Ryan always has some interesting thoughts around the ethics of online communities, and this is no exception. There's a lot of great questions and thoughts in here around whether or not we should be striving for interconnectedness – with strong moderation tools – or looking to fundamentally wall off some areas of the web from other parts. I dislike that thought; I want the web to be open, and feel that it should be up to the individual to moderate their explorations, just like it works offline. But (arguably just like offline) that is easier for me to say from a position of privilege, so it's always good to read through some more nuanced takes. It helps that I also agree with Ryan's central call to "moderate people, not code" and agree that bridging services is a net positive, though 😅

On one of the core questions being discussed, but phrased in a way that I feel is accurate and also often overlooked:

Should there be one internet? Or multiple, sometimes separate internets?

On the core argument, e.g. "moderate people, not code":

Here’s one possible conclusion: Moderate people, not code. When you choose who to federate with or block or mute, don’t look at protocols, or networks, or software. Look at users, and communities, and their behavior. At the end of the day, those are probably what you really care about anyway.

On whether the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress causes context collapse:

Is [seeing a Mastodon comment appear on a WordPress blog] surprising? Is it a problematic instance of context collapse? Maybe! But why? The exact same thing happens between true, “native” fediverse servers. In both cases, the post and reply are public, and can be seen by anyone on the internet.

On protocols versus people:

Whether ActivityPub or ATProto or webmention, the underlying technical protocol a community uses to interact online is a poor way to judge who they are and whether you might like them.

Make those judgments for your communities, instance by instance, not by network or software. Those sledgehammers are too big and unweildy.

Just mention @birb in a post to Mastodon with a link, and RSS Parrot will search the site for any kind of feed, convert that feed to an RSS output, and then launch a Mastodon account that automatically posts everything in that feed to the platform.

I'll admit, I didn't really see the value at first – wouldn't I prefer to get feeds sent to my feed reader? But then I found a "good news" site (Reasons to be Cheerful) and realised that I didn't want this stuff cluttering up my daily reading, but I wouldn't mind keeping an eye on what they produced. Enter RSS Parrot, and now I follow them on Mastodon. If I miss a post: oh well 🤷‍♀️

I can see myself doing this with plenty of other news sources, and sticking them into a list somewhere, to be honest. And maybe some YouTubers. I wonder if this could pull stuff directly out of Twitter and Threads... 🤔

If you ever wanted to make a cool, animated flag from scratch on the web, Josh has you covered. But the article is also full of clever tricks for animation in general.

On using CSS variables to stagger the amount of movement across otherwise identical elements, to create momentum and physics:

What if we wanted this number to be dynamic? For example, wouldn't it be cool if each column had a slightly different billow amount? Like a real flag attached to a flagpole?

It turns out, we can do this with CSS Variables!

@keyframes oscillate {
  from {
    transform: translateY(var(--billow));
  }
  to {
    transform: translateY(calc(var(--billow) * -1));
  }
}

On setting up animations to start midway through their run cycle by using negative delays:

It turns out, we can use a negative value for animation-delay!

For example, if we set animation-delay: -200ms, the animation will run immediately, but it will act as though it has already been running for 200ms.

I'm a fan of TomSka. Have been for a long time. I did not expect to be pulling a quote from one of his 2023 "Last Month" vlogs on the nature of personal goals and relationships, but here we are. (I've tidied this up a little, as video narration does not immediately translate to written text.)

You need to be the main character in your own story. You need to advocate for yourself. You need to push yourself forward, towards your goals. Just keep your story moving, and keep it entertaining. Approach life like you are a protagonist; conduct yourself in a manner befitting a main character.

However, you also need to do this with the humility and understanding that you are still a side character in everyone else's story.

You need to figure out when this is a "you" episode. When it's a "you" episode – a key moment in your story, your plot – you need to be the main character. But when you're in someone else's episode, you're just a side character. You need to play a support role; maybe comic relief, maybe a love interest (if you're lucky).

Because if you try to bring too much main character energy into someone else's life, you become the antagonist, you become the bad guy. You're stealing the spotlight. You're making things all about you. And you're making their life harder.

Main character in your own life; support role in other people's.

Prose is a service that connects with any GitHub repo you want, and then lets you edit Markdown and plain text files directly from a dedicated text editor. Particularly useful for people using GitHub as a static site host, as Prose can be used as a sort of CMS back-end for editing and creating new content.

A clever service that takes any input URL and attempts to identify lists of links (i.e. a feed) and then convert this into an RSS feed that anyone can subscribe to. Great for pulling content out of newsletter archives, news websites, and even personal sites that don't have dedicated feeds (for whatever reason).

A Netflix-inspired UI for public domain films, animations, shorts, and similar media that the Wikimedia project has archived and catalogued in some way. Contains some real classics, including much of Buster Keaton's and Charlie Chaplin's films, one-offs like Nosferatu and Metropolis, and many of the first animations ever made for film. Also contains more modern shorts, mainly from YouTube.

A semi-official reporting tool to interrogate trends in web technologies versus Core Web Vitals (including the upcoming INP metric). Things look particularly bad for React-based frameworks, but there's a lot more that can be dug into beyond those headlines.

An alternative, open-source analytics package which should be lighter weight than Google and claims to be more privacy conscious than even Matomo.

A simple mapping project that overlays light pollution data with available accommodation pulled from AirBnB and Booking.com, allowing you to find places to stay that will also be great for star gazing.

Henrique has added a "shoebox" section to their site; a kind of miscellaneous category to shove all of the articles, side projects, archives, and other assorted "extras" that you might want to use online. What a neat idea, and a nice real-world comparison.

It fills that niche space of things I have on this website, but don’t really fit any other category.

I feel particularly seen by this comment 😅:

I too keep around (shoe)boxes with the most random things.