I've been on Mastodon for about a week now, and here's my advice to new users:

This is not A CULT! #BeigeBless

The tendrils that are attaching themselves in key places are totally NORMAL, if you question them it will hurt more.

Don't anger the #Mosstodon folks, most of them are vengeful wizards.

Just hit the BOOST BUTTON, seriously what are you trying to prove here? You like toots, but you don't like like them?! Grow up, this isn't elementary school.

What are your favorite low-tech tools? I mean things you use regularly that you really appreciate, that aren't computers, tablets, phones, AirPods, etc.

For example, my Stanley thermos is perfectly crafted and I use it every day. And this Rotring 600 mechanical pencil might as well be part of my hand. Exquisite balance and weight, makes writing a joy.

Interested to hear your answers in the replies.

Thanks to a lazy press, too many people think Mastodon IS the Fediverse. It's just one microblogging software program running on independently owned servers that all support The ActivityPub Protocol.

TAPP is the tech allowing message federation between about 8 software programs that support it (including Mastodon). If you're using any of those programs, you're surfing the Fediverse via the TAPP network You're tapped-in.

TAPP may soon compete with BlueSky & other protocols.

Too many people are used to centralised social media and websites in general.

Mastodon is like email in the technical sense, but it's more like Minecraft. You can join a server, but you don't have a right to be there. You're asked to follow the rules. If you piss off the admin you'll probably get banned because they don't want you there. Getting banned from one server doesn't mean you can't join another.

That's the Internet. Welcome. Be gay. Have fun.

This is one of my favorite pictures. It feels like it was taken yesterday… but it was taken in a Paris public garden nearly a hundred years ago. Everything feels modern: the composition, the casualness, the daring clothes, haircuts, and accessories.

The colors are original: this is an #autochrome, using the first process for color #photography invented by the Lumière brothers in 1903.

The women are unknown, but I can't help wondering how they fared a few years later in nazi-occupied Paris.

Seeing Big Tech folks jump into the fediverse and – without so much as a “how do you do, fellow kids?” – roll up their sleeves to write the rules, dream up commercial services, and pontificate about how advertising should run on it. 👀

#fediverse #BigTech #corporateCapture #warning