I missed the northern lights, again, during the night, but at least I did remember to look for them when I was out with the dog before going to bed. (They were intense enough and far south enough to be a newspaper-level event.)
I did spend a good amount of time under clear skies though, but most of it was soaking up all the sunlight I could get during lunch and late afternoon.
I wonder if I have over time made myself more dependent on being outdoors to feel good, or if I have just gradually realized that I feel much better when I get some fresh air every day. It is now at the point where I feel as strange spending a whole day indoors as I do not getting regular exercise. Like something is missing, something which should be there, a very small itch in the back of my mind.
The Mammoth in the room
Mammoth was one of the first Mastodon IOS apps I tried from the recent app explosion. It soon got replaced by Ice cubes on all my devices though, and then I did not look or think much about Mammoth until two days ago when I suddenly decided to give it a try on the Mac.
Wow, look at all those great columns!
Apart from having more columns, thus making better use of horizontal space when you have it, Mammoth does not do much that clearly different from the other apps I have tried. But it manages to feel a lot different, somehow much more at home. I like the experience a lot better than any of the others.
However, Mammoth has the interesting property of being backed by venture capital, and of encouraging people to sign up to its own instance when you start it.
Now, an app having a default instance to make onboarding easier feels like a reasonable idea in itself. Most people will not know what to pick, so having a default option that you can make as simple as possible is probably a win.
But when combined with venture capitalists? It is hard to look at it and not catch the scent of lock-in to come. Investors want amazing returns on their investments, and unique experiences to keep their users in place. They would not mind becoming the Gmail of Mastodon instances, and even if that is hopefully a lot more benign in the fediverse than it has become for email, it still is not a particularly desirable future.
I feel torn, but Mammoth will stay on my desktop for at least a while. And yes, I should take a serious look at Ivory for Mac when it is released. If anything will feel and look great on my Mac desktop, Ivory will be it. And there will be no strangeness with business models there, just a great app you pay for.
Nice app you have there, pity about the business model.