It came to me today that I should play the devil’s advocate. Everyone who comments seems to like this, therefore there has to be someone to take the job of un-hypeing it. So this is just a different POV … because I can.

It’s a kind of social experiment which could be fun for some. The idea is to try to make a drawing with very limited resources (a single pixel per message, perhaps a few hundred pixels over a couple of days), and concurrently with hundreds/thousands of participants.

The outcome is less an artwork than it is a work of art that shows the (dire) state of collective creativity and imaginative capabilities of people who have been “rised” in dominance-hierarchic, competition-centric, societies: imagine one of these squatted houses where the walls quickly get filled with tags and political messages. While they in theory could have collectively put on an artwork that really speaks, they’d rather endulge in “us vs. them” group think, competing for the space and overdrawing each others messages.
– Thus, in a “canvas” action, those who can captivate the minds of the masses, and those who have the proficiency to have armies of machines fight for them, will win the most space. People will say this is fun but it’s rather the same as in politics. The outcome is perhaps pretty or hilarious in some details but it’s mostly logos and flags and symbolism, flat colours and two-dimensional cartoon caracters. So rather boring; rarely one will see a detail where one would say, “wow, someone really did put some thought and skill into this”.

Regarding me, I could imagine taking part in a project to create a bot that would facilitate collective decision making (about division of labour among drawing project participants and on-the-fly decisions about how to interact with neighbouring bits – stop at boundary, colour-mix, or overdraw – and drawing of colour-dithered, possibly three-dimensional, pre-planned graphic design (or algorithmic graphics), while at the same time automating the tedious sending of draw commands from many locations (it’s the most inefficient way one could do it but who cares in times of HD video streaming).
… Another fun idea that just pops into my mind, would be programming a “game of life” automaton which respects pixels that are already occupied, or overdraws them then re-draws them in their original colour. It could be made to completely vanish until closure time. :-D

that’s all so 2-D …

Umm… I was not so very clear perhaps. The idea would still be that user accounts as well as forums all contain their domain name, as their site of origin rather than a location identifier. Just that the host could change to any other domain (after negociation with the new host, that is). So it’s not about domains being tied to specific hosts/IPs but entities being tied to domains. It would be up for design discussion if that identifier should change or not, iin the case of a migration. The idea would be to give entities the ability to roam or be resurrected from any federated copy in case they are dissatisfied with the policies of their hosts, or in the event a domain gets taken down by authoritrian actors. (That’s why this actually is off-topic here)

From my glance into the ActivityPub doc, I concluded that it’s really only about the data exchange protocol, yet I might have overlooked something as I never had an in-depth talk with people who implement the thing. Yet, just because many do it in a certain way does not mean to me that this is written in stone somewhere. :-)

[OT; tl/dr: the issues with forums and user accounts being under hegemony of server instances is by design but it’s not actually the way one would design a truely de-centralised network]

It’s a feature but not the best practice if the idea would be forums (and users) being free of domains (and the dangers of domains being taken down, and host admins’ whims). The design approach of Lemmy however, speaks “hegemony” all over. It says a lot about the mindset of its creators.
An alternative would be indeed distributed directory systems, employing concepts like DHT … well proven de-centralized resiliency for quite a while. Would it have been done in such a way, there would be no difficulty with migrating forums and users across instances, and even a domain getting lost would not necessarily lead to all forums/accounts there-on to be lost. Also the issues with link creation across instances were due to forums being bound to domain names instead of them having Universal IDs thus being agnostic of which node they are actually hosted on.

ActivityPub, AFAIK only defines a protocol for communicating datasets between instances, not the structures in which federation should be done.

I think commenter above means, as opposed to the US-american re-definition of liberal = “Democrat”, somehow. Since the Trump party is absolutist leaning, this makes sense fr them … somehow.

Compelling concecture. I also wonder if there are really groups of people like that (i mean, how do they behave in physical, that must be sort of punks?) – or if it is part of an orchestrated disruption and possibly false flag. I read it’s only about 15 accounts to block if one wanted to get rid of the obnoxious ones.

Have any hints that back it up?
Edit: do not mind, i have read farther down. It also seems to have deviated from the original CTH community, as in “unfriendly take-over”, which was even stated by a HB account.

Besides, this helped me to finally understand the confusion about the “liberal” adjective. It’s understood differently in USA, from most everywhere else. :-)

A more perfect(*) solution would be separating sorting by relevance (formerly up-/downvote) from emotional reactions. There’s the possibility of having a range of emoji reactions: agree, disagree, inaccurate, like it, bookmarked it, dislike it, find it funny, makes me happy, makes me sad, loveyou for this, what the fuck, find it’s bullshit, (etc. but this is not necessarily a good selection). Some of the reactions (disagree, inaccurate …) could also require a comment of at least (n) words to be left.

(*) oxymoron intentional

Edit: See here what people interested in development are opining about this idea: Add emoji reactions to posts, comments. #29

Possible but on what evidence would one make such a claim?

my interst will probrably change to something tommorow which is annoying.

The last line triggered me to write some “feel with you”. Dreaming big, or thinking big, can actually be a gift. Big inventors, philosophers, people who build companies – they all are/were capable of thinking in bigger terms than what they could accomplish themselves or in a day.

As others commented, a plan should be broken up into smaller “achievables”. It might be less simple than that, though. The problem comes with a lack of persistence, or even a perceived iniability thereof.
This could be traits in the neurodivergent spectrum. Breaking a process up might be a no-brainer to you, but then there are perhaps a lot of things to get done before even starting with the project itself (like needing to acquire the hardware, or funding). If your (main) interest is constantly shifting, and you will have the next big idea tomorrow, then it’s hard to get anything started. Having to accomplish a lot of small goals, while being constantly rewarding to some people, can also be constantly distracting for others. The end goal is just so many little pieces away, and any small task can get your interest astray because that thing that brought the reward is now much closer than the big goal.

As someone who suffers from the same problem, my understanding of what it would take is this: A constant motivator that can direct your interest back to the one big thing again and again. I think what would help is to not do it all on your own, but find other people who have the same kind of interest and keep close exchange with them. The primary goal is not to get the big idea manifested at all costs, but to keep motivated to pursue the path that leads there, while also allowing you to switch your attention to all those other things. Like-minded people who go the same path could be that constant motivator.

If this resonates with you, feel free to PM me, or come to the !neurodivergent@sh.itjust.works group that i started (and have yet to get going, sort posts by “new”!) specifically for such purposes.

Yes seems that hot and active just don’t show old posts anymore. Inactive commmunities appeear “empty” now.

Actually interesting.

Sorry to bother you once again. I think here is actually the notable part of this thread. This is interesting:

I really wanted it to be a debate center to bridge the gap between left abd right, that was the initial mission three years ago

Without a demand for a quick answer … if this is so then it’s a noble cause gone astray somewhere. I’m thinking, without knowing any of the story, could this be somehow put back on track? I mean, as it is now many people on both sides are doing the opposite; they go yet more polarising. This could have little to do with EH, or it could indeed be a systemic failure of how EH is supposed to work. – I’m always thinking when i chat with some stranger online, how would be their reaction if they met me “irl” … because they have no idea even closely, about who i am and about my lifestyle. How would certain people behave when we would meet in person? – The reality is that we crtainly exhibit a different persona in a restricted environment like this. All the cues of meeting a real person are missing, and all that remains is the words. We know from experience that certain natural restraints are not there if the perception of there being a real person is mostly missing. People are more or less aware of this. There is a perceived distance to the other, or even a perception of them being “unreal” (that’s what i have sometimes).

Coming to the point, perhaps that idea of absolute free speech just doesn’t work in such an environment? It might work in a setting where people can meet and learn to know each other personally, but in a text-only setting there is little that would naturally (neurologically) make them interact in a respectful way.
Hope it’s understandable what i mean.

With “campaigners” i don’t mean @wigglehard. I’m also not advocating for hate speech, if that would be the next thing to come. Instead i see a likely minority group of segregationists infesting this place with their hatred. I’m not interested in joining anyone’s divisiveness, i can do better. If US people want to do their internal warfare online, then please have them do it in their exclusive space. This comes from someone who sees all people as human beings, regardless of how ill-minded they may seem.

It would help a lot if everyone would get a bit into psychology. The basic human requirements in social structures, different needs in security, differences in self-perception, and not least why do we get aggressive. All the energy you use for fighting could go into actual understanding. – What are the opponents actual needs and fears? What are your needs and fears? Where did this originate, in which way were we traumatised, in which way were we mistreated as children? What natural social structures do we miss? Look a bit deeper and find that humans are actually inherently compassionate and good-willed.

Maybe i’m unbearably progressive with this. Take me as a prophet then. For humanity to have a future, the paradigm of separatedness will have to end.
An interesting book perhaps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humankind:_A_Hopeful_History

Well, it’s a much-wanted feature, so it will get known with ease, i think.
About the interface, i could think about possibilities but i’d say don’t make it look too complicated if we want to have it soon. ;-)
We now have a page with blocked users and opted-out communities, and there could be another section with opted-out instances. That’s how i would do it but i will not get directly involved in the development.

Uh so i slightly misunderstood it. Seemed to me that you wanted to say that user was an alt of a sjw inhabitant. Yes i’m also quite annoyed by those campaigners. Hope you will still enjoy your favourite niche communities here, even if they get the mob to defederate from your server. Campaigning for the rights of marginalised people within their respective societal environment – all good. Carrying their fighting spirit onto a global platform, thereby disrupting the experience of all people … well, all i can do is see through some of the psychology in it. I see the basic need for personal security not fulfilled, on either side. Followed by a subliminal anxiety, followed by aggression, put together with a generally aggressive societal norm.

What can we do but try to understand, ban the assholes. And notice i’m doing quite a funny thing here – advocating compassion and reasonability in the example of US-american rightwingers. Guess that’s my job.

Thanks for the recognition. From what i have seen so far, you try to behave when you are posting here. We may be mostly different in our beliefs but i think we can be in the same boat concerning all the segregation movement in societies. It seems a form of “divide et impera” that is especially harmful given that there are much more pressing challenges we have, that would require some unity. …

If i may ask, what makes you believe that the other person has something to do with shitjustworks?

I also think that you missed the point of this post. It’s about giving the people better tools to choose what they see. That’s a meta-discussion, independent of current debates.

I think you missed the point of this post.

… And btw, here is my take on “racism”. I have a degree in biology, and to my knowledge, the notion of “race” (more precisely: subspecies) in humans has been abandoned decades ago. Therefore, who ever speaks of “races” in humans, is necessarily a racist. :-)
Now look at the colour of your skin. What colour is it, exactly? – Mine is a great range of shades of yellowish-brownish-reddish, depending on the part of the body; it’s usually darker brownish in summer because i’m under the sun a lot. So please don’t call me “white”. People would guess that i’m an Egyptian but i’m not. :-)

No i won’t. I’m not a racist either, if you mean to say that. You are just taking your trolling to shitjustworks, and here you are asked to behave a bit different. As i read it, @wigglehard came to complain about your aggressive behaviour, so here is my response. I have responded to him as well, but he is not normally as obnoxious as you play it here. Please go play somewhere else.