Something changed culturally between Usenet and the things that came after.

Me, who only started into online communities in the early 2000s:

But the extent to which the fediverse seems to like to do this stuff just seems really extreme to me, and a lot of times what it’s based on is just weird petty bullying nonsense.

Not saying that it isn’t a problem, but as someone who’s been Around™ online, this is pretty par-for-the-course stuff.

Ah, to remember the glory days of Livejournal and Tumblr… and don’t get me started back in the days when every fandom had a dozen sites which all hated each other for vague and extremely personal reasons.

“No is a full sentence, Gondor.”

Nice feature!

“They dug too shallow, and too judiciously… ‘We can get out… we can touch grass…’”

and my wife isn’t an assassin,

So far as you know

REJECT Al Bundy energy

EMBRACE Gomez Addams energy

Live in the present, be yourself at all costs, love and respect your SO visibly, vocally, and at every opportunity

Explanation: Of the military systems of Ancient Rome, the Mid-Republic takes the cake for sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness. During the First and Second Punic Wars, the Romans suffered massive defeats at the hands of their enemies, to the tune of six-digit casualties - something which even modern states with massive, post-industrial revolution populations would struggle to sustain.

The Mid-Republic, though? Ban mourning. Reinforce penalties for evading conscription. Tax everyone’s jewelry. Free volunteer slaves. Do WHATEVER is needed to raise those troops and AVENGE THE REPUBLIC’S HONOR!

At times it seems they pulled extra troops out of their ass - something which at least one ancient historian noted (in reference to their wars against the Greek invader Pyrrhus of Epirus) as being like ‘water gushing forth from a fountain’.

Explanation: This is a genderswapped depiction of the Sacred Band of Thebes - an ancient warrior society in which all the members were comprised of couples of same-sex lovers.

I haven’t read it in years either, but that sounds correct.

Basically Frodo comes in as Sauron is gaining strength, and desperate to regain the One Ring. So there’s more ‘pressure’ being put on Frodo, just because of when he came into possession of it (or rather, when the movies take place, as in the books he inherits it a number of years before even leaving the Shire).

Hell yeaaaah

Smeowg on his hoard

Read the whole thing. Everyone involved in this, author included, seems to be batshit insane?

I’m about halfway through.

I didn’t realize Mastodon was big enough for so much fucking drama.

Damn, sapphic dating seems based af

In the long run, whitelisting may become the norm for federation instead of blacklisting.

I was just offered 500$ to be someone’s friend. Of course, I refused - my friendship is worth much more than that!

But it’s… concerning that we’ve got this sudden spike in spam.

No?

18 posts takes like, 30 minutes.

Crypto doesn’t really solve any of the problems that a payment processor wouldn’t also solve, unfortunately.