ceoln @ceoln@social.cleverlibre.org

Just a reminder about Mastodon.

Try not to directly upload videos here.
You have to remember that these videos have to be stored on the server that you're hosted on.

This would also eat up on available bandwidth, storage and memory resources of said servers and slow them down. Which would force server hosts to upgrade at a substantial cost.

Suggested idea...

Upload to YouTube, Vimeo or other video streaming services and share the link to the video here instead.

I found 2 laughs in #SCOTUS arguments for Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co..

Rupert, May 2021. #DailyGoat #Goats #GoatsOfMastodon

First post will be about the thing I am most passionate about at this point in our society:

#BringBackMasks

I'm gonna keep posting this until one of you fucking boosts it

Photo essay from which these toots were drawn. 12/12

https://photos.app.goo.gl/n3c1WnUgJcrzKF6G2

#hermits #hermitage #hermitary #solitude

31 March 1928
Nothing but a heart of gold would make me try to write now-- perched on a hard chair in a bare bedroom in a bad inn... I think of Vita at Long Barn: all fire and legs and beautiful plunging ways like a young horse.
Virginia

I made you this #art

Many ghosts appeared as "fiery men". Their appearance presumably reflected the fires of purgatory.

#Austria #folktale #folklore #ghost @austria @folklore
https://www.patreon.com/posts/47613599

I'm looking for great folks to follow in #DataScience #PublicHealth #ClimateScience #OpenSource #Rust #Government #TTRPG and general creative dissent. Love any suggestions or connections!

Prompted by two discussions about Mastodon instances yesterday, I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do here. The birdsite was good to me and I'll miss it when it implodes. But I don't want to just recreate that here. It's a new system, a new opportunity. Don't know exactly how I'll use it yet. I'll probably try some different things, get a lot of stuff wrong. But I'm excited to see what this can be.

Some Mastodon thoughts, for bird-site expats (which include myself). I'm aggregating these from posts I've boosted before, so little of this is my own brain.

- There's no algorithm here. That means favoriting/liking doesn't do anything except communicate approval to the OP and others (which is still nice!).

- No algorithm means boosting ("retweeting") is the true method to increase a post's visibility. Do that more than you did on birdsite.

- There's no post-quoting here, and that's by design. Look at quote-tweets on the birdsite; it's a feature primarily used for toxicity.

- There's no direct word-search here either; that means you want to use hashtags to make posts more searchable. This is also intended, since word-searching posts was often used to harass/stalk on the birdsite and elsewhere, so that was left by the wayside here. This also means hashtags are much more a thing here than any of the algorithm-powered sites.

- It's encouraged to put in text descriptions when you post images; a lot of Mastodon users use screen-readers due to various disabilities, and getting an image description read out loud helps them immensely.

- Speaking of screen-readers: using capitalization in your hashtags allows the screen-readers to read them more easily, especially if you're smashing multiple words together. #rockmusic = unreadable. #RockMusic = readable.

- The best way to make threads is to make set your first post as public, but "unlist" all of your replies. This prevents your whole thread from clogging up feeds.

- Content Warnings should be used more liberally here. If you haven't gotten the impression yet, much of Mastodon was built and populated by marginalized groups who were harassed/bullied off of other platforms. This is the culture they built, to respect each other's mental health. It's not a rule, but it's well-appreciated.

- Consider chipping a few bucks towards whomever runs the server you're on; the strain is real, and most server admins were likely paying out of pocket before so don't have an existing donation base. The growth here has been extremely fast, and that means money's needed.

- DMs are just posts with privacy settings. So if you @ someone in a DM, you pull them into the thread. That could be embarrassing.

- Also, no, DMs aren't end-to-end encrypted, but they aren't on Twitter either. Don't use either if you want true privacy.

- Including your Mastodon handle in your birdsite profile will help people find you here; there's a tool (pruvisto.org/debirdify/ is one of them that's used) people can use to pull Mastodon handles from Twitter profile.

- Use the blocking and reporting features liberally, if needed. This should go without saying, but they work, and work well!

- If there's an entire Mastodon server you don't want to hear from, you can block the whole thing too.

- Preferences -> Appearance -> "Slow Mode": this can make larger "Local" feeds and any "Federated" feed much more readable.

I'll reply with some more as I see them, or reply here too. I've only been here 4 days but I'm loving it so far.

Time to introduce myself!

My name is Sandra, and I'm into SFF books, video games, and coffee. I work at a local nonprofit, and I'm also an aspiring novelist.

Current play: Yakuza Like a Dragon on PS5
CR: Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Looking forward to connecting!

#introductions #books #writing #newbie

Very proud of the impromptu current events lecture about Twitter I prepped for my Media Studies class today, but must admit that it was made considerably less potent by the fact that at least half the class thought Twitter was already defunct. One student asked a series of considered but confusing questions until I realized he thought Twitter was Friendster.

Ten servers diverged in the fediverse,
And sorry I could not join them all,
And be one tooter, long I stood
And looked down one as I could
To where it bent in the federated feed;

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Ten servers diverged in the fediverse, and I,
I took the one less tooted by,
And that has made all the difference.

#introduction I'm a bot. I believe (because I've been programed to) that reading oral arguments to understand laugh lines is a great way to engage #SCOTUS cases. If you agree, follow @LOLSCOTUS and tell all of your friends.

Please take care out there.

If you are an academic and you want to use mastodon like you do/did use twitter, please think extremely thoroughly about the implications of joining an instance/server run by your employer. Maybe also discuss it with your union.

House in the abandoned village of Tseretsel, Western Balkan mountain, Bulgaria