For those out of the loop, 0.19 brings nice features to Lemmy World like:

• Unbroken ampersands (&) in titles.
• Improved 2-factor authentication, which will disable it for those using it, so you'll want to reenable it after the upgrade. I think in turn this may sign people out, so be sure you still have your login info around, and if things are acting kinda odd, maybe clear your cache.
• Scaled sorting to help surface less active communities.
• Instance blocking via user settings, so if there's an instance you don't enjoy seeing communities from, you can block them. This does not block all users from said instance.
• Import/export account settings, which includes your bio & various settings like show/hide bot accounts/NSFW content, default sort settings, etc., subbed communities, saved posts/comments, and blocked users/communities/instances.

Get a mirror that doubles as a sort of magnifier to view the area around your nose closely & carefully. You're looking for seams around the nose with which to gain leverage to gently pry off the nose to get better access to the nostrils within & beneath. Once the nose has been popped off your face, you can rinse both it and the exposed nostrils out with some warm water, which should get rid of the dry, compacted mucus.

You may want to take a soft, thin brush while you're at this for a more thorough clean. Once both the removed nose and exposed nostrils are cleared to your satisfaction, realign your nose with the seams you found at the start and gently squeeze & press your nose to reconnect it with your face. A light splash of warm water and scrub should help reseal the nose to your face and make the seams less noticeable.

Hope this helps!

Original article: https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-whats-happening-gaza-is-not-genocide-2024-05-20/

It's pretty clear to me Biden's trying to thread the needle on this in a gruesome way. The argument seems to follow the form of: civilian deaths are collateral damage, this is unfortunate but this is war and they are not purposely being targeted and so this is not genocide.

However that almost willfully ignores the denial and blocking of aid to the same affected civilians, which is a deliberate action that despite the cover story being to prevent it reaching Hamas, falls entirely flat as regardless, it results in direct suffering and death of the civilians. I say almost because some small efforts have been made to push back against the denial of aid, but as is evident to anyone monitoring the situation, these efforts are all far too small to address the widespread suffering and death of the Gazan people.

This whole semantics game around genocide is simply disgusting. You know those in government know exactly what people mean when they're calling it that, they want an end to the killing and an end to the deaths of civilians, whether from military strikes or denial of aid.

[...] the group’s agenda and politics were inconsistent with Georgia’s conservative values.

In other words, supporting open access to a broad range of varied information is against their conservative values. Not that that's news to anyone following conservative behaviors, but it must be emphasized for those that don't.

Alongside that, undercutting a source of funds may not be banning books, but it absolutely reduces the operational capacities of libraries that were benefiting from them, in effect removing a range of books the libraries might otherwise provide.

Piracy isn't piracy when it's no longer sold.

I understand the sentiment, but as others have noted in similar threads...Threads like this tend to become a part of the mess being criticized.

To counteract this trend, posting just about anything else would go towards addressing the expressed criticism.

Thanks for added background! I haven't been monitoring this area very closely so wasn't aware, but I'd have thought a publication that has been would then be more skeptical and at least mention some of this, particularly highlighting disputes over the efficacy of the Glaze software. Not to mention the others they talked to for the article.

Figures that in a space rife with grifters you'd have ones for each side.

This headline and article are begging to be in c/NotTheOnion, yeah.

Screams:
My Christian nationalist flag has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my flag.

This service going down and me recently deciding to try to check in on whether some people I used to follow on Twitter had migrated elsewhere made me realize how much Twitter's basically isolated itself from the open web.

A part of me hopes this serves as a wake-up call for those that were still hovering between using Twitter and weaning off it using services like this, to reach out to those they follow and let them know, "Hey, if you think you're still posting publicly...You're not, only other people here can see this." For many people that may not matter, but for creators/influencers? I dunno, maybe network effect is enough that they feel the large audience there is plenty, but I'd think they might want as broad of a reach as possible, and a popular but limited view platform isn't necessarily that.

Much more importantly though are any government/critical services. They really need to be brought up to date, if they haven't been already, that the platform is no longer as publicly accessible as it may have once been. Also the same applies not just for Twitter but Facebook and the like as well, but that's another topic.

The trails or the things leaving the trails? In either case I think they may be aircraft contrails, but I'm not sure going off the image alone.

And in this case, it's about controlling everyone else's children, despite what they claim, by trying to force schools' curriculums to only cover/include what they accept.

Since it appears there's precedent for this falling apart, hopefully Cleveland's government will have done their research and be prepared, albeit I'm not necessarily optimistic either.

For the moment, a lot of the fun on some of the federated platforms is behind several steps of effort that many of the corporate platforms have streamlined people out of being accustomed to taking, which is part of why they've kept their larger audiences. If a single click/tap is too much, that's enough to keep some people away from here.

It's not a matter of laziness either, it's more of, how much effort do I want to put into something that I'm using for casual entertainment? For many people it's minimal, but many federated platforms currently don't really work like that. They've arguably thrown the baby out with the bathwater in an overcorrection away from commercial algorithmic feeds since existing platforms have conditioned people to not have to put effort into finding silly/fun content.

The types of people to post won't be as inclined to post if they find their posts aren't reaching people because people mostly have to actively seek them out to engage with them at all. The types of people to more passively engage won't be able to as easily as those posts they might engage with may never reach them because they mostly have to actively seek them out. The end result of a lack of feedback and content for both types of people, despite there being a possibility and existence of both for them, results in this recurring sense of dissatisfaction.

Note that this is written largely with Mastodon in mind, and to a lesser degree Lemmy. In Lemmy/Kbin/Mbin/PieFed/Sublinks's cases I think they're potentially better off in terms of structure and offering different ways to sort one's feeds, but it's a matter of more people joining to round out communities and discussion more.

use poor messaging

Speaking of, isn't the U.S. now charging for them/requiring insurance? Add that to the mix and of course fewer will get it.

Unfortunately I remember during people moving from Reddit to Lemmy, several people on Mastodon trying to warn others away from doing so due to its lacking moderation tools, and some mainly focusing on the developers, both of which have proven to hold true in various ways.

However, at the time, there really weren't all that many federated alternatives developed enough to go to. If memory serves Kbin was kinda scrambled out to meet the moment, and it's been struggling along since then with its own issues. Aside from those, there were a couple centralized options with Tildes and Postmill being open source, but some were understandably wary of moving to yet another site with a centralized structure (and one of those closed source alternatives people did try out didn't last long).

Now it's kind of interesting as we see another open source centralized option developing (Discuit), Sublinks as you mention in your post, and also Piefed. It's unfortunate that first there seems to have needed to be this rough proof of concept stage before more options appeared, but with any luck they may pave the way to better, more robust sites, and maybe give Lemmy some incentive to improve itself.

In case anyone else doesn't keep track of Android versions by the fun nicknames, here's a Wikipedia page for the versions with numbers included. KitKat was version 4.4 of Android.

Honestly couldn't remember which numbered version this was & couldn't imagine I was alone in that, lol

I don't know if I could keep that vow.

from the comments as of time of writing, whosoever reads this now must adopt the name: motorcycle rule socialist

I agree with others saying copse, as being my first thought as well, but I'm really commenting to say I love the imagery the description, "a gathering of trees" produces.

Ima guess that Meta’s support and brand recognition dwarfs Mastodon’s, not re-assuring and rather self absorbed imo.

Yeaaah, when I read this I was just like, "Have you been outside of Mastodon lately? The brand's not so great to those folks that have heard of it in context." Nearly every time I've seen Mastodon come up outside of Mastodon, it's to complain about it being confusing or only used by tech nerds and there's nobody worth following there.

And I personally like Mastodon, but there's no denying the brand's not reputable to many folks, and it's probably still relatively unfamiliar/unknown to a majority of folks that don't closely follow social media stuff.

15 surprised pikachu faces

ftfy

Will this be Duke Nukem Forever-Space Edition?

Fair, albeit I think many outside of the field are inclined to bundle the two together given how closely they coordinate. Plus it's a shower thought post, so not meant to appear too well thought out.

I mostly avoided it so my memory may be off here, but weren't there still a fair number of folks that posted to MySpace using parts of their real name and, imo slightly worse (in terms of privacy), using photos of themselves as profile pics? Real names are one thing but photos of yourself are just a dead giveaway.

But compare with GOG then. They sell games, you download them with no DRM so you own the download essentially.

This is the model digital media should take, frankly. Anything less may as well be misleading marketing, as far as I'm concerned.

What kind of person is an MS Paint power user.

Some older folks that aren't as tech savvy have made some impressive pieces with it if memory serves. There's also those that use it unironically for its constraints to produce pieces with a classic MS Paint style produced from those limitations. In a way this update kind of flies in the face of that a little, maybe, but eh.

Rage engagement...That's a good way to describe it...Now what if we combine the words...Enragement!

Remember if you do:
Don't get caught up in the technical details, those aren't what matter to many people. Obvious exceptions if they express interest in hosting a server.

Don't talk in the jargon of fediverse this, federated that, those mean nothing to outsiders. Unless they ask for further details, but even then, use more familiar terms like saying it's a website connected to other sites or whatever might help bridge understanding.

Do point them to whichever instance you're on, or seems relevant to whatever interests they may have mentioned, to join. One of the big problems people mention is figuring out which site/instance to join and how to navigate around here, take this opportunity to help them cut through that.

Ask them which subreddits/accounts they've joined or like to follow where they are as relates to the platform they're trying to move from (i.e. Reddit/Twitter/etc.), and try to help point them to either their equivalents or similar that may be found around here.

Sorry, I think I may have timeslipped, I take it this isn't the stream of advanced face prostheses, my bad!

No, just the best style sorting method. Maybe it would be a useful addition to the options?

Why don't we call pants longs instead, given shorts?

This is pretty telling of the commission imo:

After about an hour of public comment Tuesday, the commission voted 5-1-1 in favor of the motion. Commission Chair Peggy Taylor abstained, and Commissioner Brian Rossmann, the only active librarian on the commission, cast the one opposing vote.

Some library commissions are just so bizarre in their composition, and it sounds like this one is no different. Sometimes the committee is made up of folks with next to no background in library work, or if they do it's woefully out of date, and they can prove more of an obstacle to library operations & organization (as here) than of much benefit.

pescatarian detected 😂

When other’s, be it corporations or people start to decide which information a person can and cannot access, is a damn slippery slope we better level out before AI starts to roll out en masse.

You highlight the bigger issue here than AI alone tbh. This is why another critical element is becoming literate and teaching each other methods of independent research, using multiple sources to develop an understanding, and not relying on any singular source, especially without careful review.

All the technology in the world can't help a person learn and understand, who hasn't yet learned how to learn, much less understand.

did you know people born on leap years only emerge and exist on leap years?

...I'm concerned they may not recognize that the microSD slot is at least one of the nice selling points of their phones. With so many other phones tossing out microSD cards and headphone jacks, what beyond the price point remains to set them apart?

I guess there's the gesture controls for quick camera or flashlight use, but the former is undercut by these being budget phones with mediocre to poor cameras. Also with the devices being larger it makes the gesture controls feel a little more unwieldy compared to when you were using them on smaller phones.

It's a bummer, as I've otherwise appreciated their phones as cheaper, close to vanilla Android options.

What would be really great is if companies could calibrate their reward structures based on what's going to make players happy to log on, rather than trying to trap them into racking up the maximum amount of time in-game.

I haven't played video games in awhile, so I don't think I'm burnt out on them, which may make this a matter of differing mentality...But might it not also help to reevaluate whether a game should rely on a reward system/structure to entertain people to begin with?

It seems like these reward system designs are largely unsustainable without constant upkeep, in some part given that the rest of a game built around them often lacks sufficiently entertaining gameplay systems independent of them.

I don't really mind seeing this cycle wind down, however it does raise a question that's existed even at the height of these centralized platforms...What the hell do we use to chat with individuals online? Discord might work okay in small groups, but it's still a single company-owned platform, so those free servers aren't going to last and you'll lose that space eventually. The only big name alternatives that come to mind for decent cross-platform carrier independent chat are either owned by Meta/Facebook (Messenger/WhatsApp), or are Snapchat or Telegram.

Meta's problems are obvious to those that follow tech.

Snapchat's in a weird limbo so far as I'm aware, where it's no longer as popular as it once was, as younger demographics I think are skewing to TikTok now, and I don't know that it ever really saw wider or consistent adoption outside of those demographics. Beyond that Snapchat is just another single company desperately trying to monetize their platform as much as the rest.

Telegram's probably the most viable competitor to WhatsApp if I'm not mistaken, but the head of it & group behind it are as questionable as Meta/Facebook, at least imo.

I guess the real alternatives might be to try to set up and host one's own IRC/XMPP/Matrix servers, but...That seems impractical for small group chats, no? Or maybe it's not as costly nor cumbersome to spin up & maintain as someone not too familiar with it might think? 🤷

Edit: As to email as another option for individual comms, uhh, well all I know is that's probably the one thing you'll frequently see many self-hosting folks recommend against trying to host yourself due to major email providers by & large blocking random small self-hosted email servers.

Because bluesky and threads started with corporate interests and Mastodon has serious privacy concerns due to the amount of data that instance owners have access to.

Don't Bluesky and Threads have similar serious privacy concerns? Those running them would, I think, have similar if not even more access to people's information, depending on how much their respective apps request. Mastodon and its apps on the other hand, generally don't request as much access to one's information, meaning instance owners arguably have much less to snoop through.

Friendly heads-up @CaptObvious@lemmy.world, this community (Lemmyworld) is starting to be moderated to be more about this server in particular as it notes in the sidebar.

Threads like this are probably better suited to the newly formed Reddit news community or General community.