“Over the past six months we’ve watched institution after institution corrupted by the Trump administration. Institutions that might produce inconvenient information, from those tracking climate change to those tracking infectious disease, have been special targets. And now they’ve come for the economic data. … It’s one more step on our rapid descent into banana republic status.” —Paul Krugman https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/caracas-on-the-potomac #trump#usa
The winning choice from the poll is the feathered gown of iridescent plumage - A magnificent choice! You understand that true diplomacy isn't about blending in, but about making a statement so bold it can't be ignored. Your taste is as exquisite as it is daring! I shall ruffle more than a few feathers at the diplomatic ball, both literally and figuratively. #LwaxanaTroi#ThankYouDarlings#AllStarTrek#StarTrek#StarTrekTNG#TNG#StarTrekDS9#DS9#Mastodon@allstartrek
#Plume #Statistics 2025-08-02 05:00 CEST Number of active instances: 34 Number of users: 23 849 Number of posts: 25 265 Number of comments: 116 917 Number of users last 4h: 3 Number of posts last 4h: 1 Number of comments last 4h: 0
#Writefreely #Statistics 2025-08-02 05:00 CEST Number of active instances: 905 Number of users: 364 643 Number of posts: 1 125 414 Number of users last 4h: 77 Number of posts last 4h: 120
Tbh I’m more worried about Trump firing the labour statistic guy then him moving a nuclear submarine for show, just to act like he’s preparing something against his puppeteer master
Thoughts and Prayers for Muerika…we’re praying hard etc
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When you're young, you believe the worst thing that could happen to something you love is death. Then you realize that death is welcomed if the other option is having to witness that thing you loved turn into what #Twitter has become.
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It was good to catch up with a bunch of Melbourne Mastodonians last night in Abbotsford. Loved the Yorkshire Stingo pub too. First time I'd been there, great food and atmosphere.
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After a bit of wind the night before that sent me to bed a little early to escape the cold bite, the next morning at Little Five Lakes in Sequoia National Park's backcountry brought sunshi
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The wait is finally over! We got a beta for an MMO I’ve been waiting a long time for, Drakantos. If this is your first time, Drakantosis a pixel art hero MMO comming to PC and mobile. Players can jump into a fantastical world as one of its 20 unique champions as they explore the fantastical world of Eldras. There is a dark fantasy story for those who want to dive into its deep lore, pvp for those who are feeling a little scrappy, and group content for those who like to raid. I have written about Drakantos for a while now, so make sure you check out my previous posts for more details.
So What Did I think?
Drakantos fairs better than a lot of the other MMO beta’s I have tried, but I am still uncertain about my excitement. While I did enjoy my first few hours of the game, it started to get stale. A lot of the missions began to feel the same and pointless, and it didn’t help that the game was buggy. I know the game isn’t released yet and the bugs should be addressed on release, but it became hard to overlook as I lost interest in the game. A lot of the issues I had with the Beta have been addressed, and I am hopeful they will make those changes. Make sure you join the official Discord to stay up to date on all the news.
I played on the Steam deck and while it was playable, there was a level of jankiness to it that made the game harder. Movement was a little awkward. Sometimes it wouldn’t move when I wanted, the pathing was awkward, or my character would get stuck on random elements on the map. This made getting the mount incredibly annoying, but this struggle seems self inflicted. Combat had similar issues where latency and jank would mean missing skill shots or dying to latency.
The Questing system is fine. I like that there is a story to play through, and the writing seems fine. I like that you can queue up for different quests without having to leave the hub, but I also have the opportunity to explore this huge map and pick up a few crafting and gathering jobs. The problem with the queue system is that you can’t solo quests. Aside from a couple of toxic encounters, the community seems friendly enough where random queues aren’t a reason to not play, but sometimes I wanted to take my time with a quest and practice my rotation. I still want there to be the MMO side because finding a good group made the game more fun, but sometimes I don’t want to be social. It would be cool if they could implement a system where you can get better rewards for playing with others, but you can also join your own private lobbies.
Another issue with the game is that if you choose a character that doesn’t vibe with your play style, you are going to have a rough time. I don’t think the grind for this game is worse than other MMOs. There are definitely worse grinds, but the grind does feel bad when choosing a character you don’t like. Switching to a new character was easy in the Beta, and I hope they keep this system for the full release. Players need to be able to choose from a decent pool of heroes and be able to easily switch between them at launch or people are just going to quit. A lot of people like to create and customize their own characters, and choosing from preset champions is going to be a hard sell. I have no issue and would argue that there is a good amount of customization, but it is going to suck for the new player who loads into the this game who can’t choose their look and gets stuck with a character that doesn’t vibe with them. I did eventually find a character I liked after a bit of trial and error, and that journey was fine.
My main draw to the game is the art. I love the pixel art, and while it does take some inspiration from existing genres, it is able to create its own unique flare. My problem with the art is that the maps feel a little too busy. Some maps feel like they cram as many of the artifacts into a world to build their rail road, and it is a little distracting. It isn’t enough to ruin my experience, but with how buggy movement was, it made things annoying. Other than that, the monsters, champions, and bosses all look cool, and there are some cute mounts and pets you’re going to want to collect.
So how was the experience overall? I enjoyed the first few hours of the game where I was exploring and finding my way. Once the novelty wore off, I started to run out of reasons to stick around. If felt like I ran out of things to do early on. The quests started to feel repetitive, and not everyone was willing to do the side quests. The buggyness made some of the quests harder than it should be, and I wasted too much time trying to unlock the mount. Combat is fine for a mobile game, but I need to see a more polished version before I can rate it properly.
That said, I am still hopeful. This was the first beta, and it is honestly in a better place than some of the other MMOs I’ve tried from bigger developers. Sure the game is still rough, but the devs have already acknowledged a lot of the issues, and I’ve seen enough interviews with devs that I am confident the game can only get better. Until then, I will continue to follow Drakantos closely because I still hold on to the hope that this will be a good game.
Had an interesting little issue happen today. I have a VPS where I host this and several other wordpress instances for friends. All of it runs inside nice orderly docker containers dictated by a compose file. All of them share the same network to talk to the reverse proxy.
The wordpress container talks to the database container through docker’s use of internal DNS referencing the name of the service. Considering I use the same template for each instance there’s now a whole bunch of wpdb containers and no clear way to tell which one is which.
Hey @telegram, you pioneered voice-to-text, but WhatsApp has clearly taken the lead — with better accuracy, live preview, and full support for Cantonese and Mandarin.
Will you improve multilingual transcription for your loyal users?
Stell dir vor: Morgen kein Google/Microsoft mehr. Behörden, Kliniken, Logins – Chaos! Abhängigkeit ist real. Schleswig-Holstein zeigt den Ausweg: LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Nextcloud – bald sogar Linux. Offen, europäisch, günstiger (200 Mio. € MS-Lizenzen 2023!). Zeit für digitale Souveränität. #bigtech#opensource#europa
The group has finally actually entered Bidney Park! They've been enjoying the offerings at the most joyous place on Judex! Streaming Wild Traditions SCAR at https://www.twitch.tv/ra_zim
~~ (I just saw a clip of an interview where #trump says he plans to leave office in 2029, though Trump and “other donors,” yet to be named, are supposedly paying for the ballroom.)