The interoperability of different software really is amazing. One of the best parts of the fediverse imo.

https://fortune.com/2023/06/10/fortune-500-falling-profits-telling-something-economy-recession-return-to-normal/

If companies were just greedy they could have raised prices at any time before. They didn’t because they’re trying to find the optimal point between supply and demand to make the most profit (as we all do – are you willing to take a pay cut or eschew a raise you can probably get?)

All the money pumped into the economy is why they could raise prices – not just in 2020, but pretty consistently for the past 20 years. Lots of normal people are getting screwed but it’s fine for these companies because guess who gets much of the money being printed? Hint: donors.

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Everyone has their friend group and nobody else is allowed in unless we say so.

No, I’m using lotide, another link aggregator altogether. It’s a lot leaner, especially on the front end.

vpzom, the dev of lotide pointed me to this fep from gnusocial that talks about the problem and proposes something similar to my first suggestion:

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/2100/fep-2100.md

I’ve tried aether, and I presently run a nostr node and satellite instance, but I’ve found both of those solutions have a problem due to relying on the local client. Many networks are locked down, so I find many places I can’t really participate in nostr or aether on the go (the latter is desktop only anyway), while I can hop into any of my activitypub related instances.

I know of one project to create a nostr client that I believe will handle the communications stuff at the server end, but we’ll have to see – you never know if projects actually get off the ground, or if they’re actually worth using until they get up and running for real.

(and lotide doesn’t implement editing at all, despite ActivityPub supporting it so my options are delete and repost or leave it)

I should have said threadiverse in the title. Oh well.

Man, the other day my phone didn’t have internet and popped up and old copy of my lotide. It was a painful reminder of how much more fun it used to be on the threadiverse. Sad that all the fun instances shut down and we end up trapped here with a bunch of boring redditors.

Wolfballs and exploding-heads didn’t show up as a response to lemmy instances, they showed up in response to big tech censorship, which we have a lot of evidence was being heavily manipulated. As I said in my initial post, wolfballs was created and shut down before most of the big lemmy instances today even started, and exploding-heads was started before most lemmy instances existed.

I’m not saying that the US government did the DDOS attacks. I doubt the US government was the cause of shutting down wolfballs or exploding-heads except insofar as the establishment powers that be took advantage of idiots being tribal to push their pet policies to the exclusion of any others (which too many people fell for and continue to fall for hook line and sinker). Another form of attack is the omnipresent risk of cancelation hanging over anyone’s head who isn’t in line with the current orthodoxy.

I’m not letting you guys win because I think these replies are attacks, but because lemmy has become so ideologically homogenous in part because reddit became so ideologically homogenous. What’s the point? I already know what you’re going to say because it’s one big groupthink that at one point I was myself a part of (along with most of society), so there’s no benefit to it. I’m seeking truth, and there’s nothing new to be found in arguing with people after I’ve been saturated in their unconvincing arguments for years. So you win, yep, stupid me.

Censorship is the institution, system, or practice of censoring. To censor is to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable.

The Establishment is the part of a particular group that has power or control.

If the most powerful government on earth contacts the largest and most powerful companies on earth in order to categorically suppress or delete certain viewpoints or certain speakers, then by definition that is “‘the establishment’ censoring you”. The fact that you agree with the censorship doesn’t make it not censorship, and framing it in a moralistic way doesn’t make it not censorship. Being moralistic didn’t make it not censorship when the right was doing it.

Exploding-heads as I understand it was facing DDOS attacks near the end (or at least they thought it was), that’s one of the things that prompted the admin to shut it down, it wasn’t worth the effort to try to keep the site up and running under such an onslaught.

Anyway, I don’t know why I’d even try. You know what? You win. Everything is fine and censorship doesn’t exist and the only truth is that which the government and major corporations tell you, and the government and major corporations are actually the anti-establishment fighting against the big bad individuals who believe things they’re not supposed to.

They went to nostr or other parts of the fediverse because the lemmyverse is toxic and they were constantly facing attacks of various types. Same thing that happened to wolfballs before it.

Some of the users might lurk on other servers, but I have my doubts. The point was to have a place they could be free to talk about things the establishment were censoring. Most of the colonizers from Reddit don’t realize those servers existed long before most of what are considered the big Lemmy servers today even existed.

If the goal was just to troll redditors, there’s always reddit.

By that standard it seems to me like most of the internet should be shut down, particularly establishment outlets that are more than happy to tell you who to hate.

As for the story of the war and some of the characters stories… The age of heroes like Kirk in their prime is over, the federation is losing the war. Younger crews weren’t properly mentored and so lack the knowledge of the aging heroes and so are not doing well at all, and the older crews dont have the vigor to engage in total war. Meanwhile the Klingons seem to be doing just fine, being both vigorous and wise, hence why they decided to start a war sensing a weak federation. Kirk would slowly over the course of the movie learn that it’s not so bad mentoring top people. Bones would struggle after watching the young men come into the sickbay dead realizing in just a few years his final destination would be upon him, and he’d be making mistakes and cracking. Spock would share his struggles with his grandfather dying and would speak logically about death like nimoy did in “I am Spock” and it would help McCoy put death into perspective. Scott would learn he drank because he didn’t think he had anything better in his life until he saw the new batch of engineers trying really hard to keep the ship running but lacking know-how and one of the engineers would come to him with personal problems and he’d realize he had more to offer than just work. Spock would do some brilliant work as a seconded science officer and later would use his skills as a diplomat to help end the war with the Klingons once the Enterprise becomes the focal point of a passing of the torch where the old crews realize they need to build up the new ones which makes the Klingons realize their time has passed to attack (with a little prodding). Uhuras work as a communications officer ends up front and center as she is a second diplomat working with Spock near the end of the movie. Checkov would realize that while he isn’t happy with his past all he can do is move on to his future. Sulu would have a whole b-plot where he talks at desks about strategy and helps see several ambushes by the Klingons in advance which is part of what helps end the war.

Ok but that’s it…

I think the ending needs some work but I like the concept.

I don’t know if the boomers could write a story about getting old wisely, particularly not way back then. I like the idea of showing different characters managing getting older, both in positive and negative ways, and perhaps some characters having an arc.

Kirk would definitely be trying to keep living his glory days. He already looked like an idiot wrassling Klingons in Star Trek 3, by 6 he should be seeing the consequences of his insistence on playing hero, a washed up captain with a growing number of failed missions because he keeps trying to go down and fight the bad guy and kiss the lady and he just isn’t capable of it anymore. His arc would be learning to let go of the day to day battles, and leaning into his wisdom earned by a lifetime of work in the field to help raise the next generation of people who will be taking over after him. In the actual canon just as Kirk never faced the Kobayashi maru challenge head on, his character never actually faced aging head-on and died in a battle including 3 old men.

The idea that McCoy would stop being a doctor is dumb, many doctors practice until they die of old age. His arc would be about coming to grips with the reality that he has a limited amount of time left and what that means.

Spock would be an investigation of what it means to have more time since he’d be a young man in Vulcan terms, looking at aging from an alien perspective, but hey we introduced a new family member last movie how about we introduce sarek’s dad who is in the final stages of Vulcan decline and the consequences of having people be such reliable pillars for so long and then losing them.

Scotty’s story of becoming a drunk stays, it’s too interesting to not do something with.

Uhuras story should be a future reflection on a life for a woman that was much different than the life of a woman in the 60s when TOS first aired, an opportunity to show how different gene’s future was than the present of 40-60 years ago.

Contrasting to Kirk who was the captain in his prime winning all the fights and getting all the chicks, Checkovs (sorry Koenig) character would be a reflection of a life of regret, of opportunities not taken. His arc would be about making peace with his past self and taking steps to constructively manage his future.

Sulu could be shown taking an entirely different path, such as a strategic command, and his arc would be about using his wisdom and experience from the enterprise adventures to advise the fleet.

With all this, I think two huge threats are too much. Galactic war or youth worms, and I think Galactic war makes way more sense for the last hurrah.

You’d start off with a captains log and the on a routine mission to transport Spock in his role as a diplomat to mediate a dispute on a planet. Smash cut to a battle between Kirk and a klingon. The dialogue would suggest Kirk quickly sniffed him out with his experience, but while he puts up a good fight ultimately he loses the fight. He beams up and a space battle starts with a klingon ship. He issues competent commands and wins the battle but just a beat too late so the ship takes some hits and some people die. Later he’s admonished by Starfleet command and given an ultimatum that he either accepts a role as an admiral commanding fleets or he can retire, and he can make the decision when he gets back to earth but for now his first officer is in command of the ship. Just as they are about to set a course for earth they get a message that war has broken out with the Klingons and the Enterprise is needed immediately to participate in the war effort.

Anyway better stop here or I’ll write a whole script lol

Unfortunately, it’s the paradox of liberty that to be free you need to also give freedom to people you don’t like who will do things you don’t like.

In spite of that, libre is an ideal worth pursuing. Otherwise everyone might as well just go right back to big tech now.

It’s always nice when authoritarians can paint whoever they disagree with as the great Satan to justify their authoritarianism. It only happens every single time.

Ideally, a distributed fediverse wouldn’t need much in terms of donations because it’s a bunch of small instances instead of a few huge ones.

Incidentally, there’s an 8 day old post on the topic that is showing in my instance and I checked the source it wasn’t deleted when I went.

Big problem with lemmy in particular is that communities are server based and so if you lose the server you lose the whole community.

On mastodon, if I talk to person 1@a.com and person 2@b.com and a.com goes down, I can still talk to person 2@b.com. on lemmy, I might be talking to both in community@c.com and if that server goes down I’m no longer in a community with person 1 or person 2 despite a.com and b.com both being up.