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Karl Marx: A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon - authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8478


James Connolly: Yes, friends, governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8479


Nick Davies: For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it. The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote8480


Just sharing a random bit of AI fun because I was bored and had a thought.

AI can incidentally translate language, but that also extends to things like converting victorian english to modern day english and even updating slang and euphamisms (though when asked for slang it'll lay it on a bit thick... but it's fun about it)

So... here's the opening monologue of Romeo & Juliet (and no, it didn't preserve iambic pentameter):

Yo, listen up, peeps! Two big-shot families, equally high and mighty,
Kicking it in fair Verona, where this drama's gonna go down.
An old beef turns into some fresh drama,
And it's so bad it gets everyone dirty.
From the messed-up love lives of these two rival crews,
A pair of star-crossed lovers are gonna do something crazy,
Their messed-up misadventures bring down a whole lotta pain,
And with their deaths, their parents' drama finally stops.
The crazy rollercoaster of their death-marked love,
And the never-ending feud between their folks,
That only ends with their tragic deaths,
Is gonna be the main event on our stage—
If y'all stick around and listen close,
We'll do our best to keep it real for ya!

#AI #RandomFun #Shakespeare



Server Crash


Regarding the downtime that happened last night (while I was trying to sleep which is why it went on for so long).

The short version is a bunch of stuff clogged up the pipes, hung, and just needed a good ol' fashioned restart to fix. I've made some changes to help reduce the chance of that happening again, as always I'm sorry for the trouble.

The longer version is that the php worker processes hung and bogged down the database which brought the whole thing to a screeching halt.

I've changed the limits on those workers so they should have less impact and hopefully not do that again (the downside is that they'll be a little slower on federating updates, but most of the time that shouldn't be noticeable).

I've also taken advantage of the existing downtime to migrate the database over to a second machine with more memory. I originally intended to upgrade the memory of the machine it was on, but unfortunately made the mistake of buying the wrong chips. That plan is still pending. However by migrating it I was able to expand the memory usage significantly which should help performance, the downside is that it's a busier system so the CPU is occasionally busier and can sometimes have a negative performance impact (it's likely negligible but I'm not super confident of that).

In the next week or two I plan to do further hardware upgrades, but with the database migrated already it should be negligible if any downtime.

Once that's done, I'm hoping to implement some high availability options to further reduce downtimes.

in reply to Server News

If you're experiencing particularly slow load times on the network page (the default homepage with your main feed), one thing on your end you can tune is how many items it tries to load at one time.

Go to Settings -> Display -> Content/Layout and you can change "Number of items displayed per page".

Especially as an item includes a post and all of it's comments as one item, this can make a drastic performance difference (on my personal feed 40 takes >30 seconds to load sometimes, but 20 takes < 3 seconds)


in reply to Shiri Bailem

Well, regarding disablities:

I don't know if I should still write something like this nowadays - but so be it.
2-3 years ago I went by train and there was a person in a wheelchair without legs, who turned on everyone else.
I kept out of it, but when I got off I had to inevitably pass him and he he had also for me me a stupid saying in store.
I was really annoyed by him and asked him where he was going? to a dance contest?
*concerned silence*
He started to laugh and said that I was the only one who would take him seriously.
I see him 1-2 times a year at most, but a friendship has grown out of the situation :)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Raroun

@Raroun I call that a lucky bit of chemistry. Also, just because someone isn't using saying ableist things doesn't mean they're being ableist... walking lightly around disabled people is also it's own form of ableism that gets really tiring.

And I'm not even sure your joke is what I was talking about since it was very direct and more a specific targeted jab that happened to reference their disability, you didn't even mark it as something shameful but rather just spouted an absurdity.

A prime example would be something like mocking the lisp of a Nazi. Sure, that person is a Nazi... but what about all the non-Nazis that you're also mocking at the same time?




Some updates since it's been a messy few days and I really should have said something sooner.

After a post of mine went viral, server encountered some load issues that kinda cascaded.

I've been gradually reducing the impact through tuning, and have ordered more ram sticks to expand the available ram on the server, as well as give me room on another server to provide redundancy (so it can try to spread the load between boxes).

Ram sticks for the second box will arrive tomorrow, I'll review how I want to approach things from there. No planned downtime for tomorrow, but a planned downtime for next Tuesday with the other ram sticks arrive.

Side note: I've made a custom error page to at least make it less painful, no blaring white, automatic attempts to refresh the page, and my email address to reach out about it if needed.



A quick test...


Ok, allegedly I've set up to post to Tumblr from my Friendica account... let's see if it works.
in reply to hadeantaiga

It's working partially.

I can post TO Tumblr, and Tumblr can see my comments, but Friendica isn't can't see the comments made to the post on Tumblr lol.

in reply to hadeantaiga

yeah i don’t see how that could even work, since tumblr comments aren’t happening on the fedi
in reply to skze

@skye 🏳️‍⚧️ he/him Yeah, it's a very weird conversation the two sites are having and I'm not sure how it's working, but the bottom line seems to be that I can post from Friendica to Tumblr, I can view my Tumblr timeline on Firendica, and I can reply to Tumblr posts via Friendica. Friendica just can't see new comments added to the posts *via* Tumblr.
@skze
in reply to skze

@skye 🏳️‍⚧️ he/him @hadeantaiga Friendica connects to Tumblr as a puppet account, so none of it is on the fediverse but just in the same feed.

I suppose they probably didn't connect the comments because that would get weird with a whole lot of comments being only visible to you (a whole of context management to figure out if you're replying via tumblr or AP, and whether or not the person you're talking to can see the relevant tumblr or AP comment)

It does offer a quick button to get to the original post immediately though, which is helpful (for Friendica users, the top right little arrow beside the network icon).

I think the feature mostly works to let you post and not worry about leaving a chunk of your audience out. Though I imagine it could use some work and if you have ideas they're always listening on the github: https://github.com/friendica/friendica/issues



Introduction post!


Hello! My name is Eli, I'm a transmasc butch from Tumblr. I'm slowly poking my way around the Fediverse and I'm looking for an interface that lets me do long-form blogging. Friendica is allegedly good for that, so here I am!

Grad student, certified "Moon Nerd".
Nonbinary butch transmasc. Masculine like a misty mountain forest, queer as in fuck you. Converting to Judaism slowly but surely.

Interests:
Games: #Pathfinder #DnD #DragonAge #DiscoElysium #TheSims #CivilizationIV

TV: #Trigun #StarTrek #OurFlagMeansDeath #YouTubeVideoEssays

Books: #SherlockHolmes #TheExpanse #LordOfTheRings #TheHungerGames #SciFi #Fantasy

in reply to hadeantaiga

@hadeantaiga Welcome to the server/fediverse! And welcome as a fellow trans jewish convert!

I'm more than happy to answer any questions you may have with Friendica and to help you figure out if it's the right place for you... but if you go somewhere else please link because you definitely have me interested in your introduction!

Also what's your Tumblr, Friendica supports following Tumblr feeds, and this spurred me on to finally setting up the Tumblr addon which allows crossposting to Tumblr (it does require access to your Tumblr to do so, but uses Oauth so doesn't have your password or control over your account, just the ability to post).

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@Shiri Bailem Oh my gosh that is PERFECT. I'm HadeanTaiga over on Tumblr too and I've been *searching* for a way to do longer posts like on Tumblr, and the fact that I can integrate Tumblr and the Fediverse here is like??? A dream come true???
in reply to hadeantaiga

@hadeantaiga friendica's upside is connecting to everything that allows it to connect, downside is that it's a little less user friendly.

Followed your tumblr!

in reply to hadeantaiga

Filtered word: nsfw



Planned Outage


Power company is coming to work on the power transformer next Monday (7/17).

I've been notified that the planned outage is for 9am to noon US Central Time.