You don't have to promote yourself or be fake at all. If you reply to people and they like things you say, they or others who read it may follow you. Often if you follow someone they'll follow you back--but that most likely depends on you having put some info about yourself in your profile so they can get an idea of who they would be following, and even more likely if you've interacted with them before.

Since there's no algorithm, hashtags are big on Mastodon. By subscribing to some you'll find people to follow and interact with. Also, a common way for people to find and follow you is to write an introduction post and pin it--include the 'introduction' hashtag plus hashtags of your interests. That way when people search for hashtags they're interested in, they'll find your intro post and may follow you. And whenever you post about something you want to have more reach, put a relevant hashtag or two at the end of it.

As someone who had never used corporate social media like FB and Twitter (for my own reasons), when I found out about Mastodon back in 2017-18, I decided to join it because of its philosophy and it not being a corporate-owned walled garden. It has its flaws of course. But since I didn't have any preconceptions, I mostly liked Mastodon as it was and didn't find it confusing at all. That's probably because I read up on Mastodon first to decide whether I'd want to try it, so I knew what to expect.

So I can understand how people who had been using Twitter and had their expectations shaped by it would assume that Mastodon was just a Twitter clone, not having learned anything about it beforehand. That's why they were confused and disappointed to find that it was its own thing with its own philosophy, and had existing communities aligned with that philosophy.

Some (not all) of those who saw the differences as flaws, complained that Mastodon was crap for not having certain Twitter features, and some (not all) existing communities didn't take kindly to demands that Mastodon abandon its philosophy and transform itself into a Twitter clone, so there were conflicts as well, and those new people didn't stick around.

OTOH, many other new people found that they liked the different philosophy and those people did stick around, so Mastodon has grown. But IMO since most people like the Twitter-style algorithms and "broadcast/consume" culture (as opposed to Mastodon's more personal interaction culture), Mastodon will always be a much smaller thing. But its existence is an important and good thing, like the quiet room away from the riotous street party, where you can hear each other speak.

Well it was obvious from the start that the provision that TikTok either has to sell to a US owner or be banned means that some oligarch would be buying it. I suppose the broligarchs have been competing for who will get it. Sure, maybe some in Congress care about the security aspect, but underneath, that was mostly a pretext to get support for it. Would be nice if Tiktok refuses to sell it.

A three year old would not have the ability to form that concept, let alone verbalize it.

Age two to five years old

Young children are interested in the idea of death, for example in birds, insects and animals. They can begin to use the word 'dead' and develop an awareness that this is different to being alive. However, children of this age do not understand abstract concepts like 'forever' and cannot grasp that death is permanent.

( Source )

A couple tweaks: Include Illinois and the eastern part of Pennsylvania. (edit: I see you did get Chicago, maybe just go a bit further south?).

Wow. I've heard about things like that happening to people from New Mexico, but never WV! Don't kids have to memorize all the state capitals in school any more? I may not remember all the capitals now but at least I remember all the states!

Oh, I feel dumb--I should have thought of West Virginia since I knew Virginia split during the Civil war. But I never knew the details of why so TIL! Thanks for the link!

Are you talking about certain areas/counties in some of the seceding states (e.g AL, MS, TN) where people opposed secession and rebelled or otherwise refused to participate in the Confederacy? I haven't heard of a state seceding from the confederacy.

On people moving: As things are today, it's too expensive for many people to be able to relocate as a practical matter, but if things ever deteriorated to the degree we're talking about, the stakes change drastically. If there's a war, or some people are about to get trapped where they don't want to or are afraid to be, it's no longer "can I find a decent job and place to live there and afford moving expenses?" but becomes "I've got to get out of here any way I can even if I can't take anything with me and don't know how I'll get by once I'm there." Especially people who fear for their lives or safety in a country where they are hated or considered less than human by the majority.

"…there will be no stopping me from punishing your executives by murdering their families for refusing to improve the accuracy of your website search function."

Wut

Of course. I live in a red state myself so I know what you mean about urban vs. rural. But Trump didn't think about that when he withheld federal aid from California for the 2018 wildfires. He had to be told that he had lots of supporters in CA; they even had to show him the voter rolls to prove it to him and only then did he approve the aid. See https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/03/helene-trump-politics-natural-disaster-00182419

“We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” Harvey told Politico.

But like I said, it's just interesting to think about how things could go. There would necessarily be a pretty massive population redistribution both into and out of the seceding states. There would likely be a war or at least many battles over territory so many of the states' boundaries would change as well. Then there's all the military bases, missile silos, and other national-level facilities spread among many states to be dealt with.

Back when they were first able to federate (if you can even call their one-way dissemination of propaganda into the fediverse "federating"), my Mastodon instance didn't block them so I moved to another instance that blocked them from the get-go. I wanted an instance-level block to keep their shit off the server completely, not just an individual-level "block" which is more like ignoring than blocking.

I've been able to reproduce some, like the "how to carry <insert anything here> across a river" one where it always turns it into the fox, goose and grain puzzle.

But generally on anything that's gone viral, by the time you try to reproduce it someone has already gone in and hard-coded a fix to prevent it from giving the same stupid answer going forward.

If there's a dynasty, it'd probably be at MaraLago, but my bet would be on Texas.

It's interesting to think about. If the blue states, which are not contiguous, seceded and joined together as a nation, they'd be scattered groups of states and easily defeated. But if they formed a union with Canada (the NAU?), then at least the territory of the NAU would be contiguous because most of the blue clumps are adjacent to Canada: the NE states, west coast states, Minnesota, probably Michigan, and then Illinois, which might be isolated depending on how Wisconsin would go. Colorado and New Mexico would still be isolated. Maybe they could defeat Arizona and be linked up with the west coast.

Then there'd be the issue of the US capital being D.C which along with its surroundings is overwhelmingly blue, so it would just have to be taken as part of the NE section, and Trumpistan would have to have its capital elsewhere.

Once trump cuts off all government funding from the blue states as he keeps threatening to do, maybe they could join Canada as provinces. It should be win-win considering the blue states contribute more to the federal govt. than they receive from it; while red states receive more than they contribute. So they would make Canada stronger and Trumpistan weaker. Trump wants to expand US lands to impress his idol putin and be like him, but instead he would lose territory.

I had called fake because that account doesn't even exist, but according to that article (thanks for the link), the entire account was deleted as well.

Fake, but funny.

Thank you, kind neighbors!

"But all the other lemmings are there! I can't leave or I'll be left at the top of the cliff by myself!" 🙄 Guess what, there's more of us up here who aren't jumping than you realize.

Sorry to be harsh, but that's how I feel about it when people say they have no choice but to enrich these social media oligarchs by participating in their exploitation machines. By contributing their "content" to be collected, sold, used for training their generative AIs, by viewing their ads, and by making themselves targets to be manipulated by propaganda of all kinds.

They already exploit us enough in ways we can't control, without us willingly participating in their schemes.

That's why I try to be there for my son.

Then why are you sitting in a bar drinking?