I post on mastodon and bridge to bluesky. That way I can reach anyone there interested in following me, but I personally don’t have to bother with the site at all.

As someone trying to reach an audience, it’s pretty much perfect. Each to their own obviously.

Thanks, very insightful!

Maybe elaborate?

Yeah, this is what I was referring to by historically weak. Parts of it anyway.

I can’t believe you can still get away with being a Russlandversteher in contemporary German politics. Then again, there’s a lot of things I struggle to believe about contemporary German politics…

The timeline here looks pathetic. Trump wins the election and suddenly we’re all interested in hearing what Putin has to say.

Maybe something good can come out of it. But my god does it look pathetic.

A historically weak Chansellor reaching out to a Russian despot who knows perfectly well his only real threat is being stabbed in the back by one of his own. Scholz has no bargaining power over Putin whatsoever.

Vitamin D supplements. You’re not gonna get much sunlight, and you need vitamin D not to get depressed.

The locals are used to seasonal depression. Foreigners tend to have a hard time with it.

Layers are key. Noting beats real wool.

Use mittens, not gloves. Gloves suck.

You cannot interact with microblog folks on Lemmy, unless they actively post something in a Lemmy community by tagging it. So if you want to combine microblogging with threaded discussions Mbin is the only platform that does both. Mbin lists followers publicly.

I think there are Mastodon forks (or configurations) that hide followers from the public though. But it will only ever be half hidden.

It’s useful.

Let’s say you see someone who posts stuff you’re interested in. In a brief moment of absolute brilliance, you think to yourself “aha! Maybe this person follows other people whose content I would be interested in!”

So you check, and sure enough, there’s a bunch of interesting people listed. So you follow them as well. Your social graph grows, you have a better time there, the people you follow get better reach and gets to enjoy pleasant interactions with you. Everybody’s happy.

These social media platforms are designed to be public. If you want to do stuff in secret, do it somewhere else.

That’s fantastic.

It seems clear the English speaking web has a preference for Bluesky. It would be interesting to know how much variation there is between users of other European languages. It seems to me the Germans are pretty active in the Fediverse, which makes sense considering a significant portion of them have been huge privacy nerds since the fall of the GDR.

It gets worse:

The pair hopes this move will help drive innovation in their respective search engines — including and especially around generative AI — as well as reducing dependence on search indexes

Christian Democratic Union, no less.

Interesting take on Christianity.

Interesting take on Democracy.

I guess we just need the party to split in order for the irony to be complete.

I mean, I totally believe people who would find the act of milking a cow to be disgusting have no business drinking milk from the supermarket. We need to reflect on where food comes from, and if that changes people’s habits that’s probably a good thing.

In part, I think legislation should play a role here. When buying milk you should be able to know what kind of conditions the cows lived under and what they were fed. I don’t think there’s anything disgusting about cow milk as such. Induatrial farming, on the other hand…

I’m not telling you to shut up. But I am telling you that you’re probably not convincing as many people as you’d wish by telling them that their culture and way of life is “gross”.

Also, some of the best plant based food is totally gross. Fermentation is life.

If everyone made an effort we’d live in a completely different world almost over night. At least as someone who cares about sustainability side of it, that’s what matters. But I appreciate that veganism consists of a bunch of different forms of arguments and motivations.

If you consider this to be the main reason not to eat cheese, you would particularly benefit from keeping it to yourself.

Thanks for not fucking up the planet any faster than you have to, and for being a better person than I am.

I’ve almost given up meat. I don’t see myself ever giving up cheese. But I appreciate you guys and what you’re (not) doing.

Absolutely. If America was ever great, the greatness existed in the work and legacy of FDR. Saying that he was one of the greats feels like selling him short.

Even worse, he’s a bad businessman. The kind you would not do business with unless you are trying to suck up to him for one reason or another. He famously does not honour his contracts.

So it’s not even transactional in a functional sense. He’s just a conman.

The baffling thing is how the hell did we end up relying so much on the US in the first place.

The last time the US was great was FDR, and even he had to fight like hell against America First in order to stand up against the nazis. Other than that there has been brief moments of impressive presidents, but they have always been up against a nation that seems infantile at best. JFKs greatest accomplishment - arguably second to Marilyn Monroe - was that he managed to keep his own secret service from getting a nuclear war started. Which is great, but it’s great in spite of America.

I think I have over-estimated America on account of having my formative years during the Obama presidency. He seemed like the leader of the free world. But that was a brief exception in a historical perspective.

Now that we have come to.A point that it’s obvious we cannot depend on America, I am only left with one question: How did we ever come to think that we could?

Yeah, for sure it depends on the situation. But for military cooperation I think it might be good not to be too trigger happy.

No doubt for other things we need to be able to decide things without Hungary.