@hex@kolektiva.social2025-11-01 23:34:29
For any of my comrades who are using SNAP, I wish I had something better to say than "if you crush 4 buckeyes with a hammer and tie the pulp in a sock you can wash a good sized load of laundry." English Ivy also has saponins, but I've never been able to make soap from it myself.
Ivy is everywhere. Buckeyes (Horse Chestnuts) are common in city parks (there are a ton in Seattle).
Yucca is also a good source of saponins, but it also has silica. That makes it a good scrubby soap. You can find these plants all over they're pretty common to find in yards.
If you can find acorns still (it's a bit late, but who knows), acorn grits are great and something you can survive on for a bit. Acorns need processing (it's easy to look up, but feel free to ask or check out one or Black Forager's videos on it).
If you've been following me for a bit, you probably already know all this. But if you don't, I hope it helps.
Any other forager folks are welcome to drop hints here that might be useful to folks in the city.
#Foraging
@jake4480@c.im2025-12-31 18:04:26
These were my favorite movies of 2025. Pretty much all horror, sci-fi, comedy. There's still a couple I need to see from this year (Cold Storage!) but these are all my favorites as of now.
#2025Films
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-31 18:41:06
Israel on Tuesday said it had
💥suspended more than two dozen humanitarian organizations,
including "Doctors Without Borders" and CARE,
from operating in the Gaza Strip
for failing to comply with new registration rules.
Israel says the rules are aimed at preventing Hamas and other militant groups from infiltrating the aid organizations.
But the organizations say the rules are arbitrary and warned that the new ban would harm a civilian population d…
@joxean@mastodon.social2025-11-01 11:06:02
@comex@mas.to2025-12-02 07:53:25
I tried vibecoding again. Gave Opus 4.5 what I thought was a fairly hard assignment: generate a TypeScript compiler transform, using ts-patch, to let me mark functions with a magic decorator to make the compiler inline all calls to them.
It one-shot a basic implementation.
Getting to a higher-quality implementation required guidance from me – at times it had bad instincts – but when I gave guidance, it was competent at following it.
Overall, I'm spooked.
@inthehands@hachyderm.io2025-12-02 17:09:39
I am once again begging, begging everyone to hold these 3 thoughts in their head at once:
1. Plastics recycling is not very effective. It’s far, far better to not use plastic at all in the first place, and that failing, far better to reuse.
2. Plastics recycling is not worthless or pointless. Don’t just throw it all away because “iT dOEsn’T matTeR.” A miserable 5% reclaimed is still better than 0% reclaimed.
3. Plastics recycling is nonetheless part of a petrochemical greenwashing campaign, per @…’s post below. https://mastodon.social/@CelloMomOnCars/115650231600448649
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-10-02 10:55:31
Day 9: Eniko Fox
Edit: added a store link for Kitsune Tails.
We're back to videogames, and with another author who's on the fediverse: @…
Fox has developed a few games, but the one that I've played and love is Kitsune Tails. It's a sapphic romance take on Super Mario Bros. 3, and (critically for a platformer) it's got very crisp controls and runs smoothly. I think one thing a lot of indie platforms devs struggle with is getting those fundamentals right, because on the technical side they require very challenging things like optimization of your code and extremely careful input handling that go beyond the basic skills necessary to put together a game. From following her on Twitter and now the Fediverse, it's clear that Fox is a deeply competent programmer, and her games reflect that. Beyond the fundamentals, Kitsune Tails has a very sweet plot with a very cool twist in the middle, and without spoilers, that twist made both the levels and gameplay very difficult to design, but Fox rose to that challenge and put together a wonderful game. Particularly past the plot twist (but in subtle ways before it) Fox is able to build beyond SMB3 mechanics in ways that gracefully complement the original, and the movement in the game ends up being difficult but extremely satisfying, with an excellent skill/speed response allowing for both slower, easier approaches that work for a range of players and high-skill extremely-fast options for those who want to push themselves.
There have been plenty of people I follow with indie game projects that are kinda meh in the end, and I'll still boost them without much comment if they're decent. Fox' work is actually amazing, which is why if you've followed me for a while you'll know I tend to mention it periodically, and which is why she makes this list of authors I respect.
You can buy Kitsune Tails here: #20AuthorsNoMen
@floheinstein@chaos.social2025-11-02 08:16:06
I had over three hundred accounts following me that I didn't follow back, mostly because I lost track of all the new followers.
So I did the unthinkable thing:
I asked Perplexity to write me a python script to follow everyone back. I will just unfollow some of them later, if I don't like them enough. But for now, everyone gets the benefit of the doubt.😉
The script needed some adjustments, but it worked.
Here's the script if you need it:
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-31 19:42:23
@cdarwin@c.im2025-11-30 21:56:24
Hi, it’s Al Franken.
I don’t usually send messages like this, so I’m hoping you’ll read to the end for a GREAT story.
Before that, though, I want to tell you about Peggy Flanagan.
She is unbelievably great and she’s running to keep Minnesota’s Senate seat blue.
Her end-of-month fundraising deadline is tonight so I’ll get to the point: Please donate now.
