They took this to the next level with bad fur day. By combining simple textures with plain color filters they could create complex visuals without using more memory. Eg: All the liquids (there are a lot!) look and flow the same, but have different color filters applied to differentiate them. They managed to squeeze in a full voice track too!
Dude we had totally different experiences. When I got my grey badge, I walked in, gave them my forms I was told via email they would need, was then told to wait 3 hours and left to go hang out at the lake. Sunbathed for 2 hours. Came back. Got my badge. No issues.
My team was very underutilized... We got legitimately excited when we came in and there was real work for us to do instead of sitting around and being 'available'.
I did get a badge the first time, but it didn't have the chip I needed to access certain things required for my job so I could get in the building and lab but not really do much. Apparently it also has to do with the location, because another person that was getting onboarded for the same project at another location also didn't get a chip but they immediately issued a new card when he walked back in without the hassle I went through. Seems to be pretty hit or miss, but I haven't had any luck
Toots are posts. Boosting is reposting so your followers can see it. Instance owners can change the terms to whatever cutesy terms they want, so this example has boost replaced with boop and toot replace with toot.
Also this is a FINE example of why niche communities need unbiased online infrastructure. A casual google-searcher may judge them by whatever google's AI decides is representative of the group, and choose not to deal with them at all.
Email is de-facto centralized at this point, with the overwhelming majority of email going through a small handful of giant providers. I don't remember the number anymore but some scary-high percentage of all email volume goes through Google servers.
1. There are still multiple options working options within the same ecosystem. And yes you can still self-host or pay to host[0]. Unlike on WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal where you have to choose one (or more) providers.
2. I find it weird how busy we are as a community are: scaring each other away from the solutions we should use by pushing Joe Average in front of us (like the post in this thread about mastodon.com being up for sale).
[0]: yes, there are problems. But FWIW mail disappeared before Gmail as well: I have memories of customers complaining about mail from "central USA" (or something) not arriving and after hassling our email provider and having them hassling their connections mail suddenly started to arrive. (And no I don't think it was acceptable then and I don't think it is acceptable now.)
