An amusing idea from @xor@mastodon.xyz for Mastodon instance names (which form part of your username) has been taking three word phrases from Moby Dick and trying to find available domain names, so you could host your instance at famous.whaling.house for example.

Parker has since blogged his idea and some examples which is well worth a read and explains it in more depth, as well as explaining how he did and linking to the script if you want a go.

Many Mastodon instances are on subdomains, and since the early days weirder new-style TLDs have been de rigueur. (The flagship has always been at a .social!) So I set out to find three-word phrases where the third word is a 4+-letter top-level domain, using as my first source text Moby Dick.

Re-reading through the thread on mastodon again, I spotted the following reply from @knowtheory@mastodon.social

Ok. Now map them on what three words

— https://mastodon.social/@knowtheory/109282602341495412

Now whilst I don’t think what3words is beneficial in their current form¹, they are definitely a great service for comedy purposes. Given they also have three word phrases, and can point to a location anywhere in the world… what’s the funniest location we could put a Mastodon instance on and join the fediverse with?

Say, what’s the Twitter HQ location on W3W? Searching for “Twitter” suggests “Twitter HQ, Market Street, San Francisco”, clicking that shows Twitter’s W3W location as ///define.rental.yoga.

A quick search on the Wikipedia page for Internet Top Level Domains reveals that .yoga is a valid TLD. Further searching on a couple of domain registrars shows that rental.yoga is also available! For a mere £32/year, and hosting a mastodon instance there you could be @you@define.rental.yoga and declare that you haven’t left Twitter!

For some reason this amused me enough to blog about it. I have not registered rental.yoga. Who will? 🙃