Tag: toots

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.

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).

Coma therapy wishlist

At a chronic pain seminar tonight, the OT said, “one thing we often hear is, ‘oh i wish you could just put me in a coma until my current neurons would die and be replaced with new ones that aren’t so highly reactive’, but unfortunately that isn’t how the nervous system works.”

Firstly, lol at “unfortunately”. Love this ally who wants to make coma therapy wishes come true.

Secondly, wanting a temporary coma really is a common fantasy across quite a few chronic conditions. I have personally heard it from people with pain, anxiety, depression, ME/CFS, and also just sleep-deprivation (parents).

I mean

Promo photo of the book My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh, with pink block letters over a classical oil portrait of a woman looking bored or resigned

I am thinking about how often patients are correct in a general or metaphorical way– folks with ME who say they feel like their batteries don’t work and then research turns up mitochondrial dysfunction.

Makes me wonder what version of coma therapy will turn out to work for us all.

Seasonal ambition re: slug draft stopper

We had one cool day and I am having my traditional seasonal ambition to make a draft-stopper for the one drafty door.

I have already made unprecedented progress by choosing a design and even buying a pattern, because how could I resist this perfect soft sculpture of a slug by Clare James?

Photo of a large greige corduroy slug perched on the back of a couch against an off-white wall. The slug has a realistic shape, with a mantle and four eye stalks. The couch is covered in a green patchwork quilt and cushions with earth-toned prints. There is an abstract blue and orange artwork on the wall above.

Inspired as always by my friends’ projects, in this case a pal who made this sardine as a draft-stopper for her mom who loves tinned fish.

Now I am torn between using generally sluggy fabric I already have, or buying something to make a perfect banana slug 🍌

Background info for today’s small pleasure: a friend and I recently started a soup swap, which just means we drop off soup for each other whenever we feel like it.

So today’s small pleasure was texting my friend “HOT SOUPS IN YOUR AREA” to find out whether she was home

Red Nation on trusting white people

Loved this take on how to organize across differences in privilege:

“One of my favourite organizers in history is a guy named Witold Pilecki, who organized a resistance cell inside Auschwitz… He said that the people he chose for that cell were the ones that he saw do an action that helped another person and harmed them. Help another person, and gain nothing.

You wanna know if you can trust the white people you organize with? Put them in that position. Do it over and over and over again.”

From this episode of The Red Nation Podcast.

Reminds me of the classic Real Ally Shit zine— finding the difference between pretty words and dependable people:

Making pink ink from radishes

You would think by now I would have one moment of hesitation before I started boiling 3 bunches of radishes that had been in the back of the fridge too long. It makes #WeirdSmells but will it make ink?

Photo of a small stainless steel pot full of chopped radishes and water. On the surface there are bubbles and foam. The radishes are pale pink, having released some of their colour into the liquid.

Surprisingly solid pink ink once it gets concentrated enough! Seems more stable than things like raspberry or red cabbage.

Photo of a stainless steel pot with about 2 cm of dark pink liquid in the bottom -- radish tea

Photo of four strips of paper that have been labelled and dipped in ink at different stages. radish: very pale pink radish + 10 min: still very pale pink radish + 15 min + salt + alum: noticeably darker but still pale pink radish + 20 min + salt + alum: even darker but still light pink that could possibly be legible for writing

Can’t decide whether to add gum arabic for a drawing/dipping ink, or filter it better and add a bit of glycerin to try with a cheap fountain pen 🤔

Art is when everyone else makes money

I have been watching documentaries about art forgeries, and I keep being struck by what an unstoppable economic force art is.

You fund a fringe festival and the entire city or even region makes money even if all the plays are bad– restaurants, taxis, hotels, venues, bartenders, poster designers, print shops, and then later maybe youtubers and critics and fan conventions…

This is probably the wrong take-away from art forgery stories, but even criminals are making millions of dollars in secondary activities because of the original art, which then means these filmmakers are making money talking about the forgery, which means cinemas and festivals can make money showing the films… Unstoppable.

This is the worst test for whether art is “real” but the way AI-generated content leaves a bunch of economic destruction in its wake is probably telling.

They invented a type of content that has zero cultural capital lol

Related/unrelated I would like to visit a museum of famous forgeries. Probably cheap to set up.