On all microblogging platforms, I just follow people and periodically pare it back to something manageable. The sweet spot for me is following 200 or so people where a handful post all the time (and are fun and smart) but most are just friendly people, experts who don’t have poster’s madness (but add a lot when they do post). And some bots here and there for weather or breaking news but I’m very selective there. (I only want breaking news alerts that are actionable like, “A natural disaster happened.” and not 20 posts a day about political drama.)

That strategy has worked for me since the days of Twitter. It ensures there’s content for me to read when I’m playing with my phone but not so much that I’m unable to keep track of it all.

To me, Russia fell into the “natural resources trap” where a country can sell oil, gold, diamonds, whatever and the citizens are fine with low taxes and jobs but it ultimately can doom you to misrule. A country that doesn’t have oil or whatever has to do things the hard way. Like educate everyone and be a knowledge economy. That’s harder than finding oil.

Sochi seems lovely and I’d like to visit St Petersburg once relations normalize but no one associates Russia with tourism like they do Italy or France or Thailand or Bali or wherever your nearest tourism hotspot is.

So, long term, I’d like to see Russia embrace its strengths outside of energy and arms. We’d all be happier. But I’m not in charge so we’ll see what Trump and Putin do instead.

Natural resources. Oil & LNG (which America exports but much of Europe, China, and India import). They have Uranium fit for nuclear plants (so does Mali, which is why it’s a point of contention between France and Russia). Kind of crappy but still explosive weapons sales. The U.S., France, and China will sell you previous generation weapons that are better than Russia’s best stuff.

I mean, to vastly oversimplify, it’s a gas station with nuclear weapons and rocket scientists from the Soviet era. It’s not a diversified economy for a country so large. They export grain and shit like that but it’s a whole continent wide and they aren’t efficient about it.

It’s not a conventional career path but what is in these times of change?

Thank you. I have a masters in headassery from the Advanced School of Clowning at Bologna. And I interned at the Milan Dick Sucking Factory, which is where I met your parents.

Make one if you want that. I doubt many adults are going to make a 4chan clone and deal with all that comes with it.

No offense. I’m just saying 4chan is toxic and bad and and there’s not a lot of experienced developers hoping to recreate it when we can just take a shit on the sidewalk and accomplish more in less time.

I’m only speaking for myself but I’m not sure I’d want my BlueSky and Mastodon feeds mixing. I tried it with Skybridge and a third party Mastodon app and the vibe shift felt weird. I’m all for people making bridges for those who want it but I don’t mind having two apps that I use to follow two different cultures.

On Mastodon, I followed a lot of developers and activists and it’s usually kind of serious discussions. On BlueSky, I followed shitposters and people who don’t take posting too seriously. Twitter refugees. People like that. And that works great for me. Sometimes, I want one and sometimes I want the other.

Back in the olden days when Twitter wasn’t fash, I made lists and that worked fine. Like, I had a list for activists, a list for weather alerts, local government announcements, etc. My main feed was for people making jokes. So, it can be one app. But I’ll be ok if it’s two apps. (It’d be nice to have a Tweetdeck thing — there’s blue.deck and Mastodon equivalents — that can view it all, especially during major events.)

Hotmail. Been using it since high school and every data breach and fuck up taught me something new.

Sorry, I’ve been in a sour mood of late due to being an American and all my favorite sports teams being in last place. The only thing that can cheer me up is watching college kids do dumb shit on TikTok. Now let me take a big sip of water and open the app.

(I know I can just use a VPN. I’m too crotchety and old to be using TikTok anyway, though.)

It’s not really a fun time to be an American leftist in a very blue city in a very red state. But I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic.

BlueSky being ahead of X is a real testament to how Mastodon users are insufferable and hostile. I love and use Mastodon but Jesus Christ, make some jokes and relax. Al Gore didn’t take the lead in creating the Internet for people to be insufferable. If a game is on, people might talk about it. Don’t chime in about colonialism or whatever during the game. Relax. We’ll talk about that on a weekday.