New post: Chewing on the Quiet

-Term-Care

Une longue pe de silence (Christian Bobin)

Une longue pe de silences'enfonait parfois dans mon coeur,et je ne pouvais l'enleversans aussitt provoquer une hmorragie :je choisissais donc de me taire et d'crirece genre de phrases gouvernes par le blanc.Chacune m'tait dlivrante au temps o elle venait.Je n'ai jamais crit que pour rsoudre une crise,traverser une fort, rejoindre le temps limpidedessous le temps obscur.Je n'ai jamais crit que pour vous et pour moi,pour un vous And this has to say something.
After all, Mastodon is far from a by-the-book implementation. Mastodon's ActivityPub implementation is influenced by two things. One, the legacy compatibility decisions from a time when Mastodon had two base protocols, OStatus and ActivityPub, and it had to make ActivityPub work like OStatus. Two, Mastodon's willingness to combat the Fediverse and eventually EEE it rather than embracing it.
Let me put it this way: At least for the longest time, Mastodon has tried hard to be incompatible with large parts of the Fediverse, at least with those parts that don't appear like add-ons to Mastodon (like PeerTube or Pixelfed).
And it has reached its goal: Almost all of those on Mastodon who do know that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon think that Mastodon still is the reference implementation of ActivityPub, and everything that doesn't work exactly like Mastodon, or that causes friction when interacting with Mastodon, is broken. That's one way to get rid of competition: Make it look bad to your own users.
Entire features, some of which are backed by FEPs, are bad from a Mastodon point of view. For example, enclosed threaded conversations with one post and otherwise comments, as can be found all over the Fediverse from Friendica and its descendants to the whole Threadiverse, are bad because they're so different from Mastodon's threads loosely tied together from toots and more toots. And there's an FEP for them: FEP-171b "Conversation Containers".
This has gotten so bad especially since the big Twitter exodus from 2022 that developers no longer implement ActivityPub to quote a diaspora* developer, they "implement Mastodon". They build their stuff hard against Mastodon with little to no regards for actual ActivityPub and with little to no regards for the rest of the Fediverse.
Even Mike Macgirvin, formerly the staunchest Mastodon critic under the sun, has given in. He has added a per-post switch to (streams) and Forte which lets you choose between starting an enclosed conversation as per FEP-171b that Mastodon doesn't properly understand and starting a Mastodon-style loose thread that Mastodon understands.
I mean, what kind of "decentralised" Fediverse is it if the W3C is powerless, if the SWICG is effectively powerless, if the other devs are powerless, too, because it's Gargron and his Mastodon developers who are the one and only authority that defines how the Fediverse has to be built And when Mastodon decides to re-invent the wheel once more, the whole rest of the Fediverse has to throw away its existing wheels and implement Mastodon's not even necessarily better wheels
Hat von euch Nicht-Mastodon-Fediverse-Leuten, bei denen BigBlueButton geht, jemand Sonntag von 16 bis 18 Uhr Zeit
RE:
Hat von euch Nicht-Mastodon-Fediverse-Leuten, bei denen BigBlueButton geht, jemand Sonntag von 16 bis 18 Uhr Zeit
RE:
There is the latter in a way.
Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have fields for gender, relationship status (including with whom and since when) and sexual orientation. It should be possible to develop dating add-ons for them, only they'll handle nothing like Tinder because they'll inevitably be part of the desktop-oriented Web interface.
I think Friendica has these fields, too. But Friendica isn't quite as modular as its descendants.

Audi Q3 Sportback long term review, 11,500km report

Okay, first, a clarification: thats not me hooning around in the Audi Q3 Sportback. Thats a certain Mr Saumil Shah, who borrowed the car from me for work in the biggest air quotes imaginable.The...

Anonymous originally came from 4chan. The whole name, the whole concept came from 4chan's feature of allowing people to post and comment without logging in and without attributing their posts or comments to individual names. When they did so, the "name" shown where their name or nickname would have been was simply "Anonymous" because they posted anonymously.
Eventually, some channers got the idea to adopt this "Anonymous" as a moniker under which they wanted to do stuff outside of 4chan. Now, this doesn't mean that they officially founded a group with a leader and a coherent structure and named it Anonymous. They simply decided to adopt this "name", or rather the lack of a name, for themselves. This went farther than a nickname used to hide their real-life identity. This went as far as wiping out any and all traces of an individual identity.
Have you ever watched the film V for Vendetta In the film, the protagonist V sends full-face masks identical to his own, modelled after the terrorist Guy Fawkes, to all citizens of London.
The UK is a post-apocalyptic totalitarian surveillance dictatorship in this film with cameras everywhere and extremely restrictive laws. You do something wrong, you will be identified, tracked down and punished. V is the only one who gets away with everything because he's too smart and, above all, too well-prepared. The Guy Fawkes mask is his "face" that identifies him. It's unique to him, and yet, as he hides so well, the system fails to catch him. Also, it's the only thing that identifies him. And then there's a scene in which a little girl wears her Guy Fawkes mask out in the open. She's caught by the Finger (akin to the Gestapo) and beaten up badly because they genuinely think she's V because she's wearing this mask.
And then comes this iconic scene with thousands upon thousands of Londoners gathering with their Guy Fawkes masks on. The system can't do anything. Theoretically, anyone of them could be V, or maybe, none of them is V. Most importantly, the system can't identify anyone of them at all, what with everyone wearing identical masks. This empowers them to protest against this totalitarian system for the first time since its inception. For unlike other dictatorships, this one does not go against big crowds.
The channers figured out that this works the same as anonymity on the Web. You dare to do anything and everything if you don't identify as your real-life self. On 4chan where nobody except for moot ever logged in, not only weren't they their real-life selves, but they didn't have a unique identity at all. They all had the same handle, Anonymous, just like the citizens of London all had the same "face", the Guy Fawkes mask, in V for Vendetta. Same concept. Thus, when Anonymous became an idea, the Guy Fawkes mask was adopted as a symbol.
Again, Anonymous was never a group. At best, Anonymous was a collective, a swarm of identical beings like (hence, "We are Anonymous. We are Legion."). Actually, Anonymous was an idea. A concept. Being anonymous in the traditional sense, being without an individual identity, became a collective identity.
One was not "a member of Anonymous". That's silly. An invention of those who have never understood Anonymous. One couldn't be "a member of Anonymous" because there was nothing to be a member of. One was Anonymous. You did something, maybe you coordinated that deed with others, and you all decided to do it under the collective moniker of Anonymous, especially if it aligned with whatever else Anonymous stood for at that given time. Of course, you had to make bloody sure that none of you were actually individually identifiable.
I couldn't say, "I'm Jupiter Rowland. I'm a member of Anonymous." This is silly and factually wrong. One can't possibly be a member of Anonymous. Anonymous isn't something one could be a member of.
I couldn't say, "I'm Jupiter Rowland. I'm Anonymous." That's an oxymoron. If I'm Jupiter Rowland, I can't possibly be Anonymous because I. Am. Not. Anonymous. Not if I still have an individual identity.
Instead, I'd put on my Guy Fawkes mask, say, "I am Anonymous," and wipe out the identity of Jupiter Rowland entirely in the process. As I become Anonymous, I stop being Jupiter Rowland. I stop being an individual. I stop being individually identifiable. I become the same as all the others in Guy Fawkes masks who are both anonymous and Anonymous. I can only be Anonymous when I'm actually anonymous. When I take the Guy Fawkes mask off again, I stop being Anonymous because I stop being anonymous.
Now, 4chan today is no longer 4chan from 20 years ago. It was commercialised. The "good parts" remained 4chan and in moot's possession. The "bad parts" were "outsourced" to 4channel which, I think, is independent.
Even they aren't as bad as when 4chan was the "Internet Hate Machine", and Anomymous attacked fandoms they didn't like. The infamous /i/ board on which such invasions were planned, which was the birthplace of Anonymous, was deleted when the actions that were planned there endangered all of 4chan. What used to happen there went to other image boards like chan, and Anonymous tried to distance themselves from what was planned there because chan had also become a hive of Eliot-Rodgers-worshipping incels.
I guess digital activism is gone from image boards completely. Image boards were a thing for the very late Generation X and the Millennials. They, in turn, were digital activists when they were still young. But after they'd got a job and founded a family, the whole thing had become too dangerous, and they didn't have that much time anymore. That, or the whole Anonymous thing came back to bite them when law enforcement joined forces with domestic or even foreign intelligence agencies to track them down.
I also guess that using the "Anonymous" moniker for activism or similar actions has become too dangerous nowadays. Most people have never understood Anonymous. The general public, mass media, tech media, politicians, law enforcement, they all see Anonymous as an enclosed, organised, coherent group. It isn't far from there to being declared a terrorist group nowadays.
Antifa serves as an example. It works exactly the same as Anonymous, only that it isn't about anonymity, lack of individual identity and blending into a crowd of identical beings. It isn't a coherent group. It is an idea, a label, at best a collective. But literally everyone outside Antifa thinks they know for a fact that Antifa is an enclosed, coherent group with a leader and an internal organisation and what-have-you. Antifa is a "terrorist group" in the USA as far as I know. Antifa is feared by the powers that be just as much as Anonymous is. And Antifa is misunderstood by the powers that be in just the same way as Anonymous is.
So if Anonymous carried on, the same fate would befall it as Antifa. Or even worse because, unlike Antifa, Anonymous is officially, and wrongly, being referred to as a "hacker group" although only few who have use the moniker "Anonymous" have ever done so as actual hackers. DDoSing a website in the 2000s by hammering on the F5 key when a dozen people doing so were sufficient to bring a Web server down is not a hack, but next to nobody who isn't actually a hacker understands this either.
In other words: If you refer to yourself as Anonymous nowadays, you basically risk being arrested violently by heavily armed special police or military forces for allegedly being a member of the "hacker group Anonymous" that did this or that thing.
Younger generations don't use image boards anymore except maybe for a few 15-year-old edgelords who, unlike the 15-year-old edgelords 20 years ago, don't have what it takes to evolve into Anonymous. In fact, younger generations barely use PCs and Web browsers anymore unless they're hardcore gamers with too much money. They do everything on phones with dedicated apps.
Anonymous, to them, is a "boomer" thing (where "boomer" means everyone older than them and their friends) like Facebook or Instagram or image boards in general. And lastly, the whole idea is contrary to what these younger generations believe in instead: personal fame.
Those who used to be Anonymous no longer are. And nobody became Anonymous after them.
Dafr sind Alt-Texte eben primr da. Sekundr sind sie fr die da, bei denen aus technischen Grnden keine Bilder angezeigt werden.
Alt-Text ist eigentlich gedacht als 1:1-Ersatz fr das Bild, der nur dann zum Tragen kommt, wenn das Bild nicht zur Verfgung steht. Der Alt-Text-Button fr neugierige Sehende, die auch das Bild haben, ist mastodonexklusiv und auf Mastodon einzigartig im ganzen Web.
Wenn du Erklrungen willst: Erklrungen und andere zustzliche Informationen gehren nicht in den Alt-Text, sondern immer in den Beitragstext. Es gibt nmlich Menschen, die sich keine Alt-Texte anzeigen lassen knnen.
Das kann tatschlich wegen einer Behinderung sein. Um an Alt-Texte ranzukommen, braucht man entweder einen Screenreader (den sehende Leute nicht brauchen und daher auch nicht haben) oder mindestens eine hinreichend gut funktionierende Hand, um z. B. die "Alt"-Schaltflche bei Mastodon anzuklicken oder anzutippen oder, falls man nicht auf Mastodon ist, einen Mauscursor aufs Bild zu schieben und da ruhig liegenzulassen.
Wer einen starken Tremor hat, oder wem beide Hnde amputiert worden sind, kann trotzdem einen Computer benutzen, zur Not eben rein ber die Tastatur. Aber so jemand kann keine Alt-Texte ffnen.
Oder das kann technische Grnde haben. Es gibt Linux-Freaks, die haben mit voller Absicht keine mausgesteuerte Desktopumgebung mit allen Schikanen, sondern nur einen ganz minimalen Window-Manager wie i3wm oder ratpoison. Der wird komplett nur ber die Tastatur gesteuert, und der untersttzt berhaupt keine Zeigegerte wie z. B. Muse. Diese Leute sind nur mit Tastatur-Shortcuts sehr viel schneller als wir alle mit der Maus. Aber sie haben keine technischen Mittel, um im Browser einen Alt-Text anzeigen zu lassen.
Wenn jetzt aber Erklrungen oder andere Informationen ausschlielich im Alt-Text stehen, also weder im Beitragstext stehen, an den jeder rankommt, noch fr unkundige Sehende aus dem Bild ersichtlich sind, dann sind diese Informationen fr all diese Leute nicht zugnglich und dauerhaft verloren.
Deswegen erklre ich meine Bilderposts immer im Beitragstext, verborgen hinter einer Zusammenfassung mit Inhaltswarnung fr diejenigen Mastodon-Nutzer, die mit Beitrgen mit ber 500 Zeichen ein Problem haben. Und ich erklre sie immer sehr umfassend, weil alle meine Bilderposts ber Themen sind, von denen fast niemand wirklich etwas versteht. Aber ich wei auch, da auf Mastodon erwartet wird, da solche Posts fr Laien verstndlich bis hin zu den Grundlagen erklrt werden.
(Versuch nicht, hier auf diesem Kanal, von dem ich gerade kommentiere, nach meinen neuesten Bilderposts zu suchen. Ich poste hier schon seit mehr als zwei Jahren keine Bilder mehr, sondern woanders und auch da wegen des groen Aufwands nur selten. Und bevor du fragst: Bildbeschreibungen schreibe ich auch, und zwar mit einem Detailgrad, den ich nach meinen eigenen Einschtzungen und Erfahrungen fr angemessen halte.)

New post: As Independent as Possible

-Term-Care

HUITAINS (Nina Berberova)

HUITAINS1Ce jour-l le soleil s'est couch, d'une extrme lenteur,Les maisons et le jardin dsert noircissaient dans le rouge.Cette nuit-l le cur n'en pouvait plus de tant d'toiles,Sur la chaude et vaste nuit, nous avons ouvert les fentres.A l'aube un vent lger nous apporta la fracheur de la mer.Les glycines et les roses ont dploy trop de couleurs.Je suis parti cette nuit-l, tout notre destin,Tout l'amour, moi, toi.2Demande et

Let others slay monsters, you run your own tavern

Homo Ludens and Dotemu unveiled Dungeons & Dragons: Long Rest Tavern, a sim where you build and manage your own inn, sending heroes off to dungeons. "Every legendary hero needs a long rest", and that ain't cheap.

Each adventure's outcome is decided by a dice roll, and familiar faces like Minsk and Boo will drop by. Launching early 2027 on Steam, with Russian text support.

First of all, you completely forgot the social media posters. The TOC link leads nowhere.
Also, maybe it's fair to mention that I'm working on about alt-texts and image descriptions, especially for the Fediverse. 46 pages are planned as of now, 24 of them are already written. These will include over 30 pages on how to do things, how not to do things and what never to do at all.
I won't add step-by-step guides for certain frontends. But I've already started adding rules and guidelines for how to describe images appropriately and write alt-texts in a way that won't break stuff anywhere.
Even if it's a very incomplete WIP, it's unique in several ways:

It's the only wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions. Few writers have even only written multiple pages or articles on this subject.
It's the only guide that takes the existence of the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into consideration. This means that it's also the only guide that doesn't assume that Fediverse equals always having only 500 characters for the message text. , regardless of whether or not vanilla Mastodon users can do that.
It's the only guide that, instead of regurgitating the alt-text rules for webpages and blogs and assuming that they apply to the Fediverse just the same, , how Mastodon's alt-text quality criteria are different from the W3C WAI and WCAG alt-text quality criteria, and why it's critically important to know and fulfill Mastodon's requirements for good alt-texts.
It's probably the only guide that and make sure that only those receive it who understand it right off the bat.
It is the only guide that lists , including your blog post, but also including university webpages as well as over two dozen guides from Veronica Lewis a.k.a. Veronica with Four Eyes.

That's one nice thing about Hubzilla: You can customise the UI apart from theming. You can completely change the layout. (Not sure if you can do that with Saiwal's themes, but you can with Redbasic.)
By default, a new channel has barely got any icons in the navbar and not even that many in the app menu. The right-hand end of the navbar of a new channel only contains icons for search, HQ, help and the app menu. You can configure under Apps which icons shall appear where. Star them, and they're in the menu. Pin them, and they're on the navbar.
In fact, whereas (I think) Friendica has all its features on all the time, Hubzilla is very modular. Many of its features are optional and off by default they're called "apps". If you don't need it, don't activate it, and you won't have UI elements for it.
Even the various pages can be rearranged in the PDL editor. You don't need something, throw it out. You only need one sidebar, choose a layout with only one sidebar instead of both. You can do without any sidebars, pick a layout without sidebars.
Saiwal's theme previews have to show what can be done with them. Hence, a lot of UI elements are in place that either can be configured away or have to be configured into place in the first place.
For example, if you look at the AdminLTE preview: You only have to pin the apps that you need all the time. If you want to, you can unpin them all, and they're gone. But then you'll have to go via the Featured Apps menu to get to them. You can slim that down as well, but then you have to open the Apps page to get to them.
The entire wide dark navigation bar on the left can be folded in if you don't need it. Fold it out when you need it.
Main Navigation looks like a homebrew element that doesn't necessarily have to be default. The Archives field can be configured away or has to be configured into place.
The buttons below the posts can't be reduced that much. The speech bubble unfolds the comments. Then come thumb up and (optional, off-by-default) thumb down. Next comes repeat (= share on Friendica). The smiley is for replying with nothing but one emoticon I think this is actually an optional feature, too.
Now, when I look at the Solidified preview: Almost every other button on the left-hand bar is for an app that isn't even activated by default. Most of the rest are for features that are available right away, but their buttons usually aren't.
Most of what's on the right was probably configured in for the showcase. Even if it's there by default, it can be removed.
The centre only seems cluttered because the posts are arranged across three columns instead of all in one. Even there you can choose how to arrange the posts.
Have you taken a look at yet
It was created by the same guy as Friendica, and it's a descendent of Friendica. (Forked to Free-Friendika, then forked to Red, both in 2011, then largely rewritten against a brand-new protocol in 2012, then renamed Red Matrix, then greatly expanded in features and renamed Hubzilla in 2015.)
One could say it's Friendica

entirely running on its own protocol, Zot6
with that makes it possible to clone your channel across multiple servers and making it resilient against server outage
with multiple channel (identities, like complete Friendica accounts, but without separate logins) on one account/login, and you can switch between them without logging out and back in again (all with multiple profiles like on Friendica)
without Bluesky integration
with less pandering to Mastodon
with an even better permissions system
with full (client-side and server-side) OpenWebAuth support
with polls
with WebDAV access to your file space
with a built-in CalDAV calendar server
with an optional built-in CardDAV addressbook server
with optional articles, planning cards, wikis and webpages
with a very extensive, detailed and well-written built-in help system
with the ability to integrate git repositories with 3rd-party add-ons and themes that can even be upgraded with shell scripts as easily as the whole hub
with 3rd-party themes available that change the entire UI and UX instead of reskinning the existing UI, especially the by

It does not provide any previews for links, though I'm sure something like this can be developed as a third-party addon.
If you want to try it, it's quite tricky to find a good hub with 3rd-party themes installed to start on. There aren't any in North America don't go looking for them.
You may want to get in touch with pepe about joining his hub. It's well-equipped, it's well-maintained, but keep in mind it's in Europe.
If you find Hubzilla to your liking, and you want to have your own hub hosted, . Pick one you like, set up your own hub, activate the add-ons you need, install the third-party themes and add-ons you need, get it to run properly, and then clone your daily-driver production channel over from Whoville. Make the instance on your own hub the main one, and keep the one at Whoville as a clone in case your hoster is offline, or something else is wrong with your hub.
Add your location to a Google Map I could come up with a bunch of conspiracy theories for this behaviour.
Enforcement of Mastodon dominance.
A front against Mike Macgirvin, inventor of the most "disruptive" Fediverse software from a Mastodon point of view, as well as all his creations and inventions.
Forcing a grass-roots development under corporate control and eradicating the grass-roots part. Essentially "embrace-extend-extinguish", but trying desperately to speed-run the "embrace" and "extend" parts to cut to the "extinguish" part as quickly as possible.
The only way this could possibly fail is if Mastodon decided not to play along because more people consider Mastodon the ActivityPub reference implementation and Fediverse gold standard than not.
Write your image descriptions 100% by hand, full stop.
For starters, AI descriptions are bad. AIs hallucinate. AIs misidentify stuff if they don't know it. AIs don't mention stuff at all if they don't know it.
Besides, AIs can only generate generic image descriptions. They don't know the context. They describe stuff that doesn't matter for anyone. They completely omit stuff that does matter because they don't know that it matters. Only you yourself can individually tailor image descriptions to the context of the post.
First of all, Mastodon offers you 1,500 characters per alt-text. Not 10,000.
Otherwise, no. No, you absolutely shouldn't.
It isn't uncommon among Mastodon users to say, "Okay, we've only got 500 characters in our toots which we also need for mentions and hashtags and even CWs. But we've got 1,500 characters per alt-text! So let's use the alt-texts to expand our character limits!"
What next to nobody on Mastodon knows: Not everyone can access alt-text. There are people who can't, and for whom everything only written in alt-text is lost forever.
Accessing alt-text either requires a screen reader or at least one hand that's working properly enough. You have to hold a phone, or you have to click something, or you have to hover a mouse cursor over the image.
But there are people who are sighted enough that they don't need a screen reader, so they don't have one. At the same time, however, they don't have any sufficiently working hands. Or they don't have hands at all because both their hands were amputated after some accident.
And yet, they can operate a computer. They control it entirely by keyboard. With a headpointer, if need be (a pen strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys, one by one).
If you write something into the alt-text and only into the alt-text, none of these people will ever be able to read it.
If you really need more characters, then you've got two options.
If you absolutely must stay on Mastodon (because you like the UI, or because you're on an iPhone, and you absolutely must use your favourite Mastodon phone app), you can ask around for servers with a higher character limit.
If you only want to stay in the Fediverse and connected to Mastodon users, and it doesn't have to be Mastodon, but you don't want to go through the hassle of looking for servers with over 500 characters, you can move to, for example

Akkoma (5,000 characters can be configured by the admin, so the actual limit may be higher)
Misskey (3,000 characters hard-coded)
Sharkey or CherryPick (3,000 characters can be configured by the admin, so the actual limit may be higher)
Friendica or Hubzilla (16,777,215 characters limited by the maximum size of the message text database field)

When I read the Bonfire suggestion, I was about to suggest Hubzilla, the most powerful Fediverse server application.
In case you don't know it: It basically evolved in 2015 from a fork of a Friendica fork, and it was created by Friendica's inventor. It probably has one of the best user documentations in the Fediverse, but it also has quite a steep learning curve, and newly created channels require quite a bit of configuration before you can really use them.
The same guy still maintains two more recent members of the same software family, (streams) from 2021 and Forte from 2024. They aren't quite as blistering with features as Hubzilla (they lack all the CMS stuff: articles, cards, wikis, webpages), and they don't offer nearly as many connection options as Friendica and Hubzilla.
Although they're still somehow complex, and although they don't have much of a user documentation, I dare say they're easier to get into because they don't require quite as much undocumented initial configuration after creating a channel.
All three offer groups (Hubzilla calls them "forums"), but no subforums. Whereas Friendica groups can only be co-administered by someone on the same server, groups/forums on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte can be co-administered by anyone on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte.
However, there aren't any phone apps for them. They can be installed as progressive Web apps, though, and their Web UIs transform into mobile mode quite well AFAIK.
And that's the issue. It has to work with languages switching not only mid-text, but mid-sentence, like so (taken from a very old image description of mine):

The column between the passageways in the background to the left carries a black sign with group joiners for the Metropolis Newsnet group. The sign has the octagonal red Metropolis logo with a white M in the middle and a white edge around it in the top left corner. To the right of the logo, it is labelled in white, "Metropolis Newsnet Gruppe" which is partly German and translates to "Metropolis Newsnet Group". The writing below reads, "Aktuelle Informationen um Metropolis" and "Ankndigungen, Infos, Events, Fragen und Antworten im Chat" which is mostly German and translates to "Announcements, infos, events, questions and answers in the chat". The small neon green writing at the bottom edge reads, "Klick hier und folge dem Link im allgemeinen Chat, um der Gruppe beizutreten. Im Gruppenfenster JOIN klicken.(Click here to join the Metropolis Newsnet group." The German part of this translates to, "Click here and follow the link in the general chat to join the group. In the group window, click JOIN." Right below the black sign are three clickable white panels with black writings on them, "deutsch", "franais" and "english".

Granted, I wouldn't put something this long into the alt-text. But I can't exclude someone being in a situation in which a text transcript that'll go into the alt-text causes the language to switch mid-sentence.
And that's the issue. It has to work with languages switching not only mid-text, but mid-sentence, like so (taken from a very old image description of mine):

The column between the passageways in the background to the left carries a black sign with group joiners for the Metropolis Newsnet group. The sign has the octagonal red Metropolis logo with a white M in the middle and a white edge around it in the top left corner. To the right of the logo, it is labelled in white, "Metropolis Newsnet Gruppe" which is partly German and translates to "Metropolis Newsnet Group". The writing below reads, "Aktuelle Informationen um Metropolis" and "Ankndigungen, Infos, Events, Fragen und Antworten im Chat" which is mostly German and translates to "Announcements, infos, events, questions and answers in the chat". The small neon green writing at the bottom edge reads, "Klick hier und folge dem Link im allgemeinen Chat, um der Gruppe beizutreten. Im Gruppenfenster JOIN klicken.(Click here to join the Metropolis Newsnet group." The German part of this translates to, "Click here and follow the link in the general chat to join the group. In the group window, click JOIN." Right below the black sign are three clickable white panels with black writings on them, "deutsch", "franais" and "english".

Granted, I wouldn't put something this long into the alt-text. But I can't exclude someone being in a situation in which a text transcript that'll go into the alt-text causes the language to switch mid-sentence.
Come to think of it, ideally, I'd provide individual image descriptions with text transcripts in all languages that appear in the image myself.
This way, if I have a sign in French, English and German, I can add a verbatim transcript of the French text to the French description, a verbatim transcript of the English text to the English description and a verbatim transcript of the German text to the German description.
If I only provided an English description, and if I only gave translations of the French and German parts of the sign, neither French nor German readers would have a verbatim transcript of anything in the sign. French readers, for example, would get a French machine translation of my English translation of the French text instead of getting the French text itself as a verbatim transcript.
Come to think of it, ideally, I'd provide individual image descriptions with text transcripts in all languages that appear in the image myself.
This way, if I have a sign in French, English and German, I can add a verbatim transcript of the French text to the French description, a verbatim transcript of the English text to the English description and a verbatim transcript of the German text to the German description.
If I only provided an English description, and if I only gave translations of the French and German parts of the sign, neither French nor German readers would have a verbatim transcript of anything in the sign. French readers, for example, would get a French machine translation of my English translation of the French text instead of getting the French text itself as a verbatim transcript.
To be honest, what I had in mind wasn't screenshots of text although describing screenshots of foreign-language text can be tricky itself.
Here are some snippets from my first long image description. It's outdated in a way, but it provides good examples. And this image description did go into the message text (with an additional, shorter description in the alt-text).

On the ramp to the teleporter, there is a black sign that reads, "Wenn Durchgehen nicht klappt, Klicken Sie das Bild zum Teleportieren. When Walk-Through does not work, Click the Image to teleport."

The column between the passageways in the background to the left carries a black sign with group joiners for the Metropolis Newsnet group. The sign has the octagonal red Metropolis logo with a white M in the middle and a white edge around it in the top left corner. To the right of the logo, it is labelled in white, "Metropolis Newsnet Gruppe" which is partly German and translates to "Metropolis Newsnet Group". The writing below reads, "Aktuelle Informationen um Metropolis" and "Ankndigungen, Infos, Events, Fragen und Antworten im Chat" which is mostly German and translates to "Announcements, infos, events, questions and answers in the chat". The small neon green writing at the bottom edge reads, "Klick hier und folge dem Link im allgemeinen Chat, um der Gruppe beizutreten. Im Gruppenfenster JOIN klicken.(Click here to join the Metropolis Newsnet group." The German part of this translates to, "Click here and follow the link in the general chat to join the group. In the group window, click JOIN." Right below the black sign are three clickable white panels with black writings on them, "deutsch", "franais" and "english".

To my best knowledge, there's no way a screen reader can switch from English to German, to English, to German, to English within one sentence. Or from English to German, to French, back to English, again, within one sentence.
Or how about these two sentences from another, even longer image description

At the bottom of this area, "Patefacio radix" is written in medium dark grey letters, in a wide sans-serif typeface and in what is likely to be small caps. It is Latin for "open source".

The screen reader would have to switch from English to Latin, back to English, mid-sentence, not to mention that the screen reader would have to know how to properly pronounce a dead language.
To be honest, what I had in mind wasn't screenshots of text although describing screenshots of foreign-language text can be tricky itself.
Here are some snippets from my first long image description. It's outdated in a way, but it provides good examples. And this image description did go into the message text (with an additional, shorter description in the alt-text).

On the ramp to the teleporter, there is a black sign that reads, "Wenn Durchgehen nicht klappt, Klicken Sie das Bild zum Teleportieren. When Walk-Through does not work, Click the Image to teleport."

The column between the passageways in the background to the left carries a black sign with group joiners for the Metropolis Newsnet group. The sign has the octagonal red Metropolis logo with a white M in the middle and a white edge around it in the top left corner. To the right of the logo, it is labelled in white, "Metropolis Newsnet Gruppe" which is partly German and translates to "Metropolis Newsnet Group". The writing below reads, "Aktuelle Informationen um Metropolis" and "Ankndigungen, Infos, Events, Fragen und Antworten im Chat" which is mostly German and translates to "Announcements, infos, events, questions and answers in the chat". The small neon green writing at the bottom edge reads, "Klick hier und folge dem Link im allgemeinen Chat, um der Gruppe beizutreten. Im Gruppenfenster JOIN klicken.(Click here to join the Metropolis Newsnet group." The German part of this translates to, "Click here and follow the link in the general chat to join the group. In the group window, click JOIN." Right below the black sign are three clickable white panels with black writings on them, "deutsch", "franais" and "english".

At the bottom of this area, "Patefacio radix" is written in medium dark grey letters, in a wide sans-serif typeface and in what is likely to be small caps. It is Latin for "open source".

The screen reader would have to switch from English to Latin, back to English, mid-sentence, not to mention that the screen reader would have to know how to properly pronounce a dead language.
I'm pretty sure that posting this will turn out completely futile. But I'll try anyway.
I'm especially asking the Mastodon alt-text enforcers: How must foreign-language text be transcribed, both by Web accessibility standards and by Mastodon's alt-text standards
Let's assume I have some text in an image that's in a different language than the post and therefore in a different language than the image description. But I still have to transcribe it.
Now, according to image-describing rules, text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim. Word by word, character by character, exactly identical to the original in the image.
Here's the catch: Screen reader software may not be able to reliably switch the language in which they read out text in the middle of a description. They definitely cannot switch the language in the middle of an alt-text, I know that, just like they cannot navigate within alt-text.
This means that if I describe an image in English, but there's French text somewhere, a screen reader may read it out as gobbledygook instead of proper French. It may read the French text like it's English.
But even if the screen reader did read out the French text in proper French, someone who doesn't understand French won't understand the text.
This leaves me with two options:

Transcribe the foreign-language text verbatim, add a translation afterwards.
This would make the foreign-language text understandable, but it would also produce gobbledygook.
Give a translated transcript of the foreign-language text that's as close to the original as possible.
No gobbledygook, but I'd break the rule of always transcribing text verbatim.

Transcribe the foreign-language text verbatim, add a translation afterwards.
This would make the foreign-language text understandable, but it would also produce gobbledygook.
Give a translated transcript of the foreign-language text that's as close to the original as possible.
No gobbledygook, but I'd break the rule of always transcribing text verbatim.

The latter option would produce weird results if applied to a sign with essentially the same text in French, English and German where the French and German texts translate into something that slightly differs from both each other and the English text. I've happened upon this before.
Just out of curiosity: Are there any good excuses for not having added an alt-text that you'd accept
For example, when someone new to Hubzilla tells you that they neither know what alt-text is nor how to add it Hubzilla doesn't have dedicated UI elements for adding alt-texts. Images are embedded into posts like in blog posts rather than attached as files like on Mastodon. , and the newbie might not know that this is explained in Hubzilla's built-in help, or it's simply too tedious to "program" an alt-text in.
Or when a Hubzilla veteran of over ten years tells you that Hubzilla has no way whatsoever to add an alt-text to a video Like images, videos are embedded into posts. But the video-embedding code has no option for an alt-text. Granted, if it's a video, I'd rather expect or supply a full, time-coded transcript in the message text. But maybe what's expected is both a full, time-coded transcript and an alt-text that's sufficiently detailed by Mastodon's standards.
If neither of these are acceptable to you, there's something else you should know: Hubzilla does not support Mastodon's report feature either because that's a non-standard, homegrown Mastodon feature, and Hubzilla is not built against Mastodon. So if you report someone to their Hubzilla admin, the admin simply will never receive your report.
This is likely to lead Mastodon users into believing that either the server on the other end is unmoderated (which, in Hubzilla's case and by Mastodon's standards, is technically true because Hubzilla is all about self-moderation), or the admin doesn't care, both of which, by Mastodon's standards, is reason enough to have the server Fediblocked.
Again, I'm just being curious and cautious. You should not believe that I'm trying to weasel myself out of having to describe images.
After all, I'm working on with . I'm using the same knowledge that I'm pouring into the wiki, the same rules and guidelines that already have or will have wiki pages, to describe my own images, even though some of them collide with each other and with Mastodon's image description preferences and quality standards. I don't think anyone else in the Fediverse is taking describing images more seriously.
I rarely post images anymore due to the effort involved. But whenever I do, I take all the effort that's needed to both describe and explain them, taking into consideration the context, Mastodon's culture and preferences regarding alt-texts and image descriptions, the potential target audience and what knowledge they may or may not have about what's in the image. I've declared all my existing image descriptions outdated, also because it'd be too tedious to go and upgrade them all whenever I learn something new about describing images. (Don't go looking for my most recent images on this channel I post my images elsewhere now because Hubzilla can't make Mastodon blur sensitive images.)

Longtemps couvert par une clause de confidentialit, laccord dachat sign entre et a t publi en septembre 2023, aprs une dcision de la Haute Cour obtenue par .

I've written an article with several feature comparison tables between

Mastodon
Friendica
Hubzilla (rebuilt from a fork of a fork of Friendica by Friendica's creator)
(streams) (fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla by the same creator)
Forte (fork of the streams repository by still the same creator

A few goodies:

Mastodon:
500 characters requires source code modifications to get more
Friendica:
16,777,215 characters
Friendica:
Can render and create the full gamut of HTML text formatting
Mastodon:
Can only create plain text can only render a small subset of HTML text formatting
Friendica:
Have as many images pro post as you want
Embed them within the text
Mastodon:
Limited to 4 images
Images can only be file attachments
Friendica:
Shows you all content in the Fediverse just like the author intended it
Mastodon:
"Sanitises" away half the formatting, all embedded images and all images except for the first four, just for the sake of purist microblogging
Mastodon:
Timeline consists of single messages with no context
Friendica:
Timeline consists of complete conversations, all the way back to the start post, with all branches (ignores and blocks notwithstanding)
Mastodon:
Conversations consist of toots and more toots, loosely strung together with mentions
Replies only reach those who are visibly mentioned
Friendica:
Conversations consist of exactly one post and otherwise comments
Replies go from the replier to the thread starter and from there to all participants in the conversation without having to mention anyone
Friendica:
Has groups built in (groups are accounts with special settings)
Mastodon:
Has no support for groups whatsoever, much less its own groups
Most Mastodon users don't even know that the Fediverse has groups
Friendica:
Lets you federate with the whole Fediverse
Lets you federate with diaspora*
Lets you include and remote-control a Bluesky account
At least used to be able to do the same with a Tumblr account or a Twitter account
Lets you crosspost to Dreamwidth, Libertree, LiveJournal and XML-RPC-based blogs like WordPress
Mastodon:
Just barely so federates with the Fediverse
Tries to make everything that isn't Mastodon look broken
Would love for the Fediverse to be only Mastodon
Mastodon:
Makes the whole Fediverse look like Mastodon
Friendica:
Shows you which server software a message came from

This would actually be quite counter-productive if it was hard-coded, especially on Mastodon.
See, the Fediverse can create content that Mastodon can't even properly display. Or rather, stubbornly refuses to display because of its self-imposed limitations.
Commercial news platforms like Ghost and Flipboard, specialised long-form blogging applications like WordPress, WriteFreely and Plume, the "Facebook-style social networking" side in the shape of Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, they can all send messages into the Fediverse that make use of all formatting tricks in the HTML book and then some. But if Mastodon, with whichever frontend, were to display them, it would often completely and utterly deface them.
Mastodon has no support for titles, at least not in messages which it actually displays. It pretends they don't exist.
Mastodon has no support for ordered lists with numbers or letters. It changes them into bullet-point lists.
Mastodon has no support for tables, for horizontal rules, for text colours, for text sizes except in headlines etc. It "sanitises" them into plain, unformatted text entirely.
Most importantly, Mastodon has no support for embedded images and for more than four images in one message.
For example, let's assume someone writes a beautiful travel blog post on WordPress with the ActivityPub add-on activated. The post has ten images embedded between paragraphs with the paragraphs referencing the images.
If Mastodon tried to render this blog post, it would rip all images out of the text where they should be embedded. If you're lucky, it would hang four of these images up underneath the post and silently discard the other six so you'll never know they exist. If you're unlucky, Mastodon would silently discard all ten images.
This, by the way, is the very reason that it's good that Mastodon usually "displays" such posts with their title, their summary and a link to the original that'll open at its source in your Web browser. It'll allow you to see the post as it was intended by the author. Mastodon itself won't.
At the very least, the links in such Mastodon-generated "previews" must continue to lead to their sources and open in a Web browser. The very reason why these "previews" exist is so that Mastodon can keep clinging to its purist microblogging principles while at the same time not defacing the posts which are "previewed" with links.
Also, there must always remain the option to look at messages at their source, and be it stashed away in a menu.
If you want all of this to disappear just so that phone users are spared from their browsers ever popping up whenever they tap something in their Mastodon apps, then you'll deprive the Mastodon users of any way of seeing anything in the Fediverse without Mastodon's limitations.

Pour ce ciel (Supervielle)

Pour ce ciel encor vif de couleurs et de flchesO passent des oiseaux prisonniers d'un long jour,Pour ces doigts pntrs par l'ombre des caressesEt qu'un frisson du soir vient chercher par-dessous,Pour cet arbre si proche et qui dj ressemble de beaux souvenirs remuant dans leurs cendres,Pour la Terre profonde o nous sommes couchs,Pour ce miroir plaintif sous le ciel renvers.(Supervielle)LE FORAT INNOCENT1930Recueil: Oeuvres potiques

LES POEMES DE LHUMOUR TRISTE (Supervielle)

LES POEMES DE L'HUMOUR TRISTE moi-mme quand je serai posthume.Tu mourus de pansympathie,Une maligne maladie.Te voici couch sous l'herbette- Oui, pas de marbre, du gazon,Du simple gazon de saison,Quelques abeilles, pas d'Hymette.On dit que tout s'est bien passEt que te voil trpass ..Ces messieurs des Ombres FunbresVers le fond fumeux des tnbresTe guidrent d'un index srMais couronn d'un ongle impur.Et c'est ainsi que l'on vous

Do vient cette immense douceur (Supervielle)

Illustration: David Caspar Friedrich D'o vient cette immense douceurQui m'enveloppe au crpuscule,Quand le chant des oiseaux reculeDevant le calme et la langueurDu crpuscule l'heure o le ciel plein d'amourVient bercer notre me trouble,A l'heure o s'arrte l'ide,L'heure mauve ou le ciel est lourdD'immense amour Quand l'eucalyptus long et sombrelve aux cieux son front sereinEt le calme dont il est plein,Quand merge du fond de I've just discovered a certain Mastodon account that seems to automatically post images of Second Life avatars. It can be lucky to only have eight followers, one of them being a search engine, the others being Second Life users.
If it had more follower, it would certainly already have met the wrath of the wider Mastodon community, especially the Mastodon HOA, for breaking Mastodon's unwritten rules.
And I'm not even talking about nigh-nudity in some of the images with no warning, no image flagging, no hashtag. I'm talking about the alt-texts that are vastly below Mastodon's requirements and quality standards for alt-texts.
Granted, all things considered, the requirements for good image descriptions by Mastodon's standards have to be extremely hard and tedious to meet, at least by my personal estimations. In fact, they have to be impossible to meet on Mastodon itself due to its tiny character limit, and if this account was somewhere where it could meet these requirements, it'd probably be blocked by loads of Mastodon accounts for its excessively long posts due to the long image descriptions.
But if more Mastodon users knew it right now, it'd probably be blocked by many more Mastodon accounts than follow it.
If you post from virtual worlds into the Fediverse, you simply cannot win in the long run. You'll lose either way.
I've just discovered a certain Mastodon account that seems to automatically post images of Second Life avatars. It can be lucky to only have eight followers, one of them being a search engine, the others being Second Life users.
If it had more follower, it would certainly already have met the wrath of the wider Mastodon community, especially the Mastodon HOA, for breaking Mastodon's unwritten rules.
And I'm not even talking about nigh-nudity in some of the images with no warning, no image flagging, no hashtag. I'm talking about the alt-texts that are vastly below Mastodon's requirements and quality standards for alt-texts.
Granted, all things considered, the requirements for good image descriptions by Mastodon's standards have to be extremely hard and tedious to meet, at least by my personal estimations. In fact, they have to be impossible to meet on Mastodon itself due to its tiny character limit, and if this account was somewhere where it could meet these requirements, it'd probably be blocked by loads of Mastodon accounts for its excessively long posts due to the long image descriptions.
But if more Mastodon users knew it right now, it'd probably be blocked by many more Mastodon accounts than follow it.
If you post from virtual worlds into the Fediverse, you simply cannot win in the long run. You'll lose either way.
I don't want to alarm you, but:
Friendica ( ) has introduced full-text search to what would become the Fediverse as early as May, 2010.
Hubzilla ( ) inherited this feature from Friendica. Hubzilla first came out in March, 2015.
For reference: Mastodon first came out in January, 2016. It immediately federated with Friendica and Hubzilla. In case you don't believe this: Take a look at my profile on its home server. Does that look like Mastodon
The Fediverse has full-text search right now, and it has had full-text search for five years and eight months longer than Mastodon has even existed. This is the status quo.
If you want your content to be private, don't make it public in the first place.

PAUVRE PETIT TROTTIN (Supervielle)

PAUVRE PETIT TROTTINIl fait froid. L'ouvrire en la salle alourdie,Coud ternellement de sa tremblante main,Fatigue de souffrir, et, la journe finie,Elle a bien peu d'argent pour acheter son pain.Pauvre petit trottin !..Il fait nuit. L'ouvrire en la rue triste tousseRegagne son logis aprs un long chemin.Dans sa petite chambre elle s'endort enfinMais il y fait trop froid pour la rverie douce.Pauvre petit trottin !Enfin voil la grve. Hlas! c'est

LOUBLI (Supervielle)

L'OUBLIChaque jour de mon cur emporte quelque chose,Une fleur d'autrefois ou un rve d'antanEt je voudrais chasser cet oubli qui s'impose,Mais je m'en aperois alors qu'il n'est plus temps.L'oubli, l'affreux oubli, m'engloutit dans le vide,Il tue mes passions, mes rves, mes amours,Quand je veux retrouver le pass des beaux jours,Je revois sa place un squelette rigide.Chaque jour de mon coeur emporte quelque chose.Je croyais y avoir deux tristes yeux

SOUVENIR (Supervielle)

Illustration: Edward John Poynter SOUVENIR Mademoiselle A. O.Les doux soirs de printemps que je passais prs d'elleOnt laiss dans mon me un radieux azur,S'largissant toujours et s'ouvrant comme l'aileD'un grand aigle planant calme dans le ciel pur.Les brises, doucement, passaient chaudes et lentes,Des tideurs parfumes erraient vagues dans l'air,Les fleurs exhalaient des longues senteurs aimantes,Qui montaient et mouraient comme l'eau de la mer.Les

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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