PhilipTheBucket

Have some logos. We can say they are CC-BY licensed if you want to use one.

They might, but I think that China's type of deception is different than most democratic governments'. They would be more likely to simply pretend the story hadn't happened, because it doesn't fit their narrative and goals. See how long it takes you to find the story on SCMP. It took me quite a while.

China's deception on Taiwan is trying to find ways of doing less aggression so as not to provoke a costly conflict with the US, while presenting a posture that they are being extremely aggressive and the US is scared of them. Wanting to fight an unpopular war, and finding an acceptable reason to seize on to actualize it, is much more in line with the US's normal behavior than it is with China's. China's situation with Taiwan, at least so far, has been largely the opposite.

I think they're leaving regardless. I think giving them $115 is only to provide fuel for loyal apparatchiks to argue that he cares on any level what happens to them.

Now multiply it across all of healthcare, all of teaching, civil engineering, and everything else about society.

The only reason America functions at all is because people care enough to do a good job even though the bankers are trying to make it more difficult for them at every turn, and then keeping all the money they created when people make it work anyway.

Deputy First Minister for Northern Ireland, Emma Little-Pengelly.

I completely agree. Maybe my phrasing was careless. I wasn't trying to be critical of the pace of accepting PRs or anything. I only meant that I think more flexibility in the frontend would help, instead of needing any minor UI change to go all the way through a cycle all the way up to you, incorporating it into the core codebase, and then filtering back down to an upgrade by the instance admin. But please don't take it as blaming you for any of that situation. I was raising it in the effort to propose a solution and also to advocate against people just complaining about the moderation tools and then moving on, and waiting for you to make them happy.

I did look at the backend plugin system PR, although sadly not enough yet to have any opinion or feedback on it. I do think a frontend plugin system, of sorts, could help a lot. I'm not sure when I will have time but I will try to put together something on this instance to show what I'm talking about, and if I do wind up doing it and it's well received, I am completely open to putting it together as a fixed-up and official PR for the main codebase.

St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

Content warning, imperialism.

I didn't write this. G.K. Chesterton did.

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.

That is fair. Might be worthwhile talking to instance admins and core devs about how best to make use of it? Putting it behind some admin approval or administration might be the best way.

That's a good idea. And then, if it turns into a mess of botspam, it's not my fault.

This is a very good idea. Slashdot hit on something very good with their scoring and moderation system, and then the lessons were forgotten in the systems that came after Slashdot.

There are so many small tweaks like this tagging idea that would improve things, that I think the way to do it is a frontend "plugin" system that can accommodate them without it being a big fandango of tweaking the core to include fifty of these little nubbins all over the codebase.

Nothing that's ordained from on high will ever be completely perfect. If you can have a little text box on your custom frontend, where you can tweak your own UI features, and then talk with the instance admin about importing one of those little tweak plugins for the whole site, or for your own community only, that sounds like a huge step forward to me. If you've ever added little tweaks to Wordpress, with the custom CSS boxes or by adding a few lines to functions.php, I envision this being similar.

This is all much more ambitious than I was thinking of when I asked this original question, but it would be a lot of fun to work on. If the result was it going back up into Lemmy, and each instance having its own collection of tweaks and a thriving community of people working on them without needing to disrupt the pace of development on the core, that would be a pretty excellent outcome.

I want to have artistic and photographic content and make the interface less GTK-like, especially on mobile, to try to make it acceptable to the normal people. I am techie so I think it will always have a significant tech vibe, but yes. If it had about 80% fewer people talking about Linux and US politics, I think that would represent a big improvement in the experience.

It’s not absolutely safe against bots and sockpuppets, but it surely makes it more expensive than even a $10/account membership.

I think, sadly, that either sending in your national ID or paying $10 would be unacceptable to so many people that it would make it a lonesome failure of an experiment. I'm on your side about the idea, but I think people would just take the path of least resistance and create their sockpuppets on some other instance, and your main accomplishment would be driving away legitimate users.

PIxelfed is still just supporting ActivityPub. I’m talking about multi-protocol communication. A smart client should be able to let you communicate with Lemmy communities, subreddits, Facebook groups and all types of different platforms from a single unified interface. There are plenty of people that think this is something undesirable (like everyone that wants instances to block Threads), but I’d argue that building these integrations with closed platforms would eventually destroy them because they would lose the monopoly on network effects.

I get it. Aren't there projects that are working on that? Friendica and Emissary? Adding integrations with closed-source networks to those isn't too hard. At that point, it's not its own web app anymore, though, more akin to an email program. It's a good idea but it's different than what I had in mind. You will also have to deal with API limits or terms of service and legal issues, once you start looping in the closed-source networks.

No, but you could have a web server that responds to multiple domains. Ideally, the server listening and responding to the AP requests should be able to work with multiple “virtual servers”, instead of having to have only one instance == one domain that we today. AFAIK, only Takahe does this for microblogging.

Yes, that part's not overly hard. I'm already doing virtual servers for ponder.cat and rss.ponder.cat, to run them both on the same VPS, and I'll probably add more virtual servers for development of frontend tweaks if I keep going with Lemmy. Some of the ideas I had in mind for hackable frontends involved wildcard virtual servers to serve people custom "instance" sites off a subdomain that's different from the actual actor ID instance name.

What I'm saying is that if someone's actor ID from the POV of the rest of the Fediverse is still https://ponder.cat/u/rglullis, and ponder.cat goes down, nothing that either ponder.cat or any new instance can do, can "catch" requests that are being directed to that actor ID. You have to make the actor ID either https://rglullis.com/u/rglullis or https://rglullis.sometrustedthirdparty.com/u/rglullis from the beginning, and arrange for ponder.cat to be handling any traffic for those domains, so that you can switch away from the ponder.cat instance later on if you want to.

Of course, you can tell people that they can either have a ponder.cat user, or a rglullis.com user if they want to buy their own domain for their user, and they can have an actor that will be transferrable from ponder.cat to any other Lemmy server that supports the feature. It wouldn't work with current Lemmy, but in theory it could be made to work, if someone were willing to make the right Lemmy changes. It would be tough but it might be worth it.

Overall I think it might be better to address the same issue at the protocol level as some other federated social media networks do, so you're not introducing crazy new requirements on both the server and user experience side in order for people to be able to transfer their users later.