I’ll be damned… Switching to ipv4 makes it work again:

root@msi:/home/gargle# /sbin/sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
root@msi:/home/gargle# /sbin/sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=1net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1

Now I can M-x mastodon and I can use package-refresh-contents.

Why this? I have to look at all of the debian changes of the month.

No error messages during start up, that’s the confusing thing. I have been using this configuration for months without any trouble at all. I set mastodon-instance-url and mastodon-active-user in my .emacs file. As I said before, when on my companies vpn it works without a glitch. Without the vpn I get a ‘Wrong type argument: stringp, nil’.