He seems to really like "Maryland-style" flags, which just have a ton going on all over the place. I don't really like those kinds of flags, though honestly New Brunswick's isn't that bad. The top and bottom strips each stick to a solid color on a solid background (yellow on red for the top and white on blue for the bottom). I'm not a huge fan of the middle strip with the ship — I think it would be better if it stuck to solid color on solid color like the top and bottom — but it doesn't use that many colors and goes well with the water.

Meta (or any large entity) cannot monopolize or control the fediverse. If their implementation starts drifting from established norms, they will be blocked by most instances or will just be incompatible.

Right now, many are already desperate for activity and thus hesitant to defederate. Do you actually think that you'll convince people to defederate once everyone's used to all the content they provide? "Hey guys, Meta's starting to make changes, so we're going to cut the content you're used to seeing by 99%." That's an impossible sell. Once content dependence is established, there is no turning back.

… but people forget that XMPP is still around. It never died; its just a smaller, niche network. The fediverse is already a small, niche network.

Most of us want to see the open fediverse grow into something a bit less small and a bit less niche, but that possibility will be dashed away if we put activity in Meta's hands and then let them take it away from us. Tons of people will leave platforms like Mastodon to go to Threads or otherwise have to live with most of their content being gone and no longer seeing the posts of most of whom they follow. That's lots of people who would have been sold on the fediverse but now see it as dead because of the massive activity drop. Threads coming and going takes the view of our situation from "It could grow a lot," to "It really fell off when Threads left," and the latter will make it impossible to grow again.

If we want a fediverse with the values we care about to grow, we don't need Meta. It's insane to start pretending that this is the case just because Meta is offering to control 99% of the content. Patience will help us in the long run, whereas relying on Meta to carry the fediverse will absolutely hurt us.

I'd change a single bag of Cape Cod party-sized sea salt potato chips so that it would be at my current location.

This is one of my designs that I'm really happy with, probably just because I feel the colors go together really well while being arranged in a very distinct manner. I don't remember what I had in mind symbolism-wise when I made this flag, but here are my guesses:

• The pine is a prominent symbol of New England.
• The triangular arrangement of the colors represents New Hampshire's nickname, the White Mountain State. You can even view the white and yellow triangles as a white, shaded mountain.
• The white & red allude to England's flag (more New England symbolism).
• The blue & yellow were probably taken from the original flag using symbolism from the seal, with the blue evoking the water from the harbor and the yellow representing granite (New England also being called the Granite State).

Can't believe they're making an Elon Muskrat movie

Also recognize you as well! I'd love to see @kbinStyles revived sometime and to contribute to that goal if given the chance. I've just imagined that a thread for every idkbin update would be more annoying than appreciated. It's also helpful that the magazine is in the official kbin collection, so that might help visibility.

EDIT: Fixed link

Since I'm that one guy who doesn't like Maryland's flag, I tried to give it a redo when I was redesigning all of the US state flags. I took the Crossland and Baltimore banners and simplified them to make an (imo) better looking flag that alludes to the designs. There's even some extra symbolism in there: there are seven stripes since Maryland was the 7th state to ratify the Constitution and join the US.

It's definitely subjective. Case in point, I think the Seychelles' flag is great where as New Brunswick's is quite messy if still decent. The latter is helped by not going overboard on colors, though I think it'd be more cohesive if the ship followed the pattern that the lion and the water followed (single-colored design on single-colored background). The lion is yellow on red and the water is white on blue, but the ship is all over the place with red flags and a white, outlined sail.

I like the concept, but I have a few suggestions:

• Maybe make the green a bit darker. I get that you're going for grass and a river, but that's conveyed with any green, and I think a dark green would go a lot better with the lighter blue.
• As another commenter mentioned, the river would be better as a simple diagonal stripe. You don't need a complicated river shape to convey a river.
• This may be limited by your drawing skill, but I think the emblem should be more complex. Right now, it's in this area where it's not simple enough (i.e., it's not just a flat, one-color shield) to match with the rest of the flag but it's not complex enough to really feel like an emblem. It stands out but doesn't quite have the complexity to warrant it, if that makes any sense.
• The emblem might be better off in the middle, left, or upper left. Symbols on flags tend to go there instead of on the right, where it'll be flapping in the wind more.

Again, we're talking about throwing "essentially rocks" at speeds that are insanely fast no matter who's doing the throwing. When you're talking hard objects being thrown at such high speeds towards people in protective gear, the difference in danger (even if that danger is significant) is going to be minimal. If women "are far more likely to be exhausted" at the end of a match, they're more susceptible to really bad injuries from any cricket ball moving at such a high speed. A trans woman throwing the ball isn't going to pose much more risk, definitely not enough for safety to be a factor in banning trans women from women's cricket.

I think there's definitely a discussion to be had in regards to what's fair and how we approach fairness and sports in a world that's accepting of trans people. However, the moment you go out and pretend that there's some safety risk posed by trans women in sports, you unjustifiably paint them as threats to cis women, and that's completely unacceptable.

But here's the thing: OP didn't know that it was accounted for and expected. And if it wasn't expected (or we, like OP, weren't aware), many of us would probably also mock Elon sort something of the sort. It's not malice. It's simply not knowing something.

Why couldn't this commenter have maturely and informatively told OP why they were wrong? That would've made OP aware of their mistake and cautious of making similar errors in the future without discouraging them from contributing entirely. It's clearly not difficult to do, as other comments did it.

The only reason for someone to personally insult someone over this is because it makes them feel better, they find it funny, etc. It doesn't help OP or the community. It's just for someone to get a quick laugh from bringing down other people for not knowing something, and that's not something people should support or condone on the fediverse.

Things I like:

• The interface is great, and it's the main reason I chose Kbin over Lemmy. The UI is just much more aesthetically pleasing, especially with the Tokyo night theme and with custom userstyles.
• Microblog integration is really convenient. I don't use it a ton, but it's nice to be able to view Mastodon content from the same place as all the stuff in the threadiverse. Magazines being able to collect microblogs with certain tags is also great (e.g., the !pixelart microblog section collects anything with the #pixelart tag). Being able to follow tags to have in your subscribed feed would be awesome.
• The community on kbin magazines is really nice. I do wish there was more activity, but I love the interactions I have here.

Things to improve:

• Activity is lacking in most magazines. I try to post and comment—I'm doing so a lot more than I did on Reddit—but not a lot of people are doing the same.
• There are quite a few annoying bugs. Posting brings you to an error page (even though the posting still works), image uploading doesn't have any visual feedback, and blocking any domain causes comments to disappear.
• Federation is far from perfect. Some stuff doesn't federate for seemingly no reason, and downvotes don't federate at all.
• This is a general issue throughout the fediverse, but there isn't really a built-in guide explaining federation, yet understanding federation and its intricacies is kind of a prerequisite to using the fediverse (since federation is far from seamless and can be quite inconsistent). What doesn't help is the attitude that people who don't get federation are dumb or should just try harder.

There are other issues I have, like the lack of a subscription panel, but these can be fixed with userscripts. Even so, stuff like this should be part of the base functionality, or at the very least there should be prominent links to these userscripts until it can get added.