PlzGivHugs

While I think he's overreacting a bit, I could absolutely see how he'd come away with that opinion. I mostly agree with him, as a broad assessment of Lemmy.

In terms of content, 90% of whats active is politics. That leaves like, 10% of the already small content pool for users who aren't interested in it. At the same time, this lack of content (and lack of users) centralizes content in just a few, broader communities.

In terms of his assessment of users, I could definately see this too - esspecially in the bigger communities he was likely pushed towards (by the lack of content). Lemmy does have an elitism problem, both on the tech side and esspecially on the politics side. Making it even worse, there's a pretty good chance he ended up on .ml or one of the worse tankie instances, or at the very least, was frequently interacting with them due to their size and activity. If he didn't immediately block the tankie instances, I'd be more suprised if he didn't come away with a negative impression.

In terms of mods, it'd depend a lot on which communities he tried to participate in, but again, I could easily see how he'd end up having this experience. Even ignoring the massive presence of totalitarian bootlickers on Lemmy, as I previously said, the lack of content causes things to centralize. In theory, you can split off to your own communities, but in practice, its nearly impossible unless a mod simultaneously pisses off the whole community at once as happened with 196. Even then, the community needs to be quite large to jump-start the competing community. Until Lemmy gets large enough to have multiple communities running in parallel or for new communities to quickly and easily grow, mods will continue to be a potential problem.

All that said, I'm still here. I think, despite its issues, Lemmy has a much stronger foundation. Unfortunately its still missing most of the rest of the structure (or rather, content) needed to compete with other platforms.

The main thing is post more. Lack of content is the main reason people don't use Lemmy more, and the only way to fix this is to share/produce more.

Its a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I think even (transparent, community-relevant) bots are a good idea at this point, given that 99% of interests have little to no activity currently. For example, if we had bots that post game update changelogs to their relevant communities, it would at least provide a baseline amount of content and make it easier to discuss for fans of those games.

So you're asking how to encourage them to avoid you? Mostly, as you implied, you don't want to suprise them. When you're in the area, try and stay in the open, and if you can, make a bit of noise like whistling or that. They'll naturally want to stay away where possible.

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the current previews. In particular, the reflections feel too extreme (esspecially off the grass) and the colour feels a bit off. That said, Mojang has been shifting towards more customizability and if this is included in that, I'm sure modders and artists will do great work with the tech.

Nothing you've said leads me to believe its a Microsoft account ban, but if it is, it'd be because of Microsoft's chat moderation - nothing to do with account or game setup. Microsoft has a chat moderation system that is enabled by default. Its possible, albiet very unlikely, he was banned due to something like saying something controversial, automated mass reports, or falsified reports.

That said, if he's a smart and friendly kid as it sounds like you're saying, its most likely a server ban - IE he got banned from the specific multiplayer server he had been playing on. In this case, you'd have to find the website for that server (if there is one) and try to appeal the ban, or just switch to another server or a single player world. I'd guess that he unintentionally damaged another player's work, and that's why he got banned. Its an easy mistake to make for an inexperienced player.

The article doesn't add anything, so here's the direct link: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-play-on-the-go-bundle

It wouldn't be an anti-cheat issue as the only anti-cheats out there are run by (unofficial) servers and are purely server-side.

That leaves either a Microsoft account issue (in which case God help you), a server specific issue such as a ban from that specific server or a server reset, or a singleplayer issue like him deleting his save, or getting lost in-game.

Halve of the scheduled trains didn't run today in Belgium.

Only half were cancelled? Man, that sounds nice.

I've got the Razer BlackShark V2. Don't know whether it's the best but the mic sounds almost like a studio mic. Never had any issues with it.

I have the wired version currently, but I need something wireless, and the wireless version is out of my budget unfortunately. $230 CAD.

Those look good, but unfortunately, at least here in Canada, they $250 - pretty far outside my budget.

Calling it now: Putin will break the ceasefire (as always) and then the US will pause aid again.

This will just be a chance for Putin to consolidate his gains and kill/remove Ukranians from captured territory.

Edit: On second thought, when Russia breaks the ceasefire, they'll probably blame it on Ukrane and have Trump impose sanctions or similar.

Tl;dr: During maintenance some coolent leaked into the containment drain. Not exactly world news.