WhatsApp is more problematic to leave though. Where I live, it’s the default messaging app everyone uses. I haven’t texted anyone in ages. And I can also see why it’s the default, WhatsApp is just better than the competition. It’s end-to-end encrypted, so Meta cannot read your messages directly, it has good markdown-like formatting support, it’s has a lot of features, and it’s relatively stable.

I’ve been using Telegram and Signal with friends, but honestly Telegram doesn’t exactly feel safer to me, especially with e2e encryption not enabled by default (last time I checked). And Signal is better, but sometimes just a pain to use. No Markdown-like syntax (though formatting is finally possible via GUI), it constantly keeps desyncing devices that I use once every few weeks, and we’ve had plenty of bugs with not seeing messages of eachother.

Now, I can accept that to a degree, in return for better privacy. But no way in hell are laypeople like my family going to switch. WhatsApp is too good and safe enough to remain dominant.

Lol, that’s absolutely not what I mean. Please keep all the “wokies” here. As long as “woke” means accepting people regardless of race, sexuality, gender, etc.

It’s always difficult. On the one hand it’s not great to de-federate based on political opinion. After all, I’d have no issues with these people posting memes and other content, adding non-political insight in non-political communities, and even discussing politics in political communities. An echo chamber doesn’t really help anyone after all. However, these people seem to actively look down on anyone even slightly more right wing as them, and as shown in the examples they also seem likely to aggressively push their views in places where that would not be appreciated. To me defederation seems like the good call, at least temporarily, to ensure that moderators won’t have their hands full. But it would be nice to see at least attempts to federate with these extremists, just to give them a chance to play nice. It would be better in the grand scheme of the fediverse to keep things as connected as possible and to avoid echo chambers.

You might be able to easily spot sarcasm, but not everyone is blessed with that ability. Many autistic people, for instance, struggle to detect sarcasm. And comments being text only makes it harder. “/s” is an accessibility tool and implying that using these tools is “dumbing down” communication is honestly a very shitty move.

It surprises me that so many people think it didn’t fail. Remainers, which as far as I can remember nearly made up 50%, will almost all think it has failed from the start because they see the whole Brexit as a failed idea. And many Brexiteers seemed to have very unrealistic ideas about Brexit, seemingly thinking that they could just boss the EU around and get everything their way. And because we don’t live in their fairytale Brexit utopia world, they would always have been disappointed. Add to that the general incompetency of the Conservatives and it’s honestly quite astounding that anyone still thinks it’s going well.

Nope, I’m European so I’ve never heard of it tbh. I like pizza, so I wouldn’t mind trying if I ever end up ip in the area somehow

Also Rocket League. I’ve got like 2K hours and managed to get to Grand Champion (1) once, but usually hang around in Champ 2 or 3. In a way I just play like a very consistent Diamond player though. I can semi-reliably wavedash, sometimes manage to hit a half flip, and can’t do any flip resets, musty flicks, etc. I solely rely on positioning, shooting at the right time, fast aerials, bumping, and boost stealing.

During my master’s degree we had a course where we had to make a small app or data collection thingy using the Mastodon api (or something, can’t fully remember). So I was aware it existed, and contemplated joining at a few points. Ultimately though, I just don’t really vibe with Twitter-like social media. After Reddit did the thing, I saw Lemmy, which suits me way better. I like it so far. I’m donating a small amount of money to help with keeping the instance running, and I hope this remains a cool place to be for many years to come.

Sorry for being pedantic, but it’s “Ruud” not “Rudd”. I’ve noticed that the same mistake often gets made with other Dutch spellings, like the Haas F1 team being written as “Hass” online. Do repeated vowels feel weird or something to people who don’t speak Dutch, or is it just a coincidence?