#Internet migration

[dichotomoustessellations]

Internets all fucked up, we goin back to newgrounds or what?

[zaryathelaika]

The web is dying. We are present on these websites:

Instagram

YouTube

TikTok

Cohost [decomissioned]

Bluesky

Flickr

We have presence elsewhere in several different places (eg. Pillowfort, Dreamwidth), but not sure how to best use them. The best way be updated on our social media migration is our GitHub (which is backed up GitLab and Codeberg). Really need to get around to setting up a Fediverse presence. Just need to find an instance which has a decent mod team.

[teddypoi-qd]

unrelated to any events lately

[thegayneurodivergentagenda]

I can't believe I currently get to experience first hand the cultural phenomena of migration in between apps like do you realize this is migration in the most literal sense happening Online in between made up platforms and real found communites it's a dialect exchange it is essentially just wires and invisible rays that are moving and technically they aren't moving as much as they are just,,, becoming absent and present simultaneously this is unreal because what this means is that a netnographic research could probably be conducted but it also seems unserious enough to the Research Scholars to not seriously look into but this is so fucking interesting and cool and I just wish to be able to express how deeply enthralled I am with it

[maliciouscigarette]

Call it Fruits Basket because I’m a fruit and I’m frantically weaving between the sides of my line.

[hadleysmis]

I don’t think my posts usually reach a British audience, but if you’re in the UK and over 18, let me tell you: it’s so easy to contact your MP.

Sure, you may not be concise or formal as you want to present yourself at first, but it's passionate constituents who get their points across to their MPs.

You have all your life ahead of you to make your change. I know that with the new government, so many things are overwhelming, but that’s exactly why we need more people to get involved.

If you can't actively protest, you can at least email your MPs and at least sign petitions.

Let your stories be transferred. Let them know what the People want.

People have to be involved with politics. We have to be the loud ones.

Politics isn't just for politicians. It’s for us. You don’t need to know all the policies or have every answer—that’s their job. All you need to do is care and speak up. Even the smallest concern can grow into real change.

Take the step. Contact your MP.

[nyctoheart]

I finally looked at people's neocities (and old personal websites in generaly) and like... this is the most fun I've had online in years.

[wordswithloveee]

I invite everyone to choose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition.

[siruoa]

returning to tunglr to find a new circuit of greed blogs in the yr 2025 my soul is healing

[forestdeity]

noisy sandhills this morning

[zaryathelaika]

It's a shame Tumblr is dying because I do not want to go back to Facebook to interact with the other laika-people. Brad Anderson's Laika Forum was fun, and so was writing to my own blog. But I don't know if anyone actually wants to read about doing stuff in the wilderness with dogs these days.

Should set up a Discourse forum one of these days, or a Sharkey / Akkoma instance on the fediverse.

With rugged individualism intertwined with self-hosting, a lot of folks seem to have forgotten the yesteryears of friend groups chipping in for shared community-hosting to be on the same bulletin board or play on the same gaming server. But don't really have the patience nor resources for administrative duties. Besides, I am not sure how to convince a bunch of older people that it's okay to leave Facebook's walled garden. Way too many people have been burnt by petty-tyrant behaviours.

[indecisiveavocado]

So I was researching the Dom people and figured other language Wikipedias might have more information. So I checked the Arabic Wikipedia and uhhh their categorization of some articles are questionable.

[vaya-writes]

i feel like Veron and full strength and health is probably really cool ngl

(thank you for making yet another character I can be normal about. he's just going round and round my head like in a microwave. weeeeeee.)

I love that he's rotissarie chickening in your head because he's a blorbo i barely put any initial thought into :'D I was basically like "okay put all the sexy monster traits together. now put him in a situation. oh yeah, gotta build a personality"

I use this website. It's called Notebook AI - I will use the disclaimer that it existed before the AI boom, and it's literally just a notebook with a bunch of tabs of different topics with questions that you can answer about your characters (and places, and other things) if you want. And it's how I keep track of character backstories and just the itty bitty details that build my OCs.

-

I'm thinking full strength Veron uses magic party tricks to impress people and be silly for his friends and co/workers.

[denieatsart]

i think i just accidentally recommended tumblr to my english teacher

[crunchycatepillars]

Back to being the niche internet microcelebrity I was always destined to be

I'm famous 🥰

[bopinion]

2024 / 37 - Belated vacation edition

Aperçu of the week

“Never start to stop and never stop to start!”

(Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman scholar, writer, philosopher and politician)

Bad News of the Week

Poverty and a lack of prospects as well as climate change and a lack of livelihoods are the most common reasons for migration. This is an understandable consideration: those who see no future for themselves (any more) can either resign themselves or set off in search of one somewhere else. Leaving your home country is never easy, so such a move can also be seen as the willpower of someone who won't give up.

Now there are many developed countries that even have a need for immigration. Germany, for example, has a shrinking population due to low birth rates. At the same time, many baby boomers will soon be retiring - so there is less working population and more to care for. A delta that could be closed with immigration. So it's actually a win-win situation that benefits everyone.

Germany does not exactly have the image of a classic immigration country. So anyone who is not a persecuted asylum seeker, but perhaps even a sought-after skilled worker, will think about where to build their future. Potential migrants cite the difficult language, complex bureaucracy and lack of a welcoming culture as the main reasons for not choosing Germany. We cannot change the language, but a reduction in formalities and more openness to the world would also do us good as a society.

I therefore react with incomprehension to the current behavior of the conservative CDU/CSU. They are adopting the pejorative rhetoric of the right and are raging without sense or reason against a supposed emergency situation at the borders caused by an increasing flow of irregular migration - which does not exist to this extent in Germany any more than it does in the USA. An ultimatum from this largest opposition party to the ruling coalition, which it was even prepared to take up constructively, was finally declared a failure just in time for the general debate in the German parliament Bundestag. In this debate, CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz insists on the rejection of refugees at the border. Despite all legal concerns and criticism from neighboring countries.

Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz argues against this: “There is no country in the world with a shrinking working population that has economic growth. That is the truth with which we are confronted”. And “We are a country that offers protection to those who are politically persecuted and that is in our constitution and we are not putting that up for debate”. However, he also concedes that openness to the world does not mean that anyone who wants to can come: “We must be able to choose who comes to Germany.”

So the door to talks is still open. Even if only with vague hints instead of a concrete plan on how immigration could be managed for the benefit of all. However, as long as the conservatives bask in good poll ratings and believe it cannot leave populism to the extreme parties, they will refuse to cooperate out of self-interest until at least the next general election. And we will once again fail to come up with a constructive, forward-looking concept for migration. Which we actually urgently need.

Good News of the Week

Taylor Swift and I agree. Elon Musk and I do not. So it should be clear what I'm talking about: the upcoming presidential elections in the USA. Or rather, the televised debate between the two candidates last week. Because it clearly went to the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, as even the otherwise barely objective right-wing populist broadcaster Fox News admits. The corresponding polls can be averaged out at two thirds to one third.

On the one hand, Donald Trump delivered his usual ghost train of doom-mongering, brazen lies, self-praise and bad humor. If he were to lose, there would be a third world war. The one between Russia and Ukraine, on the other hand, would never have happened in the first place. Thanks to him, NATO would be strong again, the pandemic would have been overcome superbly, the economy would be running smoothly and the whole world would take the USA seriously. The Democrats, on the other hand, if not their current vice president personally, would bring millions of migrants from Latin American mental institutions into the country to change gun laws, abort fracking even after birth, eat the cats off African-Americans and tax jobs. Or something like that - at times it was difficult to follow what he was saying.

On the other hand, Kamala Harris gave a solid performance. She came across as factual, credible, confident and self-assured. Yes, at some points one would have wished for more factual content than pathos, but that was not the point. In the run-up to the event, a majority of Americans had explicitly wished to learn more about the candidate. Who ultimately remained rather pale as Vice President. And who had to manage the tightrope act of simultaneously selling her previous performance well and embodying a new beginning. She has managed this reasonably well. And my hopes have risen that we could once again scrape past the abyss on November 5 instead of falling into it. I'm curious to see how the vice-presidential candidates' debate goes the week after next - I'm assuming that it could be entertaining instead of just weird.

Personal happy moment of the week

I had another great time with great people in Québec this week. Thank you!

I couldn't care less...

...that Google has been fined billions in the European Union. We simply have legislation that attempts to control dominant market positions and enable healthy competition in the interests of consumers. I think that's fine in principle.

It's fine with me...

...that BioNTech is now also launching an mRNA vaccine against lung cancer. After all, it was the German company's aim from the outset to use messenger ribonucleic acid to combat this cruel disease, which is the second most common cause of death in humans. This could be nothing less than a medical breakthrough.

As I write this...

...Germany is approaching the last state election of the year. This time it's Brandenburg's turn. Where the ruling Social Democrats could succeed in the last few meters to deprive the far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland / Alternative for Germany) of what they thought was a certain victory. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that.

Post Scriptum

After 28 years, the original German internet search engine MetaGer is shutting down. This makes it older than Google, but it has never been able to compete with it. As Yahoo is ending its involvement as an advertising partner without official justification, one of the longest-lived German Internet projects is now being discontinued. However, I have to admit that I have never used it.