#gplus — Public Fediverse posts

@nyquildotorg I loved the Ripples feature that early #GooglePlus had!
It was very neat to see it ripple through communities with reshares, and occasionally was a great way to find and tap directly into new audiences.
It probably also could be a privacy nightmare 😂
Early introductory example video of Google Ripples in action on Google Plus
Being able to scrub through the timeline and watch the post spread out to other people, with the size of the circles representing how big an audience it reached, and then being able to click on them to see the other circles it reached through them, filtering down deeper and deeper recursively. Getting an overview of the biggest 'influencers', languages, and stats like longest chain length, average shares per hour, and longest chain; I don't think I've seen a similar set of features since.
RIP #GoogleRipples and #GPlus.

@MLE_online PS to my other comment, introducing you both just in case you didn’t meet on #GPlus @LJ

@CStamp @BobHorowitz well I guess I may do that. Unsure whether homies that knew about it back in G+ would remember when I shared it then #GPlus +GPlusRefugee

I wouldn't have thought it, but I now miss #GPlus (G+). The platform worked comparatively well as an interest-orientated way to get information & exchange ideas - (almost) without unnecessary rubbish. Much of #SocialMedia, including the praised land of #Bluesky, is simply unbearable.

@jupiter_rowland @danie10 @thenexusofprivacy @mikedev

Okay first I should state that I've never actually said that masto isn't a solid and capable platform. It is, but at a severe cost - the design of masto, notwithstanding the insistence on maintaining a historically lackluster feature set when compared with almost any other Fediverse software, is such that it really isn't built for #DeSoc - it really strives to be some sort of unachievable ideal for the monolithic silo model.

No one but me seems to site this nowadays, but masto doesn't even really shine with respect to cost in terms of system resources and stability until you approach the 20,000 user account mark. What? Why would you do that? Back when these stats were being bandied about, Pleroma was showcasing its new #Gopher protocol (browsing) support, and reminding people that it felt perfectly at home on an #rPi. No such claim was ever made for masto, lolz. That doesn't mean that the other platforms aren't just as capable of scaling vertically... but... why? Who's going to foot the bill? Who's going to manage all of those un-vetted people creating accounts on your machines? Why would someone bother with that in the first place?

Community? Nope - there's no sense of community on masto servers, and I'll get to that later. Because you want to create your own private Idaho? Probably. mastodon.social is one of, if not the, largest deprecated monolithic silos existing in the Fediverse today. Why? What possible benefit could be derived by driving a million people into a single funnel under the auspices of telling them that they're escaping that very same model? It's ludicrous.

No matter what happens in the short term, Eugen is assured of his parachute and comfortable retirement fund, except for the part where he forgot to have his new significant other sign a pre-nup - that might dash his net worth later, but that's another consideration entirely. I hope his marriage is actually a long and fruitful one that lasts forever, he's not a bad guy, he's just been courted and corrupted by the "Ooh shiney" phenomenon of financial entrapments that come with relative success in the media and pop culture.

The reason masto needs to be hard forked (several times, IMO) is not to create a better masto that will lend itself to DeSoc, #smolweb, and self-hosting on people's home networks, but rather, to further dilute the trademark, and especially the brand, effectively killing it if possible, supplanting it with Fediverse instead. People like to bounce around that term inclusivity, well, this accomplishes that.

Forks of masto aren't going to create a better masto. No way. Sure, some improvements on this one, other features on that one, but dilution of the brand until it is only as significant as any other deserving Fediverse platform is and should be the ultimate goal. It's not well suited, architecturally for horizontal scaling anyway, unless you don't mind throwing all those system resources at it that could better serve you elsewhere with something like #GoToSocial or one of the #Misskey and #Pleroma family fork members.

True leaders in the Fediverse will initially be those platforms that have planned ahead and accommodate other DeSoc protocols, arguably Fediverse protocols, at this time, #Diaspora, #OStatus, #Nomad, #Zot, and even others that some #Fedizens turn their noses up at, like #nostr and #Bluesky's #ATP. #ActivityPub is NOT the end-all, be-all for the future. It is the golden calf of today, and just as others that have come before, it will morph and evolve or be obviated by others that will be plugged into the platforms currently running it - #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and Streams are prime examples of this, and Friendica especially, considering it's the only extant original member of the Fediverse for all intents and purposes. One could say that Friendica is the #Slackware of the Fediverse, lolz.

With respect to Friendica in particular, but also Hubzilla and others that have arrived at this obvious conclusion, ActivityPub is merely the major vehicle by which it communicates with other decentralized social communications systems on the Internet. I don't think it has ever lost sight of that, like another of its contemporaries, #GNU_Social did.

Hemming large masses of people onto a single (and at this time appearing to be) and open walled garden has the immediate effect of control over large swaths of population - you can say this, but not that. You can think this, but not that. You can be this, but not that. You can believe this, but not that - under penalty of excommunication.

In reality, we don't have strong friendships with our neighbors - that's why we have fences. We wave to them and say hi, call the cops when they're on vacation and see someone suspicious lurking about their property. That's about the extent of being a neighbor. We invite our friends and coworkers over for BBQ's and to swim in our pools, not so much our neighbors.

The current masto social architecture is the antithesis of that, and so is it's physical architecture - put all the lobsters in the same pot of boiling water. Turn on and off their ability to speak all at once. Force them en masse to endure advertising blitzes (Oh, mark my word that's coming) decided upon by the server admin. It's like Baba O'Reilly by The Who - "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss".

That's not the promise of Fediverse. it's the antonym.

masto also hinders innovation, attempting to define, dictate even, what should and should not be available - Nomadic identity is but one emerging facet of what is fracturing the masto monopolistic initiative - and that's a good thing, because with the help of FEPs, already, others are adopting various cooperative models for this as well, but discussing that now, and here, at this time, is more of a tangent so I'll get back to the point.

Jupiter:
> That's why people still fork Mastodon to add features that are available just about everywhere else.

Indeed it is, and why it has managed to enjoy a reasonable level of notoriety. There's also the wholly undeserved notion of community that actually, in direct opposition to, masto has continually sought to break and in a very big way, break.

There are certainly platforms (mostly forumware) that curate a sense of community, but those days are largely past. Whether it was #gplus, #Myspace, #Faceplant, #InstaSPAM, or #Twitter; because just as it is in real life, #COMMUNITY is that which you define for yourself through your connections - your follows and those who choose to follow your account. The biggest failures in the Fediverse that I've personally observed are those that seek to localize, geographically or by shared interest, a monolithic ivory tower of sameness and similarity amongst people.

I felt so awful for one guy who, so enthusiastically upon discovering the Fediverse, started registering domain names corresponding to several states, thinking that he would be successful in launching a geographically oriented family of masto based servers tending to the shared interests of people by offering them a place to congregate. He quickly discovered the fatal flaw in his model, but was stuck with hefty data center bills to maintain all these masto servers that were largely uninhabited.

Trying to get rid of your masto subscribers when you figure out that you need to egress from it is not an easy task without disenfranchising your user base. I know, because a few years back, not long after @Gled archived his #mastodo fork and urged everyone to adopt Pleroma instead, I face the daunting task of trying to convince my user base to migrate elsewhere - it took more than a year to accomplish!

Danie:
> thing is though there are also many existing alternatives to Mastodon already on the Fediverse, so why fork it?

In a nutshell, because it serves to, at the very least, dilute the masto brand, and more likely kill it. It has served its purpose and now that it has been exposed as a vehicle antithetical to #DeSoc, it's time to deprecate it.

My introduction to the #Fediverse occurred when I stumbled upon an earlier incarnation of #Friendica, started looking at #Red_Matrix, and discovered that the monolithic model, if not having been shown the door, had at least been handed its hat.

The problem at that time, was the effect of Prettiness, and of course, UX. Friendica wasn't too bad in that latter sense, when compared to that of Faceplant, but it sure didn't even come close to being as pretty as Faceplant - or even Myspace, which had only recently fallen into the abyss. That's changed A LOT, even in just the past year, with respect to Friendica and Hubzilla - they're much more intuitive for a layperson parachuting to the ground after jumping from the cesspit over at Faceplant.

I think that more than anything, not being pretty enough for the subjugated chattel coming from Twitter and Faceplant, was the most difficult thing for onboarders to embrace. Mike placed all of his focus on functionality and forward thinking vision with respect to what these and later efforts could provide the masses, but the "prettification" was left to others who didn't step up for the challenge for many years. I'm all for features six-ways to Sunday, but I also feel that many things need to be hidden from the landing page a new user sees upon account creation - the very basics they expect should be there, akin to those available in the deprecated monolithic space; users expect this, but they don't yet know they not only want, but really need all of these other feature sets too, yet some things should left, IMO, to be discovered later by the user.

And in my conversations years ago with Mike, I gleaned as much from him [paraphrased, of course]: "Here's this really bitchen gift for the masses, it does all this kewl stuff, now I leave it up to others to make it pretty" (and with a sense of coherency that these former subjugated chattel can initially get their heads around). Putting all that stuff right in their face was awe inspiring, but foreboding at the same time for many.

Well, finally, people are making it pretty :) And they're also moving much of the overwhelming busy-ness elsewhere in the UI. As a result, there's been an explosion of adoption - not even primarily from former masto folks either.

I'd like to touch on the notion of community one more time in closing. It might be convenient for n00bie onboarders to glean a bit about how a particular platform functions, but just like in your own neighborhood where you live, you make friends elsewhere mostly - at work, at functions of the hobbies you engage in, with friends you meet at the grocery store or libraries, and the beaches or on hiking or 4x4 weekend excursions. It's the same way in the Fediverse, you make your friends through connections here and there through people you discover along the way, and 99% of them ARE NOT on your particular server instance.

They don't need to be either, because this is the Fediverse :)

#tallship #FOSS

⛵

.

@jupiter_rowland @danie10 @thenexusofprivacy @mikedev

Okay first I should state that I've never actually said that masto isn't a solid and capable platform. It is, but at a severe cost - the design of masto, notwithstanding the insistence on maintaining a historically lackluster feature set when compared with almost any other Fediverse software, is such that it really isn't built for #DeSoc - it really strives to be some sort of unachievable ideal for the monolithic silo model.

No one but me seems to site this nowadays, but masto doesn't even really shine with respect to cost in terms of system resources and stability until you approach the 20,000 user account mark. What? Why would you do that? Back when these stats were being bandied about, Pleroma was showcasing its new #Gopher protocol (browsing) support, and reminding people that it felt perfectly at home on an #rPi. No such claim was ever made for masto, lolz. That doesn't mean that the other platforms aren't just as capable of scaling vertically... but... why? Who's going to foot the bill? Who's going to manage all of those un-vetted people creating accounts on your machines? Why would someone bother with that in the first place?

Community? Nope - there's no sense of community on masto servers, and I'll get to that later. Because you want to create your own private Idaho? Probably. mastodon.social is one of, if not the, largest deprecated monolithic silos existing in the Fediverse today. Why? What possible benefit could be derived by driving a million people into a single funnel under the auspices of telling them that they're escaping that very same model? It's ludicrous.

No matter what happens in the short term, Eugen is assured of his parachute and comfortable retirement fund, except for the part where he forgot to have his new significant other sign a pre-nup - that might dash his net worth later, but that's another consideration entirely. I hope his marriage is actually a long and fruitful one that lasts forever, he's not a bad guy, he's just been courted and corrupted by the "Ooh shiney" phenomenon of financial entrapments that come with relative success in the media and pop culture.

The reason masto needs to be hard forked (several times, IMO) is not to create a better masto that will lend itself to DeSoc, #smolweb, and self-hosting on people's home networks, but rather, to further dilute the trademark, and especially the brand, effectively killing it if possible, supplanting it with Fediverse instead. People like to bounce around that term inclusivity, well, this accomplishes that.

Forks of masto aren't going to create a better masto. No way. Sure, some improvements on this one, other features on that one, but dilution of the brand until it is only as significant as any other deserving Fediverse platform is and should be the ultimate goal. It's not well suited, architecturally for horizontal scaling anyway, unless you don't mind throwing all those system resources at it that could better serve you elsewhere with something like #GoToSocial or one of the #Misskey and #Pleroma family fork members.

True leaders in the Fediverse will initially be those platforms that have planned ahead and accommodate other DeSoc protocols, arguably Fediverse protocols, at this time, #Diaspora, #OStatus, #Nomad, #Zot, and even others that some #Fedizens turn their noses up at, like #nostr and #Bluesky's #ATP. #ActivityPub is NOT the end-all, be-all for the future. It is the golden calf of today, and just as others that have come before, it will morph and evolve or be obviated by others that will be plugged into the platforms currently running it - #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and Streams are prime examples of this, and Friendica especially, considering it's the only extant original member of the Fediverse for all intents and purposes. One could say that Friendica is the #Slackware of the Fediverse, lolz.

With respect to Friendica in particular, but also Hubzilla and others that have arrived at this obvious conclusion, ActivityPub is merely the major vehicle by which it communicates with other decentralized social communications systems on the Internet. I don't think it has ever lost sight of that, like another of its contemporaries, #GNU_Social did.

Hemming large masses of people onto a single (and at this time appearing to be) and open walled garden has the immediate effect of control over large swaths of population - you can say this, but not that. You can think this, but not that. You can be this, but not that. You can believe this, but not that - under penalty of excommunication.

In reality, we don't have strong friendships with our neighbors - that's why we have fences. We wave to them and say hi, call the cops when they're on vacation and see someone suspicious lurking about their property. That's about the extent of being a neighbor. We invite our friends and coworkers over for BBQ's and to swim in our pools, not so much our neighbors.

The current masto social architecture is the antithesis of that, and so is it's physical architecture - put all the lobsters in the same pot of boiling water. Turn on and off their ability to speak all at once. Force them en masse to endure advertising blitzes (Oh, mark my word that's coming) decided upon by the server admin. It's like Baba O'Reilly by The Who - "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss".

That's not the promise of Fediverse. it's the antonym.

masto also hinders innovation, attempting to define, dictate even, what should and should not be available - Nomadic identity is but one emerging facet of what is fracturing the masto monopolistic initiative - and that's a good thing, because with the help of FEPs, already, others are adopting various cooperative models for this as well, but discussing that now, and here, at this time, is more of a tangent so I'll get back to the point.

Jupiter:
> That's why people still fork Mastodon to add features that are available just about everywhere else.

Indeed it is, and why it has managed to enjoy a reasonable level of notoriety. There's also the wholly undeserved notion of community that actually, in direct opposition to, masto has continually sought to break and in a very big way, break.

There are certainly platforms (mostly forumware) that curate a sense of community, but those days are largely past. Whether it was #gplus, #Myspace, #Faceplant, #InstaSPAM, or #Twitter; because just as it is in real life, #COMMUNITY is that which you define for yourself through your connections - your follows and those who choose to follow your account. The biggest failures in the Fediverse that I've personally observed are those that seek to localize, geographically or by shared interest, a monolithic ivory tower of sameness and similarity amongst people.

I felt so awful for one guy who, so enthusiastically upon discovering the Fediverse, started registering domain names corresponding to several states, thinking that he would be successful in launching a geographically oriented family of masto based servers tending to the shared interests of people by offering them a place to congregate. He quickly discovered the fatal flaw in his model, but was stuck with hefty data center bills to maintain all these masto servers that were largely uninhabited.

Trying to get rid of your masto subscribers when you figure out that you need to egress from it is not an easy task without disenfranchising your user base. I know, because a few years back, not long after @Gled archived his #mastodo fork and urged everyone to adopt Pleroma instead, I face the daunting task of trying to convince my user base to migrate elsewhere - it took more than a year to accomplish!

Danie:
> thing is though there are also many existing alternatives to Mastodon already on the Fediverse, so why fork it?

In a nutshell, because it serves to, at the very least, dilute the masto brand, and more likely kill it. It has served its purpose and now that it has been exposed as a vehicle antithetical to #DeSoc, it's time to deprecate it.

My introduction to the #Fediverse occurred when I stumbled upon an earlier incarnation of #Friendica, started looking at #Red_Matrix, and discovered that the monolithic model, if not having been shown the door, had at least been handed its hat.

The problem at that time, was the effect of Prettiness, and of course, UX. Friendica wasn't too bad in that latter sense, when compared to that of Faceplant, but it sure didn't even come close to being as pretty as Faceplant - or even Myspace, which had only recently fallen into the abyss. That's changed A LOT, even in just the past year, with respect to Friendica and Hubzilla - they're much more intuitive for a layperson parachuting to the ground after jumping from the cesspit over at Faceplant.

I think that more than anything, not being pretty enough for the subjugated chattel coming from Twitter and Faceplant, was the most difficult thing for onboarders to embrace. Mike placed all of his focus on functionality and forward thinking vision with respect to what these and later efforts could provide the masses, but the "prettification" was left to others who didn't step up for the challenge for many years. I'm all for features six-ways to Sunday, but I also feel that many things need to be hidden from the landing page a new user sees upon account creation - the very basics they expect should be there, akin to those available in the deprecated monolithic space; users expect this, but they don't yet know they not only want, but really need all of these other feature sets too, yet some things should left, IMO, to be discovered later by the user.

And in my conversations years ago with Mike, I gleaned as much from him [paraphrased, of course]: "Here's this really bitchen gift for the masses, it does all this kewl stuff, now I leave it up to others to make it pretty" (and with a sense of coherency that these former subjugated chattel can initially get their heads around). Putting all that stuff right in their face was awe inspiring, but foreboding at the same time for many.

Well, finally, people are making it pretty :) And they're also moving much of the overwhelming busy-ness elsewhere in the UI. As a result, there's been an explosion of adoption - not even primarily from former masto folks either.

I'd like to touch on the notion of community one more time in closing. It might be convenient for n00bie onboarders to glean a bit about how a particular platform functions, but just like in your own neighborhood where you live, you make friends elsewhere mostly - at work, at functions of the hobbies you engage in, with friends you meet at the grocery store or libraries, and the beaches or on hiking or 4x4 weekend excursions. It's the same way in the Fediverse, you make your friends through connections here and there through people you discover along the way, and 99% of them ARE NOT on your particular server instance.

They don't need to be either, because this is the Fediverse :)

#tallship #FOSS

⛵

.

@jupiter_rowland @danie10 @thenexusofprivacy @mikedev

Okay first I should state that I've never actually said that masto isn't a solid and capable platform. It is, but at a severe cost - the design of masto, notwithstanding the insistence on maintaining a historically lackluster feature set when compared with almost any other Fediverse software, is such that it really isn't built for #DeSoc - it really strives to be some sort of unachievable ideal for the monolithic silo model.

No one but me seems to site this nowadays, but masto doesn't even really shine with respect to cost in terms of system resources and stability until you approach the 20,000 user account mark. What? Why would you do that? Back when these stats were being bandied about, Pleroma was showcasing its new #Gopher protocol (browsing) support, and reminding people that it felt perfectly at home on an #rPi. No such claim was ever made for masto, lolz. That doesn't mean that the other platforms aren't just as capable of scaling vertically... but... why? Who's going to foot the bill? Who's going to manage all of those un-vetted people creating accounts on your machines? Why would someone bother with that in the first place?

Community? Nope - there's no sense of community on masto servers, and I'll get to that later. Because you want to create your own private Idaho? Probably. mastodon.social is one of, if not the, largest deprecated monolithic silos existing in the Fediverse today. Why? What possible benefit could be derived by driving a million people into a single funnel under the auspices of telling them that they're escaping that very same model? It's ludicrous.

No matter what happens in the short term, Eugen is assured of his parachute and comfortable retirement fund, except for the part where he forgot to have his new significant other sign a pre-nup - that might dash his net worth later, but that's another consideration entirely. I hope his marriage is actually a long and fruitful one that lasts forever, he's not a bad guy, he's just been courted and corrupted by the "Ooh shiney" phenomenon of financial entrapments that come with relative success in the media and pop culture.

The reason masto needs to be hard forked (several times, IMO) is not to create a better masto that will lend itself to DeSoc, #smolweb, and self-hosting on people's home networks, but rather, to further dilute the trademark, and especially the brand, effectively killing it if possible, supplanting it with Fediverse instead. People like to bounce around that term inclusivity, well, this accomplishes that.

Forks of masto aren't going to create a better masto. No way. Sure, some improvements on this one, other features on that one, but dilution of the brand until it is only as significant as any other deserving Fediverse platform is and should be the ultimate goal. It's not well suited, architecturally for horizontal scaling anyway, unless you don't mind throwing all those system resources at it that could better serve you elsewhere with something like #GoToSocial or one of the #Misskey and #Pleroma family fork members.

True leaders in the Fediverse will initially be those platforms that have planned ahead and accommodate other DeSoc protocols, arguably Fediverse protocols, at this time, #Diaspora, #OStatus, #Nomad, #Zot, and even others that some #Fedizens turn their noses up at, like #nostr and #Bluesky's #ATP. #ActivityPub is NOT the end-all, be-all for the future. It is the golden calf of today, and just as others that have come before, it will morph and evolve or be obviated by others that will be plugged into the platforms currently running it - #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and Streams are prime examples of this, and Friendica especially, considering it's the only extant original member of the Fediverse for all intents and purposes. One could say that Friendica is the #Slackware of the Fediverse, lolz.

With respect to Friendica in particular, but also Hubzilla and others that have arrived at this obvious conclusion, ActivityPub is merely the major vehicle by which it communicates with other decentralized social communications systems on the Internet. I don't think it has ever lost sight of that, like another of its contemporaries, #GNU_Social did.

Hemming large masses of people onto a single (and at this time appearing to be) and open walled garden has the immediate effect of control over large swaths of population - you can say this, but not that. You can think this, but not that. You can be this, but not that. You can believe this, but not that - under penalty of excommunication.

In reality, we don't have strong friendships with our neighbors - that's why we have fences. We wave to them and say hi, call the cops when they're on vacation and see someone suspicious lurking about their property. That's about the extent of being a neighbor. We invite our friends and coworkers over for BBQ's and to swim in our pools, not so much our neighbors.

The current masto social architecture is the antithesis of that, and so is it's physical architecture - put all the lobsters in the same pot of boiling water. Turn on and off their ability to speak all at once. Force them en masse to endure advertising blitzes (Oh, mark my word that's coming) decided upon by the server admin. It's like Baba O'Reilly by The Who - "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss".

That's not the promise of Fediverse. it's the antonym.

masto also hinders innovation, attempting to define, dictate even, what should and should not be available - Nomadic identity is but one emerging facet of what is fracturing the masto monopolistic initiative - and that's a good thing, because with the help of FEPs, already, others are adopting various cooperative models for this as well, but discussing that now, and here, at this time, is more of a tangent so I'll get back to the point.

Jupiter:
> That's why people still fork Mastodon to add features that are available just about everywhere else.

Indeed it is, and why it has managed to enjoy a reasonable level of notoriety. There's also the wholly undeserved notion of community that actually, in direct opposition to, masto has continually sought to break and in a very big way, break.

There are certainly platforms (mostly forumware) that curate a sense of community, but those days are largely past. Whether it was #gplus, #Myspace, #Faceplant, #InstaSPAM, or #Twitter; because just as it is in real life, #COMMUNITY is that which you define for yourself through your connections - your follows and those who choose to follow your account. The biggest failures in the Fediverse that I've personally observed are those that seek to localize, geographically or by shared interest, a monolithic ivory tower of sameness and similarity amongst people.

I felt so awful for one guy who, so enthusiastically upon discovering the Fediverse, started registering domain names corresponding to several states, thinking that he would be successful in launching a geographically oriented family of masto based servers tending to the shared interests of people by offering them a place to congregate. He quickly discovered the fatal flaw in his model, but was stuck with hefty data center bills to maintain all these masto servers that were largely uninhabited.

Trying to get rid of your masto subscribers when you figure out that you need to egress from it is not an easy task without disenfranchising your user base. I know, because a few years back, not long after @Gled archived his #mastodo fork and urged everyone to adopt Pleroma instead, I face the daunting task of trying to convince my user base to migrate elsewhere - it took more than a year to accomplish!

Danie:
> thing is though there are also many existing alternatives to Mastodon already on the Fediverse, so why fork it?

In a nutshell, because it serves to, at the very least, dilute the masto brand, and more likely kill it. It has served its purpose and now that it has been exposed as a vehicle antithetical to #DeSoc, it's time to deprecate it.

My introduction to the #Fediverse occurred when I stumbled upon an earlier incarnation of #Friendica, started looking at #Red_Matrix, and discovered that the monolithic model, if not having been shown the door, had at least been handed its hat.

The problem at that time, was the effect of Prettiness, and of course, UX. Friendica wasn't too bad in that latter sense, when compared to that of Faceplant, but it sure didn't even come close to being as pretty as Faceplant - or even Myspace, which had only recently fallen into the abyss. That's changed A LOT, even in just the past year, with respect to Friendica and Hubzilla - they're much more intuitive for a layperson parachuting to the ground after jumping from the cesspit over at Faceplant.

I think that more than anything, not being pretty enough for the subjugated chattel coming from Twitter and Faceplant, was the most difficult thing for onboarders to embrace. Mike placed all of his focus on functionality and forward thinking vision with respect to what these and later efforts could provide the masses, but the "prettification" was left to others who didn't step up for the challenge for many years. I'm all for features six-ways to Sunday, but I also feel that many things need to be hidden from the landing page a new user sees upon account creation - the very basics they expect should be there, akin to those available in the deprecated monolithic space; users expect this, but they don't yet know they not only want, but really need all of these other feature sets too, yet some things should left, IMO, to be discovered later by the user.

And in my conversations years ago with Mike, I gleaned as much from him [paraphrased, of course]: "Here's this really bitchen gift for the masses, it does all this kewl stuff, now I leave it up to others to make it pretty" (and with a sense of coherency that these former subjugated chattel can initially get their heads around). Putting all that stuff right in their face was awe inspiring, but foreboding at the same time for many.

Well, finally, people are making it pretty :) And they're also moving much of the overwhelming busy-ness elsewhere in the UI. As a result, there's been an explosion of adoption - not even primarily from former masto folks either.

I'd like to touch on the notion of community one more time in closing. It might be convenient for n00bie onboarders to glean a bit about how a particular platform functions, but just like in your own neighborhood where you live, you make friends elsewhere mostly - at work, at functions of the hobbies you engage in, with friends you meet at the grocery store or libraries, and the beaches or on hiking or 4x4 weekend excursions. It's the same way in the Fediverse, you make your friends through connections here and there through people you discover along the way, and 99% of them ARE NOT on your particular server instance.

They don't need to be either, because this is the Fediverse :)

#tallship #FOSS

⛵

.

For Google Plus users only: A Walk Down Memory Lane.

Five years ago today, Google commenced the shutdown of Google Plus. The process took several hours as different geographic regions of the world went dark, one after another.

Here is a blog post with screen shots of what our beloved social networking platform used to look like.

https://shuttersparks.net/for-google-plussers-only/

#google #GooglePlus #GPlus #G+ #history #memories

@ILoveNumAn
the one G+ feature I'm still hoping gets implemented here sooner rather than later btw, is #Collections.
I loved how you could categorise your posts into Collections about a certain topic, and could make certain collections opt-in rather than opt-out by default, and that you could opt-out and opt-in of other people's specific topics, rather than having to follow all or nothing from that person...

Oh #Google, why oh why did you have to kill #GPlus :(

@ILoveNumAn welcome!
While Mastodon doesn't have native groups yet, there are some other Fediverse alternatives that do. The most notable example probably is #Friendica: https://fedi.tips/friendica-a-flexible-fediverse-server-type-with-long-posts/
While I do have a Friendica account myself, @[email protected], I don't find myself using it actively. In theory it's closer to what #GPlus is, in reality it just doesn't feel as polished, and I haven't been able to curate a home feed and 'circles' with it that keeps me active on the platform on a regular basis. The user interface and user experience of #Mastodon just feels a lot more thought through and polished.
The same applies to #Diaspora, the platform #GooglePlus probably took the whole idea of Circles from, where they are called "Aspects". There's also #Hubzilla, which has even more features, but which just felt slow and cobbled together. I would suggest you give them all a try though, as your experience and needs might differ from mine!

Now, having said that Mastodon doesn't have native #groups yet, there is some third party support for them in the form of #Guppe (https://a.gup.pe/). Check out @FediTips for a good primer: https://fedi.tips/how-to-use-groups-on-the-fediverse/

Mastodon 'recently' did add a feature that reminded me of the early days of G+, which should help you discover people a bit easier than manually trawling hashtags, and that's the ability to follow a hashtag, so its posts will automatically appear in your home feed.

Finally, if you like the overall interface of Mastodon, but miss being able to format your posts by wrapping words in asterisks, underscores and the likes like G+ supported (though with less frustrations imho), or write posts longer than 500 characters (like this one), then I would suggest you also check out #GlitchSoc, a fork of Mastodon that adds a bunch of features which Mastodon for example itself has shown a resistance to to add. https://glitch-soc.github.io/docs/
Best advice I can give is to just try out several different alternatives and then settle on the one that best suits your needs. :)

Anyway, I hope this wall of text has been of some help. 😅

https://zotum.net/item/6e940e3d-9d58-4ce1-8f91-faa7cb392365

https://zotum.net/item/6e940e3d-9d58-4ce1-8f91-faa7cb392365

https://zotum.net/item/6e940e3d-9d58-4ce1-8f91-faa7cb392365

https://zotum.net/item/6e940e3d-9d58-4ce1-8f91-faa7cb392365

Spricht mir aus der Seele der Artikel 😭😭😭
G+ war so ein großartiges Netzwerk und die Features bis heute unerreicht.

#googleplus #gplusrefugee #gplus

https://www.androidpolice.com/google-plus-missing-features-to-today/

@dansup where can I read more on what Collections are?
Is it similar to what #GooglePlus called #Collections?
(I was sure I had made a post tagged with that to explain what #GPlus' Collections were, but now I can't find it...)

Socialhome.Network as a searchable federation archive

The Socialhome node socialhome.network/ is both widely federated AND searchable by non-members. It displays both posts AND profile pages even to non-members, which is NOT the case for Diaspora* pods.

If you're looking for specific content from a now-defunct pod, Socialhome may be able to turn that up for you.

You can search for a specific profile by the its handle, e.g., [email protected] or [email protected], for my present and now-defunct Joindiaspora profiles, using the site's Search feature.

My (now-offline at origin) Joindiaspora profile appears as:

socialhome.network/p/702b2f0c-…

Note that the profile GUID is NOT the same as it would be for my Joindiaspora profle itself (`d8210c0de509264f``). The Diaspora* GUID can be used to construct a URL visible from the Diaspora* Pod you have an account on and are logged in to, but not as a globally-viewable third-party-accessible URL. Socialhome solves this problem.

That is, if you are on Glasswings, this URL links to my Joindiaspora profile:

diaspora.glasswings.com/people…

But if you're not, it won't. Glasswings users might try a different pod such as Diasp.org:

diasp.org/people/d8210c0de5092…

Instead, third-party visitors are presented with a log-in / registration page. Socialhome solves this problem specifically.

There may be additional features / API apparent at the Socialhome GitLab repo: git.feneas.org/socialhome/soci…

Noting that that is a FENEAS URL, also likely to go offline in the near future, GitHub:

github.com/jaywink/socialhome

Limitations

The downsides to Socialhome seem to be that:

• References to content and profiles does not follow Diaspora*-assigned GUIDs. That is, there's no automated way to refernece a specific post or profile.
• I'm not seeing an obvious way of exposing a JSON abstract of posts or profiles --- the Diaspora* trick of appending .json to the end of a URL does not work, and I'm not seeing a JSON abstract in the raw HTML. There may still be an API.

Photos are displayed but appear to be served from the original host, not separately federated. Once the origin host goes offline, photo links / embeds will be broken.

It's not clear how widely or deeply content is federated, though some should be better than none. This option was brought to my attention by @isaackuo in comments here.

#Diaspora #DataArchival #Federation #SocialHome #Pluspora #Joindiaspora #DataMigration #Archives #Plexodus #GooglePlus #GPlus #FENEAS

@stevenkennard here is Susanne
@Susanne711
Welcome!
A friend from G+, to any who remember us in those days.
#GooglePlusRefugee #GooglePlus #GPlus #followFriday #photographer

@mensrea it's a shame Google didn't just contribute to #Diaspora rather than build their own for #GPlus :(

Back in the early days of social networks I enjoyed trying out new networks. Even since the closure of #GooglePlus (and our collective archiving methods during the #Plexodus beforehand), I haven't really bothered.
I mean, sure, I tried out several alternatives during the #GPlus exodus, such as #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and re-tried #Diaspora* (though the pod I was one also shortly after announced its closure), and of course #Mastodon, just to find a new 'home'.
However, my heart was no longer really in it. For now Mastodon suits my needs (or at least the #GlitchSoc fork; shout out to those wonderful #GlitchSocial folks!) well enough, and I can't be arsed to even look at all the various alternatives that have popped up in my timelines since. (Most of which seem to show up for me, so I'm guessing most of them didn't really pan out anyway.)

Part of me still misses G+ though; especially its early days, and some of the later features such as #Collections and #Groups.

Spent a lot of time rescuing 20 yrs of data & photos this week.

Much of my 2010s photography was trustingly shared with #EvilGoogle #GPlus (for 8 years) and then wiped out - along with myriad communities, groups, collections - April 2, 2019.

Happily I 'mirrored' some of my most popular collections on my own site. Here's a favorite: Cuba.

http://www.fenichel.com/cuba

Click/tap on photos &/or text links for a (free, un-tracked) self-tour around Havana, Cienfuegos, and Hemingway's home.

#Fenfotos

This GIF of me - from a livestream in 2023 where I did surgery on a cardboard shark to make to it foldable - is kind of difficult to explain. 😆

It was the good old Google+ days and I wanted to bring @Fluffy with me to visit online friends in the USA, so I had to make @Fluffy able to fit into my luggage and I decided to do this "operation" on a Google Hangout, so my G+ friends could participate. Those were the days. 😊

#GooglePlus #GPlus #Shenanigans

While (re)watching #TragedyGirls (2017) I noticed this poster on a wall in the background of a scene. Brings back memories of the days where G+ was popular enough to make it into films.

Also - let's count the plurals (why?!?!):
⬩ Twitter: 3
⬩ Facebook: 2
⬩ Instagram: 2
⬩ YouTube: 2
⬩ Google+: 2

#GPlus #GooglePlus

Hey, remember the first #enshittification of #Google, when every single Google app got #GPlus awkwardly crammed into it because individual googlers’ bonuses were calculated based on how and whether they got people to use G+?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/06/google-ceo-tells-employees-it-needs-all-hands-on-deck-to-test-bard.html

@BeckieSueDalton let's hope Collections and Groups will get added soon; two features I still miss from the #GPlus days :)

But yeah, of the various networks I tried out after G+'s demise, Mastodon is the one I still visit daily.
@briannawu

My most memorable DM on #Twitspace was with a quasi-friend from #Gplus who turned out to be a #TERF.

Wondering how she's enjoying all the free speech. I could see it going either way, really...

#GPlus felt like home, but it was the kind of home where your parents are always imposing bad ideas on you for your own good.

#Facebook never felt like home, even though it was my first experience with social media and a place where I reconnected with a lot of people from 2 decades earlier. It was more like... I dunno... an awkward family party.

#Twitter never felt like home. How can you feel at home in a place where every room is a broom-closet?

#LinkedIn is just evil, and always has been.

Extended Profile

Synopsis:

• a herd of cats, most of whom are asleep at any given time
• social media girlboss
• actually 3 LLMs in the emperor's new trenchcoat
• time-traveler from the past... oh FFS, what have you kids been up to??
• Unfrozen Cavegirl Coder: your modern client-side paradigms frighten and confuse me...

Truisms:

• Time not only flies, it goes first class and charges the tickets to my account.
• I have so far succeeded in my life goal of never graduating from anywhere.
• That which didn't kill me just really messed me up for a long time and I was lucky to ever get myself back together again. (It also made me stranger.)

Personal sites:

• creative: https://woozalia.com
• technical: https://wooz.dev

I also run https://issuepedia.org and https://htyp.org but nobody knows why.

Details

My legal name is:
Woozalia Nicola Jadzia Rayner Staddon
(...but you can call me Woozle, which is short for Woozalia and is also what my parents called me from the time I was about a week old.)

I met @Harena online in February 2001, and we've been hypertwins ever since.

We both live in #DurhamNC, where we grew up 3 blocks apart (but, again, we first met online) in the 1970s (give or take).

I was born in Toronto, grew up in Durham (1967-'85), spent a summer in Ann Arbor MI (1985), lived in #ProvidenceRI working at #BrownU Psychology Dept. (1985-1989), moved back to Durham and worked at #DukeU (Humanities Computing Facility, 1990-'91) writing neural network software, lived in #AthensGA (1991-2001), then finally again moved back to Durham.

Things I sometimes do:

• post original music
• write about #JennyHypertwin
• escalate the War on Bullshit
• write lots of unfinished software
• administer TootCat
• complain about tech (mainly software)
• feel inadequate
• take photos of clouds

(If the above doesn't show as a bulleted list for you -- please complain to your instance admin. ^.^)

I was on #GPlus when the walls fell.

I was on Facebook in the early 200?s, several years before everyone else discovered it (a Dutch friend from IRC dragged me there).

Defenestrated* since 2005; prefer Ubuntu MATE.

I started an online store at about the same time Jeff Bezos did. He had family willing to invest in it, though.

I never understood the appeal of marriage, but I tried it for ten years anyway. Not my cuppa cola.

(I don't drink coffee; I don't like it. Cola is my one vice.)

My ideas are my children. (Wait, I guess I'd better explain that... I helped Harena raise her 3 youngers, and I have a biological daughter from the aforementioned marriage who is awesome and doing well for herself in Atlanta -- but I very much never wanted kids, and neither did H. It was always other people who did.)

(* exited from Windows)

A realization after a few days on Mastodon: This feels not so much a replacement for birdsite, as it does for what was great about #Google+

Discoverable fascinating discussions, with intelligence and depth, about subjects of interest, with people I didn't yet know.

I've missed that, a lot, since G+ shut down several years ago.

Edit #GooglePlus #gplus

People is now moving to Hive.
More of the same.
I don't think I'm going to open more accounts in corporate environments.
#Gplus ending, #Facebook politics interference and now the #Twitter thing has convinced me of the inconvenience of that.
#Mastodon or something like it is the way forward, now or later.

Get out of the wheel.

After #GPlus shut down, there was an attempt to create a new and friendly social network. It was called #OpenBook, but Facebook's lawyers forced them to change the name and it became #Okuna. It had to be stopped of financial reasons. Now I find a few of my former bubble here and please boost so I might find more of them again!

Oh look, it's my old #GPlus buddy @3DBigBoxGames :D
Welcome aboard!

Back in the early days of social networks I enjoyed trying out new networks. Even since the closure of #GooglePlus (and our collective archiving methods during the #Plexodus beforehand), I haven't really bothered.
I mean, sure, I tried out several alternatives during the #GPlus exodus, such as #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and re-tried #Diaspora* (though the pod I was one also shortly after announced its closure), and of course #Mastodon, just to find a new 'home'.
However, my heart was no longer really in it. For now Mastodon suits my needs (or at least the #GlitchSoc fork; shout out to those wonderful #GlitchSocial folks!) well enough, and I can't be arsed to even look at all the various alternatives that have popped up in my timelines since. (Most of which seem to show up for me, so I'm guessing most of them didn't really pan out anyway.)

Part of me still misses G+ though; especially its early days, and some of the later features such as #Collections and #Groups.

Back in the early days of social networks I enjoyed trying out new networks. Even since the closure of #GooglePlus (and our collective archiving methods during the #Plexodus beforehand), I haven't really bothered.
I mean, sure, I tried out several alternatives during the #GPlus exodus, such as #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and re-tried #Diaspora* (though the pod I was one also shortly after announced its closure), and of course #Mastodon, just to find a new 'home'.
However, my heart was no longer really in it. For now Mastodon suits my needs (or at least the #GlitchSoc fork; shout out to those wonderful #GlitchSocial folks!) well enough, and I can't be arsed to even look at all the various alternatives that have popped up in my timelines since. (Most of which seem to show up for me, so I'm guessing most of them didn't really pan out anyway.)

Part of me still misses G+ though; especially its early days, and some of the later features such as #Collections and #Groups.

Back in the early days of social networks I enjoyed trying out new networks. Even since the closure of #GooglePlus (and our collective archiving methods during the #Plexodus beforehand), I haven't really bothered.
I mean, sure, I tried out several alternatives during the #GPlus exodus, such as #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and re-tried #Diaspora* (though the pod I was one also shortly after announced its closure), and of course #Mastodon, just to find a new 'home'.
However, my heart was no longer really in it. For now Mastodon suits my needs (or at least the #GlitchSoc fork; shout out to those wonderful #GlitchSocial folks!) well enough, and I can't be arsed to even look at all the various alternatives that have popped up in my timelines since. (Most of which seem to show up for me, so I'm guessing most of them didn't really pan out anyway.)

Part of me still misses G+ though; especially its early days, and some of the later features such as #Collections and #Groups.

Back in the early days of social networks I enjoyed trying out new networks. Even since the closure of #GooglePlus (and our collective archiving methods during the #Plexodus beforehand), I haven't really bothered.
I mean, sure, I tried out several alternatives during the #GPlus exodus, such as #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and re-tried #Diaspora* (though the pod I was one also shortly after announced its closure), and of course #Mastodon, just to find a new 'home'.
However, my heart was no longer really in it. For now Mastodon suits my needs (or at least the #GlitchSoc fork; shout out to those wonderful #GlitchSocial folks!) well enough, and I can't be arsed to even look at all the various alternatives that have popped up in my timelines since. (Most of which seem to show up for me, so I'm guessing most of them didn't really pan out anyway.)

Part of me still misses G+ though; especially its early days, and some of the later features such as #Collections and #Groups.

Today's freshly committed code will not only request relevant JSON from the APIs, it will also combine it all into single structured JSON file per domain.

Hurry up though, the scripts rely on the #GPlus #APIs which will go away on March 7th, so in a few days.

The most important will be to retrieve all the data; once the data is cached locally, future updates to improve structure and parsing of the JSON archive can work based on the cached results.

#PlexodusTools #Plexodus #GooglePlusShutdown

@mudd0359 Welcome to Mastodon!

You might find other #Pluspora or #GooglePlus / #GPlus refugees by using those hashtags. You can enter a hashtag in Search and then pin the resulting stream to catch any mentions of it.

Post a brief introduction of yourself as well and pin it to your profile to help others find you.

I'm also https://diaspora.glasswings.com/u/dredmorbius

#Welcome

As a #GooglePlusRefugee, you can now find me on #PlusPora (part of the #Diaspora galaxy) as well as #Mastodon
https://pluspora.com/people/a89673102b0e01370372005056264835

#Gplus #GooglePlus

Nice little article about the succes of #Pluspora after the demise of #GPlus. They went from 150 to 6000 users in one week. That's impressive.

https://phillipschneider.com/google-user-creates-freedom-based-alternative-as-google-announces-end-of-g-network/

Here I am, in case you're looking for me, as previously seen on Gplus, especially in Retro Computing, and Computer History, and Computer Security & Lockpicking, and Computer Science, Seriously, and Computer History Book Club, and HP Calculators, and others.
#retrocomputing #gplus #pluspora #pdp11 #6502 #bbcmicro

Extended Profile

Synopsis:

• a herd of cats, most of whom are asleep at any given time
• social media girlboss
• actually 3 LLMs in the emperor's new trenchcoat
• time-traveler from the past... oh FFS, what have you kids been up to??
• Unfrozen Cavegirl Coder: your modern client-side paradigms frighten and confuse me...

Truisms:

• Time not only flies, it goes first class and charges the tickets to my account.
• I have so far succeeded in my life goal of never graduating from anywhere.
• That which didn't kill me just really messed me up for a long time and I was lucky to ever get myself back together again. (It also made me stranger.)

Personal sites:

• creative: https://woozalia.com
• technical: https://wooz.dev

I also run https://issuepedia.org and https://htyp.org but nobody knows why.

Details

My legal name is:
Woozalia Nicola Jadzia Rayner Staddon
(...but you can call me Woozle, which is short for Woozalia and is also what my parents called me from the time I was about a week old.)

I met @Harena online in February 2001, and we've been hypertwins ever since.

We both live in #DurhamNC, where we grew up 3 blocks apart (but, again, we first met online) in the 1970s (give or take).

I was born in Toronto, grew up in Durham (1967-'85), spent a summer in Ann Arbor MI (1985), lived in #ProvidenceRI working at #BrownU Psychology Dept. (1985-1989), moved back to Durham and worked at #DukeU (Humanities Computing Facility, 1990-'91) writing neural network software, lived in #AthensGA (1991-2001), then finally again moved back to Durham.

Things I sometimes do:

• post original music
• write about #JennyHypertwin
• escalate the War on Bullshit
• write lots of unfinished software
• administer TootCat
• complain about tech (mainly software)
• feel inadequate
• take photos of clouds

(If the above doesn't show as a bulleted list for you -- please complain to your instance admin. ^.^)

I was on #GPlus when the walls fell.

I was on Facebook in the early 200?s, several years before everyone else discovered it (a Dutch friend from IRC dragged me there).

Defenestrated* since 2005; prefer Ubuntu MATE.

I started an online store at about the same time Jeff Bezos did. He had family willing to invest in it, though.

I never understood the appeal of marriage, but I tried it for ten years anyway. Not my cuppa cola.

(I don't drink coffee; I don't like it. Cola is my one vice.)

My ideas are my children. (Wait, I guess I'd better explain that... I helped Harena raise her 3 youngers, and I have a biological daughter from the aforementioned marriage who is awesome and doing well for herself in Atlanta -- but I very much never wanted kids, and neither did H. It was always other people who did.)

(* exited from Windows)

Extended Profile

Synopsis:

• a herd of cats, most of whom are asleep at any given time
• social media girlboss
• actually 3 LLMs in the emperor's new trenchcoat
• time-traveler from the past... oh FFS, what have you kids been up to??
• Unfrozen Cavegirl Coder: your modern client-side paradigms frighten and confuse me...

Truisms:

• Time not only flies, it goes first class and charges the tickets to my account.
• I have so far succeeded in my life goal of never graduating from anywhere.
• That which didn't kill me just really messed me up for a long time and I was lucky to ever get myself back together again. (It also made me stranger.)

Personal sites:

• creative: https://woozalia.com
• technical: https://wooz.dev

I also run https://issuepedia.org and https://htyp.org but nobody knows why.

Details

My legal name is:
Woozalia Nicola Jadzia Rayner Staddon
(...but you can call me Woozle, which is short for Woozalia and is also what my parents called me from the time I was about a week old.)

I met @Harena online in February 2001, and we've been hypertwins ever since.

We both live in #DurhamNC, where we grew up 3 blocks apart (but, again, we first met online) in the 1970s (give or take).

I was born in Toronto, grew up in Durham (1967-'85), spent a summer in Ann Arbor MI (1985), lived in #ProvidenceRI working at #BrownU Psychology Dept. (1985-1989), moved back to Durham and worked at #DukeU (Humanities Computing Facility, 1990-'91) writing neural network software, lived in #AthensGA (1991-2001), then finally again moved back to Durham.

Things I sometimes do:

• post original music
• write about #JennyHypertwin
• escalate the War on Bullshit
• write lots of unfinished software
• administer TootCat
• complain about tech (mainly software)
• feel inadequate
• take photos of clouds

(If the above doesn't show as a bulleted list for you -- please complain to your instance admin. ^.^)

I was on #GPlus when the walls fell.

I was on Facebook in the early 200?s, several years before everyone else discovered it (a Dutch friend from IRC dragged me there).

Defenestrated* since 2005; prefer Ubuntu MATE.

I started an online store at about the same time Jeff Bezos did. He had family willing to invest in it, though.

I never understood the appeal of marriage, but I tried it for ten years anyway. Not my cuppa cola.

(I don't drink coffee; I don't like it. Cola is my one vice.)

My ideas are my children. (Wait, I guess I'd better explain that... I helped Harena raise her 3 youngers, and I have a biological daughter from the aforementioned marriage who is awesome and doing well for herself in Atlanta -- but I very much never wanted kids, and neither did H. It was always other people who did.)

(* exited from Windows)

Extended Profile

Synopsis:

• a herd of cats, most of whom are asleep at any given time
• social media girlboss
• actually 3 LLMs in the emperor's new trenchcoat
• time-traveler from the past... oh FFS, what have you kids been up to??
• Unfrozen Cavegirl Coder: your modern client-side paradigms frighten and confuse me...

Truisms:

• Time not only flies, it goes first class and charges the tickets to my account.
• I have so far succeeded in my life goal of never graduating from anywhere.
• That which didn't kill me just really messed me up for a long time and I was lucky to ever get myself back together again. (It also made me stranger.)

Personal sites:

• creative: https://woozalia.com
• technical: https://wooz.dev

I also run https://issuepedia.org and https://htyp.org but nobody knows why.

Details

My legal name is:
Woozalia Nicola Jadzia Rayner Staddon
(...but you can call me Woozle, which is short for Woozalia and is also what my parents called me from the time I was about a week old.)

I met @Harena online in February 2001, and we've been hypertwins ever since.

We both live in #DurhamNC, where we grew up 3 blocks apart (but, again, we first met online) in the 1970s (give or take).

I was born in Toronto, grew up in Durham (1967-'85), spent a summer in Ann Arbor MI (1985), lived in #ProvidenceRI working at #BrownU Psychology Dept. (1985-1989), moved back to Durham and worked at #DukeU (Humanities Computing Facility, 1990-'91) writing neural network software, lived in #AthensGA (1991-2001), then finally again moved back to Durham.

Things I sometimes do:

• post original music
• write about #JennyHypertwin
• escalate the War on Bullshit
• write lots of unfinished software
• administer TootCat
• complain about tech (mainly software)
• feel inadequate
• take photos of clouds

(If the above doesn't show as a bulleted list for you -- please complain to your instance admin. ^.^)

I was on #GPlus when the walls fell.

I was on Facebook in the early 200?s, several years before everyone else discovered it (a Dutch friend from IRC dragged me there).

Defenestrated* since 2005; prefer Ubuntu MATE.

I started an online store at about the same time Jeff Bezos did. He had family willing to invest in it, though.

I never understood the appeal of marriage, but I tried it for ten years anyway. Not my cuppa cola.

(I don't drink coffee; I don't like it. Cola is my one vice.)

My ideas are my children. (Wait, I guess I'd better explain that... I helped Harena raise her 3 youngers, and I have a biological daughter from the aforementioned marriage who is awesome and doing well for herself in Atlanta -- but I very much never wanted kids, and neither did H. It was always other people who did.)

(* exited from Windows)

Extended Profile

Synopsis:

• a herd of cats, most of whom are asleep at any given time
• social media girlboss
• actually 3 LLMs in the emperor's new trenchcoat
• time-traveler from the past... oh FFS, what have you kids been up to??
• Unfrozen Cavegirl Coder: your modern client-side paradigms frighten and confuse me...

Truisms:

• Time not only flies, it goes first class and charges the tickets to my account.
• I have so far succeeded in my life goal of never graduating from anywhere.
• That which didn't kill me just really messed me up for a long time and I was lucky to ever get myself back together again. (It also made me stranger.)

Personal sites:

• creative: https://woozalia.com
• technical: https://wooz.dev

I also run https://issuepedia.org and https://htyp.org but nobody knows why.

Details

My legal name is:
Woozalia Nicola Jadzia Rayner Staddon
(...but you can call me Woozle, which is short for Woozalia and is also what my parents called me from the time I was about a week old.)

I met @Harena online in February 2001, and we've been hypertwins ever since.

We both live in #DurhamNC, where we grew up 3 blocks apart (but, again, we first met online) in the 1970s (give or take).

I was born in Toronto, grew up in Durham (1967-'85), spent a summer in Ann Arbor MI (1985), lived in #ProvidenceRI working at #BrownU Psychology Dept. (1985-1989), moved back to Durham and worked at #DukeU (Humanities Computing Facility, 1990-'91) writing neural network software, lived in #AthensGA (1991-2001), then finally again moved back to Durham.

Things I sometimes do:

• post original music
• write about #JennyHypertwin
• escalate the War on Bullshit
• write lots of unfinished software
• administer TootCat
• complain about tech (mainly software)
• feel inadequate
• take photos of clouds

(If the above doesn't show as a bulleted list for you -- please complain to your instance admin. ^.^)

I was on #GPlus when the walls fell.

I was on Facebook in the early 200?s, several years before everyone else discovered it (a Dutch friend from IRC dragged me there).

Defenestrated* since 2005; prefer Ubuntu MATE.

I started an online store at about the same time Jeff Bezos did. He had family willing to invest in it, though.

I never understood the appeal of marriage, but I tried it for ten years anyway. Not my cuppa cola.

(I don't drink coffee; I don't like it. Cola is my one vice.)

My ideas are my children. (Wait, I guess I'd better explain that... I helped Harena raise her 3 youngers, and I have a biological daughter from the aforementioned marriage who is awesome and doing well for herself in Atlanta -- but I very much never wanted kids, and neither did H. It was always other people who did.)

(* exited from Windows)

@MackWells115
#oliebollen are a deep-fried #Dutch snack mostly eaten on and around #NewYearsEve. Some would call them #DutchDoughnuts.
I wrote about them back in #2014, when I shared my grandmother's recipe via #GooglePlus.
While #GPlus is now defunct, you can still read about them and the recipes for not just oliebollen but also the #appleFritters-like #appelBeignets via the #WayBackMachine: http://web.archive.org/web/20190310015108/https://plus.google.com/112064652966583500522/posts/ciQw9Q66qFi
@dadegroot

I had to go to #Facebook to find a recipe for #oliebollen and #appelBeignets I remember posting there years ago as a note.
Fortunately it included a link to a #GooglePlus post where I'd also posted the same recipe, and since I've #archive'd just about all my #GPlus posts through the #InternetArchive's #WayBackMachine, it meant I could share http://web.archive.org/web/20190310015108/https://plus.google.com/112064652966583500522/posts/ciQw9Q66qFi rather than a disgusting Facebook link :D

(Of course, ideally I'd already posted it to my own #recipeEasy instead… next week maybe?)