Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

​ Hey, fediverse friends!

I want to remove the shroud of secrecy from a project I've been hacking on off-and-on for quite a while now.

It's a fediverse app for posting about things - in the first iteration, video games, but eventually lots more stuff.

Obviously you can already post about video games on mastodon or whatever, but the point is that each game can be a first-class object that you can reference and share across the fediverse, like with Bookwyrm or NeoDB.

I also wanted to experiment with different ways of federating posts, managing visibility/privacy, etc.

Current status:
All the big pieces are there and work, but lots of things are rough and/or clunky. It's definitely a 0.0.1 instead of a 1.0, but I set myself a deadline of sharing it this summer, otherwise I'll just trap myself in an endless cycle of quietly tweaking this software that nobody uses but me and never actually sharing it.

I've been using it for gameposting for a while now (almost 2000 posts already!) - it's absolutely not ready for General Consumption, but if you're willing to put up with some code and some jank, it might be worth a look for you.

https://codeberg.org/gush/gush

https://gush.social/

#gush

I love how the national library of medicine went with "do not @ us we are a library" for their default embed preview image for everything on pubmed lmao

I am really pleased with this photo. Straight off the camera and it looks SO WEIRD. So many questions. Why such a HUGE arched bridge over what appears to be such a small distance? Why only one solitary pedestrian using it? Where are they going? Where have they been?

I love it.

#photography #Scotland #bridge

I realized recently that
1. I'm about to install a little library in front of my house, and
2. I have a laser printer, which means my cost to print simple black and white booklets basically rounds down to 0$
So, uh, any interesting free-to-print (ideally black and white) #zines out there that would be interesting to share with the general public? Especially those related to #solarpunk, community, #anarchism, #environmentalism and similar subjects. Bonus points if they're in French

A lot of people are looking for a job right now, and I've seen many of them on fedi taking the automated messages from recruiters at face value and questioning why exactly are they not a good fit for this role. Especially when the role still stays open for a while.

The rejections come in multitude of different wordings.
"You already possess a lot of important skills for this position but unfortunately, we have other candidates who are a closer match overall."
"Although your background is impressive, we regret to inform you that we have decided to pursue other candidates for the position at this time. At this stage, we have decided to move forward with candidates that have more experience as fullstack developers and more experience with our tech stack."
"Even though your profile seems very exciting, we decided to shortlist other candidates who match our qualification profile for the advertised job even better."

This all is bullshit.

All these texts are just a part of a standard template not even for rejection; the messages that you're getting are the messages sent automatically after recruiter clicks on "end the process for this candidate" button.
They're not even sent at that moment; instead, often they're sent by a cron job that fires, say, precisely at 8:00 on every day Mon-Fri (even when that's a public holiday) and send rejection messages to all the candidates who are no longer in hiring process but didn't receive the rejection message yet.

I've had a couple of recruiters later telling me this explicitly (when the rejection with this reason just didn't make any sense not just because of my profile).

And on this screenshot, the most recent case in point.
This company felt that I match their requirements very closely. So closely, that I passed all five interview stages successfully and they made me a job offer.
For reasons outside the scope of this post, the conditions the offer came with really didn't suit me. We discussed this for a few more days, they decided that they won't compromise on these conditions, and gave me time to think if I'm going to accept their offer.
I thought about it for a few days and eventually had to reject the offer. They personally thanked me for the information, wished me good luck... and the next day, exactly at 8:00, I'm getting this automated message. It's beyond ridiculous.

So whenever you get a bullshit message telling you that your profile is very exciting but they decided to move forward with other candidates whose profiles are even more exciting but you should not hesitate and please contact them whenever there is another role... it's just a very elaborate way of saying "your application process for this role is over". It doesn't mean that they found your profile exciting, or that they even looked at your profile. It doesn't mean that profiles of other candidates are now exciting, or that there even are any other candidates. It doesn't mean that they rejected you because you're not a good fit, or that they rejected you at all (as opposed to, say, you rejecting them, or them restructuring the company and cancelling the job opening). It doesn't mean that they want you to apply to them in the future. It only means one thing: that you won't be getting the job you applied to, period. Nothing more.

I just rediscovered something poetic I wrote in a private forum dedicated to nude photography of ordinary people (not models!). I'm reposting it here, because it's worth remembering:

"A normal body is beautiful in its banality. It is the result of genetics and the physical labors and ordeals that this body has endured. The fact that an ordinary person is willing to let the world see their banal or 'imperfect' naked body celebrated in art is a gift to us all."

#bodypositivity #bodypositive

segregation in sports is unjustified by all metrics. it's unjustified by physical parameters — all people have different ones, and there are men, women (both trans and not) and others who can be both strong and heavy or more agile and light. it's unjustified by psychological parameters — there's no gender-specific differences in brain function. the only reason why sports are gender segregated is because men feel humiliated when they see other genders win

Kitsune Tails is OUT NOW!! Run, jump, and dash across a land inspired by Japanese mythology and untangle the love triangle between three young women on a journey of self discovery. Explore the complicated relationships between kitsune and humans through classic platforming action.

get it now on steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/1325260 or itch https://eniko.itch.io/kitsunetails

we're a small underfunded team with a majority queer developers, and while we're punching way above our weight class we need the support of our community if this game is going to be a success. please boost this post, and if you can afford it buy it on steam and leave a positive review on the first day (the text doesn't matter, only the thumbs up, so "i like gay fops" is totally valid as a review)

i also want to prove fedi is powerful enough to make an indie game succeed, so even if you're not personally that into the game, please boost this post? 🙏

#KitsuneTails #QueerGames #GameDev #PixelArt

something that i like about the fediverse culturally is that it's... instances going offline is not something we love but it's something we are used to, it's something that is Known by everyone, and i think that's important.

one of my strongest philosophical stances is that we should look at the ends of things with unafraid eyes

You will never advocate politely enough about social justice to please someone whose lifestyle depends on social injustice.

Wanted to look up where the word "critter" comes from so I just absent-mindedly typed in etymology.com into my address bar and apparently that website is just an emoji of an orange and nothing else.

Two years ago, I experienced Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSNHL), and am now almost completely deaf in one ear. This year, one of my colleagues had the same thing. Now I see there's a study out showing a strong correlation between COVID and SSNHL.
I guess that explains a lot. But, shit.
BTW If you find you suddenly lose hearing in one ear, get yourself to a specialist *immediately*. You have a 24-36 hour window to save your hearing before it becomes permanent.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00338-9/fulltext