École des Bro-Arts

Switchy leatherman into bad puns, thick boys, and distributed systems. Purveyor of fine jockstrap selfies. Woof.group admin.

Jim Starkey: "Of interest only to third-rate academics a few papers short of a tenure package."

Reddit: "would never ever ever hire this degenerate holy shit"

Peter Watts: "The most innovative fanfic I've ever read."

Blog: https://aphyr.com
Leather Blog: https://blog.woof.group/aphyr
Work: https://jepsen.io
Pronouns: He/Him

Public Key

npub1hw0zfm2rrpuvr7k4qelzzgck94tdgvzhl9yce2q85pcn2l58q6ts76jzvh

NIP-05 Address

aphyr_at_woof.group@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsth83ya4p3s7xplt2svl3pyvtz64k5xptljjvv4qr6quf406rsd9cpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsu55qwj

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1hw0zfm2rrpuvr7k4qelzzgck94tdgvzhl9yce2q85pcn2l58q6ts76jzvh

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Last Notes

2026-04-07 15:25:33 UTC

I never imagined that the Turing test would fall within my lifetime. Nor did I imagine that I would feel so disheartened by it.
https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess

2026-03-28 23:04:13 UTC

No Kings, Chicago
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/116/309/297/222/606/167/original/45c1bd9bd272dd8d.jpg

2026-03-07 04:58:48 UTC

Imagine being the whales from Star Trek IV. Goldfish arrive, but not like your usual goldfish. They telepathically communicate with you that they're really sorry, but in the future, goldfish kill all humans, and now they're paying for it, and would you mind please coming with them to repopulate the future earth?

2025-12-16 18:07:43 UTC

It has been zero (0) days since trying to use my Google Titan security key with Google Chrome to access Google Meet has locked me out of a therapy call because the "device is not supported".
As a security nerd I really, really want to be on board with extensive 2FA and passkeys, but as an actual human being who is constantly getting locked out of their accounts because of totally inscrutable 2FA errors, I honestly want to go back to Just Long Passwords, Please.

2025-12-16 06:09:03 UTC

As someone who runs my own blog, email, social media, backup system, home automation, business site, etc...
I feel like self-hosting digital services is a lot like backyard chickens. Rewarding, lots of control, independence from Big Egg, and a great reminder of why distribution of labor and efficiencies of scale are so important.

2025-11-08 19:26:19 UTC

This weight presses upon me every day. I am flooded with stories. There are so many I cannot remember them all; cannot keep straight who was gassed, beaten, abducted, or shot. I write to leave a record, to stare at the track of the tornado which tears through our city. I write to leave a warning. I write to call for help.
https://aphyr.com/posts/397-i-want-you-to-understand-chicago

2025-10-29 16:05:24 UTC

Joining the Indivisible Spotify boycott today, to try and convince them to drop ads for ICE. This one is painful--I use Spotify constantly, and have been a subscriber for a decade. I've got a huge investment in playlists there, and they're one of the few services with decent Linux support. But with ICE and CBP deploying tear gas blocks away, I can't keep giving them money.
https://woof.group/@npub1j8z…fgt7/115458155256369218
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/115/458/286/962/466/983/original/bd343a45a2c31755.png

2025-10-25 13:29:54 UTC

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Started reading the article and I'm sorry what the actual fuck is going on
"...homegrown zoomer Tea Party that might one day produce its own gooner congressmen, gooner news networks, extremist gooner terror attacks."

2025-10-25 13:25:22 UTC

Well everyone, we had a good run, but Harper's has discovered gooning. We have to invent some new Weird Sex Thing now. https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/the-goon-squad-daniel-kolitz-porn-masturbation-loneliness/

2025-09-13 15:03:50 UTC

The complaint form Ofcom says you should use to report websites for violations of the #OnlineSafetyAct does not allow you to enter URLs, because it might be illegal for Ofcom to look at them.
What is going ON over there.
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/115/197/590/726/826/066/original/1a02535ee1b53d37.png
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/115/197/591/063/582/833/original/b12e7c810814603b.png

2025-08-19 20:13:01 UTC

Please. "Toxic masculinity" is only harmful to those who absorb it. You're thinking of *venomous* masculinity, which hurts others.

2025-08-16 15:51:46 UTC

Made a little pornographic test case for the UK #OnlineSafetyAct, to see whether we can get Ofcom to ban AWS S3 from the United Kingdom.
http://ofcom.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

2025-08-06 22:23:36 UTC

The most incredible thrift store find
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/984/155/099/840/837/original/551aef733d96f51e.jpg

2025-07-15 13:38:06 UTC

As a leftist, I just feel that if I were in charge of advertising for the local communist group I would choose figureheads not generally known for having induced the famine deaths of millions of people. There are in fact other options here!
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/857/514/070/089/818/original/e8d646f2e36d35db.jpg

2025-04-04 12:06:49 UTC

Dumb himbo
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/279/604/696/300/033/original/28823f57b2ca9798.jpg

2025-03-31 03:52:23 UTC

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1970s, apparently! (Nerd-sniped me too) https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/111998/disappear-as-a-transitive-verb

2025-03-31 01:55:05 UTC

Who called them tater tots instead of spudmuffins?

2025-03-26 13:35:35 UTC

The times you can write a sentence like this, as a reporter...
"Waltz, who invited Goldberg into the Signal chat, said yesterday that he was investigating 'how the heck he got into this room.'”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/signal-group-chat-attack-plans-hegseth-goldberg/682176/

2025-03-14 03:01:30 UTC

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Other ideas we've turned over (and laughed at the implications of trying to advance them in inappropriate times)
- Hand washing
- Germ theory
- Calculus
- Post-structuralism
- Lagrangians, diffeq
- Cryptographic ciphers (executable via analogue techniques)
- Boiling/alcohol for sterilization
- Queer theory
- Biodiversity (e.g. prevent the German forestry disaster)
- Crop rotation
- Randomized controlled trials
- Silent reading
- Eyeglasses
- Marxism
- Suspension bridges
- Japanese joinery

2025-03-14 01:01:38 UTC

I've been turning over this question with friends recently: if you travel back in time, and can bring only your own body and memories--no raw materials, no machines, no books, etc., what ideas do you bring?
For instance, I could probably draw and explain how to fabricate every part of a fixed gear bicycle, or at least a velocipede. But that only works in a time which has (at a minimum!) access to reasonably efficient axle bearings, and ideally rubberized tires, gears, etc. The window is small!

2025-03-09 20:05:00 UTC

Oh, okay https://archive.is/okSlz
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/134/263/027/474/361/original/8aa771a67d64a900.png

2025-03-05 14:22:21 UTC

I am so, SO curious about the "Fediverse Chick" spam campaign. We've suspended, like, a dozen of her accounts so far and she just keeps going. I assume the end goal is getting money out of people, but like, why target Fedi and self-hosting OSS nerds? It's like Joanne the Scammer trying to grift her way through the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone 🤣
Reminds me of Darwin's Hawkmoths, growing incredibly specialized proboscises to suck nectar from equally specialized flowers: https://www.calacademy.org/learn-explore/specimens-in-focus/darwin%E2%80%99s-hawkmoth
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/110/268/636/533/059/original/1a0df99ce05193e7.png

2025-03-02 23:38:54 UTC

Gosh on days when I use caffeine leg day is actually fun
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/114/095/471/162/346/070/original/591367625dd98c4b.jpg

2025-02-26 23:45:39 UTC

a C witch taught me how to do some very basic gdb and valgrind today and WOW debuggers are cool

2025-02-13 19:13:15 UTC

we and our 3438 advertising partners saw you from across the web and really liked your vibe

2025-02-04 18:20:44 UTC

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Honestly I think where this winds up is "few if any services block the UK, everyone is in violation of the act, and Ofcom simply doesn't have the resources or political will to go after small sites"

2025-02-04 18:18:29 UTC

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I think the only bit of actionable advice I got out of today's Ofcom livestream was that yes, geoblocking the UK is a valid compliance measure.

2025-01-25 01:19:47 UTC

BRB opening a bar called "Tongue in Cheek"

2025-01-24 17:27:12 UTC

Spent a while last night reading through Ofcom's Illegal Content Judgements Guidance under the #OnlineSafetyAct and I am so, so confused about what they expect us to do. I thought "don't do terrorism" would be easy to comply with, but they list the "Anarchists Cookbook" as an example of a terrorist offense. It's also an offense to "express an opinion or belief supportive of a proscribed organization" (p 25). Hamas is a proscribed organization.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/online-safety/information-for-industry/illegal-harms/illegal-content-judgements-guidance-icjg.pdf?v=387556
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror-groups-or-organisations--2/proscribed-terrorist-groups-or-organisations-accessible-version

2025-01-16 20:50:10 UTC

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That might be a thing, but I think the bigger question is what happens to every *non*-UK instance. I assume there's going to be a weird detente where most do nothing, and the cautious ones geoblock the UK.

2025-01-16 20:24:25 UTC

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Like @npub1ewu…ktd2, I've been trying to untangle the thousands of pages of OSA guidance and... my current, lay-person's understanding is that essentially every Mastodon instance is going to be illegal in the UK come March. Most servers allow porn, or federate with servers that do. I've never seen an instance do age verification more robust than "You attest you're at least 18".

2025-01-16 20:19:15 UTC

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Even if we were to somehow do age verification, take the site private, and block all federation, I suspect some of our content could fall afoul of the "extreme pornography" provisions of the OSA, which doubles down on Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
I am reminded, yet again, of the Spanner trials: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16803763/

2025-01-16 20:07:25 UTC

I wrote to Ofcom last week asking for guidance for Mastodon instances like woof.group, as the #OnlineSafetyAct comes into effect in March. There's a lot of respects in which we're likely to run afoul of the act, but one of the big ones is that Ofcom's response letter repeatedly explained that any service which allows pornography must perform "highly effective age assurance".
I've written back to ask for clarification, but... I don't see how it's possible to comply here.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/consultations/category-1-10-weeks/statement-age-assurance-and-childrens-access/statement-age-assurance-and-childrens-access.pdf?v=388849#page=15?v=388849
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/839/825/685/664/255/original/d42293611a9ae91a.png
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/839/826/154/575/051/original/26227ada7269a225.png
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/839/826/807/452/178/original/ffd7c2850e757b94.png

2025-01-14 17:03:16 UTC

Wow y'all weren't kidding, lots of new gays on pixelfed this week. Hat tip to @npub1lxy…k4m5, who's boosting a bunch of newcomers!

2025-01-14 16:58:37 UTC

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Yeah, pixelfed doesn't show follows/followings if you don't have an account on that instance, so my usual trick of "browse people's follows to find the other gays" is useless

2025-01-14 16:53:19 UTC

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we're gonna need some handles :D

2025-01-13 16:30:05 UTC

awarding the fields medal to whatever mathematician can figure out how much a subscription to the Chicago Tribune costs
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/821/984/760/589/304/original/046f76825106ee4e.png
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/821/985/451/245/329/original/5fc88f9eb65a9e62.png
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/821/985/993/436/418/original/d8df7715a8d27e1d.png
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/821/986/334/492/239/original/b669be4b44d231da.png

2025-01-08 15:35:30 UTC

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Over the pandemic I started a little zine of lewds and mailed em to a dozen friends who contributed. All you need's a printer and a big stapler. It was actually a blast. :-)

2024-12-28 16:08:17 UTC

If carcinization is transforming into a crab, ostracization should be transforming into an ostrich

2024-12-25 19:01:03 UTC

just discovered the JS Date constructor uses zero-indexed months but one-indexed days, what on fucking EARTH
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/Date#monthindex

2024-12-22 07:49:32 UTC

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Cyberpunk 2077 is a video game in which you drive around a city buying cool clothes and doing photoshoots for a fashion magazine while serving as much cunt as virtually possible
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/695/360/307/927/460/original/9f6398e824983eb7.jpg
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/695/361/490/015/971/original/fd2ec434eeba5347.jpg
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/695/361/654/854/245/original/75f260d000b3a6db.jpg
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/695/362/102/614/778/original/992223d8f5fc95f2.jpg

2024-12-21 00:39:08 UTC

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Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and my brain's heuristic for "should you try to procreate with this man" is a.) beard, b.) huge, c.) mean

2024-12-21 00:34:29 UTC

there is simply no polite way to say this but it has to be said: I would absolutely suck Royce's cold, robotic dick when placed in this position
jackie can come too
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/687/996/111/228/304/original/65f7e8805a8c4ad3.jpg

2024-12-13 17:02:35 UTC

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Scrubbed through my ride videos this week and got two cyclists running reds. It happens! It's not great IMO!
OTOH, in that same set of rides I have three cars running reds or stop signs, ten parked in bike lanes, a half dozen unsignaled lane changes, four stopped or parked directly over crosswalks, four on their phones while driving...

2024-12-13 17:00:45 UTC

I have this theory that part of why car drivers rant about cyclists and don't seem to realize how often cars break the law is because when you're in a car you don't actually get to *see* that many cars. You spend most of an urban drive waiting behind other cars. On a bike you're constantly passing them and have lots of chances to see car fuckery.

2024-12-10 22:18:13 UTC

Eleanor Zigbee /
Turns on the lights in a room where nobody wants them /
Mistaken scene /
Based on a message /
Sent by the press of a button six hours before /
Who was it fooooor?
#HomeAssistant

2024-12-02 15:46:50 UTC

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Those actors fall in the long tail of the heterogenous threat landscape. The bulk--other users on instances that generally play by the rules--is more subtle.
Fedi has no built-in global search, and lots of people disable external indexing. Broken conversation chains and missing replies are common. You can, if you like, block your own moderators (!) and make their job incredibly frustrating. Approving followers and using followers-only posts do *something* to limit visibility.
It's complicated!

2024-12-02 15:44:07 UTC

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At the same time, people are generally boring, admins are generally ethical, and snooping takes *work*. I've dug into the database to look at DMs once (?) in five years, and that was at the specific user's request. I've also been inside the surveillance capitalism sausage factory: corporate snooping is both far more invasive than most people realize, and also *ridiculously* lossy/noisy. We don't have the resources to fight a subpoena, but also no government has *bothered* to ask for our data.

2024-12-02 15:30:37 UTC

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I don't know how to effectively communicate, let alone acculturate, realistic models of privacy here. Yes, your moderators can see your email address. The admins of your instance and every receiver's instance can read your DMs. Yes, the entire world can, if they like, view your public posts. It is very likely that those posts have been indexed by governments, researchers, ADHD gay hyenas (non-derogatory), and trolls (derogatory). Blocks are advisory. Authorized_fetch is a gate with no lock.

2024-12-02 15:07:32 UTC

In the early aughts I was a a self-described paranoid cypherpunk. I was obsessed with privacy: running Tor, trying to convince all my friends to sign each other's GPG keys so we could build a web of trust, and booting Trinux from a floppy so I could tunnel my Very Important HTTP traffic over SSH where The Authorities (TM) couldn't read it.
None of that prepared me for the experience of being a moderator on Fedi, and the myriad privacy headcanons people construct.

2024-12-01 22:34:36 UTC

"Despite the fact that Threads users can’t follow or see mentions from people on other instances, Threads has already opted to block a slew of instances where gay & leather people congregate.... If Threads were a taxi service, it wouldn’t take you South of Market."
https://aphyr.com/posts/371-threads-wont-take-you-south-of-market

2024-11-19 12:57:29 UTC

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this is the Tuvix episode we deserved

2024-10-30 04:30:57 UTC

Taking the subway today with a few friends, a man took offense to my friend standing in the aisle in front of where he was seated, and insisted he move. Friend did not move. Man stood up and kept arguing, and a third guy chimes in and starts tapping him to move.
I'm thinking this whole thing is headed towards a fight when this young woman a few feet away speaks up and is like... "Sit your ass down. He is perfectly welcome to stand there; you do not own the train. You are going to get the...

2024-10-24 02:20:02 UTC

the future is great
https://files.woof.group/media_attachments/files/113/359/999/375/240/562/original/7c85e16f143ade19.png

2024-10-20 18:04:56 UTC

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I think it varies, but my bear friends have said they felt surprisingly welcome. There *was* that one twink who said "oh my god you're SO brave, love your body positivity" though 😂

2024-10-14 15:52:13 UTC

Centaurs, from the Latin "cen", meaning "hundred", and "taur", meaning "bull", have one hundred legs by definition. Bulls, horse-men, and other horsey creatures are generally referred to as n-taurs, and can have any number of legs. Most cattle are 4-taurs; Chiron is a 6-taur. Those with more legs than usual (e.g. 64-taurs, or the Bojack Horseman Centipede) are known as myriapods.

2024-10-04 00:24:07 UTC

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ooh are those the Gasp shorts? I keep looking at those then deciding what I really want is the model's hamstrings 😆

2024-09-24 18:55:20 UTC

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oh man I saw the trailer for that and found McAvoy *uncomfortably* erotic

2024-09-12 18:24:39 UTC

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Yeah, definitely sort out priorities--it's not gonna be the full smartwatch experience. But... two weeks of battery life, an always-on screen that's highly legible in bright sun, offline, road and trail maps package for the entire continent! And in three years of my clumsy ass wearing it daily and slamming it into furniture, tools, steel frames, etc... I've put only a couple barely-noticeable scratches on the screen. I expect I'll probably be using this watch for a decade.

2024-09-12 18:13:23 UTC

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This may or may not be right for you but on the chunky, indestructible metal watch front, the Garmin Fenix is an incredible piece of kit.

2024-08-26 13:09:47 UTC

help the jd vance makeup tutorial has undone me https://www.instagram.com/p/C9udTghuPNB/?hl=en

2024-08-17 14:24:26 UTC

Heads up, sluts: the mpox vaccine should be effective against the current clade 1 outbreak. Modeling suggests building population-level immunity through vaccination significantly reduces the chances of major outbreaks & sustained transmission. If you haven't been vaccinated yet, go get it. https://www.cdc.gov/cfa-modeling-and-forecasting/mpox-gbmsm-technical-brief/index.html

2024-08-13 18:18:58 UTC

I am begging software projects to release programs as tarballs or plain old static binaries. I don't know what a Helm chart is. I am not installing an entire Kubernetes cluster. Docker breaks LXC and firewalls and is constantly breaking for mysterious reasons. I would rather submit myself to hours of `./configure && make && make install` frustration than try to hack through the endless hellscape of containerized deployment systems.

2024-08-02 00:11:00 UTC

OH "The price of being observant is the horror of knowing that it's there"