links

fediverse

imagine social media; now imagine it's good. That's fedi.

The fediverse is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term fediverse is a portmanteau of federation and universe.

My absolute favourite is Bookwyrm, especially my home instance there. I like Bookwyrm because it has this super chill cadence, so you don't feel the need to check multiple times a day. Exactly the right cadence for checking in whenever you finish a book, or are looking for a new one.

I'm also addicted fond of getting a good scroll on in Lemmy, which is basically a drop-in replacement for reddit. Except unlike reddit, it's much less prone to enshittification, because of its decentralised structure. The core dev team and server admins pay for it through donations and not being stupid.

Yeah we get hyperlocal

I'm currently experimenting with my own hyperlocal social media instance (also Lemmy), for my city, at lemmy.kgon.ca (there's nothing going on there as writing this). Might add more local social medias, I don't know; but I really like the idea.

Finally, there's Mastodon. I was never really into microblogging even before the dominant platform was overrun by fascists, but this one (I'm on a Canadian instance) is pretty cool. I've had some good little exchanges on here, but they still feel more transactional than I'd like. Something about the larger, more public, audience maybe.

Also honourable mention here for email! While not officially part of the fediverse, it does also benefit from a common set of protocols, and so is a perennial fav for quality correspondence, especially long, asynchronous, one on one conversations - pen-pal style. Some of my best, deepest conversations have been over email.

There's something special about getting an email from an actual person, addressed specifically to you and no one else... ✉️

software

things that make the lights on the rectangle change good.

🚧️ Under Construction 🚧️