FBXL Social

Here's a list of lemmy and lotide instances that I've had good luck with. Unfortunately a lot of the main lemmy instances are highly censorship focused, these are instances that I've found seem kosher with open discussion without immediately throwing out diverse opinions.

That isn't to say that they're all full free speech havens, but I know for a lot of you guys like me, the main lemmy instances banning all wrongthink immediately destroyed any interest in the platform, but there are some good sites out there worth looking at.

wolfballs.com
exploding-heads.com
narwhal.city
mander.xyz
gtio.io
heapoverflow.ml
community.xmpp.net
slrpnk.net
federated.community
lemmy.otakufarms.com
community.hackliberty.org
nrsk.no
donky.social

And of course lotide.fbxl.net

The biggest thing we need in these communities is participation. There's quite a bit of activity in some of these communities, so they're worth taking a look at, especially since they're federated. You can subscribe to communities using mastodon/pleroma/soapbox by following community@site , but personally I think it makes more sense to have a separate account on lemmy or lotide since the form of discussion is so different. However you decide to participate, a lot of good folks are putting a lot of good work in on making that part of the fediverse something legitimately worth checking out at this point.

fwiw, I recall friendica showing threaded conversations by default.

I got my domains from them forever ago and for a long term so it's sort of inertia, but I'm sure they're not unique in being capable of changing your DNS entries with a script.

It turned out to be surprisingly easy to get godaddy to operate as a dynamic DNS service. It's a single script available online that you just set up as a cronjob to update the DNS if your outside address changed.

Probably a lot fewer barriers to entry than most people might think.

One thing I've found is that kids aren't as good with technology outside the guardrails as you'd expect.

People mistake "good at using the ipad" for being good with technology. Then the button they always press doesn't work and they're totally lost as to what to do next.

If we want to have a next generation of technologists, we're going to have to work to make sure kids are getting a solid foundation of technology early. My next book is going to be a sort of introduction to computer technology wrapped around an introduction to programming, I'll probably use it later to help my son get into computers properly. You know, back in my day computers came with manuals and massive nerds could sit and read through the manuals!

Can confirm, grandma is dead, Facebook deleted.

Sure seems like Mr 5d chess is falling directly into a trap everyone can see placed for him.

The interesting thing I realized when I visited a panel @RekietaLaw ran at a comic book convention was just how diverse his fans are. There were people of all races, some of his fans are gay, and he was invited by a transgender person.

It made me realize that the concept that these psychos have a monopoly on diversity is simply a lie. The only thing they have a monopoly on is making it an issue.

In the book, the big point was that by mindlessly turning your brain off and just following any ideology you will end up wrong because reality isn't that clean. Some of the monsters in the book turned out to be good, but some turned out to be evil and so in that way both groups were correct, but they were also both incorrect.

That being said, I agree with what you just said. An observation I made is that people will appeal to whatever the power of the moment is. When the Church was the most powerful thing in the land, people would align themselves with that. Today wokeness appears to be the most powerful thing in the land, so many people (and organizations) align themselves with that. If tomorrow carrot farmers became the highest power in the land, look at all the people and organizations that magically find ways to explain why the thing they want ultimately helps the carrot farmers.

I saw an interview a few years back with an employment lawyer who made a fantastic case that if the workers are busy fighting themselves over their differences, they won't band together to fight the company.

It's easy to define authoritarian order, but it's much more difficult to define authoritarian chaos.

I rather liked Yahtzee's "Differently Morpheous" because it showed that there were two sides to the coin: On one hand the insane old school authoritarianism that mindlessly follows old paradigms, but also insane new school authoritarianism that mindlessly rejects old paradigms.

"Why is calculus so easy?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuOxDh3egN0

Project Gutenberg book "Calculus made easy"

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283

Obviously you have to make sure you're not overextending yourself, but one of the nice things about buying is that you're trapping your housing cost in time (especially in the US where you can get a mortgage rate for as long as the mortgage). If inflation would have caused your rents to rise, your mortgage stays the same so you're slightly better off every year.

Hopefully what's happening now is going to completely change the housing market so it's sane again.

In the first house I rented, it was in pretty bad shape, so I spent a few bucks on some basic repairs including replacing all the 1950 vintage skeleton key door knobs with modern door knobs. It was great, basically sneakily ended up with a much nicer place than we were paying for.

Unfortunately, rents skyrocketed over the next few years so the landlord pulled a "my sister is moving into the house" so he could sell it, but it was a nice deal while it lasted.

The idea that you'd make unlimited money by making an unfederated mastodon instance is sort of silly when you think about it.

Do you have a Butler or something who does your shopping for you?

You seem to be living in a parallel universe where food hasn't been getting massively more expensive every single month.

I wonder, if you took all the pokemon media that's ever been created with Ash in it and put it end to end, how much realtime has he spent as a 9 year old?

It certainly can be a critique of all welfare, but the difference here is that you're taking something given to a fraction of the population and making it universal.

There presumably isn't a choice, you're just going to collect the cheque. Period. At that point, the question isn't whether you sign up for the money, it's how do you use the money you're getting either way?

I suspect that in the longer term, it would end up shaking out that you'd end up with an even more stratified society -- You'd have the masses of have-nots, and you'd have a tiny minority of people who make overwhelming amounts of money by providing services to the masses. We started to see something like that during the pandemic, where the poor got poorer and the rich became insanely richer.

We lived throughout most of history with much worse quality of life than the poor of today, but many of those people lived just lives without turning to crime and went on to be paragons of their communities.

I'd argue that turning to drugs and crime today isn't usually a problem of poverty, it's a problem of meaning. They felt like they were contributing to their communities, and that contribution made them feel like they had a stake in the proper running of society.

If you give everyone UBI, it might shock you the number of people who look at that money and go "Ok, I can figure out a way to live off of this" and do so, even if it means cramming themselves into terrible living conditions. They'll live in the pod and eat the bugs because it means they don't need to work, but in the process of giving them the opportunity to do so you do take something away from them -- the mandatory requirement to contribute to society to continue being is a benefit because it gives people meaning in some way. Take that meaning away, and their lives become nihilistic and meaningless.

You don't just see this with the poor, you see it with the children of the super-rich. Many end up nihilistic and live terrible lives because they never need to do anything to survive and even thrive. They could live their entire lives in luxury but hedonistic pleasure doesn't help achieve eudaemonia, the condition of human flourishing or of living well.

I think it'd be surprised the industriousness of people trying to not have to work. I could absolutely see entire apartments filled with potential Reddit moderators, figuring out exactly how to live off of whatever Ubi provides without needing to work. You might be shocked to discover how many people are willing to live in the pod and eat the bugs if it means they don't need to go to work. That however is a problem. Just because people find out a way to survive doesn't mean that they're living a good life, and it certainly doesn't mean that they're living a meaningful life. I think that widespread adoption of Ubi would lead to this, billions of people living nihilistic existences consooming internet vaccuosity.

Problem is when you've got a guy who says all the right things but falls apart when it comes to actually do the deed.

There's a role for him, but President isn't it.