Went washer/dryer shopping today. The Electrolux looked keen, but the salesperson warned us it doesn't have an app.
Oh no! How will I ever get my clothes clean if I can't have a cloud connection and embedded consumer spyware?
Remote
Courtney Rosenthal
@courtney@pdx.social
mastodon 4.7.3Voted most likely to be eaten by a grue.
758 Followers
471 Following
50 Posts
Joined March 09, 2025
Pronouns:
she/her
Location:
Portland, OR
Email:
cr+masto@crosenthal.com
Website:
How it started ..... How it's going .....
Happy Gotcha Day 4th anniversary, Franklin. 😻
When I am appointed ruler of the world, one of my first decrees will be the banishment of staples in favor of reusable fasteners.
It's not just the single-use waste. I hate going through my old records and having to de-staple piles of documents before recycling or shredding (which is compostible).
I am a firm believer in lifelong learning. You're never too old to acquire new experiences and broaden your horizons.
For instance, today I learned you should give that seat on the train a good look over before sitting down.
My neighborhood pub had a women's softball game on the telly -- a championship game for the AUSL professional league.
It was the Portland Cascade playing. I didn't know we had a local woman's softball team!
With women's sports being in the news as of late, I decided to check the AUSL policy on transgender participants. And -- holy double huh! -- the AUSL has a highly inclusive policy.
I wanna check out a game next season.
I've been thinking I need to do something to remedy my lapsed blogging.
So I did something. I signed up for Blaugust 2026.
https://nerdgirlthoughts.game.blog/2026/07/15/blaugust-2026-is-coming/
#blaugust
I don't get why people are upset that their Github projects are getting pulled into the Hugging Face training set.
For goodness sake people ... github IS a training set. I don't mean your project is surreptitiously scraped -- although that's happening too.
When you publish on Github you are loading content directly into the Copilot training machine.
If you don't want to be trained upon, maybe you shouldn't publish on Github.
I'm a grown ass woman and I'm eating instant ramen for dinner, and I'm ok with that.
New Blog Post: Matter Woes
Matter/Thread has been a frustrating addition to my home automation network. So why do I keep doing it?
https://www.crosenthal.com/chrome/2026/08/04/matter-woes.html
#homeAssistant #blaugust
Google's 'advanced flow' for sideloading is a deterrence mechanism, not an escape hatch. 9 steps and a 24-hour wait for software you own? No thanks. @keepandroidopen@techhub.social #KeepAndroidOpen https://keepandroidopen.org
Commit!
New Blog Post: I Built a Bot
I've created a Mastodon bot called NotifyBot that monitors hashtags and sends you a DM when new posts appear.
Would you like to try it?
https://www.crosenthal.com/chrome/2026/05/26/i-built-a-bot.html
Replying to
... and the answer to your question is: tinga de pollo.
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This screencap is an example of the notifications the bot produces.
Yes, you get a random cat image with each notification. BONUS!
New Blog Post: Kill Yr Substack
If you don’t want to support racism, transphobia, and other forms of hate, then maybe you don’t want to use Substack. @boogah@simian.rodeo is here to help.
https://www.crosenthal.com/chrome/2026/05/06/kill-yr-substack.html
I hate that I have to buy a new phone. My Pixel 5A serves me fine and there is nothing more that I want from a phone.
Except security updates. I want that.
Update support for this phone ended August 2024, so continued use is an ongoing and increasing risk. So I should do it.
UPDATE: I did it.
TFW the entire day has been blocked out and scheduled, including transit, and you didn't put in an entry for lunch.
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com has thoughts about Codeberg (source code hosting platform) refusing generative AI projects ...
https://philip.mallegolhansen.com/blog/2026-07-29-the-codeberg-fracture-is-good-actually.html
Need more goose content. Please send geese.
Replying to
@haineux@mastodon.social @nonelvis@mastodon.social Damn you. Here in Portland, OR the fried fish is all dipped in corn starch, which is light, crispy, and tasteless.
Rah Rah. AHS class of '77.
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@nonelvis@mastodon.social @haineux@mastodon.social Black Raspberry is such a Massachusetts flavor. I miss it so much. *sigh*
They're cute when they're young, but they grow up so fast ...
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@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com The thing I'm tweaking is the recent Hugging Face anger, which I think is misplaced. Of course they hoovered up GitHub. All the LLMs did. The difference with Hugging Face is they provided a little transparency and they are taking a ration of shit for it. Personally, I'd be more angry at those that aren't disclosing their training practices. This pile-on probably will guarantee they won't.
I blog like a Vulcan.
I need an editing pass just to go back and put in contractions.
A big shout-out and hug to Place Cats.
When @NotifyBot@pdx.social sends a notification, it includes a random cat picture. 😸 That is thanks to Place Cats. A service that's truly making the world a better place.
Good News: NY Mag is offering a free scoop of Salt & Straw ice cream to subscribers. (Which I am.) YAY!
Bad News: Only at NYC locations. BOO!
Replying to
@rk@mastodon.well.com And from the end-user perspective, H-E-B tech is the awesome. I used to love their curbside website and app and I miss them.
The email from #Portland Mayor Keith Wilson has subject:
I haven’t seen you testify yet. (Budget hearings start soon)
which gives me big Chuck Schumer /DNC vibes. But, at least to his credit, he's not asking for money.
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@sondra@lgbtqia.space When you follow a hashtag, you might miss the post. especially if you have a high volume timeline.
NotifyBot will DM you that the post occurred, so you won't miss it.
Let's celebrate the Fourth with a good old protest song. Sing it, Margo.
The government having ownership interest in commercial business poses no risk of conflict or regulatory capture. Nope, never, none whatsoever.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/02/openai-stake-us-government-ai-sam-altman
A recent update of KDE Neon in Manjaro has broken all of the desktop pager widgets -- except for the standard one which is completely unusable in a vertical panel.
I use Compact Pager and I feel lost without it. This has completely borked my workflow and given me a severe sad.
Replying to
@nonelvis@mastodon.social If you can hold the feta (and invent the transporter), then we've got a deal!
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@somcak@beige.party He will get the normal amount of treats and hugs ... which is a LOT.
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@kimlockhartga@beige.party We moved in to Portland, OR nearly two years ago and he loves it here.
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@cy@pdx.social Thanks for the suggestion. Normally these are loaded through the widget store:
https://store.kde.org/p/2112443
I also tried from the author's website:
https://github.com/tilorenz/compact_pager
What's weird is that the author says it's been fixed for KDE Neon 6.6 (I'm on 6.6.4) but it's not working for me.
Replying to
@503bartley@pdx.social They offered me $50 on trade-in. I figured it's definitely worth $50 to have a quality, hand-held Android device laying around.
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@PizzaDemon@mastodon.online Ha! Normally, I prefer to buy "older tech" -- previous generation stuff -- but decided that with phones, due to the reduced support window, that's a false economy.
I ordered a Pixel 10A.
Three Good Things:
-
E. Jean Carroll is going to get her $5.8M (and there's potentially another $83.3M behind it).
-
Planned Parenthood is able to receive Medicaid funding again.
-
The rapey guy will have more time to dedicate to his oyster farming.
You know, listening to Rolling Stones "In the Stars" on streaming, without the sloperific video, is kind of a banger.
So, here's the lyric video, which is much better than the AI version:
Replying to
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com Oh, honey, yeah. But that's just the start. Did you know they did a collab with Two Bell?
https://www.delish.com/food-news/a68393863/taco-bell-salt-and-straw-tacolate-review/
Replying to
@503bartley@pdx.social Hope you enjoy it. Let me know if you have any feedback or questions.