Notices by Oliphantasmal Force (oliphant@oliphant.social)

@AnarchoNinaWrites @coffeepine It's really irresponsible to write it so vaguely, it's designed to foster paranoia and a sense that your enemies are within the gates, and it could be easily twisted to anyone's agenda.

@AnarchoNinaWrites The dehumanization is particularly vile.

We will at times need to harm the Horrible Creatures. But we mustn't feel justified in doing so. I'm sure they are some sort of alien being, unfeeling and bent on conquest. How else could they be so cruel? But maybe I'm wrong.

And I'll skip the 'walking shit people' comparisons.

Holy hell.

@AnarchoNinaWrites I had to look up Vampire Castle theory and oh no

I'm not interested in 'crafting a narrative' or whatever here.

"don't pre-block Meta. Think of the narrative this creates!"

Once again, I am telling you that this is the internet, we're all cats, and if you think there aren't gonna be some cats out there doing some shit you don't agree with, then buddy, you don't know cats.

Like you might as well just accept pre-blocking of Meta is happening and figure out what your public relations story is on that.

I mean, if you care about such things.

"I'm really impressed by all the people that are suddenly experts in--"

Dude, this is the fucking internet. Some people know lots of shit.

There are people who are pretending to know lots of shit, too. They tend to put those people on camera.

Figuring out which is which is the ongoing battle of our time, but I tell you we've been training for this our entire post-Internet lives.

In some ways, our disagreements are just between people on whom the propaganda works, and those on whom it doesn't.

It's going to be one of those days where my notifications and Home feed spiral up endlessly, I see.

We really have turned a corner. I used to wonder how I'd hear about breaking news once I moved to Mastodon.

That turned out to be an empty concern.

If Elon doesn't even have the ability to break news on his platform, I'm not sure what he has left--

Other than you people who refuse to fucking leave no matter how much he turns it into Parler.

I’m not cheering on nazis, but if they want to fuck up their own shit am I just supposed to sit on my hands here?

"I'm not gonna follow you if you don't have an avatar."

A big visual avatar is probably the last thing a blind person cares about, so maybe park that judgment somewhere else.

Just sharing some breaking news.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-mercenary-boss-says-moscows-war-ukraine-based-lies-2023-06-23/

"I ask you not to resist. Anyone who does will be considered a threat and destroyed. That goes for any checkpoints and aviation on our way," says Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin in an audio message on Telegram. "Presidential power, the government, the police and Russian guard will work as usual. We will deal with those who destroy Russian soldiers and then return to the front."

Also: https://journa.host/@w7voa/110595393406737931

Let's be clear, there might not be anything left of us when the dust settles, this isn't any kind of resolution, this is part of the process.

Sometimes, people's own greed and corruption fucks up the world around them so much that it turns upon them, too, and they can't escape the monster they created.

Take hope in small victories (or more like--the monsters are fighting each other right now, so kill the lights and let's hustle out the back while they're distracted).

They sleep on us, don't wake 'em up. We sneaking out.

I assume Ukraine will probably be using this opportunity for some sneaky shit, too. I mean, that's what I'd do if I was fighting for my life.

Deleting what was going to be the reply to this post, which was pretty personal.

I guess the point I wanted to make is that it feels like some of this evil is turning on itself.

And I'm daring to be a little hopeful about that.

People always tell you that evil turns upon itself.

That always seemed like some Disney movie shit.

Ever since my father went to war in Iraq in 1991 and I didn't know if I'd ever see him again for nine months--where my Mom physically wasted away in stress and grief--let's just say I take war very personally.

To me, the children of soldiers aren't invisible. The crying spouses as they leave aren't just good theater.

They are me.

They were my family.

So anyone that would voluntarily start a war of aggression, earns my greatest contempt.

(And yes, that includes my own country, and why George W. Bush gets to live out his live making paintings instead of apologizing for the rest of his miserable life to all the war orphans--but I digress)

Thinking fondly back to that time I turned a Libertarian forum into a cacophony of fuck by asking why it was that the state paying Doctors to perform medicine on behalf of the citizenry was "as bad as slavery" but not when the state performs that exact same arrangement with police.

The tortured rationalizations were a thing of breathtaking majesty, all of them buttressed by these impressive towers of words that fell all over themselves to justify "fuck sick and poor people, but please let the state which I absolutely hate protect my personal property."

When you boil it right down, a LIbertarian has shat all over the definition of what a Libertarian actually is. In its current incarnation, it's just another facet of fascism.

It's libertine insofar as it removes all existing guardrails from the ones who are currently preying on us and says, "The problem was that we had too many regulations, which made it impossible for them to naturally self-regulate in a way that doesn't dump toxins in the ocean and shit into the skies even more so than we already do."

The issue with me being a very loudmouthed admin is that admins speak for their server.

They can't help it. They set the tone for what's allowable on their server, and I'm a big loudmouth who gave myself a 5000 character limit so I could shout at the world and my only conceit that makes this strange behavior okay is that I post it Unlisted, so I'm off your Federated feeds and not "clogging anything up."

Lots of admins are way more professional about this than I am. They maintain a separate personal account, and this makes it very clear when they are speaking with opinion or as an admin.

And I realize that, including pretty much every admin who is one of my blocklist sources is more professional about how they handle their admin account than I am.

Admins generally don't show their ass like this.

And if they do, they put their server at risk. Someone who can't stand my bullshit might just block the whole server, affecting everyone else on it.

But it does have one benefit.

Everyone who joins my server knows exactly what they are getting into.

It's pretty clear what I support, and what I don't. How I feel about various things. My full-throated defense of your right to block and curate the online world so that it uplifts your own mental health and doesn't serve someone else's agenda for advertising or "debate me, bro," etc.

I have carved out a space where I'm making the (radical) position online that it's okay to redact, filter, curate, and otherwise sort this mess of conflicting boundaries and opinions into something that reflects, for you, a safe space. I realize 'safe space' has a floating definition.

But like-minded people who agree with your methods or idea of a safe space should join it, and "find their people."

To some a safe space is unfiltered, chaotic, but "completely free" federation with anyone and everything, hands-off admins, maintain your own blocklist.

That's not my idea, but the point is, I need to consider whether I limit or suspend that server as a result--or whether I keep an eye on it, and wait for potential (and perhaps inevitable) damage that will occur when our contradictory server policies invariably intersect.

It's not just me and a couple friends I know from real life on the server anymore.

There are people who are at risk here, and that's a weighty responsibility.

My first and foremost job, all bullshit aside, is to advocate for them. I had no business letting them join the server if I wasn't willing to do that.

And if they disagree with my decisions or blocks, they can always leave and take their followers with them, no hard feelings from anyone.

Of course, they are welcome to talk with me about anything, this is not a large server after all, and I'm just down the hall, so to speak, shitposting.

What I tend to be finding is that people want to join my server because of these decisions.

So I guess I'm going to keep on running things like this, but I don't think this will ever be a server that supports a large crowd, and that's another reason it's more okay for me to be so "out loud" as the server admin, I think.

I have my opinions, and you're free to disagree with them. I generally am not the kind to block a server because the admin disagrees with my decisions or federation policies, even when I know the admin pretty much hates me.

Hopefully that lays it out a bit more.

@goatsarah And if new people join your server you can just say to them, "Don't worry, I made it nice for you. There's a whole long list of people you don't gotta worry about."

I'll just keep reposting this "we shouldn't silence important voices" rebuttal.

https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/im-just-saying-transphobia

And get the terminology right:

Victims are targeted. Abusers are called out.