Sick man you are helping that new start up newspaper? It looks really cool actually.

It's a Canadian-wide thing, started by others. I've been watching it gain momentum, old-skool-style, on the down-low, unsurveilled.

I now know someone who knows the head guy. I'm guessing there might be at least a few people who can draft up nice articles to submit, assuming they're receptive and the articles are worthy. Since I'm not a researcher/reporter, I doubt I'll ever feel confident enough to write for it, unless they accept creative writing - but I could do a comic strip or few. To start I was thinking of doing a short cartoon series called "Lemmings". I won't say that it has an uplifting ending, but it could be pretty funny.

As mentioned above, I was waiting until I had a dedicated sub for other things too. For example, if folks in other places around the world wanted to throw donations at me I could raise money for 1) postage, 2) postage to mail to other people, whether they expect it or not, 3) Druthers, 4) other projects (ie. decentralized platforms), 5) maybe some left over for my time?

Since each month's paper has many stories, I could post one story a day on SaidIt or whatever.

Obviously a wiki and/or a decentralize forum would be better but that's not happening.

I'll set up your Lemmy for you if you want, but we cannot discuss custom features whatsoever :) I'm just the setup guy then it's hands off for me unless it breaks or something.

That's a huge and VERY welcome turn of events I didn't see coming.

A few hours ago I literally pulled the plug (ethernet cable) on the project. I can copypaste you a PM of the latest Session drama (After nearly 3 months Larry just declared that "Lenny is too ugly for me to deploy.") and the previous developments (or lack of) for you if you want to get up to speed, and/or with /u/Optimus85's permission I can copypasta our latest PM discussion with our unvarnished reflections on things that might summarize it better. And/or you can also GetSession.org and join the group chat to read the tedium it for yourself. (My ID: 05554ed31b43b1bfce4c973298a225091933977220ca8e672b7d23215b1440d666) Also, I tried to temper my comments here: /s/Cassy/comments/7z4i/a_quick_update/ Larry asked for the phpBB to be fully his own project under his moderation, a non-decentralized forum which would be in direct competition with SaidIt, admittedly useful if SaidIt goes down or M7's absence brings other problems. I agreed but with terms, including wanting to know what's going on, where it's going, and how it will be moderated, among other things - and I even stated I think it's just another M7-like ego project. Further, I don't see a reason why it would need to be on my old box when the cloud would be more suitable for a centralized site.

Custom features are nice but definitely not a priority. Despite me being visually driven, I don't even care if Lenny or the wiki look nice, as long as they're a functional work space. I have zero interest in making some grand launch until most of the ducks are in a row with some fundamentals, a grand plan, and a custom makeover with branding, serious PR campaign, and animations. I wouldn't mind if a grand launch were a year or two away.

All I wanted were 4 things plus communication. (1 server up 2 wiki online 3 Lenny online 4 drive space). We got the server up. Larry got the wiki going, it went down, then up, and it's still not online and I've wasted many days trying to troubleshoot it. Zero Lenny. I could finally afford a new hard drive and have yet to finish unpacking my crammed shit around so freeing up the external drive is no longer paramount.

I don't know what counts as features or not, but these are the things I'd like most, without knowing anything about coding or Lenny:

1) To be federation-able.

2) I don't want random-anons. Known-anons are welcome. Request, referenced, or invited only (until user-category filters are developed, if ever).

3) No sub chaos. I want community discussion on orderly sub development by committee consensus. The hierarchical Wikipedia categories are the best I've seen to emulate if possible.

4) A way to backup everything. (Archive, archive management, PeerTube, etc would be nice too, but no rush.)

5) A way to mirror SaidIt content.

6) No rush: A way to have the mirrored SaidIt content, within subs, (as well as other potential forums (ie. Ruqqus, etc) in the future) be tagged/separated/sorted/filtered from the rest of the new Lenny content. Maybe we'd have to see how subs are set up and understand their limitations first. Maybe I'm thinking too far ahead and this is just wishful thinking. Metatags may simply be enough.

7) No rush: Metatags on everything: users, subs, opinions, topics, posts, comments, media, etc. I'd rather have tags than votes. This may be wishful thinking for future developers.

8) No rush: Decent search. Maybe external YaCe (a 3rd platform)?

9) No rush: Some kind of bridging, but since there are only 2 platforms (wiki + forum) and there aren't any others I know of on the Lenny federation. Not sure if we can join a Lenny federation or will need to start a new one.

10) No rush: Whatever else I forgot.

11) This isn't really a feature request, but I think it's important. I want to fill the projects wiki with lots of stuff to help folks DIY, setup, and troubleshoot their decentralization platforms, and of course many kinds of projects - basically anything that isn't an encyclopedia. (I have GiraffeIdeas.wiki, among many other GiraffeIdeas domains, along with MANY branding ideas developed since ~1994.)

I think those are most of my priorities, whether they're features or not. I have no expectations. I listed them so you can pick and chose. You may even feel inspired to work on something later - or not. Simply having something functionally operating is orders of magnitude more than just talk - it's something to point to, to inspire folks, to build upon, and of course to network and federate with. I don't care if it's janky or ugly for a while. Tyranny has made superficiality irrelevant.

Some of my new local friends have a very keen interest in my decentralization ideas and I suspect we may be able to raise funds, find resources, and even get I.T. help, direct, paid, or otherwise. My old "Cassandra" Lubuntu box may be the first but not the last. I didn't have much hope in Windsor until recently. It was a meh blue collar town in the 80s and has gradually grown nicer in a generic vanilla way, but now I see vitality despite the herds of sheeple. It would be really nice if our local group efforts became nationally and globally influential and emulated.

Cool, the progress on the animation front sounds exciting.

Sort of, sort of not really.

I don't know anything about it other than it's a vaccine doc with a trailer coming out this week apparently. When I offered I thought he was almost done and could use last minute flourishes. I didn't say I'd work for free but was thinking it, and obviously money changes much. Turns out he's half way done. I'm not sure I want to take on something that big, especially without seeing the content and quality. He likes Kurzgesagt animations, which are top notch even if limited in a very strong style, but they take a monster load of work. If the content is A+++ I'm in, but otherwise I'm meh. However, it would be good to have something "legitimate" on my resume again after a decade of nothing. At the very least I can still get the old "(I Know Why You're) Semper Fi" video I hacked in Flash (worst animation program ever) for a friend presentable in 1080p. It's a very different also flat style, meant to be VERY compressed for a 2005 Internet.

If I was actually really keen on animating I would have focused and done something on that by now. My passion for the craft has profoundly faded. My passion for truth-seeking knowledge and my learning curve flattened out a while ago. For a year I've been trying to decide how to shift into effective (and possibly moderately lucrative) action mode and only been unfocused and ineffective. So I'll just try, try again.

I remembered the other earworm song stuck in my brain that I think could not only be a good candidate for re-writing the lyrics, but could have crowd-interactive appeal such as clapping, chanting, and the speedup...

The Chaotic Story of Dexys Midnight Runners & "Come On Eileen" | New British Canon (18:59) ~ Trash Theory, Apr 17, 2020

A couple guys in our local group liked the idea and I believe one started on it. I don't know if/when they will do anything, but I suspect there's a good chance these doers will do something with it.