El microrrelato:

LA NOCHE ABANDONADA, REVISITADA

#relatos

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Portada del libro Microterrores XIII, publicado por la editorial Diversidad Literaria

To kind of summarize some of the recent #Bluesky drama. Yesterday Bluesky changed their Terms of Service to require binding arbitration. Users are unhappy, but there's nothing they can do about it because Bluesky is not decentralized and there is no place they can go. Today, Bluesky banned a user for wishing ill of J.K. Rowling for her anti-trans hate. Users are very unhappy, but there's nothing they can do about it because Bluesky is not decentralized and there is no place they can go.

Get it?

Oh! Light goes on. I completely miscategorized the book. It's adult romantasy, not youngling dystopia. This makes the gushing over man pecs more understandable, although it's also getting more genre predictable as we go. Will she fall for the handsome good boy or the steamy bad boy, oh, gee, I wonder which she'll choose.

ACOLLAR

   De cuello.
    1. 1. tr. Agr. Cobijar con tierra el pie de los árboles, y principalmente el tronco de las vides y otras plantas.
       Sin.:
          + arrendar, aporcar.
    2. 2. tr. Mar. Meter estopa en las costuras del buque.
    3. 3. tr. Mar. Halar de los acolladores.

Pluralistic: Bluesky creates the world's weirdest, hardest-to-understand binding arbitration clause (15 Aug 2025)

"These days, binding arbitration is everywhere, allowing corporations to proceed with total legal impunity. When a woman died of allergens in her Disney World meal (after being told it was allergen-free), Disney told her widower that he couldn't sue because he'd clicked through a binding arbitration waiver when he signed up for a free trial of the Disney Plus streaming service [...]"

Link : https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/15/dogs-breakfast/#by-clicking-this-you-agree-on-behalf-of-your-employer-to-release-me-from-all-obligations-and-waivers-arising-from-any-and-all-NON-NEGOTIATED-agreements

#bluesky #moderation #socialmedia #enshittification

the myth of the good tech giant

#clippy #unix_surrealism #microsoft #ai

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Microsoft clippy says: "If I knew how to steal and sell your data in '97, I would've done it."

Centro Colón, Madrid

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Futurist windows. Centro Colón, Madrid

BADIL

   Del lat. batillum.
    1. 1. m. Paleta de hierro o de otro metal, para mover y recoger la lumbre en las chimeneas y braseros.
       Sin.:
          + badila, hurgón, paleta, hurgonero.

"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."
-- Edvard Munch

Literally every good person I know who is working in tech actually wants to be doing something else like gardening or carpentry, says a lot about how much we've all fucked up this industry

Timely reminder ✌️

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Black and white photo of a bus stop under an overpass, where you can read on an advertisement display "Nationalism, teaches you to take pride in shit you haven't done & hate people you've never met"

Secret Panel HERE 😮 https://tapas.io/episode/2361115

I think this shows how @linuxfoundation is not necessarily on our side.

https://social.lfx.dev/@linuxfoundation/114993371357953940

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A screenshot of a Linux Foundation toot saying: "Data privacy rules like GDPR are fueling a climate of risk aversion, slowing open data progress."

Supporting “AI” in its current form is an inherently right wing political position. “AI” exists to further commodify and devalue labor. It’s anti-worker and facilitates the transfer of power to the capitalist class.

Debian 13 "trixie" is released with Ceratopsian by Elise Couper as its default theme, featured across wallpapers, installer, and login screens. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Ceratopsian #debian #debian13 #trixie #ReleasingDebianTrixie

MAJANO

   De or. desc.
    1. 1. m. Montón de cantos sueltos que se forma en las tierras de labor o en las encrucijadas y división de términos.
       Sin.:
          + almora, mureño.

CC: @gsuberland@chaos.social

Monocultures are bad; biodiversity is good.

So, the last time Tim Cook bribed Trump (with a $1M donation to his inauguration fund) the Apple tech bros kept telling us that was a personal donation from Cook, not from Apple the company.

What's their line of defense gonna be now that the bribe has a big ass Apple logo on it?

https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-trump-ceo-tim-cook-glass-corning

There should be a hyper-exclusive amusement park for billionaires built with all the same disregard for regulations and human safety they employ in their own pursuits

46 years ago today
"Bela Lugosi's Dead" is the debut single by English post-punk band Bauhaus, released on August 6, 1979 and is often considered the first gothic rock record

#punk #punkrock #postpunk #gothpunkrock #belalugosisdead #bauhaus #history #otd

CATACRESIS

   Del lat. catachrēsis, y este del gr. κατάχρησις katáchrēsis 'uso indebido'.
    1. 1. f. Ret. Designación de algo que carece de nombre especial por medio de una palabra empleada en un sentido metafórico, como en la hoja de la espada o una hoja de papel.
    2. 2. f. Ret. Metáfora de difícil comprensión propia del conceptismo y la poesía barroca, como en [el gigante] un monte era de miembros eminente.

And a subtle, beautiful reference to Mama Cass. Kudos!

@NanoRaptor If you don't know something, find someone who does and ask. It's not weakness.

@NanoRaptor Since you have no control over what others think about you, there’s no point in worrying about it.

CC: @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social

PALABRO

    1. 1. m. coloq. Palabra rara o mal dicha.
    2. 2. m. coloq. palabrota.
       Sin.:
          + palabrota, garabato, tapa, ajo.

—Vamos —dice al fin el hombre de las sienes plateadas.

La Bety y él cruzan el umbral. Dentro está muy oscuro. Bajan una escalera y ella da un traspiés que no llega a hacerla caer. Las paredes están totalmente cubiertas de carteles de conciertos.

A cada paso, la música de baile se va volviendo más y más ensordecedora.

Está en los dominios de Oleg Olégovich Tanareg. En el umbral no estaba escrito lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. El interior de La Basílica tiene tres pistas de baile, cada una a su nivel. Hay barandillas metálicas, pasarelas en ángulos improbables, grandes candelabros a diferentes alturas, jaulas con chicas bailando en bikini colgando de los negros muros. Un mar de gente baila en trance. Huele a desinfectante y a sudor. Unos enormes tubos como bocas exhalan chorros de aire frío. Un cartel publicitario de cerveza Totengarten, oblongo, enorme, parpadea en azul y magenta. El nitrógeno líquido flamea en fumarolas como fuegos fatuos.

Este pedazo de tierra olvidada es un exclave de la Rusia Blanca y bien podía estar a miles de kilómetros de esta ciudad o colgada de las nubes o sumergida en el mar interior porque su ubicación es ajena al tiempo y al espacio.

Cuatro tipos como hienas la rodean. Allí, delante de todo el mundo, la cachean con violencia y lascivia. Nadie se inmuta, el ritmo endiablado de la música bascula sobre sus cabezas, los cañones de luz se retuercen como faros desquiciados. La Bety alza las manos, saca del bolsillo la pistola con el índice y el pulgar y se la entrega a alguien.

Una mano firme le arrebata la bolsa.

Quizá esto es el final.

[...]

Debugging: the art of slowly realizing you're the problem.

*Has anyone ever actually played this, and is it a fun game

I was using mastodon before it was cool.

Narrator: that's currently.

BitTorrent never asks for age verification.

Icehouse - Electric Blue
Deleyaman - Electric Sky
Kraftwerk - Electric Café
OMD - Electricity
Anna von Hausswolff - The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra
Edgar Varese - Ionisation

Electronic - Getting Away With It (it's in the band name, but whatever)
Lightning Seeds - Pure (it's in the band name, but whatever)

Happy August!

Fediverse, have a great weekend!

[...] I’m in charge of feeding my sister-in-law’s cat. All of a sudden, he’s super affectionate with me and follows me everywhere.

@nazokiyoubinbou @DaveMasonDotMe If you think that the "focus should be on supporting users" before "keeping your website online at all", then I assure you, you *do not* totally get it.

Substack is terrible - but even people who know it don't want to leave the platform – a tale in 3 acts.

Act I

Tech journalist Taylor Lorenz published a scoop a few days ago, showing how "Substack sent a push alert promoting a Nazi blog" (if you don't want to give #Substack a click, here is an alt link https://archive.ph/FTjEH).

It was a terrific and disturbing piece - kudos to her.

Act II (plot twist)

People started pointing out that Lorenz herself is using Substack as the publishing platform for her blog - which she monetizes with subscriptions. So, very ballsy move on her part to criticize the platform that she relies on to make a living, but still, some people started pointing out the incongruity of this. What about her values? Why wouldn't she move her newsletter?

Lorenz was starting to get fed up with these comments and explained on Bluesky (alt link / snapshot if you don't want to give Bluesky a click: https://archive.ph/CePll)

" Them: Get off substack
Me: Ok I set up a Patreon. The features aren’t as good but I’m willing to take a hit and do a lot more time consuming work on the back end to make it work. Here’s where you can subscribe to support me. Once enough people hop over I’ll be able to make the jump
Them: *crickets* "

She followed up that post with the comment:

" A lot of people on here want to attack and punish creators (esp women and LGBTQ ppl) for being forced to rely on certain platforms to make a living, but aren’t actually willing to support those creators in a way that allows them to leave the platforms ur so critical of them being forced to rely on. "

Fair enough.

Act III (in which I insert myself)

I don't post on Bluesky anymore but I felt compelled to resuscitate my account to point out that Substack is not only terrible, but it's also very expensive and takes the BIGGEST cut out of all other newsletter platforms.

I wrote:

" With all due respect Taylor, moving away from Substack is the ethical choice and it also makes financial sense. The great Molly White compiled a detailed breakdown of how much money creators who rely on subscriptions could save... by switching over to other platforms. "

And I linked to Molly White's brilliant post: https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/114319870485786053

I also added a link to the article by @micahflee : "Not only is Substack right-wing broligarchy garbage, it's way more expensive than Ghost" https://micahflee.com/not-only-is-substack-right-wing-broligarchy-garbage-its-way-more-expensive-than-ghost/

Lorenz responded:

"Again, I am on Patreon and have had the option to receive my newsletter directly outside of Substack since day 1. Only 3 people have ever taken me up on this. By the way I cover Substack and the only reason I got the scoop I got it from being in the platform. Hence why I’ll always have an acct"

I just replied to her that #Ghost offers a free concierge migration service (https://ghost.org/concierge/) where she could move over all her paid subscribers... and I said that IMHO she could still use Substack Notes to share her articles if she moved elsewhere... but staying on Substack and giving them 10% of her earnings feels like an implicit endorsement.

I meant that in the most empathetic way. I can understand her struggles but she has 87,000 subscribers and if she wanted to move she could simply ask for help and I'm sure people would volunteer to set her up somewhere else. If she did so on the Fediverse she'd have a self-hosted account on a VPS in less than 24 hours.

Lest you think I want to "attack and publish creators (especially women)" like in Lorenz's words on Bluesky, well, I'm a woman who started self-hosting only 6 months ago and I now run my own Ghost blog which I manually installed. It's not that unattainable.

Maybe it's just me, but I believe that the tech we use sends an important message about our values and the causes we support. Everything is politics now. Including our tech stack.

#DigitalLiteracy #DigitalCoup #A16Z #Broligarchy

@inthehands Or, the "save government money" stuff was just a cover story, and the real aim of DOGE was exfiltrating all government data to feed Elon's AI. Which he accomplished in the first week.

For #InternationalTigerDay... "Tigerlillia Terribilis" — from Edward Lear’s Nonsense Botany (1871–77).

More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/edward-lears-nonsense-botany-1871-77 #InternationalTigerDay2022

@mwl

Meanwhile…

FreeBSD: You need a processor, preferably something made in the last two decades with 1GB of RAM (although more is better)

OpenBSD: You need a processor, preferably made sometime since the turn of the century and maybe 256MB of RAM (although more is better)

NetBSD: You've got a dead badger you found on the roadside and have attached it to a dodgy 220V power-source? Sure, we'll run on that.

CC: @h3artbl33d@exquisite.social

BATISCAFO

   Del fr. bathyscaphe, y este del gr. βαθύ bathý 'profundo' y σκάφος skáphos 'barco'.
    1. 1. m. Especie de embarcación sumergible preparada para resistir grandes presiones y destinada a explorar las profundidades del mar.
       Sin.:
          + submarino, sumergible.

I'm trying a compositor called Wio, i never used Plan9 but if this is how Rio works on Plan9 then i like it, keeping in mind that Wio doesn't implement all the features that Rio has. The most interesting thing about the design of Wio is that when you make a window by defult opens a terminal and in there you run your graphical program, so i'm thinking, wouldn't be neat that you could switch between the terminal and graphical preview, and and then came to my mind "why not allow to do that on the compositor it self" because sometimes happens that the compositor breaks and you are locked in the sence that you can't change to another tty.
Idk i think that would be neat.
#wayland #unix #plan9

How Gustave Moreau’s Mystical Paintings Defined the Symbolist Movement

Gustave Moreau was the defiant visionary whose mystical paintings shaped a groundbreaking new movement in France and beyond.

by Kelsey Spicuzza

https://www.thecollector.com/gustave-moreau-symbolist-movement/

Symbolism in literature at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/7864

#Books #Literature #Symbolism #Art_criticism

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L'Apparition (1876), watercolor, 105 x 72 cm., Musée d'Orsay by Gustave Moreau Gustave Moreau’s L'Apparition is a haunting and richly symbolic watercolor painting that vividly captures a moment from the biblical story of Salome. In this striking scene, Salome stands transfixed before the vision of the severed head of John the Baptist, which hovers, radiant and bleeding, in the air before her. Salome is adorned in elaborate, orientalized robes and jewelry that shimmer with color, light, and texture—an opulent reflection of her allure and the decadent atmosphere of Herod’s court. Her expression is one of awe and dread as she gazes upon the miraculous apparition. The head of John the Baptist floats above a luminous nimbus, glowing with supernatural intensity, contrasting with the dark, richly patterned architectural setting behind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Moreau#/media/File:The_Apparition,_Gustave_Moreau_1876.jpg

Escape from the Land of the Dead: On Leonora Carrington’s The Stone Door

"Magic and ideology are both practices of belief."

By Celia Bell

https://lithub.com/escape-from-the-land-of-the-dead-on-leonora-carringtons-the-stone-door/

#Books #Literature #literarycriticism #WomeninArt

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Leonora Carrington This evocative photograph captures Leonora Carrington, the British-born Surrealist artist and writer. Carrington appears poised and enigmatic, her expression calm but intense, often with piercing eyes that suggest her deep inner world. She has semi-long curly hair and wears a lacy midi-length blouse with a skirt (or black pants), her arms wrapped around one of her knees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Carrington#/media/File:Leonora_Carrington.jpg

Welp. All that lovely "AI" derailment aside, we now have an answer:

It is literally impossible for XScreenSaver to lock the screen under Wayland. Cannot be done. None of the extant, spottily-supported "protocols" will allow the screen to be locked while an Xwayland surface is visible.

Great job, everybody. Perfect, no notes.

Everything i draw and make here is fediverse-exclusive-in-the-public-domain. That means you can use my work for anything you desire without having to ask for permission!

If you enjoy my content or have some kind of use for it, please, consider supporting my work.

https://analognowhere.com/support

or visit the store:

https://analognowhere.redbubble.com

Thank you!

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Generation 7 color palette'd Girl with a laptop.

Mientras Cristóbal Montoro asfixiaba a los ayuntamientos y les exigía recortes, maniobraba para que las empresas de gas de la trama pagaran menos impuestos locales.

Os explico cómo varios ayuntamientos perdieron más de 10 millones de euros. https://www.elsaltodiario.com/cristobal-montoro/varios-ayuntamientos-perdieron-10-millones-euros-impuestos-locales-caso-montoro

I had a small VPS with small filesystem space, and I (temporarily) needed much more. I also had a Wireguard connection from this VPS to a server in my own home under my desk, slow but with plenty of disk space. My home connection was a standard ISP fibre, dynamic IP, but very stable in time. So, I used sshfs from the VPS to mount a folder in my home server. It was not very fast, but got the work done.

CC: @contaminase@bsd.cafe

"If you ever touched a computer, chances are you are already my victim"

CC: @FreeBSDFoundation@mastodon.social

Wait... What the freaking effing Fick? It's Friday, my dudes and dudettes!

Wheee! Where did that week go?

Aren't we supposed to slow down during the summer months?

Schrödinger's backups

CC: @stefano@fedihome.stefanomarinelli.it

Me: Sync is also not backup.

Great article, Stefano, as always.

"Do not worry, this is a free service"

sample time

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/07/18/make-your-own-backup-system-part-1-strategy-before-scripts/

has a page with all her posts concatenated together

CC: @alderwick@merveilles.town @anarodrigues@front-end.social

ERRABUNDO

   Del lat. errabundus.
    1. 1. adj. Que va de una parte a otra sin tener asiento fijo.
       Sin.:
          + errante, errático, vagabundo.

CC: @stefano@journal.bsd.cafe

CC: @stefano@journal.bsd.cafe

CC: @AntennaPod@fosstodon.org

#FediMeteo

Have a nice weekend!

PERMANENTE

   Del lat. permănens, -entis.
    1. 1. adj. Que permanece.
       Sin.:
          + constante, continuo, duradero, estable, perenne, incesante, fijo, ininterrumpido, persistente.
       Ant.:
          + pasajero.
    2. 2. adj. Sin limitación de tiempo. Se reunieron en sesión permanente.
    3. 3. adj. Dicho de una comisión: Que en el seno de una institución u organización asegura la continuidad de sus funciones. U. t. c. s. f.
    4. 4. f. Rizado artificial del cabello, que se mantiene mucho tiempo.
       Sin.:
          + rizado, moldeado, moldeador, peinado, tocado.

You own more than 75,000 books. Yes, they are yours! Come get them!

https://www.gutenberg.org/

#Ebooks #PublicDomain

Improbably Compatible #oldknees
This is one of ~140 comic strips that are in my new book 'Ew, It's Beautiful', available for preorder now! https://site.andrewsmcmeel.com/ew-its-beautiful-incentive

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Two crows are flying in front of a gray-blue sky. One says to the other "Do you think we're best friends in other universes too?" The second panel splits into a three by three grid of different reactions of "Um"s and "Well"s from the second crow, in a multiverse sort of way. The third panel is further split again by three, so there are nine by nine squares of the same two crows flying together, the only distinction between the squares is a different sky colour. In the fourth panel, the square are again divided by three so there are now 27 by 27 filling the panel. We can see now that there is a greater pattern emerging from the colours of each square, a pixelated form is starting to emerge. In the fifth panel, the many many squares of different universes is reminiscent of a painting using pointillism, which each dot of colour represent one of many thousands of realities. We can see now very clearly that the pixelated forms are the two crows, flying in front of a gray-blue sky. We return to the visual resolution as we saw in the first panel, as if no time has passed at all. The second crow responds "It doesn't seem likely".