Some other good answers already but here’s a sound byte version:

It’s currently expensive to borrow money, and then the borrowed money isn’t as useful as it used to be.

Yeah. The litigation risk is considered high right now, and no one wants to be first to try it.

Which I totally get. This place is largely run by volunteers, after all.

We saw similar hesitation in the early days of WordPress/Wikipedia/Drupal proliferation. Eventually those solutions greatly enabled sites like BlogSpot and Tumblr to become wild places, and niche sites to pop up for stuff that BlogSpot and Tumblr didn’t want to touch.

I can think of a few specific anti-spam and security tools that strongly enabled casual admins of WordPress to start sites.

I think we will see an erotic golden age once Fediverse moderation tools cross some unknown usability threshold.

Edit: I come across here as really excited about porn. Lol.

Art has a long history of being erotic, and beauty appreciation is one of the better things technology can do.

I am also really excited for the rest of the content that will thrive after demand for porn has pushed the technology to maturity.

I’m not sure what to do.

On Mastodon, I used the search function to shotgun random topics that interest me, and then followed all the hashtags on the posts that came up.

Over time, I started replacing following hashtags with following my favorite users who I discovered through those hashtags.

Then I started discovering and following their favorite users through their boosts.

Now that my feed is pretty much where I want it I tend to click “hide boosts” on anyone new that I follow, to prevent their every random amusement from cluttering my feed.

The end result is fantastic, but it took awhile to get there.

stopped talking to me once I said I didn’t have instagram, because it meant I was “hiding something”.

That’s awful.

Also, I guess they would think I’m hiding so much, considering the number of bloated awful services I’ve rejected.

You’re doing better than I am. I just bullshit them and say I’ll “probably check it out later.” By which I really mean whenever it gets reposted on a less shitty technology platform, in a few decades. But I don’t say that part.

Yeah! I think that’s going to sway in this place’s favor very soon.

I predict a glorious age of the very best curated pornography being here.

As other preferred platforms enshitify, I expect a lot of innovate erotic sensual and/or dirty artists (new and established) to have a dynamic, accessible, profitable experience here.

It’s probably going to be very horny, but also really beautiful in a lot of pro-social ways.

Interesting! I learned something here. Thank you.

Interesting bit from Wikipedia:

Had Metternich not stood in the way of “progress”, Austria might have reformed, dealt better with its problems of nationality, and the First World War might never have happened.[94] Instead, Metternich chose to fight an overwhelmingly fruitless war against the forces of liberalism and nationalism.[95] Heavy censorship was just one of a range of repressive instruments of state available to him that also included a large spy network.[72] Metternich opposed electoral reform, criticising Britain’s 1832 Reform Bill.[96] In short, he locked himself into an embittered battle against “the prevailing mood of his age”.[97]

Sounds familiar. He’s certainly not the last person to do so…

If your software can save lives, I guarantee the people whos lives you saved didn’t forget you.

I appreciate that thought. I don’t believe it. But I appreciate it.

A lot (if not all) of the lives my work saved don’t know anything about the part I played, or even that my software had anything to do with it.

I’m okay with that. I know that there’s families out there that are more whole today, thanks to my work. That’s more valuable to me than any footnote in a history book.

Someday those families will be just as dead as if I had done nothing. But I did do something. Millions of extra moments happened with family members who could have died.

Beautiful things that are eventually forgetten are still beautiful things. To me, that’s enough.

I’ve been on the other side of this, too.

I have no way to thank all the people whose medical engineering work extended my grandfather’s life by decades. I don’t know any of their names.

But, I hope they know that people like me revere their efforts as sacred. (I’ve made some effort on that front, but I know I’ll never thank everyone who deserves my thanks.)

That’s beautiful. A film set is a particularly good analogy - whatever we want to remember from it must be thoughtfully captured by skilled artists and technicians, before the set, itself, is gone.

I was going to build some kind of long lasting software that improves everyone’s lives.

I’ve built some genuinely impactful stuff. Some of my work has saved lives.

But that long term worthwhile project hasn’t materialized. Everything I’ve built is now either tossed out and forgotten, or has long overstayed it’s welcome.

I take it as a zen lesson about the ephemeral nature of all things. All we are is dust in the wind - including the stuff we make.

Now I mostly make whatever someone is willing to pay for, and just however well they’re willing to pay for. (Edit: Lately I have the privilege to select employers that I think do some genuine good. That helps how I feel about it. I did a lot of ‘meh’ work on my way to where I am.)

I do make a few handy little things on the side, but I’m no longer burdened with my past delusions of grandeur.

10/10. Would give up the dream again.

Make a budget, each month.

Write down your expected expenses. Keep it simple. Use paper and a calculator.

Rewrite the list, in order of priority, to you.

I’ve met so many people who are scared to do this, yet would be pleased if they did.

You’ve just aptly described why this is the best part of the Internet.

I would also say that your comment would be a thousand times more damning than upvoting every comment/post critical of Musk.

Yeah. If I were out as my real name, John Jacob Jinglehimer Schmidt, then I wouldn’t make these comments.

died suddenly in a car crash because he was recklessly driving with a sex worker.

I know they probably played it straight for the eulogy, but I hope someone managed a “died doing what they loved” or something, at least.

If votes were anonymous here, I might “come out” as my professional self and share more from my resources that can be used to Identity who I am.

I’m concerned that my voting pattern is probably already being collected to build a profile on MajorHavok, to decide whether MajorHavok should be favored or disfavored in anything owned by old Elon or Zuck or Bezos.

Elon is a fuck up, but he still owns a lot of places that I might need to use for my work.

So, for now, it’s pretty important to me that MajorHavok and John Jacob Jinglehimer Schmidt are kept as separate identities, so that John’s employability where Elon/Zuck/Bezos has influence will remain unaffected.

That’s great. I might steal this one!

Dark theme and accessible color contrast enforced by default.

If the site owner makes stupid choices, my browser should ignore them.

Edit: And an automatic switch to light theme if I decode to print something, obviously. I wasn’t raised in a barn.

There’s tons of free options for XMPP clients and servers.

I do this on purpose, to annoy any friend who catches a ride with me.

Walking up to my Ford Tempo, “I thought you drive a Cadillac?!”

“That’s a nickname.”

I’ve faced this decision.

As long as the stuff I’m doing on the Linux VM is legitimate work, I find that no one cares.

Every so often someone asks questions about how the underlying concerns are being addressed - most critically backups.

As long as I have reasonable answers, or I express willingness to collaborate on solutions, it tends to work out.

That said, I’m a manager of software development, so I receive a lot of leeway to tell people what tools I need.