dpflug

How is Mastodon harder? (Legit question, not snark)

Identity was already solved with Zot aka Nomad, which is part of the Fediverse and easier to implement than ATProto.

It’s mostly been ignored because it’s just not that important to people, apparently.

I think it’s just called “The Fediverse”. :)

But also the cartel thing.

And the gov is apparently “protecting” us from solving this ourselves with black market eggs. Bootleggs?

It’s all good. I just asked about your needs so I could give customised recommendations. :)

A popular option for folks that need exact spellings is Callendar’s Orthographic Shorthand. One of the /r/shorthand regulars digitized the instruction materials. It starts off as a simple alphabet replacement, then layers on more space and time savings. On the Fediverse, @masukomi@connectified.com has been posting her take on it.

An easier and more compact option is Ponish. The manual is… eccentric, but the system is solid. It’s a modernized version of the 17th century Tachygraphy system by Thomas Shelton. Because no characters depend on size to differentiate, you can write as small as your hand will let you. There is a lower speed ceiling than “Orthic” unless you do some system development of your own. I’ve got ideas for improvement, but that gets into the weeds.

Two other options worth mentioning: Sweet’s Current & Schlam’s. They look and feel more like cursive. The former gets complex, but it’s uniquely beautiful. Both are available on /u/Filalethia’s comprehensive shorthand archive.

I’ll try to contain my jealousy over the ReMarkable. ;) I’ve wanted one for ages.

That’s the biggest problem with everyone doing the corporate socials’ enshittification cycles instead of POSSE and/or independent services. Cool communities just fracture and die.

I’ve tried to get people to see this for decades. Maybe it’ll finally enter the zeitgeist this go around.

I think so!

The difficulty depends on several things, but the easiest systems can be picked up enough to use in a few days to weeks.

I’ll try to put together an intro post this weekend. How would you rank these features?

• Speed
• Size on page
• Less study required
• Number of users
• Ability to type it
• Phonetic (texts written phonetically are about 20% shorter, but it is an extra thing to learn)

You know what, why not? I’ll give it a go. Let’s see what happens.

If I recall, the rule of thumb is orders of magnitude. If you have 100 active users, there are probably about 1,000 lurkers, and only 10 substantial users that account for most of your content.

This is the rule from corporate marketing stats, tho, so who knows if the Fedi works the same.

Shorthand is a method of writing faster and/or more compactly. Speeds over 200 words per minute are attested, or fitting an entire printed page on a sticky note.

It’s an extremely niche interest, so the main thing preventing a comparable community here is enough active users who are interested. I’ve wanted to do a series of posts teaching one of the systems, but I’ve not hand the chance.

I’m stuck on there because /r/shorthand is inimitable (for now). !shorthand@lemm.ee, but it’ll have to be bootstrapped.

I’d use something that already exists:

• https://life-notes.fr/
• https://github.com/babybuddy/babybuddy
• https://github.com/BabyTracker/baby-tracker

The focus of the latter two is slightly off, but it would work.

Actually, I’d probably not add a use-specific thing unless I needed something specific it offered. I’d just pop up another page on our shared wiki to track things, or put it in a synced note app.

Syncthing is another nice option for syncing Obsidian notes.

You’ll want to use Syncthing-fork on Android.

If they’re courting buyers, it’s already dead. It’s just not started to stink yet.