aasatru

I was paying for Kagi until recently, but they keep working on functionality I'm not interested in rather than lowering their prices. Other than that it was a fine experience, but too pricey, and the argument that that's the cost of running a search engine doesn't hold when they choose to develop all kinds of extra stuff.

I wish I liked SearXNG better, but the results are sadly not that great for me.

Is it possible that I miss out on valuable insights by immediately dismissing the opinions of anyone who refers to machine learning as AI?

Sure.

Will I stop doing it?

Sure as hell not.

Norwegians are generally leaning pro-Palestine.

In a recent survey, 46% of Norwegians responded that they have more sympathy with Palestinians, whereas only 12% have more sympathy with Israelis. 32% responded that their sympathy with Palestinians has increased in light of recent events.

I can imagine several reasons why Norway is so different from for example Germany and France in this regard.

One is that we have a pretty well-organized civil society, including an organized Jewish community that is actively outspoken about Israeli extremism. My impression is that leading voices in the Mosaic community in Norway are frequently outspoken on the side of humanity.

Another reason is of course that we are still bitter about the collapse of the Oslo Accords. There's simply no question Israel were the ones who killed it.

Even before this, Israel might have had less goodwill in Norway following the Lillehammer affair where Mossad murdered some random waiter who was on his way home from the cinema with his pregnant wife. One of the agents involved in placing 13 bullets in Ahmed Bouchikhi has since stated that they knew they were shooting the wrong man.

More importantly however, it probably relates to the story we tell ourselves as a nation.

We're in all likelihood prouder of our war efforts than most of Europe, and certainly more than pro-Israeli countries like Germany and France. A lot of us (myself included) have family members who helped Jews flee the country following the occupation, at the risk of death penalty should they get caught.

The author of our national anthem took active part in the Dreyfus affair, among other things writing in a French newspaper that the French government was the "most shameless of any civilized people".

Other important national poets dedicated their lives to giving Jews right to statehood, wrote poems urging people to wake the fuck up to the horrors of nazism, or died bombing Berlin.

These people, among others, make up the core of what we consider Norwegian national identity. As a result the average Norwegian might be less afraid of criticizing Israel than the average German (or French), as we consider ourselves to be firmly footed on the right side of history.

Of course, history is more complicated than that. A lot of us will simply not read Hamsun, and never mind that Jews had to be allowed into the Kingdom in the first place. History is complicated, but the stories we choose to tell and the ways we choose to frame them matters a lot.

Also, Norwegians are pretty left-leaning, and we put a lot of effort promoting ourselves as a peace nation. Probably doesn't hurt either.

Spain has been rallying for this for months! They're pulling their weight in this issue.

I think a good approach could be to think about how you could reach users of different platforms.

A lot of Mastodon users follow hashtags, so including relevant hashtags (#accessibility and #blind seem like good starting points) might be a good idea. Tagging groups, such as @accessibility@a.gup.pe, might also help.

I think Kbin/Mbin might be better suited for this than Lemmy, as it integrates better with other federated networks. You can follow microbloggers and boost content, which in turn makes them likely to follow you back and creates a community beyond which Lemmy community you choose to post in. Your Mastodon followers will see your posts, but it won't matter to them which community you post it in.

It's hard for content to make the jump from Lemmy to Mastodon as Lemmy does not make itself discoverable, but as soon as content reaches Mastodon users nothing stops them from interacting with it (by boosting or replying).

Sadly Kbin.social lacks sufficiently active moderation these days, so you might be better off with an mbin instance. I also have no idea how accessible Mbin is to blind users.

Edit: I over-emphasized the point about reaching a broader audience. If you want to discuss a narrow topic but you don't want most ActivityPub users to see it because you don't value their input, I guess Lemmy is as good as it gets.

They vote in Brazilian elections. Some voted for Lula, others for Bolsonaro. The latter are directly responsible for this.

Well, imagine you meet a guy travelling through the US. He's wearing lederhosen, has a freaking feather in his hat, and speaks with a heavy German accent. You ask where he's from, and he says he's American/Italian, as his maternal grandfather was born in the US and his grandmother on his father's side is Italian. However, this is his first time outside of Germany, and he speaks no Italian and hardly any English.

This is what Americans tend to look like to Europeans.

I remember checking out Lemmy in December 2022, it was barely even a proof of concept. Now it's a whole ecosystem.

it's incredible how far it has gotten in a short time. And while commercial platforms will only get worse with time, open source platforms will only get better. Growth might not always be a linear process, but I'm feeling optimistic. :)

If anything, this proves that forking Mastodon is a great idea. Not because any useful software would come out of it, but it would distract some of the annoying armchair managers out there.

The biggest problem with Mastodon isn't the lack of feature X or the presence of feature Y; it's those exact assholes, draining the energy and enthusiasm from anything that crosses their path while scaring away anyone looking for a meaningful conversation.

I hate to break it to you, but if you genuinely think you've figured it all out, chances are you're a fucking moron.

This. Conservatives tend to themselves be the victims of a failed system, hating them for failing to address it in a useful manner is hardly constructive. I reserve my hatred for billionaires.

Yeah, you're probably right it's worth reading if you want to understand the American right. I just don't think Atlas Shrugged is anywhere near as interesting as Anarchy, State and Utopia from a history of ideas perspective, but that might not be the relevant dimension. :)