DJ Sundog - from the toot-lab @djsundog@toot-lab.reclaim.technology

Long ago, I thought I was special, different than everyone else, and I was surrounded by adults who reinforced that thought daily.

Eventually, I realized that I was special, different than everyone else, and so was every other person in the world.

They left out the important bit. We're each special and different and that's what makes us awesome.

I celebrate your special difference, friends, each of you. May it bring you the joy in the coming years that it has brought me getting to know each of you during the last few.

I remember showing up over here by following the jetsam [1] of the first infosec migration across the tumultuous seas of microblogging, slightly disoriented but little worse for wear.

There was a lot of space back then. You could swing a raccoon in a circle around your head [2] without having to worry about giving someone a faceful of frenetic fur. [3] Fewer than twenty-five thousand souls inhabited this archipelago [4] at that point, gathering on a handful of islands.

I was pretty sure I was destined to be consumed [5] by those who had arrived before my cohort.

In a way, I was. I am no longer the person I was when I arrived here. I have been changed by this place. I have been changed by this ever-changing group of groups of people. I have been changed by you. [6]

Fierce storms will batter these little islands. Battles will arise. Pain and grief are by-products of interaction.

But so are laughter and cheer and warmth and contentedness.

And love.

My neighbors, the very least that I wish for each and every one of you is to find days so filled with love that there's no time for hate and nights so restful that you rise burning with the force of the sun within you.

Mend what is broken. Build shelters you need. Make mistakes and make them count. This is your world and mine and it will be exactly what we make it, but the sky is the limit if we keep looking up instead of bringing ourselves down.

Thanks for being here, thanks for being you, and thanks for listening to the rambling of a silly old dog.

[1] unbeknownst to many, stale infosec memes are extremely buoyant
[2] assuming the raccoon consented to be swung such
[3] assuming someone wasn't throwing their face at the nearest bit of fur
[4] h/t to @priryo for https://linernotes.club/@priryo/100565446740959131 and @sydneyfalk for https://mst3k.interlinked.me/users/sydneyfalk/updates/85279
[5] ​
[6] assuming I consented to be changed such [7]
[7] I did

achievement heckin GET

mastodon streaming on a #Kaypro 2-83 #retrocomputing

this is my semi-regular yet aperiodic reminder that this place here is a distributed federated version of Callahan's as far as I can tell and that is one of the most bestest things that can be.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callahan%27s_Crosstime_Saloon

Every one of you is precious and wonderful and unique and necessary and deserving of life and love and peace.

Anything your brain does to try to convince you otherwise is a mean trick.

Please try to remember this. Remember it unceasingly.

maker sites: now is a great time to start some projects

my lab full of started projects: 👀

heck, she earwormed me on my way through.

My wife has playlists

I aspire to having my lab look like an Information Society video