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   rdm (rdm@aus.social)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Jun-2026 00:08:49 JST rdm

   I looked across the tent at a perfect copy of myself. Well, not quite perfect. They are still getting the hang of English.

   I should back up a bit.

   Just before sunset a week ago, I screwed up. I'd been driving too long, and only saw the wombat on the highway at the last moment. I swerved and lost control.

   When I came to, my car was totalled, and well out of sight of the highway, behind a low rise on the plain. I struggled out of the wreck in the dark, but had enough sense not to try wandering around. There are all sorts of sinkholes around here, and if I fell down one of them, I was a goner.

   As I stood next to the remains of my car, I saw what I thought was a helicopter coming my way. I waved and shouted, but then I noticed how erratically it was flying. The lights seemed a bit off, too. I was pretty sure helicopters didn't have purple lights. So maybe it was someone's drone?

   All of that went out the window, when it turned towards me, and then crashed into the ground next to my wrecked car.

   What I was looking at was an actual flying saucer. About twice the size of my car. And it looked about as wrecked as my car was.

   After a couple of moments, a small port opened, and a gush of purple liquid poured out, followed by a splat of something grey.

   I just stared. What I didn't notice was the grey blob in the purple puddle extruding a tendril towards me. At least until it touched my leg.

   I probably jumped five metres straight up at that. And about five backwards.

   What followed was the grey blob contracting back into itself, and then changing. Into a perfect copy of me.

   This was one shock too many, and I fainted.

   When I came to, the copy was crouched next to me. Before I could move, it touched my forehead, and I was filled with a sense of worry. And it was not mine. This I found a bit reassuring, and so I stopped myself from moving, and tried to ask what it was.

   It took a lot of back and forthing of mental images, but it's ship had hit an near-earth asteroid, and it had lost control. It wanted to know if it could be fixed.

   I didn't know. But, between the two of us, we might be able to get one vehicle sort of working. We thought about getting a lift, but there would be questions. Too many of them.

   Of course, it was now in the form of a human, so the first order was arranging food and water. Then it discovered it needed to sleep. And everything else.

   Some of its ship still worked - and it knew enough to work out how create food and water for us both. And it is learning English. Which is a bit easier than trading images.

   We've been here a week now.

   As I watch the copy of me, it wakes up. I watch my body stretch, and then it looks at me. "We fix car. Get bigger car. Take my ship to fixing place."
   "I don't know that we've got anywhere that can fix your ship."
   "Can't fix it here."
   "Can we fix the car?"
   "Easier than ship."

   I guess it has a point.

   #SF #SFF #SciFi #microfic #tootfic #microtfiction #IAmWriting

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   Randahl Fink (randahl@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 04-Apr-2026 15:17:30 JST Randahl Fink

   in reply to

   While it is true, that a large number of generals and officers have been fired during the first 15 months of Trump's term, this is not a one day mass firing event happening now.

   As shown, the story has been shared widely on Threads, Bluesky, and X.

   The story was shared as breaking news as early as April 3, and often uses the same graphics design while claiming to be from different sources.

   This design appears in many pro-kremlin fake news sites, and I suspect Putin's regime is behind it.

   2/2

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   Yukari Hafner :v_lesbian: (shinmera@mastodon.tymoon.eu)'s status on Thursday, 26-Feb-2026 23:30:39 JST Yukari Hafner :v_lesbian:

   So it looks like the #sbcl project is getting sloppified. Very, very saddening to see. It feels like something is slipping through my fingers, so I thought I should say something publicly.

   Evidently Christophe is not interested in shutting this crap down, and when I read his email about it, I pretty much gave up on saying something myself. His stance is hopelessly naïve, and this is only being shown now.

   As soon as you get these idiots a gap, they'll wedge it open, and it's already happened.

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   Sandra (sandra@idiomdrottning.org)'s status on Friday, 31-Jan-2025 09:43:04 JST Sandra

   I read “Indistractable” today. Since I’m already so long down the road, a lot of the practical advice was useless to me (“here’s how to use Facebook slightly less”) but the core message of how the opposite of distraction is setting and making goals matches with the trip I’ve been on lately. I’m finding that I need both: just cutting the screen without a clear plan of what to do instead doesn’t work, but neither does vice versa: I can have all the plans in the world but addiction to the shiny is a 🐝 and a half. By addressing both, I’m finally in a good place, at least for now.

   As for the book, I’d call it mid tier as far as applied psych productivity books go. While some of the lingo gets unbearable (“indistractable” is a great punny book title but he uses it throughout as an adjective with inconsistent meaning) and there are some red flags among the endorsing names, I’ve seen worse. Main disappointment is that I’d want it to go much further. Annihilate all silo accounts and dark patterns.

   But that it doesn’t is kind of a strength, too. It also addresses the internal struggle. You could have a perfect set up (probably better known as no phone) and still be a wreck addicted to novels and jigsaw puzzles. Sometimes we make our own distraction.

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   Wiktor Kwapisiewicz (wiktor@metacode.biz)'s status on Saturday, 18-Jan-2025 06:06:13 JST Wiktor Kwapisiewicz

   in reply to

   Just for the record: it’s still possible to get a free S/MIME cert nowadays e.g. https://www.actalis.com/s-mime-certificates — not affiliated, but checked it today and got a valid one, it’s still a bit of a hassle clicking through the forms there :-/

   If it would be more convenient I guess regular people wouldn’t mind it being centralized. The same way as domain TLS certificate authorities operate now.

   As for PGP, the current “schism” where GnuPG forked OpenPGP into their own, proprietary https://librepgp.org/ won’t help the interoperability, I’m afraid :(

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   John Carlos Baez (johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Nov-2024 21:28:58 JST John Carlos Baez

   These days reporters are interviewing me again about the Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project - because we're again facing the possibility that a Trump administration could get rid of the US government's climate data.

   From 2016 to 2018, our team backed up up 30 terabytes of US government databases on climate change and the environment, saving it from the threat of a government run by climate change deniers. 627 people contributed a total of $20,427 to our project on Kickstarter to pay for storage space and a server.

   That project is done now, with the data stored in a secret permanent location. But that data is old, and there's plenty more by now.

   As before, I'm hoping that the people at NOAA, NASA, etc. have quietly taken their own precautions. They're in a much better position to do it!

   I got interviewed for this New York Times article about the current situation:

   • Austyn Gaffney, How Trump's return could affect climate and weather data, New York Times, November 14, 2024. https://archive.is/y5Qb9

   For what we actually did, read this:

   https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/azimuth_backup_project/