I appreciate that what other people in the fediverse is different to what I see - different instances, who they follow, etc.

I don't remember the last time that I saw pornography which was not CW'd.

I follow and interact with lots of lovely people who post such content *and I still don't see if unless I click to open their post*.

Conversely, several friends who do post sexual content here express how few boosts / interactions they get with that type of toot: https://neilzone.co.uk/2026/04/sex-and-the-fedi/

#ALT4you
A contraption consisting of an upside down table fan, a wire clotheshanger, a ring on some string and a can of soapy water. As the fan blows, the ring dips into the can and comes out again in front of the fan, resulting in a cooler room and soap bubbles
@vingtroiseize

Beating the heatwave with fun!

Succinct, clear, precise communication is becoming a rare skill. A 5 minute phone call that could've been a 12-word text message with a one-word answer. 🤷

Earlier this year I told a story in a conference talk. This is the behind-the-scenes story of that story. Weirdly, they're both basically the same story.

https://despairlabs.com/blog/posts/2026-07-05-conference-presentation-cost/

Tripod specifications: "Minimum height: 12 centimeters. Maximum height: 7.5 inches"
What kind of monster does this.

I’ve been trying to learn the current state of #Bandcamp, but there’s very little reporting since the union-busting of 2023 following its most recent sale.

All I can find from the last year are one subscriber-only Substack post (never heard of the author; the above the fold preview is all preamble), and one AI-written guide to using it from a generic “advice for musicians” website.

Anyone know more?

@mattcen The Phanpy client (https://phanpy.social/) already does this https://github.com/cheeaun/phanpy/blob/3dc87d248caa5bcb5388afd157ae4a793eea3107/src/utils/extract-image-desc.js#L7

There are issues on the Mastodon tracker that have been open for years, but it hasn't been implemented yet.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14903
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/20297

Youfuckinwhatmate?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-04/federal-government-rejects-un-lgbtqia-recommendations/106866788?utm_source=ken-behrens-backyard-barbecue-no-poofters

ETA: unfortunate URL capitalization makes me think the government looked at the UN LGBTQIA recommendations and said “we already have un-lgbtqia laws at home”.

One city (Brisbane), two #OpenSource conferences:
- @pyconau (August)
- @everythingopen (January)

But January is a long time away, and the weather is much nicer in August! So what are you waiting for? Get your #pyconau tickets today! https://2026.pycon.org.au/tickets/

You gather your most expensive people into a room to make your most important decisions. Then, somewhere in the second hour, the room quietly gets worse at making them. Not the people. The room.

I now travel with a portable CO2 monitor. Outdoors it reads around 400 parts per million. In a closed meeting room with a handful of people in it, I have watched it climb past 2,000. The photo here is a real reading: 2,143.

That number matters more than it looks. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory put people in a chamber and varied only the CO2. At 1,000 ppm, performance dropped significantly on six of nine decision-making measures compared with a clean-air baseline of 600. At 2,500 ppm, seven of the nine fell substantially, some into a range they called dysfunctional. A separate study out of Harvard found cognitive scores declining as CO2 rose, with the steepest losses in exactly the domains you called the meeting for: strategy, planning, and using information under pressure.

Continue reading on my blog because it's too long for here. https://blog.mikebowler.ca/2026/07/03/co2-and-decision-making/

So #EXIF (metadata for images and other media) defines fields for ImageDescription and UserComment (https://timestampcamera.net/photo-guides/exif-tag-reference), both of which could theoretically contain image Alt Text. I wonder if any social media apps (clients for Mastodon of other #ActivityPub or #ATProto services, for example) read and use Alt Text from EXIF on upload, or preserve the metadata in the file if you re-save it. Seems like a relatively obvious and useful feature.
#Accessibility #AltText

RE: https://fosstodon.org/@jimsalter/116851027584816648

OK, so some of these are excellent terms, but they are not traits *exclusively* related to ADHD. Also, it's worth clarifying that (8) is *not* what object permanence means. Object permanence is the understanding (which we gain as toddlers) that things *exist* even if we can't see them. *Forgetting* that something exists because you can't see it is different from not *knowing*. This is perhaps better described as "out of sight, out of mind".

See this How To ADHD video for an explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yE6ePVPvVI&t=128s

Also, does anybody know the origin of this image or its text? The oldest post I can find for either text or image is from mid-June on Threads, but I seriously doubt that the original.

I humbly submit that there is only one way to learn things: the hard way.

I just found this badge on the floor outside a high school.

#Norwich #TheKidsAreAlright

Don't act like a TECHBRO
Choose OPT-IN!

We have a standalone licence for Microsoft Office 2019, primarily for Publisher, which our floor staff use to design the labels that they stick on wrapped pallets. A proper paid-for licence key. We installed it on a computer on the factory floor, with a local user, no Microsoft account. All planned carefully to protect against enshittification.

At some point, someone got socially engineered by Microsoft to sign into their Microsoft account on that computer. The licence got silently associated with that user.

So now when we need to reinstall Office 2019, and enter the licence key, it's rejected as having been already activated, and we are told to sign into the Microsoft account of that user to reactivate the licence.

That user has been dead for three years.

Microsoft is discontinuing Publisher this year in October, so our Office 365 subscription is of no use.

Meanwhile, companies who are happy to run warez versions of Office have no punishment at all.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/116829783351455241

The other assumption that's made is that latency is <10ms and there's no jitter.

I'm sick of UIs failing to load here in Australia

So, today I was called a "Luddite" because I don't like AI.

Call me what you want, but when it comes to folks losing their jobs, data centers sucking up our water and causing higher energy bills for people already struggling, LLMs being trained on stolen data, and so many other ethical issues, I won't budge or back down on how I feel.

I will proudly accept the Luddite label. I've been around for nearly 60 years and have had a pretty shitty go of it the past 5 or so years. You can't hurt my feelings.

#noai #fuckai

If you don't want your Mullvad fees going to fund neo-Nazis - or @mozilla VPN fees, which is rebranded Mullvad - cancel and get a refund immediately

that's whose "free speech" the official account is talking about here, and that's where your fees go to

EDIT: Mullvad has a 14 day refund policy. But the message below is a direct call to ask for a refund if you don't want to give money to Nazis.

If Mullvad refuse a refund, call your consumer protection agency. And reverse credit card charges on the basis of deceptive refund policy representations. It's not like you ever want to be a Mullvad customer again.

archive copy of Mullvad statement: https://web.archive.org/web/20260627172939/https://mastodon.online/@mullvadnet/116822244689326681