Look, I know lots of what is going on is a nightmare now, but let's not forget another weapon we have: ridicule, mocking, and humor.

Today, in a post that can only be described as deranged, Trump claimed the US military entered California, turned on some magical pumps, and started water flowing from the Pacific Northwest (and beyond!!) to southern California.
Facts?
1. There is no physical connection (pipeline, aqueduct, etc.) that brings Pacific Northwest water to California.
2. The US military has not "entered" California to conduct operations on California's water system.
3. What happened was a couple of pumps in the Central Valley Project, offline for a few days for completely routine maintenance, were turned back on.
4. This action had no, zero, nada effect on deliveries of water around the state. Indeed, the reservoirs statewide are fuller than normal for this time of year.

Hey everyone,

I’m micr0, the person behind Altbot, the open-source bot that helps generate alt-text for images, videos, and audio on the Fediverse. Right now, Altbot uses Google Gemini to generate the alt-text, but that means your data goes through Google’s servers and could be used for training their machine learning models.

To fix this and ensure total privacy, I’m looking to move Altbot to a local model that will run completely on my own hardware. This way, your data won’t be saved, shared, or used anywhere else—it’ll stay private and only temporarily be on my hardware.

It’s a big goal, but one that’s been on my mind since the very beginning. I’ve been talking about this shift for a while, and it’s time to make it happen. Plus, if I reach the goal, Altbot will be running on 48% renewable energy, which means less environmental impact and more sustainability.

To make this happen, I need to raise $1,800–$2,000 USD to buy server-grade hardware—things like GPUs for model processing, a solid motherboard, power supply, storage, and cooling. With this setup, I’ll be able to run Altbot privately, efficiently, and sustainably.

I’ve also posted a breakdown of the planned server specs and spending as a reply to this post if you’re curious about the details!

If this sounds like something you want to support, any help would be appreciated! Every little bit gets me closer to the goal. You can donate here: Ko-fi Link.

Thanks so much for supporting Altbot and helping make the Fediverse a better place!

It's interesting to me the scant #media attention this is getting (at least in the #USA)

Huge #protests in #Belgrade #Serbia

Reason: a train station collapse in November, 15 dead: #NoviSad, shoddy construction

The country is seething with disgust at long standing #corruption

#PrimeMinister #Vucecic just resigned

But the #protestors are aiming for #President #Vucic

Now #farmers are joining #students in their 24 hour #traffic #blockade

Keep your eyes on Serbia

https://apnews.com/article/serbia-protest-blockade-roof-collapse-cbb0998288519e0e64b5c2306e11ff0d

Time to rebuild my follower base from Twitter on Mastodon!

I’m Vidar, founder of Street Art Utopia, curating the most inspiring street art from around the world.

Every new follower who comments here will receive a high-quality street art photo as a thank-you reply! Feel free to request a specific theme for your photo!

The Onion bought Infowars. Not a drill. Not a drill.

https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/

I had to read this 3x to realize it wasn’t satire. #WompWomp

The Onion wins Alex Jones' Infowars in bankruptcy auction

The satirical newspaper plans to shutter Jones’ InfoWars and rebuild the website featuring well-known internet humor writers and content creators, according to a person with knowledge of the sale.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/onion-wins-alex-jones-infowars-bankruptcy-auction-rcna179936

Welcome to new people joining from 𝕏!

Remember, posts are called toots here, likes are called florps, retweeting is technically a cross-account posting exploit that they can't fix because we're using it, and our version of Grok is called Garfiald.

There's no algorithm here! Literally none. There is no computer code behind Mastodon. Each http response is typed out by hand by your server admin in real time. Sometimes this means you won't see replies from other servers, but that's ok, other servers are full of losers anyway.

People here make a point of using alt text — if you can't find an image you want to post, just post a picture of your cat and describe the correct image in the alt text. Nobody will notice, or at least nobody will mind.

The first thing you should do is make a pinned toot with your pronouns, political affiliation, and favourite Linux distribution. Cisgender people are welcome on Mastodon but aren't officially supported, so some features may not work properly.

But most importantly, have fun! Users found to be not having fun will be given a written warning in the first instance and banned if the behaviour continues.

No Words – #NoWords

https://muz4now.com/2024/no-words-nowords/

I follow Auschwitz museum and have for as long as they've been around. My family wasn't in Auschwitz, but they were in Buchenwald.

Edit: They weren't there because they were Jewish. They were there because they were gay.

Every once in a while they publish a photo of someone who looks very much like me.

And I remember: That COULD BE ME.

IT CAN BE YOU.

IT CAN BE ALL OF US IF WE DON'T TAKE THIS SHIT SERIOUSLY.