As long as people know how to and are willing to socialize outside of the internet, and as long as they realize most knowledge is available outside of the Web (and away from those trying to take hold of it), they should not be that much different.
BTW, that 'outside of the Web' place filled with knowledge are libraries ;)
Have you an idea on what instance you want to migrate already?
I have had a real fine experience with sh.itjust.works (and with the French Jlai.lu, but this one is focusing on French language ;)
You got a point :)
d’ailleurs bonne idée, je vais vérifier.
C'est ce que je ferais, juste au cas où ;)
So, Ive recently gotten back into writing and been thinking about how much more fun it would be to write Outside.
I know it's not what you're looking for but since it's the tools I'm using for the exact same purpose you're mentioning, maybe they're worth suggesting?
There is no copy paste, no edit, no syncing either but depending what you wish to write, you may not need that—I certainly don't, and I even prefer this to more high-tech solutions for my purpose.
I know it’s low-tech and not trendy at all, but it works great and have been doing so for... centuries (for the notebooks in its current form) if not for millennia (handwriting) and has been used by many authors whose work we're still enjoying/admiring to this day.
I recognize that doesn’t really mean anything, but the way it’s gamified, whenever I’d make a controversial post or say something stupid or wrong and get even -1 karma, it’d ruin my day in a serious way.
Seems like you made the right decision by leaving it behind. Welcome :)
he is indeed :)
J'y connais rien en trotinettes (la dernière que j'ai utilisée c'était dans les années 70 et je portais des culottes courtes... et j'avais encore des cheveux) mais la garantie du fabricant dit quoi à propos des crevaisons d'un pneu increvable?
The long agony cry of democracy dying under the relentless assaults of cupidity and egoism with the enthusiastic support of a quickly rising stupidity and illiteracy.
Sorry, that may not have been the kind of answer I was supposed to share. So, to keep myself asomewhat on tracks I may add that this WE I listened to some Beethoven and also some Jacques Brel.
As long as enough people are willing to use and to rely on those apps/services, no matter how good the reason(s), those companies win and they (will) screw all of us.
I told those companies they should go fuck themselves the day I quit using them
Not 100% sure it's the right place to post this but it also feels a lot like it 100% belongs here. So, let me know what you think ;)
I don’t know about you but when I decided I've had enough of the big bloated web, it was not just to get back to a Web that was not rotten to its core by marketing-money—and the annihilation of any notion of privacy marketing requires in order to better track everything we do so they can sell more ads. This mattered a lot to me, obviously. But it was not my sole motivation to be looking for a smaller and a more humane Web.
My other reason was to reduce my digital-waste.
Be it storage space used on the server for all the large pictures, or the energy used to make scripts run and to transmit always more volume of data between the server and the computers of any visitor.
So, without being a developer myself, I searched for ways to create a website as small and as light as possible; I searched for ways to reduce the size of the images too so they would waste less space and load faster.
It goes without saying, but to reduce waste the first thing was to refuse tracking, scripts and ads. In summary, I don't have ads at all and I don’t know who is visiting my website or what they do when they're visiting... unless that person decides to tell me by contacting me... through email, or here on Lemmy, as there is no way to publish a comment (but that's not directly related to e-waste, it's me not wanting to deal with spam ;)
Here is what I managed to get, I thought it might interest others and could be an interesting discussion:
To give you an idea, here is the picture I used in my last post (posted this morning). It’s a 1000x710px PNG screenshot of my desktop (879,5kB), next to it is a 700px JPEG (118,1kB) and next to it is a 700px AVIF at... 22,6 Kb. If you want ot check the actual image quality (not this poor compressed version) of the AVIF file go check the actual post.
Since AVIF can be tricky to get right, I wrote a small script that does the conversion for me using the imagemagick and the ffmepg command lines (they will need to be installed on your computer). I could only use a recent version of imagemagick (and that’s what I did when I was still using a Mac computer) but I’ve gotten better results using ffmpeg for the AVIF conversion.
#Excerpt of the full script
# resize 700 px if is larger than 700
# add an unsharp mask (sharper image)
# Save temp file in /temp
convert "$1" -resize 700x700\> -unsharp 0x1 "/tmp/$NOW.jpg"
# convert temp file to avif using ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i "/tmp/$NOW.jpg" -c:v libaom-av1 -crf 30 -pix_fmt yuv420p "$DIR/optimized.avif"
Since I’m also lazy as fuck and don’t fancy myself typing complex command lines when I can avoid it, I transformed those little scripts into Nemo 'Actions' (Nemo is the file explorer that comes with my Linux Mint system, Actions are one of its nifty feature that lets it execute scripts through the contextual menu). So, now all I need to do is to right-click on whatever picture to have it converted as a jpeg, AVIF (and also a B&W version if I ever need it).
Which makes it almost immediate to get the image I need. If you have never written one, an Action looks something like that:
[Nemo Action]
Active=true
Name=Optimize AVIF
Comment=Convert to a 700px AVIF file
Icon-Name=image
Exec=<action_scripts/makeAvif.sh %F>
Selection=any
Extensions=png;PNG;jpg;jpeg;JPG;JPEG;webp;WEBP;AVIF;avif
Quote=double
If you want to reuse those scripts/Action, they’re on my codeberg Git repo.
Dislaimer: I’m not a dev and I’m not even much of a geek. So, there is no warranty it will work. All I can say is that this works well enough for me and I'm ok with the result. There is no doubt this could be improved upon a lot. If you ever feel like doing it, you’re more than welcome to but please do let me know, so I can also use your improvements.
Also, if you have suggestions, tips, ideas to optimize further my website and images, do not hesitate to share them.
Since you managed to read everything to that point, and in case you want to have a look at my website ;)
The topic everyone was impatiently waiting for, we can all agree.
If you did not knew it already the Cristal Bic, the world most used ballpoint pen, is French and even though the brand is now global and have factories in many countries (including the US, among other brands they own the US Waterman), they still made part of their production in the EU, in France and Spain.
(For those like me who worries about plastic/throw away pens, you may not know that Bic has recently started selling an aluminum body that's shaped like the cristal Bic that you can insert a refill in. Also, and for much longer, they make it possible to buy refills for the cheap plastic cristal Bic by packs of 50—so, you can keep using the same single clear plastic body for much longer only replacing the ink. Alas, those refills are not as readily available as the Bic itself.)
If you're interested in Bic history, and want to know more about what they do, they have this PDF available for download.
I'm not affiliated with them, I just have been chewing on one or another of their Bic pens for well over 50 years now and I quite like them. And that is coming from a lifelong fountain pen user...
Fountain pens? One may want to consider the excellent German brand Lamy which offers both cheap and expensive models of fountain pens (and ballpoint pens too, but not as cheap as Bic). Their cheap ‘Lamy Safari’ pictured here was designed in the 80s/90s to help kids proper handwriting and is still, imho, one of the best cheap/beginner-friendly fountain pen one could buy here in Europe. Its also real sturdy while still being easy to fix if anythign was to happen to it ;)
Also, I think they look gorgeous with their bright flashy colors :p
If you're more into pencils, may I suggest you check the German FaberCastell or the Swiss Caran d'Ache? They're very different kind of pencils but they're also both amazingly good, be it their 'cheaper' lines (say, for kids) as well as, obviously, their artist lines (much more expensive too).
For watercolors, I would suggest the Dutch Royal Talens. Their student-grade paint 'Van Gogh' is unbelievably good for its price, as well as their artist-grade 'Rembrandt'. Heck, even their cheapest 'ArtCreation' line is nice (and it also offers truly excellent and cheap sketchbooks)
Obviously, the English Winsor & Newton whose artist grade paints are now made in France if I'm not mistaken, as well as their Cotman student-grade—but if you go the student grade road, I would strongly suggest you give Royal Talens 'Van Gogh' a try, like really, as you may be surprised.
The French Sennelier, they have a honey-based artist-grade watercolors that are so bright <3. They also have a student grade called 'La Petite Aquarelle'.
Last but certainly not least, I would not want to forget the Ukrainian's Rosa. A recent discovery for me (a little over a year ago) which I quite like.
One should also talk about paint brushes for watercolors, and about inks for fountain pens as in both cases there are excellent EU brands, but this is already way too long ;)
Your turn! Do you know any other European brand of pens, pencils or watercolors?
Edit: updated the title from 'in the EU' to 'in Europe'
Thank you very much, you're more than welcome.