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Then I saw that the actual price of the bamboo cup was £4.50.  Still a little pricey but, and maybe it was the caffeine craving talking, I thought “alright, I’ll buy this.  But I’m going to use it religiously as I can”.  And you know what, dear reader, I did.

And now we get to the most exciting part.  I have now reached my 50th use of the cup in my morning coffee shop stop.  Each morning thereafter, when I presented my little, orange, eight ounce cup to the barista, I received a 28p discount on my coffee.  After nearly eight minutes of very complex mental arithmetic I was fairly sure I could have my £4.50 cup paid for in savings.  

Fifty times twenty eight pence, my accountant tells me, is fourteen Great British pounds sterling.  That puts me £9.50 in profit on my original investment.

Not bad, eh.

A week later I’d unwittingly walked into a negative backlash that initially left me shocked and confused. But in reality I’d just missed the point of the federated model, and bought too much into the benevolence of the collective.

My first week using Mastodon was naff, but in that brilliant fresh way. A LOT of “tooting” about inane and innocent stuff. Burnt toast, cats and sunsets. I joined mastodon.technology, assuming techie stuff was the right place to start. Some git tips, go… a few genuinely interesting things. The local timeline (I eventually derived) was my mastodon.technology instance and the messages there were as I would expect.

Beyond this was the federated timeline, the collective view of all connected mastodon instances. This is where the image starts to distort.

The first thing I noticed was an enormous amount of negative attention towards Wil Weaton, apparently the first celebrity on Mastodon. For some unclear reason, I don’t really care to know, Wesley Crusher seemed to be a villain in this new world.  Wesley?

Then, as it flew past in the timeline, I saw an inane complaint about “white men”. I investigate this further to find it’s an administrator of a mastodon instance. Hold up, says I. Aren’t these supposed to be the people making this a better place? Surely this sort of generalisation is what they’re seeking to avoid? I was then asked if I was a man and then blocked. Right.

I was then messaged by three or four other accounts saying I was part of the problem for attacking marginalised communities and arguing “in bad faith”. There is no utopia for scum like me I was told by these, in fact, white men and blocked for my presumed poison.

Then, a significantly wiser person than I, a white trans lady to be specific (since group membership seems very important in Mastodon), pointed out that in a federated world, I could expect a lot of instances that would have no problem casting generalisations on white men. I will quickly add that this was a relievingly pleasant dialogue.

And then the penny dropped.

This is not a brave new world, or a utopia. This is a collection of utopias built for an individual community. Where as I was hoping for somewhere that transcended politics and bias, what I found was something designed to focus those things. An eternal corridor of exclusive rooms in which people are free to debate without challenge, propagate negativity and intolerance towards whatever “them” they choose.

At best this is no better than twitter and at worst it is something far more damaging.

I think I’m far too tame on the tamest end of the spectrum to even hope to be picked out by this sort of ban. Real-life genitals? I’m not even sure I could even sketch them accurately anymore. Haha. Am I right? Anyone with two kids in the audience?

So basically, in spite of this policy change, I think I’m going to go ahead and re-spark some of my impromptu blogging and stay right here.

If I want to see real life genitals I will very, very quickly glance at myself in the mirror.

I’m totally kidding, I haven’t been able to bring myself to do that since 2014.

Aaaanyway.  I have just finished reading Factfulness which is a truly exceptional book that I think every terran should read.  I am also reading Seven Eves, though admittedly in fits and starts.  Both of these recent reads have gone entirely unhindered.

Having looked at the cover for a long, long time I decided to crack open the physical copy of Caliban’s War leant to me by Daltman.  I was no more than 35 pages in when:

Han:   Whatcha doin? Me: Reading. Han: Talk to me. Me: I’m reading. Han: I’m bored though.

Then, in high-twenties heat, she snuggled up to me.  Snuggled.  What manner of heat torture is this?!  There’s almost a hosepipe ban, the polar ice caps are melting and my wife is snuggling me.

Maybe she loves trees that much.

The Rebble Dev forum is quieter than a mute Canadian in a library.  I tweeted to ask if the plans to introduce an alternative were on track and the extent of an answer was my tweet was liked.  Long gone are the days that someone liking one of my tweets raised even a murmur of emotion from me, so that was a hollow gesture let me tell you.

*Very* quiet on the @pebble_dev front, given end of June is closing rapidly. Any news, @KatharineBerry? Is the revolution still on?

— @tin_fish (@tin_fish) 25 May 2018

I have now been wearing a wristwatch for a good few months, but have the Pebble Time Steel on for old time’s sake.  Hello “Pebble: An unknown error has occurred”, my old friend.

At the same time I got an offer of a discounted FitBit smartwatch, for being a “loyal follower of Pebble”.   Thanks very much, Fitbit, but you’re the Brutus of this little play.  I’d rather wear barbed wire.

So what now?  I have my Withings Go, which continues to serve all of my step/sleep requirements.  But… is it finally… finally time for the Apple Watch?