The Guardian takes notice of Mastodon. 
The new social network with its interconnected ‘fediverse’ is a welcome alternative to blustering rival Twitter and Elon Musk
Many of us struggle with self-control. And we assume willpower is the key to achieving our goals. But there’s a simple and often overlooked mental habit
— Read on hiddenbrain.org/podcast/where-gratitude-gets-you/
I am totally a grasshopper. But a good thing to practice in the coming year is gratitude, rather than trying to guilt myself into a goal.
Posting to my #Wordpress blog this via the #Tooot #sharesheet in #iOS as a “publish immediately” post. The “draft” option in the #iPhone app didn’t trigger the #Mastodon plugin. It works from the desktop version but there’s a little checkbox that should always be ticked. The phone app doesn’t have that option.
Listened to this #HiddenBrain episode this morning, and I’m grateful for electric power, warmth, clean water, love, and a couple of simple gifts.
Oh boy, here we go.
Mr. Musk, who asked his Twitter followers on Sunday if he should step down as head of the service, will remain the company’s owner.
— Read on New York Times Gift Link
My guess is he’ll pick someone guaranteed to offend everyone and to totally ruin the company.
Think Jared Kushner, or Steve Bannon, or Alex Jones, or Kellyanne Conway (which would be awkward for George).
Oh boy, here we go.
Mr. Musk, who asked his Twitter followers on Sunday if he should step down as head of the service, will remain the company’s owner.
— Read on New York Times Gift Link
My guess is he’ll pick someone guaranteed to offend everyone and to totally ruin the company.
Think Jared Kushner, or Steve Bannon, or Alex Jones, or Kellyanne Conway (which would be awkward for George).
Seth Abramson over on Post.news thinks everyone needs to run, not walk, to the lifeboats. I also added that link to the mini posts column to the right, since it’s easier to grab the link via WordPress’ “publish or draft post via share sheet” option.
Another story that’s been making the rounds on Post.news is the one about the steps you need to take to lock down your Twitter account and get your data. I had already downloaded my data but missed the window for grabbing it. I’m considering requesting it again before the end of the year and sunsetting my Twitter accounts, but Seth’s warning has added a note of urgency.
I’m using both Post.news and Mastodon and liking both for different reasons. Post is still in beta, while Mastodon has been around long enough to have useful WordPress logins and an actual APP that formats well on both the iPhone and iPad – it’s especially nice on the tablet screen in landscape mode. I’m waiting for Post to catch up on the features side before coming to any kind of decision about committing to one or the other.
So currently I have a foot in each lifeboat, so to speak, and although it’s a bit precarious, it all seems to be working. It’s a bit awkward having to manually repost everything to Post.news, but I could see hanging out there to do the blabbity news commenting and hanging out on Mastodon for more entertainment and community-building social interaction, since this blog now autoposts there.
Both of them have their strengths and weaknesses as social media platforms – and both thus far are clear of trollish minions. Twitter, though, soon will be flooded with enthusiastic wannabe shitlords acting like huge flocks of soiled budgies flying out of people’s lavatories, infringing on people’s personal freedoms.
Probably best to start paddling the lifeboats somehow, or doing that thing from Mythbusters with the awkward aquatic shoes.
Seth Abramson over on Post.news thinks everyone needs to run, not walk, to the lifeboats. I also added that link to the mini posts column to the right, since it’s easier to grab the link via WordPress’ “publish or draft post via share sheet” option.
Another story that’s been making the rounds on Post.news is the one about the steps you need to take to lock down your Twitter account and get your data. I had already downloaded my data but missed the window for grabbing it. I’m considering requesting it again before the end of the year and sunsetting my Twitter accounts, but Seth’s warning has added a note of urgency.
I’m using both Post.news and Mastodon and liking both for different reasons. Post is still in beta, while Mastodon has been around long enough to have useful WordPress logins and an actual APP that formats well on both the iPhone and iPad – it’s especially nice on the tablet screen in landscape mode. I’m waiting for Post to catch up on the features side before coming to any kind of decision about committing to one or the other.
So currently I have a foot in each lifeboat, so to speak, and although it’s a bit precarious, it all seems to be working. It’s a bit awkward having to manually repost everything to Post.news, but I could see hanging out there to do the blabbity news commenting and hanging out on Mastodon for more entertainment and community-building social interaction, since this blog now autoposts there.
Both of them have their strengths and weaknesses as social media platforms – and both thus far are clear of trollish minions. Twitter, though, soon will be flooded with enthusiastic wannabe shitlords acting like huge flocks of soiled budgies flying out of people’s lavatories, infringing on people’s personal freedoms.
Probably best to start paddling the lifeboats somehow, or doing that thing from Mythbusters with the awkward aquatic shoes.
On Twitter, a new algorithm will allow far-right trolls to band together en masse—something they have already been shown to have done repeatedly and systematically over the last 24 months—to make the tweets of Twitter Blue–verified left-leaning accounts disappear from public visibility permanently simply by muting or blocking them.
— Read on post.news/article/2J3AloOm0Fho4H1A0YFAy9nU3fS
With Twitter being ruined and hamstrung by well-known rich man-baby Melon Husk, I’ve been considering options and preparing several lifeboats.
This tweet – the whole beginning of the thread, really – encapsulates what I feel is my way forward.
https://twitter.com/Green_Footballs/status/1597058176817446913?s=20&t=P80599Tzn7owAvoSAhY0hA
The mention of Google Reader’s much-lamented loss was also the beginning of trying to find a quick, easy way to “microblog” via G+ (also gone) and Twitter (going) for me.
So I finished a draft post about last week’s trip to Salt Lake. Published.
I had Thursday and Friday off, thank God, so I spent it working on the T-shirt quilt which is turning out to be quite heavy, and I had a number of “learning experiences” during construction (okay, “mistakes were made.”) It will be a wall hanging so the ugly back won’t be visible. Next time I make one, will use a normal woven cotton backing! But it has been fun remembering the various trips (and figuring out how to turn the stains and bad seam intersections into fun appliqué bits). I did a lot of anxiety-reducing procrastinating, never fear. And ordered some fabric for my next few projects, too.
Thanksgiving Day was spent baking a couple of loaves of sourdough/oat bread, cooking sweet potatoes, prepping carrots to steam, and packing them all into crocks and Dutch ovens into this insulated bag thing I bought from Amazon. The bag will eventually be a bread proofer, as I also got a seed warming mat and a thermostat controller, much cheaper than a Brod and Taylor proofer and multitaskers, too. Anyway, dinner was at my in-law’s new place, which is all of 5 minutes’ drive from us. So easy.
Other family members gathered for brunch that morning before dispersing to various other branches of their extended families; for us it was nice to just be the 4 of us plus one guest who is part of the family but didn’t have dinner plans other than going to the earlier brunch to see some of the young ones.
One of my Illinois nieces seems to be needing to assert independence or something and did her own thing; not sure what’s up with that but drama has always been her M.O. – now it appears that she’ll also skip an upcoming birthday for a very young lad, and holiday gatherings because “reasons.” We have something for her and her daughter but keep putting off presenting it to her, either because we didn’t want to pull focus in front of her ex-husband’s family, or because she teases her birth family with a possible appearance at a planned event, and then doesn’t show up (again, “reasons”).
One thing for sure, I won’t be making any more elaborate (or amateurish) attempts at sewing projects for her, because she’ll just throw them out.
https://twitter.com/ginnyred57/status/1597102138106466307?s=21&t=C_RtRzYyM-3J6plDuF52XA
Meanwhile, Twitter is in the news, and not for good reasons. Supposedly Husk is letting Herr Drumpf and some other horribles back in. Trolls running wild! Spam galore! Advertisers leaving in droves! Hackers shitposting! Oh, the inhumanity!
You may think that I’m grousing unnecessarily about Twitter’s decline under the overshitlordship of the Melon Husk, but events in Iran, China, Ukraine, and everywhere in the world where freedom of the press and of self-expression is not assured show that Twitter has been an invaluable resource. The Husker Duh has been gutting the security and human rights teams, not to mention the “banging on stuff” teams. It’s not good.
I’m exploring footholds on Counter.Social (run by an anonymous hacker dude, so hardly sketchy at all) and Post.social (all the cool newsies are waitlisted) and some instance of Mastodon (where a RL friend, Jette, plus some Resistance crewmates have landed).
And I’ve been engaging more on Facebook with friends and family. It seems like blogging here, and having IFTTT handle crosspositing, may be my way forward. I like Twitter, but can try to retrain my brain to write long-form instead of short form again.
Life has been on hold around here for three months, and just got confirmation that it’s likely to stay that way into the fall.
What next? My chosen career in corporate travel isn’t coming back anytime soon, and my current hobbies (sewing and knocking around virtual worlds) don’t really fill the bill.
School? Learn a new skill? Take up where I left off? Use my chameleonic superpower for good, not napping on the couch undetected?
I shall make inquiries.
I want to live in a country where we send our troops to save koala bears instead of making money for old men that own stocks in defense contractors. @realDonaldTrump
— NoelCaslerComedy? (@caslernoel) January 5, 2020