This is the true promise of the #Fediverse : Everyone has the right to freedom of speech, but no one has the right to a captive audience.
This is the true promise of the #Fediverse : Everyone has the right to freedom of speech, but no one has the right to a captive audience.
Which is as it should be. Yet what other social media system can say the same?
@[email protected] True, but they also have geographic restrictions on many of them.
@[email protected] Are there any good models for distributed search functions out there?
The recent downtime of the #InternetArchive reminded me
The recent downtime of the #InternetArchive reminded me
(a) How vital the site is for my own work. Fortunately, I save pretty much all old books I need for my work to my hard drive, so I am not totally lost without it - but still, most of the links to the individual folk tales I am translating go to online archives, and the Internet Archive is the most important among them.
(b) How storing all this vital cultural heritage stuff at one single site is a terrible idea. Today, the Internet Archive might be taken down by hackers. Tomorrow, the site might commit suicide by lawyers. And in a possible future, a fascist US government might take the site down out of sheer spite.
While there are a fair number of other, more specialized digital libraries out there, too many public domain works are only available at the Internet Archives. And another huge percentage is stored only at the Internet Archive and Google Books, which is not a lot better.
We need a more distributed archive system where all these works can stored on multiple servers around the world - yet where users can search through all of them with comparable ease. Only in this way will our digital cultural heritage be truly safe.
Perhaps a #Fediverse - based approach could work? Something like #Bookwyrm , but with actual data storage?
What do you think?
@hanktank61 I'm really fascinated by how local folk legends form a "supernatural landscape" - real world places you can visit that have supernatural associations.
@[email protected] @[email protected]
Unfortunately, "reach" can be pretty important.
Let's say you are a user in, for example, #Pakistan. How many Pakistani Mastodon instances are there? One? Two? For a country of 240 million people?
When almost no one in your country uses the #Fediverse , using Mastodon exclusively means you have effectively isolated yourself from your community.
I was able to do a clean break from Twitter when it got bought by Elon Musk, but that was because I was in a relatively privileged position. There are plenty of people around here who are interested in folklore and table-top RPGs, and share similar backgrounds. I miss some people from Twitter, but not enough to remain active there.
Others do not have this privilege, and we should acknowledge that.
2/ As an addendum, I want to make clear that I have absolutely zero sympathies for the social media platforms and their owners themselves. In fact, I consider them to be a dire threat to civilization, as their algorithms and owners promote hatred and bigotry of all kinds.
What I want to stress is empathy for many of the users on these platforms. Most of them stay there for reasons that make sense to them, after all.
And "empathy" does not mean "agreement". But if you don't take the time to understand their points of view, you are unlikely to convince them to give the #Fediverse a try.
I absolutely agree that X must be destroyed. I just don't think that berating X users for staying there is going to accomplish that.
We must make it easier for others to leave, and for that we must understand why they still stay there - and offer a welcoming off-ramp.
There is a lot of disdain here on #Mastodon and the #Fediverse for those who have chosen to stay on #X / #Twitter and other social media platforms. And I think that this is not helpful.
There is a lot of disdain here on #Mastodon and the #Fediverse for those who have chosen to stay on #X / #Twitter and other social media platforms. And I think that this is not helpful.
I mean, sure, in the case of governments, political leaders, and major news organizations, disdain away. But many activists and small-time business owners depend on having a large reach and good networking for their activities, and this reach might simply not be feasible on the Fediverse - especially if their primary focus is on a demographic underrepresented around here (as the Fediverse skews heavily towards white Europeans and North Americans).
Hating on these people accomplishes nothing useful - and worse, it contributes to the Fediverse's well-deserved reputation for snobbery, which has driven a lot of people away.
So instead try empathy. Understand why such people make the choice to stay on other social media platforms, despite their problems. And instead of berating them for it, emphasize that these platforms will almost certainly get worse over time, due to the Enshittification cycle that all tech businesses touched by Silicon Valley venture capitalists must inevitably go through.
Suggest that developing a Fediverse presence is a useful "Plan B" for their social media efforts - and that among social media platforms, the Fediverse alone has the potential to develop into something better over time.
@[email protected] They do have some locations that OpenStreetMap has not (and vice versa), and they are more friendly for finding places with alternate spelling. There is a reason I check both.
Also, their linked images are useful for visualizing these locations. Though I think I saw an OpenStreetMap version with geotagged images once, but I can't find it again.
A surprisingly large part of my research of old German folk tales is trying to identify the places mentioned in these details. They are often not mentioned on Google Maps, although Open Street Maps
A surprisingly large part of my research of old German folk tales is trying to identify the places mentioned in these details. They are often not mentioned on Google Maps, although Open Street Maps frequently provides better results.
But a particularly useful resource has been Arcanum Maps, which uses old survey maps from the 19th century or earlier as Google Maps layers - and these often do have period names for locations that have vanished from modern maps. This has been especially important for Silesia and other regions where German place names were common, but which now only use Polish names.
If you are interested in historic maps, then check this site out!
#cartography #history <https://maps.arcanum.com/>
We got lucky on our birdwatching trip to the coast.
We got lucky on our birdwatching trip to the coast.
#wildlife #photography
@[email protected] Depends a bit on the neighborhood.
While romance novels predominate in all of the six or so little free libraries within easy bicycling distance, only two are filled with them entirely.
The very best (for my purposes) is the one next to our local city theater - it almost always has books on history, culture, or travel.
@[email protected] Hmmm. Hannover is my usual layover city when I travel by train to visit my father. Is the store you are referring to the one at the Limburgstraße 1?
If so, I might be able to check it out.
One of my compulsive habits is visiting local little free libraries and taking any #travel books or books about #history in the hopes of reading them one day and using them as inspiration for #ttrpg
One of my compulsive habits is visiting local little free libraries and taking any #travel books or books about #history in the hopes of reading them one day and using them as inspiration for #ttrpg #worldbuiling .
But the main tangible result is that I have run out of bookshelf space. Again. 😭
There's the "Creepy Amusement Park" vibe so beloved by horror movies, and then there's the "Creepy Amusement Park set in a Never-finished Nuclear Power Plant" vibe where I have ended up today.
There's the "Creepy Amusement Park" vibe so beloved by horror movies, and then there's the "Creepy Amusement Park set in a Never-finished Nuclear Power Plant" vibe where I have ended up today.
#photography #NuclearPower
!The mascot of the park, possibly some duck thing. !The exterior of the cooling tower, which now has a free-climbing installation. !The interior of the cooling tower, which now hosts a carousel.
One of the high points of my visit to the Harz Mountains was a visit to the Teufelsmauer ("Devil's Wall"), a massive sandstone ridge stretching east of Blankenburg, and parallel to the Harz mountains
One of the high points of my visit to the Harz Mountains was a visit to the Teufelsmauer ("Devil's Wall"), a massive sandstone ridge stretching east of Blankenburg, and parallel to the Harz mountains themselves.
There was a footpath right on top of the ridge, which provided a spectacular view in both directions - although it required some climbing, and it was definitely nothing for people who are afraid of heights!
#hiking #mountains #photography <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teufelsmauer>
!A narrow footpath, with rock formations on the right and a steep slope to the left. !A stony footpath across a ridge, with steep drops towards both sides. !Another stony footpath on top of a ridge, with a handrail to the right providing some security.
