I watched the indie comedy film Bear With Us, a low-budget movie. I wasn’t expecting miracles, but it’s here, and at least somebody tried something. Honestly, just being able to complete a film is something I respect.
The choices in this film are interesting. For one, it’s entirely in black and white—no color. I’m not sure why they made that choice. Shooting digitally is cheaper, and everything nowadays has color, right? You can film something on an iPhone, and it’ll be in color. So the black-and-white must’ve been an aesthetic decision. Maybe they were trying to nod to Kevin Smith’s Clerks—his first movie, not the sequels.
The plot follows a group of friends who go on a secluded vacation in the woods. You already know where this is going: they’re threatened by a bear picking them off one by one. But this is a comedy, not a horror, so it’s lampooning that old trope. The characters even reference Cabin in the Woods at the start of the film, joking about the possibility of dying in the woods.
What sets this movie apart is the twist: the bear isn’t real. Our protagonist has a plan to propose to his girlfriend by helping her confront her biggest fear—bears. He gets one of his friends to dress in a bear costume, planning to heroically “kill” the bear and propose. Naturally, everything goes horribly wrong. The movie becomes a comedy of errors from there. That’s as much as I’ll say—no spoilers, in case you want to watch it.
I found the film funny in spots. Not uproariously so, but it made me giggle. A warning: there are drugs in the movie (specifically cocaine, because of course there is), as well as violence. Sometimes it’s grizzly, unintended violence. The ideas in the film were okay, but this isn’t a polished production. Don’t expect Hollywood-level material.
The audio had some issues—not terrible, but noticeable. The acting could be wooden at times. But for an independent film, it was decent. I laughed, and there were some great visual gags and setups. With a bigger budget, this could’ve been much funnier, but I appreciate that this was someone’s dream project.
Making any film at all takes an immense amount of time, effort, and money. My hat’s off to them—it was time well spent. I don’t regret watching it. It’s not for everyone, but it made me laugh, and that’s what counts. 
I’ve created #Surf feeds for every single prominent #Fediverse software distribution. 
#Fediverse music service #Bandwagon, an ActivityPub-enabled alternative to #Bandcamp, is testing out a #music discovery search engine.
I welcome this development, especially early in the development cycle.
One of the key stumbling blocks with the Fediverse is social discovery. So to see this happening is fantastic!
My argument for #ActivityPub over #ATProtocol is simple: if ATProtocol rules supreme, what will compete against #Bluesky’s firehose?
How many nodes are there on AT Protocol?
How many unique services that don’t resemble Twitter run on AT Protocol?
But above all, what happens if Bluesky gets bought by Musk or Zuckerberg?
With the Fediverse, we got established decentralization. Not theoretical—something that exists in the far off future—but decentralization that is here and now.
#LinkedIn has cut off my ability to post there.
Either they’re rate limiting me or they don’t like what I’m posting.
What am I posting there? Pretty much what I’m posting here.
And this is why I run my own Fediverse server: no one can remove my posting access from atomicpoet.org.
Believe it or not, I prefer #Nostr over #ATProto. At least, as the two protocols exist right now.
I don’t trust #Bluesky’s control over the firehose feed. It is expensive to set up a competitor, and even if you do, there’s no guarantee people using ATProto will use it.
Nostr’s relays are much cheaper and affordable. What’s more, a client can use multiple relays at once. If you want, you can even use a private Nostr relay.
Congrats to @dansup@mastodon.social and the entire #Pixelfed and #Loops community! 🎉🥳🎈
In less than a day, the Pixelfed and Loops Kickstarter campaign crushed its funding goals!
And we still have 44 additional days to go! 💪
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixelfed/pixelfed-foundation-2024-real-ethical-social-networks
#Peertube is also growing. It now has 496,997 accounts.
The race is on! Will #Pixelfed or Peertube cross 500K accounts first?
#Pixelfed just overtook #Lemmy as the 4th most used #Fediverse software. Here’s the raw numbers in terms of total users:
* Pixelfed: 474,151
* Lemmy: 470,716
Pixelfed is moving close towards overtaking #Peertube, which is currently the 3rd most popular Fediverse service.
Head’s up! #Pixelfed is highly likely to reach 500,000 accounts this week.
And remember, it just reached 400,000 accounts last week. The service is growing fast and steady!
Some people on Instagram are forced to follow Donald Trump. And they cannot unfollow him.
Meta says this is due to “technical difficulties”.
That said, if you really don’t want to follow him, you can delete your Instagram account.
https://www.the-independent.com/tech/instagram-donald-trump-follow-meta-facebook-b2684253.html
Fantastic! @fed.brid.gy@fed.brid.gy is now a non-profit!
Or to be more precise, a non-profit has been formed to bring together social web development under its aegis, and Bridgy Fed is its first project.
More projects may form under its umbrella.
Today, Pixelfed and Loops launched a Kickstarter campaign.
And it looks well on its way towards smashing its goals!
If you want to contribute, here’s where to find it:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixelfed/pixelfed-foundation-2024-real-ethical-social-networks
It’s inevitable that Lina Khan would resign now that Trump is elected.
But she was the best FTC chair in a generation.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-ftc-chair-khan-resign-commission-coming-weeks-2025-01-20/
CNET just made an excellent tutorial on how to import your Instagram posts to Pixelfed.
They correctly note that you currently can’t do this on pixelfed.social because that feature is disabled due to high traffic volumes. However, you can currently do this on other Pixelfed servers—so this is good motivation to register on them.
But yes, I’ve done this before and it works fantastic.
https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/fed-up-with-instagram-how-to-move-your-photos-to-pixelfed/
I want to go back to the era where it was socially acceptable for dudes with hairy chests to walk around with an unbuttoned shirt wearing a giant gold pendant around their neck.
Because believe me, I would rock that.
I’m somehow watching a British sci-fi TV series that isn’t Doctor Who:
I’ve been involved in software development for awhile but I don’t code. So how am I involved in development? My skillsets:
* QA
* Documentation
* Project management
* UI/UX testing
* Product iteration
But I think my superpower is getting people to give a damn about what coders make. And like it or not, that’s what coders need.
When I first heard of #Solid, I thought is was a pipe dream.
But this looking more and more real as time goes on, and if so, it will solve one of my biggest complaints about the Internet: how to manage digital identity.
I just finished watching The Harvesting, an Amish-themed horror film, and I have no idea what the hell I just watched. Honestly, I don’t even know what happened. I sat through an hour and a half of this thing, and all I can say is, “What?” Like, seriously—what?
Here’s what I do know: there’s a family that decides to go on vacation in a remote area to spend some “bonding time” together. This house they rent is near an Amish community, which happens to live by a forest. And apparently, this forest is evil, which makes the Amish turn into psycho killers. That’s basically the main thrust of the film.
Now, I have a lot of questions. For one, if the forest is so evil, why don’t the Amish just cut it down? Like, chop the damn thing down and salt the earth to make sure nothing grows back. Problem solved—no more evil Amish.
Second, why do families in these movies always choose to vacation in the most remote, desolate places where there’s zero civilization? Why? It’s like they want to be murdered.
And then there’s the ending. I won’t spoil it in case you want to watch this (though honestly, don’t), but the ending completely undermines everything that happened in the movie. Nothing makes sense. Like, what is this malevolent force that’s causing people to go evil? It’s never explained.
Oh, and why are there drugs just lying around in the house? And why are the kids—literal kids—huffing nitrous oxide tanks? That’s right, this random house in the middle of nowhere has a spare nitrous tank just sitting there. How did it get there? Nobody explains it.
There’s also this B-plot involving a boy who spends time in the forest and then does… something. Whatever he does apparently makes him evil, but it’s never clear what he did or why it matters. Eventually, the A and B plots kind of tie together, but by that point, I was just sitting there going, “Huh?”
I think this movie sees itself as some kind of artsy, high-concept film. And look, I’m pretty perceptive when it comes to figuring out a movie’s themes, symbolism, or subtext. There’s a lot of religious imagery in this film, sure, but it doesn’t go anywhere.
Here’s the thing: I’ve spent time around religious folk, including Mennonites (who are kind of like the Amish but with more technology), and this movie doesn’t even seem to understand the Amish. Apart from the fact that they’re portrayed as not using technology (which isn’t entirely accurate), this film has no clue.
I went in knowing this movie had bad ratings, so I was prepared for it to be crappy. But nothing prepared me for just how weird and nonsensical it was. 