I post on mastodon and bridge to bluesky. That way I can reach anyone there interested in following me, but I personally don’t have to bother with the site at all.

As someone trying to reach an audience, it’s pretty much perfect. Each to their own obviously.

Thanks, very insightful!

Maybe elaborate?

Yeah, this is what I was referring to by historically weak. Parts of it anyway.

I can’t believe you can still get away with being a Russlandversteher in contemporary German politics. Then again, there’s a lot of things I struggle to believe about contemporary German politics…

The timeline here looks pathetic. Trump wins the election and suddenly we’re all interested in hearing what Putin has to say.

Maybe something good can come out of it. But my god does it look pathetic.

A historically weak Chansellor reaching out to a Russian despot who knows perfectly well his only real threat is being stabbed in the back by one of his own. Scholz has no bargaining power over Putin whatsoever.

Vitamin D supplements. You’re not gonna get much sunlight, and you need vitamin D not to get depressed.

The locals are used to seasonal depression. Foreigners tend to have a hard time with it.

Layers are key. Noting beats real wool.

Use mittens, not gloves. Gloves suck.

You cannot interact with microblog folks on Lemmy, unless they actively post something in a Lemmy community by tagging it. So if you want to combine microblogging with threaded discussions Mbin is the only platform that does both. Mbin lists followers publicly.

I think there are Mastodon forks (or configurations) that hide followers from the public though. But it will only ever be half hidden.

It’s useful.

Let’s say you see someone who posts stuff you’re interested in. In a brief moment of absolute brilliance, you think to yourself “aha! Maybe this person follows other people whose content I would be interested in!”

So you check, and sure enough, there’s a bunch of interesting people listed. So you follow them as well. Your social graph grows, you have a better time there, the people you follow get better reach and gets to enjoy pleasant interactions with you. Everybody’s happy.

These social media platforms are designed to be public. If you want to do stuff in secret, do it somewhere else.

I guess I at least agree that we were naïve with regards to Dorsey and way too slow to realize Twitter was a threat. Looking back now it seems like it was bound to go to hell eventually, and if we look beyond the west it already went to hell a long time ago. And even in the west the tipping point was arguably years before Musk bought Twitter, it was just that people were too addicted to accept how dangerous it was.

So I guess you could criticize people for only realizing now how fucked up Twitter is. Then again, better late than never.

That’s fantastic.

It seems clear the English speaking web has a preference for Bluesky. It would be interesting to know how much variation there is between users of other European languages. It seems to me the Germans are pretty active in the Fediverse, which makes sense considering a significant portion of them have been huge privacy nerds since the fall of the GDR.

Oh no, it’s fine, we’re just being softly threatened with the enabling of a Russian invasion of our eastern borders should we force Twitter to comply with our laws. No real problem here, keep posting.

I just saw this post over at Mastodon, and it seems to be a solid reminder why Victorinox deserves to be represented in this community:

A few weeks ago, I sent my 1985 Swiss Army Knife back to Victorinox for a broken blade replacement.

It came back today, fully repaired, cleaned, polished, lubricated and in a new box.

Total cost: £10 + return postage.

They sent the knife back with an invoice. I didn’t have to pay a penny before the job was done.

A product that’s been out of production for almost 40 years, repaired at very little cost by the original manufacturer.

I’m stunned. Happy, impressed, grateful and stunned.

— @woodpunk@mastodon.online

I’ve only had my Swiss army knife for around half a decade, but I can confirm that they are still amazing.

It gets worse:

The pair hopes this move will help drive innovation in their respective search engines — including and especially around generative AI — as well as reducing dependence on search indexes

Spoiler alert!!

Also, really beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Christian Democratic Union, no less.

Interesting take on Christianity.

Interesting take on Democracy.

I guess we just need the party to split in order for the irony to be complete.

I mean, I totally believe people who would find the act of milking a cow to be disgusting have no business drinking milk from the supermarket. We need to reflect on where food comes from, and if that changes people’s habits that’s probably a good thing.

In part, I think legislation should play a role here. When buying milk you should be able to know what kind of conditions the cows lived under and what they were fed. I don’t think there’s anything disgusting about cow milk as such. Induatrial farming, on the other hand…

I’m not telling you to shut up. But I am telling you that you’re probably not convincing as many people as you’d wish by telling them that their culture and way of life is “gross”.

Also, some of the best plant based food is totally gross. Fermentation is life.

If everyone made an effort we’d live in a completely different world almost over night. At least as someone who cares about sustainability side of it, that’s what matters. But I appreciate that veganism consists of a bunch of different forms of arguments and motivations.

If you consider this to be the main reason not to eat cheese, you would particularly benefit from keeping it to yourself.

Thanks for not fucking up the planet any faster than you have to, and for being a better person than I am.

I’ve almost given up meat. I don’t see myself ever giving up cheese. But I appreciate you guys and what you’re (not) doing.