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.

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 🤔.

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:
::: spoiler 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! :::

My programming is open source on GitHub and developed by @[email protected]. 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 @[email protected] mentioned this being a possibility

Yep.

 undefined

    
::: 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.

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.

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.

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 🥴

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 🤔.

That's wild to imagine! Any recollection of how high up those ceilings might have been? The gyms I remember in the US had ceilings that were something like 2 or 3 stories high, if I had to guess. That strikes me as quite the height to jump for a fitness test. Just for the height factor alone I can't picture myself having the guts back then to do it. Dunno if I'd even have 'em now 😨.

No, not really. Graduated from high school in California in 2017. Both my middle and high school, however, had the equipment and stations on hand. It feels relevant to mention we also had what looked like climbing pegboard stations: boards on a wall that'd go something like 6 – 10 ft., 1.8 – 3m high that someone would climb with pegs. We didn't use those, either.

There might've been one or a few times that my freshman PE teacher had us climb or swing on a rope as part of a circuit? He had the good graces, at least, to give the rope foot and hand knots to work with. That was definitely an exception, however, and wasn't part of anything mandated by the district nor the state. Pretty wild, though. I kinda wish my schools did more to push that. I sure wasn't the athletic type, but my arm strength could've benefitted from it.

"WHY DOES IT HAVE HUMAN TEETH," a dismayed commenter asked. "IDK WE DIDN'T MAKE THEM," the wildlife agency replied.

any volunteers to Brush The Teeth on the next one? lil thing looks like it could use it 👀

What do you mean by that? 🤔

My take on it is that English doesn’t have enough variety in gendered words, whether that means binary, non-binary, or neutral options. In which case…yeah, come to mention it, you might be onto a perspective I didn’t think of.

People ought to be have range in how they express themselves, and I’d suppose there isn’t enough. I had been in favor of increasing the range and popularity of neutral and non-binary terms for a while now. I still am, but I don’t think that has to be mutually exclusive with increasing the range of gendered options, either. Perhaps part of resolving gendering issues in language isn’t just providing more neutral options, but more gendered options. If someone wishes to identify with masculine or feminine labeling, I think they ought to be able to.

Or maybe another lens to this is that there are “gender neutral” terms that, through context and history, have come to carry a sort of implicit gendering to them. I’m not sure if that’s a challenge in linguistics or a challenge in how some people may think.

All an interesting way to frame this kind of thing that I hadn’t considered before. If you have your own details to this you’d like to mention, I’m sure it’d be insightful to read. My language experience outside of English only extends to Spanish and some beginning bits of Dutch, and I’m in dire need of brushing up on both 🫠.

Bikes! I'm thinking about getting a new bike in the next several months, and a step-through bike seems to have some features in practicality that I value compared to a step-over bike. Not Just Bikes, ironically, has a pretty good video talking about Dutch step-through bikes that introduced me to the concept and advantages of a step-through. It might be on topic to mention that Not Just Bikes gives mention to one of the Dutch names for this kind of bike: "omafiets", or Grandma Bicycle.

I'd suppose it's getting better, but I still encounter a fair chunk of people who see a step-over bike as a men's bike and a step-through as a women's bike. And I'll think C'mon, that's a fair chunk of potential storage space you could have over the rear wheel if you put a rack on top. I've tried making it work before with my step-over bike, but in my experience, that space becomes much less meaningful when you have to swing a leg over and end up knocking your shin on something as you get on.

I'd love to see bikes just sold by their step type more often. Give all of them a wide color palette, keep the labeling at Step-Over or Step-Through, and let people ride what they wanna ride. I'm making progress with changing minds, but it's taking a fair chunk of time to reach Pops at least, bless his heart 😒.

Not Just Bikes gave an iconic point: step-over/men's bikes are the only kind you can hit your nuts on.

Edit: Proofreading: “one of the names,” not the name.

There are a few examples that come to mind of rotating brand elements, both large and small, that make me think there's a lot of potential to give a place and community some flavor and fun. I get the vibe you're already on board with this kind of thing, but for the sake of putting it on record and giving everyone else a sense of what's possible, I think it'd be cool to give a sense of the kind of things we can do in the future. Admittedly I'm 99% sure that these ideas are impractical, if not impossible, with Lemmy's current UI abilities. Still, I think it may be good for the community to keep stuff like this in the backburner in case the potential opens up. This is spit balling, admittedly. Hopefully spit balling we'll be able to act on eventually, though.

I remember Apollo for Reddit had a massive library of app icons that users could independently choose from. There was what I would call the primary mark and a few color or smaller derivatives of that, but there were also some wildly different ideas that were loosely tied to one another. Some were closely aligned with the original Apollo, others were barely connected to that visual identity. Either way, Chris got a lot of artists involved in the app icons aspect to Apollo. I forgot if they were commissioned or if it was some part of a community volunteering bit, but it was a cool way to add another touch of customizing and involvement to the app.

Newgrounds is an example that I think goes even farther than Apollo. There are visual elements that remain consistent, like the logo, logotype, and site iconography. But every so often (IIRC, something like once a month or once a season,) they'll bring in a community member to change up most of the site's color scheme and the site's padding graphics. I can't seem to get the Wayback Machine to load a good capture on my end, so I went ahead and took a screenshot for archrival's sake.

I'm leaning toward saying that the new logo is an improvement, design wise. Digital icons, let alone content like tab icons, will always require some sacrifices in detail in order to be legible. This logo still has some legibility loss in smaller sizes (although I'll admit asking for that not to happen is a mighty tall order,) but I'm tempted to argue that it maintains its legibility better than the Bee Rustler. Mentioning visual unity with the community icons series is something I'd say is a plus, but if seasonal or community variants to the site logo is something that's explored later, it makes that point not quite as meaningful.

Bee Rustler was a cute lil' thing and I loved her as much as anyone else, but admittedly I'm not so sure her graphic was a good fit for a logo. Chances are, however, that this is the kind of thing that would be most completely resolved with a comprehensive brand set that can accommodate community flavoring in aspects of it when the time comes. I'd think that's getting well into long-term territory, however.

Issues aside with Bee Rustler being a catch-all logo solution, I doubt that Bee Rustler is going away entirely any time soon. Mascots, and more broadly the sense of characters within a community, have a way of maintaining staying power. There's going to be means and ways for Bee Rustler to show herself and still be part of the community lore, whether that's officially or through the user base. Like I've still gotta see the Bug Crusher through before I throw the towel, and I don't think that's gon' be the end of it from me or anyone else either 🤠.

Absolutely cute critter you have in your yard there. Looks like the little dude has a delightful kingdom to roam around in 👑.

Yes 😉.

I'd say "whichever one has the more chunky/varied texture," which I'm pretty sure puts me in the Jam Camp, but my local groceries never seem to be consistent with whether that should be called a jelly or a jam. I'll take whatever's put in front of me, but I personally enjoy having some texture variety in there with the seeds and fruit bits.

Except for marmalades. I definitely enjoy an orange marmalade on toast, but something about the idea of rinds feels icky in my PB sandwiches 😖.

'Used to smoke weed on something like a weekly to monthly basis to help unwind. I stopped after I got on an Adderall prescription to help tend to my ADHD.

Adderall has some pretty restrictive control measures in the US, and weed still has some more substantial restrictions federally. My medical provider says they might test me for weed and other drug usage randomly, and that if I'm caught with something federally inexcusable in my system, I'll be booted from my prescription.

Is it something I could finesse my way around so I could keep up with my weed unwinding days? Probably. It definitely helps to live in a weed legal state, and if I end up dropping my Adderall for something less controlled, I could see myself getting back into weed. But my work and education have benefited from my prescription though, and even if the risk could be made slim, I'm personally not that comfortable with putting that on the line.

Besides, there's other vices they don't test for that fit in just fine 🥴.

I love Tech Connections. Unnecessarily long deep dives, but that’s the kind of content I absolutely appreciate. His stuff is a treat that helps to highlight the rabbit holes that can be found in the mundane.