*On December 28th, I delivered a speech entitled "A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet" for 39C3, the 39th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, Germany. This is the transcript of that speech*:

https://archive.org/details/doctorow-39c3

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

1/

I don’t like to butt in on the moderation happenings on another instance, but since people on my instances are now getting involved, I feel I have to. Hachyderm’s mod team removed a post from one of their members, believing it to be incorrect information after it was reported to them as being incorrect information. The person whose post was removed got upset and that has caused a bit of a firestorm response. @quintessence has been trying to answer questions but I want to add some context as a fellow admin/moderator.

The first thing to know is that moderators are not perfect. We make mistakes. I make them all the time, as some of you will no doubt recognize. Like Quintessence with Hachyderm, when anything goes awry, moderation-wise, it is my job as admin to stand in front and take the heat from whatever went wrong. We DO. NOT. throw the mod team under the bus, assuming the moderators are acting in good faith.

The next thing to understand is that this is a thankless job. People get mad at us for taking action, for not taking action, for being too fast, for being too slow, for permitting something someone thinks should be blocked, and for blocking things someone thinks should be permitted. We see some awful shit. We get threats of harm. We get doxed. We get angry letters from lawyers.

We also don’t have a team of fact checkers at the ready. We generally process dozens of reports per day. We have to apply a reasonableness test to incoming reports and respond based on the rules and guidelines we’ve set for our community and then move on, and if we made a mistake, we go and fix it.

I would ask that y’all afford some grace and understanding to the Hachyderm team and to the admins and moderators of fediverse instances generally. We aren’t the enemy. We are trying our best to manage a community at a time of unprecedented levels of tornadic bullshit, fear, anger, and hate.

Peace.

using LaTeX is easy, all you need to know is that when Donald Knuth failed the Mark of Mastery Exam and lost his ability to wield a keyblade, his heart manifested that power into a new person: Tela Type

Tela had the power to wield the Fountain Keypen, which was mightier than any Keyblade.

However when Tela's best friend Roxe was consumed by darkness (creating the nobody Xerox and the heartless Bell), Tela fell into despair and lost her heart too, creating the nobody LaTeX and the heartless Metafont.

You first meet Metafont in *Kingdom Hearts e-ε: ligature drop descender*, although they aren't that important.

LaTeX first appears in *Kingdom Hearts π-ε : hbox overfull*, although at that point they're called TeX.

They only become LaTeX in *Kingdom Hearts Literate:coded* where they merge with their digital replica in a simulation of TAOCP and discover the χ-macro that was hidden inside themselves by king Mickey.

The knight was groggy and sore. Something smelled of lemons and charred meat.

"Oh, you're awake," squeaked a voice that was trying hard to be quiet.

"Whuzferhmm?" the knight mumbled, not even sure what she had been trying to ask.

"Well," the voice squeaked again, as if it understood, "It all went very well, you vanquished the evil Lord Plyp, and didn't lose your leg!"

The knight felt the limb being placed beside her and sighed in relief.

#TootFic #MicroFiction #Writing #TerylsTales #Fantasy

One of the most under-used features of Mastodon is audio. You can attach audio files to your posts, they can be in MP3, OGG, WAV, FLAC, AAC, M4A or 3GP formats. They can be any length, as long as the file size is under 40 megabytes (some servers may have even higher limits).

I've attached an example audio file to this post, you should be able to play it on most interfaces and apps.

(Music is "Modern Technology" by Mokka Music, used under Creative Commons Attribution licence)

#FediTips