I would prefer not to federate with them. Their track record is abysmal and the privacy invasion is horrendous. One of the people over on Mastodon recorded more than 200 queries from the app within an hour of installing it - they are determined to scrape every last detail of your life into their advertising database and, well, fuck that.

Mastodon.nz announced a week or so back that they have no intention of federating with them and I found that to be reassuring: we're all here because we specifically Do Not Want a corporate body throwing adverts and algorithms at us.

It wouldn't surprise me if blasting the fediverse with millions of users is specifically designed to weaken smaller instances, just to oh-so-graciously offer their users and 'safer, more stable' place to set up.

So.... mission accomplished? It doesn't matter which bird won (so long as it wasn't a bloody bat!), John Oliver did the organisation and the birds a massive favour.

I can see it happening in stages, much like Twitter's inexorable decline. Seeing that Steve Huffman said in an interview recently that he admired what Elon Musk was doing, I don't think we've seen the worst for redditors yet.

I love that random bypassers were supporting him, especially the road crew donating gloves.

General pessimism this morning. Would anyone be interested in a couple of weekly threads showcasing non-misery-inducing things? I'm thinking maybe a thread to show off things we've made ourselves (building projects, cakes etc) or maybe a photo challenge?

That is a really unfortunate url 🤔

I have a Kobo Libra 2 and I think the only extra features are that it's waterproof and you can do audiobooks on it via Bluetooth (you might be able to do that on Kindle too, I'm not sure).

I went with Kobo because I'm not a fan of Amazon and because I wanted to access a subscription service through it. With the optional sleep cover I never turn it off so it's always ready to go.

I love the lady on one news being completely disbelieving. I guess she doesn't like the idea of partaking of something with such a social stigma.

I think the stress and uncertainty of the last few years has left us with no real optimism. There's usually a lot more talk of New Year New Start and resolutions about getting your life generally better but now it feels like it's just dragging yourself past a check-in point on a fairly mundane racetrack.

This year I'm definitely going to try and focus on good things in my journal to see if I can improve my outlook.

Morena. Heat pump is going and I'm on my second coffee. Hope everyone is keeping warm this morning, I don't think we quite had a frost but that was probably to do with the wind than anything else.

Groceries this morning. I was bored and ran the entire shopping list through the Grocer app, since we have to drive past two other supermarkets to get to our one of choice. By stopping at each one and grabbing the specials we saved nearly $30 so the doubtful SO has decided that doing a grocery check before leaving the house is my new Sunday morning chore.

In related news, I am turning into my mother.

It's hard to maintain a crusade against these guys when they look so innocent... But we had two babies that would prowl our section during the day and the way they descended on a living baby bird that had fallen out of the nest was a bit of a reality check. They obliterated the thing in two minutes flat and proved how very efficient they can be!

I'm thinking I'll post a photo challenge this Friday and then have a thread next Friday for everyone to post their snaps. I usually get inspired on the weekends then forget during the week so having a week to get sorted will be good. If anyone has any prompts or ideas feel free to post them because I'll probably resort to Pinterest lists and they're probably not going to appeal to everyone 😆

And then there will be a post on Monday demanding to see your hobbies are because I'm nosy and in need of inspiration, lol.

This morning I found a camera tucked away in the bottom of a drawer. It had no batteries but the memory card was still in it and I have no recollection of ever having bought it.

There are a grand total of 7 photos on it, including one of a random tree for no apparent reason. They're all dated the same day in 2015 so... I guess I kinda scored myself an old-but-unused camera. The thing I love the most about it is that it has actual buttons! They make clicky noises and everything! None of this newfangled touch nonsense that's impossible to use with gloves or fat fingers.

Got my hair did, smell like salon potions.

Glad to hear you've maybe turned a corner. There's something particularly unfair about being at your worst over a weekend.

The SO was offered a spot on a fishing trip so he's just left and I'm up and awake way too freakin' early. But I have coffee and heat pump and no plans so... win?

What's everyone's plans for today? (I may shamelessly steal good ideas)

Fedora kde and win11. I'm using OneDrive as a file server/ online backup though so I'm probably just making my life difficult but I hate the way AI is being bolted onto windows when it's unreliable and built on janky datasets.

After resisting for years I'm finally starting to come around to the concept of podcasts. I have a relatively short walk to work and have started listening to a podcast by a psychologist to see if I can learn any techniques for combating some pretty insistent negative mental habits.

Day one and I'm starting the day in a much better frame of mind. The thought of celebrating with a cheese scone may have something to do with that though, lol.

I think I've found part of tonight's dinner in the 1974 edition of the New Zealand Women's Weekly Cookbook. I love old cookbooks, they use fairly plain, easy-to-source ingredients and took clogging arteries as a personal challenge. That said, I'm only going to use half the cheese for this experiment. Probably.