i have approximate knowledge of many things

OK so i wanna tell you about Mastodon and the Fediverse. I have a video coming out about it soon and I'm too hungover to do any other kinda work right now so let me proselyte to you about The Fediverse!

What the fuck is a Fediverse?

So you know Email? The one thing we all wanna be safe from? Well the thing about Email is that it's not one service; it's a protocol. It's a whole load of independent services that can all talk to each other. Someone on gmail can email someone on proton and vice verse. It's why email is old enough to have seen the discovery of the Titanic Wreck!

Anyway, The Fediverse is a bit like that, but for Social Media. They're a collection of things that work on the ActivityPub protocol, which allows for various social media services to talk to each other to create one big metanetwork through a collection of independently run instances.

One of those Fedi-things is Mastodon, a Microblogging network on the Fediverse.

Mastodon

So Mastodon is not one service, it is a collection of services that talk to each other (like Email). To join mastodon, you go find an instance, sign up to it, and add people. They can be from your own instance or another instance.

Instances?

Each instance is different. They have their own target market (general use, subcultural (furries, gamers), regional (countries, cities), sectoral), but they all can talk to each other. If you have the know how you can even set up your own Instance (with Blackjack and Hookers). They have their own rules and regs, so you can find your own little corner, but you're not isolated. You can still follow people from other instances (like how you can email someone from a different service). Your handle on Mastodon will look like @[email protected] (eg, my handle is @[email protected]), so if you wanna add someone, that is what you type in the searchbar.

Advantages

Mastodon cannot get Elon Musked: Yes, you heard. You can't have something like what happened to Twitter where one man buys the whole network and turns it into a right wing circlejerk. Someone like Musk can set up a Mastodon Instance, or even potentially buy one, but if they fuck up said instance, other instances can defederate that instance (block it on an instance level) keeping their own instance safe and sane.

It's containerized, but not isolated: So with it being different instances, you can basically choose your tribe, but you can also talk to other people from other instances. Just add them using their username and server name. This also helps stop or slow down trolls and bigots because they have to put in legwork to find marks which most don't do. On Twitter, you were forced together with those bigots and they were encouraged to fight you.

No algorithm: The site doesn't tell you what you see, you do! What you see is who you follow! There are starter packs out there now to find people to follow, or...

You can view the firehose: Yes! You can view the firehose for either your instance or Mastodon as a whole. This is a great way to find people to follow if you are just starting out and get the vibe of the network.

Lots of independent apps: You can find plenty of phone and web apps to access the fediverse, so you're not tied a single, shitty, official app!

Disadvantages

Server performance depends on the instance: You will experience slow servers. Be at peace with that.

Not everyone is on here yet: If you wanna follow celebrities, bare that in mind, but if you do not wanna follow celebrities or wanna follow new, more interesting people, this could be the place for you. I'm literally following with the Astronomer Royal of Scotland!

Are there other Fediverse things?

Lemmy is a Reddit-style network on the Fediverse! Upvote, share, and meme like the good old days before reddit went to shit.

Pixelfed is an Instagram style photosharing network on the Fediverse!

Peertube is a Video Sharing Network on the Fediverse!

Do you have any Recommendations for Mastodon?

Yes, Don't join Mastodon.social. It's run by the creators of Mastodon but it has some iffy TOS (if you use it you have to settle for arbitration and can't sue them) and centralising everything is not how the Fediverse should run. Instead try the following:

ohai.social (they also run other services like matrix or 13ft).

mas.to

mastodon.scot (targetted at Scots or Scottish related things)

mstdn.party

mastodon.au (targeted at Australians)

toot.wales (targetted at Welsh people).

woof.tech (for furries, tech people, or furries in the tech industry).

gaygeek.social (LGBT targetted)

You can find a list at https://joinmastodon.org/servers

Bringing out those tags because so, so interesting, perhaps one of my favourite things, to mess around with patterns of story*. When I sat down with Spock to transcribe his autobiography, we came up with a form for what Vulcan memoir might look like, which he subverts. (There’s some of Sarek’s poetry too.)

Meditations on a Crimson Shadow is described as being set during a future war, so is a Cardassian sf novel. I figured it would surely, at least superficially, tell the story of Cardassian supremacy and permanent conquest, like Orwell’s boot stamping on a human face forever. Except maybe if you were reading it in the basement of your father’s home as your whole civilization implodes around you. Then I thought it might read differently. Or at least you would start the previously unimaginable work of imagining differently.

If historical fiction tries to reconfigure what we think was possible for people in the past, sf tries to configure what we think can be possible to us in the future. They feel very close, in my mind. Can we find sources or traditions in the past that give us succour or hope? What visions of the future are available to us, or do we need to imagine, and how do we map our way there? I think about these things all the time.

Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, VI

Billionaire crypto-executive Rutash controls everything—his monopoly, his image, his life. But when meticulous, fascinating, female FCA accountant Biano is called in to audit his sprawling fortune, he discovers a ferengi who he cannot afford… or so she thinks.

Rutash is used to people falling in line, but Biano’s sharp mind and strange independence ignite a dangerous curiosity in him. He starts testing her limits with subtle bribes—illicit luxury clothes, secret allowances, whispered promises of indulgence—but each offer is a challenge, a dare. With every temptation, the game intensifies: will she uphold her integrity, or will she raise the stakes even higher?

As the audit dives deeper, the lines between money and desire blur. Every ledger, every transaction, every bribe becomes a pulse-quickening act of dominance and submission. Biano finds herself drawn to Rutash’s wealth, his power, and the intoxicating control he wields—learning that sometimes pleasure comes at a price, and sometimes the cost is more than she ever hoped.

In a world ruled by profit, bribery is seduction, and temptation is irresistible. The ultimate question looms: who truly controls whom, and what will they sacrifice when lust and power collide?

happy pride to this fucking thing susanna thompson does with her mouth