Ashelyn
Awesome! Hopefully more people come leave Reddit for alternatives now that a lot of subs are going dark. This instance could not have a better name for all the little gay people in your phone to migrate to.
Given that I typically used GIMP for pixel art when I got started, that was never really a problem for my use case. These days I try to use Aseprite for that purpose but GIMP was able to do what I needed it to easily enough while being free and easy to download. It’s got its limits but it’s what I know. These days I mostly use it for its relatively unique (and charmingly janky) filters as well as regular contrast/hue/etc adjustments
GIMP has an odd workflow. I couldn’t tell you the amount of times I have done the specific sequence of Select -> Select.Grow -> Select.Border -> (optional)Select.Feather -> manually fill in selection with active brush. If you ran an ellipse select while holding shift for step 1, that would be one of the better ways to draw a circular outline in GIMP lmao
Plus the number of times I’ve run a 0.5 size Gaussian Blur to soften the noise after running another filter
I like the minimal UI of Tildes much like I heavily preferred the old reddit page design. It’s not fancy but it’s very functional, and Tildes is deliberately designed the way it is to discourage low effort content (e.g. no image/video embedding). I go to Tildes for the discussions and I come to Lemmy for the more “fast and loose” atmosphere
On scripts/css, there actually are several discussions about solutions that some site users have developed! I don’t have any of them bookmarked but I’d imagine they’re findable through tags or via the search function, plus they tend to resurface every few days.
On that note, one interesting thing about Tildes is that threads tend to bump to the top forum style instead of being algorithm-controlled (with a few nuances/caveats). It’s just part of the site loop. Additionally, it’s run entirely as a non profit, private entity funded by donations. I’d highly recommend reading through the philosophy section in the docs to get a better idea of why the site is the way it is.
It is invite-only though. If you don’t have an account already, feel free to DM me for one if you’re interested, I’ve got a few left.
Limitations inspire creative solutions
I agree with the sentiment on your breakdown, but it’s important to recognize the distinction between the technical definition of politics, and the colloquial one: most people mean partisan, mainstream, and/or heated discussion of government policy that’s highly controversial. If you stretch that colloquial definition just a tiny bit, once any discussion gets contentious, groups start to form, and they start adopting talking points that fall on deaf ears to the other side, that’s when you could get the average person to consider it a “political” subject.
The person you responded to pretty clearly was operating under the popular meaning of the term. I’ve given people similar spiels to your own, but there’s a thing people mean when they refer to something as political or apolitical, and while there’s theory and textbook definitions to draw upon, there’s also value in getting to the crux what they’re trying to say even if they don’t use important words in the same you do. There should probably be a succinct disambiguation, is it lowercase p politics as in the workplace latter of office politics, or is it the uppercase P Politics where the discussion is over society-level legislation and policies? Ubiquitous politics vs niche politics? Perhaps there’s a book someone wrote on the subject 50 years ago that we can use as gospel on the correct way to refer to these different concepts.
There’s a certain level of (near) unanimous group cohesion that doesn’t feel political to participate in because everyone present seems to be in agreement to keep the peace. Without a political “other” being formed for each side to mock and deride, disagreements are relegated to personal taste matters that people can just agree to disagree and still allow each other in the same space. I think the key is when people start strategizing how to get more people “on their side”, because one of the goals of political action is to rally other people onto a cause. The dynamic is markedly different, with a shared group purpose with the future at stake.
There are times when a subject is worth bringing issues to light to spark politics within a “non political” group. To give an example, I’m really glad that the ethics of designer dog breeding has been called into question and heavily criticized, because some really fucked up things have been done to the genomes and resulting quality of life of countless dogs. I’m sure there were plenty of people who bemoaned the Animal Rights Activists coming in and “bringing politics” into the prestigious activity of seeing whose dog with a genetically squashed-in nose could run the farthest despite its impaired respiratory system. In situations of that vein, where harm is being actively done and bringing attention inspires positive change, the naysayers can cry harder and deal with it. I’m not a vegan but I can get behind the cause especially on a policy level to end meat subsidies and even outright ban factory farms.
But there are plenty of situations where a big-P Political topic doesn’t need to be brought up, especially if it’s almost entirely tangential (and especially if it goes beyond one or two relevant threads under an innocuous post). If there’s an ethical problem, a bad actor, or some other injustice, by all means: speak up. Otherwise, it’s best to respect people just having a chat over a hobby or admiring art; not every comment section needs to be railroaded into the same tired talking points about how everything is degraded under capitalism and the climate is being destroyed (points I’d almost certainly agree with you on, by the way). They have their place and they shouldn’t be pushed aside entirely, but that place isn’t anywhere and everywhere.
There is value in having spaces where people do not have to be reminded of stressful things; we have enough of those already. The mental health benefits alone to not having 24/7 doom spiral content can’t be overstated.
At the same time I do think people need to just be okay with ignoring, hiding, or manually filtering out content they don’t want to see, because at the end of the day it will pop up in unexpected places from time to time. There are plenty of ways to do that on Lemmy, I know Sync has some pretty good filtering features for those who want them. I would encourage people to make use of said filters as needed, even if just to improve the overall experience and reduce spam that would show up in their feed.
Just because the US has more space, that doesn’t mean it has to be filled with unsustainably sparse development.
And you’re correct—you’re not biking across your state, but the average resident of Amsterdam isn’t bicycling across the entire Netherlands, just to all of the amenities which are in reasonable walking/biking distance with the infrastructure to safely facilitate it.
