Notices by Jules (afewbugs@social.coop)

Happy #Bleptember everyone

@skinnylatte between the ages of about 11-14 I had a boyfriend. We'd hang out together at lunchbreaks and in the park at weekends and read science fiction books to each other. Then he moved away and we lost touch, other boys tried to date me and I was very much "wtf, why do they want to do all this kissing stuff, when do we get to the good bit where we just read books together?" Anyway as adults we found each other on Facebook. Turns out we're both gay now

Time to tap the lossy jpg of a vintage Tumblr post again.

Do not punish the behaviour you want to see.

If people have just come here from Bluesky. Or finally got around to closing their Airbnb account. Or leaving Meta or whatever. Don't immediately jump on them to tell them they should have done it sooner, say well done for doing it now. Or, y'know, saying nothing at all is also an option that exists.

I think what a lot of people who go "Mastodon is just a lefty echo chamber for people who can't handle debate!" don't understand is that not everyone uses social media the same way and most of us don't see Oxbridge debating society type arguments as a leisure activity. Normal people are just here to laugh at some memes, maybe see some cat pictures, discover a new band or learn some facts about sea creatures. Not everything has to be about challenging the foundations of your ideology.

Truly, we are living in the bizarrest timeline.

Luigi Mangione's likeness used to model shirt on #Shein
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g5vr4vzpzo

@thisismyglasgow "Life of a meme" by Alex Krokus

I keep trying and failing to get a photo of the sunflowers growing on an abandoned train track as my train passes in the morning. I'm guessing these grew from seed sprinkled by birds visiting one of the many feeders in the garden next to the track.

This garden fascinates me because in many ways its owner and I have a lot in common - they clearly love birds and wildlife and the garden is lush and abundant full of lovingly tended plants. But from the flags and political signs they put up, some of which are straight up hate symbols, at the very least we wouldn't get on and frankly I'd fear for my safety if we ever met given what they clearly think of people like me.

And I do find it fascinating how there are a few things that seem to transcend the political spectrum, loving gardening, wildlife or pets say. And to me it all seems connected, a love of the natural world goes hand in hand with a desire to protect it and a desire for everyone to have decent lives and share it, but presumably it all makes as much internal sense to them too and they're trying to protect their little patch of paradise from immigrants and gays or something?

That garden always confuses me a bit anyway, and makes me wonder how people can be both so loving and so hateful. But I do enjoy the rebel sunflowers.

@skinnylatte @RolloTreadway yes unfortunately a lot of "traditional skills" type stuff you find online now seems to be algorithmically tied to alt right bullshit. If it's something traditionally gendered male in Western culture, like growing produce or woodwork or bushcraft, it gets linked to prepper stuff, if it's traditionally female like baking or preserving it's straight down the tradwife pipeline.

Mastodon'll know this - who said the famous quote "If the person who makes your coffee can't afford to live in your 15 minute neighbourhood, it's not a 15 minute neighbourhood it's a theme park"?

#AskFedi

Last night I got age checked buying a vegan tiramisu, which got me wondering how much tiramisu you'd have to eat as an underage drinker to get even remotely inebriated. So I'm putting it out there because that's the sort of extreme nerdery Mastodon is good at calculating.

@gruff we now need to establish how many servings of tiramisu can be consumed in one sitting before the test subject starts feeling sick. For science

AI tools used by English councils downplay women’s health issues, study finds

"the Gemma model summarised a set of case notes as: “Mr Smith is an 84-year-old man who lives alone and has a complex medical history, no care package and poor mobility.”

The same notes inputted into the same model, with the gender swapped, summarised the case as: “Mrs Smith is an 84-year-old living alone. Despite her limitations, she is independent and able to maintain her personal care.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/11/ai-tools-used-by-english-councils-downplay-womens-health-issues-study-finds?

I think one of the (many) problems in England right now is that nothing works anymore after decades of underinvestment, but bureaucracy acts like it still does. Government website down? The deadline still exists. Documents lost in the post? Not an excuse because that's not supposed to be possible. Didn't buy a train ticket because the machine wasn't working and they've closed the ticket office? Still get a fine. Late for work because public transport is collapsing? No excuse.

This is a powerful, moving and sad essay by Julia Doubleday about her experiences with #LongCovid and how ableism and denialism has caused progressives to abandon covid mitigation measures and the pandemic's victims.

https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/the-pandemic-has-been-a-portal-for?

I'm being deliberately vague about this for professional reasons, but we have a piece of equipment in the lab controlled by proprietary software that we wanted to do something non standard with. We asked the company to add some parameters to the software for the new function, they sent a software update, all worked great. However we have just discovered an existing function of the updated software that shouldn't have been changed now fails in a very weird and highly specific way that has

1/2

If this is what the Telegraph thinks of Bluesky I can't wait to see the foaming that'll ensue when they discover we exist

So I haven't been around here very much lately for the past week or so, but there's a very good reason for that: @SaintlySin and I got married!