Sept 30th is the National Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada. It's a statutory holiday to memorialize and recognize the atrocities committed by the Canadian Indian school system. I mean, I think it's good there's a day to recognize this horrid part of Canadian history. And this is not why I'm writing about this.
I'm writing about this because I'm hearing fireworks being set off over the weekend. I thought, maybe it's a religious holiday or something but my search through the 'net turned up nothing for this weekend.
Is it just me or does the fireworks display seem to be in bad taste? These are pretty loud fireworks too, which lends to the assumption that this was allowed or even run by the municipality.
I brought this up with my SO and he suggests it could be the First Nations families celebrating. Maybe it's an organization ran by First Nations people. I sincerely hope so. Otherwise this is a bad look.
I know this is probably not going to be a popular opinion with everyone, but I feel the need to express my appreciation for one of the federated instances I'm in. I've found out that they are not so focused on growth as they are in cultivating a space where people of all walks of life are welcome...as long everyone treat each other with respect and dignity.
Considering the nature of the federated network, I personally don't see a huge need to grow out and potentially fragment an instance. As long you have an account on one of the instances, you can post in any community on any linked instances. That being said, I can see the appeal of keeping it in one instance, where we can be certain that everyone posting are in agreement with the rules they're posting under. But fragmenting early will likely turn the instance into a ghost town. I don't want to see any instances turn into that.
All in all, I prefer the wait-and-build approach. I suspect it won't take much time or effort to create a new community when it's needed, so why not embrace that flexibility and just wait for the need to arise first.
I can't seem to focus on much else right now. Made a Calckey-based account in a gaming focused instance. Figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to spread my federated social media presence around. Or maybe it's a terrible idea!
The thought of hosting my own definitely crossed my mind. However, I don't have my own server hardware for it and I'm not sure I want to worry about running my own instance. Even if I do, it'd be limited to just me and my friends, if they want to have a presence through my instance(s).
All that being said, I'm going to try and take a break for now. Focus up on my project. So close to completion!
This isn't the first time I've dipped my toes into the fediverse. I actually made my mastodon.social account back in 2019. Frankly, I don't remember what prompted me to do that. I probably saw it on Reddit and was curious enough to try.
Funny thing is, Reddit progressively getting worse have encouraged me to look into alternatives again. I tried a few years back but it didn't really stick. I'm hoping the community over at beehaw.org is friendly enough that it'll get me out of my online shell, so to speak. It's only been one day over there, but so far the impression is pretty good!
Getting that all set up got me more interested in other federated software. It's how I came across paper.wf. I want to write a webserial and while other places might boast better support for discovery and whatnot, I like that a federated network means people don't have to make a whole new account just to follow a paper.wf (writefreely) account. I like the minimal design of writefreely, and that I'm free to make adjustments to the appearance. I want to keep it simple though. Stick with lower contrast. I might do more if the need arises.
This space will be my blog, that I probably will forget to update every so often (go figures). I'm thinking of starting a webserial within this instance as well. I want to leverage the interconnectivity of a federated software so people who want to follow won't need to make yet another account to do it. As far as I can tell, it works with Mastodon and PixelFed but not with Lemmy. I haven't tried any others at the moment. The only downside is that this post isn't showing up in those software. I might have to look elsewhere. Turns out it just needs a bit of time.
I might write about my thoughts about software development here. I might do something else. It's an unlisted blog but I'm still going to avoid writing about things I don't want anywhere near the public.