This is an utterly delightful that made me smile

Vive la France

There are plenty of Israelis within Israel who are opposed to Israel’s war crimes and other crimes against humanity. If you doubt this, I recommend checking out the journalistic outlet +972, which has an editorial team of both Israelis and Palestinians, and have been speaking out against the Israeli state since 2010. They’ve written at length about how hard it is to operate within Israel when journalism such as theirs is heavily suppressed, but much of their work is also available in Hebrew, because they aren’t just writing for an international audience

Smart if so. Israel’s only been able to keep up its campaign of aggression because of US support (and I’m not just talking about this most recent war), and this seems like it could help drive a wedge between Israel and the US

It sounds like you’re in the affected area. Please accept my well wishes if that is indeed the case. What’s happening right now is disgusting beyond words, and I appreciate you giving your perspective

It has changed a bunch, but I don’t mind it. It has gotten larger, and with that comes a greater number of trolls and spammers. I don’t see as much tankie discourse nowadays. There seems to be more political content, but that’s likely a reflection of the world.

Communities have become more concentrated — after the Reddit APi debacle, it was common to find the same community across many instances, and these were often inactive or sparsely used. Now many of these have been consolidated into fewer, more active communities.

Some communities are niche enough that you can easily read over a week’s worth of posts in one small burst, but remain active due to the dedication of moderators who do things like weekly threads.

There are frequently recurring big names who post frequently. These people aren’t necessarily the same as at the beginning, because there are still a few individuals who make up a majority of posts. I worry for these people sometimes, because it must be a lot of pressure to know that if you stopped posting, the community may wither away. Some of these communities are just silly little meme comms, but I imagine people still feel a sense of ethical duty towards these things.

The rules pages for communities are much better now. It’s easier to know where you stand in different communities, especially in areas where there may be overlap between the communities’ scopes — there has been gradual iteration that has helped people to understand how things relate to each other

When I first got here, I was struck by how much it reminded me of my early time with Reddit. It was much easier to have productive conversations with people. I felt sad because it highlighted how bad Reddit had become. It has always been a bit of a toxic cesspit of a site, in some ways (when people ask me what pseudonymous social media site I used most as a teenager, I am often embarrassed to admit that it was Reddit), it had a lot of good going for it — people engaging in genuine conversation despite everything. I can get that a lot more reliably here.

Things have changed, but Lemmy is still capable of fulfilling my desire for genuine conversations with random internet people. I often write long comments, and I often feel that my time was well spent. Sometimes I non-judgmentally call out people for being unpleasant in their comments, and it leads to productive conversations. I honestly live for that shit, and Lemmy reliably helps me to scratch it. I am better able to navigate the site to find what I am craving.

I wish there were more posts and comments sometimes, but I recognise that this is a bit of a monkeys paw wish, in that a greater userbase will degrade the experience further. Nothing lasts forever though. When Lemmy dies, whenever that ends up being, I will have been glad for my time here

Commenting to follow

This was at an Unknown Mortal Orchestra (a psych rock band) gig at an old and fancy venue. At one point, the lighting was such that members of the band were silhouetted against the upper ceiling; it was also cycling such that different band members were casting shadows. The image doesn’t capture the phenomenon very well, but it’s enough to invoke the memory in me, as well as the awe I felt at seeing it.

Although I would gently suggest that if there are many things that you have said you’re going to fix but haven’t yet, perhaps the person isn’t reminding you in a “hurry up and do the thing” kind of way, but in a “honey, are you doing okay? You try to do so much for us, and whilst I appreciate it, I do worry about how you’re coping. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I’d rather you tell me “I’m not going to fix that thing for the foreseeable future” than to run yourself ragged”

I’m really glad to hear this. FIFA might still be arses about it, but by New Zealand’s team being good sports about this, it will make it easier to hold FIFA accountable

Edit: also props to Mexico for making it clear they’re open to host also

Eh you can do better, have another go at it.

No, thank you.

For someone who is excited to go and have fun playing with this tech that’s apparently everything you’ve been waiting for, you seem weirdly eager to get angry over other people being angry?

That’s okay, because a sincere comment of gratitude functions as a super-upvote anyway. It’s like Reddit Gold, but with more human connection, and less capitalism

Yeah, I knew that, it’s super cool, and it came to mind as I was writing my earlier comment.

What’s neat about the website stuff is that even if it’s not as good now (idk, I haven’t looked), that value they created is still there in the older case study — there were so many good resources. I was the disability rep in a few student societies, as well as in a few volunteer orgs after uni, and we referenced the guidelines a few times. Good resources like that are especially useful in those contexts — because they helped turn “that would be nice, but we don’t have the resources to implement accessibility in our materials” into “okay, let’s put our money where our mouth is and do our best to make something as accessible as we can”

Yeah, I hate the word “crisis” here.

Yeah, it’s a big “worst person you know actually makes a good point” moment

Evangelising the Fediverse on Reddit is not for me, but respect to anyone who does try that (I save my evangelising for my irl folk. I’m wearing them down)

Despite being so shit in many different respects (a chronic use of external consultants and contractors means the UK seems less likely than other European countries to make progress on a sovereign tech stack), the UK is pretty good with its data. There’s a surprisingly amount of data that’s released and is in a sensible format.

During the teachers strikes last year, I ended up using playing around making visualisations using the data about the number of teachers in various parts of the country, and I was pleased to see how much there was there and how clearly it was documented. There are very few things I’m proud of the UK for, so I am glad to have this as one

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Eid Mubarak, America.

I’m not glad for this war, but given that it is happening, I gotta admit that I am glad to see US hubris challenged so thoroughly