Corporations: get your booty back into the office so it’s not empty
Also corporations: we’ve laid off your team in favor of AI, it was a tough but necessary choice due to costs
The empty office building: ???

I think I can get behind a few more days of this if it sears into any other rich, incompetent asshole’s brain out there a fear that their legacy will be as a laughingstock, not a genius engineering disruptor, if they ignore safety regulations.

Fuck /u/spez, and more importantly, welcome to everyone coming in today. It’s been amazing watching the growth of kbin, and I’m super thankful for the developers who have kept me connected to my communities - first Christian, now Ernest. I’ve never been in on the ground floor of anything and this has been absolutely wild.

Kinda mad I didn’t grab a short handle while I could, but I wasn’t thinking and just used the same as I had on Reddit. sigh

So I noticed there was a mention of accessibility certifications in here - as a side topic, does anyone know of a trustworthy / reliable certification I could look into getting? I know about the WCAG guidelines and some basics, but I would love to get some more formalized training so that I know I’m doing the best possible job when designing or writing code, and can pass that knowledge on to others in my team.

The part I’m really blown away by is that I just saw this final project in the intro to design class I teach from a group of international students earlier this spring. The project was to create a logo design and brand guidelines as a small team. The students can pick the business and whether it’s new or a rebrand, and this group went with social media all-in-one apps and made the justification that they are hugely popular in China, but nothing like that exists in the US. My favorite part is that the letter X was a HUGE part of the logo/branding, but they did not name it just “X” specifically for the reasons you listed - it’s not discoverable or unique in searches, the App Store, etc.

I feel like I’m being punk’d

Yes, absolutely. It affirms that I’m not alone in my frustration and sadness. I like songs that have an upbeat or energetic feel alongside the dark lyrics though, it helps get me boppin’.

@christianselig Thank you for an amazing answer to the Reddit app from a former AlienBlue user. It was difficult to lose AlienBlue and the sting is familiar with Apollo. I used your app near exclusively on an iPad and adored it, so I can’t imagine what you must have had cooked up behind the scenes. I’m excited to follow your next chapter from my new home on kbin. :)

Deleted my account of 11 years just now as well after verifying PowerDeleteSuite didn’t miss anything the past few days. I thought this would be my hardest non-federated social media account to delete, since it was the last one standing and the one I used most. After what I’ve seen this month, it’s an easy delete. My time there is done.

Didn’t know I could be more upset about this argument but this rule really takes the cake sandwich. Though for this specific instance, I agree it’s a calzone.

I actually really appreciate this as a kbin user, especially with regards to Beehaw because I know their goal is to specifically promote a friendly, safe community. It’s like visiting another country - I don’t get mad at newspapers with headlines directed at Brits if I’m a visiting American. With how easy it is to “travel” to another community with different rules, these types of cues help me be a better and more respectful visitor when I’m interacting in that space.

I think it would actually be beneficial to have some sort of sign or pop up reminder that you can mark “don’t show again” that helps explain this and shows the instance’s basic rules when you join a discussion from another instance. I saw a debate in Beehaw get kind of ugly earlier, and I was really surprised by it because I know how hard the folks at that instance work to keep the space kind and welcoming. Took a look at the usernames, and it turns out it was two kbin.social users name calling and arguing with each other in a Beehaw space without thinking. Totally rude, but I can see how you might not know that if you’re a new user and you’re just walking in with the expectation that all instances have the same norms, and it’s not even necessarily easy or clear at a glance what community a link in your feed came from unless you’re thinking to look for it.

It is! Magazines are a feature in kbin, and Lemmy calls this sort of thing a Community. You’re seeing the kbin terminology here because this thread started on kbin.social. If you pay attention to URLs, that’s also why it’s /c/subredditname on Lemmy and /m/subredditname on kbin.

The other major difference with kbin magazines is that you can configure them to pick up content from Mastodon using a hashtag, and it will show it in threaded format in a separate area of the magazine that’s easy to get to. It’s great for news, giving people an outlet for self-promotion without cluttering discussion, or helping get a magazine started if the topic is popular.

Love: weapon durability so long as it’s paired with weapon building and leveling systems. I like that I can’t ever take a weapon for granted and that I can’t hack and slash without thinking. I have Dark Cloud in mind as I’m writing this - it was easily my favorite weapons system I’ve ever played, and it always kept me on my toes. It’s a kind of stress I appreciate because I have some measure of control over it as long as I plan and slow down a little.

Hate: timed anything. Way too much pressure, and it pushes me back towards going faster and not thinking so I can beat the timer, which I don’t like. I especially hate it because I primarily play turn-based JRPGs to get away from having to worry about timing and to be able to play at my own pace. If I wanted to do time-sensitive stuff, I’d play an action game.

I’m on kbin too. If you’re ever wondering where someone is commenting from, you can tap their username and their profile will show the instance name. If you’re ever wondering what platform the comments are hosted on, the sidebar (where it says magazine) is the easiest way to see that. I pay attention to that because I know some instances have different moderation rules - for example, Beehaw (which uses Lemmy) is a community that tries to create a safe and productive discussion environment, so I try to be mindful of my actions there to help make sure I’m not interfering when I visit. :) I like to think of it like traveling from my home country to other countries. Norms and customs might different, but we all have some commonalities in how we’re built and communicate at the end of the day.

Lemmy and kbin are just different types of software for communicating, kind of like how you can use an Outlook account or a Gmail account for email. They use the same protocols, but have different interfaces and features. Personally, I like kbin. But either is just fine. Technically, you could even use Mastodon to read this, though that would kind of be like using a terminal for email. It’s possible (I’m sure), it’s just not fine tuned for this type of content or use case.

You’ll get the hang of it quickly. Welcome, be nice, and have fun!

Regarding the nightclub … the easiest way I’ve found to sort my feelings out on this was to imagine how hard I’d cringe if this skit was in my corporate-sponsored sexual harassment training. The answer is something around the level of crawl-in-a-hole-and-die rather than endure this skit, and I’m pretty sure “Director So and So is planning a company party and suggested a strip club. How would you respond?” was an actual scenario in one of the many I’ve had to sit through.

I can’t believe anyone is still using and even defending that word as a slur in 2023. It’s been over a decade since the push to remove references to it in federal law and honestly, even 20 years ago I felt seriously uncomfortable with any use of that word in an offhand or derogatory manner, and I didn’t even know about neurodivergence then.

I feel like the culture around usernames on Reddit really enables this kind of behavior, like it’s a game to be as offensive or lewd as possible for some folks there without “technically” breaking the rules. I deleted my account back when the Apollo drama happened and I definitely don’t miss that aspect of the culture. I’m sorry you encountered resistance to bringing this up, because you are right - it is not okay and it hasn’t been okay for years. I suspect a lot of the “just get over it” is folks who wrongly feel like there is no other option but to tolerate this culture in exchange for the ability to communicate and find support online, since the power you have as a user there is pretty much limited to “I’m leaving”.

Yeah, I’m really tired of reading this line in every news article about Twitter I read. They should have quietly disabled that auto reply months ago so the line would become “Twitter did not respond for comment” like every other company with bad press. That’s going to look terrible to a judge.

Defederation opinions aside, free speech should be protected from a legal standpoint, and the ACLU is all about that. I’m glad you pointed this out, sorry about the downvotes - free speech is an important legal right.

To add my perspective - in terms of defederation, I’d say that is an example of a healthy boundary, which needs to be respected as well. If folks collectively want to create a personal boundary that they don’t want to discuss antivax theory in their space, that’s also cool. We set up boundaries like this all the time as communities - churches are a good example. Sure, you can legally swear in church, but the community set a boundary that they don’t want that there, and they might punt you out of the community if you disrespect it. One of the nice things about the Fediverse is that free speech is “legal”, as is you can use the software freely for whatever you want to say or discuss because of the open source license, but there are also tools like defederation to create reasonable boundaries among communities.

I hope more folks start to think of it this way as federation catches on and that this concept helps make room for nuance in discussion again. Healthy boundaries that keep you psychologically safe are good and necessary. In real life, we wouldn’t think it’s good or healthy to let someone constantly badger or berate us or talk about things we don’t want to discuss anymore. We’d say “end the conversation and walk away”. I think it’s okay to bring those boundaries to the internet too.

It can also be read as a sign of which class you’re in. I’d blend decently with middle or upper middle class folks, but my “jacked up teeth” (others’ words, not mine) are a dead giveaway about my socioeconomic background. Fortunately, it’s only really visible on the bottom ones. This is also probably part of why my parents kicked that can down the road until it was my problem.

I’d get braces, except I’m only just at the point (after thousands in repairs) of even having a healthy baseline since I didn’t have access to dental care for years. It’s separate and not included in our normal health insurance, and it’s also not required, so if you’re poor, it’s a cost that often gets delayed or cut altogether. Back when I was a kid or through my early career years when I was just trying to keep myself fed and housed, it probably would have been cheaper. Then I was just plain terrified of what the results would be if I DID go to the dentist. I’m still playing catch up and can’t even get to braces if I wanted to until I get my wisdom teeth pulled, because there just isn’t room otherwise.

Tooth problems can also become more serious health problems if they get bad enough.

Nope, and I used to do a lot of Reddit - like several times a day, and usually entire evenings just browsing. I used PowerDeleteSuite and deleted my account, and I use an RSS reader with an adblocker for the 2-3 local subs I truly can’t find the same info for elsewhere. One is a university I teach at, and the only exception I’ve made to this was to create a throwaway to answer a question about salaries and point the person who was hoping to teach to our union contract. Worker solidarity > Reddit drama.

I have a hobby of trying out new hobbies till I’ve accumulated a bunch of stuff, then losing interest and doing new hobbies!

ah, my people

Welcome! I’m also on kbin.social and have been here a few weeks, so if you’re curious or confused about anything I’m more than happy to help. It doesn’t take long to get the hang of things here, you’ll be at home in no time. :)

True! 😁

We had a wood stove hooked up to our chimney. 😬

I was wondering about this myself. If a bot presents a good argument that promotes discussion, is the presence of a bot automatically bad?

I don’t love that right now, the focus is on eliminating or silencing the voice of bots, because as you point out, they’re going to be indistinguishable from human voices soon - if they aren’t already. In the education space, we’re already dealing with plagiarism platforms incorrectly claiming real student work is written by ChatGPT. Reading a viewpoint you disagree with and immediately jumping to “bot!” only serves to create echo chambers.

I think it’s better and safer long term to educate people to think critically, assume good intent, know their boundaries online (ie, don’t argue when you can’t be coherent about it and have to devolve to name calling, etc), and focus on the content and argument of the post, not who created it - unless it’s very clear from a look at their profile that they’re arguing in bad faith or astroturfing. A shitty argument won’t hold up to scrutiny, and you don’t have the risk of silencing good conversation from a human with an opposing viewpoint. Common agreement on community rules such as “no hate speech” or limiting self-promotion/review/ads to certain spaces and times is still the best and safest way to combat this, and from there it’s a matter of mods enforcing the boundaries on content, not who they think you are.

Whoa - I’ve been reading this discussion and I went to look at what community it federated from, and I was really surprised to find it was Beehaw. I think this discussion has gotten very heated on both sides (which I understand, I’m vegan myself), but name calling doesn’t move the conversation forward. I notice you’re coming from kbin.social too - this is just a gentle reminder from a fellow kbin visitor to keep Beehaw’s community guidelines in mind as you’re visiting, and participate in debate with respect. I love the content and community here, and I would hate for our instance to be defederated from Beehaw because we’re not practicing awareness of the community we’re participating in and their guidelines.

I do handwritten notes for anything fast paced where I also have to respond in real time, because handwriting is a less mentally demanding task for me than typing. I can star, I can draw, I can make up any word I want without squiggly lines, lists are instantaneous. I do design work, and noting a design change through typing is a nightmare when I can just squiggle the layout and put an arrow, cross out, annotate, whatever. I also find I remember handwritten notes better. The notes are a incoherent, illegible, squiggly mess, and I usually know exactly what they mean at a glance.

I actually have a reMarkable and love it. I don’t really use the notes to text or cloud functionality often, but the few times I have, it’s been really helpful. I like it better than a notebook because I don’t feel like I’m wasting paper, so I take notes a bit more freely as a result. It’s also helpful in situations where it’s impractical for me to use a keyboard. For example, I teach, and when I’m grading a presentation or explaining a concept to a student who already has their own laptop in front of them, I don’t want to muck with trying to make sure they can see my screen and it’s the proper size when it’s faster for me to sketch out the concept.

I’m also trying to learn Japanese, and having a way to freely practice writing as many times as I need to without having to print over and over again is really useful.

That said, I can’t think of a reason I would ever write anything with actual grammar or sentence structure involved longform. If it’s just me and the computer, no other interruptions and I can focus on my inner voice, typing is much faster and more natural. I’m able to type closer to the speed I can think than I can write, but that’s because I’m used to typing like I think - in full sentences. Trying to type shorthand is like sludge for me the same way trying to write longhand is like sludge. I use both because they serve different purposes for me :)

Toot! for iOS. It lets you add servers you don’t have an account on, and then you can interact easily on that server with any server’s account you’re logged into. I have 2-3 accounts based on different things I’m interested in so my followers don’t get a complete mishmash from me if they don’t want to, and this setup makes it so easy for me to interact and browse as if it’s all the same account.

I deleted mine too. The time feels right. :)

Hell, I’d do it just because I like sharing information and helping others out. Plus it’s a big project with a sense of accomplishment.

Mid-30s web designer equally versed in design and frontend development, quiet in conversation but loud in spirit and fashion choices. Hobbies are whatever I need and whatever I can get my hands on - today it’s woodworking and construction due to a burst pipe, last year it was cooking and zero waste living plus grad school, with dashes of IndieWeb, gardening, hydroponics, and plenty of internet in between. I don’t work too many hours in the traditional sense, but I do keep myself constantly busy - full time job, side gig, fixing all the things. I am often asked if I sleep. The answer is yes! I love naps, I usually take at least one a day.

tldr: neon chaotic hobby napper here, nice to meet you.

I’m super jealous! I can never get my bread to look this good 😍

Exactly what I was looking for - thank you!!!

Rainbow punk is probably the best way I can think of to describe it. If it’s candy colored, glittery, or black (because black helps colors pop) I’m all over it. I recently got a pair of magnetic glasses covers that is printed to look like a slice of watermelon, and it’s my favorite because I have pink hair at the moment and between that and the deep green lipstick I have I can get an awesome watermelon look going. I’m a big fan of mixing patterns and textures as well. I love figuring out how to get a good alt look going that makes people smile. 😁

I’m trying to subscribe to gardening@thegarden.land and can’t seem to get it to show in search results, so it’s not just you.

This is amazing and right in line with how I expect the boost/upvote/downvote system to work. Thank you so much, I’ll be mindful to continue boosting the best comments and threads so people keep finding /kbin!

Whoa - I’ve been reading this discussion and I went to look at what community it federated from, and I was really surprised to find it was Beehaw. I’m sorry you are encountering this here, but I notice that it’s largely not Beehaw users who are continuing interactions that do not meaningfully engage in this conversation. I think this discussion has gotten very heated on both sides (which I understand, I’m vegan myself). I notice you’re coming from kbin.social too - this is just a gentle reminder from a fellow kbin visitor to keep Beehaw’s community guidelines in mind as you’re visiting, and participate in debate with respect. Although you make awesome points, they aren’t being heard right now, except by folks in Beehaw, since they have community guidelines that promote this type of discussion in a respectful manner. It may be better to call this off and restart the conversation in our instance, or choose to respond only to folks who are practicing respectful debate.

Please don’t take the downvotes seriously, especially in Beehaw. Beehaw has downvotes disabled, so what we’re effectively having here is a kbin conversation following kbin rules in Beehaw. If you want to engage with folks who are downvoting you, I think it’s best to do that in our instance or elsewhere to be respectful of Beehaw’s guidelines.

I love the content and community here, and I would hate for our instance to be defederated from Beehaw because we’re not practicing awareness of the community we’re participating in.

Ahhhh I have a flannel I live in when I teach, they’re so comfy and cute! (I teach design/web dev classes at a university in the evening). I’ve never heard of a football kit before but I think I got the idea from a quick search. I’m not on Matrix at the moment, I’m usually more a forum person because of my schedule 😁