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wjs018@lemmy.worldtoUnited States | News & Politics@midwest.social•A $6 Billion Shortfall Has US Mass Transit Facing a Death Spiral8·12 days agoThe MBTA also needs at least an estimated $24.5 billion to bring its infrastructure to a state of good repair.
I knew that the MBTA had built up a huge pile of deferred maintenance on its infrastructure due to past funding shortfalls, but this is enormous. I commute to work every day via the T (commuter rail to red line), and it hasn’t been too bad lately. However, I no longer live downtown, so I don’t really use the system much beyond my commute these days.
There are quite a few in the anime space. I have been meaning to put a list together for some time. There is an old post here put together by a user, but I don’t think it is really that up to date. So, here are the communities that I directly know of and have interacted with:
- !dungeonmeshi@ani.social - Delicious in Dungeon
- !theapothecarydiaries@ani.social - The Apothecary Diaries
- !frieren@ani.social - Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
- !dragonball@ani.social - Dragon Ball
- !dandadan@ani.social - Dan Da Dan
- !gundam@ani.social - Gundam stuff
- !gundam@lemmy.world - Gundam stuff
- !nokotan@ani.social - My Deer Friend Nokotan
- !toarumajutsunoindex@ani.social - A Certain Magical Index (and related series)
- !aobanime@bookwormstory.social - Ascendance of a Bookworm
- !bocchitherock@sopuli.xyz - Bocchi the Rock
- !overlord@sopuli.xyz - Overlord
wjs018@lemmy.worldto Television@lemm.ee•List of shows episodes discussion threadsEnglish2·28 days agoThe anime discussion index link has been updated. It should now point to https://lemmyverse.link/ani.social/post/11480352
I tend to refresh that post every couple of months just so that stale comments aren’t sitting around forever and confusing people.
Some other updates that I see:
- Dan Da Dan has finished airing, but a new season is coming in July, so your call whether you want to keep it up or not.
- Dragon Ball Daima has finished airing, but the !dragonball@ani.social is currently hosting a rewatch of the original series. Here is the link to the start of the rewatch. The most recent thread is pinned to the community.
- Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX - We are hosting threads over on !gundam@ani.social (in addition to the main anime community)
wjs018@lemmy.worldto Fedigrow@lemm.ee•Weekly thread - How are you doing with your communities?English8·29 days agoBeen a little while since I popped into one of these threads. Some notable events:
- !gundam@ani.social is entering an exciting period as a new gundam show just started. The first episode discussion thread was lively, so I am hoping that continues through the season.
- !anime@ani.social is also quite active at the moment due to the start of the new anime season. There have been quite a number of names that I don’t recognize from past seasons, so that is exciting.
- !manga@ani.social is similarly experiencing a bit of influx of new users posting and commenting. I haven’t been as active as I would like in this community due to time, so it is a welcome development to have more, different people posting.
wjs018@lemmy.worldto Fediverse@lemmy.world•What do you think might be some fun, positive ways for instances to distinguish themselves?English5·2 months agoLike winamp skins for lemmy?
wjs018@lemmy.worldto Fediverse@lemmy.world•What do you think might be some fun, positive ways for instances to distinguish themselves?English33·2 months agoI am a big fan of content-specific instances. Some instances off the top of my head that fit this description:
- bookwormstory.social - Instance about the Ascendance of a Bookworm series
- ani.social - Instance about anime/manga/Japanese media
- slrpnk.net - Instance focused on the climate crisis and related issues
- programming.dev - Instance focused on software development
- startrek.website - Instance about Star Trek
- literature.cafe - Instance about books and writing
…and I am sure there are many others. I just think that having a focus like that provides a more interesting local instance environment than a large, generalist instance, though both have a place.
wjs018@lemmy.worldto News@lemmy.world•The salary you need to be considered middle class in every U.S. state3·2 months agoIt’s all based on the median household income. I feel like that isn’t the best representation if the median household is losing purchasing power over time due to wage stagnation, but it’s the definition they went with. From the article:
The report, which crunched the numbers for all 50 states, is based on Pew Research’s definition of middle class: two-thirds to double the median household income.
wjs018@lemmy.worldto Fedigrow@lemm.ee•Self-promotion restriction rules and Fediverse growthEnglish5·2 months agoEdit: Reading is hard and I misunderstood that this post is about promoting lemmy on reddit. I don’t have any experience to contribute with that, but I will leave the rest of my post for posterity.
By self-promotion, do you mean creating content for youtube/a blog/etc. and then posting it to lemmy? If so, then I think that is fine within reason. In the communities I mod, I have allow self-promotion with these guidelines:
- Be an active member of the community on other posts too, not just your own content
- If you post your own content, at least be responsive to questions you might get in the comment section
- Rate limit your self-promotion so that it doesn’t feel spammy (no defined rate, more vibes-based)
I have a couple posters that have posted article or projects that they have created and been fine. I also have a couple people I have ended up banning because they would just post links to their own content and vanish otherwise.
All that said, there is a sizable portion of lemmy that seems to chafe against any kind of corporate-controlled social media. So, there is an inbuilt hostility that can exert an outsized influence in smaller communities.
wjs018@lemmy.worldto News@lemmy.world•FDA cancels meeting to select flu strains for next season's shots24·3 months agoJust for some background information on how most countries tend to rely on larger, more rigorous regulatory bodies…
I am in the pharma industry (not in vaccines though). Typically the two main regulators that most other countries look to as a reference are either the FDA or the EMA (the EU organization). This usually means that if you can satisfy the requirements of one of these bodies, then it is satisfactory for the other country as well. However, it isn’t universal as each other country will usually have some modifications here and there for whatever reason. The most annoyingly particular ones I have dealt with in the past are China and Japan.
wjs018@lemmy.worldto Selfhosted@lemmy.world•Jellyfin is not just good... but *better* than Plex now?!English2·3 months agosubtitle playback
This is still a little weird. I found that the web client (in a browser) handles this really well with default settings. However, if I try to use the desktop app or a mobile client, I have to force it to burn in the subtitles for them to show up reliably. Fortunately, there are per-client settings for this now:
wjs018@lemmy.worldto science@lemmy.world•academic writing software recommendations from fellow researchers?English2·3 months agoIt’s been a while since I last used LaTeX since I am in industry now, but there is definitely a learning curve. If you are talking about undergrads, then it might be too steep a challenge for most to want to take on unless they plan on pursuing academia long-term. Like others have mentioned, LaTeX is a kind of standard that you see used a lot in academic circles. Some journals also like or support things that are created through tex and will have their own templates to use.
Basically, LaTeX consists of writing in a markup language, like your screenshot, and then running that through a processor that interprets your
.tex
file and creates the formatted output (usually a pdf). Back in my day, TexnicCenter was the program of choice to write the actual.tex
file, but some quick searching and it looks like VSCode with an appropriate extension is probably one of the best/easiest ways to do it now.The most annoying part of tex is references. I remember being utterly confused by BibTeX when I was trying to get it to work. I am way out of date on what best practices for today might be, but I hope they have improved that process somewhat.
wjs018@lemmy.worldto science@lemmy.world•academic writing software recommendations from fellow researchers?English7·3 months agoSeconding LaTeX as the gold standard for formatting math/science in written form. Some of my peers in grad school (physics) wrote up their assignments in it (I opted instead for massive reams of handwritten work). However, I did write up my thesis in LaTeX. My university had a LaTeX template for a thesis that took care of the boilerplate formatting, I just had to focus on the content.
wjs018@lemmy.worldto Technology@lemmy.world•Prius Prime 2024 Followup: More TestsEnglish7·4 months agoI own a Prius (not a PHEV though, just a hybrid) and can corroborate that my mileage goes down significantly in the winter months. It is a combination of a couple factors in my experience.
- Needing to run the engine more to heat things up for defrosting and heating the cabin.
- Related to the above, I tend to idle a lot more in the winter while cleaning ice/snow off the car, letting it warm up, or clearing the driveway.
- Switching to winter tires (Blizzaks) negatively impacts rolling resistance compared to the LRR tires (Ecopias) I use the rest of the year.
I tend to average ~45 mpg in the summer and ~37 mpg in the winter over the past two years.
Starting a new community is an uphill slog. Some tips and observations:
- Make sure to subscribe to the community from several of the large instances so that it is federated there and people viewing the all feed can see it.
- If you haven’t yet, make sure to announce the community in !newcommunities@lemmy.world and/or !communitypromo@lemmy.ca
- If you can think of some kind of recurring post series, it is a good structure to provide a steady drip of content. For latin, maybe something like a weekly post about the etymology of a modern word with a latin root?
- In general, posts with a lead image generate much more interaction than non-image, discussion posts. So, the meme-type posts can serve a role to help people discover the community.
Fantastic, thanks! I haven’t made announcements yet about the new community, but hoping to do that some time this week when I get a chance.
I haven’t been able to post as much this past week compared to normal, but things have been going ok:
- !anime@ani.social is actually kind of booming right now with the start of a new season of shows. I have seen lots of first-time commenters chiming in on episode threads. It actually hit ~300 users/day at one point over the weekend.
- !manga@ani.social has been calm but active. There are a handful of other fairly reliable posters that have been able to keep things going while I have been away.
The not as active ones:
- !nokotan@ani.social - I inherited this community when the previous moderator had to step away for an extended period of time. The nokotan community in general is very meme-heavy, and I just don’t really know how to engage with that very well. There is only so much non-meme content about the series. So, I am going to try to binge-read the manga and start posting chapter discussion threads when new chapters are released. I just need to find the time to do that.
- !gundam@ani.social - This is another kind of special case. The current, most active Gundam community is !gundam@possumpat.io. However, that instance announced that they are shutting down later this month. The current users over there were interested in setting up a new community but there wasn’t anybody that wanted to moderate. So, I offered my help in that respect. It just started this past week, so there isn’t much there yet, but I am going to try to keep posting any Gundam-related content I find over there.
You must have taken Nokotan’s loss pretty hard. /s
Good luck finding new mods and I am hoping that you are able to come back before Dan Da Dan season 2 this summer.
wjs018@lemmy.worldto Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What is the worst fandom you've ever been a part of?8·5 months agoIt also depends on the community a lot. The anime community on lemmy (!anime@ani.social, shameless plug) has been super chill overall. I think it’s in large part due to the lemmy userbase skewing older than your average social media user.
wjs018@lemmy.worldto Fedigrow@lemm.ee•How much growth hacking is too much for the Fediverse?English3·5 months agoRecently, in !anime@ani.social, I configured the episode discussion bot to create posts using the poster art of the show rather than just an empty discussion post as a bit of an experiment about the effect of images. I don’t have hard analytics to dig into, but I have noticed that the episode discussion threads have garnered significantly more votes when they have images, and a small increase in comments. Though, the additional comments are usually just wandering folks instead of people that stick around and engage.
I still don’t let fanart in either the main anime nor manga community because it would too quickly spiral out of control. There is simply too much fanart in existence for these things. Instead, I limit it to official art only, which usually means teasers/posters/trailers. In the manga community, there is a bit of a special case in that I do allow fanart of a series if it was done by a different published author (not just some random pixiv user). This happens sometimes when a series ends and you get other authors drawing commemorative art for it.
This isn’t happening in YouTube Music, the paid music platform. Instead, it is users putting together playlists of normal YouTube videos and presenting them as an album playlist while maliciously inserting a monetized, spammy video into it. As far as I know, YouTube Music wouldn’t really be vulnerable to the same kind of abuse.