So, I needed to check my own "Posts and Comments" history in Friendica. I don't know why, but Friendica doesn't offer the "Posts and Comments" tab when the Friendica user is seeing its own profile, the tab only appears for other profiles. From an endpoint perspective, it makes sense: other users's profiles are served under the /contact/#{id} endpoint route, while the oneself profile is served under the /profile/#{screen_name} route, which offers things such as "Personal Notes" and "Scheduled Posts", both private things which aren't supposed to appear for a /contact.

My own "Posts and Comments" could be seen through my "Network" tab. However, due to the ongoing performance issues, the "Network" tab often results in Gateway Timeout (so I often catch myself accessing my Friendica through direct URLs such as my own profile's URL, so I avoid demanding the "Network" tab content from Friendica). So I needed a workaround.

Then I remembered how ActivityPub uses the Finger protocol to serve information about users. "Perhaps it returns a /contact endpoint and/or a numeric user id", I thought. The result from friendica.world/.well-known/we… , however, doesn't contain numbers, just the /profile endpoint. The only "number", under links.[rel="salmon"], is actually an UUID and its href returns 404.

Then I tried to take a look at the Friendica API documentation, then I found about `api/externalprofile/show` which Returns a Contact entity for the provided profile URL, with the parameter profileurl being the full /profile URL. I promptly tried it and it asked for login. After logging in (again, as I was already logged into the same domain), there I got it, my own id, which after being replaced in /contact/#{id}, readily returned my own "Posts and Comments".

Ideally, it shouldn't be so technically complicated to check own's "Posts and comments", but maybe this (checking own's posts) is not something that people usually do.

#devlog #friendica

There is a well-known phenomenon that happens to those who write, I don't know if it's called "blank page problem", "blinking text cursor problem" or something else. It's when you open your favorite writing application and spend hours staring at a blinking cursor (you know, the vertical bar that indicates the current position where the next character will be inserted if you decide to type any letter) inside a blank document/text field.

It's not as if there were no ideas or thoughts going on within their minds, it's because they can't be translated into words... They could fully tap into their unconscious, a process called "stream-of-(un)consciousness", but it's easy said than done: try to describe the taste of chocolate without using "chocolate", "cacao", "sweet", "sweetener", "sugar", among similar terms, and you'll realize you simply can't do it.

And there are situations where the thing *can* be translated into words, but they *shouldn't* be. It's when they're aware of the possible unwanted consequences of expressing that thing, so they keep it restricted to their own thoughts. It's not as if they were thinking an unsavory thing, but they know that it can't be said out loudly.

One of those situations is when the thing is a secret. Say someone told them a very deep and serious secret. A secret so intricate that can't be expressed without compromising the secrecy of the thing (as well as the secrecy of the person who told the secret). It's like having to carry a heavy boulder, forever.

All of those situations will face the same things: a blank page, a blinking cursor and a desire that simply can't be fulfilled to express something that can't be said. It's uncomfortable, it's on the verge of the painful.

But wait: there's more! There's a worse scenario, a scenario I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. A scenario where those three situations happen simultaneously: it's a secret, it's a thing that have no words to express it, and it's a thing that can't be shouted out loudly.

Words have consequences. Actions have consequences. Yet holding things to oneself also has consequences. Internal pressure increases until it reaches critical state. One's brain will keep rehashing and rehashing it, it's inevitable. It's akin to a Cassandra curse: they have something going on inside their mind, yet nice/good reactions wouldn't be found if they decided to express it (supposing that they could translate it into words).

So they keep it to themselves, just as Cassandra. They're the only ones that could potentially understand it... or could they? It's where the situation becomes even worse: it's a thing that they can't understand by themselves, they need help to understand it, but they're forbidden to seek help to understand it, because they can't say it in the first place. Even when they have close friends or familiar people, they couldn't use their help, and these people probably wouldn't understand either.

And this is where it becomes the worst scenario: ain't no close friends to even consider the possibility of talking to, nor "far friends", no one. Maybe they should rely on LLMs? Lol, they can't "understand" a thing, they're just fancy auto-completing algorithms, they can't reason, they can't help with the ineffable. Neither can that writing app, which is still blank, while they lost count on how many times its cursor blinked. Ain't no one besides themselves to try to tell the thing.

This is the ineloquibilis scenario: can't be said, can't be held to oneself either...

So I found this Friendica instance through the post "Meta Risks Mass Exodus: Is #HelloQuitMeta the Next Viral Movement?" (I saw the post being shared on Lemmy) and decided to sign up. Question is: how populated is here?

I've been hopping from platform to platform here in the fediverse, trying to find a good instance within a good platform... Mastodon, Lemmy, Pleroma, Mitra, Friendica... This is the second Friendica instance I'm trying, the first one was... devoid of social interaction. This is one of the reasons I've been keeping hopping between platforms and instances, you know...

A thing I like here in Friendica is the character limit and text formatting. Sometimes I write things (dark and occult poetry, philosophical thoughts, etc) and it doesn't fit the Mastodon's default 500 char limit... and Lemmy isn't focused on creative content.

I don't expect this profile to last long, maybe it lasts, I'm not sure. Time will tell... 🤷

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So, in the meantime, greetings, you can call me Daemon. I'm Brazilian. I used to be a developer (full-stack JS, Python, Shellscripting, etc). I'm philosophically nihilist. I'm spiritually syncretic (my closest "label" would be "Luciferian", although my devotion/worshiping isn't focused on Lucifer, I used to be more "Lilithian" (as in "worshiper of Lilith") a couple months ago, but sometimes my spirituality leans towards Thelema, sometimes it leans towards Umbanda... it's not a very definite/clear belief system, that of mine).

Deep down, I don't really fit nor like to fit labels and human definitions, so I don't feel fitting anything specific (that's lonely and all but... whatever). You can just call me Daemon and try to decipher the deep and multifaceted layers I sometimes bury within my texts... Because I do sometimes bury layers of meaning within my texts.

#introduceyourself #introductionpost