DarbyDear

It only winds up being suicide by border guard if someone is trying to escape, not so much so if someone is trying to get in. Not too many people want to go to North Korea if they can help it.

I wonder if his angle is to be taken in by North Korea in the hopes of being used as a poster child for North Korean propaganda. Considering he was on his way to getting flown back to the states for further disciplinary action after getting out of a Korean prison, he might assume that’s his best bet for a decent life since he might be assuming North Korea will pamper him so that they can use him to talk about how terrible the U.S. And South Korea are.

Back when I was in Korea, people that wound up in a Korean jail usually didn’t get shipped back to the states; it was more likely they’d be stripped of rank, locked down to the military base, and put on permanent detail for the rest of their time there (think "spending any free time scrubbing toilets and picking up trash around the base).

Things like serious assaults on local nationals could land someone a flight back though, so it’s very possible that whatever he did was bad enough that he thinks his life would be over if he went back to the states, so I guess that might be his play. How it’s going to pan out for him is another matter though - he may be treated well by the North Korean government (from what I’ve heard they tend to pamper their foreign mouthpieces to keep them placated and compliant), or he may wind up a bargaining chip for foreign aid from the U.S. depending on how low their resources are.

Mind you, I’m hardly an expert on the relations and current situation in North Korea, just a guy that was stationed over in South Korea for a few years in a non-intelligence capacity, so take all of this as idle speculation.

Good luck getting the coop finished! I still need to finish the coops and run for our chickens and ducks - they’re currently living in our woodshed at night and free-ranging during the day until those are done. Just a heads up in case you aren’t aware already - if your guinea(s) is/are male, it might start getting aggressive when it hits around a year old, so try to prepare accordingly. Ours got very mean towards any chickens other than the two Brahmas it had bonded with and was actually harming the others. Not a guarantee that it will happen, but it might be good to have a separate space for the sake of your flock if it does. For now though, enjoy the babies; it never gets old having little peepers scrambling around and being chaos!

My week is going well, all things considered. I’m in the New England area and all the surrounding areas are suffering from flooding, but my town is unscathed at the moment. The ducks are pretty happy with all of the rain, the chickens not so much, and I’m annoyed that the shipping container our friends gave us for a duck coop can’t be painted to protect it from the moisture, but I’m overall thankful that the government response has been pretty quick and everyone we know is safe and sound so far.

Congrats on the internet upgrade! I live in a rural area as well, but I (unfortunately) had to cave and get Starlink since the only other option is blazing-fast 5Mbps DSL, which unfortunately won’t cut it for my remote work. There’s a multiple-municipality fiber co-op getting established at the moment though, and I’m hoping that we’ll be connected with them by the end of the year. About the same price, but way faster speeds and way lower latency (and no reliance on Musk), so I’ll be switching as soon as I find out it’s an option!

There’s also the criticism that I’ve seen multiple times about “having to write an essay to be allowed in” when 1) I wrote maybe 3 sentences total for all of the questions, 2) it’s kind of a bare minimum vibe check to make sure you aren’t going to raise hell, and 3) even setting all that aside, anyone from an instance that is federated with Beehaw can interact with us so it’s not like they’re missing out on anything. It’s literally people being upset at nothing if they really are interested in participating in the community in any way. They just resent the smallest of obstacles (which aren’t even obstacles since, again, you can still interact as a member of another instance). It just reeks of bad faith arguments that can be discarded out of hand.

If you and your partner enjoy RPG’s, I highly recommend Divinity: Original Sin (and Divinity: Original Sin 2, though we haven’t finished that one yet). Very story-driven, the tactical combat is a blast when you get into strategizing and collaborating, and there are all sorts of non-combat shenanigans you can get up to as well (the second even more so than the first).

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s how I would approach the situation if I had more dev resources, but as a (primarily) 2-person outfit, I can see why they took that route. It’s really easy to fall into the trap of “mark it as obsolete and create a tech debt item to remove it completely,” then never have time to go back for it. Next thing you know, you finally address it a year or two later and find out that you broke someone’s workflow

This picture illustrates the difference between the different dragon and dragon-adjacent creatures! My partner is also pretty adamant about this subject, so I’ve wound up developing the same pedantry.

To answer your question about if they removed websocket support (a couple of days late, so you might already have the answer), it looks like that’s exactly what happened.

Completely agree! Beehaw fills the time left open by my dropping Reddit, but it isn’t a replacement for Reddit in my mind. Instead, I see it as it’s own thing, primarily centered around socializing, and that’s reflected in the fact that I’ve already posted here in a couple of weeks than I did in my decade or so of using Reddit. It’s a lot more interaction and active use instead of passive consumption and lurking, and I really like that. Seeing all the people trying to file bug reports for Lemmy/Jerboa and making demands in Beehaw Support bugs me since (as far as I’m concerned) the admins have already gone above and beyond what I think they’re responsible for, and I appreciate every bit of it.

I did a small write-up off my understanding here, but that’s coming from someone that’s only dabbled in both and I may have missed some stuff.

I think you’ve hit on a good point - you want enough users for there to be engagement, but you also don’t want so many users that people feel like they’re a face in a sea of people that gets crowded out. What the appropriate number of people is depends on the culture and aim of the site more than being a static number to reach. Beehaw, for example, is trying to focus on creating a sense of community and connection rather than growth at all costs. That means Beehaw’s “critical mass” is going to be lower than something like Reddit, where it’s more of a free-for-all that seems to be trying to appeal by being a “loud” public square type space. Meanwhile, the tiny forum in the corner of the internet about a niche subject is going to have an even smaller goal because it’s safe for users to assume that there won’t be as many people and, if they’re seeking out a forum for a niche subject, it’s also safe to assume there won’t be as many lurkers.

My understanding is that there’s a single setting for “allow downvotes” and, if that’s set to false, it disallows down voting everywhere for users that are a part of that instance. Incidentally, that also means that users from other instances can down vote stuff on Beehaw, but it has no visible effect for Beehaw members (mentioning this because it was a source of confusion in a separate post where down votes were discussed).

I can’t speak for the admins about if this will change if the option becomes available, but at least for now, there are a lot of things where there just isn’t a way to fine-tune settings at the moment in Lemmy and this is one of them unfortunately.

As an Army vet that read through this series not too long ago, the stuff happening at Elan school was absolutely worse than what happened to us at basic training. That on top of the fact that at least we were all (nominally, at least) adults that chose to go.

I like this one quite a lot more, thank you for sharing it! I think it also helped me realize what it was about version 1 that put me off: It wasn’t what I’m going to call the “ping pong note bending,” because that was still pretty clearly present here, it was the way it was used for what felt like every sustained note instead of as an accent like it is in version 2. Rather than being the majority of the notes, those bends feel more like they’re being used to wrap up musical phrases in version 2, so it flows together more cleanly to my ear.

Massively impressive and talented cover! I’m personally not a fan of the way the bends “bounce” (I don’t know the right term - the way the bends repeatedly go up and down in pitch), but that’s entirely a matter of personal preference since it’s a fundamental technique when playing this instrument. I do think it’s really neat how the bends were kind of used to replace the shredding from the original song though; super creative and not something I would have ever thought of. I may not put this in my personal playlist, but I loved seeing it and respect the concept and execution. Thanks for sharing!

This is my thought as well. I signed up for Beehaw specifically because I loved the idea of a chill place where I don’t have to worry about the typical Internet joys of bots and trolls, and where people can have actual discussions. If I want to see other Reddit-like content like low-effort memes, that’s where federation comes in, because I can go elsewhere to see it. Meanwhile, others are free to hang out in my home instance if they like the vibes (also due to federation) as long as they don’t try making a mess of the place. If they do… Well, they get kicked out the only way available for now.

I don’t know why people can’t be bothered to click the “register” button to see for themselves. I’ve spent more time writing each individual post I’ve made on Beehaw than I did the questions for registration. Granted, I also read all of the literature discussing the philosophy and goals of Beehaw beforehand and had the answers in my mind by the time I saw the questions, but it was really just a line or two per prompt. Basically the bare minimum of user vetting. Imagine my surprise when I see people talk about it like we were asked for an in-depth literary analysis of the themes behind “Great Expectations” and how they can be translated to the modern world.

What’s really funny about this image is that the implication is that Beehaw mods are trying to keep us from seeing content from other instances, when they’ve said in multiple ways that 1) if you don’t agree with the decision, you can go elsewhere, and 2) it’s about keeping trolls from spamming up Beehaw, not preventing Beehaw members from venturing outside of the instance. I don’t even know why people think Beehaw’s admin/mod team cares at all about where it’s users go beyond making sure they’re not trolls trying to infiltrate. They’re providing a free service where they’re trying to build a community, not create an Orwellian dystopia where all thought is policed. If anything, mods here have been way more tolerant of dissenting voices than I’ve seen elsewhere as long as those voices are civil and not actively promoting bigotry/harm.