Boz (he/him)

U.S., and I don’t know how many businesses here use it, but I think it’s quite possible to avoid using it socially here. I’m not sure if I even know anyone who does use it, and certainly no one has asked me to get one.

I don’t know, I think Musk might actually have an inferiority complex. He’s obsessed with himself, but he puts an awful lot of effort into trying to prove that he’s cool. But yeah, they’re both terrible, it doesn’t really matter who’s worse.

Probably the shirtless pic was a carefully calculated move to short-circuit theories about his lack of humanity, by showing that he has a navel. [/s]

…for real, though, at least the man utilizes his paid PR staff.

I agree that social interactions are good! I just learned forum etiquette at a time when the default state of any forum was everyone socializing all the time, and no topical discussion. Even communities with fewer than 20 people had to make rules about staying on-topic in topical threads, and the rules were made by and for the community, not by corporations or algorithms. Coming from that background, I feel like it’s rude to OP if I don’t stay on the topic they chose. I suppose it’s a different internet, now.

Very cool. I think you can see by my display name that I like showing pronouns, lol. I remember when putting pronouns on a name tag was like waving a trans flag. It wasn’t very long ago. And I also appreciate the heads-up on politics. I’m far left enough that I usually feel comfortable with the level of disagreement I have with communists and anarchists, but the feeling is not always mutual, so it depends on specifics. I will take a look at the communities when I have a little time to go in depth.

Anyway, I think we’re a bit off topic, except that issues with bigotry etc are part of why figuring out how to manage vote history is important.

Thanks for the tip, I’ll check it out! The issue isn’t my local instance, though, it’s that clearly marked safe spaces always attract people who want to make those spaces unsafe. It’s kind of a “Trolls? Must be Wednesday” kind of thing for me, after a lot of years online, but it never stops hurting. The only thing downvoting does to trolls is allow non-trolls to communicate to one another that the space is still supposed to be safe, which offers a little comfort, but it doesn’t actually make the space safe. Banning the trolls is much more effective.

That makes sense. I think Bud Light had a broader problem than Target, but I agree that their retreat wasn’t a good idea, either.

I agree that a lot of information can be inferred from vote history, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry if I came across as trying to minimize the risk there.

What I meant is that exponentially more information of the type you describe can be inferred from post history, particularly for those of us who use this space to connect with other members of marginalized groups we belong to. Voting history is a minor risk to me when just the fact that I have replied with “I have also had this experience” to a certain post or posted a meme in a certain group could cause serious trouble for me in my offline life. I don’t understand the use case where someone would become concerned about privacy because they found out their vote history could be accessed by unknown parties if they weren’t already concerned about privacy because their posts and comments are visible to anyone and everyone.

I guess the tl;dr is that I just don’t understand how the hyper focus on the risks associated with voting history is consistent with an assessment of personal risk in a broader sense. I am conscious of taking a huge risk by being on the fediverse, and I decided it was worth it. The stakes were high enough to begin with that I just assumed that the only source of privacy I had would come from anonymity, not the technology, which might be why I am confused by some of the responses I am seeing.

I agree with you about harassment issues, and the importance of controlling the transfer of admin-level data between instances, but for your last scenario, doesn’t blocking only apply to users who are logged in? Assuming your hypothetical tankies and Nazis were actually posting as well as blocking, it would be easy to find them just by logging out, and there are a lot of ways to get them banned or otherwise counteract their activities that don’t require someone to interact directly with them while logged in. The case you’re describing is not the kind of situation where the most important action is to argue with them. Arguing with extremists usually just validates their delusions, and encourages them to keep doing what they’re doing.

How do pirate captains manage the health of their crew, particularly in the areas of nutrition and disease?

On a more granular level:

1. What are the staple, easily-stored foods, and how are they supplemented with fresh foods?

[Are we talking ship’s biscuit and salt beef with regular landfalls to get fruit and vegetables? Is there magical cold storage so they can have frozen whatever? Do they take vitamin supplements? Do none of these things happen, so long voyages always result in nutritional deficiencies, including scurvy?]

2. What level of medical knowledge and expertise are available in your world in general, and on ships in particular?

[Are they even at the level where they know and acknowledge that scurvy is caused by poor diet? Is healing all magic and four-humors pseudo-medicine? Is it difficult to get a competent physician to join a pirate crew, leading to bullet wounds being treated by barbers or dentists?]

3. How do pirate captains deal with contagious diseases, and what are the most common shipboard epidemics?

[Is quarantine a thing? …in a confined space? Do they have the germ theory of disease at all, or is the focus on “bad air” and ventilation, or demons, or divine disfavor…? Are they looking at flu, plague, body lice, intestinal parasites, syphilis, all of the above…? Do crew members generally comply with the orders of the captain and/or surgeon, or are you likely to have half the crew sick, and the other half mutinying?]

4. How are battle wounds dealt with?

[Related to 2, but you’ll want specific protocols for different kinds of injuries, removal of bullets, shrapnel, or arrows as relevant, suturing techniques or lack thereof, bandage material, disinfectant or lack thereof, pain management—other than liquor—if any, ways of dealing with infection, if you want to go there, and, of course, prosthetics, because, IMO, you can’t have a pirate setting without the option of peg legs and hook hands, and anything else bad you think might happen to characters in battle].

5. How much value do captains place on keeping a crew alive, vs just replacing crew members when they die from injuries or disease?

[Fun fact: the British navy—and other Western navies—used to deliberately overcrowd ships at the start of the voyage because they knew a large portion of the crew would die, and they wanted to retain enough sailors to make it home. Quite possibly the death rate would have been lower without the initial overcrowding, and it definitely would have been lower if they had invested in medical care rather than extra recruits. I suspect pirates were, historically, as bad or worse in this respect. The extent to which captains in your world see crew members as replaceable vs repairable will be demonstrated by your answers to the preceding questions, or, if you’d rather go the other way, might help you decide on the answers].

…all of which probably makes it sound like I hate maritime dramas, which is totally false, lol, I love them, I just have a really morbid imagination.

I’m too new to the fediverse to form an opinion about community differences in general, but I have definitely noticed that my own behavior is different without the downvote option. The biggest difference for me is that I am more likely to do things that decrease my interaction with content that upsets me, rather than reading hateful garbage just to get the dubious satisfaction of pushing the little down arrow button. The stuff I downvoted wasn’t usually something I could have discussed in a civil way, it was trolling, bigotry, or generally hateful comments. (I am part of frequently-targeted groups, and no platform is free of bigots and trolls). Now, when I see that kind of thing, I do what I should have been doing all along, which is some combination of blocking, reporting, and just skipping over things I recognize as not worth my time. I think you’re right that the voting system can replace moderation in unhelpful ways. Trolls should be removed, not just downvoted in situ.

As someone in an instance without downvotes, I can confirm that I don’t miss them. It didn’t take months, either, just a week or so.

I agree that it’s good to have some kind of deletion, even if it’s not really getting rid of the content. Nothing is ever really gone on the internet, but there is value in communicating to others that you meant to retract a comment.

Some instances don’t allow downvotes by people logged into that instance, which I think helps. (From both sides: I find that when I can’t downvote, I have a lot less motivation to read anything that makes me angry. I just keep scrolling).

Possibly relatedly, is this a good place to mention beans? I have not figured out where that meme actually came from, but apparently it’s a thing the cool kids are saying.

I think I personally give out more information in what I say than how I vote, and I think that’s going to be true for a lot of people here. I want to share, and that requires me to sacrifice some privacy.

No shade intended, but if you’re concerned about what your voting history will say about you, you might consider not interacting with posts at all, and if you’re really concerned, don’t curate a news feed, either. It’s totally fine to browse logged out if you really want to be safe. I think any level of concern about privacy is valid, but it’s useful to think about the whole picture when you evaluate your risk tolerance.

I find it’s possible to be logged into two instances on the same browser, so it doesn’t need to be more difficult than switching tabs. (That may change, I don’t know whether it’s technically desirable, but if it’s relevant to someone’s interests…)

I guess so. [/smh]

Wait, what? Target barely even had a Pride campaign this year. They started rolling it out early, then backpedaled so fast and so far that there was basically nothing in June. Certainly nothing that classified as “sexual” to a sane human being. Also, if they’re still claiming there was anything actually trans-body-friendly in children’s sizes, that is pure fiction. As a trans, queer person, I would give Target maybe a C- for LGBTQ+ - friendliness, and that’s giving them the benefit of the doubt. These scumbags are not only morally bankrupt, they’re barking up the wrong tree.

I disagree with that definition of news. Keeping politicians accountable is certainly one of the functions of the press, but there are a lot of possible news items that don’t refer to politicians. “Winter storms hit [location]” is news, but not related to politicians unless it talks about steps local politicians are taking to prevent storm damage (which is not necessary for a good article). Or “Physicists find [particle they were looking for].” That one could be in Science rather than here, but it is definitely news, and I personally think it’s hard to shoehorn politics into a discussion of particle physics without losing track of what actually happened. Very few politicians involve themselves in that kind of research (though, to be fair, it might be news if they did).

Whether it’s possible to have a purely apolitical news forum is a different question, and I am sure it’s possible to put a political spin on almost anything if you want, but I just don’t think it’s true that news must be political to be news.