Unofficial Minds Newsletter Issue #7

So if y'all didn't notice... this issue is late. Yeeeeah, I got the damn coof and it took me down kinda hard for a few days, but I've mostly kicked it now. It's not as deep as usual, but I'm doing a bit of restructuring to focus more on the community, since Minds has started putting out their own changelogs. So here we gooooo!

Goings-On of Yestermonth

Site Wide Tantrum Finally Gets Response From Devs

We had a wild ride around the middle of the month, aye? @smugwolf left the platform after becoming sick to the teeth of the comment spam problem, and then @enytuxia also threatened to leave if the admins didn’t respond to the issues. 

Prompted by a random interview video that Minds was promoting, I took the opportunity to once again vent some frustrations about the company’s current optics as viewed by us, the users. This in turn caught the attention of Bill Ottman, who left some remarks about checking the gitlab for progress reports and informing me of my rudeness… something that Decken continues to tease me about to this day.

That weekend, I wrote another post, one detailing a laundry list of common grievances that I asked everyone to spread far and wide through the site to pick up enough oomph to hopefully make an impact. Well… it did. Oh boy it did. The same day we saw Ottman finally give us a quick list of things they’ve been working on. Not long after, Minds released its first official changelog, something they intend to put out every two weeks from here on out. Sub to the Minds Info page to get em in your feed: https://www.minds.com/info/

As I said before, this was a tiny little victory for us. There was a lot of tension on the ground level because people weren’t feeling heard due to the lack of communication between them and us. That seems to finally be getting resolved, and with any luck, won’t fall apart at the seems. Strong communication is super important when it comes to morale. So good job, y’all. Cookies all around.

Townhall

This brings me to Townhall. Needless to say, much of what was discussed was previously mentioned in Ottman’s post, but with more details given. Spam prevention and multi image posts are set to finally drop within a few months, and we’ll have some new features to look forward to regarding monetization, like Superminds. Though I still highly doubt that this addition will do anything to help the cross poster infestation. 

And Minds might wanna consider rebranding from “Minds” to “Michaels” with all the new guys they’re hiring named Michael. 

…I also seem to be getting infamous among the Minds team, since I was name dropped a number of times. Hashtag humblebrag. 

The recording actually survived this time around, too, so you can watch the whole thing and listen to me stutter my way through my questions here: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1407242058506178573

Facelift

Right after Townhall concluded, the whole site received a welcome facelift. Posts with image now have the text placed above the image instead of below, the upvote/RM/comment buttons were spaced out more, and the comments section given a new look. There are also plans to spruce up the notification panel and shrink the size of image thumbnails. 

Community Happenings

Tomas the Kraken Compiled

Tomas has been one of the most endearing projects Minds has seen, and with the ending now in sight, we’ll be sad to see our grown boi finally leave the nest and venture out into the open sea to realize his lifelong dream of becoming a real estate agent. …And sinking boats. But that aside, there’s finally a compilation of the entire story of Tomas’s life, from birth, to the present stage for newcomers to catch up and veterans to reminisce: https://www.minds.com/jaebeeart/blog/tomas-the-kraken-the-story-so-far-1409218052905504779

Timo Has Another Vella Story 

One of our resident authors has completed yet another tale and begun another! With the conclusion of The Ghosts of Zovus-4 brings the beginning of The Battle for Pilgrim's Fall (Exosuits vs Aliens), inspired by power-armor type media like Iron Man and Halo! https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1408869503873323009

Artist Spotlight

Welcome to a new little section of the newsletter where I’ll be spotlighting some art/creative accounts that I think deserve some attention. For our first rendition, if y’all didn’t think I’d be wheeling out @bitbybitbert, then you be cray cray. 

For some weird reason musicians have a bit of a harder time garnering an audience here on minds, and given this beard-bro’s niche is chiptune music, that narrows an already small window down even more, so please go show musik fren some appreciation. The stuff he produces wouldn’t be out of place in an old snes/n64 era jrpg, and it’s completely royalty free, and if you toss him some membership tokies, you get instant access to instant downloads of a large chunk of his catalog. And on top of all that, he just released a big bundle for sale on Itch that’s been in the works for 2 years: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1412492416073601039 . It’s not exactly cheap, but if you’re a game dev, it might be damn well worth it.

Horoscopes

Since apparently so many people have sticks up their butts about astrology for some reason, here’s a quick peek at some of the celestial shenanigans that await us all this month. There will be a bin to dispose of any soiled undergarments at the end of the tour, along with fresh diapers and free tubes of Preparation H. :D

Mercury will be going retrograde in Libra starting September 9th and remain so until October 1st, joining a handful of other planets in their current retrogrades. Hooray for pain! Be on guard for any potential communication or tech issues that might crop up because Mercury rules those things. Just try to remain patient and give yourself a little extra wiggle room for any Mercury related affairs. 

We’re also currently in the midst of Virgo season in the Tropical system, and Venus will also be joining the Virgo fray, so relationships are gonna be a big theme. Oh, and that Mercury retrograde? Around the 23, it’ll be backing itself up into Virgo again. Couple this with Jupiter’s current retrograde in Aries, a square event between Venus and Mars, and a full moon in Pisces… we’re in for a hell of a ride, so y’all better buckle up and get ready. The cosmos is gonna drag us kicking and screaming through some baggage, and it ain’t lettin go until the shirts are folded.