I have resumed reading Mastodon and posting directly to it.
I experimented for a while with relying on ActivityPub federation from my blog on Micro.blog and reading Mastodon from the Micro.blog timeline.
But Micro.blog doesn’t support boosts, favorites, link previews or display names (it only shows Fediverse addresses). I want to see all those things. So I decided to reactivate my favorite Mastodon account (@mitch@hachyderm.io) and read Mastodon from there.
And then I figured why not reactivate cross-posting from Micro.blog to Mastodon?
Eventually, I suppose I’ll migrate my Micro.blog followers to Mastodon. But I’m in no rush.
I’m still looking for one place to post where everybody who wants to read me can just follow me. In theory, that’s the web, but in reality everybody likes to go off in their own little services — Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, Tumblr, whatever — and not talk to people elsewhere. I have communities on Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, my blog and newsletter and Tumblr, and I don’t want to give them up. I have a few automation tools and other tricks for minimizing manual cross-posting, but it also involves too much cutting and pasting. Frustrating!
I just sent this email to Micro.blog proprietor Manton Reece: You asked for an update on my experiment using Micro.blog as my sole outpost on the fediverse. It didn’t work for me.
I’ve mentioned before that I’d love it if you’d make Micro.blog into a superset of Mastodon. Today, I’d add Bluesky to that wish. Support boosts/reposts, likes/favorites, quote posts, display names, link previews and the rest. I think based on prior discussions that this is downright antithetical to your philosophy of Micro.blog and I respect and appreciate that — but it frustrates me. I think you like the peace and quiet of MIcro.blog, whereas I like the noise. On the other hand, It’s been many years since I’ve been the subject of a social media pile-on.
I want one place to post and have it automatically go everywhere. Micro.blog almost gets me there — but then it stops a few feet short of the destination!
I have been thinking for a long time that Mastodon was dying, that fewer and fewer people were posting less and less and that what they were posting was less interesting.
Then yesterday, I followed @lisamelton@mastodon.social. Boy, was I wrong!
Lisa doesn’t post much, but she is a fiend for boosting other peoples posts.
So many interesting posts! So many interesting people to follow!
Mastodon nowadays has a Tumblr vibe. If you want to build your business or brand or get your political message out to the broadest possible audience, you should use YouTube, Twitter, a newsletter, Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn and maybe TikTok (though I hear TikTok is fading).
Like Tumblr, Mastodon is just a place to hang out and read fun and maybe informative posts. It has no practical value. I like it.
And unlike Tumblr, Mastodon is not perpetually at risk of money people pulling the plug. As long as a few people are interested in keeping it going, it will keep going.
This is the beginning of a thread about the value of low-level people who know how to get work done. It’s worth clicking through and reading. explorerrowan.tumblr.com/post/8130…
Granny was quite well known for her hi protein mixuns.
It took me a while to figure out what’s going on in this sequence of images, and I’m still not 100% sure.
Mood
