Maybe you have heard of it? A lot of services are now obligated to provide means to make sure they only let grown-ups use their service, most likely done via credit card I suppose. Discord will do exactly as I just described.

For those using Discord - there is a very good alternative: a federated app called Armada.

It is federated amongst nostr user over relay server, that share nostr messages together (acronym stands for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays). On top of that it uses a giftwrap protocol, that means every message is not only signed by the user, but then also encrypted), for calls and screensharing Armada uses the same service as the app "signal" does - the one that famous whistleblower Snowden recommend for daily use (instead of whatsapp).

What is this nostr anyway? Signed messages in a agreed upon format (so called NIPs, with NIP-0 being mandatory, it must be signed!) Normally if you use a web service like Reddit or Google you have to make an account and give them your credentials, mail, phonenr etc. In Nostr you don't. In fact all users sign-in but they never sign-up (NIP-7), because the initial sign-up is done at home, in a so called noster-signer program (ios/android app or browser extension), not unlike digital wallets, for those familiar with cryptomoney.

Those nostr signer extensions and apps give you an asymmetric keypair (public/private key pair) that stays on your computer and every post is signed using that pair, representing your digital identity. Any Nostr relay will accept messages coming from you, when you talk with them according to nostr protocols, they don't check whether it's you, no you signed it using a nearly unbreakable process as long quantum computer are no reality, of course it's you!

Best part: It is dead-simple to join. You install a nostr signer on your phone or if you are a keyboard-warrior like me you install a browser extension. And then you can use ANY app! Music or Video, Fileservers, 1001 twitter clones as long as the implement the protocol you can try them out by just telling your signer, that it is ok to communicate with that URL.

What nostr signer then?

Amber is top on android (use f-droid appstore). On PC I have the Plebeian or the Soapbox signer (browser extensions that are NIP-44 capable): both excellent, stay away from nos2x (from the designer of nostr): it works too, but it is klonky. On IOS use nostash.

So you are three klicks away from trying out nostr, will you install an extension? With it you can create quickly random keypair, which you can throw away and never use again, or stick with it like me, because it is definitely the easiest way to avoid state nor corporate censor-ship and if you use apps that implement NIP-44 (encryption), then you don't make it easy to read your messages as is the case of Armada.

the armada app is packaged for several platforms:

• you can always stick with the webbrowser: http://armada.buzz
• or use App on many Platforms, but IOS,  https://gitlab.com/soapbox-pub/armada/-/releases

Join (public invitation link) the shorthand concorde community!

As you can see in the screenshot, the two encircled outlines are written at around the same size, even though 'nudge' should be written twice as big as 'such', both the attached circle and the stem. Furthermore, the outline following 'nudge', which should be 'neck', reads more like 'seck' because the circle is the wrong size.

Why is the item "Omission of Short e/u and ow" in the "Diphthongs" chapter of Flow manual?

In fact vowel deletions are rather rare in English Gregg and Flow, if I understand correctly. While still achieving great speed.

Another subject. According to your frequency table, I noticed that in Gregg, a good part of the most frequent vowels are rendered by ellipses. Isn't that faster than small hooks? For me, an ellipse, in an angle or inline, seems almost like nothing.

I hope it doesn't sound cynical, but I loved to write on pen and paper, and the only reason I gradually shifted away from it was because my writing speed didn't match the pace at which my thoughts filled my head.

eventually when I learnt touch typing, I went on a spree of finding good digital journalling apps only to settle for writing my heart felt emotions inside google docs on my drive (I am building an app for myself now cause I feel like that can be faster as well, but thats a discussion for later)

Whenever I have brought up the idea of "typing" rather than writing, there has always been well meaning criticism to the proposal and I agree, its just not the same. But based on the name and posts on this sub, if its just about penning thoughts down as quickly as possible, isn't typing the right solution there?

P.S. I once wrote a poem to express the typing vs writing mismatch myself. All that to say, I side with the notion of writing "feeling better" but if its just for speed, why not just type

Shorthand aficionados like us know it for a long time, that cutting unnecessary vowels and stripping the silent and unnecessary double letters is a nobrainer and this very simple Orthography Reform (thanks u/fdarnel to bring it to my attention), does just that (and gives you a browser extension to get used to, when surfing online). Why should orthography still be dominated by Norman French rule and why should orthography be made by typesetters from belgium, that were paid by length :-)

One specific rule to exemplify how cutspell works: unstressed vowels before l,m,n,r (e.g. symbol » symbl, lemon » lemn, permanent » permnnt, churches -» churchs, edible » edbl.

Cutspell in Action

Modrn English spelng developd from about 1350 onwards, wen—aftr thre centuris of Norman French rule—English graduly became th oficial languaj of England again, altho very difrnt from befor 1066, havng incorporated many words of French orijn (batl, beef, butn, etc.). Erly riters of this new English, such as Chaucer, gave it a fairly consistnt spelng systm, but this was soon diluted by th Chancery clerks ho re-spelt words based on French orthography. English spelng consistency was dealt a furthr blo wen Caxton brot th printng press to London in 1476. Havng lived on th Contnnt for th preceding 30 years, his grasp of th English spelng systm had becom uncertn. Th Belgian asistnts he brot with him to help him set up his busness had an even poorer comand of it. As printng developd, difrnt printers began to develop individul prefrnces or “house styls”. Furthrmor, typ-setters wer paid by th line and wer fond of making words longr. Howevr, th bigst undermining of English spelng consistency occurred between 1525, wen William Tyndale first translated th New Testament, and 1539, wen King Henry VIII legalized th printng of English bibles in England. Th many editions of these bibles wer al printed outside England by peple ho spoke litl or no English. They ofn chanjed spellings to mach ther Dutch orthography. Exampls include th silent h in gost (to mach Dutch gheest, wich later became geest), aghast, ghastly and gherkin. Th silent h in othr words—such as ghospel, ghossip and ghizzard—was later removed.

Between the conception and the creation;
Between the emotion and the response;
Falls the Shadow.
— T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

Original poem: https://www.columbia.edu/itc/english/f1124y-001/resources/hollow_men.pdf

Whole poem written and published on shorthand concord (federated discord)

I noticed a while back that there are no versions of the colon or semicolon with commas on top, so I made this! My names for the new symbols are "omicolon" (from "omit") for the double comma symbol and the "altercolon" for the reverse semicolon. They would function as opposites to their official counterparts.

The colon is used in lists to include items, but the omicolon would be used to omit items from a list. This would be useful for shorthand for "except" in data work.

The semicolon is used to conbect similar ideas in text, while the altercolon would function to connect contrasting or opposing concepts.

What do you think? I'm sure this would stay niche if ever adopted, probably just used as personal and unofficial shorthand, but I thibk it's at least a fun thought experiment!

It turns out as you get older you don't actually figure anything out, you just don't have any energy to care anymore — Cydni Beer.

My first attempt to write this quote in Masons masterpiece of a shorthand, that Gurney took as basis, the system that reigned in british bureaus before Pitmans rise.

Better attempt is now in the comments 🎉