Of note: ActivityPub (the protocol) has its own logo, seen in https://activitypub.rocks/ and other places. The protocol and the community are absolutely separate things, so this is really good.

I’ve never really linked the rainbow star icon, just because I don’t really like rainbows (IMO the ace flag is the prettiest but I might be biased). I’m also still not convinced that Meta’s icon is even supposed to represent the fediverse, as opposed to just a Threads feature that lets it connect to the fediverse. So overall I’m a fan of this proposal, although it does bug me that it uses 6-pointed stars in the font on the webpage and 5-pointed stars in most other typefaces. The 5-pointed stars create some nice negative space.

@[email protected]

@[email protected] I think part of it is the “branding” of Mastodon - if everyone someone follows uses a Mastodon server, they might just think of “Mastodon” as the social network they want to join, and never really consider that other people on the network might be using something like Firefish or Pixelfed or microblog.pub. After all, most Mastodon servers’ web UIs look pretty much the same and the default Mastodon name and graphics are often pretty prominent.

I don’t think this is usually an issue, but there are some Mastodon instances out there whose names are `mastodon.[something] and I think that can mislead people into thinking that’s the one they “should” join just because it seems “official”.

@[email protected] @[email protected] neat, I never realized that micro.blog could federate itself in addition to crossposting to mastodon.

@[email protected] I’ve got a few ways to find fics with all-OC casts, which usually fit the bill (Trek BBS forum; fanfiction.net’s StarTrek: Other section; looking at AO3’s Star Trek tag and then excluding each individual show). Problem is, I’m usually more interested in hearing people talk about their stories / ideas / etc than actually reading them, and I don’t know where that sort of thing happens, if at all.

@[email protected] Although I wish some of Pike’s dialogue had been fleshed out a bit to make him feel like less of a generic foil for M’Benga (especially in their scene near the end), I do really like that they had the lead character of the show be the one who doesn’t get it, and in a way that’s in keeping with his characterization (it ties in particularly well with last season’s alternate-timeline Romulan episode, I think).