This makes me wonder beyond salad dressing and granola:

What else is low effort to make and vastly better or cheaper than store-bought?

RE: https://ablerism.micro.blog/2026/06/15/regular-random-reminder-that-bangforbuck.html

I’ve found this to be true as well.

Heading to #SouthKorea, likely at least #Seoul and somewhere else (#Busan?) in November this year.

Anything @Wham and I should make sure we see, do, or (most importantly to me!) eat? :)

RE: https://social.coop/@hollie/116729407063869537

This looks like a useful app for a wide range of people, especially those who get overwhelmed at times and have difficulty speaking.

Wish I’d known about this sooner! My only complaint is there’s no privacy info on the iPhone App Store.

I just realized one of the things I like about Mastodon and #MeshCore is they approximate some of the internet of my youth. Namely, talking to weird strangers online about niche topics. I was basically formed with MUSHing hashtag channels.

Random people out in the world trying to talk to me, and I will run for the hills. But random people online and I'm suddenly the world's biggest extrovert.

(I wonder, in hindsight, how much of this relates to moving through the physical world when I was a younger, thin, cis, white woman.)

In what is becoming an annual Pride month tradition, I have replaced my pride flag bunting with fresh, shiny, extra gayly colored pride bunting. (*)

Happy pride, yall! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

(*) I mean, I’d love for the bunting to not fade enough to require yearly refreshing, but until then, this is the time for it!

Also, I keep waiting to find one of the bottles we give away back at a thrift store the following year! I can tell ours because we sticker them each year. That would tickle me about the circle of life for water bottles.

But it hasn’t happened yet.

The great bottle washing begins!

My camp for the local #BurningMan event brings free water bottles to give away. I boggle that for 7 years I’ve I bought ~40 used water bottles per year from local thrift stores, at about $3 apiece. It’s never hard to find enough nice ones. Often a significant number are completely unused, with the little paper explaining how to wash them still inside. The majority are for companies or events I’ve never heard of.

Anyhow, if you ever want a nice bottle, swing by your local thrift store to see if one there is good for reuse. Or first time use, if it’s got that paper. 🤣

I see tonight is time for this meme again. I love ya, Washington State, but sometimes you are outright ridiculous. 😂🤣

#Washington #Seattle #Aurora

If you live in an area with a smoke season or are concerned about air quality in your home, I highly recommend Clean Air Kits' pre-made Corsi Rosenthal Boxes. They are basically SILENT (they very cleverly use computer fans), and don't take super special filters (unlike my Coways).

Find them here: https://www.cleanairkits.com/

(H/t to @datasaurus and @gairdeachas for finding these originally.)

Finished Noumenon today, and it's a really interesting and different book. Humanity sends a generation ship out to explore an unknown star. Due to travel, by the time the exploration is done, ~300 years has passed on the ship and 2000 years has passed on earth. The ship is run by "clone lines" all sourced from the original crew.

It's a weird book in that you can't get too attached to any character -- each chapter skips forward 30+ years, so you get this sweeping arc of human history across the ship. But it's unlike any other book I've read like this because of that. I enjoyed it but wouldn't rave about it.

Also, fun fact: "Noumenon" is a real word. It's sort of the opposite of a "Phenomenon".
#books #bookstodon

Oh gosh, the King County library system has a bingo reading card. 😻

Particularly useful if you're in the #Seattle or surrounding area and following @gairdeachas 's VERY EXCELLENT #QueerBooksForPride!

https://www.spl.org/Seattle-Public-Library/documents/books-media/book-bingo/SPL_BookBingo2026.pdf

Get a bingo, get entered into prizes at the library. You have until September 8th!

#KCLS

RE: https://mastodon.gruezi.net/@kuow_bot/116654914661158153

What an interesting day to be a King County courtroom judge 🤣😂🥳

One reason this doesn’t surprise me is this 2005 study that showed that people refine their search criteria for jobs *after they look at candidates* to prefer the men.

In one study, participants were shown two officers for police chief. One was described as "book-smart," the other as "street-smart." When the male officer was the book-smart one, participants said “book smarts”were most important for a police chief. When the descriptions were swapped so the male officer was the street-smart one, participants shifted and said street smarts were what mattered most. Either way, the male candidate won. (This disappeared if they made people write down criteria first - the importance of a well-specified JD).

But during this, participants redefined the criteria for success to match whatever credentials the preferred (male) candidate happened to have.

I would guess a similar thing is happening in the recent study, but with AI. Male is preferred, so an AI-assisted resume is fine.

RE: https://mstdn.social/@amydiehl/116631877252603677

And so it continues… this result doesn’t surprise me given what else I’ve read about resume studies and who gets privileged and penalized. I’d expect a similar or worse result if they used a Black-coded name instead of “Emily”.

RE: https://kind.social/@outsidercomics/116621854021169996

I have a more complicated view of AI than an automatic “fuck off”, but if you’re in Kind County and use libraries, definitely worth sharing your views.

It’s not completely clear to me what they’re considering. Reading between lines I see maybe chatbots on the site (no thank you) and maybe some educational programs for people who don’t know about AI now (could be good, depending on what’s presented).

Got to give a talk today at a local community college about the intersection between #infosec and #MentalHealth, and it was an absolute delight. I wasn’t sure how it would be received, but people seemed interested and had a lot of good questions. Hopefully arming some up-and-coming #security folk with tools and awareness.

#Bookstodon, I need your help!

What is your absolute favorite, not-problematic, public domain detective story?

I have a new jailbroken kindle to go out into the little library and want it to be a little jewel box of @gutenberg_org mystery books.

Edit: Particular preference for non-white, non-straight, non-male authors. Natch. :-)

Please boost!

#books #fedihelp

My rating system for books:

5 stars - highly recommend, will chatter to you about how good this book is

4 stars - slightly less enthusiastic chattering but will absolutely recommend

3 stars - Eh, I’m not sad I read it but also didn’t super love it. Probably would only recommend if I knew it was likely to be particularly liked by someone else

2 stars - Didn’t like it, probably finished it anyhow because it was just good enough to make me think it might get better

1 stars - I really did not like this book, probably didn’t finish it, and may even rant to you about how bad or annoying it was

Curious what everyone else’s ratings are?

I got repeatedly stuck #jailbreaking a #Kindle 5 Touch on a "This item is not signed by an authorized developer" error when trying to open the KUAL "book". KUAL is technically a step after jailbreaking, but needed for any of the things you want to jailbreak for.

I was totally stumped from MobileRead.com (where most of the info lives) until I found https://fekir.info/post/jailbreak-kindle-touch/. They noted upgrading firmware to 5.3.7.3 works. I didn't use their files (missed seeing them) but managed to find a mirror of Amazon's patch at TechSpot.

The thing Fekir's site misses is the need to install the "universal patch" as a final step: https://github.com/KindleModding/Hotfix/releases/tag/v2.3.7, or that same error occurs.

Sadly, their site's contact page is broken, or I would write them with that info and thanks. Because it's a great writeup of what needs to be done for jailbreaking a Kindle Touch.

So on the off chance you know a Fekir (they totally seem like they could be a fediverse citizen), maybe pass that along? :)