@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

ethanschoonover

@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social

Photo & Design & Tech & RPGs / SeattleACS ham radio volunteer / Cascadia Radio cofounder / RPG XRAY host / TeenHorrorCast intern / "skoon-over" / he

Maybe you use Solarized (colorscheme), maybe you used my Kinkless GTD sytem (which became OmniFocus), or maybe you followed my D&D clubs at a Seattle girls' middle school.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ethanschoonover, to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

This article's premise could apply to either the senseless, destructive war initiated by Russia, or the senseless, destructive stonewalling by republicans regarding the debt ceiling and even two paragraphs in I wasn't sure which irresponsible madness it was referring to. Could have gone either way! Less to do with the article (fun, short, & spoiler: it's about congress) and more to do with the absolute malicious recklessness of today's GOP.

https://wapo.st/3oB58PX

ethanschoonover, (edited ) to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

Ok @ivory users, I'm going to blow your mind:

Yesterday I wished for a yellow-card/penalty-box on Mastodon (a temp mute/block). For those times when someone MIGHT be an asshole but maybe they were just having a bad day? Or because they are posting spoilers for your fav show for the next week?

I know Mastodon has good filters buried in settings but I wanted a one or two click solution.

IVORY HAS IT BUILT IN! On a user profile you just:

  1. Click the profile menu
  2. Click filter & pick timeout!
ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

This is a great example of clients innovating and testing new UI/UX for Mastodon. I'd love to see this kind of experimentation and modeling trickle back into the default Mastodon web/app UI as well.

ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

@mike @ivory I'm looking forward to the mac app from tapbots for this reason.

ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

@JonathanTreffler Oh very cool. I honestly had no idea and just did a test. Sure enough.

Would LOVE for this UI to improve... these are some amazing power tools but they are hamstrung by how hidden they are.

ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

I just learned that MUTES can also have a timeout period. This seems to be out of the box supported on the web UI for Mastodon.

I've been on Mastodon since 2017 and only JUST TODAY learned this. Feel free to blame the user here, but honestly the UI does not surface these options well.

These are empowering, flexible tools and I wish they were better presented.

(the management of blocks/mutes/filters is also scattered around the UI too much...)

(thanks to @JonathanTreffler for this tip!)

ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

@JonathanTreffler I'm not sure how @ivory is doing this filtering... it might be limited to ivory only. I just did a test and that filter from ivory does not show up in my filters, blocks, or mutes in the web ui.

ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

@kevinrj i'm only using it on the iPhone right now. Waiting for their mac app to come out of beta (or open up more slots).

ethanschoonover, to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

You guys are laughing but that rocket carried all the remaining blue checkmarks

ethanschoonover, to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

I want "Social Media Penalty Cards".

I'm pretty fast to block. Time is short and if a user can't be kind I'll just kick them out of my feed.

BUT there are edge cases where I want to just issue a temporary penalty/warning

Imagine a Mastodon Yellow Card: Temp ban or block. Expires after two weeks but stays "on their record" (i.e. my view of them) so if they offend again I'll just block them. They also know they've been carded.

Maybe yellow doesn't block, but a red card does. There are options.

ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

@bedirthan Yeah there are plenty of work arounds for this (i have a manual notes file labeled "is this person an asshole") but I want it automated. I also want the user to know they have been carded.

ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

@JudeNunga @bedirthan seems like you've made some assumptions there but I'll still answer to clarify:

Feedback and communication are good. Knowing that a line has been crossed is communication.

This isn't entirely different than the concept of the x card in TTRPGs.

Try not to leap to "this is a power play" and reframe it as a communications issue.

codinghorror, to random

So there is literally no way to search my own mastodon feed for something I posted previously? Am I missing something here??

ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

@codinghorror It's the worst missing feature. Had to do it again yesterday (manually search through my old posts) and it's ridiculous.

GWillow, to random

Just upgraded to Apple News+ and now I feel like Belle in the bookstore

A gif of the bookstore scene from Disney's animated classic Beauty and the Beast

ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

@GWillow You probably know about this already but I subscribed to Apple News+ for over a year before I figured it out (same trick works on iOS and macOS):

https://mastodon.social/@ethanschoonover/109943779375262150

ethanschoonover,
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

@GWillow 50% of the time for me it's a new yorker article I'm trying to access and the one caveat there is that News+ doesn't have the entire back catalog, just X number of years (3? 5? I haven't figured it out), so sometimes that trick doesn't work, but for current articles it's pretty solid.

ethanschoonover, to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

Other recovery-from-covid-2.0 media consumption:

I read more (series by @marthawells ). Finished "Network Effect." Had several laugh out loud moments, a couple "kind of choked up but not going to admit it" moments, and a few "shocked gasps" during the course of the book.

If "snarky repartee between sentient machines" is your jam, you will definitely enjoy MurderBot.

If you find people confusing and/or hard to relate to sometimes? MURDERBOT.

ethanschoonover, to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

I feel like the obsession over "chronological posts" as better than "algorithms" (n.b. chronological display is actually a basic algorithm) is the same motivation that makes some folks fetishize raw milk or raw water (ew) as better because they are "naturallER".

There's nothing natural about social media. I want to reframe the discussion not as "chronology vs algorithm" but as "forced+hidden algorithm" vs "user selectable and controlled algorithms" (of which chronology is one).

ethanschoonover, to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

The only upside of having covid a second time (I'm 5x vaxxed, still caught it again... 2nd time is also no joke) is that I finished the masterpiece of a game that is

ethanschoonover, to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

Stop thinking of Twitter, TikTok, IG, (et al) as social media sites.

They are Content Refineries.

Like processed food manufacturers they take user content & extract the most addicting/engaging content. Brains eat it up but in an unhealthy “devour the whole bag of chips” way.

They make hyper-processed social media junk food.

Mastodon is more like a potluck. We're all bringing dishes. It's a mess. Kids are running all over. But we are, at least, real people sharing real things.

ethanschoonover, to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

The cat just went over to the HomePod mini on my desk, meowed at it, and Siri said "sure here is some music for you" and the cat perched on the window sill listening to Garbage and Elliott Smith.

I just want to know how long this has been going on.

ethanschoonover, to fujifilm
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

Pre-dawn storm over the Malacca Strait off the coast of (shot from my quarantine room this past summer).

A six second shot caught the electric purple of the lightning while "rosy fingered dawn" was breaking over the horizon.

X-E4 16mm 6.5s exposure

ethanschoonover, to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

Please make use of this Ferris still to encourage your friends on other, less cool social media services to join the resistance.

ethanschoonover, to random
@ethanschoonover@mastodon.social avatar

1980 Computers are for nerds
1990 Computers are for everyone

1995 The internet is for nerds
2005 The internet is for everyone

2005 Smartphones are for nerds
2015 Smartphones are for everyone

2006 Twittr is for nerds
2016 Twitter is for everyone

2022 Mastodon is for nerds

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