Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

Good morning! A post just rolled across my fedi-timeline saying not to post about politics on Mastodon, so I'm here to remind you that:

1 "politics" refers to decision-making about how to live together in groups
2 choosing to not participate in political discussion is saying you support the status quo, and is a political stance
3 abstaining from politics because you feel safe from its impacts is a privilege and a choice to abandon your more vulnerable neighbours

Been trying to keep an open mind about Post but, yeesh, it has a lot of warning signs right out of the gate, and I don't mean beta bugs. Comments run by OpenWeb? Investment by Marc Andreessen? No way to know who is reposting your content? No way to moderate comments on your posts?

It doesn't seem buggy, it seems structurally unsound in ways that will be hard to fix.

https://twitter.com/Chronotope/status/1596224339355262977
https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1596606967195533312

I'm starting to see this in the wild on the fediverse now. I figured I'd see it before long.

If you are currently using these so-called "fonts", please stop doing so. Use Unicode characters for the purposes they are designed for. Breaking screen readers doesn't make you cool.

🦇

#ScreenReader #Accessibility

A less controversial take (I hope...) but "LGB" isn't a thing and gay transphobes are still transphobes and will be promptly told to get tae fuck 💜

narrator: and what happened next surprised no one

This should have actually put behind a CW, so here I did. This would also be a good candidate for a quoted post/toot.

"Aaron Swartz would have been 36 today. …"

🧵 https://kolektiva.social/@weareintolerant/109411729775137723

#AaronSwartz

"Kat in 't bakkie" is a Dutch expression that's the equivalent of "easy as pie"; literally, it means "cat in the box".
#Caturday #cats #CatsOfMastodon

So last year, some seagulls raised a chick on the roof of the building across from my home.

Those seagulls came back this year, and their chick JUST HATCHED and it is THE CUTEST THING

#Birds #BirdsOfMastodon

Every day I see more and more evidence of society descending into utter lawlessness and chaos.

Angry farmers block highways: 0 arrests.

Violent racists block a highway: 0 arrests.

@extinctionrebellionnl block a highway: 150 arrests.

But noooo, there's no justice equality issue in the Netherlands, they say.

A reminder that most journalists work for corporations and therefore represent those interests in their work, and those interests are in direct opposition to the #workingClass. The work of journalists is never unbiased and is often harmful to your interests. The widespread tendency to treat journalists as sacred, too important for scrutiny (or, say, defederation on Mastodon), is dangerous. Work of journalists should be no more safe from scrutiny or boycott than the corporations they represent.

I guess I'll address this publicly then, since the person I was going to say it to decided to block us.

Anyone who claims that "mentally sound" people would never commit an atrocity because of bigotry is, frankly, whitewashing history and scapegoating mentally ill people. Being mentally ill yourself does not excuse this.

The Holocaust was not carried out by mentally ill people. It was carried out by average, neurotypical people as a result of radical bigotry.

That wasn't the only instance of horrible atrocities commited by "mentally sound" neurotypical people. It's happened many, many times throughout human history, including to this day. And the Milgram experiment confirmed this: ANYONE has the potential to be lulled into committing horrible atrocities.

The same goes for mass shootings.

Whitewashing atrocities as caused by mental illness is ableist, and dangerous. It tells neurotypical people that they are immune to committing atrocities.

They are not. And it's not OK to scapegoat mentally ill and neurodivergent people just because that fact makes you uncomfortable.

🦇

#MassShooting #Ableism