🆕 blog! “ActivityBot is the recipient of an NLnet grant!”

Back in February, I applied for NLnet's Next Generation Zero grant. They were looking for Fediverse projects to help rewild the social media landscape. Or, as they describe it:

Reclaim the public nature of the internet

Small and medium-sized R&D grants between 5.000 and 50.000 euro,…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/08/activitybot-is-the-recipient-of-an-nlnet-grant/
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#ActivityBot #ActivityPub #fediverse #NLnet

I'm getting a bit frustrated with the various Mastodon apps for Android.

Tusky doesn't support quote posts, and scrolling is janky.
Fedilab scrolling also stutters.
Pachli doesn't group notifications.
Mastodon official doesn't let you swipe between the tabs or customise them much.

I'm on a Pixel 8 Pro - so scrolling performance shouldn't be this bad!

What's your favourite #Android app for the Fediverse that you personally use on a regular basis?
(Not interested in websites / PWA thanks.)

Left a bad review on eBay after being messed around and sent a broken product twice.
Seller said they'd refund me if I amended the review.
I agreed.
They refunded.
Review amended to say they are gaming the review system.
Clowns.

For those mourning the loss of #XCancel and #Nitter - I've written a guide to retrieving Tweets without using the Twitter API.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/04/you-dont-need-an-api-key-to-archive-twitter-data/

You can use that to get individual posts + whatever they were in reply to.

Enjoy!

Has anyone here got an Indian PAN and DMAT account as a *non-Indian*?

Everything seems aimed at NRI and PNO. But I'm a Brit trying get shares from an old start up.

Long shot, I know, but if you have actual experience of doing this please let me know.

🆕 blog! “Theatre Review: Cats at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre”
★★★★☆

Cats is so silly!

In the olden days, after a wild animal was slaughtered, the tribe's shaman would wear the skin and re-enact the hunt. As he became one with the beast, the people slowly understood the ways of nature.

Cats is a similarly spiritual experience wherein we watch androgynous …

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/08/theatre-review-cats-at-regents-park-open-air-theatre/
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#musical #TheatreReview

🆕 blog! “Why do audience members choose specific shows at the Edinburgh Fringe?”

On our recent trip to the Edinburgh Fringe, I was bemused by just how little effort performers put in to finding out why people had selected their show. Taking a show to the Edinburgh Fringe is ridiculously expensive with some performers paying tens of thousands of…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/08/why-do-audience-members-choose-specific-shows-at-the-edinburgh-fringe/
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#data #EdFringe

🆕 blog! “And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway”

In early February 2011 Egypt was in the middle of a political revolution. One morning, everyone's phones suddenly pinged with an alert.

The Armed Forces asks Egypt's honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honour and our precious Egypt.

A series of…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/08/and-then-the-men-with-guns-tell-you-to-do-it-anyway/
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#politics #technology

I know you all hate the emergency alert about disposable barbeques.

But yesterday I watched a man at our hotel breakfast set fire to a toaster by trying to toast a croissant - despite multiple signs telling him not to.

Today he tried again.

So, you know, calibrate for the average person.

How do you deal with all your open tabs?

I have a hundred "I'll look at that soon" tabs across three devices.

Does anyone here use an (open source preferable) app for keeping track of all the things they want to get back to?

They're not all articles, some are searches, IMDb pages, etc. So I dont think Wallabag will work (correct me if I'm wrong though).

Any help to tame the madness appreciated 😄

(Looking for personal recommendations. I know how to search the web.)

🆕 blog! “Metadata for AI Generated Outputs”

How do you tell users that the text they're about to read has been synthetically generated?

It is polite to readers that you don't waste their time, it's also important that LLMs don't feed on their own regurgitated slurry lest they pollute their own development.

I think there are a number of potential ways to do this and I'd be…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/08/metadata-for-ai-generated-outputs/
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#AI #HTML #semanticweb