Live performance of The Laughing Dogs playing their song I Need a Million. And the guy with the beard later on did most of the voices for Team Rocket in Pokémon.

Today, I was listening to The Laughing Dogs, the 1970s New York punk band that was popular at CBGBs and toured with Blondie and Patti Smith. As I was looking at who the band members, I saw that Carter Cathcart played keyboards. Wait… the famous anime voice actor?! Yes, the very same Carter Cathcart who did the voices of Gary Oak, James, Meowth, and Professor Oak in Pokémon.

The Laughing Dogs - Wikipedia

Kate Bush - Never For Ever (1980) Her 3rd album, and worth it alone for Babushka, but every track is a killer. What an amazing musician. Kate Bush truly is a rock goddess.

Someone just said that nerds can’t be DJs. Okay, what? DJing is the most nerdy thing you can do in music. It literally requires you to have arcane music knowledge so you can mix disparate tracks. It’s the musical equivalent of playing Dungeons & Dragons.

TechCrunch is now covering #Mastodon’s addition of quote posts. But there’s one thing @Sarahp@mastodon.social might want to change: we know when quote posts are coming. The display of quote posts is coming with Mastodon 4.4. You will be able to see quote posts if they come from other services. But authoring of quote posts, that is the ability to make them in Mastodon, is coming with Mastodon 4.5.

TechCrunch

Mastodon is working to add the controversial 'quote posts' feature | TechCrunch

Mastodon, the decentralized alternative to X, is going to adopt a controversial feature from the platform formerly known as Twitter: quote posts. The

Here’s #Mastodon’s specification for quote posts. And they provide examples too. The great news is that this will not break compatibility with platforms that have already implemented this feature. Thank God!

Cookie monster!

#Mastodon is being more blatant—it will add quote posts. This will piss some people off but frankly, this has been in the works for years. To those who believe quote posts are abusive, there is no data whatsoever that shows any correlation between quote posts and abuse. And actually, platforms like #Misskey, #Akkoma, and #Friendica have had that feature for years, and hardly anyone using those platforms has ever complained. In fact, I use quote posts every day. No one’s complained to me about my use of quote posts. Nevertheless, Mastodon is doing the right thing—and it takes serious courage to tell the Fedi Gatekeepers that this will happen. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But it’s a change that needed to happen.

Mastodon Blog

Bringing Quote Posts to Mastodon

Sharing our thinking and progress on bringing Quote Posts to Mastodon, with a goal to create a safe and respectful space for everyone.

#Reddit is planning on paywalling some subreddits. If true, this is the biggest gift they’ve ever given to the #SocialWeb because I guarantee a whole lot of people will want that stuff for free.

Ars Technica

Reddit will lock some content behind a paywall this year, CEO says

How will Reddit generate content for paid-for subreddits?

Can’t believe this song is 15 year old. Time moves too fast.

Classical music is exhausting. 😮‍💨 I like it but can only hear it occasionally because the dynamic range wipes me out.

Have we finally discovered Jack the Ripper’s true identity? If true, one of the world’s oldest cold cases may have just been solved. https://www.newsnationnow.com/crime/jack-the-ripper-identity-revealed-dna/

TIP: Use #Voyager to do keyword filtering on ”Trump” and “Musk”, and #Lemmy becomes much more usable.

Eventually, these AI girlfriends and boyfriends will require a subscription. Unless, of course, if they’re running on your own hardware. And what kind of relationship is it if you can just uninstall your romantic companion?

The Conversation

Teenagers turning to AI companions are redefining love as easy, unconditional and always there

Young people have led makeovers of the concept of love before. But relationships with AI chatbots leave out the compromises and effort of real rela...

This reverse Turing Test, where AIs try to figure out who the human is, offers an interesting glimpse into how to conduct a modern Turing test. That said, I don’t think the fellow doing this test tried to pretend he was an AI.

Whenever someone tells me Genesis is bland and milquetoast, I send them this video. Because this is a circus.

Micro Social, a new iOS app for micro.blog, has just launched! It features: * Customisable Feed * Photos-Only Timeline * Books Integration * Seamless Conversations * Minimalist Design The release notes can be found here:

Greg Morris

Micro Social : The Launch

Micro Social started as a personal project to solve a simple problem — I wanted a better way to use micro.blog. Something that felt more customis...

You can download the app here:

App Store

Micro Social App - App Store

Download Micro Social by Greg Morris on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips and more apps like Micro Social.

#Mastodon plans to add the display of quote posts with Mastodon 4.4, and then to support authoring with Mastodon 4.5. I hope the dev team has the courage to follow through with this plan because, amongst some Mastodon users (but not most), this will be the worst thing ever—despite Mastodon clients supporting quote posts, and software like Akkoma, Sharkey, and Friendica doing the same. Ultimately, quote posts are a must. More people want them than don’t.

Mastodon Blog

Trunk & Tidbits, January 2025

News and updates from the Mastodon developers. Technical changes from January 2025, and what the core team did at FOSDEM.

I can’t stop laughing at this. I mean, it sucks to lose out on $780M. If I lost that kind of money, yeah, my life would be filled with regret. But the idea of buying a landfill, searching through every bit of garbage, hoping the hard drive is still intact—that is incredibly hilarious.

Tom

Man who lost $780 million in Bitcoin in a landfill now wants to buy the entire dump before city closes the site

Buried Bitcoins would be worth over $780 million today if recoverable.

Well, I’ll be. Looks like the Liberals are gaining support. What’s the reason? Not only is Justin Trudeau stepping down as leader, but Donald Trump’s tariffs have made Canadians re-visit our priorities.

CTVNews

Conservatives still frontrunners but ‘hemorrhaging’ support to Liberals: Nanos survey

The federal Liberals are making significant gains at the expense of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives following Justin Trudeau’s resignation, ac...

Something to understand about the HOA is that they pretty much only exist on #Mastodon. They’re completely invisible on #Lemmy, #Pixelfed, and #WordPress.