David Njoku

Just realised that the woman's voice at the start of Michael Jackson's 40 year old song Liberian Girl is singing the words "nakupenda pia" which means "I love you." In the East African language, Swahili. Liberia is in West Africa. That's really pissed me off. Africa. Is. Not. A. Country. Please follow me for other up-to-the-minute scandals.

Do you smoke (cigarettes, pipes, vapes, weed, whatever)? Apparently around 13% of UK adults smoke. I'm curious if Mastodon is around that level too. (Please boost and all that. Not that it makes a difference; once around 50 people have voted the percentage doesn't change much. Don't believe me? Boost it and see)

Every time I hear a Hello Fresh or an M&S food ad, the meals are described with 4 or 5 adjectives, and with every ingredient and cooking process getting a starring role. ... slow-cooked, smoke-infused, lemon, avocado pasta with extra virgin olive oil from the hills of Bologna... Dear white people, is that how you people really speak? The other day a colleague asked me what I'd brought in for lunch "Rice," I replied. They looked at me expectantly, so I added: "... from the shores of Lagos."

Look at these two images and guess at which of these gatherings the police thought it was necessary to make arrests:

• one is a gathering of people dancing to soca music and eating jerk chicken

• the other is a group of masked men dressed in black, disrupting one of the nation's major ports.

However the police judged it a "spontaneous protest."

Must be embarrassing to get up in the morning, independently put on nazi gear - and then find that everyone else is coincidentally dressed the same!

What's the small, ubiquitous, land animal where you are? I remember moving to Nigeria as a child and having my mind blown by the little lizards all over the place. I then lived in Nigeria long enough to forget that we've got squirrels everywhere in the UK, and having them blow my mind when I came back over.

Question for extroverts: don't you get tired, going around extroverting all over the place like a bloody bluebottle? Give it a rest; you're not impressing anyone.

I'm watching Reacher on Prime. Good show, satisfyingly violent. But since when did the good guys stop saying something witty every time they kill someone? I miss that.

Talking about being Black with Black people is always different from talking about being Black to white people. Cos every conversation about blackness to white people is really just a conversation about whiteness. Do they feel guilty, resentful, entitled? I can empathise, though. Every conversation I have with women about womanhood is really about my relationship with manhood. Same thing when I speak to queer people, and trans too.

Of the ten candidates that I interviewed, five of them pre-warned me that they have autism or ADHD or ASD or something. They told me what to expect and what accommodations I could make. I've been interviewing and hiring software developers for close to 20 years, but this is the first time this has happened. And I like it. I like that somehow the culture has edged to a place where people can speak about #mentalhealth without fearing that they would be disadvantaged.

Growing up in Northern #Nigeria, I knew lots of kids of Lebanese heritage. I don't know their history but many had been in Nigeria for generations; they spoke better Hausa and Pidgin than me, but were never considered truly Nigerian. The best ones grew up and left. The unrecognised strength of countries like Britain and America is that you *can* become British, become American. We keep our best. It hurts me that we take it for granted, and so many people want to get rid of it. #UKpol #USpol

@uc@mastodon.scot Yup. Not just the same story, pretty much the exact same words each time.

I remember back in the day when Bryan Adams' Everything i do was number one forever, and when Rihanna's Umbrella was number one forever, and Boyz II Men was number one forever. I heard those songs so much that my ears started to bleed. Olivia Dean and some guy have now been number one for even longer, and I don't think I've ever heard the song once. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly8r2p27lzo

RE: https://mastodon.social/@VeroniqueB99/117004599684541292 I bet Uber will soon start doing ambulances in America. They'd make a - pardon the pun - killing.

Would you take a guaranteed £50,000 or flip a coin for a chance to win £1m? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0njd4e2evo

The United Nations passed a resolution urging countries to adopt a world map that shows the correct size of continents (most maps shrink Africa). Only one country voted against this. No, it wasn't North Korea. It was America. I guess it was too DEI for them. With every passing day, America is becoming more and more like a moustache-twirling comic book villain - both laughable and terrifying. #uspolhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce30vp55dnlo

Everyone's saying The Odyssey is great cos it's the tale of a man taking 10 years to get home. Pah, that's nothing. Football's been coming home for 60 years and it's still not here. #worldcup

Here's a dilemma you have as a person from two different cultures: how do you pronounce the names of people who mispronounce their own names? For example, English football is full of players of Nigerian heritage - Saka, Madueke, Eze - and everyone mispronounces their names. So should I anglicise their names too? Feels weird in my mouth tho. Same thing when I met British-Nigerians in real life. Example: if you're British and you meet an American called Craig or Graham, what do you call them?

@FlockOfCats@famichiki.jp If that is not already the title of an adult movie, then the porn industry should be ashamed of itself 😀

When you adopt a country, how much of its history do you adopt with it? If, for example, you're a first- or second-generation American, do you get to be proud of the Constitution? And, if yes, what about what happened to the native population? If you're British, do you get to celebrate 1966? And should you apologise for the massacre at Amritsar?

I wish Mastodon apps would redesign their UI to deprioritise the Like button and emphasise the Boost button. They are n͟o͟t͟ of equal importance in social media that does not have an algorithm. #mastodon

What's the number¹ of tattoos that a person would have that they're almost guaranteed to get another one? (That is, if you've got 1 are you almost sure to get a 2nd? Or is it when you've got 3 that you're almost sure to get a 4th?) I don't have tatts, but I've heard they're addictive and I'm a bit curious. ______ ¹ lowest number #tattoo #tattoos

Sometimes we all need a reminder that race is a cultural construct. And every culture will construct something slightly different. I was watching the Australian version of the sitcom Ghosts and was shocked to hear the main character described as Black. Black? That woman is white to me. But then, I'm not Australian. #australia #blackmastodon

The United States of America is at war. And so it makes complete sense to me that its news outlets would report the (very sad) death of US soldiers while making no mention of the fact that Iran has lost soldiers too. Being fair and balanced takes on a slightly different tint when your country is at war - even if it's a war you disagree with. My question is this: why does the British press do the same thing when Britain is NOT at war? Cos America is our ally? #ukpol #uspol

I don't know enough to have an opinion on whether Saudi Arabia should be allowed to enrich uranium or not, but since when did one country - America - have the right to give them permission? Isn't that the kind of thing the United Nations used to handle? What if, tomorrow, Russia says they've given North Korea permission to fuck around with uranium? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/us/politics/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal.html

@jmopp@masto.ai Now it's going to bother me too. Thank you! 😡

@ohmu@social.seattle.wa.us Oh OK. I guess they do say that it's his song featuring her. Makes sense if it's mostly him.

@oldladyplays@wargamers.social This makes me so so happy for you. ♥️

@losttourist@social.chatty.monster until you said that, I hadn't noticed that the couples are always of different races 😀 I wonder if that's something we just happened to do in the UK version and other versions decided to keep

@muddle@infosec.exchange I am not thinking of this from the point of view of my posts. I'm thinking of the health of the whole system. I think timelines would be more varied and discoverability would be better if there was a lot more boosting.

@Colman@mastodon.ie if we could find a way to stick a cable up their backsides and harvest that energy we could eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels in a year. 😁

@natcbr@mountains.social Thanks for this

@syntaxseed@phpc.social Yes, I do hate it when people feel they need to pick an English name. However, I don't feel any way towards English speakers who struggle to pronounce foreign names. There are some foreign sounds we just can't get our tongues round.

@FrazzledBrynn@glitterkitten.co.uk What is it?

NOTE: I do not understand money. Keep that in mind. Musk bought Twitter for $44B. Instagram and Tiktok are worth billions too. All based off the backs of thousands of content creators toiling for free for hours every day. Many of us toil for h̶o̶u̶r̶s̶ minutes every day creating content for Mastodon. So where does its billions in value lie? Not with the server hosts - they're paying for the privilege too. So where? #Mastodon

Random question: If someone fires a gun in front of your face, would you be able to actually see the bullet?

@jmopp@masto.ai That's a shame. It's weird the way that the circle with politics works - something in society gives rise to racist politicians, and then those racist politicians embolden society to be more racist.

@davep@infosec.exchange But do you get to celebrate the good things?

@TheSwiv@hear-me.social Can't remember if I've read that one. Went through a phase of reading lots of them. They're all blurred into one in my memory now

@aceofcosmicspace@lgbtqia.space 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿

@bodhipaksa@mastodon.scot That's really cool tho. I like her songs. They seem a bit tame for a concert, but I'm sure it'll be fun. You'll soon be part the reason why the song stays at number one for a twentieth week 😀

I know there's no justice in this world, but if Argentina wins this game it'll be proof that there's no god. #worldcup

@SamanthaJaneSmith@lgbtqia.space I was about to quip, "and then you ate her" Now I realise how rude that sounds! 🤣

@graemewinter@mas.to That's brilliant. Hadn't seen this one before 😀

@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io I was expecting it to be crap, but it wasn't. Sure, Ronaldo looked thoroughly awkward like someone's old granddad wheeled out of retirement. And yes, tiny Shakira kept taking up all the space as if she'd forgotten that Burna Boy was there. But it wasn't crap.

@farah@beige.party I dont think the 'no make fun of white men' club has a Mastodon chapter. Or does it?

@eseubert@mstdn.science I've heard of Olivia Dean, but...

@ohmu@social.seattle.wa.us how does it compare to her other songs?