cabbage

There are a bunch of 50501 communities all over the Fediverse, and the numbers increased substantially with the state-oriented communities hosted by 50501.chat.

In response to this I put together a combined feed for the movement, which can be seen here: https://piefed.social/f/50501

As of now, the feed combines content from 64 different Lemmy communities hosted on five different instances. Lemmy does not (yet) support these feeds, but PieFed users will be able to interact with all 50501 communities in one place.

If anyone has suggestions for communities to include in the feed, or alternatively communities they feel should not have been included, feel free to let me know in this thread or over a direct message! :)

Excellent article by @Noupside@saturation.social highlighting how Musk draws on experiences from Twitter in his ongoing destruction of the US state aparatus.

Behind paywall, but the author shared an excellent thread on Mastodon containing large parts of the article as attached screenshots.

This is pretty huge news for Mastodon users: Once this feature is up and running comments to a post will not be limited to whatever is federated to your server through indirect means. The whole platform should feel a lot more vibrant after this, and it addresses what has been one of the main complaints about Mastodon.

It is summarized like this by @FediTips@social.growyourown.services:

Some good news about #Mastodon, there has been a very significant bit of code added which will automatically fetch all the replies in a thread. This means everyone will be able to see a thread's whole conversation no matter which server they are on! 🥳

The code has just been "merged" which means it should become available in the next update to Mastodon, hopefully within the next few months.

(Those who want the technical details can see the Pull Request at https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/32615)

While it is exciting, Mastodon CTO @renchap@oisaur.com points out that we maybe shouldn't expect too much too soon, although it is a big step in the right direction:

it is important to point out that this is very experimental, behind a feature flag, and there will be a need for more changes to get it in front of people.
Also we don’t recommend activating it yet, this may have significant performance implications or bugs.

I just saw this post (with video) from @DavidMadeThis@mastodon.social on Mastodon, and figured it might be worth sharing. Looks pretty neat.

Hello Mastodon! I'm a power engineer who is trying out solo game development and on the way to release Power Network Tycoon - a game where you build and manage your own electrical grid with real physics simulation.

If you've ever wondered how power systems actually work (or why they fail), this might be your jam. I built it to be technically accurate while still being fun. To say it's been a challenge is an understatement...

Edit: This seems to have been caused by some sort of algorithm censoring certain trending hashtags, not bootlicking admins. More info here: https://floss.social/@admin/114041922033317834

In a reminder that you don't have to be a billionaire to be a bootlicker, and that one needs to remain critical also while on the Fediverse, floss.social is blocking anti-fascist hashtags.

[I have chosen to redact this toot - the user deleted their post in response to admins clarifying what happened, so out of respect I remove this copy as well. The gist was that users could not post toots containing #antifa or #noAfD]

https://floss.social/@OddDev/114040886

I realize this might be slightly outside of the topic of this community ("Dedicated to antisocial behavior of social media corporations"), but I think it's important enough to nevertheless be of relevance.

With apologies for my bootlicker comment. Though we need to remain critical on the Fediverse, the lesson here might also be that we also need to be charitable and not jump too quickly to conclusions—which I just made myself guilty of. :)

It's interesting how Instagram (allegedly) accidentally banned #democrat after the US election, and now a similar problem was identified on a major Mastodon instance before the German election.

It seems Ubuntu Touch for Fairphone 5 is now available from the ubports installer, which means it should be relatively easy to install!

It's still early, and some features are apparently not working yet (such as Waydroid, which lets you emulate Android apps), but it seems to be running pretty well already.

By @karramarro@pixelfed.social - https://pixelfed.social/p/karramarro/765533495035643409

I found this to be a great write-up on how social media enables fascism by providing a sense of false agency: Posting online we feel like we are doing something, and we end up wasting our time shouting in a void rather than actually resisting.

Many of my journalist colleagues have attempted to beat back the tide under banners like “fighting disinformation” and “accountability.” While these efforts are admirable, the past few years have changed my own internal calculus. Thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt warned us that the point of this deluge is not to persuade, but to overwhelm and paralyze our capacity to act. More recently, researchers have found that the viral outrage disseminated on social media in response to these ridiculous claims actually reduces the effectiveness of collective action. The result is a media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.

Photo cred @karramarro@pixelfed.social - https://pixelfed.social/p/karramarro/764409399557860229

At a moment when Zuckerberg's focus is clearly on sucking up to the Trump administration, Instagram goes the extra mile to block hashtags like #democrat and #democrats from Instagram.

Officially it's a mistake, with some tool from the company giving the following statement:

We're aware of an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum and we are working quickly to resolve it.

Despite their claim to affect "across the political spectrum", the "problem" seems to affect both #democrat and #democrats, but neither the hashtags #republican nor #republicans.

Here's a video of said behaviour documented by a PeerTube user (@letydoesstuff@peertube.doesstuff.social):

https://peertube.doesstuff.social/w/f8c84bb5-3dec-45a1-b833-3b3f0736c4e8

With two months left in office, the president for the first time authorized the Ukrainian military to use the system known as ATACMS to help defend its forces in the Kursk region of Russia.

President Biden has authorized the first use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia, U.S. officials said.

The weapons are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops in defense of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, the officials said.

Mr. Biden’s decision is a major change in U.S. policy. The choice has divided his advisers, and his shift comes two months before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, having vowed to limit further support for Ukraine.

Allowing the Ukrainians to use the long-range missiles, known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, came in response to Russia’s surprise decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight, officials said.

Mr. Biden began to ease restrictions on the use of U.S.-supplied weapons on Russian soil after Russia launched a cross-border assault in May in the direction of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

To help the Ukrainians defend Kharkiv, Mr. Biden allowed them to use the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which have a range of about 50 miles, against Russian forces directly across the border. But Mr. Biden did not allow the Ukrainians to use longer-range ATACMS, which have a range of about 190 miles, in defense of Kharkiv.