I don’t see it as either. I don’t come to social media to engage in political discussions, so for me, the bigger issue is the lack of thriving communities around topics outside of national/world politics and technology. I’d love to see more places like startrek.online.

On art sites - i.e. DeviantArt and the various furry sites that copied it in the 2010s (many of which are still very much active) - every user has a “favorites” page to which they can add anyone else’s posts. This also sends a notification to the artist. When I get a favorite or a comment, I always check that artist’s posts and their favorites page, to see what else they have favorited, and I can reliably find new people and posts that way. I don’t think this is really analogous to a boost, since it doesn’t show up in your feed, but it’s also not quite the same as “likes”, since it’s much more expected that people will go looking through it (people don’t really look at other people’s likes much, even though they are almost always public). Plus it’s almost guaranteed that it’ll be filled with art, as opposed to blog or microblog style text posts, so you’re not as subjected to the hot takes of random people you don’t know.

One (small) issue is that it assumes there *is* a client outside of the server. Most server apps have both a web UI and an API, and it’s even possible to build an ActivityPub server with no client API at all (microblog.pub was like that, IIRC). I think the ActivityPub C2S API was intended for servers that worked just like you’re describing, but IDK if anyone ever really implemented it properly.

I got into Star Trek by watching random Voyager episodes whenever they happened to be on TV. It’s from the same era as SG-1 and is overall pretty close to what an “average” Star Trek show would be IMO. You can give it a try if TNG doesn’t click with you for some reason. Or go with SNW if you want something that’s currently airing with new episodes being made - every other “current” Star Trek show has either finished production or not aired yet.

I feel like there’s still a pretty big gap in the drawing / art space. I want something that works like the furry art sites all work, which means (a) art posts and text posts separated into distinct feeds, and (b) thumbnails in a grid instead of a vertical timeline. I built a web app to do this but unfortunately it’s single-user (and basically locked to the Azure cloud). In the meantime, Pixelfed works pretty well for following Mastodon artists.

I’m curious to see at the end of the regular season whether any conference besides the Big Ten and SEC gets an at-large bid, and whether any of the autobids end up ranked below 12.

A hot dish? Sounds like Minnesota

I used microblog.pub for a good year or so, worked really nicely (although it did slow down once when Lemmy wasn’t honoring my unfollow requests and kept hitting it with Announce activities - ended up just editing the python code to block those domains). I *love* that there’s no infinite scrolling. Only reason I moved off it is because I ended up putting the functionality I needed into my personal art gallery app (which is what I’m posting this from now).

The Androrians had left too, but the Tellarites hadn’t. It’s a fascinating thing for the writers to throw in there, considering that there aren’t any Tellarites involved with the story, and I’m intrigued as to what that says about their society and about the Federation in that time period.

That’s a good point about the Borg not using telepathy, etc. Perhaps the large mass of existing Borg have a bias towards the usefulness of such abilities that the collective, when acting as one mind, is not really able to self-interrogate? If so, that could be considered one of their major weaknesses.

The one Bally Sports used last year was even worse. It was SO LOUD