Jen 🏳️⚧️What are folks using for newsletter service these days? Buttondown has been slowly, grindingly enshitifiying for the past few quarters.
Dare I configure exim to do the job?
The Fulcrum (backup)The Programmer’s Fulcrum: 27 February, 2026
Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum.
It’s your weekly review of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Fediverse development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism. We aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.
IMHO, the best way to do […]
https://newsletter.mobileatom.net/the-programmers-fulcrum-27-february-2026/ #ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #bluesky #Buttondown #Codeberg #CSS #Emissary #FAIR #fediverse #Ghost #GoToSocial #Gutenberg #Holos #HTML #HTMX #javascript #Linux #Mastodon #Nextcloud #OMN #OrganicMaps #PixelFed #Tuta #WordPress #XMPP #xWiki
HollieMassive thanks to @buttondown for the best customer service ever!
There was a burp with one of my blog posts, where, probably thanks to my botching the publication date, it didn't get picked up by my newsletter. I have a handful of family and friends who don't use RSS and rely on the RSS-to-Email function I get from Buttondown.
When we realized the problem, I could fix the date in future posts, but there seemed to be no way to get my Buttondown account to pick up that one older post and send it out. So some very nice employee named Justin literally coded that option! Probably on a Friday night since I got email about it this morning! So bonkers kind, thank you so much! ❤️
Nicholas A. FerrellNewsletters and Email Clipping
Buttondown, which powers The Newsletter Leaf Journal, published an informative post explaining how some email hosts clip emails that reach a certain size. It varies based on email provider. Several email apps, like Outlook, Apple Mail, and Proton, won't constrain your emails beyond the limits set by SMTP. Others do, though. Gmail cuts a received email short once it hits 102kb in size (not counting attachments). That tends to work out to around 17,000 words of plain text, or as low as 7,000 […]https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/newsletters-and-email-clipping/
Footnotes in Buttondown
I mailed the 264th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal earlier today. I included 21 links from around the web (the usual). I had one saved link (see how I save links) noting the unfortunate consequences of putting a request for a Court to take one action or another in a footnote. I decided to take that as a challenge and use many footnotes in my newsletter (I wrote the footnotes in markdown by the way). While I do not think I will do the same thing in Newsletter Leaf Journal 265 next week, […]https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/footnotes-in-buttondown-01-24-26/
Alejandro BaezI haven't seen many users yet on #PlaneScale for #postgres. Nice of #buttondown trying things for the rest of us. 😅
For migrations like this, spinning up a read replica is key. Use it to do what you need. Primary then gets no impact while migrating.
https://buttondown.com/blog/2026-01-14-how-we-migrated-our-database-to-planetscale
The Programmer’s Fulcrum: 02 January, 2026
Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum. FYI, this is our first one of 100% TPF curation.
It’s your weekly review of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Fediverse development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism. We aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week.
IMHO, the best way to do that is to use […]
https://newsletter.mobileatom.net/the-programmers-fulcrum-02-january-2026/ #ActivityPub #ATProto #Bonfire #Buttondown #Codeberg #CSS #DarkTable #ddev #Decidim #docker #DrupalCMS #eOS #fediverse #Ghost #GIMP #GravCMS #Holos #HTML #HTMX #Inkscape #javascript #Joplin #Kdenlive #Krita #Mastodon #mBin #OMN #OpenProject #PeerTube #PostmarketOS #Scribus #SelfHosting #Twig #WordPress #xWiki #Zettlr #ZorinOS
https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/buttondown-canonical-urls-11-29-25/
I mentioned in my previous post that I could not send our regular weekly newsletter due to a formatting issue in Buttondown. Fortunately, my support request was answered quickly. It turned out that I had an extraneous tag in the header (it had not caused any issues before this week). I sent the email. In so doing, I learned something interesting about Buttondown. Two reasons I like Buttondown is because it has a full searchable archive and an RSS feed. That is, it functions like a blog which supports my making Newsletter Leaf Journal its own publication. For today’s email, I set NLJ copy as the canonical URL since I published that before sending the email. To my surprise, I learned that when you set an external link as the canonical, the archive link for the newsletter takes you to the original instead of the Buttondown version (I assumed that the Buttondown archive version would be accessable but with the canonical tag pointing search engines to the original).
https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-mail-your-newsletter-11-29-25/
I use Buttondown to host my weekly newsletter, wherein I share links from this site and The New Leaf Journal as well as 21 links from around the web and other news and notes. I had finished drafting my newsletter. Unfortunately, Buttondown is producing garbled formatting that I would not want to put in anyone’s mailbox. I sent an email to support. In the meantime I published the newsletter on NLJ. Buttondown allows for setting canonical links, so it will not be an issue once I can finally mail the newsletter to our regular subscribers and newsletter followers.
Battalion 👊🗡️⛓️💥Destroying Autocracy – November 27, 2025
Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.
It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.
The Programmer’s Fulcrum is the future (and smaller) home for a fusion of Symfony Station and Battalion. Its tagline is Devs Defending Democracy, Developing the OMN.
You can sign up now and for 2025 get an email with links to each week’s Symfony Station Communiqué and Battalion “Destroying Autocracy” post along with their featured articles. And you’ll be set with TPF after the fusing in January.
We are posting on the Fediverse now at @thefulcrum @thefulcrum.dev and original website content will start in 2026.
Featured Item(s)
The Atlantic writes:
Over the weekend, Elon Musk’s X rolled out a feature that had the immediate result of sowing maximum chaos. The update, called “About This Account,” allows people to click on the profile of an X user and see such information as: which country the account was created in, where its user is currently based, and how many times the username has been changed.
Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, said the feature was “an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square.” Roughly four hours later, with the update in the wild, Bier sent another post: “I need a drink.”
Almost immediately, “About This Account” stated that many prominent and prolific pro-MAGA accounts, which signaled that they were run by “patriotic” Americans, were based in countries such as Nigeria, Russia, India, and Thailand.
@MAGANationX, an account with almost 400,000 followers and whose bio says it is a “Patriot Voice for We The People,” is based in “Eastern Europe (Non-EU),” according to the feature, and has changed its username five times since the account was made, last year.
On X and Bluesky, users dredged up countless examples of fake or misleading rage-baiting accounts posting aggressive culture-war takes to large audiences. An account called “Maga Nadine” claims to be living in and posting from the United States but is, according to X, based in Morocco. An “America First” account with 67,000 followers is apparently based in Bangladesh. Poetically, the X handle @American is based in Pakistan, according to the feature.
Elon Musk’s Worthless, Poisoned Hall of Mirrors
Just FYI, December 25th will be the day I stop exploring the stupidity of our current timeline and the last Destroying Autocracy post. Again, see the notes above about The Fulcrum.
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery
EuroNews reports:
Life after chatbots: Meet the ‘AI vegans’ refusing to accept a virtual reality
Kagi is:
Introducing SlopStop: Community-driven AI slop detection in Kagi Search
Fucking awesome if you use Macs.
TechPolicy Press reports:
Why Civil Society Is Sounding the Alarm on the EU’s Omnibus Rollback
The Guardian reports:
European parliament calls for social media ban on under-16s
The Free Software Foundation Europe shares:
Germany Stack: Only Free Software Enables Digital Sovereignty
Wikimedia announces:
Unifying our mobile and desktop domains
Decidim reviews:
Decidim Fest 2025: Collective energy, digital sovereignty and a common roadmap
The Conversation reports:
Mullvad reports:
An important victory – but we still need to stop Chat Control.
Ploum says:
Fiona Fokus says:
I don’t care how well your “AI” works
Abso-fucking-lutely.
It’s Foss has:
Self-Hosting is Rising and Linux Users are Leading This Revolution
CNBC reports;
Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it’s costing the economy
Neutral
The Guardian asks:
Has Britain become an economic colony?
England always makes sure to ape the shitty parts of America.
W3C shares:
Preventing Abuse of Digital Credentials
Ben Werdmuller covers:
The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back
Heise reports:
Analysis of the Digital Sovereignty Summit: Open Source Gets Scolded
We Are Solomon reports:
Hungry for data: Inside Europol’s secretive AI program
The Intercept reports:
The FBI wants to use Surveillance Drones with Facial Recognition Technology
How Corporate Partnerships Powered University Surveillance of Palestine Protests
The Counter Offensive reports:
Witkoff was secretly giving Russians advice
Pariah States
The Register reports:
CISA warns spyware crews are breaking into Signal and WhatsApp accounts
DarkReading reports:
DPRK’s FlexibleFerret Tightens macOS Grip
Big Media
The Columbia Journalism Review reports:
Could Public Skepticism of the Press Actually Be Good for Democracy?
It could since most Big Media is owned by right-wing c^nts.
ProPublica shares:
ProPublica’s May-August 2025 Impact Report: Independent Investigations That Spur Change
Big Tech
Sage Journals reports:
Renée DiResta reports:
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a MAGA influencer… in Lagos
The Daily Beast reports:
Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls
404 Media reports:
America’s Polarization Has Become the World’s Side Hustle
The Register reports:
Meta knows how bad its sites are for kids, say lawyers
MM+M reports:
What healthcare marketers need to know about Meta’s censoring of abortion ads
The Markup reports:
How American Big Tech guards the profits it extracts around the world
Tuta reports:
Google wants to kill Android freedom: Say Goodbye to installing independent apps
Cybersecurity/Privacy
BleepingComputer reports:
Cox Enterprises discloses Oracle E-Business Suite data breach
Hmm, cable companies are literally shit at everything.
Code beautifiers expose credentials from banks, govt, tech orgs
Malicious LLMs empower inexperienced hackers with advanced tools
DarkReading reports:
Infamous Shai-hulud Worm Resurfaces From the Depths
The Register reports:
FCC guts post-Salt Typhoon telco rules despite ongoing espionage risk
GrapheneOS bails on OVHcloud over France’s privacy stance
Fediverse
Connected Places shares:
Mastodon announces:
Mastodon Joins Forces with WE AID
Bonfire has:
What is Bonfire? Plural by design.
Buttondown has:
Making social networking more like email
Terence Eden has:
Now witness the power of this fully operational Fediverse!
Ghost has:
RadWeb Hosting shares:
How to Host Your Own Mastodon Server on a VPS (5 Minute Quick-Start Guide)
How to Install Pleroma on Ubuntu VPS (5 Minute Quick-Start Guide)
NodeBB announces:
NodeBB v4.7.0 — category boost fixes, remote media/emoji in chats, and more!
Slightly Decentralized Social Media
Connected Places has:
Internet Exchange reports:
‘Composable Moderation’ May Protect Bluesky from Political Pressure
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS. Or even our future home in 2026, if you want a head start.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse
#ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bonfire #Buttondown #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Ghost #Mastodon #NodeBB #Pleroma #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism
