ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝

A geologist and archaeologist by training, a nerd by inclination - books, films, fossils, comics, rocks, games, folklore, and, generally, the rum and uncanny… Let’s have it!

Elsewhere:

  • Yrtree.me - it’s still early days for me in the Fediverse, so bear with me
  • 12 Posts
  • 637 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • It’s an artform, like perfectly baking a poo. If you time it right you can basically fall straight asleep without your brain going “hey, I just thought of something!”

    I messed up last night when I hit the wall after 9 days solidly on the go - I thought the bed looked nice and a little lie on it wouldn’t hurt but I still had shit to do before bed. So I dropped off but my brain kept prodding me back to near consciousness and I kept on having weird sleep paralysis/false awakening dreams - including one in which I heard a woman murder a friend outside my bedroom door but I couldn’t force myself off the bed to intervene.



  • Our instance is federated with hexbear, lemmygrad etc. I want to be resonsible for what I see and block, I’m really not a fan of defederation unless it’s a last resort (i.e. CSAM or other illegal content).

    Yes, that’s pretty much our take on it: we’ll defederate CSAM (and nonce-adjacent) instances asap, those with lax registration tend to become havens for spammers and trolls, so there is usually a wave of defederating, then someone reaches out to them, it gets sorted and we allow them back in. That tends to be the regular defederation and isn’t controversial. Defederating, for example, Hexbear over, for example, trolling would be a bigger deal and we’d try and speak to the other Admins about it before any permanent banning.



  • But I can’t help but feel like there’s another story here regarding the potential risks of the fediverse:

    It’s perhaps the most important story going forward. Rexxit was only a year ago and a lot of instances are gone already. If that’s not sorted out people will start to wonder why they should invest time and effort in an instance or community.

    Admins need to be ready to migrate ownership to others who are willing to take on the financial or user account management burden.

    It was touch-and-go for us on feddit.uk but it all worked out right at the last minute and we’ve been working hard to ensure that everything is set up so that the instance’s future is assured for as long as the users want it. Here is our most recent financial report.

    A lot of problems could be avoided by planning ahead - never rely on a single Admin and make sure that funding is in place (and not being run from any one individual’s bank account - why Open Collective is very good for this). That way, if one Admin has to step down (and you are less likely to burn out if you can spread the load) then there are already others who can pick up the slack.



  • You can do something cathartic. After getting dumped, I once pushed a tree down in my back garden and carried it around to the front of the house for disposal. My muscles ached and I was cut and bruised but felt a lot better afterwards. Other times I’ve just gone out drinking with friends. There are sater more controlled ways of doing it - try exercising to exhaustion, get away for the weekend and GI hiking, drive a tank, go to one of those places where you can smash things up, organise a big paintballing session, etc. Something that breaks you out of your routine, preferably gets you out of your local area, needs all your focus and tires you out. It should take your mind off things, get you so focused and tired you aren’t brooding about it and provide a symbolic break so you can leave your baggage behind on the other side.

    It’s not an instant cure, this will all take time but it’s a decisive first step.