My neighbor is having a big voting party - a potluck dinner wherein I don't think folks actually vote, but everyone goes over the voter booklet we got from the county. I'm super happy they're doing it but also I'm too anti-social to go.

"The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media" by Jeff Bezos

(the irony just in the headline + byline is so strong it's like one of those sour candies I ate on a dare that made my salivary glands eject from my face)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/

Huh, Nintendo cancelling Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp as a mobile game-as-a-service such that it just becomes a mobile game-that-you-buy seems pretty cool...?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBwJdX8fnfQ

Average night of couch computing with Cheddars and Catsby #cats

Brain entering toddler time wherein I really should go to bed but don't wanna

I think my cat wants me to go to bed, he's probably got the right idea

A thing I don’t want to hear from my news sources: “wow has it been a fun, wild, and exciting election season” - like GTFOH

@librenews Ooh, I'll have to check that out!

Oh no, the tiktok algorithm has started targeting me with ads to buy cardigans featuring cryptids. It's becoming too intelligent

@muffinista This server has been a fediverse institution for far longer than anyone could have expected. Thank you for running it all this time! :blobsalute:

@terry @kissane I would love to work at, like, a "lifestyle business" or co-op where I just make a good wage to keep things truckin' along. No growth hacks, no hockey sticks, no 10xes. Just maintenance and steady incremental improvements

@abetterjulie I'm bouncing between like all the critter ones

Whenever I see the word "dropshipping" I think I'm reading "dropshitting"

Steve Bannon's out of prison, I guess. How many popped collars is he up to, these days?

did they even let Steve Bannon have multiple collared shirts in prison?

@ubernostrum Really wish there was an easier alternative between that or, say, taking on VC funding from cryptocurrency boosters

Thinking about botsin.space heading for the sunset - it would probably make a lot of sense to run something like that atop not-Mastodon.

Maybe GoToSocial or Hollo or even snac. Headless is good.

At one point, I had some activitypub bots running on a few tiny AWS Lambda functions. That barely cost a few bucks over the course of a year.

Also embrace ephemerality, delete posts and media older than 30 or 180 days - especially for hourly-posting bots.

@wohali Hmm, misplaced the fedi post, but blog post over here https://muffinlabs.com/posts/2024/10/29/10-29-rip-botsin-space/

That said, I'm not offering to dive on that grenade, it sounds kind of thankless. 😅 But, botmakers might want to explore something like that for themselves?

There is a little finchy bird who has taken exception with a corgy toy in my office window? Cosmo is fascinated

@cinebox Well, the challenge there would be handling the incoming POSTs for follow requests, at least. Could deliver the outgoing messages on a schedule though

@skotchygut Yeah, running a Mastodon server since 2017 with bots chattering away regularly kinda adds up

Very fierce little guy, flashing his ruby feathers at me when I came to the window

My phone says this is a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, in fact

@maddiefuzz @astrid en garde! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXN4cgERfbM

@rc2014 You should have done this on your space station

Folks shocked by anything that happens on Elon Musk's X were never regular callers to small-town dial-up BBSes in the 1980s run by capricious teenagers and it shows

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/29/elon-musk-x-republican-democrat-twitter-election/

I even remember a few folks calling some of my local BBSes back in the 80s responding with great umbrage about "the public square" whenever 14-year-old sysop Timothy edited their posts in the Debate subforum to say "we love our great lord Timothy"

I mean seriously, what do you expect from a BBS run by "Dark Gothic MAGA Elon"? The only difference is in scale, really

Now I have half-a-mind to doodle an ANSI art BBS ad for Dark Gothic MAGA Elon's X BBS

edit: I asked chatgpt for this monstrosity, because I'm super lazy (LOL @ Dark Gnathic Melon)

As far as I'm concerned, this is the official product branding for x-dot-com now

Finished the Metaphor: Refantazio demo last night. Now I'm wondering if I should buy it or just actually finish Persona 5 Royal first 😅