I highly recommend reviewing this post from Gaywallet: https://beehaw.org/post/107014. Specifically, the Spirit of Beehaw and What is (and isn't) Beehaw. These sections go into what I paraphrased above at length, if you want the admin's full thoughts.

The admins have taken a stance where this should be a safe space and those being insulted/harassed/discriminated against are welcome to respond in kind. The most important part is to report it so the mods/admins can review and take action as needed.

While it may not be nice to tell nazi punks to fuck off, it will ultimately make for a nicer community if they do - we don't mind community members saying "hey, this isn't cool" in whatever manner they feel necessary.

I'm in complete agreement. When I joined Beehaw, I didn't think much of the lack of downvotes - "oh, cool, sounds good." It's definitely made it easier to want to interact with the community (as someone partial to lurking) and I've come to appreciate that they're disabled on this instance. Glad to see others are in agreement.

Oh man, MLIA and FML were staples of my internet browsing once upon a time.

I do something similar - I've subscribed to a few communities now that have popped up at the top of my feed because I thought "oh, this looks cool"

I mostly still listen to the same stuff I used to. Most of my favorite bands are still coming out with albums, so every time something new drops I get to add that into the mix. Occasionally I'll add in a new song, whether I hear it in a videogame (my husband loves videogame music, so I've added some great tracks as a result) or the radio or with a friend, but I haven't had a new artist grab me the way my favorites did once upon a time. In that way, I might just be resistant to change.

I definitely don't necessarily have the time to look for new stuff, so I usually stumble upon it. I don't agree that all music today sounds the same - at least, not anymore "the same" than what was coming out ten years ago. Sure, some things within a genre might be similar, but I don't think it's any more "same-y" now than it used to be. If you're finding new stuff you enjoy, past or present, I think that's awesome.

Might be timing then, since it loaded for me immediately - you got the request going and then it was ready when I searched.

I know the Lemmy devs have a huge load of things to focus on with the current (unexpected) influx of users, but hopefully this is something they'll work on improving somewhere down the line so it will be smoother or at least say it's still searching so you don't think it failed

I think the easiest way is to take the link for the post you want to interact with (so https://lemmy.ml/post/1181103) and put it in the search (the spyglass to the left of your username). I just tested it and this should pull up the post so you can interact with it on Beehaw.

Reminder that if you don't see anything, give it a few minutes to pull the information and then try again. Instances we haven't interacted with before can take a minute since the information needs to be pulled.

I think it's just how the different instances interact. If you click the search icon (spyglass) to the left of your name and enter "[email protected]" and click search, you should see this post and the community you're looking for. Sometimes you have to search and then wait for the beehaw instance to pull the information in order for the community to show up, so give it a few minutes and try again if you search for a different community and don't see anything.

For local, I've been using new and new comments personally. I've been browsing the way I used to browse Reddit though, which is a lot, and haven't branched out much, so that may change.

Just letting you know I appreciate your question because the answers are going to help me out, too. Many of us are learning how to use Lemmy, there are no stupid questions.

This is correct. You would need to create a community on another instance that allows anyone to do so, as only admins can create new communities on Beehaw and they aren't planning to add more at this time.

Hmm, they might be visible because you're viewing it through your instance and someone on an instance with them enabled downvoted, but I can't be sure. This would be a better question for Beehaw Support, or maybe even Lemmy support since I'm not sure we have an answer based on my current understanding.

This instance has downvotes turned off. My understanding is that since your account is from an instance that uses them, you can see and use the button, but it doesn't affect Beehaw posts. I believe the intentions are usually good for why downvotes exist, as you've mentioned, but since people will use them to disagree or otherwise spread negativity (think how vote brigading happens on reddit) it's disabled here altogether. Hope that helps!

Another suggestion is to check out some writing prompts and see if anything jumps at you. I don't write much, but when I do it's because an idea just... sticks to me. @morgiedama mentions dreams, which sometimes inspire me as well.

Unfortunately my favorite source of writing prompts is r/WritingPrompts (currently in the process of saving the ones I've marked over the years) but hopefully there are other sources around as well that might jump start the creative juices a little.

Oh man, Clank Catacombs looks right up my alley. Thanks for the suggestions, I'll have to keep these in mind the next time I add to my collection of board games.

If you can make a tool work for you, that's what matters in my opinion. If not, well, not every tool is for everyone and that's cool too.

I probably wouldn't have spent much time on it if I couldn't just pick up sections and move them around the screen all willy-nilly. I thought it was neat, so the program held my attention where normally mind maps aren't my thing.

I'm honestly not great with mind maps either, but it was a more fluid way to hold information. I actually redownloaded FreeMind and pulled up the old mindmaps - oh nostalgia.

One of them is to help keep track of character details and relations. Nodes were whether they were a main character, minor character, someone referenced in passing, and then the character name, and then a breakdown of details around them (family, special abilities). I think I also intended to include major plot points I wanted to hit as well, as I was big on planning at the time.

The second was going to take place in a made-up world, so that one has character details and also location details, so I could keep everything straight and have one document to reference to make sure I was being consistent.

Of course, neither of these ever got written, so take it how you will haha. I think the map was just more visually appealing than a list of these items, since related things can be linked easier than in a doc.

My best friend and I used to play SubTerra when we hung out every weekend. Company that originally made it is sketchy for a number of reasons, but they're also gone now and another company owns the games. It's a tile based game where you are trying to escape a cave system with monsters in it and you create the board as you play. Each character has abilities to help this and there's a turn limit you have to escape in. It can be really addicting.

I also really enjoy Campy Creatures and Space Park - they're pretty simple games (same creators) that a great for a group of 3-5. Campy Creatures is a little bit like War, where each player gets a hand of monsters and the highest number wins. There are "people" cards laid out and winning lets you pick who you take, with the people having point values assigned (which is what ultimately determines the winner). Hopefully I explained it okay. Space Park is very different - the goal is to get 20 victory points, which are mostly earned by completing tasks. There are 6 "locations" you travel to which give you various resources to help you complete the tasks.

I also love playing Quiddler - it's a fun word game, nothing super complex about it unless you play with people who make up words (we have a rule that half the table has to agree that it's a word).

These come out a lot at my game nights, hopefully I did them justice with my descriptions.

I do the same as you with Google Docs - it honestly never occurred to me to use something fancier. I did used to use a mind map software when I had grand ambitions of writing longer works, FreeMind.

While I would love to use pen and paper, my handwriting is a mess and it would get lost long before I ever moved it to a digital format.