As a user of both Mastodon and Lemmy, I think there are inherit differences between the formats that make Lemmy easily a capable replacement for Reddit, but Mastodon not at all a replacement for Twitter.

To get into specifics, Lemmy is more meme and news based, and as long as there are a few thousand users using it and some percentage of those posting content…it largely scratches the same itch.

Twitter was very much an active global conversation forum. It was nicknamed the hell site for a reason because if someone took issue with or was very amused by something you posted and you became “the main character” of Twitter for even an instant (something I experienced only very slightly) it was electrifying and even sort of scary at times.

In addition, the people that were active on there were very active, and it felt at times like you could talk to anyone who had been twitterized…which was a lot of people including prominent politicians, celebrities, and even experts of certain fields.

It was just an entirely different thing altogether. Mastodon is like many of the Twitter alternatives that have popped up from time to time. It’s largely kinda the same with regards to functionality (though not having quote tweets is completely ridiculous IMO) but the engagement of it is very low, and the place largely feels very inactive. It feels like you’re talking to dead feeds posted in syndication and there’s nobody on the other end (and in many cases I don’t doubt that is literally the case).

It’s not the same as Twitter, and I doubt that Bluesky will even be the same as Twitter. Honestly, maybe all of that’s a good thing. But the virality and the engagement and the discovery and everything on Mastodon is way turned down versus Twitter. Twitter was like the crack cocaine of social media…fast, cheap, addictive, and terrible for you. Mastodon is like a cup of tea by comparison.

If Pangaea was administered by Americans they’d be all like “yeah but it’s just too big for trains!”.

She is last seen surrounded by dementors

Hey, just like in real life.

I feel like I was in the minority that saw that for the first time in the movies and was like…dude how fucking outright antisemitic can you be in a children’s movie?

Do you find food valuable? Clothing? Shelter?

Some things are valuable because we’re frail creatures who need stuff in order to survive. I don’t believe in gatekeeping those vital things behind a monopolistic mega-corporation but my country sure as hell does. The monopolistic mega-corporations that provide human necessities become inherently valuable by proxy.

You could still rotate your phone if you wanted to, it just wouldn’t be necessary anymore.

Are you asking if collecting taxes in the currency is the “necessary but not sufficient” condition for a currency to have value? Sure.

The second thing I wrote about (military consequences) is another thing altogether. Obviously, things are slightly more complicated in modern economies and with global capitalism so they aren’t the only factors that matter, but they’re important. In addition, prior to Trump part two, there was also the dominance over global capitalism using soft power, but I think we’ve begun the process of “uncentering” ourselves in that system.

Expectation of stock value, sure, but also inherently valuable in that the services or products they provide are things that people value. For instance, a utility company that owns electrical plants and produces electricity and distributes it provides an inherently valuable service. Who pays for that is a separate concern, as is the stock price, but the service itself is valuable.

Money is an emotional thing. Do I believe that this coin / bit of paper / number on a website is something that I can exchange for goods and services? If not enough people believe that, that currency will collapse.

That’s not true at all. You know most of the reason why your currency works? It’s not based on tinker bell. It’s based upon the fact that the government collects taxes from you in it. It’s also based upon the fact that other countries will accept it as repayment of debt or face military consequences.

Now, stock prices are mostly irrational – though some companies do actually produce valuable goods and services and own infrastructure – I’ll grant you that. But belief has very little to do with USD being more than green-tinted paper.

100% totally is.

He’s a huge buy, borrow, die financial strategy guy.

I think you’re right that it’s related to it being a rectangle and without changing the sensor shape it’d be basically a crop in software.

The cameras are round though so it’s only the capture hardware that would need to be fixed. The “megapixel” of the camera constantly increases as well so dropping some of it in a crop may not even matter much in the long run.

It wouldn’t. It would just switch the orientation of the camera. The preview/what you’re looking at would remain in portrait mode.

It’s literally a software problem. You don’t use a different camera when you go into landscape mode, you’re just using a different aspect ratio.

So again, why don’t we have this?

What would Katy Perry going to space even inspire girls to do? Get popular writing queer-bait songs and release mediocre pop albums? Become a dark horse? Look at that girls, if you can write mid-tier songs and wear skimpy outfits you too someday can become a passenger on a billionaire’s cock rocket!

I feel like most social media is the online version of this.

My family is so full of wankery about being Irish and I fucking hate it. If you can’t move back to Ireland and regain citizenship based upon ancestry you aren’t fucking Irish.

I think it’s a way for people to separate themselves from any last shred of responsibility for the country they reside in. They really are simply pieces of American shit just like me.

The desire to disassociate is strong among Americans.

Yes, I use it to generate my glue sandwich recipes daily.

Agreed!

“Just a joke” is the last bastion of cowards. Own your crappy opinions. You clearly think these things are something more than they are.

You a fan of Trump too? Do you just pick things to like based on how much they suck?

I remember when ads were considered a bad way to create a business model for a website. Now everyone just tries to stuff more ads into everything like they were doing with cheese in pizzas in the 90s.