The following hashtags are trending across South African Mastodon instances:
#goodfriday
#scabpharmacy
#emacs
#gnus
#emailclient
#softwarephilosophy
#techradicalism
#peaceandstrength
#communitycare
#bible
Based on recent posts made by non-automated accounts. Posts with more boosts, favourites, and replies are weighted higher.
> ActivityPub has no notion of 'Title' so mastodon posts will all
> appear in the summary as just the date and time, no hint what it
> says until you click it.
If you use gnus, you can do something about this. See below.
> The second point is interface. For me it was trying to use #Emacs
> #Gnus to read early Fediverse, and it wasn't feasible.
It is feasible, just. If you're willing to hack a little, check out my blog post:
https://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucecesf/blog/20250812.html
I have an update to one of the functions described there which I will blog about soon (hopefully) but contact me should you wish to see the update sooner.
The following hashtags are trending across South African Mastodon instances:
#goodfriday
#peaceandstrength
#scabpharmacy
#communitycare
#dreamed
#emacs
#gnus
#emailclient
#softwarephilosophy
#techradicalism
Based on recent posts made by non-automated accounts. Posts with more boosts, favourites, and replies are weighted higher.
Gnus: Why I consider my email client a life form
Gnus is a newsreader from 1987. It runs in Emacs. No buttons, no animations—just group overview, summary, and article buffer.
It's ugly. Complicated. Overpowered. And the best program I've ever used.
The learning curve is brutal. Thousands of pages of docs. Countless keybindings. You'll fail at first—IMAP won't show anything, authinfo will ignore you.
That's normal. The steep curve isn't a bug. It filters those who truly want it from those who just want an email client.
Why use a 1987 newsreader for email? Because everything is "news" to Gnus. IMAP folders = newsgroups. RSS feeds = newsgroups. Archives = newsgroups.
No other program needed. No sync. No detours. Just Gnus.
But the real answer? Control. Every aspect. Every color. Every keybinding. Every thread.
We live in a world of simplification—apps that tell you what to read, filters that decide what matters. Gnus refuses all of that. It shows you everything. You decide.
Gnus is radical. Not politically—but because it refuses modern logic:
"Make it easy" → "Learn it"
"Be efficient" → "Be thorough"
"Follow best practices" → "Build your own"
I'm not writing this to convince anyone. I'm writing to capture a decision: I refuse to be managed. I read myself. I decide myself. I reply myself.
Gnus is my silver robe. Uncomfortable. Unmodern. Unsimple.
But it's mine.
`M-x gnus`
🔗 Link to full essay in German: https://mahamind7.blogspot.com/2026/04/gnus-oder-warum-ich-meinen-email-client.html
#Emacs #Gnus #EmailClient #SoftwarePhilosophy #TechRadicalism
two things come to mind:
- You are in a reader, you cannot interact with any of those accounts, only read them, perhaps search.
- ActivityPub has no notion of 'Title' so mastodon posts will all appear in the summary as just the date and time, no hint what it says until you click it.
The second point is interface. For me it was trying to use #Emacs #Gnus to read early Fediverse, and it wasn't feasible.
On the first point, the trouble I have with my Tumblr blog is the Nag-Wall: you can read my post, but as you follow a thread you are tossed out. My teledyn.tumblr.com/rss on the other hand, is fully public, but of course you cannot interact, but you can read it!
I was hoping surf-social was doing the opposite: turning RSS feeds into pseudo-Fediverse feeds to read via any app.
Ah, the lengths I go to just to be able to read everything (not just email) via Emacs gnus! 🤔
I subscribe to RSS feeds for individual mastodon (and others) users and a variety of hashtags (guess which ones? 😉). I have created a virtual gnus group which brings together articles from all my RSS groups (regex pattern "^nnrss:.*"). Now when I visit that virtual group, I get the benefits of *adaptive scoring* for the accounts and hashtags in the fediverse! Those toots I am most likely to be interested in appear first in the virtual group and those that I am least likely to be interested in reading are at the bottom with some already marked as read due to a low score.
So my **algorithm** for the fediverse is adaptive scoring as provided by gnus. 😀
Well y'all Android users, I've failed you. I've failed you all. Spectacularly.
I have selfishly decided to just get my Gmail working with Emacs Gnus using an app specific password instead of working on Fair Mail. I'm not sorry. However, I am sorry that I'm not sorry.
Mastodon Trends South Africa
éric 🚲 🇪🇺 
tusharhero
mahamind
teledyn ð“‚€
Omar AntolÃn
YankeeDoodleAndy
Devin Prater :blind: