We finally put up the Christmas tree! Not finished decorating, so not posting a full picture, but here are the Mastodon baubles my wife made, in their rightful place 😊

#Felting #Mastodon #Christmas

Just remember:

#instagram #facebook #twitter #x #bluesky #coso #tribal #mastodon #photos #videos #socialmedia #fiction #fake #fakelife #real #reallife

Well, that was a first. No child has ever asked me if I wanted a trick? But one just did.

What have you got in mind, I asked? “I can do a backflip,” says the 8 year Ghost Buster. Fearing liability, I thanked him, but declined. He did one out by the mailbox anyway. It was pretty well executed too.

Pardon the intrusion. Many thanks to those people who donate to support the fediverse instance(s) you use. Nearly all fediverse instances are free to join and use, but they are not free to run. Most instance operators donate tremendous personal time and money because we believe in a better, more privacy conscious social media and we love the growing community that exists here.

These are tough financial times for many. I believe it is important for people going through rough times to have an access to this social outlet. If you are in a position to do so, please consider setting up a monthly donation to support your instance. You can usually find information on how to do so on the About page of your instance. For example, https://infosec.exchange/about. In my experience, most donors contribute between $5 and $20 per month, with some less and some more.

The fediverse doesn’t sell your data or monetize your social activities, which is how nearly all other commercial social networks pay their bills. We generally are dependent on donations from ourselves and from the people using the instance.

For Infosec.exchange, the bills are about $3000US per month, between server rentals, storage providers, and content delivery services. (If you’re curious, that’s $2k to Hetzner for servers, $300 to Wasabi and Backblaze for storage and backups, and $400-$700 for Bunny and Fastly - and this includes all the various mastodon, peertube, pixelfed, lemmy, bookwyrm, firefish, and other servers). I am fortunate that our donations usually come close to covering the bills. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes less. That’s not the case for many instances, though.

Again, donating is voluntary and not required and there is zero problems with those who can’t afford it. At the same time, donations keep this thing called the fediverse alive, and without them, we won’t go far.

I sincerely appreciate being a part of this community and hope you have a great October.