July of 2020, in what seeked then like the middle of the pandemic (though now it seems like early days) we traded in our old Grand Am for a minivan, a GMC Acadia (which model name I include here in the hopes that I will remember it--I keep getting it wrong). Still used, and we got it at one of those dealerships that gets a lot of used car trade-ins, not a GM dealer.
This may have been the first time in a while that we were trading in a still-drivable vehicle; more often it would have broken down or gotten written off after an accident or something. With two fully-grown children (and one still growing) the back of the sedan had been getting way too cramped on the still-periodic long highway trips.
At the time I'd been working from home for months, and wasn't anticipating going back to work anytime soon. It got a weekly drive to the grocery store, and my wife would drive to look after/visit her dad during his decline from Parkinson's. (He passed away a few months ago.)
Not too long after we got it, it started giving us a message indicating the ABS system (and "Stabilitrak", whatever that was) wasn't working. It didn't seem like a big deal; although we do live in a place that gets periodic Real Winter, we'd never had ABS before and made up for it by just driving more cautiously. (I also don't switch to winter tires, which makes me some kind of a kook in these parts. Yeah, well, I don't drive over the speed limit either.)
I got lured back into the office a month or so ago, and so of course I've been driving a lot more (it's still only a 15-20 minute commute, at least). When it got cold a few weeks ago, our tire pressure sensors started going off, and so I took it in to the dealership where we bought it to have them checked. They seemed to think that the pressure had just gotten a bit low and the temperature drop had exacerbated it. They topped up the pressure, no problem. But while I was in there, I decided to make an appointment to get them to look at the ABS thing. That was today.
After all that...no, their technician can't actually diagnose it because this is a Chrysler dealership and apparently the system on this GM vehicle is not cooperating with their sensors. Sigh. Oh, well. Maybe sometime in the next few years we'll see about taking it to a GM place. (There aren't any on the way to work, of course.)
At least I got the oil changed. Normally I'd go to one of those drive-through places, but the nearest one has leaned into the "putting on winter tires" service, and when the "Change Oil" light came on was just after the first snow so the lineups were ridiculous. I grumbled that what I really wanted was somebody to come pick up the car while I was at work, do the oil change, and bring it back before the end of my day. It wasn't quite that convenient (I got home an hour later than usual and still have some time to work off) but I guess it wasn't too bad.
Car ownership can be kinda stupid, but it's part of the culture up here. Which of course means our bus system is pretty crappy. And I feel like Alberta will be the last place in the world to abandon gasoline-powered vehicles. So I'll cope with what we've got. Maybe one day we'll go to EV or hybrid or whatever. But this is not that day.
Fediverse Too Difficult?
11/26 '22
First you choose an instance on which to make your account. Some say it doesn’t matter. Others say you should choose one that represents your interests, because of the local timeline. Someone points out the federated timeline includes content from many instances. But oh, the first friend says, only content that someone on your instance is following, so you’ll never get everything. A third friend says “this is all beside the point if you use the official iOS app, it doesn’t even support the local and federated timelines, because they are ridiculous firehoses of information.”
You’re nervous now. This isn’t as simple as signing up for twitter.
Then friend one says, “oh of course you shouldn’t pick an instance with bad moderation policies.” You nod. That sounds bad for sure. “Or an instance where people don’t use content warnings for everything. Or an instance that allows cops to join.” Wait. What? You know why people have issues with the police and you share those concerns, but your cousin is a cop and you can’t quite picture banning her from the local Twitter-equivalent outright. Maybe they don’t mean banning private accounts for cops? How would they even know? This sounds complicated and you need to examine your feelings.
“The guy who made the official app is a jerk for taking away those timelines.” “Nah, they were impractical.” “The local timeline is great on a small instance about your interests.” “Just search for hashtags. That always works.” “Yes, but (vague gesture) it only knows about stuff other instance users are following, because something something something federation.”
Finally friend four says “geez guys, you’re scaring friend zero.” He turns to you and says, “Go to joinmastodon.org and there’s a little quiz to help you pick an instance. Them just use it like it’s twitter. You’ll have a pretty good time.” You nod and swallow and give it a go. A month later you’re contributing to a Patreon for the upkeep of your chosen instance, and you’re vaguely aware you should consider volunteering as a moderator. A friend asks about Mastodon. You try to be friend four, but you have thoughts you’re bursting to share.
Finally you say: “look, I know it sounds like a lot, but Twitter has all these problems too. They just hid them under a pile of money until the money ran out and a crazy billionaire took over and made it a hellscape. Mastodon is run by the people for the people. That’s good, right? Just give it a go. You can change instances later if you want to.”
Your friend takes the plunge, or doesn’t. You go back to looking at cat pictures. Mastodon has an excellent Caturday participation rate.
Sounds like you and I are thinking the same way about it.
I think I have a kind of flexibility that most folks don't. A decade of bouncing from 'home' to 'home' in anywhere from a single day to a month at a shot has left me with a "nothing is permanent, so stay agile" mindset.
That's just not reasonable for most everyone, and I think it's skewing my view of this.
I also think it (Mastodon / Fediverse) requires continued effort from people in a way that any service with an algorithm feeding you content doesn't. You have to find all of your people. They won't be presented to you.
That might sound condescending, but I sincerely don't mean it that way. Social media already asks a lot of us. Working to find out tribe is a not insubstantial addition to that.
Still, I kinda want to do a stripped down slide deck / video explainer with Friend Four's perspective. Something simple to help folks who are struggling, but curious.
I just saw enough chatter about Mastodon that I thought it warranted a look, and I'm really glad I did.
As to the beastie: it's just my version of a 'hollyphant' ( https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Hollyphant ). That entry actually mentions one based on a Mastodon, but I hadn't seen that before. So when I saw 'winged elephant', I thought "I can do better!"
This was long before I knew that Mastodon existed. 😅
Mastodon looks like it would not measure up to my Twitter experience (in particular, the multiple server concept doesn't sound like the one-stop shopping experience I had with Twitter), while at the same time it would also be hitting me up for money and even more time, whether going to different servers to find content/people, or as a volunteer to improve the experience. Not for me, I'm afraid.
Me too. I've encountered a LOT of venom from folks when I mentioned that Twitter was my social media of choice. "Isn't that just a cess pool of crappy politics and bullying?!"
But I wasn't seeing that. Like yourself, I just spent some time and effort being careful with what and how often I interacted, and I was finding it quite fruitful. Still am, if I'm honest.
As I see it, Twitter has one thing that is both better and worse than Mastodon: the algorithm fountain of content.
It's better because once we've done the work of cultivating the who and what of our interactions to a point where it 'understands' us, we don't have to keep working at finding new and interesting stuff. The algorithm takes over and we can (for the most part) kick our feet up and just enjoy.
The down side is that doing so hands over control of what we see. It's always frustrated me that even after I say "I want to see posts that opadit makes." I might very well NOT see a certain post.
I know some sites are better about this than others. I can do notifications. (I loathe notifications.) And it might be no better on Mastodon once I have a large enough collection of folks I'm following. But for now, I kinda love that everything friends post, I will see.
It's also possible that the rough edges on the Fediverse are actually a big part of why I like it this far. There's something Web 1.0 - feeling about it. I get that sense of stumbling on something cool that I found by looking.
Arguably, that's a rabbit hole that I shouldn't go down if I want to stay productive, but I can't deny that it's pleasurable.
*shrug*
I'm sincerely not trying to sway people into something that they don't want to do, and I REALLY appreciate that you gave me specific elements that aren't for you. It helps me understand what (at least some) folks are not loving about it.
I kinda like the exploring. Finding cool new stuff is what the net is all about to me. Guess I'm showing my age there.