sanity_is_maddening

Yeah, Bazzite has the best word in town for a gaming distro.

Rendered speechless I am, as I weep at the sight of such sublime prose.

A delight worthy of a true bard!

Bravo!

Did ye mention the cursed option?? It is wretched and thou shalt not name it to others here!

“Amazon”! “Google”! “Apple”! “Microsoft”! These art with the devil and shalt be pledged to be forsaken! Forbidden words here, ye see? And thou shalt forsaketh these!

Linux, by the one Torvald is the bid! We shalt fork it or foster thine many bastard children to a better morrow.

And all sources shalt be seen!

And all protocols shalt be open!

To all who shalt join the bid of a morrow of freedom!

Sorry. Frustration has its way with me. I apologise if I also tired you in the process, beyond myself, obviously.

Apologies.

I want to start by saying… Thank you. And also that this is precisely why I’m still on this platform. You engaged thoroughly and thoughtfully with everything I wrote. And I mean it… thank you.

All that you pointed out is valid criticism.

But to be fair I didn’t say that killing those filters would solve every problem, just that it would eliminate that implicit incentive to seek the reward to be highlighted at the top. Through “easy to be enraged by posts”, “karma-farming like reddit posts” or just hoards of low effort memes just to mention a few.

It’s low effort but it works. On me too.

And to be completely honest about how the only “New” filter being hijacked the way you mentioned by barrage posting… I have no solution to that end. It already happens. There’s like five names (I’m not counting an exact number so it’s figurative) on lemmy that seem to post more than the rest of the lemmyverse in its entirety combined. They completely hijack the feed in any filter one chooses. I also want to say that I find that these are passionate individuals that want the lemmyverse and the fediverse to grow and I still find that they are doing a great job to that end. But one doesn’t need much insight to know that these will turn into a problem as well. Unless they are all gracious and know the perfect timing to slow down as more traffic takes off. I have seen some of them being criticised for it. And I think at this point it is unfair, but soon it might not be.

Mentioning the upvote/downvote system, I always said that we could do without it and it would be for the better. I said it on reddit for many years. I say it here as well. It’s actually the most easy to hijack feature of them all: bots, brigade hits, you name it. I never thought of this being the defining feature of reddit, but its biggest flaw. The community building, the interchangeable branches of discussions, that was what reddit got right and was stolen to the end of the earth for it. Virtually every platform stole this after 2005/2006.

Upvotes/downvotes are not only low effort, they actually reduce valuable engagement and lack any clarity. People will downvote this comment or even upvote it and I will have no idea of what was they agreed or disagreed with. It means nothing. What you and I are having here is valuable to me. You are not just disagreeing with me, but adding elements to my perspective that I might miss on my own. This is what these platforms were genuinely made for. From all the way back from the mirc chats in the 90’s.

One of the things I can point out is people mentioning to me, “you can just hide the upvote/downvote system” or “don’t use the Hot or Popular if you don’t like it” or “just block communities you are not interested in”, but these are features or elements that are driving the engagement of the people around me in here. It would be pretty silly of me to think that hiding upvotes/downvotes would change anything but to cover my eyes to what is around me. For as long as they exist, I’ll displayed them and separately. They’re here and they’re driving engagement regardless of what I think of them. No point in hiding from it. The same for everything else.

Like I said, I have the list of communities as my homepage and then I go through them chronologically in whatever I’m interested to check out that day. I don’t know what you mean by never seeing any posts past an hour. I don’t follow any communities here that if I don’t come here for three or four days (which happens frequently) that I couldn’t go through them quickly. Even back then on reddit, I didn’t have this issue with the communities that I followed. But I never followed high traffic nonsense.

You have to admit that these filters are hijacked the way that I said, just that I have to admit the new filter is hijacked by persistent posting as you said.

This right here, what you and I are doing is what some call “yellow team”… we’re tracking the issues and how unintended or deliberately so consequences can emerge.

My question is what do we do about it?

We should have like a “town hall” like instance for all federated administrators and mods to talk and vote on directions to take and have users vote. This is only valuable if we implement the same rails and safeguards as in the structuring of a great democracy. And Lemmy can function like a beacon to why federated municipality should be the future of democracy. Even deciding a cap on the number of maximum registrations per instance is not a bad idea to start throwing as numbers increase. I was on Lemm.ee. It was nothing terrible that happened there, it was just too much.

It’s better to have large numbers spread around many instances, than to have them in just a few. This is the right way to scale up. The more centralised and large the more easy it is to corrupt it. And the harder it is to manage it. Smaller instances will know better how to maintain its base and to manage it. Rimu (the piefed creator) already said he is thinking about closing the registrations on the instance he manages. Which is the one I’m on.

After a certain number, people should know to close the registrations and just maintain and manage the instance well. I would say some people don’t listen to their instincts and keep pushing beyond what they can take on and ruin their experience and the instance with it. That is the cautionary tale of lemm.ee that others should learn from. It was no bad apples and awful people, it was just too much for too few to handle.

By all means help people set up other instances, but have them be small. Lemmy.world is constantly being hit with new registered trolls and instigators and it is very clear why they pick it, because it is the larger instance and hijacks the lemmyverse attention in the process through this same filters we are speaking of, which is whay I’m on this detour. I also want to say that the administrators and mods have done a great job, but I’m seeing the same cracks that I saw on lemm.ee start to show in that is becoming too much for them to handle so much. It’s not that they are making bad decisions or becoming terrible at all, is that it is starting to become impossible for them to keep the standards they have maintained so far. It’s too much to handle. That’s all.

Like I said before… “Scale is the death of virtue”. Still can’t remember where this is from though. Aging is fucked.

Just one last quick mention, I absolutely agree with you regarding the transparency of having our comment history visible. Nobody needs to volunteer their identity, but it’s the least we can do as to gain trust to let the things we say here be visible to all. And absolutely that was one of the (many) problems of what it went so wrong with reddit. But I gotta say, reddit was amazing for a while. Then it wasn’t anymore. That is why I’m worrying in advance about this place.

Anyway, thank you for this exchange. I really appreciate thoughtful discussions and you gave a few things to ponder. I’m gonna sit with them and see what comes out.

Much appreciated.

That was unnecessarily condescending…

I know “algorithm” is not a dirty word. Algorithms are used almost everywhere for almost anything. But when we mention " the Algorithm" colloquially these days we know that we’re talking about algorithmic influence in engagement in digital platforms. And how it can have unintended consequences or dark incentives structured within them.

Which was precisely why I was talking about these filters. Not from a place of like/dislike but because of its inherent reward system and how it rewards rage and disgust, exactly as media experts warned everyone it would with the algorithms at the core of the other platforms.

And if you are denying and saying that the same is not already occurring here, you’re being disingenuous in this exchange. As one only needs to go through their feed with these filters enabled on navigating across all the federated instances to see the rageposting and disgust at the top. The few exceptions will only prove the rest is the rule.

It’s frustrating, because people are not engaging with what I wrote, and are only replying deflections instead of addressing the direct criticism at the core of my argument.

I’m not insulting anyone, I’m not throwing shade at people for enjoying memes, as I do to. I’m merely pointing out the perverse incentive lying at the core of this feature.

And it doesn’t matter if I don’t like it, I can just not use it, because it’s the enabled option in everyone that uses that will be driving their behaviour and fulfilling the loop with its dark incentives.

Why are people not engaging with what I’m saying? I even said “I’m no better” because I will fall prey to it if I leave it on, or even if I feel tempted to go back to it from time to time. That is why I don’t.

But I still see the posts that get the most interactions and comments.

This is not an armless feature. This is what broke the civic nature of discussion in society through social media. This loop of incentive will always lead to rage and disgust to raise above all else. And reward derangement in people that seek attention for attention sake.

I don’t know what else to say…

I’m sorry if I insulted anyone by pointing this out. But I don’t see how my comment can be misconstrued as a personal attack on anyone. As it is just an avaluation of a proposition through its inherent consequences. This is basic level of scientific method right here.

This is not about liking/disliking. I really dislike coffee, and I have offered a coffee machine as a birthday gift to a friend. More than once, actually. I can have people enjoy things I dislike with no hint of an issue. It’s even baffling to me when others don’t know how to.

This is about adressing an issue at its core. And out it influences behaviour and the user base at large.

I know. But is scale all that matters? I know what you mean and I swipe through a lot of them.

But that also happens with the Hot and Popular filters. Because if I just swipe through the All option across all the federated instances using the Hot or Popular filters it’s mostly memes, circlejerking and rageposting. Is this what is wanted? Because nobody needs Lemmy for that. Reddit and all of the other platforms are already serving that low level of engagement with slop to spare.

This actively rewards it. Exactly the same way.

I don’t remember who said it …“Scale is the death of virtue”… but it is definitely applicable here.

I don’t know what you want out of lemmy, but if that outcome is what you intend to have, the end product will have virtually no distinction of its’ counterparts and people will see no reason to change. As there will be none outside of it’s not “corporate owned”. But if it’s still slop, people who want a change, will just skip the whole thing. As I did for a while. And if it wasn’t for Piefed, I don’t think I would be still hanging around here anymore either.

Beware that a lot of the people who seek these alternatives do not want anything similar to what is huge out there. And you’ll essentially be killing the appeal to the larger target audience that will bother to “learn” federation and how instances operate in its context.

This is a hard bargain. And I do understand what you mean, and I have to suffer through it. But if you don’t recognise what I’m speaking of, then I don’t think we’re having a honest conversation.

I have not used those filters in a long time. But I’m betting that the enraged posting about what’s happening in the U.S. (and justifiably so), shitposting, circlejerking, memes and Tankies causing controversy again are taking the entire feed until one gets bored. If I’m wrong I bet is not by much. But hell, I could’ve stayed on reddit for that back when I was there which was a while ago.

Meanwhile the communities with intellectually engaging posting, real propositions of solutions and thoughtful discussions get slided to nowhere like on every other platform. They’re here and they are incredible. But guess what, they’re also on reddit, youtube, instagram and so on. And they get even more traction than in here. And also no traction in comparison to everywhere else. Just like here. But they do still get more people than here in the end. So what is the appeal of changing?

I know a lot of people who want to make ideas like Syntropy, Permacomputing, the circular economy and many other wonderful things known, and these communities do exist around here and are wonderful, but they’re even smaller than everywhere else. The proportions in ratio in everything remain the same here as in every other platform. “Hey, we don’t have far-right wing nuts and that many transphobes here!” - true. But it doesn’t seem like we actually use the space to do anything but complain about them and make the real solutions and discussions as invisible as everywhere else. It’s absolutely soulcrushing.

The reward of rage and disgust still leaves on. And we get to nothing different with it. The loop that made our world even more deranged is not broken.

Hey, if this is what everyone wants, I’ll just leave if I’m the only one bothered, no need to change anything on my account. But judging by the interactions I had over the two years since I’ve been around (first on lemm.ee and now on piefed), I can tell you a lot of people come here for the opposite of everywhere else. There’s a lot of older, reflective, literate individuals with a lot to share with others and eager to learn that come looking around these parts, and I stop seeing their names around because I think they eventually give up on what is essentially the same invisibility to high value conversations and the reward of rage and disgust as the media experts kept warning us about and nobody listened.

If you read this far, I thank you for your attention.

I hope you don’t think I don’t want the fediverse to succeed, I absolutely do. But not at any cost. And especially not at the cost of what can make it truly valuable as a difference and an actual change in direction.

Please. No algorithm, please.

And I don’t use the Hot or Popular filters because I think they do possess some of the same undertones of that perverse incentive that algorithmic social media has. It would be advisable to kill this before the lemmyverse grows too wide.

Just chronological in all options: Home. Local, and All. But allowing to filter any of them through themes or subject. Piefed is already toying really well with some of these concepts.

This alone allows a lot more of the other small instances and communities to be seen. And removes those perverse incentives to “climb” that corrupting ladder that makes some people post controversial and deranged posts that seek the reward of getting more attention. Algorithms rewarded this. The Hot and Popular filter options of sifting through them rewards this too. And we all know it. And we are seeing its’ effect already. In an ideal world this wouldn’t be a problem. But we know these will keep being hijacked to that end.

And these don’t help the small and the thoughtful communities to arise as we want them to.

I personally set my home page to be the list of the communities I follow and decide what I’m in the mood for. The voyager app is also great for this. And all are set to chronological.

So summing up, my suggestions are:

-kill the Hot and Popular filters. Chronological feed only.

-Add subject filters instead.

-List of Communities followed as homepage. It let’s you know what you’re in the mood for.

These will help everything including the smaller instances and communities to be seen. This isn’t about my preferences. I do this to remove my own tendencies to fall prey to the rage bait catching my attention as a starting point. Because I’m no better. That’s the point. Media Experts as soon as 2008 said this ingrained reward loop is a problem because disgust and rage are the reactions that track the most immediately and lock on in the history of all media. If we want Lemmy to be better, we have to make it so. This already doesn’t have ads and algorithmic suggestions to nurture engagement, which is great. So this is the only thorn that remains from the dark legacy of social media. Nobody would be shutting up anybody. It’s just not rewarding shitposting. If I can disable it myself, the space at large is still falling prey to it as I would if I was using it.

PS: Also, Crossposting obviously helps smaller instances and communities to get noticed too.

Instead of an edit, I decided to add another comment as PS:

If you’re worried about Aljazeera because they are based in Qatar, don’t worry, because everyone is. Including myself. And they know it very well. And I think most of us are aware that they’re running prestige journalism as a face saving front. Like many other things they’ve run over the last decade for tourism sake and to attract foreign investment and appeal to international markets.

As to their national version of the outlet, I vouch for nothing and I have no idea of how it is. I will leave that to their nationals or people who speak Arabic to state and talk about it. I’m completely ignorant of that end and very aware of it.

Like I said in my original comment, trust no outlet. But facts are verifiable.

The reason I see more and more people checking Aljazeera over the years is because they function a bit as a broker between the complexity of the reality of the middle-eastern countries and Arab African countries and our over-simplistic and often latent prejudicial takes of their cultures. I have to say before starting checking Aljazeera, my perspective of Iran was an embarrassment compared to today. It’s about the fact of how they function as a window to understand the inner complexities of their countries and problematic traditions as much as we do with our western ones.

There’s no simple answers. But you mentioned Gaza, they and the respectable outlets have managed to display the problems of Israel without reducing the country to a thumbnail of Zionism and Netanyahu. Without shying away from Genocide and murdered journalists, how many outlets have you seen displaying Israeli protests and dissent? Not a lot of them…

And they get accused of being Arabs running a mission to destabilise Israel in favour of Hamas and Palestine.

I have to say, not that long ago, everytime I defended Palestine, I was accused of being a Hamas supporter. This is the reductionism of myopic coverage. And it’s sad that now I have to run defense to the Israeli sometimes (amidst this terror!! ) because all that people see is the horrific genocide that their government is inflicting on Palestinians.

But if we know how not to reduce the U.S. and Americans to just Maga, why do we keep reducing every other country to their worst faction and erase their entire cultural complexity?

I think you are driving that from a lot of assumptions instead of experience of interaction. Which is fine. We all have those. Interacting with them as a news source over the years, their coverage is very wide and very fact driven. And there’s a lot of coverage that other outlets usually shy away from that they don’t.

You should know that even in polls taken amongst journalists Al jazeera scores very high on credibility.

I’m not sure but I believe Al Jazeera now scores higher than the Washington Post (obvious reasons) and The New York Times, two examples of once reremovedble news outlets that have been falling out of grace. But AP News is probably still holding their credibility along with NPR and PBS, both falling apart from budget cuts this year, all of them on the American side.

Al Jazeera’s opinion side though, will be a big discussion to be had like with any other outlets that exist.

But then again, they’re just one of the various I mentioned in the previous commentary in alphabetical order because I don’t really have a favourite as a choice amongst those.

I also read “Publico” and “Expresso” and find them both reliable. And RTP, which is a public funded news station. But all these are outlets from Portugal in Portuguese only. I assume a lot us Europeans here will have a lot of reremovedble National News outlets we count on, especially public funded ones, that don’t really register outside of our national borders. That is why I only shared my go to international ones and not the national ones in the previous comment.

Although, EU side, Euronews still holds up nicely despite the scandals and the envolvement of the Hungarian state friendly acquisitions, which was a Portuguese asshole that brokered that deal nonetheless.

They haven’t become a shitshow. But it’s more about what they shy away from, than how they changed their coverage.

International and in alphabetical order:

Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/

France 24 https://www.france24.com/en/

Reuters https://www.reuters.com/

The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/europe

I would say these are the ones I still hold respect over the years. Regardless of issues, these still have my respect.

Trust however?

Well, nobody should trust or distrust anything blindly. Too many times I see people nowadays fall in line of blind allegiance to absolutes. To trust or to distrust absolutely. The key to media literacy is to look for what is not seen in what is being shown. And to try and cover our blind spots nurtured by our biases.

And no the answer isn’t “ground news”. That is a silly tool for Factioned Americans. Nobody gets to decide the spectrum and the polical positioning of outlets. Example: The New York Times is considered Left Wing by Americans but in Europe they would be a moderate Right Wing or full blown Right Wing depending of the country you’re in.

This is why Left/Right is dead as a deconstruction of social struggles. The original meaning of it as established in the French Revolution has been dead and buried for a while. Especially with the NeoLiberalism creation of the “Centrist” positioning with false oppositions that protect the already benefitted citizens which would render them all as part of the “Right” by the original intended meaning of Left/Right.

There is no Center or Centrism in the original meaning of Left and Right for a reason. Because the center cannot be occupied by people saying what it is. The center is the “battleground”, the “Negotiation Space” where the contesting and conceding occur between the ones privileged by the status quo and the ones left out of it.

Was I sanctimonious, condescending and awfully presumptuous enough?

I wrote all this because a lot of people decide their predilection of news outlets based on their perceived notions of Left/Right constructions which is why I’ve pointed out that they have been rendered pretty hollow throughout time.

Facts are verifiable. Opinions however are complicated.

I could state like many have, that The Guardian is an elitist outlet safekeeping the British upper middle-class interests against the oligarchs but at the cost of the disadvantaged as well. And if you are a reader of The Guardian like myself you know this is a warranted and fair criticism.

Taking this, what position would you place them in the silly Left-Center-Right spectrum line? The answer is quite irrelevant isn’t it?

I would say, when it comes to political governance, focus on propositions and their inherent outcomes and consequences, then take the criticism of those same propositions to correct and improve them or to abandon them altogether in favour of something more viable.

When it comes to news coverage… outlets are by majority owned by corporations and or wealthy individuals that will run defense through them. That is why public owned news outlets have retained value and common trust, because the perverse incentive is blocked out.

Suggestion wise… seeking verifiable information first, then seeking many angles of that same said verifiable information to perceive if there is insight to be found or if it is just noise as cover-up for what is truly the foundation of what is happening is the best option we all have.

Knowing that all of us are unreliable narrators of reality is something that I try to find in the people that I surround myself with. Because together we can form a better account of reality than we can on our own.

That’s it. No perfect solutions. But definitely the never-ending possibility of improvements.

The fact that all of this requires some level of ego death and humility in an age where social media and its inherent algorithmic distribution of information nurtures egotism, egoism and faction siding by the “faux virtue” path is however the larger crisis we face regarding the distribution of information. Which results in an aggravation of everything else in the process.

As to solutions to this? I truly don’t know what can “disarm” this. But I would love to hear suggestions as to how we can counter this or diminish its effects.

Any suggestions?

Alô alô! Tão bom encontrar alguém Português no Lemmy! Quando a lemm.ee foi encerrada e saltei para a piefed.social não sabia que havia uma instance portuguesa. Foste tu que criaste a instance em que estás?

Tens algumas sugestões de comunidades portuguesas?

Unfortunately no. Because in local elections people vote individuals they know locally and communally. This is also why parties with no expression in the legislatives anymore like CDU or PCP win sits in these local elections. People vote who they know, not along national party lines when voting locally. Independents never even make a dent in legislative elections and in these a few manage to actually win. And a few have in these again. Which is good.

But I keep saying, if the current coalition government fails, Chega might actually win the legislative elections.

The Presidential elections are at the beginning of next year, and even though Ventura (Chega’s leader) has almost virtual zero chance at getting the presidency, he’s just running the cycle of circus and noise one more round to pump up his maniac followers and attract the few idiots who haven’t joined their circus yet, so that he can set his sights on the prime minister position in the next legislatives. And that is where the worrying starts.

Oh, hello fellow citizen in Portugal!

Celebrate away. They even did 10 times worst than the predictions suggested nationwide. That is really worthy of celebration indeed.

But I live in Algarve. And that alone should tell you everything. Even though they also did a lot worse than they expected down here, they still got a lot of sits in the municipal assemblies in the region. I haven’t checked Alentejo but I suspect a similar outcome. But it’s a lot of damage and interference they can generate nonetheless.

I’m also sad that Alexandra Leitão lost to Carlos Moedas in Lisbon. That is a huge blow to a very important region in the nation. I despise both PS and PSD, but Alexandra Leitão is the only example of a Leftist that PS has to offer, while Carlos Moedas is the worst kind that PSD has to show for and that is saying a lot.

But yeah, celebrate the small victories nonetheless. Just remain vigilant though.

I’m Portuguese. And I see a lot of people here celebrating their failure in these local elections. But I’m just not that optimistic. The fact is that they still got a lot of sits in a lot of local assemblies. This means they become endemic to the system. Everywhere. This wasn’t a barring out the fascists parade people are making it out to be. Unfortunately. They are even celebrating the fact they even got a few (very few!) number of municipal sits. And why shouldn’t they? It’s a party that didn’t even existed ten years ago.

I’m glad that they very much failed by the metrics and polls that were so publicised in advance. But by no means this is a failure to them. And unfortunately so to the rest of the sane people here. Because now we have to deal with the same fanatic mentality of Maga Cult followers and even get the American slogan with it of “Make (insert whatever) Great Again”. In Portuguese, obviously, but I kid you not, when a lot of us saw that shit in Billboards we knew that it’s the same movement now. And they’re not even trying to disguise it anymore.

This is a financed global movement that is seeking to implode democracies so that the definitive version of Neo Feudalism of corporations has no hurdles or obstacles in their way.

NeoLiberalism died with the fall of the illusion of the center in the west. Now let’s see how long does the common voter (everywhere!) takes to realise how the board is being redrawn to cripple their sovereignty and control of their own lives and the social freedoms they fell asleep on because they took them for granted.

We’re no longer at odds with capitalism and its perverse incentives. Capitalism was the ladder that allowed the new “feudal Lords” to rise to dictate the rules of an old game rebranded new. Now name it whatever pleases the most… “Neo-Feudalism”, “Techno-Feudalism”, “Conglomerate-Feudalism”, doesn’t matter to me. But folk, don’t think we’re still playing the old “Landlord Game” or more famously known as “Monopoly”. That’s been over for a while. And the feudal powers at bay are no longer disguising themselves as landlords and investors or capitalists anymore. That’s over and done.

Makes you wonder about how most armies and soldiers fail to see what and who they are supposed to be in service of. It’s this part of the article that struck me the most…

“Let us join forces, military, gendarmes and police, and refuse to be paid to shoot our friends, our brothers and our sisters,” the soldiers at the base in Soanierana district said in a video posted on social media.

They called on soldiers at the airport to “prevent all aircraft from taking off” and those in other camps to “refuse orders to shoot your friends”.

“Close the gates and await our instructions,” they said. “Do not obey orders from your superiors. Point your weapons at those who order you to fire on your comrades-in-arms, because they will not take care of our families if we die.”

Bravo. These are true soldiers. Not the cowards holding guns in uniforms like in most places.

Oh, thank you very much for explaining that. I apologised for my ignorance in advance because I didn’t know what was the difference in the encryption process regarding PGP.

Now we just have to know if they get Chat Control in motion in the EU if they will ban PGP as an encryption method. The UK enacted the child safety’s act and VPN usage exploded. So they enforced age verification on VPN as well. We’re in a stronghold moment all over the world, where the powers are overreaching and “strangling” people’s rights and social freedoms.

But thank you again for the clarification.

I apologise for my ignorance in advance… but won’t whoever runs it be forced to hand over the decription? I mean chat control is about the end of encryption. Regardless of the choice of encryption.

Pen and paper and the post office are gonna have a resurgence. Want some private stuff sent to someone? Put it on an envelope and glue that shit shut! Then mail it.

I’m starting to feel my age. I’m getting tired of the fight to stay on top of it all. I’m going more and more analog each year.

“Meshtastic” would’ve sounded great to me 10 years ago. Now I’m like… they’ll ban it in no time. But it would be nice to get some old pirate radio like network revolution against the current internet going.

Although there’s great people still committed to doing great work in there, I’ve stopped using YouTube because the platform itself is utter garbage. It’s a hellscape, and in my opinion it was no coincidence that when Google bought it in 2010, it only took a few months for Gamergate to happen from that point of injection. I eventually gave up youtube and when I go there without an account to watch just one singular video that was posted elsewhere as a link, I’m reminded why the world is just a shit show now. Fascist grifters, AI Slop and rage bait accompanied by all the disinformation possible and fraudulent ads to top it with. Just awful.

And if anyone has never checked YouTube without an account… it’s a grim look.

I have to say I use Peertube from time to time but I haven’t checked Odysee yet.

This year I had to euthanize a cat I had the pleasure to have in my life for almost 14 years. I saw her come into this world right out of her mum, and I was there when she died. Afterwards, we brought her from the veterinarian and buried her in my mother’s backyard.

She had late stage cancer. I never knew when was the right moment to say “it’s time”. The fucked up part is that we can’t get verbal confirmation that “this is it” for them.

She could barely walk or breathe by the end and I didn’t know if I was being selfish or if I was stealing time that she still wanted to have. It was brutal. Everyday was just one more day that I wanted to say goodbye.

And then one day I saw her struggle so much to breathe and said “it’s time”. The meds didn’t work anymore and I couldn’t ease her suffering in any way anymore.

That moment still sounds far off with your beloved friend. Treasure those cozy and snuggled naps they love to take and be kind to yourself as you navigate it all.