Soreth @Soreth@awoo.space

I hear new people noting how chill, tolerant, and pleasant Mastodon is.

Mastodon isn’t chill or tolerant or pleasant. It’s a tool… a foundation on which to create and maintain a culture.

It’s those who’ve been on Mastodon, run servers, and served as admins who did the hard work and created the culture you now enjoy.

Now, it’s your turn. The only way it stays tolerant and chill is by us doing the work to keep it that way.

A good example of, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Reposting this here!

The genders.

Thinking about when the wall of the salt warehouse collapsed and it turned out to just be full of loose salt, like a child might imagine

I'll explain this quickly because I've been asked about it a couple of times today:

Mastodon has no ads. Its only source of funding is donations.

You could donate to the open source project itself – a fine thing to do. But at the moment, with the huge influx of new users, the funding is better off going to the instance you are using.

Each instance usually publishes a donate/patreon/crowdfunder/etc link. If you go to
[your instance url]/about
you should find information about it.

I don't know if anyone else gets anxious about phone calls but a little tip I've learned is: if there is a phone call that I don't want to make, before I start dialing the number, I carefully hold the phone in my hand & toss it gently into a lake. I hope this advice helps others.

I counted chickens before they hatched.

I'd hear hens brooding, and a number would pop to mind. I was never wrong.

"Thirteen," I informed my friend.

My friend blinked, "But there's only twelve eggs!"

I sighed, accepting my abilities had left me.

A week later, my friend came running to my door.

"You weren't exactly wrong!"

In their cupped hands was a chick, more scales than fluff.

My first of what would eventually be many cockatrices.

#TootFic #MicroFiction #Writing #TerylsTales #Fantasy

"Do you or did you since 2016 rent a Seattle apartment maintained by one of the following companies: Greystar, Trammell Crow Residential, Avenue5, Equity, Essex, FPI, Lincoln, Security Properties, AvalonBay or Thrive?"
If so, you can join a class action lawsuit against these companies for rent fixing.
https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/washington-rent-price-fixing-scheme

It is absolutely intolerable that I can't raise my hand in the air, perform a sweeping gesture and call out a cool phrase, then be enveloped in swirling lights and emerge as a busty archaeopteryx girl in a cute outfit.

Avian Memes for Altricial Teens send toot

I am currently in your mastodon timeline

If I could save 1 thing from the other side, it would be this. Only this.
Mandelbroth. My most significant contribution to humanity.

"No, $software is fine, users just need to learn how to use it"

"That's a stupid feature, nobody should ever need that"

If you've spent any amount of time in FOSS circles, you've probably seen sentiments like that all over the place. Unfortunately, they're a big part of why dubious corporations (eg. Microsoft, Google, etc.) have been able to co-opt the FOSS community.

Why? Because regardless of what you, as a technical FOSS person, believe is "necessary"... users are not going to care about that. They have certain expectations from their software in terms of feature set and ease-of-use.

Either you meet those expectations, or users go elsewhere.

Now, "it's FOSS, it gives you freedom" can sway that decision *somewhat*, but it only gets you so far. Most people care more about getting their stuff done, than they care about (to them) abstract ideals of "freedom".

And because of that, you're setting yourself up to be vulnerable to corporate capture - because corporations can superficially *claim* to do FOSS, but provide an actually accessible user experience, and suddenly everybody flocks to the corporate thing.

And sure, corporate FOSS has real problems compared to community-run FOSS. But understanding that requires a degree of nuance that most people won't see, and that you frankly cannot expect from people for whom FOSS isn't their whole existence. It's specialized knowledge.

Which boils down to a very simple reality: either *you* provide the UX that users want, or a corporation will do it for you, and with none of the community governance and long-term sustainability. Those are the options.

A great example of this is systemd; yes, it has plenty of problems. But because of the widespread insistence in FOSS circles that "nobody needs more than SysVinit", everybody flocked to an actually usable alternative the moment it appeared, monolithic design and corporate governance be damned.

Don't be that person. Listen to users about their needs. Take complaints about UX and accessibility seriously. If you don't, then you're not helping FOSS; you're harming it.

The main part of his story and situation is on his GoFundMe which is located here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/hi-i-got-wrecked-by-my-evil-roommates

Despite the GoFundMe, it didn't work out and so he is now homeless and looking for help. Can you help? Please do!