Notices by VM (Vicky) Brasseur (vmbrasseur@social.vmbrasseur.com)

#AskFedi

What are we using as an alternate email client on iOS these days?

General client only, not specific to one email service provider.

No "AI inbox!" folderol. Or AI anything, tbh.

iOS only. This is for a specific phone.

Sending up the #AskFedi bat signal.

For those of you out there who meet all three of these criteria:

* left handed, and
* have handwriting that's more eccentric than usual (by your judgment), and
* have a Remarkable (any model)

What are your experiences with the device? Like? Hate? Collecting dust? Invaluable?

Enquiring minds want to know, ideally before the end of the week.

Boosts welcome! Advice beyond what's requested is not! Many thanks! Exclamation point!

RE: https://mastodon.social/@JMarkOckerbloom/117156875307018749

Listen to John. John is wise.

Last year I learned my childhood MMR vax had pretty much worn off. It was a post like that that led me to get that checked & my vax refreshed.

Measles is a horrible disease and can kill. Don't roll the dice. Ask you doctor to check your vax strength.

The @Codeberg team continues to take a principled stance to protect their community & reputation.

This week they banned cryptocurrency projects as well as projects that are predominantly written by LLMs:

• https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1254
• https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html

Huge respect to them for making the hard decisions.

#OpenSource #FOSS #FreeSoftware

"I am pleased to announce that Dark Horse Comics is willing to voluntarily recognize Dark Horse Workers United as a recognized collective bargaining representative under standards established by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Our representatives have reached out to the union’s attorney to initiate the appropriate next steps in this process."

https://www.darkhorse.com/newsfeed/statement-regarding-dark-horse-workers-united/

@evan Same! Which did you think would win? I figured the pretzels.

Well.

That's not at all an absolutely horrifying idea.

Nope.

(Headline: AI’s New Training Data: Your Old Work Slacks And Emails
Defunct startups are being liquidated for their Slack archives, Jira tickets, and email threads—operational exhaust that AI labs now treat as premium training data. )

https://archive.is/A0KWF

Do you have any fave body-positive fitness/health RSS feeds?

(RSS only, please)

#RSS #fitness #health #BodyPositive #BoostPlease

Do you feed your dog Raaw Energy dog food?

Stop ASAP and replace the food. The FDA has found the food is contaminated and the Raaw Energy company has not complied with a request to recall it.

https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2026/01/dog-food-company-refuses-to-recall-products-after-fda-finds-multiple-pathogens/

#DogsOfMastodon

Mozilla wants your input. Please provide it.

https://mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net/201

Here's mine.

#OpenSource #OpenWeb #Privacy #AI

@hannah This thread is 🔥, but where are all the women authors?? I now feel I've let my gender down by not having a freakazoid author severe author photo featuring my cats.

RIP Barbara Walker, deity in the pantheon of #knitting

https://pieceworkmagazine.com/honoring-a-knitting-legend-barbara-g-walker-in-her-own-words/

"Today, ProPublica is launching Rx Inspector, a first-of-its-kind database that provides answers to what the FDA won’t tell us: where our generics are coming from and the track records of the factories that made them. The information is harder to find than you may think."

https://www.propublica.org/article/rx-inspector-prescription-drug-lookup

#FiberArts festival email: "Please support small businesses! Here's a list of our vendors and sponsors!"

Me, thinking: "Nice! Let's check 'em out!"

And then more than half of the vendors' websites are Instagram. Which I can't see, because I don't have an account. 😔

We've allowed the internet to degrade so badly. I mourn for its wasted potential.

A Pratchett is releasing a new book in the Discworld universe this month!

https://bookshop.org/p/books/tiffany-aching-s-guide-to-being-a-witch-gabrielle-kent/c9c161a6d634c9a4?ean=9780063399907

#SFF

As a job hunter, this, by @anildash, hits home:

"People worry that not being seen as mindless, uncritical AI cheerleaders will be a career-limiting move in the current environment of enforced conformity within tech, especially as tech leaders are collaborating with the current regime to punish free speech, fire anyone who dissents, and embolden the wealthy tycoons at the top to make ever-more-extreme statements, often at the direct expense of some of their own workers."

https://www.anildash.com//2025/10/17/the-majority-ai-view/

Let's be clear here: The law is NOT to blame for cookie banners.

The blame lies with companies that would rather inconvenience you with a banner than respect your privacy by not collecting (and selling) your data..

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-cookie-law-messed-up-the-internet-brussels-sets-out-to-fix-it/?

“The American authorities have told us – this is the tea industry in its entirety – that if you’ve got tea from China and India in your tea, then its country of origin [is] China or India, and therefore those enormous tariffs apply,” he told the Financial Times.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/17/trumps-tariffs-have-hurt-tea-exports-to-the-us-says-fortnum-mason-boss

"The Pascaline was developed by Pascal at the age of 19 to assist his father, Etienne, who was then president of the Cour des Aides de Normandie (Board of Excise)…Blaise Pascal designed three types of calculating machines to simplify this process for his father: one for decimal calculations (additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions), one for accounting (monetary calculations), and one for the purpose of surveying (calculating distances)."

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/christies-auction-first-calculating-machine-blaise-pascal-1234751200/

"If I lay my head on the touchpad she _has_ to pet me, right?"

🙄 #CatsOfMastodon