New Mastodon Instances and a Local Timeline Experiment

I’ve been tempted to join a smaller Mastodon instance to be able to appreciate the value of having a useful local timeline. Mastodon.social is so large as to have a generally un-useful local timeline because I lack the context of all the users and its generally very hit-and-miss for my discovery and serendipity needs. It’s not like I really spent a lot of time sipping from Twitter’s firehose timeline, which is a rough equivalent.

I almost jumped yesterday when Jim Groom and the Reclaim Hosting spun up a Mastodon instance focused on DS 106 at I’ve followed a large part of that community for over a decade, but didn’t have the bandwidth.

This morning I noticed that Boris Mann and gang have spun up a Mastodon instance around the idea of tools for thought which dovetails with their efforts at Tools for Thought Rocks! So I’m going to bite there to see what happens and have the experience of a smaller specific and focused timeline to watch.

I still have to figure out how to best dovetail the experience into my own IndieWeb site given potential limitations with backfeed of POSSE posts from Brid.gy. Perhaps I’ll just use it as read only to start and simply federate my content there? We’ll see. It’s solely an experiment, but some of those few already there are people I see regularly. No guarantees on how much I’ll post there, but if it’s your favorite reader/platform you can find me at @chrisaldrich@toolsforthought.rocks. Most likely anything I post to it will be more relevant to thinking.

As ever, following me directly via my own site is the best way to ensure you’re getting the best of everything.