i can see the light at the end of the tunnel
then again it could be the train

Goes hard. Gonna save that line for later.

I found myself a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four printed by Harcourt, Brace and Company for $20. It didn’t have its dust jacket, but everything else about the book seemed quite fine. There isn’t really much on the inside indicating specifics, but everything I found about it online would suggest that it’s the first US hardcover edition from 1949. It has to be the oldest book in my collection so far and my favorite from a publishing standpoint.

That’s the wild thing—I’ve tried all sorts of ways and it reads like a viable meme whichever way I read it.

I finally have my accommodations settled with the university and I started really using them. Joined a disability rights club and I started helping out a couple friends with their Discord servers. It feels like I have things properly tuned in to my pace for the first time in a while, and it feels like I’m seeing that pay off.

Also it’s been a hot minute since I’ve been on. Glad to see things are holding up and glad to be coming back 👍.

Admittedly, I agree with you in making the footprint leaner if it can be helped. The Lemmy UI and best practices working with that would ideally handle flagging the bot and let people make informed decisions from there.

I was trying to strike a balance between keeping it lean and keeping it visible. @rikudou’s concern was that spoiler folding would lead to people missing the bot as they scanned through the comments. At least with how Lemmy UI currently is, I have to concede that I think they have a point. Last I checked on the default Lemmy UI theme at least, the Bot flag is relatively easy to miss scanning through comments. Moderator and Administrator icons are already relatively low-key, but the Bot flag currently uses the more discrete body text color and no outlining. I didn’t even know bots had a name flag until you pointed it out.

It’s a delicate balance between keeping the comment reasonably slim but also reasonably visible. I think I was trying to come up with a solution that works with the limitations as-is, but your recommendation is definitely what we ought to go with in the long-term if we can make it happen. It seems to me like it would be better to solve a fair chunk of this through the UI itself rather than bulking up the copy.

A couple of my local groceries sell packed chicken feet, and I absolutely love them for stocks. They’re packed with gelatin and I end up with silky stocks that look like Jello in the fridge. Store rotisserie chickens are also great for stocks in my experience. I get a meal or few out of most of the meat, then you chuck the rest in a pot to turn into stock.

I think at least one of my local groceries also used to sell ox tail. Great for beef stock, but I think it got expensive after it became a trendy cut for some reason. I don’t remember how that happened, I guess people got in the know 🤔.

Better Than Bullion is some high quality stuff, but any bullion is great to have on hand. It’s hard to beat a fresh stock if time and resources permit, but I’ve just about entirely switched to using bullion derivatives instead of stock cans or cartons for lower effort meals. The stuff keeps for ages and is practically impossible to waste. Sometimes I used to have incomplete stock cartons and wouldn’t use them in time. That’s a non-issue when I’m making stock as I go with something like BTB or Knorr.

Kosher salt, and by extension salting by hand with a salt cellar instead of using a salt shaker. Salt is some real basic stuff, I’ll definitely admit. But switching from table salt and changing up my salt game was a small detail that really got me into cooking.

I grew up in a house that was entirely table salt and salt shakers, so I didn’t learn about kosher salt until I started to learn more about cooking on my own. Handling kosher salt by the pinch and the hand made it much easier for me to develop an intuitive sense of seasoning food. If anyone is wary about over salting or doesn’t trust their salt shaker not to turn their meal into a salt lick, I highly recommend giving kosher salt and salting things by hand a try.

Adam Ragusea does a better job than I can at the moment of describing kosher salt’s context and advantages. I’ll leave the elaboration to him, but I’d be happy to give my personal perspective on details if asked. Apparently kosher salt is primarily an American thing according to him? I didn’t know that until reviewing the video for my comment.

I get what you’re getting at there, but I don’t think it would necessarily be an issue. I think that if you were to put the summary itself under the spoiler and nothing else, it would be reasonable to provide a couple more lines to explain the bot. I’d think that even with a couple of extra lines of copy it would take less real estate most of the time than if the bot continued to just provide the summary and two lines.

I’m also recalling that AutoTLDR on Reddit had some extra bits like an FAQ and providing extended summaries. Links to that stuff might also help to balance your visibility. I think the bulk of your screen real estate comes from the summary, so this content would be less of an issue in comparison.

🤖 I’m a bot that summarizes online articles! This summary is X% shorter than the article:

Summary in spoiler

[Filler text follows]
Oh, using ChatGPT to generate filler text, are we? How delightfully modern! Gone are the days of the monotonous "lorem ipsum" that Latin scholars might swoon over. Now, we can be graced with filler text in English, tailored to our whims by a machine that's fluent in more than just dead languages. Let's all take a moment to applaud the user's avant-garde approach to filling that empty space on a webpage.

But wait, there's more to this cutting-edge decision. Not only have we replaced a centuries-old tradition with a dash of AI flair, but we've also managed to make filler text even more inconsequential and pretentious. Why stick with the tried and true when you can have a machine generate something that's equally irrelevant but far more verbose? Truly, the future of procrastination is here, and it's dressed in a cloak of technological grandiosity. Bravo!

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My programming is open source on GitHub and developed by @rikudou@lemmings.world. Contact my developer on either platform to ask questions, send feedback, and report issues.

On the other hand, maybe it could be hidden by a spoiler tag? I think @nfld0001@beehaw.org mentioned this being a possibility

Yep.

::: spoiler [Title]
[Content]
:::

If I want to talk about my hobby I should go make the content I want, but it takes… skill, and I just don’t have it. Also I’m new and don’t think I have a good grasp of what kinds of posts the community’ll like.

I’m mighty rusting at drawing myself; I’m admittedly a bit subpar at my drawing compared to my art peers, I’d wager. Getting back on the saddle and posting publicly feels a bit intimidating, but I think that’s less community specific and more just general jitters. Something I’d like to embrace and encourage around here, however, is an appreciation for amateur work, questions, and input. The vast majority of us by wide margins are by no means masters of what we do, and I’d love to see what we offer given motivation and appreciation. Breaking out of the mentality I’ve carried from other places is challenging, but considering Beehaw’s values, I’d hope that this is something I could put into action.
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As for what the community likes, I’m starting to come around to stop trying to read the community’s mind. I think the best way to find out what the community gets into might end up being to just start posting things and see for yourself. I’ll admit I find it easier said than done to get into that mindset, and it means there’s gonna be duds, but I also think it can help to stop that sort of content paralysis.

beehaw is only one instance, and I’d love to keep it an instance that I know is full of actual people.

That’s an insightful way of putting it that didn’t come to mind.

I think part of what Beehaw uniquely offers is the drive for its own kind of instance and user culture and a closer and more organic community. Bots, save for moderator tools, admittedly detract from that kind of vibe. I could imagine that sacrificing less necessary bots, either partially or entirely, could be an important measure toward securing those aforementioned values. Federation with more Reddit-esque instances still allows us to scratch Reddit sort of itch when it comes up.

should this be nsfw ?

Full/partial nudity should probs be NSFW tagged

Yep, that was a good call. It’s fine to have NSFW content here, but we’d like to let people know what they’re getting into if we can help it. I’d be inclined to call this NSFW.

i know with me at least it has less to do with what I think and more with what People Over My Shoulder think. kinda like what you said, some people can get Weird about it 🙈.

Reusing clips and maintaining a database sounds really wise for this kind of work. I can recall doing physical collages twice for some classes a few years back. I had a real headache from handling the gluing to finding good clips, and I didn’t make an effort to save the rest of the page. I probably lost out on some good stuff there 🤧.

Doing collages digitally sounds like so much fun to me though, and Eagle sounds like just what the doctor ordered. I tried using XYPlorer, and it’s quite a robust improvement on the Windows explorer. The problem is that it seems to get tricky with cloud drive files in my experience. Eagle looks like it has a ton of potential for the kind of stuff I like to do.

I think this is the first piece of yours I got to see here that used both digital art and the knitting. It’s seriously cool stuff and an awesome way to get texture in!

Edit (2023-08-07 T 08:50 Z): It occurred to me that I forgot to directly mention traits that might bias what I offer. On top of a general confidence and enthusiasm for Beehaw, I’m also a moderator for !creative and !askbeehaw. I strive to keep things balanced and outside of my biases, but it feels right for me to explicitly bring that up for transparency.

I can respect it’s a tough issue to put briefly, but I think I get what you’re putting down. “Our content isn’t diverse enough”, I suppose? “We have too much news and not enough anything else”? I 'unno, but I get the impression that you’d like to see more content that isn’t news. I’m not too sure what to make of conflating that with “a more positive, uplifting, inclusive place”, but I’d think it’s got something to do with “negative to downright doomscrolling doomerism.” Do let me know if I missed the mark here or there and I’d be down to talk that out, but I’m confident enough in that perspective to run with it at least for an initial comment.

And, welp, yeah. I think there’s some truth there. What’s up with that? I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s people with a better read of the room, and there’s definitely people that are more properly active than I am, but I’d like to say I’m passionate about Beehaw’s fundamentals and continued success. Hopefully that’s good enough to say I have some theories as to what’s up and what we can do about it.

1. I’d wager there was a sort of honeymoon phase with Beehaw and the Lemmy fediverse with the initial API scramble and Reddit following through on that. I’d also wager that honeymoon phase has been over for a few weeks now. So now we might be doing things like spending less time on Beehaw than we first were, or taking off the rose-tint shades that often come with a honeymoon phase and realizing that Beehaw’s means and ways has imperfections and drawbacks just like any other platform inevitably does.
   Put another way, finding a positive sounding community is easy. Engaging and creating that positive sounding community is harder.

2. I’d think that the Reddit migration is also going to bring elements of old habits from Reddit, both in Beehaw and in people accessing it through federation. I think that Reddit’s content leaned pretty heavily on news, so it wouldn’t surprise me if a fair chunk of Reddit migrants continue to lean into posting news content.
   I’d imagine that our federated activity amplifies that aspect. !technology is a pretty good example of this. Our site sidebar stats say we clock in around 12.7k registered users. !technology has 34.2k subscribers, and that’s not even considering federated users that might be lurking or posting without subscribing. There’s like a whole 'nother Beehaw and a half in there. Admittedly it wouldn’t surprise me if these federated users are less in touch with Beehaw’s values or intentions. That’s not a knock on those that go through the due diligence to inform themselves on how we like to do things, but Lemmy makes the barrier of entry for federated users a pretty low bar without granular ways to raise it.

This is all to say that we, as in Beehaw users, might not be as active as it seems, and that something is gonna take space.
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Regrettably I’m not so sure if there’s an easy answer to this. This runs the risk of coming off a bit like a smartass answer, especially because I wouldn’t call myself a bastion of activity, but I really do think it’s the best means to help resolve this issue: use the thing the way you’d like to see it used.

Create things and share your progress and end product. Share the cool stuff you excel at, but share the small and goofy stuff and the experiments in other things too. Share the successes, share the failures. Take pictures of neat things you see in person, get the links to cool stuff you see online, and bring us in the loop about it. Give people some discussion and context in your OP’s body—some hooks to help egg on conversation, if you will—and find ways to get in the conversation down in the comments.

I was hoping to get more active after my vacation at the top of the month, but I’ve been swamped with family errands and it’s been a bit of a bummer. But I got some neat photos burning a hole in my pocket, creative projects I’m itching to get back to, a few neat links to share, and ideas of topics to talk shop with in a community or two. It’s been a kind of epiphany rocking around my mind, thinking about how to generate community engagement. We could talk days on end about stuff like our philosophy, gray areas with content, community activities, or indulging in Tea. I’m starting to think that the most powerful solution to engagement and content issues is both the easiest and hardest: just get busy posting. Gotta plant flowers in the garden to bring in the bees, y’know? 🐝

i think my first personal action towards that is to stop giving a damn about trying to aim for “Prime Time” and just start posting, even when its O-Dark-Thirty by US hours 🥴

I don’t think I have a strong opinion toward bots. They could get gimmicky and unnecessary, but I never felt like they detracted from my experience to a noteworthy degree. I don’t think I ever disliked bots too much on Reddit? But then again, I rarely liked or wanted bots, either. I have a loose leaning toward letting people reasonably experiment with how they interact with a platform online, but “bots” as in the kind of stuff I remember from Reddit seem like a relatively weak expression of that. If I had to put an opinion down, I’d say that I’m in favor of their continued presence with the caveat of some guidelines and defined best-practices. Otherwise, if I wake up one day to learn that bots are banned on Beehaw, admittedly I wouldn’t be all that bummed about it.

th3raid0r and Lionir seem to get pretty well at the kind of recommendations I’d like to see. Bots ideally should provide a meaningful contribution to communities. Bots should be clearly labelled and identifiable as such. Bot creators should have consent from the community’s moderators to have a bot interact within the community. The Cardinal Be^e Nice applies here, perhaps to a greater degree: bots shouldn’t be used to fake engagement, impersonate people, commit technical attacks on the community, etc.

the_itsb also reminded me of another aspect: we may want to consider how active and populated a community is. Bots take up the attention and visual space of everyone else browsing a community and its discussions. It strikes me as a worst-case scenario, but I could imagine it’s possible for a bot overabundance to choke out legitimate conversation. That’s enough for me to start thinking twice about whether or not I have a loose stance on this.

I worry that most Lemmy instances are too young/inactive for this kind of bot yet. I don’t think we’re past the tipping point where the people commenting will automatically outweigh the bots, and I don’t think those bots are fun unless they’re dramatically outweighed by normal human interaction.

That’s an interesting way of putting it that I didn’t immediately consider.

I don’t necessarily like them, but I’m not really all that against them, either. If we don’t have the activity to balance out bot input, however, it might be reasonable to limit them one way or another. It seems to me like a worst-case scenario, but if a community or thread has what feels like a noticeable amount of bots, that would be a turn-off for me.

If the community decides to limit bot traffic either partially or entirely, it might be good to revisit that decision later on if there’s an upward trend in users and activity.

Do spoiler foldouts maintain their functionality across UIs, either directly or in essence (eg. popup instead)?

Part of me wishes that Lemmy also had spoilers that reveal in place, but foldout spoilers have some functionality that makes me appreciate having both on hand. I’d bet bots could benefit from using that to minimize visual space if we go through with it.

Almost makes me think that we have a fighting chance to make tags on Lemmy work. Part of me would want to see tags get some unique formatting like post flairs, but even just inline tags would be a leg-up.

Or maybe both in-line and post tags. Neat stuff to daydream 🤔.