Anyone remember the original Farcry?
I recently bought it on GOG.com for C$2.99 (it was on sale), and it still looks incredible.
What a classic! 
Not mere hype—loops.video is the real deal!
Here’s a post I just made there!
Since PixelFed is gaining traction as an Instagram alternative, it’s a good time to highlight that there’s also a federated alternative to Facebook: Friendica.
It features a Facebook-like user interface but is ActivityPub-enabled. This means anyone with a Friendica account can communicate with users on Mastodon, PixelFed, PeerTube, or any other fully ActivityPub-compatible platform.
Friendica offers the familiarity of Facebook with the added benefit of federation. So, if your mom or cousin—who’ve spent the last 20 years on Facebook—are finally ready to leave because they’ve had enough of Mark Zuckerberg, introduce them to Friendica.
Folks, I’m using the loops.video iOS TestFlight app right now!
It’s awesome!
Here’s a screenshot! 
Big news! A loops.video website is launching this week!
It will be needed if Elon Musk buys TikTok—which looks likely!
No! No! No! No! No! 😬
I do not want to see TikTok sold to Elon Musk!
This is not conjecture! It’s likely to happen!
Another Fediverse idea: a 4X empire-building game where each civilization is an ActivityPub-enabled actor (e.g., @rome@nationstate.org or @sparta@gameserver.com).
Each civilization posts their actions (declare war, build structure, form alliance) to the Fediverse timeline.
Play would be turn-based yet asynchronous.
What do you think of an ActivityPub-enabled Craigslist alternative that has the following data structure?
* Listings are Create activities with a custom object type, e.g., Listing.
* Email is stored as a required field in the listing metadata (hidden from ActivityPub federation unless specified).
* Comments and replies can still use ActivityPub for public discussions but not for transactions.
The listing would be public. But communication between buyer and seller would be via email.
Interesting. The problem with Nostr is that the community seems one dimensional. Lots of Bitcoin talk, not much of everything else.
But maybe an Instagram-like app might force a change.
If you haven’t checked out Pixelfed yet, you really should.
It’s everything you loved about Instagram before Meta took it over and ruined everything.
Here, look at pixelfed.social’s local timeline. It’s beautiful.
Sidenote: I used to run a Pixelfed server. It was a great experience – I used it to share a lot of my vinyl music collection.
However, I took that server down because I wanted to consolidate my entire Fediverse presence onto my Akkoma server.
Do I regret shutting it down? Yeah.
This graph of Pixelfed instances is what’s most worrying to Meta.
A measure of a decentralized social network’s sucess isn’t new users, or MAUs, or even engagement. It’s the active amount of servers.
In Pixelfed’s case, servers have more than doubled within a month.
And by the way, this data is accurate because fedidb.org is run by Daniel Supernault – who’s the brains behind Pixelfed.
You might be wondering why tech leaders are trying to save Bluesky, and not Mastodon.
Put simply, unlike Mastodon, Bluesky is not a mature de-centralized service. Almost everyone who uses Bluesky only uses the server run by Bluesky themselves.
https://thelogic.co/news/quebec-ink/bluesky-free-our-feeds-elon-musk-twitter-takeover/
Meta’s adoption of ActivityPub wasn’t about embracing open web standards or ideals. It was purely defensive.
On one hand, they needed to compete with Twitter. To do that, they wanted to leverage Instagram’s existing social graph. But if they had done this in isolation, it could have raised significant red flags with regulators.
There’s another reason behind Meta’s adoption of ActivityPub, and it’s tied to news. In multiple jurisdictions, including Canada, Facebook has refused to share news, as this would make them liable for millions of dollars in payments to journalists and media companies.
ActivityPub provides a convenient loophole. News organizations can broadcast content to Threads without Meta actually hosting it. When governments ask why news is showing up on Threads, Meta can say, “We don’t control that. Media companies are broadcasting it, and users are opting in to receive it.”
A final reason, unsurprising to anyone, is that Meta aimed to stifle Mastodon and other Fediverse services. To some extent, it worked. Once Threads joined the Fediverse—though “joined” is a loose term given Meta’s slow and selective adoption of ActivityPub—many users left Mastodon. These users were never interested in the Mastodon way of doing things. What they wanted was a corporate platform that appeared to play nice with open standards.
But let’s talk about what Meta will likely never implement: account migration. On most Fediverse servers, users can move their accounts to a new server if they’re unhappy with their current one, or even run their own server and migrate their data there. Meta, with its hundreds of millions of Threads accounts, will almost certainly never allow this. Why? Because it would mean risking even a fraction of their user base migrating to Mastodon or other services.
Here’s the catch: Meta can’t kill ActivityPub’s momentum. The protocol’s value extends beyond Meta’s narrow, Twitter-like view of it. Other applications, like PixelFed (an Instagram competitor), are gaining traction. Unlike centralized competitors that die when their funding runs out, decentralized platforms like PixelFed can’t be easily killed. Even if the most popular PixelFed server shuts down, hundreds of others remain.
This is a nightmare for Meta. It’s like the rise of Linux all over again. Microsoft once tried to stifle Linux with underhanded tactics, but now Linux powers almost everything—servers, car dashboards, video game consoles—because it’s decentralized and adaptable. The same applies to ActivityPub. There are tens of thousands of ActivityPub servers online, and anyone with an idea can create a new social network, tapping into the Fediverse’s massive network effect.
When Meta announced its integration with ActivityPub two years ago, I called it a bad idea. Meta likely thought it could co-opt the Fediverse to its advantage. This is a classic “scorpion and the frog” scenario—but with a twist. You’d think Meta is the scorpion in this story, but it’s actually the frog, unaware of its vulnerability. The Fediverse is the scorpion, and it’s in its nature to sting centralized systems.
Meta might think, “If you sting me, we both drown.” But the Fediverse doesn’t care. Its decentralized nature ensures it will thrive, even at the expense of centralized platforms like Threads. The open web is resilient, and Meta’s attempt to dominate it may ultimately backfire.
There’s many Fediverse servers out there—“scorpions,” if you will—and Meta is but one frog.
Meta blocking Pixelfed links is not shocking to me.
They’ve been downright dirty towards Pixelfed for years. So much that @dansup@pixelfed.social has mentioned their shenanigans multiple times. In fact, I remember him talking about similar circumstances all the way back in 2021.
https://www.404media.co/meta-is-blocking-links-to-decentralized-instagram-competitor-pixelfed/
Nvidia really doesn’t like Biden’s approach to AI.
They’re so pissed, they just got downright political in their latest blog post.
On one hand, the S&P is moving towards its 125 day moving average.
On the other hand, there’s lots of demand for junk bonds.
And that tells me a lot about market sentiment. 🤤 
Hallmark. I hate it. God, I hate that store.
Every time there’s a birthday, Christmas, or really any kind of event, my mom insists I go to the local Hallmark and pick up a card. She values those cards so much—more, I think, than actual gifts.
I’ve tried to replace Hallmark cards with my own writing, thinking that something personal would mean more. I mean what I say when I write. But those cards? They’re assembly-line sentiments. They don’t mean anything. I don’t understand why my mom insists on them. Why do these cards matter more than a handwritten note? Why does a note mean less than a card? And why does the card mean more than the gift? I don’t get it.
These things—they’re cursed. They’ve followed me my whole life. And then, when I’m forced to go into these stores… God, what I really hate about Hallmark is that it’s the Thomas Kinkade of literature. Barely literature, but that’s what it is. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if they sold Thomas Kinkade art in those stores: the mugs, the posters, the balloons. It’s all dripping with sentimentality. And sentimentality’s fine, I guess—but could it at least be authentic?
I don’t know how these stores even exist. Well, clearly, somebody loves them enough to keep them afloat—and to create an entire channel. You know the Hallmark Channel, where the movies play? I’d call them rom-coms, but that implies there’s comedy. There’s no comedy in a Hallmark movie. The plots are horrifying when you think about them.
Take the Christmas ones, for example. There’s always a big-shot TV reporter, engaged to some executive. She visits a small town for the weekend, suddenly falls in love with a lumberjack, and dumps her fiancé to marry this guy. And, of course, the executive is presented as a total asshole. But really, what did he even do wrong? All he did was support her dreams—let her go to some random town to chase her career ambitions. That’s it! And for that, he’s punished. “Fuck you, man, for existing.” That’s what these movies scream. “Fuck you, man, for being responsible, getting a degree, and making something of yourself.”
That’s Hallmark: the bane of my existence.
You know, the funny thing is, this Christmas, my wife and I—well, we don’t usually open gifts on Christmas. We celebrate it as a cultural thing; she’s Buddhist, I’m Jewish. But this time, I thought, why not open gifts on Christmas Day? I figured it’d show we care a little more—make it feel meaningful.
And then my wife said to me, “You’re becoming like your mom. You’re turning into a sentimental fool.”
And at that moment, I thought, Goddamn, you’re right. I don’t want that. I don’t want to end up in my own Hallmark movie, doing this willingly.
I hope that’s not me. I hope that’s not me at 70. 
Love this music video.
But it’s hard to watch because as time goes on, I move further and further away from this world.
I wish I could experience this again.