if you want an alert when new Mastodon releases happen, you can follow @mastodon_releases (my mirror of the Github releases RSS feed) and then press the little notification bell icon that will appear next to the follow button after you click. this means posts from this bot will show up in your notifications tab.

Same idea but for #hometown releases: @hometown_releases

(clicking on either of these will show an empty profile. don't worry, new posts will show up)