Rowin of Win

I’m 17 years without alcohol, 16 without “le drugs”, and 15 without smoking. I still have issues in my life and challenges to solve but wow, all of those would be harder and more numerous if I still behaved like I used to. I had a fairly short period of massive excess and had a few lucky moments of clarity which resulted in me quitting it all one after another. My partner and I have been together since just after I quit drinking and I am really glad they never had to see me being my worst self.

My biggest takeaway is it really does get easier with time. The hardest times were within a short time of quitting. The longer I sustained the more ingrained the change became and now I would be stubborn and resist any sort of backslide.

The a fanfic author drops a new chapter my partner is at least as excited as I am when a new video game drops. There is nothing cringe about fanfiction, it is creative writing just as valid as writing a new piece from scratch, just with more context built right in. If you like fanfic then maybe writing it is a good idea for you

That said, when it comes to writing, reading is the key. Read lots and lots and lots, then write whatever takes your fancy, but never stop intaking new works. All writing is some sort of remixing and that is OK, you just want to have a lot to draw from and then write a lot of bad stuff to learn how to write well.

Nebula has been quite successful as far as I can tell. A whole bunch of educational YouTubers have moved over or were part of establishing it and honestly it works well. Videos can download to your device, the quality is the same, the app is a tiny bit janky but nowhere near as bad as all the ads etc on the YouTube app, and the cost is actually reasonable and goes in a reasonable share to the creators. I strongly prefer direct access to creators like this and also like on Patreon. Direct support means there is no advertiser in between to demonetise a video or have it taken down because it is controversial. You can’t even have a WW2 documentary on YouTube but you can have actual Nazis, but on Nebula you get analysis and history without Nike or Surfshark being reticent to sponsor a video.

This reminds me of the Big Mac decision. I can’t remember where but there was a burger place that had a Big Mac burger but the name was not a copy of the McDonalds one, it was iirc because the owner’s name was Mac. Anyway, they lost the case and therefore lost copyright protection on Big Mac, so Hungry Jacks/Burger King started renaming all their burgers to something something big Mac, just to mess with them. Maybe Apple will bite of more than they can chew and end up losing protection for the Apple logo or similar things.

My hope is that federation will end up having a halfway setting, where content can come across but engagement is limited in some way. For example, you may see a post from lemmy.ml but you would only see comments from beehaw and the upvotes you give it will be calculated locally. This would allow content to be visible from everywhere but would keep the communities separated to some degree. Also having personal opt-in federation may work, just like with NSFW, you could on your account allow a particular instance to come through while someone else would not select that, leaving you with a fairly personalised experience.

I don’t know about Caddy, but if they aren’t using Varnish or similar they should consider it. A caching server can be helpful for frequently repeating fairly stable parts of websites and has a fairly significant performance benefit.

It think we have cycles because people remember things that happen in their lifetime but fail to adequately instil that knowledge in the next and subsequent generations. The wealth inequality of the 1920s was the catylist for much of the economic turmoil of the great depression and laid some of the context for the New Deal era. The strong rules for antitrust and managing monopolies were put in place to prevent a repeat and while the generations who lived through the great depression were dominant they survived. As those older generations died out and as the following generations grew in influence those protections were weakened and eventually mostly dismantled, resulting in massive changes from the 70s onwards. Those protections were eroded and wealth and income inequality grew until we reached and surpassed the levels of the 1920s.

I think the same happens for other things like the idea that Nazis are bad or must be resisted, or that religious ideologies should ve kept seperate from the government, or healthcare is something we can help each other to gain, or that workers can have power by working together. What I find hopeful is hearing discussion of all of these ideas in fairly accessible places and people do seem to be studying history in order to avoid repeating it.

I have had similar experiences here in Australia. People seem to be very distracted and stressed to the point where they have no time to consider ideas like privacy, security, and societal improvement. Maybe I am an idealist but I would hope to leave a better world for those that will follow us and allowing another rise of authoritarianism seems like it is a very bad idea.

Are there any good instances of PeerTube anyone can recommend? I have seen a few but in terms of English language content it seems very sparse.

Yeah! I noticed this too, I had it installed to follow specific creators and try out the platform and then BOOM! Nazis! I was so surprised and then realised that there were basically 2 groups there, those for the tech and those for the lack of moderation. I would love to see something more like Lemmy in terms of communities, moderation, and so on, all federated, but video is so damn heavy to serve and I just can’t imagine standard video codecs being up to the job of making it affordable.

bodyweightfitness - it was a great community, but I don’t know if it is a great fit here. The community was really supportive of people working on their form for movements and offered great critique without being mean, so that would fit, but it is very fitness focussed and I don’t know if that is a good fit.

keto/carnivore/zerocarb/ketoscience - this was a set of communities all centered around the dissemination of information on very low carb eating, low enough to ensure ketosis rather than glucosis for energy. It is interesting to look at the resources they had and what sorts of problems you could solve by searching, but without that long term backlog of other people’s problems it would be hard to start up again. Maybe also a single community rather than 4 or more, but I don’t know.

A note here about the context from near the end of the article, which is very worth reading.

“This case is a trial for the Ministry of Interior, which aims to normalise this framing for repressive purposes. During a Senate hearing that followed the violent repression of protests in Sainte-Soline [environmental protests severely repressed that happened in France in 2023], Gérald Darmanin, the French Minister of Interior, implored the legislature to change the law so that it would be possible to hack into demonstrators’ mobile phones, especially those using “Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram”: “Give us the same means for extreme violence as for terrorism”. His justification was that “there is a very strong, advanced paranoia in ultra-left circles […] who use encrypted messaging”, which can be explained by a “clandestine culture”. In an attempt to demonstrate the supposed violence of Sainte-Soline activists, he also cited the 8 December affair as an example of a “foiled attack” by the “ultra-left”, in defiance of any presumption of innocence23.”

This is not just about use of technology signalling terrorism, it is about repression of dissent from the current government. Environmental protests, protests against the changes to pensions, and really any other protests are a target. This is antidemocratic at it’s core and will be expanded unless resisted. This kind of authoritarian behaviour clearly shows the need for the very thing they are repressing, technology to maintain privacy and security for those the state disagrees with.

Isn’t the EU currently pushing to allow third party app stores on devices?

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22996248/apple-sideloading-apps-store-third-party-eu-dma-requirement

If they are pushing in that direction I wonder how that will gel with this kind of approach from France? Maybe EU law is a better place to remedy this rather than French law? Maybe an appeal after this case is settled will allow a more reasonable judge to oversee the case.

For a shockingly long moment I thought this was about Counter Strike 2.

Still, awesome, mixed use zoning, maybe we can have tram lines with grass and tunneled train lines.

I have always found it bizarre that some people find the option of a story they don’t like threatening. I mean, go to a library, there are whole sections about gardening, I have black thumbs, nothing could interest me less, but it being there doesn’t hurt me, and if I changed my mind there it is. Everyone wins in my opinion.

I am glad this trend is becoming better understood. A more diverse audience means more diverse stories being told, and while another MCU or Street Fighter is a perfectly good game to release a game targeting that more diverse audience will give more options for me. I typically play games like Risk of Rain, Skyrim, Creeper World, and so on, but I have also lost many hours to Viva Piñata, so I would love to see some more diversity in the games on offer.