With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.

Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?

I know a guy who used to be a conservative, until he went to college. It wasn't "woke professors" that change him to a liberal, it was being in an actual city instead of the small town he grew up in.

Meeting more diverse people made him realize he was fed lies about others while growing up.

So yeah, if you ever wondered why the right wants to shut down education and universities, that's one reason.

@inthehands
#YouShouldBeAfraid is a hashtag to adopt, from Cory Doctorow's (@pluralistic) "Radicalized - A Short Story About Healthcare and Desperation"

It's well worth the read, (about 20-30 minutes at most)

https://prospect.org/2024/12/09/2024-12-09-radicalized-cory-doctorow-story-health-care/

EVs promised cleaner air. Satellites say it’s finally happening. https://electrek.co/2026/01/26/evs-promised-cleaner-air-satellites-say-its-finally-happening/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

The world has lost one of its most courageous and passionate advocates for people + science. Back in the days of Twitter, I saw her regularly send encouragement to people she’d never met. That was who she was: a model of joy, perseverance, courage, and kindness. Kirsty, you will be so missed. 💔

Former Liberal cabinet ministe...

(found elsewhere)

@Flisty @pluralistic
This stock market bubble has another similarity: the tech stocks have become a kind of monopoly, there's nowhere else to put your money, so the lock-in is even worse.

@Flisty @pluralistic
While I don't think a stock market bubble is enshittificaton, that article made me realize that there's a strong similarity. Investors and analysts get drawn in by a rapidly ascending stock, and then they're "locked in," with very literal switching costs. Everyone is invested in keeping the stock price going up, and so they'll accept flimsier and flimsier reasons to keep pushing the price up. This goes on until the charade cannot continue, when the emperor is standing completely naked in front of the crowd and nobody can pretend anymore....
🫧💥

Ohhhh. It all makes sense now.
Cory Doctorow @pluralistic points out that Trump's trade shenanigans are all part of a long history of US enshittificaton of the international trade system, for all the same reasons as Facebook's and YouTube's decline.
Who would have thought that an international trade system could be vulnerable to enshittificaton? It turns out that it breeds in the shadows of all kinds of monopoly.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/26/i-dont-want/#your-greenback-dollar

This Hour Has 22 Minutes has been on fire of late. But this sketch? It hits hard. Especially this weekend. https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=GMP6ipohA48ptw0I&v=fKIx4U6sjLs&feature=youtu.be #CBC #AlexPretti #Minneapolis #ICE

The baby boom visualized

(by Reddit user: u/Serkan089)

Hey USA, you have this free market healthcare industry, and you claim free markets always get the best value, and yet you spend EMBARRASSINGLY on your healthcare (17.5% of GDP, vs Canada's 12.4%), while your life expectancy is dismal (79.5 yrs vs Canada's 82.7). The cold hard facts speak for themselves. You need to change.

Big news: Canada changed their citizenship rules and now if you've ever had a direct ancestor who was a citizen, you are now automatically a citizen too! https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-citizenship/act-changes/rules-2025.html

I've been sharing this around, and I know a few people who've discovered they're now Canadian citizens!

@coreyspowell @dgoldsmith
The article talks about, "a massive galaxy cluster filled with extremely hot gas. This environment creates enormous external pressure," but I don't know what that means? Are we talking about the heat and pressure of the atmosphere of Venus? Or just *relatively* hot, as compared to other galaxies?

@theintercept
This is indeed a paywall. And I don't want to pay that price. Thank you for at least letting me read enough of the article over the paywall to know what it is about.

If I had a dollar every time a mediocre man known for his orangeness lied about Greenland for his colonial project, I'd have two dollars

That we have food banks is a testament to the fundamental generosity and kindness of people. That we need food banks - and that governments crow jubilantly about how many we have - is a savage indictment of how broken our society is.

If something is legally required, like car insurance, then the industry should be nationalised. Why should the law force me to make profit for their shareholders rather than taxpayers?

Timezones are so silly. New Zealand and Australia are in 2026, Canada is in 2025, and the United States is in 1939.