starless @starless@pixie.town

Hand Talk, or Plains Sign Talk, is a trade language that was once the lingua franca across what is now central Canada, the central and western United States and northern Mexico, used among the various Plains Nations.

Some of the signs are similar to ASL (like tree and grow). Although there is no sign for name, so the word "call" is used when asking someone for their name:
"QUESTION - YOU - CALLED."

(Images, William Tokins 1926)

If you're approached about joining Qoto's UFoI (United Federation of Instances), don't. Qoto started it because they got pissy people were defeding from them because they refuse to themselves defederate from fash instances. Some of the instances ON their UFoI are fash instances. https://weirder.earth/@human_dude/109477515561058563

Qoto are *not* representative of the 'good' spaces on fedi, and if you're invested in curating a safe space for marginalised folk on your instance, you should distance yourselves from Qoto.

Anybody know of any good transgender historical fiction books? I'm looking to get some trans books as Xmas presents for a newly out trans woman friend, and she loves historical fiction (and alt-history).

Sunrise over Lake Superior near Grand Marais, Minnesota.

#seascape #LandscapePhotography #photography #Minnesota #MNastodon

pls boost am testing gotosocial concurrency

For some context on my current instance setup, it's using nothing but free tiers of various cloud services until I get a good estimate of how much resources I would need to dedicate to running my own instance locally.

So far we're capping out at 30GB of media storage. 3GB of Database storage, and comfortable use of less than 1GB of ram and 1vCPU.

I'm thinking it's feasible to self host this very soon, once I get my newly liberated thin clients set up.

Full Moon and Mars from Exeter Observatory.

wow, nice thread from @nexusofprivacy who took notes on my "Trust & Safety in the Fediverse" webinar:

https://mastodon.social/@nexusofprivacy/109479153478604828

genuine question, where are all the SWers the fediverse supposedly has?

A quick thing — can you please boost?

I'm looking for an an artist to commission a character design piece for noncommercial public use. Since this piece would depict an agender character, I would love if a trans or nonbinary artist could be the one I commission!

If you know of anyone who has commissions open that seems a good fit for this, please let me know!

No doubt the bigotry in this space is annoying. Still, in many cases, it's less annoying than Good White People™, who 'just want to understand' and badger me for information I've discussed at length, can find on their own and/or completely ignore the context of what I have already said.

The way white people just expect me to drop what I'm doing and explain the ENTIRE social and cultural context of the fedi to them FOR FREE because they are too lazy to do a shred of labor is an easy way to show me they don't give a shit.

If you want to be viewed and treated as a reasonable and intelligent person, you need to act like one.

This is not a high bar.

An awesome quote from @aurynn that I need to share, in a discussion we were having about automatic filtering/moderation:

"if your tool hasn't thought about how it will be used to create harm, and isn't built in such a way to reduce its ability to cause harm, maybe don't build the tool"

It's amazing how many people don't think like that.

Earlier this year, I was invited down to Texas by folk who asked me: "Do you think you could teach our assorted group of blind, low vision, and neurodiverse folk about lockpicking?"

Their results were terrific. 😁👍 This video was captured that day...

https://youtu.be/2tVpNzX963g

...and we are jointly publishing it as a way of sharing this lesson plan with you all in the hopes that more classes like this can be replicated by others. 🔓

"Hemp is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world and can grow 4 metres high in 100 days. Research suggests hemp is twice as effective as trees at absorbing and locking up carbon, with 1 hectare (2.5 acres) of hemp reckoned to absorb 8 to 22 tonnes of CO2 a year, more than any woodland."

Techbros: *get extatic about untested and potentially useless carbon capture tech*

Actual scientists: "yeah just go on and plant hemp, that shit can capture carbon *fast* and store it forever in clothes and building materials"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/24/could-hemp-be-a-key-tool-in-fight-against-climate-change

#introduction
I'm Artist Marcia X, one of the og's of the fedi. Helped mod the only Blk instance onhere before it was chased off.

I longboard, I'm a visual artist, scholar, I do as much DIY content/art stuffs as possible. I write, sell prints & started ur favorite tag on here 😎

Afro-Indigenous Puerto Rican Peruvian hard femme w the tea on the fediverse. Elephant memory

www.artistmarciax.com/shop

I also have a GFM bc I'm in need of assistance

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-marcia-get-stable

little message to whoever drops and breaks the sculpture in the future