iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Für die deutsch Sprechenden, die ein bisschen was von Musik verstehen und sich um die Demokratie in Deutschland sorgen.

004 4

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/08/2026

Hadn’t been sure I needed a bowl to bring when getting the eggplant from the back yard. Well!

A blue bowl filled with various peppers, including an eggplant, a red bell pepper, and several green chili peppers, is placed on a table.

001 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/07/2026

My (single) slide from the panel at the EU office in San Francisco yesterday. It must have resonated because the other panelists also kept referring to it in their remarks!

Graphic. Left column: "From: centralized, autocratically governed, global-scale social media platforms" showing a prototypical but unnamed commercial social media platform with lots of users. 1 platform for the world, 1 approach to T&S, 1 leader in charge, 1 economic model (ads.
Right column: "Towards: locally run and governed, connected communities on the Open Social Web.." showing a federation with nodes with some random Fediverse and ATmosphere logos, with local communities around each of them. Thousands, millions of communities, T&S / governance / economic models by and as appropriate for the community. List of some key enables, and some term definitions.
And if you read it this far, I'm glad I took the time :-)

102 2

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/07/2026

Thanks @wearenew_public for the bag! I will take it for shopping in Silicon Valley where many work for the monopolizing tech giants! Being on the jury for the Open Social Awards was fun! Thanks for having me!

Photo of bag with text: the internet belongs to the people.

002 2

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/06/2026

Today’s additional job title: castle tower builder. Well, castle tower build machine overseer.

101 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/06/2026

From today's Open Social Awards ceremony.

Photo of the award stage with moderator and members of the jury. Audrey Tang and I joined by video.

101 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/05/2026

This is, I think, the "melting pot" at its best. Somebody went out of their way to research and making voting as welcoming to immigrated citizens as they could. In the outrage that much of the US is committing all the time these days, this is heartening. I don't […] [Original post on j12t.social]

001 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/05/2026

I am at loss for words. From the SpaceX S1 filing. Can anybody even remotely believe this?

Chart with claimed total addressable market.

201 2

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/05/2026

How is San Francisco these days, you ask?

001 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/05/2026

I'm kinda flabbergasted that all of a sudden, a very prominent "Fediverse" item has shown up in a prime location in the #Threads UI. It leads to all the posts of accounts outside of Threads that I'm following from within Threads via ActivityPub.

111 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/02/2026

Attempting to find a hotel, booking.com is ... mysterious.

City map with hotels all labeled "undefinedundefined".

101 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/01/2026

Move along now, nothing to see here, this is perfectly normal.

Gold price has exploded to over $5000/oz.

111 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/11/2025

As website error messages go, this is a new one. I can only send messages to this airline that don't contain a period or a question mark? In other words, no English sentences? Or sentences in any other language?

111 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/11/2025

For those of you who didn’t come to #sfscon and the #fediverse track, you also missed this.

Photo of a panorama in South Tyrol with the Dolomites in the back.

021 2

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/11/2025

We clearly need to improve the zucchini surveillance.

Gigantic zucchini vs regular sized zucchini

001 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/10/2025

One thing I love about elections in California is how many options there are to cast your ballot. I chose to vote in person more than a week ahead of voting day. A certain sign of how much a party or governments supports democracy is whether they make it easier or harder to vote.

002 2

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/08/2025

So if it is true, as I posted yesterday, that it costs about $1-$2 per user per month to run a social network at scale ... ... and if we wanted a big part of humanity to be able to escape the walled gardens ... we need just a bit of money. And donations. And volunteer hours. Totalling a mere ...

203 3

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2025

Whatever you say, it’s still a miracle. #3dprinting

010 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2025

What would it cost to run the #fediverse at scale? With billions instead of millions of users? What does it cost to run a social network anyway? According to the annual reports of two companies that should know, the comparable seems to be about $1-$2 per user […] [Original post on j12t.social]

102 2

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/08/2025

The world we have -- in social media, and more broadly in tech -- vs the world we want. Does this look about right?

104 4

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2025

7% of people already are getting their news from AI, and it's not even something the AI companies are pushing. Given this incredible quote from Elon, and the blend of AI and social media he and others are working on, how long until the "news" that arrives with people is entirely fictional? 1/3

201 2

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2025

Assembled and working. And, as always, fascinating to watch.

011 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2025

Social media has become the most used source of news. Commercial social media that is -- the one that has an opaque algorithm between you and the news that optimizes for the business benefit of the platform, not you getting unbiased news. What could possibly go wrong? 1/2

103 3

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2025

How big is the open social web, the #fediverse, #bluesky etc compared to the big commercial platforms? It's a bit sobering. From my recent talk "From millions to billions -- a plausible narrative for how to grow the open social web."

208 8

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2025

It’s tomato tasting day. If you grow several varieties, you gotta compare and contrast!

001 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/08/2025

I hadn’t been sure whether we had enough ripe tomatoes in the back yard to make a pasta sauce.

Over 3 pounds of ripe, freshly harvested tomatoes.

001 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/08/2025

We must have missed this one under all the big leaves.

Gigantic zucchino weighing more than 3 pounds

000 0

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/05/2025

If you don’t harvest your zucchini on the exact right day, they may easily end up much bigger than you wanted. First zucchino of the season. Will be excellent lunch.

000 0

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/05/2025

My neck of the woods is trying to get 7000 people out into the streets at the same time Trump has his Soviet-style, dictator-style, imperialist-style birthday military parade on June 14. Sounds ambitious? Yes. Important? Yes. Consider finding / creating a […] [Original post on j12t.social]

Flyer: No kings. 7x7k. 7 miles of resistance, 7000 resisters. From Tesla Palo Alto to Tesla Sunnyvale.

011 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/04/2025

The ceiling of todays work from home location. I’m thinking I like this home office.

Looking straight up into the canopies of a palm tree and a lemon tree.

000 0

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/04/2025

The create account / password reset function of the United States Postal Service website usps.com is "unavailable" for the second day I've been trying. Cannot create a new account nor get at any old account. Would not be surprised if the Department of Government […] [Original post on j12t.social]

002 2

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/04/2025

I declare the veggie harvesting season to be open. Pak choi chicken soup for lunch. Yes, the plant is quite young and small. But I have others and I’m so tired of grocery store veggies.

Row of pak choi plants in my vertical outdoors hydroponics system

000 0

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/04/2025

Status: on the street in Mountain View with 1000s of my closest friends. #handsoff

013 3

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/03/2025

I run Windows once a year, and every time I just wonder about this product. Like who came up with this status message? Does it mean that download has progressed in the wrong direction from 0% to now -3%, and turned into an upload? Or does it mean that it is […] [Original post on j12t.social]

Windows screenshot saying: Downloading - 3%

000 0

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/03/2025

Know anything about music theory? Don't feel bad, ChatGPT doesn't either. This is "Song Maker" with the prompt: "Create a four voiced fugue in the style of Mendelssohn with a faster second theme. Start in the bass." And it produced this. Just about everything […] [Original post on j12t.social]

000 0

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/02/2025

#AI at its best /s The gray line is what Visual Studio Code's / Microsoft's #copilot wants me to add to this code. Come again?

Add a "raise ValueError('api_endpoint is required')" to a Python program's import statement. Syntactically incorrect. Semantic nonsense.

032 3

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/01/2025

Thanks, iRobot / Roomba, for shipping be an entire box of delicious air, with a tiny add-on of a replacement battery.

001 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/12/2024

CNN: “Putin considers Russia expansion. If he’s serious, a territorial expansion into Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova would rival the Louisiana Purchase.” Oops, I must have gotten the imperialist wrong here. @cnn.com, are you completely out of your mind?

011 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/12/2024

In praise of globalization. Otherwise, how could I make my Marzipan-Christstollen?

001 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/11/2024

Rich findings walking the dog today.

Bumper sticker: “One nation / under educated”

016 6

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/11/2024

This is unusual even in a Silicon Valley little neighborhood library.

001 1

Johannes Ernst @j12t.j12t.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/11/2024

Who says there are no fall colors in California!

001 1