Notices by Christopher Trottier (atomicpoet@firefish.city)

@crossgolf_rebel@moppels.bar There may be many motives for why someone joins Bluesky, but I’m telling you what many Black people have told me: the ActivityPub-enabled Fediverse feels anti-Black, and they feel safer on Bluesky.

Hell, even Black people that prefer it here still say that the ActivityPub-enabled Fediverse feels unsafe to them. Read the other comment on this thread.

So let me be more clear about this. I'm all for defederating the Bluesky bridge -- if that's what you want to do.

However, I'm seeing a lot of people say, "Every server that uses ActivityPub must defederate from Bluesky because this is a safe space for marginalized people."

But if that's true, why have so many marginalized people come to an ActivityPub-enabled server, and ended up leaving because they felt this wasn't a space for them?

Specifically, I saw quite a lot of Black people encounter racism on certain Mastodon servers and then migrate over to Bluesky because Bluesky felt like a safer space for them. Sure, in many ways Bluesky has worse moderation policies than ActivityPub-enabled Fediverse, but they also found Bluesky to be safer for them.

And we have to ask ourselves: why, on a place that has questionable moderation, do they encounter more safety than here?

It may be true that the ActivityPub-enabled Fediverse may offer a safe space for some marginalized people, but certainly not for everyone who is marginalized. Frankly, if there's safety here for some people but not others, is it all that safe to begin with?

RE: https://atomicpoet.org/objects/8a1c053b-b059-476e-9caa-3419f8f314d5

@noondlyt@mastodon.social @fediversenews@venera.social I’m actually not referencing one particular corporate-backed instance. Threads wasn’t even top of mind.

@noondlyt@mastodon.social @fediversenews@venera.social Okay, but I'm referencing everything that creates debate over opt-in/opt-out: bridges, bots, search engines, servers, federation, etc.

Every time there's a debate about what's allowable, someone says, "I didn't opt in".

However, if you're not running a server that blocks everything by default, except for whitelisted servers, you're not opting into anything. By default, when a server "sees" another server, they are federated.

If you believe the Fediverse should operate in an "opt-in" manner, why don't you create or join Fediverse servers that block everything by default, and only federate with servers that are deliberately whitelisted?

This isn't a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely curious.

@fediversenews@venera.social

My God, these Xbox fanboys are ridiculous. It’s clear they care more about “the brand” than actual games. Otherwise, they would be celebrating greater accessibility for more people.

What’s so funny about this is that these fanboys know that the only reason to buy an Xbox is for the exclusives. The hardware itself isn’t anything to sneeze about. And generally, it’s more expensive than just getting a PC.

https://www.wired.com/story/xbox-playstation-influencers-phil-spencer/

Never buy movies or TV shows on a Sony platform.

Or better yet, if you want to actually buy something, make sure it’s in a physical format so that Sony can’t take it away from you.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/02/08/sonys-crunchyroll-erasure-of-funimation-anime-libraries-is-inexcusable/

Everyone who thinks German sounds like an angry language hasn’t heard schlager music.

Schlager makes Germans sound like the most happy-go-lucky people on the planet.

As in, yeah, I think I will help myself to some bratwurst. 🪗🍻

https://youtu.be/R1v8wpScKNI

@HistoPol@mastodon.social Yes, I have a pretty full cupboard. I really shouldn’t be buying any more tea.

Today, I'm drinking a blend of Assam black tea, orange peel, bergamot oil, dried raspberries, rose petals, pineapple, and wild strawberry leaves.

Made with freshly boiled water and steeped for 5 minutes.

If you’re interested in the gong fu method of tea preparation, this Wikipedia article is a good introduction.

Also, if you want to make friends with Chinese people, gongfu tea is a good way to do it because it’s a communal thing. Everyone gathers around, shares their tea, enjoys the ceremony.

There’s been a few circumstances where I’m in a park, enjoying tea with a friend, and strangers show up to try out our tea.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gongfu_tea

Someone asked me how it’s possible for me to put my tea blends in a teabag. The short answer: I don’t.

The only circumstance I use teabags is when I’m specifically brewing “cut, tear, curl” (CTC) tea. Which is very rare, by the way.

When I’m making tea, tisanes, or blends, here’s what I do instead:

1. Put loose leaves or fruit into the teapot
2. Heat the water to my specific temperature requirements
3. Time the steeping
4. Put a metal filter over a glass pitcher (a.k.a., “equalizer”)
5. Pour the tea (or tisane or blend) into the equalizer
6. Pour the drink into a cup or mug
7. Enjoy

Now why do this? Because in order to extract maximum flavour, you need to let the leaves expand as much as possible. For this reason, it’s generally not a good idea for the leaves to be constricted by a teabag.

Where did I learn this skill? From a Chinese tea master. He taught me what is known as the “gong fu” (a.k.a., kung fu) method of making tea. It works very well, and I now swear by it.

RE: https://firefish.city/notes/9p90i43dwzjwps6e

@liztai@hachyderm.io This is the pain I feel when I’m reading manhua.

Also, I still don’t know what they mean by “cultivation”.

I notice this with many other populations in the USA.

It's long been known that African-Americans have their own dialect known as African American Vernacular English, sometimes referred to as Ebonics. There are also 200,000 speakers of Gullah.

Latin-Americans likewise have their own forms of English that integrate a whole lot of Spanish.

Indigeneous Americans have their own dialects.

Hanging around many Asian folk, I'm noticing that their own words, phrases, and grammatical flourishes have entered their conversational English.

Is "American Jewish English" evolving into a new language?

Based on my experience, yes. If you speak to many American Jews, what emerges is something that's not intelligible with standard English.

This excellent talk by linguist Sarah Benor confirms what I've long believed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isJYtcJSczU

Today I'm drinking a blend of green tea, lemon verbena, spearmint, and lemongrass.

Water temperature is 83C, and steeped for 3 minutes.

How have I only heard this song now? The sheer chops needed to perform this song! And those vocals!

https://youtu.be/GTR27qWXGqU

Tip to anyone writing romance fiction: close the deal.

I don't care if it takes a long time, and the various plot points prove to be complicated. At the end, your main characters better end up with each other.

If you fail to close the deal, this is just a terrible story.

Just watched an anime that is so bad, I have to actually comment on it.

The title is Sword Oratoria: Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?

I'm sorry to say, the question remains unanswered. Why is that? Because no girl was picked up in a dungeon. And nobody even tried.

Despite there being ample cleavage shots, and lots of bizarre sexually-charged moments, not a single fellow in this anime showed any interest in these clearly frustrated and horny women. Like, my god, all of them are practically crying for relief and not a single guy is willing to put an end to their misery.

The only character that shows any interest in women is a whiny lesbian who gets jealous when the object of her affection spends just a little bit of time with a man. Does this lesbian ever reveal her feelings to her crush? Is there any pay-off to this long thirsty narrative?

No, not at all. All this lesbian gets is a chaste hug at the end, and that relationship goes nowhere.

Oh yeah, there's fights with monsters but even those battles make no sense, and I have no idea what the actual stakes are in this 12 episode series.

I can't believe I watched the whole anime. What a waste of time.

Recently, there's been some panic about the right-wing's attempts to influence culture through "alternative" media platforms like Bentkey.

But this is what conservatives have always done. I should know because I'm very much a product of these conservative media alternatives.

My mother didn't allow me to watch Saturday morning cartoons. She said they were a bad influence. And she also didn't allow me to listen to what she called "secular" music either.

Instead of the regular kids' TV shows, I had to watch VHS tapes rented from the Christian book store. Instead of good old fashioned rock music everyone else was allowed to listen to, I had to hear Christian rock. And there was a Christian version of everything.

The Christian version of the Wonder Years was Magee And Me!

The Christian version of Green Day was MxPx.

The Christian version of Legend of Zelda was Spiritual Warfare.

At one time, I thought this "alternative" media was just an evangelical Christian thing. But then when I spent time with orthodox Jews, I found out that they have their own "alternative" media too. A fellow I was studying with was a Haredi rapper named Matisyahu.

I'm not going to lie and say that the quality of media was always garbage because it isn't. Lots of it has gone mainstream. I bet you that some of your favourite artists got their start in right-wing "alternative" media.

For example, Katy Perry. Do you know she started off in the Christian music industry?

Same deal with Evanescence. They were a right wing Christian act.

And VeggieTales too -- as evangelical as they come.

Here's what eventually happens, though. Once the big corporations smell money, they move in. For example, one of the biggest right wing Christian record labels is the Provident Label Group.

And who owns Provident Label Group? Sony. That's right, the same company that brought you Twisted Metal, Ratchet & Clank, and Killzone is hawking right wing Christian music.

Now if you're a progressive, you're probably quite concerned -- and you should be. But if you're a right wing Christian, you're probably even more concerned.

That's because the likes of Sony don't give a damn about evangelical Christianity. To them, this is just another revenue stream. And should one of their artists have runaway success, they almost always tone down the Christianity in order to reach a wider audience.

It's how the game is played.

Right wing pundits like to say that politics lives downstream from culture. That may be true. However, culture always lives downstream from money.

Amusingly, what lives downstream from money? Politics.