Notices by Kate Morley (kate@fosstodon.org)

The beauty industry: Are you happy with your skin? Really? Have you thought about what it looks like to insects?

Today @Clare and I finally went to the @vagina_museum (it’s a long journey from Devon). We attended a poetry workshop on the theme of Queering Femininity, and it was a wonderful experience with a diverse and inclusive group of women and non-binary people.

One of the exercises was to write communal poems on the theme ‘When Is A Woman?’, with each person have a minute to add to each poem before passing it on. Here’s the one I started:

When I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation as a teenager, I thought Troi’s character was superfluous, always stating the obvious (“he seems agitated”, “you need to process these strong emotions”). Watching it again twenty-five years later I now realise the vital role she plays as a kind of interpreter, helping the male bridge crew deal with their lack of emotional intelligence.

@blausand I would never declare emotional intelligence to be an innately or exclusively female skill. It is, however, something that tends to be cultivated and praised in girls but discouraged in boys, who are often told that showing emotion (with a few exceptions, such as anger) makes them “feminine” or even “gay”. Considering this environment, it’s unsurprising that women often find themselves acting as emotional interpreters for men.

Happy #InternationalWomensDay from me and my mum, the woman who taught me that you shouldn’t let other people’s opinions affect how you feel about yourself. We had a lovely 10km walk, full of wildlife and deep conversations.

#Introduction (March 2025 edition)

Hi, I’m Kate. I’m a 41-year-old software developer based in the south-west of England. I’m best known for my National Grid: Live site at https://grid.iamkate.com.

I’m the Development Director at https://itseeze.com, where in 2007 I created a CMS that’s now used by thousands of sites across the UK and Ireland.

I’ve been in a relationship with @Clare since 2008, and we married in 2013. Same-sex marriage wasn’t legal yet, but we found a loophole: I’m trans.

If you’ve ever wondered just how nerdy I am: I just had a dream where I was on a train and an announcement said someone will be collecting names and ages and our cooperation is appreciated. When they got to me I said “Sorry to be awkward, but could you explain the lawful basis for processing this data under the GDPR?”. When they couldn’t, I refused to share it, and so did the passengers after me. Also, I was still in my nightie for the entire dream. Not all data protection heroes wear capes.

😭 (comic by https://linktr.ee/alienby)

The shamelessness of American tech companies warning against using the new Chinese chatbot because Chinese tech companies are so willing to share user data with an authoritarian government

Elon Musk could declare “I’m a nazi” in front of a televised rally and his apologists would claim we’d misheard and he’d actually said “I’m a nice guy”

I have far too many blogs bookmarked, so perhaps it’s time I finally downloaded an RSS reader. What would people here recommend I use on a MacBook?

In 2024, the carbon intensity of electricity in Britain fell to a record low of 125g CO2 per kilowatt-hour, a drop of 75% since 2012, as our last coal-fired power station closed and wind became our largest single power source. See the live data at https://grid.iamkate.com

In 2024, wind overtook gas to become Britain’s largest single source of electricity, in the same year that our last coal-fired power station closed. See the live data at https://grid.iamkate.com

@leaverou The issue is that people are using LLMs not as an idle conversation partner but as an authority. A human teacher, librarian, doctor, or news reader who was so often wrong certainly wouldn’t be worth listening to.

What’s going on with YouTube recently with excessively long unskippable adverts? I’ve just started playing a 3.5 hour video and it’s first showing me a 19 minute unskippable advert for Microsoft Azure. I’ve muted that tab and set myself a timer to come back when it’s done.

Accidentally writing social commentary in today’s #AdventOfCode:

British wind turbines averaged a record 22.41GW of power generation between 7:00pm and 7:30pm last night.

Additionally, energy exports exceeded gas-fired power generation between 1:30am and 6:00am.

Live data can be seen on my site at https://grid.iamkate.com.

I’m tempted to create a Mastodon-compatible ActivityPub implementation optimised for single-user instances and call it Solenodon

I often see people here discussing the importance of forgiving our past selves for taking so long to realise who we really are. But forgiveness implies blame — that there’s something to forgive.

I believe gratitude is more powerful, and more cathartic, than forgiveness. I say to my past self:

Thank you for all you endured for so many years to keep me safe. Thank you for sacrificing yourself so that I could exist. I’ll make it worth it. I’ll make you proud.

Yes, I hyphenate “e-mail”, and I will continue to do so until the day I die