Oh wow, I’d forgotten all about geek code.

Are you being human trafficked?

Short stories is the answer. They do seem to mainly the province of horror and sci-fi but even if that’s not a favoured genre(s) it’s a way back in. Try Night Shift or Skeleton Crew by Stephen King (give The Mist a miss though, it’s not really a ‘short’ short story). Take it a page at a time, stop reading the minute you start to lose interest, try again 15mins later. Remember it’s fun activity not a competitive sport, take all the time you need, the books you want to read are going nowhere :)

If I’m referring people to a book I always use a link to its OpenLibrary entry. If I’m discussing a book, I do it on the Bookwyrm instance I’m on.

In short - use both :)

Forum packages have been around for at least 20 years. I’m terms of forum like features the only difference is federation.

Its convenience. 99% don’t care about anything apart from getting what they need. The blackout caused them inconvenience so its therefore annoying. Its the same attitude that can appear when workers take strike action.

‘Better’ is relative. To me its better because no one person or group owns or controls the software. There’s no central authority. Don’t like the instance you’re on? Just move to another. Cant find an instance you like? Host your own. Don’t like the path the developers are taking? Fork the code. As long as the very core remains standard (ActivityPub), all possibilities are on.

There needs to be a return to being patient. Most fedi software is not beyond beta yet. They will develop and they will mature but right now the fediverse is a toddler learning to walk. There are issues but with time they’ll get addressed. We’ve all got so addicted to shiny cool apps and services we’ve become prepared to sacrifice our privacy, our choices and our reason at the altar of a quick dopamine hit.

There’s no big money to throw at these issues and therefore no dedicated team. This means solutions come slower. But they will come and they will be motivated by usefulness not profit. The people developing these things have lives and day jobs. Give them time.

The Meta Plan:

1. We’re going to use ActivityPub because we love the Fediverse!!!
2. Now we’re live, here’s some improvements to AP, now they’re not standard but we’re working closely with the AP guys. It would help if you all pleaded with them to accept these changes- they’re just to make things better!
3. Yay! All the changes were implemented and we’ve formed the AP Council, we might invite some of the old AP guys to it.