Gavin Zhao @[email protected]

Borrowed from fakebook.

My daughter came home from school and said,
“Mom, you’re not going to believe what happened in history class today.”

Her teacher told the class they were going to play a game.
He walked around the room and whispered to each kid whether they were a witch or just a regular person. Then he gave the instructions:

“Form the biggest group you can without a witch. If your group has even one, you all fail.”

She said the whole room instantly lit up with suspicion.
Everyone started interrogating each other. Are you a witch? How do we know you’re not lying?
Some kids clung to one big group, but most broke off into smaller, exclusive cliques. They turned away anyone who seemed uncertain, nervous, or gave off even the slightest hint of being guilty.

The energy shifted fast. Suddenly everyone was suspicious of everyone.
Whispers. Finger-pointing. Side-eyes. Trust dissolved in minutes.

Finally, when all the groups were formed, the teacher said,
“Alright, time to find out who fails. Witches, raise your hands.”

And not one hand went up.

The whole class exploded. “Wait! You messed up the game!”

And then the teacher dropped the bomb:
“Did I? Were there any actual witches in Salem, or did everyone just believe what they were told?”

My daughter said the room went dead silent.

That’s when it hit them. No witch was ever needed for the damage to happen. Fear had already done its work. Suspicion alone divided the entire class, turning community into chaos.

And isn’t that exactly what we’re seeing today?
Different words, same playbook.
Instead of “witch,” it’s liberal, conservative, vaxxed, unvaxxed, pro-this, anti-that.
The labels shift, but the tactic is the same.

Get people scared. Get them suspicious. Get them divided.
Then sit back while trust crumbles.

The danger was never the witch.
The danger is the rumor. The suspicion. The fear. The planted lies.

Refuse the whisper. Don’t play the game. Because the second we start hunting “witches,” we’ve already lost.

For absolutely no reason I can guess, Google Docs starts to provide auto-complete in Portuguese (a language I never write in). I had begun to type "Represent"… Any guess what's going on? Is "9/10" somehow "Portuguese/Brazilian/Açores/… coded"?

Did you know your MacBook has a sensor that knows the exact angle of the screen hinge?

It’s not exposed as a public API, but I figured out a way to read it and make it sound like an old wooden door.

Source code and a downloadable app to try it yourself: https://github.com/samhenrigold/LidAngleSensor

I have accidentally adopted a bull. Or perhaps he adopted me. My property has a bit of land and one day a random bull turned up on there. I asked all the local farmers and nobody was missing a bull. Guess he's mine now. I named him Kevin, after the Home Alone kid.

How did we land on #CatsOfMastodon and not #meowstodon

Quokka-eating-a-eucalyptus-leaf timeline cleanse.

"Nom nom nom nom".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quokka

Fence #Cat

#caturday

How your mind defends itself against psychological & emotional pain. Which are your go-to’s?

See the full expanded image 
https://geni.us/IIB-Defences2

Please report any account that claims that you need to verify your #Mastodon account to continue using it. It is a scam. Don't click the links. Real staff accounts either have a special role badge on their profile or are verified through the joinmastodon.org domain.

After two weeks of writing, revising, and trying to make everything as digestible as possible, I finally published "GNOME Calendar: A New Era of Accessibility Achieved in 90 Days", where I explain in detail the steps we took to turn GNOME Calendar from an app that was literally unusable with a keyboard and screen reader to an app that is (finally) accessible to keyboard and screen reader users as of GNOME 49!

https://tesk.page/2025/07/25/gnome-calendar-a-new-era-of-accessibility-achieved-in-90-days/

#GNOMECalendar #GNOME #Accessibility #a11y #DisabilityPrideMonth #Linux #FOSS #OSS #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #GTK #libadwaita

Why I 🧡 the web.

https://drawafish.com

Just draw the fish. Trust me. 🐟

Let's all just take a moment to appreciate eduroam

Long before vibe coding platforms deleted your production databases, GHC deleted your code if it failed to typecheck.

The ultimate production incident awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

I hope this email finds you well, and taking better care of yourself.

Seen on Thayer St in Providence/cc @shriramk

A well typed car…

I told my husband that posting this could literally take down the instance and he is insisting I post it

#dogsofmastodon #dogs

Hello

End of *Food for the Soul* was as easy as the show as a whole. A college activity club simply having fun. #anime #FoodForTheSoul