Introducing the “organize mode” and the supporter tier
The first issue of the Currents blog, where we introduce the new organize mode and a way to support the project.
On Atproto and Atmospheric Groups
I'm starting A Fresh Blog(tm), this time on Pckt. I wanted a dedicated space to post about development, atproto, and community thoughts, and a new space felt like the right place for it. Plus I wanted to get in on standard.site summer while it's still ongoing. Before I get into any of that, though, an introduction. As of a little over a month ago, I work at Bluesky! Before that I was a staff engineer at GitHub, and a long time before that I have a background in public health, which colors a lot ...
Notes and links from Tue 14 July
Psychotherapy day today so I'm taking it easy in the garden, grazing the internet and letting my thoughts settle. We talked a bit about my choice paralysis which can go from being a joke (when presented with a menu I will ask the waiting staff what they have too much of and I'll have that so it's not wasted) to being, well, paralysing. I've realised that through my life I've rarely had to make a big choice between two equal options. Most of the situations I've found myself in just imposed themselves upon me, or just required a yes/no answer, so I've never had much practice. Having to choose where I don't know what the outcome might be is just horrifying. When I do find myself in that situation I'll usually just wait until one of them expires and then do the other one, or do neither. I have no idea how common this is but it does make me wary of libertarians who crow about wanting absolute freedom. No thanks! Weather's quite pleasant today. Technically the heatwave conditions are still here but there's a strong breeze coming from the north east (usually it's from the south west) which really takes the edge off.
Getting flag emoji on Windows (11)
Due to political reasons, Microsoft has actively refused to add flag emojis on Windows 11. Given how common flag emojis are, it's honestly more annoying than I thought it'd be, especially when discussing international events like Eurovision where these emoji would be useful. People use these flags to denote their nationality, or a country they...
Wild, wild times.
I’m a Gen X woman. Believe what you like about us Gen X types but I think the most honest thing that can be said about us is: we are both unbothered and bothered, we give no f*cks and we give all the f*cks. We are the generation of latchkey kids, disappearing to play outside with no phones and no life360, we fell off bikes, jumped off garage roofs and, shock horror, paddled around bodies of water that they made infomercials about in the 1980’s (the less said about those the better).
The UK’s New Under-16 Social Media Ban Will Cause More Harm Than It Prevents
Recently, politicians in the UK pushed forward with plans to eviscerate privacy and free speech on the internet by announcing a ban on social media for users under 16 that is set to take effect in Spring 2027. The UK government continues to falsely characterize this policy as a necessary response to growing concerns about...
Distelfalter – Wanderschaft über Generationen
Der Distelfalter ist ein Wanderfalter. Er zieht im Frühjahr aus südlichen Regionen nach Mitteleuropa, worauf die nächste Generation im Herbst wieder den Weg in den Süden auf sich nimmt. Diese enorm weiten Strecken können die Schmetterlinge zurücklegen, indem sie sich vom Wind tragen lassen. Der Distelfalter erreicht eine Flügelspannweite von 45 bis 60 Millimeter. Man...
Is my ATProto app actually decentralized?
A few days ago I wrote about rolld, the little board game tracker I built on the AT Protocol. As I mentioned then, this is very much a learning experiment for me, a way to play with ATProto and learn about it. In this post, I'd like to come back to a few of my struggles and the things I learned while designing it.
UNLOCKED! Kink and Gender
As a Gift for international Nonbinary Day, we are unlocking our old bonus episode where @gearthatshines.bsky.social and @Buck Discuss all the ways kink can intersect with gender exploration.
Pourquoi Bluesky c'est chouette ?
Avant tout, je m'adresse ici à tous les monsieur et madame tout le monde qui utilisent les réseaux régulièrement sans s'intéresser à la façon dont ça fonctionne. Je ne vais utiliser que des mots simples et le plus imagés possible pour faire en sorte que ça soit compréhensible par tous. Je ne parlerai pas technique tout simplement car je ne suis pas une teckos, j'y connais pas grand chose mais je suis en revanche une personne lambda qui s'y intéresse. Et en tant que lambda intéressée je peux fair...
DRM-Free Ebook Sources
I read a blog post on Schemescape titled Using the Xteink X4, a minimalist e-reader. I have one, and I will have everyone know that I ordered mine in fall 2025 after reading about it in Liliputing before it apparently became an online "thing." But that aside, the Schemescape post, in noting that the X4...
Choosing Movies
Almost surely, if you totaled up the number of hours of movie watching I’ve done and the hours of TV show watching I’ve done, TV dwarves movies. It's not a conscious choice; just how it shook out for me. Via the internet, I “know” a couple of people who are consciously movie-only. Khoi Vinh does...
Becoming a better atproto citizen
The blog's standard.site records now carry cover images, a publication icon and theme, and the strongRefs Bluesky uses for enhanced link cards.
My website is ATmospheric.
This website is now a renderer over my PDS - posts, notes, knitting and all. What atproto actually gives you, and whether you should bother.