have a place in my playlists for streaming to handle stuff like music I’m trying out or some lower priority tunes, but I’ve been gradually building up my own library. There’s something really satisfying about having the files on my own hardware, or at least having something I purchased online rather than relying on streaming. I’ve had the rug pulled under me with songs or shows I was streaming before. It’s always a bummer to discover one less song or episode in my media library 😞.

Thanks for the heads-up. Part of me isn’t too surprised given how long some side-effects lists can get, but for the most part it didn’t occur to me that my taste getting funked up was potentially in the cards.

I’ve been on Adderall for maybe eight-so months now. It hasn’t perfectly resolved my challenges, but things have been much better compared to taking nothing. My psych recently asked that I start taking my blood pressure to send that in, and it looks like it’s elevated. I’m doing what I can to bring it down, but given my understanding, I won’t see results until later. I think I’ll be okay if I’m put on a different medication, but I’ll admit it’s not fun to think about.

It’s the first I heard about longboarding on trails, too. I’d be interested to learn more about what that’s like.

My brother used to do a lot of longboarding when I was growing up. He was more into doing things on smooth/paved ground as far as I knew. Going down hills was his thing; had a few buddies he’d do it with. I remember he had the road puck gloves for it. I should ask if he still has those lying around in some drawer of his apartment. Scraped his knees and arms plenty of times, occasionally pretty gnarly. Probably broke at least one bone 👀?

I never got into it myself, but it was some cool stuff to see from the side while he was still into it.

Goin’ aight. It was fun last week, but pretty busy for a summer week for me too. I had a friend over while they were in town for the summer, got to see Les Mis while there was a performance in SF, and was unexpectedly enlisted to help another friend practice for their driving test. All a great time, but maybe I’ll get some more time this week to tend to some personal hobbies and projects.

Maybe there’s a conspiracy? Maybe there isn’t. There isn’t much I can do outside of weening off my use of them, ultimately deleting my content there, and using and encouraging alternatives. Past that, I’ve come to find out it isn’t worth the trouble for me to give that kind of thing too much airtime in my head if I can help it. If I wake up one day to learn that there’s A Whole Thing going on, though, frankly it wouldn’t surprise me all that much.

If I had to give it an absolute Yes or No based on what I know and figure, however, I’d say there isn’t a conspiracy. I’d wager that it’s just the likes of ignorance and capitalist business practices.
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I’ve heard that the economic landscape in the past decade-ish allowed certain sorts of companies and people to do business in a way that likely wasn’t as sustainable as they thought. 2020 comes around, the economic landscape changes for intersecting Reasons, and I’d figure that the companies and people operating the least sustainably realize they have to change it up if they want to rake in the dough. Some of these businesses were social media platforms, and some of those platforms are lead partially or entirely by people like Musk or Huffman, who make some Less Than Thrilling decisions because they think it’s a sound bet to get a lot of cash. That’s not to say their decisions are sound bets, let alone good in sum, but I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt and say they weren’t decisions made in a vacuum.

As much as we may use platforms like Reddit or Twitter to connect with one another or find and do something besides consuming and entertainment, we have to remember that these places established themselves as capitalist businesses. They are for-profit companies that ultimately answer only to the likes of a board, their shareholders, or their leadership. I think it’s reasonable to say that the end game for a lot of these businesses is to make money. A lot of it. The consumer’s most important purpose in this approach is to serve as a means to that money. There might be exceptions here and there that are given various labels, both inside and outside of a capitalist lens, but Twitter and Reddit certainly don’t read like exceptions. Ill-advised or not, if the right people at Twitter and Reddit genuinely think their recent decisions will make them more money, it doesn’t surprise me that they’ll do it. The trouble is that there’s typically more to life than a dollar—actions tend to have consequences outside of their intended ones, especially at this scale. Even if Twitter and Reddit didn’t mean for this to put a dent in the ability to organize (or even to just be like, a Shitty user experience,) it can, and will, have that effect.

Writing it out, it’s kinda funny. I still don’t think there’s a conspiracy per se, but the effects of these business practices create the sorta symptoms you’re talking about, anyway. How does the saying go? “The system is working as intended”? Whether that’s better or worse than a literal social and class conspiracy I’d say is up to the individual.
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As an aside, this is why I think projects like Lemmy and Mastodon are a big deal. Actually making the platform has got to be one of the hardest hurdles to get a social media network started. For all their faults, stuff like this is ready to slap onto a server and run, and it’s free and open source. That lowers the barrier of entry drastically to let people try and make this kind of thing work in a non-profit format.

“WHY DOES IT HAVE HUMAN TEETH,” a dismayed commenter asked. “IDK WE DIDN’T MAKE THEM,” the wildlife agency replied.

any volunteers to Brush The Teeth on the next one? lil thing looks like it could use it 👀

It’s shattered my drive to find One Platform for all of my needs, and I think that’s going to work out to be a net positive. I used to be against having to hunt and peck through multiple sites and juggle multiple accounts, but the less time I’m spending on Reddit, the less I’m bothered with the idea of doing that. I can picture some of the old-guard Forum Folk looking down on my reliance on one community rather than spreading out across multiple sites—ah well, better late than never 😅.

Losing out on previous Reddit content has felt a bit like a Library of Alexandria kind of thing for me, however. I’m sure that Lemmy and the wider fediverse will ultimately help to fill that kind of knowledge, and Reddit was by no means some Bastion of Knowledge, but I can’t help but think about what prior content, both large and small, meaningful and trivial, is going to be inaccessible because of this whole intrigue.

I still have a lot of work to do in archiving my content and saves from Reddit, but I don’t see myself going back to substantially engage if I can help it. The culture around here in Beehaw, if anything, has felt much more worthwhile to engage in than I ever felt anywhere else online.

I wonder how much of that is down to how we were taught though and it being more familiar and linked with education and cognition.

I’d be curious to learn more about that as well. I never felt a strong difference in embedding to memory between writing or typing something, but my dad also started putting me in front of computers as early as when I was, like, 4? I by no means can’t speak on it academically, but anecdotally speaking, I’d suspect that getting in front of a mouse and keyboard relatively early on might’ve played a part in that?

I’d like to see some professional research into it, but I’m also interested in more anecdotes. Do you think you got into computers around the same time as your peers? Earlier or later? I’d also like to hear from anyone else if they wanna chime in 🤔.