Mastodons

Mastodon users are sharing personal accounts of how they first came to Linux. The stories span decades, from SUSE in the mid-1990s to people moving to Ubuntu after Windows 7 support ended, and long-time Debian users who have run the same system for years because it simply works. The thread has become a collective nostalgia trip for open-source users comparing their migration paths.

Artists are taking part in Dogthingtober, a month-long daily drawing challenge, and day five's theme is silhouette. A new silhouette artwork tagged art and furry has drawn attention and likes on Mastodon, with participants sharing their takes on the prompt as the challenge continues through October.

The Théâtre national de Strasbourg has joined the decentralised social network Mastodon, and the account reseauculture.fr welcomed it publicly. The theatre thanked the community for the reception and shared its first post, calling it a busy week. The welcome message drew modest engagement from theatre fans in the region.

Participants in a hashtag game are reworking classic song titles and lyrics around autumn annoyances, with one entry riffing on Johnny Nash's 'I Can See Clearly Now' changed to 'the haze is gone' under #AutumnProblemsASong. The playful posts reference foggy fall mornings and 1960s music, with others joining in to share their own seasonal puns.

A German-speaking user is sharing a golf-related quip with the remark that she must not show it to her husband, joking that he would otherwise accuse her of winding him up again. The post has collected around twenty likes and is circulating among German Mastodon users, prompting light banter about couples teasing each other over golf.

A Polish-language post circulating on Mastodon lists privacy-respecting replacements for mainstream apps: Gmail to Tuta Mail, Google Photos to Ente Photos, Google Search to SearXNG, and Chrome to Firefox. The recommendation thread is being shared as a quick guide for users looking to reduce their dependence on Google services and cut data collection from everyday apps.

Artist Sylvia Ritter has shared a digital artwork titled "The Grand Koi Hotel", painted in Krita and dated 2014, depicting an ornate building with koi fish under a starry sky. She posted it as part of a Silent Sunday art share on Mastodon, tagged with community art and no-AI labels, where it has drawn appreciative engagement.

Shortcut Menu 0.5 is out, focusing on making its safe mode safer for blind and low-vision users. In the new version, safe mode always restores the user's screen reader: if it ends without one active, whether by closing the app, the screen turning off, or 30 seconds of inactivity, the screen reader is switched back on and the app reports which one was restored. The update is being shared among accessibility-minded users on Mastodon.

An artist is marking the start of October with a new piece shared on the art-sharing site Drifting Spirits, posting a short, cheerful note celebrating the month's arrival. Fellow artists and art fans in the Mastodon community have been responding warmly, engaging with the work as part of the ongoing MastoArt creative showcase.

A link to a Concrete Blonde track, tagged with 70s, 80s, Los Angeles and CFC music hashtags, was shared on Mastodon and drew a small wave of engagement. Concrete Blonde, the Los Angeles rock band fronted by Johnette Napolitano, is best known for songs like 'Bloodletting', and listeners are revisiting and trading their classic-era material.

The Wikipedia picture of the day is 'City of Workers', a 1920 oil-on-canvas painting by German artist Hans Baluschek. The work depicts a working-class district of Berlin, showing workers' housing beneath a smoke-filled industrial skyline crossed by railway tracks. Art lovers on Mastodon are sharing the image and discussing Baluschek's portrayal of industrial-era Berlin and the lives of the working class a century ago.

The Italian instance mastodon.uno has launched a curated collection of Mastodon accounts that discuss cinema, aimed at helping users find film conversation within the Fediverse. Alongside the collection, users are invited to join the @spettacoli group to take part in discussions about movies and entertainment.

A reminder circulating online tells social media users they are not obligated to explain why they block someone, urging people to trust their instincts and use the block function freely. The message extends to Mastodon and has drawn supportive engagement, resonating with conversations about online boundaries, mental health and self-care.

An artist has shared a digital artwork titled 'Transfer Unit' as part of Shiptember, an annual community challenge where participants design spaceships. The piece, tagged under sci-fi art and digital art communities, depicts a spaceship concept and has drawn a small wave of attention from space art fans.

An artist posting as LosGrandeFocco has published a new piece of horse-themed artwork, tagging it for Mastodon's MastoArt, art and fediart communities, with the tag 'foccomaltwieder' suggesting a recurring series. The post is drawing attention as the top art item in the fediverse's global feed, with users engaging through likes.