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Raglan Niall :lk: :tinoflag:Inward Looking Melancholy
What Do I Know?<p><strong>How Do You Solve a Problem Like&nbsp;Reviewing</strong></p><p><span>RPG reviewing is hard. It’s not simply a matter of reading, taking notes, forming opinions, and writing the review. It’s trying to say something meaningful about something when you can’t take the time to play the game and challenge your opinions. I have heard people say that this is why reviews are meaningless or that you should only review RPG products that you’ve been able to play. My issue with that is, almost no one that covers RPGs can review RPGs in the same way that, for example, video games get reviewed.</span></p><p><strong><b>We’re Not Like Other Reviews</b></strong></p><p><span>Some RPGs have beta versions that someone could play, giving them a head’s up on how the game is going to play, but not all. Very few people that cover RPGs make the money to do it on a full-time basis, and even if they did, actually playing an RPG to get meaningful table time doesn’t just require the reviewer’s time, but it requires several people able to take part in playing the game. If you wait until you have hours of play and feedback from players, it’s going to be months after the RPG before you can put out a review, and, and with the time that playtesting takes, you’re going to put out very few actual reviews.</span></p><p><span>I think there is a great value in someone providing an opinion of a product after reading through and evaluating the material, even if they haven’t played. People will get a general idea of what the game is, what the mechanics are, what the game looks like. Readers can find out the tone and readability of the text. I think there is some value to a reviewer looking at a game and pointing out similarities to other games with which they are familiar.</span></p><p><strong><b>Artificially Constructed Hierarchies</b></strong></p><p><span>That’s part of why I moved away from using star ratings almost immediately after I started reviewing. Seeing a star rating is providing an absolute. There is a danger that someone only looks at your star rating, or absorbs nothing in your review except the star rating. Unless you create multiple vectors to rate, you lose the nuance of a game that may be a joy to read, but feels unwieldy in play, or a game that looks gorgeous and may be a good sourcebook, but may not be the best at providing actual statistics for characters. But once you open the floodgates of multiple vectors of star ratings, where do you stop? Readability, presentation, physical product, electronic product, value for price, enjoyability of gameplay, ease of gameplay, ability to teach the game to someone not reading the book? Where do you draw the line? Because everything you want to talk about that feels meaningful could probably have a star rating, and there may not even be the same vectors that apply to every game.</span></p><p><span>That’s why I pivoted to Not Recommended, Tenuous Recommendation, Qualified Recommendation, Recommended, and Strongly Recommended. Even with a rating hierarchy, my scale prioritized broad appeal over the product’s inherent quality of writing and design. But even that scale made it hard to express when I loved a game and thought it did a great job exploring new avenues of roleplaying in engaging ways, but was definitely a niche product that would not be for a broad audience.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>I always said that I wanted people to know that I have preferences and biases so they could weigh those into what they were reading in the review to know if I was looking at the product from the same angle that they would. But that was hard to translate back into the new scale I created. No matter how amazing a D&amp;D product is, can I really give it a Strongly Recommended? Because that means I’m telling people that dislike D&amp;D at all that they would find some value in checking the product out. If I give a narrative roleplaying game whose mechanics are more about emulating and enforcing the tropes of genres of storytelling, filtered through a character archetype, and I think it’s great, can I give that a Recommended when that means it may be a good purchase for someone that really likes more granular or tactical games?</span><span><br></span><span><br></span><span>The problem with my scale was that I had to assume an “average” reader of my reviews, and given that I like a wide range of games, and talk to a wide range of gamers, that means my hypothetical reader vaguely likes everything but is always be excited about any specific genre, and only lightly engages with licensed material, they can’t be a ravenous fan. That’s making a lot of assumptions.&nbsp;</span></p><p><strong><b>Reexamination</b></strong></p><p><span>The world hasn’t gotten any better since I felt too overwhelmed to continue doing regular reviews. In many ways, it has only gotten worse. That I feel inured to being a citizen of a country that is actively destroying the lives and erasing the rights of every marginalized community it can conceive. Every branch of government is complicit, makes me more functional, and also makes me worry about how much of my soul is dying. But on that happy note, I’ve had enough moments where my anxiety hasn’t been so high that I shut down. I want to write things again, just maybe not on anything that feels like a real schedule.</span><span><br></span><span><br></span><span>I don’t know that I want to go through the stress of trying to summarize things with a hierarchical list of ratings. It’s literally stressful to get to the end of the review and think where it should sit for that hypothetical reader. It gets even more confusing when you factor in whether my blog has a different hypothetical reader than</span><i><span> Gnome Stew</span></i><span>. I always said that I think the value of reviews isn’t the ratings they provide, but the insight into what is being reviewed, and the perspective of the reviewer measured against the reader’s own preferences.</span></p><p><span>In the future, I would like to do things that are more like my first impressions, across the board. I can talk about what works for me, what I think is new or innovative, what I think will be problematic or isn’t put in enough context, and how easy or enjoyable the thing is to read. I can talk about what it reminds me of regarding other games and how I think that will translate at the table. But it’s all me applying my knowledge, my experience, and my preferences to what I’m writing about. I hope that will be useful to people reading those articles.</span></p><p><span>Also, writing a review felt “final” to me. If I wrote a review and gave it a rating, and then later disagreed with myself, I didn’t want to edit the review. I wanted to record for posterity what I thought when I wrote that article. I want to feel more free to revise opinions, not only considering gameplay at the table, but considering how a line develops and what support materials it receives. If my initial article is effectively always my impression of reading and interacting with the product, it leaves room for me to come back and write about what the game feels like after playing a one short, or a short run of the game, or long-term campaign. If the initial look at the game or the game product isn’t a review, and doesn’t have any kind of rating, it only makes sense that follow-up articles will be an evolved view of what I’m talking about.</span></p><p><strong><b>Does it Matter?</b></strong></p><p><span>I still think RPG reviews, and any kind of meaningful analysis of RPG products, is useful. It can provide context to people that want to know what the product is. It can help people to know if there are any topics that it may or may not handle well. I may even tell people that a product exists when they previously didn’t know. But I also know from my perspective, I want to evolve how I look at and write about games. I don’t want to construct a hypothetical reader, I just want to talk to other gamers. Hopefully, this will still give people what they want from the articles I write.</span><span><br></span><span><br></span><span>It’s going to be weird describing myself as a “First Impressionist.”&nbsp;</span></p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/navel-gazing/" target="_blank">#NavelGazing</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/reviews/" target="_blank">#reviews</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/roleplaying-games/" target="_blank">#RoleplayingGames</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/rpg-reviews/" target="_blank">#RPGReviews</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/rpgs/" target="_blank">#rpgs</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/tabletop-games/" target="_blank">#TabletopGames</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/tabletop-reviews/" target="_blank">#TabletopReviews</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://whatdoiknowjr.com/tag/ttrpgs/" target="_blank">#ttrpgs</a></p>
Andrew<p>One of those days where everything just kinda flowed along without much hassle. So much so that I had no conception of time. A few times when I paused it was much later in the day than I thought. Not sure how I feel about that. When what you do is delivered with minimal effort and unconscious practice it starts to have a sense of non-achievement and I don’t like to feel that. <a href="https://aus.social/tags/work" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>work</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/navelgazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>navelgazing</span></a></p>
Gabriel N<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>Daojoan</span></a></span> T renamed the Gulf of Mexico, while reducing the influence of the country in the rest of the world. </p><p>Soon no one will even care to know were the US is: who would want to go to that place to be mistreated?</p><p><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/navelGazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>navelGazing</span></a></p>
🇪🇷Götterdämmerung<p>The mandate to know oneself turns us inwards, veiling the external world in favor of internal exploration. What gets obscured, then are the structures, forces, and contexts that constitute the very conditions of our being. By privileging the internal gaze, we risk missing the systems of meaning beyond ourselves - the very things that allow the self to emerge int he first place. <br><a href="https://glitch.social/tags/navelgazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>navelgazing</span></a> <a href="https://glitch.social/tags/gaze" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>gaze</span></a></p>
C Puffer<p>A rant:</p><p>Someone just boosted into my timeline a post from a thread by some social media mucky muck (on mastodon.social natch), proclaiming how Mastodon will never be the new Twitter and how he spends all his time on Bluesky because of all the usual well documented issues with Masto and all the cool features that Bluesky is shipping... et cetera.</p><p>Just wait until Bluesky starts shipping advertisements, my dude. But more to the point, why can't there be both? Everything doesn't have to be for everybody, and Mastodon can be its own nerdy, weird thing.</p><p>Cool that Bluesky is figuring out moderation/quoting features. They seem useful. I'm genuinely glad for the users, and that people are thinking these things through. But Bluesky, since the app is one and the same with the protocol atm, can adapt its federation protocol as necessary, whereas Mastodon can't force its will onto ActivityPub if they don't want to break Federation with a bunch of other software. It's slow and frustrating, I guess, but it's not like their aren't people on here enjoying whatever it is they do on here.</p><p>Anyway, I'm not trying to sell anyone on anything. This doesn't have to be for everyone. It's just these kinds of posts are my least favorite genre of Mastodon navel gazing: people who try to force their expectations on the platform and castigate people for not Mastodoning the way they think they should and/or gripe about what they think are essential missing features. And because it doesn't meet their expectations they declare it a failed platform. </p><p>For sure, it's a bummer when people whose posts I like disappear. But new people show up, old mutuals check in now and again, and the rest of us all just keep on keeping on. Devs can poke and prod at ActivityPub and it can contribute to its maturation, its possibilities.</p><p>Have fun with Bluesky, genuinely. But, frankly, fuck marketshare and exponential growth. I, for one, hope there remains an ecosystem of social media that can resist the need to please Silicon Valley VCs idea of what success is.</p><p><a href="https://beige.party/tags/Bluesky" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Bluesky</span></a> <a href="https://beige.party/tags/Mastodon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Mastodon</span></a> <a href="https://beige.party/tags/NavelGazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NavelGazing</span></a></p>
guyjantic has moved!Bunch of personal stuff, some kind of whiny
Cheryl<p>Looking at the memories from both Google photos and FB On This Day, I see that we've had some really difficult times over the past 5 years. Joy was hit one block from our home by an SUV that was stolen. It took 2 years before we got any compensation. It's why we currently have a car payment each month. </p><p>Then I have a mass on my left ovary. I've been evaluated for several cancers due to abnormal blood readings which persist but still no diagnosis. </p><p><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Navelgazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Navelgazing</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/introspection" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>introspection</span></a> <br>1/</p>
CatPants<p>A woman of seven and twenty</p><p>A woman of seven and twenty,said Marianne, after pausing a moment, can never hope to feel or inspire affection again.”<br>~~Jane Austen</p><p><a href="https://pywacket.org/wordpress/a-woman-of-seven-and-twenty/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">pywacket.org/wordpress/a-woman</span><span class="invisible">-of-seven-and-twenty/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://freeradical.zone/tags/Age" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Age</span></a> <a href="https://freeradical.zone/tags/Angst" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Angst</span></a> <a href="https://freeradical.zone/tags/vanity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>vanity</span></a> <a href="https://freeradical.zone/tags/aging" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>aging</span></a> <a href="https://freeradical.zone/tags/NavelGazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NavelGazing</span></a> <a href="https://freeradical.zone/tags/SelfIndulgence" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SelfIndulgence</span></a></p>
🤘 The Metal Dog 🤘<p><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/TheMetalDogArticleList" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>TheMetalDogArticleList</span></a><br><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/punknews" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>punknews</span></a>.orgpunknews.org<br>Navel Gazing for April 21, 2024<br>Welcome to Navel Gazing, the Punknews.org commenter community's weekly symposium, therapy session, and back-alley knife-fight. Chime in below with your latest playlists, record store finds, online time wasters, and site feedback....</p><p><a href="https://www.punknews.org/article/82638/navel-gazing-for-april-21-2024" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">punknews.org/article/82638/nav</span><span class="invisible">el-gazing-for-april-21-2024</span></a></p><p> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/NavelGazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NavelGazing</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/PunknewsOrg" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>PunknewsOrg</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/WeeklySymposium" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>WeeklySymposium</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/TherapySession" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>TherapySession</span></a></p>
🚲<p>If I’m lucky, there will come a point where I’ve been married longer than I’ve been not married, or that I’ve kids longer than I’ve not had kids. That’s weird to think about, but weirder is the fact that I’m soon crossing (or have already crossed) the point where, if something new comes into my life, there’s no way it will ever be in the majority of my years lived. <a href="https://social.ridetrans.it/tags/NavelGazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NavelGazing</span></a></p>
Giacomo Miceli<p>It didn't take much before Livia discovered her own website. I am wondering what will happen when she'll visit it...</p><p><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/navelgazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>navelgazing</span></a></p>
Anna<p>Why do arseholes always win?</p><p>Why are there so many of them?</p><p><a href="https://disabled.social/tags/Philosophy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Philosophy</span></a> <a href="https://disabled.social/tags/Karma" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Karma</span></a> <a href="https://disabled.social/tags/NavelGazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NavelGazing</span></a> <a href="https://disabled.social/tags/Sad" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Sad</span></a></p>
toolbear#🌶️<p>If you were Joan of Arc, gifted and cursed with glimpses of divinity, and there was a doctor or mystic who could "cure" you, would you let them?</p><p>(multiple choices allowed: check all that apply | fit for you)</p> <p>🧐 <a href="https://tech.lgbt/tags/Philosophy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Philosophy</span></a><br> and | or<br>🤔 <a href="https://tech.lgbt/tags/NavelGazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NavelGazing</span></a><br>🔁 <a href="https://tech.lgbt/tags/BoostsWelcome" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>BoostsWelcome</span></a></p>
Roy Greenhilt<p>FIRST FULL PASS EDIT COMPLETE. 20 minutes of awesomeness (I hope). But it feels good to get to this point.</p><p>Now I need to take a break and have a late dinner.</p><p><a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/navelgazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>navelgazing</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/youtube" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>youtube</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/video" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>video</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/editing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>editing</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/oversharing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>oversharing</span></a></p>
Roy Greenhilt<p>I&#39;m beginning to wonder if, for my mental health, I should not look at YT videos from content creators whose content closely resembles mine. Granted, I&#39;m in an extremely niche topic, but that just means the other folks are HIGHLY visible.</p><p>My stuff doesn&#39;t duplicate theirs, but they are PROLIFIC. A video a week, and they&#39;re long and they have a studio and and and. (and a lot more subs than I do).</p><p>I&#39;ll succeed on quality, yeah, that&#39;s the ticket.</p><p><a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/youtube" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>youtube</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/navelgazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>navelgazing</span></a> <a href="https://fosstodon.org/tags/ennui" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>ennui</span></a></p>
IMGoph<p>Haven't even *lurked* on Twitter in over a week now. There are a lot of people who have ended up here (a little bit) and at bsky (a little bit). Really do miss seeing some folks who haven't made the leap away yet. <a href="https://thepit.social/tags/navelgazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>navelgazing</span></a></p>
yours truly<p>Welcome to the newest iteration of the same ol’e blog. I change this website almost as often as I post content on it. The thing is, I get bored. I don’t often have much to say, but I’m endlessly fascinated with the various ways people can publish themselves on the web. I don’t archive much of my own blogging. Keeping back-ups of my old content seems kind of pointless, and I don’t necessarily think I’m pumping out timeless prose here.</p> <p class="">A lot of people are interested in the internet as an archive, and that’s great. In fact, one part of my day job is helping to ensure other people’s content does stay online, gets backed up in all the possible ways, is immediately recoverable, and can more easily be repurposed as needed to circumvent censorship. It’s satisfying to assist in keeping content accessible that some regime is desperately trying to flush down the memory hole. The ethos is called “beat the bastards.” I’m developing a whole Theory of Change around it. Maybe.</p><p class="">But for my own endeavours, I’m more keen on the ephemeral version of the internet, and it too has some really valuable use cases. I like volatile content that has an expiration date. I don’t necessarily think everything has to stick around on a web page for the rest of history. Human beings shift and change over the course of their lives, and their digital presence should have some of that flexibility as well. We are not immutable. Websites can be like sand mandalas. So, whenever I make one for myself, I realise that the <a rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://archive.org/web/" target="_blank">WayBackMachine</a> may snarf a copy of whatever it looks like at any given point, but I don’t really keep many copies around. My version control process is tabula rasa.</p><p>Motivations behind this current incarnation…</p><p>I’m moving back to WordPress. For some work and non-work related reasons, I wanted to better understand how <a rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/" target="_blank">WordPress Blocks</a> work. I’m also interested in how websites can use <a rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/" target="_blank">ActivityPub</a> to both syndicate content and create author presences in the <a rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/11/fediverse-could-be-awesome-if-we-dont-screw-it" target="_blank">Fediverse</a>, which is really the next phase of the more open web (calling it now for “I told you so” rights later). Finally, as much as I enjoy a good <a rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_website_static.asp" target="_blank">flat website system</a>, after running the site using Hugo, Jekyll, Publii, and sometimes just some plain old, hand-coded html pages on Github Pages for a while, I wanted something that didn’t need the command line or so many git workflows just to post something ridiculous if not regrettable, and a publishing system that I could update with an app on my phone if I felt the inspiration, without (yet) resorting to something like a Medium blog, or Tumblr.</p><p>WordPress and Blocks:</p><p>I don’t really like Blocks, but I’m getting to know them and maybe at least appreciate the intention behind WordPress going all-in on something that’s still so very beta. From a purely visual point of view, what ultimately convinced me to give WordPress Blocks another go was the website for the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s <a rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://publicinfrastructure.org" target="_blank">Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure</a>. It’s just not pretty, but sure does the job. And that’s what I’m going for here. That, and a work project has obligated me to have some minimal understanding of them. Like Blocks, this website isn’t really done, and is kind of glitchy.</p><p>Perfect may be the enemy of the good. So is lousy, though. I still think I prefer my design being implemented through nice, hand-rolled, bespoke, GMO-free css files and templates that don’t give random authors such an easy chance to ruin your aesthetics with one, albeit well-intentioned wrong move. There is also a lot missing in this method of styling a website, and I’m not keen on how it saves design elements all over the place. For what are still very good reasons, content and design should be sequestered from one another and securely compartmentalised. WordPress once had as its mantra, “code is poetry.” Blocks seems to be saying, “most people’s poetry sucks.” There’s some truth to that.</p><p>I can bang on far more about this topic, and at some point soonish I probably will, and likely reuse the same jokes. I do really like WordPress as a writing tool, though. It has one of the nicer wysiwig interfaces going. It’s better than a lot of writing software. It’s far better than Microsoft Word, and more affordable.</p><p>ActivityPub and the Fediverse:</p><p>I wanted to make a blog <a rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/" target="_blank">that could be instantly part of the Fediverse</a>, and ActivityPub is currently the prevailing protocol to achieve that. In a poorly shaped nutshell, The Fediverse is the truly decentralised social web, with the potential to let participants better control their identities, content, and decide what kind of walls they do or don’t want around their garden.</p><p>To me, it’s a redo of what Web3 could have been about instead of a marketing scheme for grifters trying to convince people that jpegs of cartoon apes had any intrinsic value. There is also some promising anti-censorship properties to how content can migrate through federated services. I’m also interested in how creators can c<a rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://themarkup.org/levelup/2022/12/22/how-we-verified-ourselves-on-mastodon-and-how-you-can-too" target="_blank">laim identity in the Fediverse</a>, bypassing gatekeepers such as the Blue Check process of legacy Twitter, while having more authenticity than, say, Elon-era Twitter’s blue check, that just goes to anyone with $8 and proves nothing.</p><p>At present there aren’t many production-ready alternatives to accomplish my goal of a federated blog, but that will be changing, and I think fairly soon. The main blogging platforms to do this are currently either <a rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://writefreely.org/" target="_blank">WriteFreely</a> or <a rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/" target="_blank">WordPress + a plugin</a>. Neither is ideal. Both have trade-offs and some hidden costs. In the end, I went with what I know better.</p><p>Posting ease:</p><p>The final hurdle I am trying to get past is being able to publish more easily, quickly and briefly. Crafting markdown pages or using flat site generators can be great, but it’s limiting, and janky, and there’s no real mobile phone publishing options. Most FOSS, self-hosted CMS don’t recognise that people primarily want to do things on the web with their smartphones. WriteFreely seems to have started down this path, but only for iOS, when much of the world is on Android. WordPress is one of the few in this area that makes it possible.</p><p>Treachery:</p><p>The overarching theme of our blog has not changed. Technology keeps its promises and delivers on what it’s asked to do. The problem is that people don’t often realise what they’re really asking for, what’s entailed, and what else it can do to the world. Be careful what you ask for.</p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="u-tag u-category" href="https://treacherous.tech/tag/activitypub/" target="_blank">#activitypub</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="u-tag u-category" href="https://treacherous.tech/tag/fediverse/" target="_blank">#fediverse</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="u-tag u-category" href="https://treacherous.tech/tag/navel-gazing/" target="_blank">#navel-gazing</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="u-tag u-category" href="https://treacherous.tech/tag/wordpress/" target="_blank">#wordpress</a></p><p><a href="https://treacherous.tech/hello-world/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://treacherous.tech/hello-world/</a></p>
Kevin Troy Darling :pen:<p><span class="h-card"><a href="https://writing.exchange/@gnosticdaemon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>gnosticdaemon</span></a></span> Aside, as you say, the people who control media outright by owning it, I've noticed that what drives the media is simply conflict. And anything that is based on ad-driven revenue will eventually sell you story rather than information. And many things like that feel like a conspiracy when they're really just an inevitable consequence. And I guess that is a fundamental indictment of capitalism. <a href="https://writing.exchange/tags/USPOL" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>USPOL</span></a> <a href="https://writing.exchange/tags/NavelGazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NavelGazing</span></a></p>
Bonaventure Software 🇨🇦<p>That thing when you're waiting on a call/email but only get spam is getting on my nerves kinda extra today. <a href="https://mastodon.online/tags/NavelGazing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NavelGazing</span></a></p>