Daniel @daniel@campduffel.social

A pretty cool thing about the Fediverse:

It will still be around in a decade. Even two decades.

Usenet still exists. IRC still exists. Email still exists. When you build platforms on open protocols and standards, it doesn't actually matter what corporations try and do to enshittify it. So long as there are people who are still willing to run instances, and users who still want to talk to one another without going through some corporation's platform, it'll still be here.

Y’all. My heart (and belly) is so full at the end of these two weeks at the John C. Campbell Folk School. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel that I was able to take the time out of my “real life” to do a deep dive building new skills and honing some rusty ones. Being surrounded by folx from all kinds of backrounds who were also diving into their respective crafts and arts.

I’m more than a little emotional about heading home in the morning!

So. Here’s a picture of the result of all that work:

200 years ago today, at roughly 9am, between 450 and 600 people boarded 21 waggons with seats on them at Brusselton, County Durham, England. There were also 8 coal and one flour Waggon attached to the train, and Experiment, a closed carriage.

This train was hauled by a steam engine built by Timothy Hackworth and James Kennedy, engineers at the Robert Stephenson and Co. factory in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. At the time, it had no designation, but it was given number 1 by 1827, and was named “Locomotion” sometime around 1833.

This engine proceeded to haul the train to Darlington over the next two hours, with two stops, one due to a broken waggon, and the other for some minor repairs to the engine. It reached a peak speed of 15mph, and averaged 8mph on that trip if you discount the time needed for repairs.

This is widely considered to be a turning point for the railways, as the first steam-hauled passenger train in England, and is being celebrated for that today. #SDR200 #Rail200

"Are you pondering what I’m pondering?"
"I think so, Brain, but why would a federated social network care about our anniversary?”

"Pinky and the Brain" debuted on 9 september 1995.