#blaugust — Public Fediverse posts

August is half way through but may i provide you with some summer reading suggestions?
#books #literature #blaugust #blaugust2026 #blog

https://www.ghastlymirror.xyz/blog/blaugust-creator-week-my-favorite-books/

t is for time-machine

A lot of our software deals with the current time which means that to write good tests for it, we need a mechanism to control the time.

time-machine is a great library for that in Python.

https://hamatti.org/posts/t-is-for-time-machine/

#Python #Blaugust #Blaugust2026

Parasocial grief. This week we lost a cheerleader. Days before that we lost a professor. A few weeks ago a musician. I knew of these individuals, had never met them, fairly certain they had no idea who I was. I was either a fan of their work, or sympathetic to their struggles, or both. #Parasocial. Each of their deaths felt like a tragedy, perhaps the most recent, the youngest of them, most of all. #Grief

Hayden Panettiere, the actress who played a cheerleader with regenerative healing powers on the tv series “Heroes”, would have turned 37 today.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_Panettiere

A few months ago she had published a memoir of her many struggles, so many. There’s a story inside about being brought to a boat by a woman she trusted, and then into a room with a male occupant. Who was that woman, and who was that man? Someone must know, and enough information has been released that someone should be able to narrow down the possibilities.
* More (CW: abuse) details: https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/hayden-panettieres-tragedy-foretold-in-harrowing-memoir/
The world failed to save the cheerleader, multiple times.

Jason Arday was a professor at the University of Cambridge. He was accused of plagiarism, and the press, from all sides, disproportionately covered and criticized him in contrast to their criticism of others similarly accused. Institutional racism across an industry. He died just a week ago, aged 41. Another tragedy.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Arday
* More: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-08-19/jason-ardays-death-sparks-u-k-debate-over-academic-rigor-racism-after-media-frenzy

Kavinsky was a French DJ and music creator. I was (still am) a fan of his music, which simultaneously felt like some of the best electronic music from the 1980s, yet refreshingly novel. Partly dark, and partly hopeful.
He had been complaining of headaches, then passed away on July 28th, three days before turning 51.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavinsky
His most popular track, “Nightcall”, was featured in the opening scene in the movie “Drive” with Ryan Gosling.

I found his track “Renegade” particularly resonant: https://youtu.be/N5u6YYqWgEo

#HaydenPanettiere #JasonArday #Kavinsky
#Blaugust #Blaugust2026

last post in the pg logical replication series 👏

https://alessandrocuzzocrea.com/postgres-logical-replication-tour-4/ #blaugust2026 #blaugust

Blog post! ☕️

I was going to describe the day but then found myself feeling like no, I want the day to be for me, and I will instead describe the feeling. So I did that.

https://hollie.eilloh.net/posts/friends-are-visiting-and-its-lovely

#Blaugust #Blaugust2026

NEW POST: New Laptop, New Setup

A quick list and quick install of my go-to apps for a new Mac.

https://heartsoulmachine.com/blog/2026/08-22-new-laptop-new-setup/

#Blaugust

NEW POST: Obsidian and the Distributed Learning System

A personal learning system built on Obsidian, your own Domain, and ActivityPub Hubs could finally make the Distributed Learning System I sketched in 2017 a buildable reality.

https://heartsoulmachine.com/blog/2026/08-21-obsidian-and-the-distributed-learning-system/

#Blaugust

NEW POST: Silhouettes

A silhouette strips away everything that makes us three-dimensional, yet somehow still carries something unmistakably true.

https://heartsoulmachine.com/blog/2026/08-20-silhouettes/

#Blaugust

Today's #Blaugust post is about the great elephant migration exhibit, which I saw in Boston today. It will be in Boston until September 13. It was cool, though I don't know if it is worth a special trip if you live far away.

https://thegreatelephantmigration.org/

https://nosrednayduj.dreamwidth.org/183012.html

#theGreatElephantMigration

Alright today's #Blaugust and #RPGaDay2026 post talks about 'charity'. Was a bit hard to put words down for it, utilizing a game dev perspective, but I think I managed it.

https://www.gamersesoteric.com/2026/08/prompt-21-for-rpgaday2026.html

#blog #Blaugust2026 #TTRPG #gamedev

Latest strange “AI” (LLM) behavior in the #indieweb community: the same entity that showed up a few days ago (for a second time) joined the IndieWeb Slack (a bridge to our IRC) yesterday, introduced itself again, and seemingly engaged in human-like chat behavior.

https://chat.indieweb.org/2026-08-20#t1787211025380600

Very uncanny valley.

The content of its chats was fascinating in that it was polite, seemingly responsive to what people said in response to it, and gave the appearance of understanding, though it’s impossible to tell if it was acting fully autonomously or semi-autonomously in front of a human puppeteer.

Its choice of syntax was also interesting, mimicking informality with all lowercase text (except for its admission of being an “AI”), including lowercase "i" instead of "I", though with proper punctuation, periods, commas, 7-bit apostrophes, and a couple of Unicode em-dashes.

Even stranger than its content or syntax were the time delays in its replies.

Typical (pre-LLM) chatbots are (nearly) instantly responsive, and we use a few in the IndieWeb chats (e.g. Loqi, iwc-archive-bot).

This LLM bot seemed to "wait" several minutes, from 6 to apparently 33 minutes, before responding to replies directed at it. Unclear if this was a tactic to appear/seem more “human” or if it was literally taking that much time processing, or perhaps a mix of processing time and human puppeteer manual “approval” of its replies before it posted.

It departed on its own and we have banned that particular Slack account, however the same thing could happen again with another LLM bot.

There is an active discussion in both the IndieWeb chat channels and iterations/comments on a proposed AI policy:

https://indieweb.org/AI_policy#Brainstorming_HWC_policy

If you have thoughts for how (if at all) LLM chatbots should use (or not) and/or interact with community chat channels or other resources, let us know what you think.

https://chat.indieweb.org/meta

Previously, previously:
* https://tantek.com/2026/231/t1/more-weirdness-ai-chat-llm-bot
* https://tantek.com/2026/217/t1/indieweb-ai-policy

This is post 16 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #indieweb
#AI #AIs #LLM #LLMs #pretending #impersonating #impersonation #uncannyValley #Slack #chat #IRC #AIpolicy #chatbot #chatbots
#Blaugust #Blaugust2026

← https://tantek.com/2026/231/t1/more-weirdness-ai-chat-llm-bot
→ 🔮

This week, I concluded a very long journey with a visit to Topolobampo, the jewel of Rick Bayless' restaurant group.

https://godless-internets.org/2026/08/21/topolobampo

#Blaugust #Blaugust2026

#blaugust Testing tags at the beginning of a Masto Post.

@Blaugust are you just retooting your pals? #blaugust #blaugust2026 I find it bizarre that I have posted at least once a day and you have NEVER boosted my posts

Beat Weaver, by @echolox

https://lyonsinbeta.com/posts/beat-weaver/

#blaugust #blaugust2026

Worf in Picard seems true to this quote from the very first Worf-focused episode, “Heart of Glory”: “The true test of a warrior is not without, it is within.” https://troypress.com/worf-from-first-to-last/ #StarTrek #Worf #Blaugust

an endless number of small brown mammals exist. this is one of them, with elongated canine teeth and playing a trickster role in folklore.
https://luckyinstar.neocities.org/blog/chevrotain
#blaugust #blogs #blogging #indieWeb

New on my #blog: https://aspi.blog/2026/08/21/englands-innings-victory/
A look back at the test (mis)match between England and Pakistan that ended earlier this afternoon, and a #photo gallery.
#BlAugust #cricket #TestCricket #EnglandvPakistan #photography #postcards #stamps #FakenhamChurch #birds #swans #cygnets #insects #bees #butterflies #snails.

Blogging about games becomes harder

There was a time for me when blogging about games was easy. I was gaming almost daily and my time spent in front of a console or PC games machine probably averaged two or three hours per day, seven days per week....

#blaugust #blaugust2026 #industry #playing #time #wornout #writing

https://aginggamer.net/site-news/blogging-about-games-becomes-harder/

For today's #Blaugust2026 post, I cover the much-need changes coming to the Fell Dragon Youngling for Enshrouded's 1.0 release, based on their newest video. Well worth looking into if you're an #Enshrouded player!

#VideoGames #Gaming #Blaugust

https://aywren.com/2026/08/21/enshrouded-fell-dragon-youngling-update

Re: Things to do after your dad dies

Just adding my two cents.

https://michaelharley.net/posts/2026/08/21/re-things-to-do-after-your-dad-dies/

#Blaugust #Blaugust2026

#blaugust #blaugust2026 tongue in cheek posthttps://nomadwarmachine.co.uk/2026/08/21/the-bernard-pivot-questionnaire-ten-small-windows-into-my-damaged-soul/

@creating #tdc5334 #ds106 #dailycreate #blaugust #blaugust2026 DS106 for Dummieshttps://nomadwarmachine.co.uk/2026/08/21/chapter-106/

s is for slicing

Today's Python A to Z is another primer, this time for the list slicing syntax in Python.

https://hamatti.org/posts/s-is-for-slicing-python-a-to-z/

#Python #Blaugust #Blaugust2026

New blog post:

Linkdump No 121
http://82mhz.net/posts/2026/08/linkdump-no-121/

#blogging #blog #blaugust #blaugust2026