DarbyDear

It only winds up being suicide by border guard if someone is trying to escape, not so much so if someone is trying to get in. Not too many people want to go to North Korea if they can help it.

I wonder if his angle is to be taken in by North Korea in the hopes of being used as a poster child for North Korean propaganda. Considering he was on his way to getting flown back to the states for further disciplinary action after getting out of a Korean prison, he might assume that’s his best bet for a decent life since he might be assuming North Korea will pamper him so that they can use him to talk about how terrible the U.S. And South Korea are.

Back when I was in Korea, people that wound up in a Korean jail usually didn’t get shipped back to the states; it was more likely they’d be stripped of rank, locked down to the military base, and put on permanent detail for the rest of their time there (think "spending any free time scrubbing toilets and picking up trash around the base).

Things like serious assaults on local nationals could land someone a flight back though, so it’s very possible that whatever he did was bad enough that he thinks his life would be over if he went back to the states, so I guess that might be his play. How it’s going to pan out for him is another matter though - he may be treated well by the North Korean government (from what I’ve heard they tend to pamper their foreign mouthpieces to keep them placated and compliant), or he may wind up a bargaining chip for foreign aid from the U.S. depending on how low their resources are.

Mind you, I’m hardly an expert on the relations and current situation in North Korea, just a guy that was stationed over in South Korea for a few years in a non-intelligence capacity, so take all of this as idle speculation.

Good luck getting the coop finished! I still need to finish the coops and run for our chickens and ducks - they’re currently living in our woodshed at night and free-ranging during the day until those are done. Just a heads up in case you aren’t aware already - if your guinea(s) is/are male, it might start getting aggressive when it hits around a year old, so try to prepare accordingly. Ours got very mean towards any chickens other than the two Brahmas it had bonded with and was actually harming the others. Not a guarantee that it will happen, but it might be good to have a separate space for the sake of your flock if it does. For now though, enjoy the babies; it never gets old having little peepers scrambling around and being chaos!

My week is going well, all things considered. I’m in the New England area and all the surrounding areas are suffering from flooding, but my town is unscathed at the moment. The ducks are pretty happy with all of the rain, the chickens not so much, and I’m annoyed that the shipping container our friends gave us for a duck coop can’t be painted to protect it from the moisture, but I’m overall thankful that the government response has been pretty quick and everyone we know is safe and sound so far.

Congrats on the internet upgrade! I live in a rural area as well, but I (unfortunately) had to cave and get Starlink since the only other option is blazing-fast 5Mbps DSL, which unfortunately won’t cut it for my remote work. There’s a multiple-municipality fiber co-op getting established at the moment though, and I’m hoping that we’ll be connected with them by the end of the year. About the same price, but way faster speeds and way lower latency (and no reliance on Musk), so I’ll be switching as soon as I find out it’s an option!

This picture illustrates the difference between the different dragon and dragon-adjacent creatures! My partner is also pretty adamant about this subject, so I’ve wound up developing the same pedantry.

Completely agree! Beehaw fills the time left open by my dropping Reddit, but it isn’t a replacement for Reddit in my mind. Instead, I see it as it’s own thing, primarily centered around socializing, and that’s reflected in the fact that I’ve already posted here in a couple of weeks than I did in my decade or so of using Reddit. It’s a lot more interaction and active use instead of passive consumption and lurking, and I really like that. Seeing all the people trying to file bug reports for Lemmy/Jerboa and making demands in Beehaw Support bugs me since (as far as I’m concerned) the admins have already gone above and beyond what I think they’re responsible for, and I appreciate every bit of it.

I think you’ve hit on a good point - you want enough users for there to be engagement, but you also don’t want so many users that people feel like they’re a face in a sea of people that gets crowded out. What the appropriate number of people is depends on the culture and aim of the site more than being a static number to reach. Beehaw, for example, is trying to focus on creating a sense of community and connection rather than growth at all costs. That means Beehaw’s “critical mass” is going to be lower than something like Reddit, where it’s more of a free-for-all that seems to be trying to appeal by being a “loud” public square type space. Meanwhile, the tiny forum in the corner of the internet about a niche subject is going to have an even smaller goal because it’s safe for users to assume that there won’t be as many people and, if they’re seeking out a forum for a niche subject, it’s also safe to assume there won’t be as many lurkers.

Yeah, I’ve been there. It’s just so aggravating, but I try to find comfort in knowing that at least I wasted a small bit of their precious bandwidth!

I hadn’t even considered the quantity of ads on those sites… Any time I accidentally find one, it’s a long column of text that starts off with a bunch of filler roughly related to whatever I was searching for, maybe a couple of lines with an answer (right or wrong is a different matter), then breaks down into a bunch of self-contradicting nonsense. I just don’t see the ads because of uBlock Origin, so I never see how bad they are. AI generated sites are completely aggravating.

Just letting you know that, even if you weren’t looking for it, you’re seen and felt. Some of the things you talk about really hit close to home for me - I’m stuck working to support the life I actually want. I bought a house not long ago in the middle of the country, which is exactly what I want now even though I wanted a swanky place in the city when I was younger. No time or energy for the things I love, and not enough money to drop out of my job and just enjoy life with my family and animals. I wish I had a secret to tell, but if I ever figure it out I’ll try to remember to pass it on to you. For now, I’m going to keep grinding.

On a tangentially-related note, do you have any of your music available online that you can link to? I love music, just never kept up with learning to play and create it, so I just try to appreciate it wherever I can find it until things change enough that I can settle a bit and pick up making it.

My understanding is that this is the plan - the only reason for defederation is because that is the only tool available at this time, and the admins for Beehaw find it most important to continue pursuing their goal to form a community rather than replacing Reddit or growing for the sake of growth.

Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but it’s generally not a great idea to give advice on someone’s situation when you haven’t gotten a full grasp on the background and relevant information, especially when it comes to mental/emotional stuff. For example, you’re correct that the general politics in the U.K. is more left-leaning than the U.S. but that’s not necessarily the case for trans rights - it’s picked up the moniker “TERF island” in some places. Elsewhere in this post, OP mentioned that their partner has been assaulted for wearing nail polish. Where they live could very well be the equivalent of the deeply-conservative part of Florida when it comes to feelings towards the trans community specifically.

I’ve mentioned my thoughts on this a few times now, but you’ve summed my opinions up nicely! I tend toward longer, overly-drawn-out comments and replies, so it was kind of pointless for me to comment on stuff on Reddit. It went entirely against what was promoted by the culture on Reddit, which developed as a result of turning comments into a popularity contest. If you didn’t have a gimmick (ShittyMorph, poem_for_your_sprog, shittywatercolor, etc.) then you were basically stuck using jokes, references, and acerbic jabs to try to get attention (as evidenced by karma). Even downvote farmers fell into this pattern, they just did the opposite of what the typical person would do, which resulted in even more toxicity.

Just wanted to chime in at the end here and say thanks for mentioning us. I literally live a 20-minute drive from the nearest grocery store, out in the country, so bikes aren’t exactly practical like they were when I lived in denser areas. What I try to do (to try adding to the conversation) is accommodate where I’m able. I have an electric car (2018 Bolt) that I use as my daily driver (my pickup is strictly for situations that the Bolt can’t handle), I’m setting up a homestead to help eat as locally as I can, and I eventually plan on getting solar and switching off of heating oil. However, even my situation isn’t feasible for everyone - my income is higher than the median in my state and I have the land to accommodate a homestead, so the only thing that can be done from my perspective is try to implement policies and infrastructure where it’ll have the biggest impact to help offset the impact of those that can’t take advantage of it, and see if there are ways to help those who live in rural areas even if they can’t be applied to urban areas.

This exactly - Lemmy is meant to allow community managers to focus on that portion while the developers facilitate their work. Speaking as a developer, there’s a very distinct difference in the skill sets needed for each field, and there should never be an expectation for one side to do work in the other - trust me, some of my past coworkers are last people you would want managing a community in any capacity. Why should it be different going the other direction?

Definitely! The big reason I decided to join Beehaw after taking a look at what instances were available is because the focus here seems to be building that feeling of community more so than just replacing Reddit, and I’ve already been feeling it in the best way. It’s almost like a return to the days of forums where there were actual conversations happening, and I’ve actually slowly started recognizing names and avatars as I poke around in different topics. I’m not sure what things are going to look like further down the line, but hopefully it keeps developing in the way it has been! I do think it will, for what it’s worth, since the admins and mods seem to be on the same page and dedicated to keeping the momentum going in that direction.

Exactly, which is why it’s so funny seeing people rant about their right to freedom of speech being infringed upon by private companies that don’t want advertisers to abandon them because of hate speech on their platform. They assume it’s because of some agenda being pushed, when the only concern they have is the effect on their bottom line.

Yeah, tapping into dopamine bursts to encourage activity is a great short-term solution, but I guess it was also foreshadowing into what Reddit would become. I’ll take what I’ve seen here so far over the quick and easy hits any day; having a constant stream of bite-sized content to consume was wreaking havoc on my attention span and I didn’t even realize it until I found myself having to stay focused on some of the longer conversations I’ve seen around Lemmy.

Yeah, I’ve noticed the same. I also don’t really have the same feeling that replying in a post with a bunch of comments already on it is a waste of time - on Reddit, if a post had 100 comments on it then it was kind of pointless for me to add my voice because nobody would see it anyway. Here, I’ve actually gone through and responded to various comments and posts regardless. I think that’s more of a “social norms/community culture” thing than a technological difference though. I mentioned my thoughts on what went wrong with Reddit elsewhere, but basically the way Reddit set things up led to the encouragement of low-effort popularity contest type replies so people would rush to get the highest-karma responses as quickly and easily as possible. There isn’t an easy way to see someone’s total score here though, so upvotes aren’t really the focus and actual conversation can happen instead.