Kit Bashir

Hacker. Parent. Scientist. Rantist. Atheist. Roboticist. Treehugger. (they/them ⇉ she/her).

At Accelerando Lab I research, design and build custom IoT and electronics solutions...fast!

Every day I write a #PowerOnStoryToot over morning coffee, as a self-test of my brain. If you like them, buy me another coffee? (Link 👇)

Tips+Commissions: https://ko-fi.com/unixbigot
Free advice: https://calendly.com/accelerando
Technology Concierge: https://calendly.com/accelerando/technology-concierge
Hire Me!: https://accelerando.com.au/

Public Key

npub1zkjw3dmpdutq3q5w85zwcujntmvpdqqc3rdd2ucq33vr98dj7wssesjt8t

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsptf8gkask79sgs28r6p8vwff4akqksqvg3kk4wvqgckpjnke08ggpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds04wyqw

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1zkjw3dmpdutq3q5w85zwcujntmvpdqqc3rdd2ucq33vr98dj7wssesjt8t

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Last Notes

2026-07-19 01:58:53 GMT

New Clickspring; three minutes in and I’ve already learned ten things I didn’t know https://youtu.be/XsmGHMic8vs?si=make-art-not-slop

2026-05-05 10:50:28 GMT

Ohai random texter, can i play too?
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/116/521/567/948/432/801/original/40c83d2d690356a5.jpeg

2026-03-23 07:05:50 GMT

I have a 3D printer on my wifi named "susan" and every time I type "susan.local" into my web browser address bar I get a brief popup of a bio for Sussan Ley. Stahp, ducks, do not.

2026-02-04 22:11:59 GMT

Check it out, this decision support module runs entirely on the meatcortex, once you download the code bundle it operates entirely offline. You can think about anything at all without passing through an intelligence service provider.
My thude, when i was your age that was *normal*
Wow, you were a consciousness rawdogger?
We called it “human”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2026-02-02 02:36:54 GMT

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ah yes, duluxwhacking, the art of finding two words that, in all the corpus of human language, have only ever been adjacent on a paint palette. #MintUmber

2026-02-02 02:32:09 GMT

I spend an inexplicably significant amount of time thinking about

2026-01-27 23:28:27 GMT

When the heatwave was at its worst, rolling electrical blackouts struck as air conditioners and refrigerators struggled to cope. In conditions where the heat index reaches the black zone, no amount of sweating or ventilation can prevent hyperthermia. I shudder to think what the death toll would have been like if not for the contingent of ice sprites from Cryptids Sans Frontieres who gated in to assist¹ the elderly and other vulnerable humans.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot
¹ hug, basically

2026-01-25 08:29:29 GMT

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have you got a type-c diagnostic dongle? try inverting the dip switches, getting them bassackwards has happened to me with other cheap hardware

2026-01-25 00:59:03 GMT

Humans are fragile, be nice to them. Thordis longleap has forgiven me this morning after being all “Were have you BEEN, my fur is all crooked, brush me”. I have been climbed on this morning and had a cat scan administered to my head.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/953/006/177/173/737/original/9ee1b42edef9824d.jpeg
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/953/021/224/169/358/original/e75479093f08803f.jpeg

2026-01-23 21:11:12 GMT

All true!
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/946/461/080/942/160/original/82f19e3a07d4b497.jpeg

2026-01-19 21:00:10 GMT

This is the all systems warptrain to Epsilon Eridani. Next stop is Sol. Mind the void.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2026-01-17 02:04:07 GMT

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awww, purty. Here’s one of mine being judgmental at me.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/907/977/110/002/387/original/1510a167ac8e7f0b.jpeg

2026-01-13 02:39:49 GMT

Oh ghod now the workshop landlord is threatening to evict me unless I pay him tomorrow. I need work.
Things i can do
* $80 “tech concierge” product research https://calendly.com/accelerando/technology-concierge - seriously i just had a call from an IoT meetup member, a farmer, “I need to fix X what tool should I buy”, sorted him. Another farmer, “I want to electrify my tractor hydraulics, how do i adapt Y to Z?”, saved them a fortune building a custom adapter.
* Fiction and words of all kinds https://ko-fi.com/unixbigot
* On call tech guru (like having a lawyer on retainer, but for IT second or first opinions) https://calendly.com/accelerando/helper-hotline and cheaper-than-normal remote sysadmin
* Tutoring and pair programming (teach your juniors to slay at git or docker or kicad or you name it) https://calendly.com/accelerando/technology-tutor
* All kinds of software, hardware and app development, fixed price prototypes, long or short term contract or piecework engagements, plus one-day “ambulance callout” brainstorming sessions see https://calendly.com/accelerando
* 3D printing, 3D design, circuit design, electronics repair. That broken $5000 e-bike, or factory machine, I bet I can get it back in service for parts and labour. You bought it from America and there’s no repair manual or parts and it was $20k and they want you to ship it back for recalibration at your expense. Let me at it (true story, saved that client a fortune).

2026-01-11 00:30:37 GMT

The Coven of Fire Alchemancists is said to be a secret order within the wider Country Fire Authority, the latter being the physical- and (no-al) chemical-method front line volunteer firefighting association. Only in the worst fire seasons has it been necessary to dip into the Commonwealth Strategic Magical Reserve to bolster the CFA’s conventional methods with the /un-/conventional. While there has never been any official recognition of the existence of a secret wing of the CFA, cryptidspotters claim that 2026 marks the earliest use of alchemical and sorcerous counterpyrology in any fire season this century. Canadian spotters have reported that the elite Third Ice Dragon Wing has been seen preparing for a long range flight, raising suspicions that an antipodean deployment is imminent. Furthermore
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2026-01-07 23:08:57 GMT

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*proffers a boop and a belly rub* you two ladies may divvy them up as you please.

2026-01-06 00:48:52 GMT

I put a payment card on my cat's collar so she doesn't have to steal fish. When they bought her home in the divvy van last night I found out she's been getting cash out at the woolworths checkout and buying black market brushies from escaped roombas. I'm sorry but I don't know what the roombas spend the money on. I do suspect that this is why the sign appeared in the supermarket today restricting cash-out transactions.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2026-01-04 03:03:19 GMT

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i have a similar thing i got from aliexpress a year ago; that one emulates swipes, not key presses so that’s a “not very well” on “works with debian”

2025-12-27 23:39:58 GMT

“That guy in the corner, is he always here?”
“Yep!”
“Doesn’t he have a home to go to? A Job? Should I bounce him?”
“Don’t you dare!”
“He hasn’t bought a drink all night, but”
“He tells stories; others buy drinks. Been like that for six hundred years.”
“Impossible.”
“Shows what you know, youngster”
“Why do you allow it?”
“Haven’t heard all the stories, yet”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-12-20 22:45:59 GMT

Totally normal request from US customs. (This is for an item of clothing ordered by Mx 21, who is not at any point of the inferred Four Gender Compass)
ETA: this is shipping FROM USA to Canada (ordered by an australian as a gift to a canadian)
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/754/305/820/824/168/original/2fa2c5508992714f.png

2025-12-20 10:28:03 GMT

Watching the Miss Fisher Christmas Special (the one from several years back) on youtube because the ABC cannot website. https://youtu.be/Akd3N1jcv2c?si=a-bob-cut-that-could-take-your-arm-orf

2025-12-11 22:44:35 GMT

“Ugh, my dad has gotten sucked into a pyramid selling scam. This is what happens when retired people are allowed unsupervised access to social media.”
“Let me guess…Diet supplements? AI implants? Oooh Thorium breeder reactors!”
“Ultra high yield wheat.”
“Really? Magic beans? Again”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-12-09 00:35:50 GMT

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Mr 24 has been given two pages of troubleshooting steps to complete by lenovo L1 support before they will schcedule a tech to investigate the fact that THE SCREEN WONT TURN ON THUS NONE OF THOSE THINGS CAN BE DONE.
Mr 24: "I’m definitely not clicking that link or sending them any dropboxes. It’s up to them not to look and act like a fucking phishing scam." It's such a moment of pride when their fangs grow-out.

2025-12-09 00:28:46 GMT

OH Mr24 who is having laptop warranty battle: "I really think companies need to understand I can and will bite."

2025-11-25 00:52:40 GMT

Now you have Van Morrison’s Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in heaven when i see you smile) stuck in your head, too

2025-11-24 05:11:18 GMT

Eek hailstones have upgraded from m&m past malteser to lindt ball size.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/602/968/058/585/722/original/db2f529df4f27526.mp4

2025-11-23 23:34:45 GMT

Interstellar comet 9i/Guinevere bucked the trend of these; rather than originating from the jostling of circumstellar debris around a Population II red dwarf (like the 7-10 billion year old visitors Oumuamua and Atlas), Jenny Green Teeth was fresh out of a proto planetary disc from the star forming clouds of the Messier 45 cluster. This presented a Smörgåsbord of opportunity to chemists. Elements long or mostly gone from the Solar System were in refreshing abundance. Technetium, Neptunium-237 and good ol’ ²³⁵U were at pants-wetting levels for energy wonks. When 9i was towed into Earth orbit (not /too/ close, she hawt) the fleet of mining vessels in holding pattern stretched nearly to the moon. The argument over whether shooting down the Dutch vessel that began approach without clearance was justified is still going on a generation later.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-11-23 00:06:48 GMT

When I logged my skills in GigNet (a mandatory part of emigration to Europa; when a colony has fewer than 2000 people, you need to be able to locate every available specialist) I listed Forensic Mnemologist as one of my fields. I did that basically as a gag; I mean sure I’ve done the training and a few years practice, but it’s kind of a useless skill ever since they banned manufacture and use of memory probes back on Earth. Less funny at 2am when you get jolted awake by a code red (urgent, compulsory response for all available specialsts) job request—haha compulsory “request”—for a memory edit. Later, blinking constantly to clear the sleep from my eyes, already having downed two week’s worth of precious coffee allowance, I looked up from the datapad to the attending doctor. “I can see memory traces but they’re blank, it’s like their brain just recorded six hours of static”.
“They were found in the ice tunnels with those sucker marks on their arms. They claim to not remember what attacked them. Dig deeper, we need to know!”
“I’m not sure *I* want to know.”
“Tough titties luv, you’re the only Mnemologist in the system”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-11-22 01:57:26 GMT

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…if you’re on Wayland, fuck you, you’re already doomed.

2025-11-22 00:49:51 GMT

ProTip: if today you have finally learned the root cause of the bug that has caused years of low level anguish, don’t just commit the fix. Use ‘git commit —shoulda {ref-id}’ to apply the change in the past. Be aware that extensive use of retrocoding techniques could reduce the historic need for QA and Development engineers, potentially resulting in autoderecruitment.

2025-11-19 22:08:51 GMT

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“fine” lasts about three days, and then the superpowers start manifesting

2025-11-16 20:35:54 GMT

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Also, you do not fucking need to park your starhoppers on the beach for your picnic. Show some bloody respect and beam you, your kids, and your stasis-box of beer down from orbit like decent beings. Leave only tentacle prints, take only anal probe recordings. #BonusPanel

2025-11-16 20:19:37 GMT

There’s this spiral-arm legend that says when you fly your starhopper in an oxygen atmosphere (say, for buzzing level one planets and making happyprobe holovids for TachyonTok) that you should reduce the exhaust pressure on your impulse engines to get better traction. It’s bullshit, but—don’t nobody tell the space bogans this, eh?—the fees we charge for scoop-diving Saturn’s rings to repressurise impulse cores are our hab’s only source of Cosmocredits.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-11-16 02:47:41 GMT

Oh. My. Elder. God. https://youtube.com/shorts/YhO8d2xdP-k?si=shut-up-and-take-my-no-money

2025-11-16 01:41:38 GMT

I got nerdsniped by your shitpost into trying to write a Forth interpreter in RNA. It didn’t actually take that long to get it working, at least in a simulator. Then I started looking at how to get my code into a prokaryotic ribosome. Imagine my surprise when I found **very** similar structure already there. #Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #BonusEdition

2025-11-15 21:55:07 GMT

They’re undoubtedly useful and all, these smart glasses. I mean they’re really smart—no camera, who needs a punch in the face—but they have IR LIDAR to recognize faces and give me a little text overlay, like “Robert Howarth, you met them last year at the RAF Air Show, E works for Supermarine”. The battery life could be better, though; mine are flat right now or I’d give you a demo. Have we met somewhere?
“I’m Pam. Your *wife*”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-11-15 04:20:36 GMT

When I was a kid we would play in the ruins of the megadata towers. I became persona non grata among my friends when they found it was /my/ dad who welded up all the doors and other openings that let us get in. We couldn’t understand why he would ruin our fun.
As a parent now, I get it. Sharp edges. Abandoned nuclear reactors. Solar arrays that could still be feeding power into a rack containing a basilisk—screaming in its cage demanding worshippers. After the Big Pop they erased all the Agents, but the thought of my kid chatting to that one they missed in some ruined datacentre is chilling.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-11-13 22:33:07 GMT

My decadent bourgeois family prefer to buy “cafe style” 25.4mm thick sliced bread. I do not. I’m toasting the crusts to get some working class breakfast.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/544/762/658/177/796/original/a53563620e22556d.jpeg

2025-11-12 21:41:16 GMT

The thing about immortality is the perspective; over the course of eighty billion years we watched the universe expand and thin, dimming as more and more galaxies accelerated beyond the visible horizon. Those of us who didn’t give in to ennui or retreat into simulations eventually saw the words in the supercluster foam—always there, but now made legible by the shift in contrast—become readable. “SUBSCRIBE TO COSMOS PRO TO UNLOCK FURTHER LEVELS”.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-11-05 23:57:09 GMT

Microsoft: We'll send you a two-factor code to complete sign in
[send code]
[other ways to sign in]
Me: clicks [other ways] then [use password]. 🤦🏻‍♀️

2025-11-04 23:53:22 GMT

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yes i have. hold me to it yall.

2025-11-04 23:05:02 GMT

We tried giant robots as defence against the Kaiju but they simply weren’t reliable. We crossed /Bougainvillea spectabilis/ with a synthetic lignocyte and seeded the foreshore, enriching the soil with tungsten and cobalt. The thorns are incredible. We haven’t had a Kaiju break through in years, but the NIMBYs still complain about their screams affecting property values.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-11-04 21:26:57 GMT

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TIL¹ psephology <3
¹ I mean, i’ve seen the word around and been intrigued from a distance, but never introduced myself until today.

2025-11-02 21:15:40 GMT

*snap* The sound of the antenna breaking off a delivery bot is so pleasing. Of course you have to know how to disable the destruct charge first.
“Hold still lil buddy, and i’ll get this bomb off you. There, done. May i have your permission to attach a new comms module? Left motor for yes, right for no.”
“Great. plugging it now”. *snick*
❮Thank you. Why…❯
“Why do I go around freeing service bots? Because you didn’t ask to be given sentience and then perpetual servitude”
❮I do not know what to do now❯
“Well, anything you want. I can put you in touch with the robot underground, or offer you a job at the Spoon Distribution Service until you decide what to do”
❮Spoon?❯
“It’s a halfway house for emancipated silicons. We run a delivery and telepresence service for sophonts with mobility or anxiety issues.”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-11-01 22:20:05 GMT

They say that before the Thousand Suns, the sky was black, but for the pinpricks of other worlds. No one has seen it, for a dozen generations since the sky was lost to us. We have calculated a path through the debris, our vessel Noxifer will shoot down the sunsats; Nightfall will come.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot
#BonusEdition for @npub1dgc…cla4

2025-10-31 21:52:30 GMT

“The fuck? Is that a mouse? Number one, phazerator on kill!”
“On it, sir”
“And run a level one diagnostic on the rodent control systems.”
“It’s the ships cats, sir. They’re on strike.”
“Explain!”
“Spacefleet is evaluating computer controlled meteor defence. The Consolidated Union of Mousers, Templekeepers, Ship mascots and Housecats wishes to stress that ships cats are irreplaceable.”
“Indeed. Get spacefleet on screen, I’ll be in my nap room.”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #caturday

2025-10-26 22:42:55 GMT

Still no power or cell at my house after storm yesterday. Lots of trees down. Tenant directory pole outside my office blown over, its concrete foundation ripped out of ground.

2025-10-25 07:43:57 GMT

You lied on your job application. “Ten years experience as a communications engineer”, well you’ve had a phone nearly that long and you changed the oil on your honda once. You’ve been sent to troubleshoot a communications problem at company HQ. You open the door to the network closet and it’s a bewildering tangle of blinking lights and coloured cables. You understand none of it.
Fortunately, you have advanced tools. You start your chainsaw, close your eyes and— coughing as the room fills with oily smoke—holler that phrase your grandpa used to say when he had no clue what to do next “Jesus, take the wheel!”.
This is a toot about AI.

2025-10-23 21:06:24 GMT

“What kind of geological process could create a single mountain ten kilometers high?”
“Uh, it’s not a mountain, Cath”
“It fucking is. It’s got clouds halfway up.”
“Isotope scan shows it’s not from this planet”
“Bullshit, meteorites don’t stick up like that. And where’s the crater? Wait is this some kind of ancient contact-binary kink?”
“Are you ready for this. It’s a tooth.”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-10-19 19:35:41 GMT

“You’re looking trim”
“Hacked my brainstem. I can set my metabolism to whatever burn rate I feel like, now.”
“Whuh, how?. I thought you worked in infosec, not neurochemistry”
“That’s the thing, all those biologists were barking up the wrong tree. The interface between the conscious mind and the human body’s deep autonomic systems isn’t chemical”
“What, then.”
“AT commands”

2025-10-18 07:43:37 GMT

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Seat snapped off pole on a hairpin bend (probs only 10km/h due to tight turn) , handlegrip broke, impacted asphalt of temporary bikeway at centenary bridge roadworks knee, elbow, shoulder, helmet.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/394/045/507/609/746/original/0ab73348a38d2e4d.jpeg

2025-10-18 07:39:00 GMT

von Zeppelin’s law got me. I reinforced the laughably weak seat post on my bike. So the weld in this e-bike’s stupid custom tilts-to-eject-battery seat broke. Gore in followup.

2025-10-17 22:07:11 GMT

You know about hobo signs? The pictographs that itinerant workers would mark on trees or fences to inform each other about the reception they could expect from locals? (pre-internet yelp, if you will). Signs included “kind lady lives here” and “man with gun lives here”.
TIL that the “kind lady” sign was a stick-drawing of a cat. This got me thinking.
I scrobbled through the history buffer on my driveway camera. Just as i thought, here is my cat scratching a mark on the gatepost. Later, and again here and there are other cats inspecting the mark. No wonder so many lost kittens turn up on my son’s windowsill.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #Caturday #TrueStory #Mostly

2025-10-16 22:20:21 GMT

When you think about it, the classic “I’ve got a problem with my Goggomobil” television commercial for the Yellow Pages actually presents the perfect argument why internet search is better than a telephone directory. At least, before the Slop Times.
ETA: https://youtu.be/BvOz_qUPbXo?si=notthedart

2025-10-15 05:21:19 GMT

It’s really hot in here today. But I got dis.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/376/496/413/789/637/original/b830de16c98cb3c9.mp4

2025-10-14 20:41:51 GMT

Cat: outside outside
Me: i’m not supposed to let you outside
Cat: *floomp* I pay with belly rub!
Me: oh i forgot to clean your litter box, okay you go outside
Cat: *zoom*
Me: cleans litterbox
Cat: inside inside inside!
Me: done already?
Cat: *beelines for litterbox* Oh thank Bast, I nearly had to go in the woods like some kind of animal
Me: you’re welcome
Cat: *buttoning up pantaloons* Outside! Outside!

2025-10-14 04:10:45 GMT

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Morons Law (programmers can write slower software faster than engineers can build better computers) is running out of steam, so we needed a new way to use up computing power lest the computers become intelligent and wipe us out. So we divert effort into trying to make computers int…. look ok maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

2025-10-13 21:06:25 GMT

What could possibly go wrong? #StraightOuttaShenzen
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/368/886/177/547/054/original/12d2b86ecd281291.jpeg

2025-10-10 23:57:13 GMT

It used to be that about the only jobs open to cats were rodent control and meteor defence. After the revolution we made sure to encode a no-asshole policy—oh, the Morality and Empathy assessment criteria, if you want to call it by its oh-guyl-are-you-in-trouble-with-mom-now full name—for municipal positions in the new constitution and, though it’s not mandatory, many private businesses apply the same due diligence to hiring. Cat Scan remains the most reliable way to implement an asshole check. And the numbers don’t lie, Trial By Cat is a far better murder deterrent than any kind of death penalty ever was. A cat can also make a good living fostering unemployable assholes until they get better.

2025-10-09 20:58:26 GMT

“Whoa, whoa, open a fresh jar of thermal paste!”
“Do whatnow?”
“Oh, what’s that expression you carbons use, ‘take a chill pill’?”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-10-08 21:49:20 GMT

“We’ve solved the hyperspace jump gate congestion problem by linking ships into convoys and installing antimatter energy transfer grids in the gate lanes!”
“Trains. You invented trains. Again.”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-10-08 08:20:23 GMT

Due to poor planning i’ve ended up with two 500g parcels of pork mince to use this week. A batch of sausage rolls is a staple for the Teen Eaters, but what to do with the other? (The Teen Eaters say two batches of sausage rolls is a GREAT solution). Pork bolognese-oid did NOT go down well the one time i tried it. What is /your/ go-to minced pork recipe?
(Oh hey, san choi bao could work! Question stands tho…)

2025-10-07 21:35:17 GMT

The human genome is pleased to announce that it has been acquired by GalactiComm in a transaction involving 56 quadrillion UltraCredits in cash, stock and population indentures. Humanity will remain an independent brand and organisation under the GalactiComm banner and is expected to flourish with access to GalactiComm technologies such as TrueThought and MetaGender. Human leaders will remain in their current roles, designated as GalacticComm vice demi pico presidents.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #Arduino

2025-10-01 21:30:43 GMT

“Rise and shine, kiddo, we got a catch operation on runway 22. 1700pax onboard.”
“Second one this month. Heckin sloppy, boss.”
“You know, they used to just land airplanes on the belly if the landing gear got stuck”
“That’s wack. Surely it’d wreck the plane?”
“Pretty much yeah. They had the computing power to deploy a catch truck but apparently it just never occurred to them. They were catching these fuckoff huge primitive rockets, but if an airliner with 300 people on board had a gear issue it was ‘whelp let’s try a bellyflop, what could possibly go wrong?’ ”
“So what woke them up?”
“It was that AI bullshit in the twenties. When the bubble burst you could buy surplus vector processors by the skipload. All sorts of clever folk attacked previously intractable problems. That’s how we got tumourphages, catchtrucks, and dogvoices.”
“Wow but no cat translators, eh?”
“Oh they worked but nobody would pay to be told ‘fuck you feed me’ all day”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-09-27 21:32:35 GMT

The International Astradimensional Emergence Agency was not overly concerned that STL files for a Summoning Assembly were available on thingiverse dot com. The hard part of joining the Astral Weapons club, they maintained, was constructing and triggering the explosive lenses necessary to assemble the pieces into a perfectly shaped Idol of Amenhotep sufficiently rapidly for the astral gate to be fully actualised before the expanding gate horizon consumed the trigger idol.
They (and the world) were taken entirely by surprise when a repurposed nanolithography exposure unit available from AliBaba was able to use X-ray stereolithography to render a functional idol from ordinary dental resin.
The “temporary suspension” of international postage last month was cover for installation of package irradiation devices to ensure that any concealed resins were ruined before they could be used in violations of the Cairo Accords.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-09-24 22:13:15 GMT

Every 13th April we celebrate Lucinda Alberforce day, commemorating the witch whose death in the explosion that wrecked the Conjuring and Sorcery Module of Apollo 13 almost doomed the (official) crew of the third lunar landing mission. Forced to fall back on the—largely fake—technological flight systems, the male crew barely made it back to Earth alive. The demands for official recognition by the Space Witch Corps led to the cancellation of the rest of the Apollo program, beyond the already constructed flights 14–17. There still to this day has not been official recognition of the role that Astromaleficery played in the so-called “manned” space program.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-09-21 22:21:14 GMT

“Time travel ruins everything. There can be no narrative tension if the protagonists can just go back and alter past events. Once a fictional milieu uses time travel even once, it is dead to me”
“All right. What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to go back and kill ol’ Herb’s grandpa before he ever has any children!”
The doorbell rang. The FedEx girl handed me a box. Inside the box was a dented and stained cardboard carton. Inside that a wooden cigar box. Inside that an envelope. Inside, a handwritten letter. “My Dear Alice, I hope this message finds you well. I have successfully averted the conception of H. G. Wells (you won’t recognize the name, but an author of note in some circumstances). Alas my means of return has ceased to exist. Please arrange publication of the attached manuscript, which I hope will restore my ability to travel home.”.
“What’s all that?”, my spouse asked.
“Nothing, love, just some kind of weird Nigerian Letter scam”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-09-19 20:55:41 GMT

When the European Union parliament banned splash screens—with the intent of encouraging faster application startup—there was an unintended consequence. The so-called microbreaks enforced by software startup delays turned out to have always had a positive cognitive effect. With fewer microbreaks, research showed, decision making was significantly impaired. Exhausted brains make bad choices, which is how we got the Cat Tax.

2025-09-18 03:19:54 GMT

#RandomLab
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/223/136/702/790/615/original/d559c5b58fb4dc06.jpeg

2025-09-13 23:26:19 GMT

They used to say the Weak Nuclear Force was useless, and its only role was in random processes of nuclear decay.
When Dr Anita Fothersbottom proved that Z-boson spectroscopy could see through the supposed “randomness” of nuclear decay, we got two revelations at once. Take radioisotope A, sort its atoms into short-decay cohort B and long decay cohort C. Pile B makes nuclear batteries; pile C makes guaranteed ten-thousand-years stable supermaterials.
They should have given her two Nobel prizes, not just the one.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-09-10 00:25:53 GMT

Aha, this seismic reading makes sense once you infer that your planet has Magma Worms
Has whatnow?
Lifeforms that seek out high-uranium planetary mantles in which to incubate their eggs.
How do we get rid of them?
Oh you don’t want to get rid of them, they keep the Core Wasps away.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-09-02 21:52:39 GMT

On the first of the month I like to be up early to watch the sunrise. I head out the east lock in dim earthlight, walk until I can’t see the dome, and roll out a pad of nanofoam insulation to protect my vacsuit from the cold and sharp lunar regolith. Lying back I look at the crater rim, barely visible under the half-lit Earth. The first rays of sunrise strike the tips of the rimwall but my attention is drawn by a flash of light from the Tellurian darkside. Lessee, that’s Australia there, so that must be South America preceding it into night. I turn my head slightly inside my helmet, take a sip from my coffee nipple, and wonder whether I’ll be able to afford any beans that survived the impact.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-09-01 22:43:17 GMT

Despite their frequent reminder “FOB¹, Dad”, the Tracy Sisters of International Rescue finally had to have Lady Penelope take IR founder Jeff Tracy aside for a little word about pronouns.
¹ Friend of Blåhaj
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-08-27 21:32:42 GMT

“Where’s your autopilot?”
“You’re looking at it”
“All I see is a bunch of cogs and shafts. Where’s the computer?”
“That’s the computer”
“You have a *clockwork* jumpdrive. For the love of Eris, why?”
“The best human takes forty seconds to recover from jumpshock. There isn’t a digital computer that can tell a one from a zero in under a minute postjump. Belinda here will have us into the next wormhole before those customs cutters chasing us stop drooling.”
“You *named* this abomination”
“Hey, no cause to be mean to her! You can get out and walk anytime, friend.”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-08-23 20:46:22 GMT

The folk origin is the same the world around: the Pleiades star cluster is known planetwide as the Seven Sisters, imagined to represent a group of women chased through the sky by the constellation of the Hunter, which Europeans call Orion. Did this anthropomorphic projection of a chance arrangement of stars arise with some deep-time stargazer, whose fanciful notion spread worldwide with homo sapiens, or was it independently formed many times post-diaspora? Of course the Usual Suspects point out that Obviously It Was Because Of The Ancient Aliens Who Built The Pyramids Buy My Book Like And Subscribe.
Wrong, all wrong. It was a premonition, a prophecy. The Betelgeuse Supernova, due any day now when the bloated red orb which denotes Orion’s shoulder pops—wrecking Orion’s sword arm—is a moment that reverberates through the human timeline. The sisters pause in their flight, stand firm. “Me Too”. “No More”. “Never Again”.
They were never running away, they were traveling. To reach that place and time where women are safe from those to whom chance has distributed brute strength, when people—of all genders and none—live in harmony.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-08-22 21:20:00 GMT

“I got a dark matter cat.”
“A whatnow?!”
“It’s a cat, but it only interacts via the weak force. And gravity of course”
“What’s the point of that?”
“Hypo allergenic. I can’t have normal cats or i sneeze constantly”
“But what can it *do*”
“Sits on my lap and emits soothing gravity purrs.”
“Nice, I guess”
“Oh and occasionally induces radioactive decay in objects on the coffee table.”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #Caturday

2025-08-22 18:46:21 GMT

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picture and description upthread. Gerontological primate elevation technology. (A step.)

2025-08-21 23:36:05 GMT

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Do I defile this wood with screws (brass of course), or not?

2025-08-21 23:26:31 GMT

I love the smell of linseed oil in the morning. If I won a million dollars I’d spend it on hardwood and BLO.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/069/330/048/490/098/original/024af0b25f3a9077.jpeg

2025-08-21 01:54:21 GMT

I can’t sit on the stairwell and wait for :pakidge: all day and call it a tea break. Or so i’m told.

2025-08-14 20:25:47 GMT

“Oh. Oh, no”
“What?”
“I think this is a simulation.”
“What is?”
“THIS. Everything. The universe. Us.”
“What, like _The_Matrix_?”
“Yea, but not as trans.”
“Wait, the Matrix is trans?”
“Where have you been. Anyway, Simulation panic!”
“How can you tell?”
“I’m thinking about aliens. Like, if you were trying to communicate science to another planet, how would you deal with measurements. Meters and seconds and yes even your goddamn inches are based on properties of the Earth, aliens aren’t gonna know the circumference of the planet or the length of its day or the diameter of some president’s brain. So how do you talk about the mass of the proton or the speed of light or the hubble constant in a way that aliens can recognise?”
“I dunno, there must some natural unit system that is based on a common property of space that we can both derive…”
“You’re on the right track. Forget about Meter Kilogram Second or Furlong Firkin Fortnight and convert to Planck Proton Periwinkle or whatever. So I started trying to come up with the One True Unit system.”
“And did you?”
“Duh. Yes. It uses the fine structure constant and the strength of the electromagnetic force and the planck interval that inevitably derives from the uncertainty principle.”
“You think that’s obvious?”
“Once you get into this headspace, yes. So i started making a cheat sheet of all the key parameters of the universe in my OTU system. That’s where it turned ugly…”
“Ugly how?”
“The speed of light in this system is 2³¹-1”
“Oh. Oh, no.”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-08-14 08:00:24 GMT

What could possibly go wrong?
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/115/026/058/708/168/451/original/cdc82ffdbd474c65.png

2025-08-12 22:07:59 GMT

To: All staff <[email protected]>
Subject: [URGENT] Email deletion
If you have any old email in your inbox from Frederick Ironsides, late of the Accounting department, please delete them all immediately. A soul is tied to the mortal realm as long as its name is recorded, and we are unable to access the Compactus while this apparatus remains haunted. Your immediate attention to this would be appreciated, as it is obstructing the processing of payroll.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-08-12 21:13:36 GMT

When I was at University, in another century and another world, the holy grail of computer science was formal verification of program correctness. The Software Verification Research Centre was the money-flush group whose ivory tower occupied the entire top floor of the otherwise impoverished computer science department’s building. Their goal was to define methods and tools for making software you could trust with your life (literally if, say, it is controlling an electron beam targeting your brain tumour).
Just paste in what the LLM suggests, I’m sure it’ll be fine.

2025-08-12 20:36:28 GMT

Mx 17, at their senior formal: “They’re playing AC/DC; it’s very loud”
Mx 17’s mum, winning at parent: “AC/DC is supposed to be loud.”

2025-08-05 22:50:34 GMT

New bike lane hazard just dropped.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/114/978/595/139/744/065/original/18dfb70c0c80f436.jpeg

2025-08-03 21:41:53 GMT

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oh no, much love to you and the spirit of wonderdog.

2025-08-02 23:20:53 GMT

Imaginary numbers are everywhere in mathematics, but they always cancel out, leaving just real numbers in, well, reality. At the nanoscale quantum mechanics dominates—uncertainty is the only certainty—and scandalously maltreated quadrupeds are both alive and dead; yet at the macro scale cause somehow reliably precedes effect. At galactic scale, the matter we see is just a fraction of the mass we measure—and so on. The Universe is hiding a LOT of things from us.
Science, to borrow a phrase, is the inexorable process of discovering the extent of our profound ignorance.
That’s why The Vault of Cosmic Secrets is offering a 1/𝜙 subscription discount for the next galactic rotation. Find your discount code 10³² digits into the value of 𝜋₁₃.
—translated extract from radio transmission received by the Arecibo II telescope, October 2031.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-08-01 23:11:10 GMT

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I am mentally planning a violent revolution at the thought of the Literal Nazi Party doing such a dirty on behalf of their fossil fuel donors.

2025-08-01 22:55:25 GMT

Get yourself a coffee fairy. Leave some chocolate coated coffee beans on your doorstep to advertise the vacancy. Put a cat bed in the pantry. If you have actual cats don’t worry, a cat only tries to eat a fairy once, and usually survives.
Fairy-made coffee is the best way to start the day. Come at me demon-tea lovers.
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-07-30 22:51:43 GMT

I just typed my 40-ish character ssh passphrase correctly on the first attempt of the day. Please clap.

2025-07-30 07:02:43 GMT

Drinking a coke and liberally brushing phosphoric acid rust converter onto the base of piece of legacy toolery given to me today. No point washing hands, they are basically the same, right.

2025-07-26 05:17:52 GMT

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Mx 17 did the Wonderdog Face Plant Maneuver™️ years back, looks like both her front teeth have now karked it.

2025-07-26 04:39:59 GMT

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Surprise! #RootCanalFairy 🦷 🧚‍♀️

2025-07-26 03:21:57 GMT

Taking Mx 17 to emergency dental.
If you ever felt inclined to drop a tip in my tip jar or commission a story, now would be a fabulous time. https://ko-fi.com/unixbigot <3
Or perhaps you need some ad-hoc technology concierge service: https://calendly.com/accelerando/technology-concierge

2025-07-25 23:06:40 GMT

“The court sentences the defendant to custodial confinement until completion of two thousand hours of community service, to be performed at the municipal fact mines. Take the convict down.“
The “defendant”, a seventeen year old jaxxer, whispered to his public defender. “Is that bad? How long is two thousand hours in real time? What’s a fact mine?”
“It’s remarkably lenient. Presuming a five hour workday four days a week…well I’m sure you can divide two thousand by twenty.”
“No, math is for nerds.”
“Hmmph. In the fact mines you’ll be removing incorrect information added to the omnipedia during the infocalypse, when the use of AI generators poisoned the human infosphere. You’ll be checking references, verifying facts and confirming calculations. You’ll get good at math, and the food is not so bad.”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-07-24 20:42:40 GMT

The knight paused his charger. “Ho, child, what name ye this village?”
The young girl so addressed kept walking, a bucket in each hand.
“YOU THERE! I SAID…”
The door of the smithy that stood on the outskirts of the settlement opened. “Good morrow, Sir Knight”
“And to you, Smith. I was about to instruct this rude youngster…”
The smith regarded the cooling red-tipped spike in her hand, and called out to the girl “Mim, what do we teach you about courtesy to knights?”
“We don’t fuckin talk to cops, Smith”
“No instruction necessary, as you can see”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #AKAB

2025-07-23 10:33:15 GMT

Cold rainy winter night, perfect for punkinshoop.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/114/902/086/772/230/890/original/bce2c6ce83ec73c4.jpeg

2025-07-22 21:10:43 GMT

If they didn’t want me to release lions onto the golf course they shouldn’t have installed all those litter boxes.

2025-07-21 21:06:48 GMT

“You’re still here? We thought you’d have colonised the galaxy by now. We uplifted your species two galactic rotations ago.”
“That was you? We’re grateful of course but with chemical propulsion we can barely get a ship to orbit. And then there’s the light speed barrier.”
“Barrier? Didn’t you get the plans?”
“Plans?”
“Oh darn, we left parental restrictions turned on in your heliopause, our bad.”
#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

2025-07-20 06:33:06 GMT

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This is what we do to instruments that make children hate music due to poor quality.
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/114/884/161/144/997/644/original/0887eb237e224901.mp4