• 19 Posts
  • 403 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • My employer has a “buy American” policy that kicks in for purchases over a certain dollar amount. To get an exemption, you need to identify 2 domestic options and state why they aren’t sufficient.

    Recently I needed to replace a module in an existing system that happens to be made by a non-US company. There is literally no valid alternative - only this one company makes the modules that are compatible with each other.

    So I had to identify 2 American made products that were vaguely similar and state why they didn’t meet our specifications. Though “Vaguely similar” is a stretch - it was equivalent to explaining to someone why you can’t buy AA batteries to replace a car battery.








  • I’m gonna echo what others have said here. The mastodon signup process is too complex, and searching for instructions just leads to “what is the fediverse and/or activitypub” explainers.

    I created a mastodon account a few years ago and it was my first introduction to the fediverse. It was frustrating and I only persevered because I REALLY wanted to replace twitter.

    Once I got it set up, I realized that no one who I followed on twitter was there. My feed is currently like 2 people, plus a bunch of dead accounts from people who dipped their toe in but didn’t stay.

    Joining Bluesky was simple, and there were already a bunch of accounts I wanted to follow. The recent influx has increased that, and it feels a lot like old school twitter without the nazis.

    People originally joined twitter (and stuck with it for so long) because that’s where everyone else is. Mastadon is too clunky join and use, so people aren’t.