Mx Amber Alex (she/it) 😷

The transsexual dyke your liberal columnists warned you about.

Part-time woman, full-time nuisance. May contain traces of neurodivergence. Cisn't. Now you say ‘pronouns in bio’ because you have no other jokes.

Anti-fascism. Intersectional & queer feminism. Prison abolition. Liberation for all. International solidarity. I've been around long enough to see every discourse several times over, so spare me the bullshit.

Thank fuck not American.

Moderator.
she/it
Speaks EN/DE
#nobot #noindex

Follow requests?: No nazis, COVID deniers, conspiracy nutjiobs
Age: >25
Special interest: Menswear (suits etc.), dress codes, ask me about clothes and regret it
Conflict resolution? CW request?: Send me a message and we'll sort it out. COVID deniers need not apply.

Public Key

npub1tx5mu9f7f5pclx5dt6klrzh0qsz2l84d2vy836mxtehdxcjnx7rstj3e5c

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs9n2d7z5ly6qu0n2x4at033thsgp90n6k4xzrcadn9umknvffn0pcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dswjfh3j

Publishing to

relay.primal.net

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1tx5mu9f7f5pclx5dt6klrzh0qsz2l84d2vy836mxtehdxcjnx7rstj3e5c

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-07-12 15:17:59 CEST

- reply

Ooookay… I used Okular (KDE document viewer) and now my *calculator* has been replaced by KCalc!
What's the deal with KDE software, upon being used once, trying to rewire the entire system towards the K suite? @npub1ncy…3x0q, what's happening here?
P.S: And yes, the terminal shortcut is now broken, since I uninstalled Konsole last time, so ctrl+alt+T is now trying to open a KDE program that doesn't exist.
P.P.S: When I say my calculator has been replaced, I specifically mean the calculator shortcut key **on my keyboard** now opens KCalc.

2026-06-30 14:08:35 CEST

Has anyone ever heard of a persistent fever after heat stroke or heat exhaustion?
I had one of the two on wednesday (hospital papers say heatstroke, unclear if it was severe enough for that) and heat exhaustion again on sunday and since, my head has been just boiling.
My body temperature is fine or even a little cold, the hospital cooled me down with plenty of cool IV fluid each time, but my circulation has been weak as fuck and my face has just been burning up.
Anyone any ideas, please?
#AskFedi

2026-06-08 09:13:09 CEST

- reply

> because they're getting to be cheaper than AI
This makes me sick 😬 sure, after threatening an entire field with redundancy and advertising "this machine can replace your expensive humans", wages drop… they got what they wanted, scared employees working for less than they deserve. I hate it.

2026-04-15 10:28:13 CEST

- reply

it isn't! Pretty much every multi-unit building I've ever lived in, and most I've visited, had a single shared room for laundry, from small houses with three or four apartments to big blocks with maybe fifty or hundred apartments.
Some of the latter basically had a built-in tenants-only laundromat, so instead of cramming the tenants' hundred washers and dryers in the basement, the company provided ones (and charged for the use, of course 🙄). Some tenants might still decide to keep a washer or dryer in their own apartments, so long as it doesn't lead to noise complaints.
But by and large, a shared laundry room is super common in Germany. Even building codes are such that it's not permitted to plan for residents having washer/dryer in their apartments due to noise pollution regulations.
(Slight tangent, but condos aren't just apartment buildings – they're apartment buildings *where each apartment is privately owned*.)

2026-04-01 18:51:49 CEST

- reply

as much as I enjoy anti-slop outrage:
[citation needed]

2025-09-27 10:12:34 CEST

- reply

where's the "I sleep with a shotgun in case my printer makes a noise" post when you need it

2025-09-08 01:04:11 CEST

- reply

And lastly, I've said it before:
The fediverse, right now, is where e-mail was 30 years ago. Federated, meaning, impossible to govern centrally. Node-to-node connections not run through a third party in between (1). Anyone can spin up a new node at will.
And just like e-mail, we are experiencing the same issues: spam, harassment, unenforceable rules.
Look at e-mail today. Virtually all moderation is automated. Entire IP blocks are being blocked based on algorithmic judgements. Self-hosting is nigh-impossible. Appeal is effectively impossible. There are no human decisions involved.
Is that where we want to be headed? Or, on the other hand, do we want to head for chaotic free-for-all PvP?
We have to make that choice now. When I started on the fediverse, back in '18 I believe, spam was a non-issue. But as the 'verse has grown in popularity, in numbers, in profile, it's become a target. We have hit a milestone, we are now relevant enough for spam and scam.
We are at a crossroads.
I would like more passive assistance. I don't want automatic moderation; we've all seen where that leads with Twitter. I want assistive systems that provide insights, that *inform* my decisions, rather than take them from me. Because at the current size of the network, purely manual moderation is simply not feasible any more.
I would like a software that gives me all the info I would otherwise have had to go digging for right away, so I can focus on the decisionmaking part.
I implore you, Eugen and the rest of the team, think about moderation while you still can, because at the rate spam etc. is ramping up at the moment, your human moderators are being outpaced rapidly.
Look at e-mail and learn. Please.
(1) internet infra notwithstanding, I mean no AP-specific facilitator is required between two instances (relays are optional)
#MastoMod

2025-09-08 00:58:20 CEST

- reply

Oh and P.S., here's another feature I believe would really improve Mastodon moderation a *lot*, that I've previously proposed:
Instance A has blocked instance B, so all posts B sends towards A are rejected.
I would like a tally of how many those are.
Instance A has not blocked instance C. Users at instance C boost posts from B, which C attempts to send to B's followers at A. These, too, are rejected.
I would like a tally of that too. Which instances try to send how many boosts from defederated instances to us.
Identify which instances are gateways into the nasty parts of the network. Close gaps in the blocklist. Identify un- or undermoderated instances.
That would be really valuable.
#MastoMod

2025-09-08 00:55:01 CEST

- reply

But hey, let's take this one at a time. Let's start with something simple. like "refetch user profile and posts at report time" and a button to do the same inside the mod report UI, how does that sound?
I *would* tag Eugen, but mastodon.social blocked me after I criticised their BDFL, so 🤷‍♀️
#MastoMod

2025-09-08 00:52:16 CEST

- reply

And take your FUCKING "read more and be forcibly yanked out of your timeline" shit off my fucking post.

2025-09-08 00:51:51 CEST

- reply

Because at the end of the day?
We *built* this fucking place. Us, moderators.
You've written the software. You've popularised the protocol. You got the fancy logos and the legally different Discord purple and the EU grants or whatever.
But we *built* the fucking atmosphere. You may have sent up the rocket, but we terraformed the planet. We water the seeds you so carelessly toss at us. Without us, the people who volunteer and sacrifice their free time, and at times, their mental health; who sign up to wade through interpersonal feuds, who read racist tirades, who swallow down swastikas and genocide fantasies, who do this job knowing any day it may be their turn to be hit in the face with CSAM that will haunt their nightmares… without us, this entire goddamn network would be uninhabitable.
And you take us for fucking granted.
You don't consult us when you introduce new "features". You shut your doors when we ask you to make our job easier. You don't waste a single thought about us when you chase endless growth.
Oh, the moderators, yeah, I guess those exist. I never noticed them, idk, I don't see any problems around here. I'm cozy on my flagship instance, I act like the weekly spam waves are just a bout of bad weather.
We, we fucking made this place one that you are welcome in. We are investing our time, our energy, our nerves, to maintain something we love, to nurse an atmosphere in which you can be at peace.
This is our fucking network. If we all quit at once, you would be so busy blocking spam and harassment, you couldn't even post your bullshit inspo stock photos.
Toss some good tools to your moderator, because at some point, when people burn out faster than new volunteers can sign up, you will learn the value of good moderation the hard way.
Fucking. LISTEN.
#MastoMod

2025-09-08 00:39:06 CEST

- reply

Because, right hand to god, I tell you what – half the time it takes to deal with the average ticket is spent on pointlessly inefficient procedures that could be avoided.
Like opening all ten reported posts in new tabs, on the original instance, and hoping you can see the context there, only to find out the instance is some *oma or *key derivative that won't show you fuck shit without logging in, followed by trying to open the surrounding replies on their authors' instances to get a complete picture.
Like opening the user's profile in the mod backend in a new tab to take a look at their bio, and then pressing "refresh" to fetch the profile anew because it hasn't been refetched since it was an empty profile two minutes after account creation, because for *some* godforsaken reason, profiles and posts aren't automatically re-fetched when they're reported (please, *please* do that. *Please.*)
I'm expected to drive a big rig here, but each time I clock in, I have to run horse reins from the cockpit to the front wheels because the company forgot to give me a steering wheel.
#MastoMod

2025-08-21 02:39:51 CEST

- reply

the article explains that beautifully: LLMs are trained on large bodies of professional writing, so they sound professional (which, tangent, is the whole fucking problem with them, sounding competent when they're just dice and dictionaries):
> Meta, for instance, torrented more than 80 terabytes of copyrighted books. Just straight-up pirated hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of books. And because em dashes are so useful to writers, books tend to include them. So the bots, programmed to copy the work their creators pirated, use them too.
> In other words, it’s not accurate to say that the use of em dashes in a text is a sign that the text is AI-generated. It’s more accurate to say that the prevalence of em dashes in AI-generated text is a sign of how reliant the AI companies are on the human writers they want to replace.

2025-02-18 11:50:16 CET

- reply

lmao yeah xD go to hell pants before actual go to hell pants

2025-02-14 12:59:28 CET

- reply

I'd go one step further: they're not "obeying in advance", they've finally got permission (as in "we'll let you", not legally watertight permission) to do what they've been itching to do for years.

2025-01-19 19:45:03 CET

- reply

I mean, Bluesky persecutes queer and feminist stuff as "mature" or "adult" and doesn't ban nazis, only limits their reach, was partially bought out by a crypto company and is headed by a crpyto grifter.
"holdout"? not sure.

2024-10-14 20:52:10 CEST

Plant people, I call upon your wisdom!
Is there any rules for which plants you can and can't water by drip feeding drip irrigation?
I keep forgetting to water my spider ivy (and it's getting pretty hard with my chronic fatigue). She has resisted all my accidental neglect for several years, thankfully, and when I heard of drip irrigation, I thought that might be a great workaround.
Would that work?

2024-09-03 00:15:21 CEST

- reply

I've spoken at length over my belief that the fediverse is at a size where it can't survive without some sort of automated or semi-automated moderation tools (https://eldritch.cafe/@amberage/tagged/MastoMod).
It's basically email: tons of providers (instances) that send messages to each other (posts, follows, etc), and there is no guaranteed standard of moderation for all of them. Malicious actors can spin up their own or abuse existing ones.
We've seen that in the recent spam waves, i.e. "kuroneko" and the weekly spam waves from mastodon.social.
That is, in the long run, more than volunteers can handle. So there needs to be some automated solution to detect and contain spam.
The API does not support that at present.
It has to.
#MastoMod #MastoDev

2024-09-03 00:12:23 CEST

- reply

Just give us some API endpoints and webhooks to automate moderation. We'll do the rest.
#MastoMod

2024-09-03 00:09:52 CEST

- reply

what it needs is ~10 full-time developers.
I'm not overly familiar with the usual salaries for that, but that's gonna run about 30k a month or more in salaries alone.
So, yknow… we don't.

2024-09-03 00:06:28 CEST

- reply

With every update I get closer to tagging Eugen with something like "GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND STOP MICROMANAGING AESTHETICS"

2024-09-03 00:04:39 CEST

- reply

You still can't automatically limit instances if tons of repetitive posts come from there, or flag new accounts for manual review if they post rapidly or spam follow requests or replies…
…but the "reports" section has a new icon and the radio buttons for the report reason don't have a background colour anymore!
ARE YOU FEELING SERVICED YET, FANS?
#MastoMod #MastoDev #FuckThisShit

2024-09-01 14:11:02 CEST

#Tailors of the fediverse! I have here a pair of trousers that I really like that is unfortunately massively too large for me.
The legs can stay as wide as they are, I don't mind that, but the waist has to be narrower.
By 16 cm (don't ask).
That's 8cm on each side of the centre back seam. It will leave enough room between the pockets, I measured (about 6cm). But.
Is that even doable, or will that absolutely butcher the proportions and fit of the trousers?
I don't mind the waist being much narrower than the legs (au contraire – the illusion of a slimmer waist is always welcome), but it would be unfortunate if i.e. the front of the trousers started pulling away in all directions weirdly.
And if that's too much, how much do you think I could take it in?
#Tailoring #Sewing

2024-08-15 09:58:11 CEST

- reply

Update: here's a picture. A friend of mine gets strong control lines (test validity, not test positivity) from kits from the same batch (we're talking thick, saturated, bright red), I get this. To the naked eye, the C-line is even fainter.
This happens across all amounts of sample fluid (from the sparsest three droplets you've ever seen to almost drowning the test in fluid), both nostrils, good and bad gag reflex days, et cetera. I can't find any factors that change it.
#COVID #AskFedi #RapidTests
https://eldritchcafe.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/112/964/966/175/457/873/original/abea47f875b96313.jpg

2024-08-04 16:53:40 CEST

- reply

besser als wenn (mehr als vermutlich schon jetzt) LfV-Wissen direkt an Neonazis fließt, I guess.... alles scheisze

2024-07-02 20:26:39 CEST

- reply

https://eldritchcafe.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/112/718/299/792/048/084/original/f7156a6be98a8ec6.jpg