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

nprofile1qqs9n2d7z5ly6qu0n2x4at033thsgp90n6k4xzrcadn9umknvffn0pcpqqqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds86rahn

Publishing to

nos.lol

relay.momostr.pink

nostr.wine

Author Public Key

npub1tx5mu9f7f5pclx5dt6klrzh0qsz2l84d2vy836mxtehdxcjnx7rstj3e5c

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Last Notes

2026-07-14 16:03:56 CEST

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(or confabulated personas that don't exist, as far as I can tell)

2026-07-14 16:01:29 CEST

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it seems all my online aliases are shared with people much more famous than me :/

2026-07-12 15:17:59 CEST

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Ooookay… I used Okular (KDE document viewer) and now my *calculator* has been replaced by KCalc!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.

2026-07-09 14:16:08 CEST

**Dringende Frage für einen Notfall im Familienkreis:**
Falls irgendjemand Tips hat, wie man mit gesicherter Diagnosis Magenlähmung (Gastroparese) an nen Arzt kommt der ne Ernährungssonde legt, haut raus.
KH versteht die Dringlichkeit nicht, der Patient verhungert seit Monaten weil er nichts essen kann, Ärzte denken es wären nur Schluckbeschwerden oder Essstörung (trotz, ich wiederhole, gesicherter Diagnose) und reden die komplexen Vorerkrankungen des Patienten klein. Notaufnahmenbesuche ohne Erfolg.
Massive Nährstoffmängel, rapider Gewichtsverlust ("ist doch schön, dass Sie abnehmen!"),, in dem Tempo wird er vor Ablauf des Sommers tödlich verhungern.
Wir sind bereit, deutschlandweit zu fahren.
#AskFedi #NEISvoid

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

2026-06-21 04:25:57 CEST

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The problem went away.

2026-06-21 04:06:55 CEST

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I have a rudimentary idea how to write a new custom keybind into dconf to bypass the whole shit and bind ctrl+alt+t to gnome-terminal again, but I'd rather not mess around in the guts without having found the cause for the indigestion, so to speak…

2026-06-21 04:01:39 CEST

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…copying org.gnome.Terminal.desktop to gnome.terminal.desktop did *not* fix it.

2026-06-21 04:00:49 CEST

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Funny enough though both the shortcut on my taskbar as well as the "open in Terminal" right-click *do* still work though

2026-06-21 04:00:11 CEST

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1) reinstalling gnome-terminal did precisely nothing
2) the dconf entry for "preferred applications" points to a gnome-terminal.desktop in /usr/share/applications that doesn't exist. an **org**.gnome.Terminal.desktop exists, though.
You can see where this is going, right?

2026-06-21 03:51:16 CEST

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LOL… since I assume Konsole initially was installed during my very short-lived trying out KDE and I never got around to removing KDE again, I went and did that… Konsole is gone indeed, but now the ctrl+alt+t shortcut is just dead, even though Terminal's settings confirm it is the default terminal and no shortcuts have changed.
Weird shit…

2026-06-21 03:13:25 CEST

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Terminal is still the default in "Preferred Applications"… wtf

2026-06-21 03:11:09 CEST

I'm not entirely sure what the fuck happened, but since this evening, ctrl+alt+t suddenly opens Konsole instead of Terminal?!
I don't recall changing anything about shortcuts or installing any new software?
#Linux #Mint #KDE

2026-06-08 09:13:09 CEST

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> 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

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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

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

2026-03-06 09:22:01 CET

RE: https://social.heise.de/@heiseonline/116177491755346314
Das sind also die Behörden, denen wir Mittel wie "Online-Durchsuchung", Staatstrojaner, in Wohnungen einbrechen um Viren zu installieren, Gesichtserkennung, usw. anvertrauen sollen?
#note1wed…0np2

2026-02-22 10:27:02 CET

Deutsche Bahn knowers! I remember a year or so ago there was a big outcry that the Deutsche Bahn shut off some API or other.
I used to use some thingy from Deutsche Bahn that had "bhftafel.exe" or something in its URL. Looked like it was from 1990 or something, beautiful web 1.0 design, but it could show me real-time delay info. Can't find it any more.
Did this whatever-shutdown kill that thing or am I too incompetent to find it?
#AskFedi

2026-02-21 17:22:28 CET

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(a band called "Level" with an album called "Level", you can imagine how ungoogleable they were)

2026-02-21 17:21:56 CET

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and until recently, one of my favourite nu metal bands, LeVeL, was basically a "everyone in this niche heard of them, nobody outside ever has, they put out one CD in 2005 and vanished" type deal. Couple years back they reformed though and went on Spotify and such.

2026-02-21 17:20:58 CET

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I got a rip of a folk rock CD from the early aughts, courtesy of some family member (forgot who). The band used to have a website, which has long gone offline, they have a singular Discogs entry, and aren't on any streaming platforms.
Pity, because the songs are bangers, too.

2026-01-18 14:23:15 CET

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and I'll lick the inside of my ashtray before I "ask" an "AI" anything

2026-01-18 14:22:44 CET

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my issue with LO is mostly that precise scaling and placement is a pain. I.e. I've duplicated a page in draw with identical charts, changed the data on one, and its size changed, its drawing area shifted slightl, I couldn't get two pages with similar diagrams that were in the same place. The key was automatically placed in weird spots, the labels on the axes were at different distances for the left and right Y-axes…
In short, it's fiddly and feels unprofessional (and the results themselves look very kindergarten too)

2026-01-18 13:47:24 CET

Is there any good alternative to using LibreOffice for making charts?
I basically just want the chart component of LO, a little better, as its own software, without the rest.
Googling has proven pointless, I either get ads for orporate flow chart software, or websites. I want a standalone, free software to make pie/line/scatter/etc charts with.
EDIT: GUI/WYSIWYG would be preferable.
#AskFedi

2025-12-25 17:02:15 CET

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fascinating! At first I thought it was a little barebones and slow-paced, but by the end, I was on the edge of my seat to see what would happen next! And I love that you made the entire film without dialogue, the images really speak for themselves!

2025-12-10 20:42:22 CET

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the idea that transphobes are unaware of trans men is just absurd. They know, and every law targeting cis women's freedoms they pass is also targeted at trans men.
and the violence against trans men is so much more socially-based than legislative. they trust that cis men will put trans men "in their place" with violence both sexual and physical.
this pervasive narrative that trans men aren't the intended targets of transphobia and just accidentally caught in it erases entirely just how strongly transphobia is predicated on exercising control over "our" women and "our" future babies. it's a disservice to our community and our resistance.

2025-12-01 13:59:14 CET

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SCP:<li>academic or bureaucratic language</li><li>there's a bunch that are just jokes</li><li>not real, can't hurt you</li>
RFC:<li>academic or bureaucratic language</li><li>there's a bunch that are just jokes</li><li>real, can hurt you</li>

2025-12-01 13:56:35 CET

The key words "AND MAKE IT FAST", "ABSOLUTELY NOT", and "LISTEN HERE YOU LITTLE SHIT" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

2025-12-01 10:27:03 CET

Trans musicians of fedi, I come to you with a plea for help!
Do you have any footage of yourself playing gigs that you 1) have the rights to and 2) would permit the use of?
Can be as short as ten seconds. Big stage, small pub, camera phone or professional cam, doesn't matter, just as long as it it's from a gig and looks the part. Audio not required.
I'm working on a trans-themed music video for a cover song and I'd love to cut a little montage of performances in the last chorus.
If that call speaks to you, I'd be delighted if you replied or DM'd me!
#AskFedi #TransMusicians

2025-11-24 04:38:35 CET

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ich sag mal so: ich hab noch keine Person getroffen, die Rosenkohl auf Pizza gegessen hat. Mehr gibts dazu doch eigentlich nicht zu sagen, oder?

2025-10-18 23:35:04 CEST

ACAB includes Paw Patrol

2025-09-27 10:12:34 CEST

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 00:45:05 CEST

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And I've been crying about this for two years or something. Look at my past posts on the subject – I've proposed a ton of improvements.
Retaining local, mod-eyes-only copies of posts that have been reported and since deleted, for documentation purposes, that's another one.
Every company in the world is required to archive receipts for a decade, but if I delete a post as a moderator, it's gone in 30 days and impossible to reconstruct the circumstances of the original ticket.
I've suggested semi-automatic moderation aids both passive and active, like automatically either silencing or just flagging for manual review every new instance the first time it's encountered.
And every time, I get a half dozen fellow mods across the 'verse agree and say, yeah, moderation tools really suck around here.
What's happened since?
The content warning field has hazard bars now. There's a mandatory, disruptive "read more" feature nobody likes. Unlisted has been renamed "quiet public" and global timelines "live feeds". We got quote posts half the userbase doesn't want.
I don't think the mod tools have changed in the entire time I've been a moderator, with one small exception:
The button that used to show posts on the original instance now shows them in the mod backend.
Providing no advantages and breaking continuity with previous behaviour for no apparent reason.
Great job, everyone. Pack it up, a job well done, clap yourself on the back.
Fuck all of this.
#MastoMod

2025-09-08 00:39:06 CEST

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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

2025-09-08 00:35:21 CEST

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Just, please, remember we are working with digital media here. We aren't limited by what can be put to paper. This doesn't have to mimic an analogue filing system. Be creative, I beg of you, and give me moderation tools that offer a comprehensive overview, quickly, allow me to dig into the case without having to open fifty new tabs, and let me deal with everything – investigating, sanctioning, notifying the reporting user, and documenting the case – all without ever leaving the mod backend.
Please.
#MastoMod

2025-09-08 00:33:49 CEST

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And while I'm going at it (once again 🙄): A "these moderators are also viewing this ticket" indicator, and a "another moderator has already assigned this report to themself" warning would be real goddamn neat. It happens so often that we get a report, two mods click on it at the same time, both click "assign to myself" a minute apart, and suddenly they're overwriting each other's actions.
#MastoMod

2025-09-08 00:32:01 CEST

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For all I care, give me a tree diagram of all posts related to the offending post, upthread and downthread, up to two degrees of separation. Scrollable/clickable further up and down the tree. Make it colour-coded so I can quickly at a glance tell apart which one of the combatants is which.
Anything, *anything* to elevate these moderation tools above the level of a simplex printout with two paragraphs on it.
#MastoMod

2025-09-08 00:30:38 CEST

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Things I need to know if I'm dealing with a report that's more complicated than "hello this is mastodon team pls click phishing link to verify":<li>who's involved?</li><li>how many others are involved?</li><li>isolated incident or pattern?</li><li>mano a mano or big brawl?</li><li>how did we get into this mess? aka, who said what, to whom, in what order?</li>
Information I get from Masto UI:<li>the person's user name and only their posts</li>
That is simply unacceptable. Masto mod UI is like trying to put out a forest fire with a gardening spritz bottle.
#MastoMod

2025-09-08 00:28:35 CEST

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Another feature I would like to see: some sort of relationship graph in reports.
Smack dab in the middle, the reported user. Above, everyone they're replying to. To the left, the user or instance who reported them. To the right, if it's a local user, the person who invited them, if applicable. Below, users who replied to them.
Just some visualisation to quickly get an idea of what the situation is. With links or buttons to expand those avatars and show the respective posts.
And while I'm at it: show me the user's bio! In full, not just a few lines.
The mod UI is *severely* hampered by the fact basically every useful piece of information is 1–n clicks away on different pages that take me out of the report.
#MastoMod

2025-09-08 00:25:11 CEST

Things I want for Mastodon moderation:
A feature to automatically notify the reporting user with a standard message that their report has been dealt with, to be filled into a textfield that the moderator can edit before hitting the button. Preferably customisable with some sort of easy syntax to match different actions.
So:<code>$reporter, thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. {$suspend: We have suspended the account in question.|$silence: We have muted the account in question.|$deleted: We have deleted the posts in question.|$default: We have resolved the situation.} Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions or to bring future concerns to us. Best regards, $moderator </code>
Would automatically be transformed into:
> @ exampleuser @ example . com,
> thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We have suspended the account in question. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions or to bring future concerns to us.
> Best regards,
> @ janedoe @ example.com
That would be neat.
#MastoMod

2025-08-22 03:45:45 CEST

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<li>is on a pleroma instance with no rules that blocks no instances, not even the worst nazi ones</li><li>objects to pleroma being called nazi software</li>
flawless logic indeed

2025-08-22 03:42:33 CEST

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ah yes pleroma the nazi software, absolutely stellar standard to measure the abuse potential of features against. 10/10 no notes

2025-08-22 00:57:20 CEST

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fuck that shit. Why we putting Twitter's worst harassment tool into the supposedly better social media site?
Mastodon needs to stop chasing Twitter and start having an identity of its own, and replicating the hellsite 1:1 and hoping it will just magically be better clearly ain't working.

2025-08-21 02:40:54 CEST

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on that note, my favourite strategy for not sounding like a fucking "AI" is just putting expletives everywhere. Just straight George-Carlin-ing all my posts with shit fuck cock tits motherfucker ass. Never gonna get that from sanitised corporate software.

2025-08-21 02:39:51 CEST

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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.

2025-08-21 02:36:02 CEST

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YEAH

2025-08-21 02:33:19 CEST

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Wikipedia has a whole page about identifying AI writing, and like half of that is just how I sound and already did before ChatGPT was a thing 😭

2025-08-09 17:53:30 CEST

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I tried to explain pretty much that ⬆️ to an acquaintance last week. Not even two sentences in, I was met with "oh shut up and stop talking nonsense", repeatedly. I kept explaining (to the rest of those present) a simplified version of how LLM training works, and said person kept interjecting telling me I knew nothing and to shut up.
The reason? They use ChatGPT at work "daily" and it's so amazingly fast and it provides "sources". When I pointed out those sources are often wholesale false, they said "well you have to check them of course!", but declined to answer my question what the advantage of ChatGPT is if you have to do all the reading yourself anyway (probably because they don't actually do that).
People's opinions on LLMs have become one of my go to metrics to judge someone's character at this point, because someone who's unwilling to engage with factual arguments that run counter to what they want to believe is, frankly, a danger to everyone around them. Today it's ChatGPT worship, tomorrow it's climate change denial and anti-vaxxing. Because anyone who spends even an hour learning about what's under the hood of an LLM would be thoroughly disenchanted with the frauds who push that shit onto everyone.

2025-08-02 22:50:28 CEST

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I really wish we didn't have to relitigate "no, kids, being weirded out by something doesn't mean it should be illegal" every couple years when a new generation of internet users rolls off the assembly line and acts like nobody's ever thought about morality before they came along 😬
the amount of queer kids I see online (and Tumblr is the worst at that) who don't make the connection between their own "I think that's gross, therefore it must be evil and punished" attitude and the fact fascists find them gross and want them punished is heartbreaking

2025-08-02 22:47:02 CEST

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a lot of 15yo Tumblr puriteens are about to have some rude awakenings in the next decade 😬

2025-07-31 02:43:19 CEST

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I have no idea who David Mitchell is but I need this show to becme reality 😭

2025-07-25 16:20:37 CEST

Okay, this just occured to me, but *Star Trek: Voyager*'s "The Killing Game" *so strongly* alludes to / takes a page from *Casablanca*? And it's just straight up not mentioned anywhere; not on the behind the scenes or trivia sections on either Wikipedia or Memory Alpha?
I mean:
<li>Rick is a nightclub owner in nazi-aligned French territory who claims to be neutral but has a past as a resistance fighter and eventually foils the nazis' plans 
and 
Janeway (as "Katrine") is a nightclub owner in nazi-occupied France who claims to be neutral ("everyone is welcome as long as you leave the war outside") but is secretly the leader of a reistance cell fighting the nazis
</li><li>Rick (an American) used to have a fling with Ilsa, which was interrupted by the war. They meet again later and she's with another man. 
and 
Tom Paris (as "Lt. Bobby Davis") used to have a fling with B'Elanna (as "Brigitte") and a reunion was prevented by the war. They meet again later and she's pregnant from another man. Also, both Ilsa and Brigitte have German-sounding names.
</li><li>Rick wears a (iconic!) white dinner jacket; Katrine wears a travesty best described as a womenswear designer's fever dream of a dinner suit.
</li><li>A little more abstract, in Casablanca, there is a scene where nazis and anti-nazi French people sing competing nationalist songs; in "The Killing Game", the nazi leader wants to hear a song at the nightclub and Seven (as "Mademoiselle de Neuf") refuses to perform it.
</li><li>And on a metal level: Rick's escape at the end is only possible because an officer from the nazi-aligned French forces joins him; likewise "The Killing Game" is ultimately resolved because one faction of the occupying aliens (who cosplay the nazis in the simulation) collaborates with Janeway.
</li>
I mean, come on! It's a very clear hommage to *Casablanca*! I'm not seeing things, right?
#Casablanca #StarTrek #VOY

2025-06-30 19:50:51 CEST

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> Die Bankkarten funktionieren nicht mehr, dann stehst du ohne Bargeld da.
*The Handmaiden's Tale*, anyone?

2025-06-02 21:06:33 CEST

It's so depressing how much channer speak has wormed its way into the vocabulary of Gen Z queers... I spent a day around some recently and it's so goddamn pervasive, and they don't even realise.
Those funny little wojaks aren't neutral, folks. "Based" isn't just a funny word and "sigma male" didn't originate in a vacuum.
Greentext isn't just for posting on Twitter, it has an origin and a history and you should learn it. And for that matter, "degenerate" isn't a word to throw around for shits and giggles, and those "chad" memes, why do you think the guy's blonde and blue-eyed?
It's not even that they argue that it's divorced from its origins and therefore fine – the kids these days (and these were otherwise perfectly nice and cool people!) straight up *don't know* that the ✨ funky ✨ lingo they're using comes from the mouths of nazis.

2025-05-14 23:39:17 CEST

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and I really wish people were more precise with their language. Oversimplification is the tool of fascism.

2025-05-14 20:56:52 CEST

Because I'm fed up, here is a handy chart for y'all to identify lockdowns with:
#Lockdown
https://eldritchcafe.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/507/710/274/982/406/original/cea3eebb18b4af64.png

2025-04-22 04:57:56 CEST

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All sewing machines I've had so far have had 50 kinds of stitches and a dozen semi-automatic modes and were less reliable than ChatGPT search results.
All I want is a primitive, unbreakable workhorse 😭
#Sewing

2025-04-22 04:44:56 CEST

All I want for Christmas is a sewing machine that is built for simplicity and easy maintenance, that can do nothing but a straight stitch, but is strong enough to do it through five layers of denim, that doesn't have any conveniences like buttonholes or zigzags, but will never break.
#Sewing

2025-03-31 19:21:02 CEST

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oh oops, my bad. I'm so used to ignoring little boxes in texts (usually it's "other people also read/bought: X") that I read straight past the typewriter bit. Sorry 😅

2025-03-31 19:07:25 CEST

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and let's add: don't use a typewriter (and if you do anything manually by hand, think of fingerprints, DNA evidence, etc.)
The Stasi, East Germany's secret police, used to specialise in tracking the little oddities each typewriter had – spacing slightly off, chipped corners in letters, etc. – and trace them back to individual activists. All it would take for a modern oppressive regime to trace a certain poster back to you is to suspect you and compare the poster or zine with your typewriter.

2025-03-23 15:15:56 CET

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Google already used AI to "improve" its maps.
As a result, Google Maps now regularly shows streets that end in nowhere, buildings that clip into the road, and lanes that overlap.
Epic fail, Mozilla. Cringe.

2025-02-18 11:50:16 CET

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

2025-02-14 12:59:28 CET

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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.

2025-01-26 23:51:35 CET

For the love of god, when you report another user, *describe the issue!*
Yes, even if you've attached posts.
Yes, even if you think it's obvious.
And if you haven't reported any specific posts, *and* haven't described the issue, how do you expect us to do anything about it?
Also, keep in mind: if we suspend an account, their posts will be deleted after 30 days. Thanks to some genius at Mastodon gGmbH, they are not retained with the ticket for review purposes, not even links to the original posts. So if we later want to review why a certain account was suspended, that's a lot harder when the reporting user didn't send a description of the problem.
So for fuck's sake, use that text field! Please!
Trade offer:
We receive: description of your report
You receive: moderation
*(This post represents the personal opinion of the author and is not an official statement, endorsed by, or representative of the collective opinion of the Eldritch Café moderation team.)*
#MastoMod

2025-01-19 19:45:03 CET

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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.

2025-01-09 20:29:05 CET

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hey so maybe don't scrape people's posts against their will, with no way to opt out, and almost DoS an instance by requesting everything it has? jesus fucking christ, you've been here long enough to know that shit doesn't fly and people don't want it.
Why do people like you always have to try again and again, wait until the last backlash to the previous scraper has died down, and then sneak in another? You're not contributing any added value here, you violate people's will to do bullshit with their posts, at the expense of unnecessarily wasted bandwidth, electricity, and patience.
Get a fucking grip.

2025-01-07 13:55:03 CET

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took him long enough

2024-12-18 11:23:47 CET

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Amber wrote a post, condescendingly mocking JK Rowling's writing. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, assembling the spiteful words that would eventually end up on the fediverse, entertaining her followers.

2024-12-18 11:10:46 CET

You can always tell when a fanfiction author (or any author in general) grew up reading *Harry Potter*. The style is unmistakable.
"John Doe did a thing, adjectively verbing further detail."
#Writing

2024-12-11 13:00:50 CET

How the FUCK do you get rid of all the wet mouth noises when recording voice-over? I just recorded for almost an hour and everything just sounds like it's drowning in the smacking of my lips 😭
#AskFedi #VoiceOver

2024-12-09 18:34:54 CET

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thank you!

2024-12-09 16:35:36 CET

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even in a decent headspace, I would have appreciated a content warning. Bit hard to prepare for reading something tough when you don't know *what* to prepare for.

2024-12-08 01:20:57 CET

Huh. Mandela effect moment? I have "Love Will Tear Us Apart" stuck in my head, but it's *not* the Joy Division original. It's more synthy and reverby.
I thought it might have been Midge Ure / Ultravox / Visage, but none of them seem to have covered it.
Anyone know the version I'm thinking of, or did I make that up?
#JoyDivision #AskFedi

2024-12-04 19:13:33 CET

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early adopter here, and by early adopter, I mean early adopter of blocking threads

2024-11-15 11:45:39 CET

Next in the non-stop onslaught of shit going wrong: my beautiful, new shoes have cracks. The leather is tearing.
Life just doesn't stop kicking me when I'm down. Every week, there's a new catastrophe.
That now makes two bad health news, one cancelled nice thing, and one favourite belonging destroyed, all in under two weeks.

2024-10-14 21:47:17 CEST

want to get good at drawing
no practice
only good

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?

2024-10-05 20:49:13 CEST

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very handsome!

2024-09-03 00:15:21 CEST

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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

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

2024-09-03 00:09:52 CEST

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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

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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

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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

2024-09-03 00:01:31 CEST

What Mastodon needs: better moderation tools
What Mastodon gets: new icons and confusing UI changes in the moderation tools
sigh.....
#MastoMod #MastoDev

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

2024-08-28 00:48:48 CEST

so uh.... my computer doesn't start anymore.
it worked fine an hour ago. now, dead.
at first, it would appear to boot, the BIOS would show up, then it would get stuck at a single blinking cursor in the black.
shut it down via long press, unplugged it and plugged it back in.
now there is a single green LED on the mainboard, but when i press the start button, nothing happens.
cleaned the insides with a vacuum, nothing.
dead.
what do I do?

2024-08-18 22:52:19 CEST

don't want to be ashamed?
don't behave shamefully

2024-08-15 09:58:11 CEST

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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

2024-08-13 17:08:55 CEST

If you wear neckties, for whatever reason, especially irregularly (i.e. only once a year for christmas / corporate events / etc), here's a PSA for you:
**Please don't leave them tied.**
People who don't often wear ties might be tempted to just loosen the knot enough to pull it over their head and leave it like that until the next time they have to wear a tie. That's a really bad idea.
The fabric wrinkles, and over time, this can cause irreversible damage to the tie. I regularly pass up on otherwise beautiful ties in thrift stores because the previous owner left the knot in for years and the tie is beyond salvation. Even extremely careful emergency surgery with an iron and a damp cloth often can't save these ties.
If once you put it back on and tighten the knot back up, the wrinkles will be slap dash in the middle of the tie where you loosened the knot to. It's not invisible damage that'll be hidden behind the knot, if you leave it like that long enough, it'll become permanently visible.
Do yourself a favour (and whoever might buy that tie if you ever sell it / throw it away / die and it goes to the thrift store) and untie it properly.
Left: what happens to a tie when it's left tied. This is *after* extensive ironing, so you can imagine how it looked before.
Middle: okay tie storage. The tie won't wrinkle, though if you leave it like that for extended periods of time, it might bend and not hang entirely straight anymore.
Right: almost optimal tie storage (there are dedicated tie hangers, I just don't have one). It hangs straight, flat, and wrinkle-free. Just make sure the part that bends around the hanger is far enough back that it won't be visible out front and will disappear into the knot if it wrinkles.
#AmberVsMenswear
https://eldritchcafe.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/112/955/331/224/870/614/original/04e6bcbaa105d47f.jpg
https://eldritchcafe.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/112/955/331/687/645/927/original/11b8442c14310493.jpg
https://eldritchcafe.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/112/955/339/806/473/761/original/c2d59c720bcb344b.jpg

2024-08-07 23:09:04 CEST

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96 years and counting. The world will be poorer the day he dies, hopefully far away.
I downloaded all his PD music and plan to burn CDs to put in the car.

2024-08-07 23:05:02 CEST

I absolutely love this song. And this is how I found out what Hanukkah is about in the first place.
(All of Tom Lehrer's songs and records were made public domain by him in 2020 and 2022 so I can just reupload it here. Yay!)
#nowplaying [Tom Lehrer: (I'm Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica](https://tomlehrersongs.com/hanukkah-in-santa-monica/ )
#TomLehrer
https://eldritchcafe.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/112/922/767/209/513/210/original/bcfb4622103909ec.mp3

2024-08-04 16:57:21 CEST

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nächsten Monat sehen wir dann, wie viel die "Brandmauer" wert ist

2024-08-04 16:53:40 CEST

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

2024-07-31 12:29:43 CEST

Does anyone have experience with COVID rapid tests not returning particularly strong negative results?
I've been testing daily the past week for reasons, and each test has been negative, as has each test of the person visiting me. However, their C-line (control) was strong, clear, full; mine is faint and takes the whole 15 minutes to be barely there.
My questions are:<li>is that test still valid?</li><li>what causes that?</li><li>need I worry?</li><li>what can I do to fix that?</li>
I use the Longsee rapid tests and it's a newly-ordered batch ("rel: 2022-05-19") with an expiration date of October 2024.
#COVID #AskFedi #RapidTests

2024-07-02 20:26:39 CEST

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