Backing out of self-hosting Mastodon

People love to mention how easy it is to host your own fediverse server, with one of the easiest options being a Masto.host subscription for around $8/month. What people usually don’t mention is that Mastodon, being pretty janky software, has a problem with rapidly escalating storage use because of the way its caching is designed (or like… not very designed). Even a single-user instance that is not particularly active will need to keep leveling up to more expensive subscription tiers forever purely due to this passive cache accumulation. There is no real way to solve it without manually removing things from the database, which you don’t have access to do through managed hosting and which also sounds way too much like IT maintenance for me to enjoy.

So although it was fun for a year or two, I’m working towards winding down little friendhole.social before I find myself at some diamond elite level of monthly hosting plans. I’ll migrate my account somewhere else; the fediverse is janky but it’s also such a relief to chat with actual humans without algorithms and ads everywhere.

Since there is no way to migrate Mastodon posts to a different server (again with the jankiness), I’m going to start posting some old faves here with their original posting dates, just for my own archival enjoyment. The tag to find them is toots.

Sometimes I want to make a bot

Sometimes I want to make a bot that just posts news stories about police with the added link to the matching press release from the relevant police department

“News” : https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/stolen-vehicle…

Press release: https://saanichpolice.ca/2026/05/28/su…

I wonder whether police media liaison officers take it personally when their press releases get edited for style.

“News”: https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/fleeing-motorcycle…

Press release: https://www.cspolice.ca/news/media-release…

Posting news stories that are just police press releases would be so high volume it would feel like spam… perhaps a better bot would be posting news about police that does NOT appear to have a matching press release from the cops.

E.g., no press release from VicPD about their deputy chief retiring on Monday, one day after someone leaked his text messages colluding with the Deputy Minister of Education to depose the local school board.

News: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/9.7216054

Valerian <3

shout out to the valerian root tincture i optimistically made several months ago for when i was ready to ease off gabapentinoids for pain. solved the jitters/adrenaline feeling really well.

(valerian is strong and has contraindications– don’t take it without talking someone knowledgeable)

In praise of group appointments

One last thought from my pacing webinar tonight — group healthcare appointments are awesome and I don’t think most people realize that until they try one.

The Long Covid Clinic and the BC-CLMF both use group appointments and they have really won me over. You get everything you need, PLUS other people ask questions you didn’t think of, forgot, or were too shy to ask. People also ask about things that haven’t happened to you yet so you can be prepared. You usually get 60+ minutes too! Big fan

Party decor x occupational therapy

Gosh i love occupational therapists. I’m at a webinar about pacing through summertime, and this OT just shared a “success story” from a client who got a banner for a party they hosted. Instead of saying “happy birthday” the banner said “please leave by 9pm”.

This is the same OT who apologized for not being able to put someone in a coma to reset their pain responses. A queen.

Little free library

An idea came to me during a conversation about World Goth Day (May 22) and now I can’t stop thinking about how fun and funny it would be to set up a little free library for goth nonsense in a secret location in a cemetery. Swap your unwanted candles, black nail polish, horror novels, goblets, etc.

Feels inappropriate to do in real life because all the local cemeteries are still active and i don’t want to intrude on the recently bereaved.

But i daydream (classic goth pastime).

Free Zine: Let’s Make an Herbal Pain-Relief Salve!

Cover of a zine. Let's make an... Herbal Pain Relief Salve! Pen drawing of a small cosmetic jar labelled "hops, yarrow + rosemary" surrounded by sparkles. by sarah PearlOfCivilization.net may 2026

I make bean-less zines pretty regularly but I rarely post them here. Should I start? Let’s try it.

This zine has instructions for making the herbal pain-relief salve I use for endometriosis and ovarian cyst pain, and that I have been sharing with friends and fam since December. It provides strong and immediate but not very long-lasting pain relief for when you need a break. Salve testers found strong relief from pain due to: frozen shoulder, tendonitis, headaches, arthritis, and more. It’s strong!

If you try it out, I would love to hear how it works or doesn’t for you. (Beep me on Mastodon?) If you’re in pain, I hope it eases one way or another <3

Free pain salve zine:

P.S., if you want to try this out before committing to the multi-week process of making a salve from scratch, I should mention that a tincture works too. More people have those around, or an herb shop might have a sample of hops tincture and let you try a drop or two to see what it does for you. The blend is stronger, but hops is the main player. If you know me in person, just ask and I will give you some salve.

Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight

Boca Tuya dance company presented a gay pas de deux that left me buzzzzzing tonight. It was so good.

Here’s a video of a performance from Jacob’s Pillow last year. “Like Those Playground Kids At Midnight”. That’s the choreographer in the pink shirt.

I love the slouchy outfits. I love the inclusion of gestures from various sex activities. I love the familiarity of grabbing each other’s arms and waists and necks ❤️

It’s a tiny section but I love how tight their unison is. I noticed it over and over in the whole program tonight — unison that good tricks your brain when you watch it. It makes the dancers seem physically connected

I have been going to at least 5 or 6 dance performances a year for the past 15 or so years and tonight was I think only the second gay duet I have seen?

Of course I have seen many same-gender pairings in many dance performances, but actual gay romantic dances? I think only two

And I go to gay dance shows! But often it is camp and drag. The sincere romance is pretty rare. I would attend an entire dance festival of gay romantic duets

The other actual gay romantic dance was in The Missing Generation by Sean Dorsey, an AIDS memorial piece that you can see part of in an early episode of Sense8.

My strongest memory is a section that fused contemporary dance and 80s house/club dance, set to house music and a recording of a survivor recalling pre-AIDS closeted hookup culture. Made me cry.

But it’s so important to see gay sex and romance outside of tragic AIDS stories too. Of course you know that ❤️

Just add DJ

During this whole pandemic I have been pondering how to have satisfying social events that are not centered around food and drinks, which was my usual in the before times.

New experiment today was having a friend do a masked dj set in the kitchen during a craft party. 10/10 recommend craft rave.

Secret police

I know police departments rarely release names of police, even when they get fired for misconduct. But then sometimes I wonder whether the names were available and just left out of news stories?

Like this is an article about a court finding that RCMP violated people’s rights. No RCMP are named, but several protestors and the judge are fully identified.

The baseline level of secrecy around police makes it confusing as a reader, for me at least. Does this mean the court didn’t know any names either, or that the finding was about “the RCMP” as a group, or just that the journalist left out the names?

One time at a club, a friend apologized for showing up late.

Late friend: “Sorry, I dropped a full coffee pot and had to clean up”

Journalist friend: “Oh my god! What was it full of?”

So I assume journalists are usually asking for all the details, but I wonder if police are a special case 🤷

One more related example. I’m sure a separate person writes the photo captions, but the 4th photo in this CBC article is captioned “Anti-logging protesters at Fairy Creek on Sept. 29, 2021” when there are also at least 4 cops in the frame, including the central subject. A whole other level to not even name that police exist.

Photo of a person wearing a vest that says "police" walking past several other people: two are wearing hard hats, two others are wearing hi-viz jackets, one is in military style green camo, and at least 3 others appear to be wearing the same police uniforms as the main subject. Caption reads "Anti-logging protesters at Fairy Creek on Sept. 29, 2021. (Ken Mizokoshi/CBC)"

An hour!

I’m excited that my enemy (seasonal clock changes) has been defeated, but it might be awhile before I stop being offended about getting up one hour early forever 🫩

New album from the MRI

Update: just got a middle-of-the-night MRI and I cannot recommend it enough to (non-claustrophobic) fans of noise music, experimental techno, etc.

The MRI tech explained that the magnetic pulses can induce currents in your body, so in addition to the vibrations from the loud noises, some people feel tingling or see lights. Wish they could harness that for a club experience.

New album from the dishwasher

One time I finished listening to an ambient album but I didn’t realize for 45 minutes because the dishwasher was on.

One time I sent my work chat a link to a website that autoplayed a weird ambient soundtrack, but I didn’t realize because I was already listening to weird ambient music and it blended right in.

But none of these beat Simon, inveterate listener of weird ambient music. One time he was reading alone in a room with no music on, and our child walked in and announced “this is the weirdest music you have ever listened to” about the sound of a sprinkler coming in through the window.