Notices by Oliphantasmal Force (oliphant@oliphant.social), page 4

Like tell me you've paid no attention to the news in our country, just in the past week, without telling me.

No one will ever tell me what's the worst thing that ever happened with wokism.

What was it?

Was it Louis C.K. getting banned from comedy for...a couple years?

Was it Kaepernick getting blackballed from the NFL for taking a knee?

Oh, no, wait, sorry, he got cancelled now....didn't he?

DIDN'T HE.

You want me to tell you the worst thing "anti-woke" ideology has done?

It ends with torture and murder.

These things are not the same. And there's no 'meeting in the middle' on this.

See my parable able the Killer of Hundreds vs. the Killer of None:

People fighting the pronouns fight in 2023 when clearly they are banning all the wrong shit it's like: Get out of my face with that.

If you think pronouns and acting like a human being towards other people is a bridge too far but you're okay with a burning planet and nazi gestapo shit around every corner and think we should normalize that somehow and all come together around a common fire--

You are DREAMING.

The Parable of the Killer of Hundreds vs. the Killer of None

The Killer of Hundreds and the Killer of None met to resolve their differences.

The Killer of Hundreds said, "I offer a compromise, we shall only kill fifty."

The Killer of None replied, "I offer only that we shall kill none."

The onlookers cried out in shock and surprise! What sort of compromise was this?

The Killer of Hundreds smiled coldly and said, "You should be more reasonable. Clearly I have compromised, and you have not. If you will not deal with me reasonably, how are we ever to proceed?"

The Killer of None replied, "You offer little compromise, killer of hundreds. For you, to compromise on the number of people killed sacrifices none of your position. For you, it is only a matter of scale.

"However," The Killer of None continued, "For me to concede to even one of these murders would be to compromise all of my position. Once I cross that line, what argument can I ever possess for one against fifty or hundreds?

"In truth," the Killer of None explained, to the listening ears of all present, "You are compromising nothing, while asking me to compromise everything.

"For some things there can never be any compromise."

Currently in the process of witnessing a 'banned' server that effectively got pre-banned out of a concern that it was going to attract members of another banned server--is now unbanned, because that never actually happened.

I realize everyone wants this process to be clean, have clearly-delineated lines, to be a reassuring thing with some "Big Daddy" governing body in charge--

And that will never, ever happen.

Some servers have a rigorous process, some don't.

Get to know your admins and mods, that's my advice.

"Yes, but other mods and admins can be erratic and make bad defederation choices, too, and that still affects me on this server!"

...Yes? I'd like you to propose an alternative.

One that would actually work.

What you're missing is the comforting certainty that there's Somebody In Charge. And that this Somebody cares about you, cares about the money they can make off of you, and certainly cares about the 'content' you're producing for them so that they can both mine you and others for precious, precious moneybucks and sell you to their advertisers.

Well, sorry to break it to you, but there are Many Someones In Charge and no one--not anyone--literally no one at all--can tell them all what to do.

Ever hear the expression about herding cats?

That's the decentralized anarchy at the heart of all of this, and what makes it work is communities talking with each other openly, and being able to disassociate from communities that do not suit them--or that might be actively destructive to them.

I sincerely doubt you'll be able to propose an alternative that doesn't ratchet up the centralization and tyranny.

@atomicpoet If you're looking for better accessibility, Mastodon still has that edge.

I feel like that's a bit gap for the accessibility-minded fediverse, but hope it's addressed soon.

Would also be nice to have a server-level silence option, or the ability to read in Mastodon-format server blocklist files. (They already read other file formats from Mastodon like follower lists.)

Bringing over followers between servers. Do this on the web.

This works between Mastodon servers and even between Mastodon and Calckey.

On Mastodon, go to "Import and Export" and choose "Export"

As shown in this screenshot go to the 'CSV' link next to "Follows" and click it to download a CSV file (which can be opened and viewed in Microsoft Excel or a similar program).

(continued in step 2...)

@atomicpoet I've noticed an uptick in people misusing groups and hashtags in order to increase visibility of their (unrelated) thing.

I wonder if they realize they are just advertising their need to be banned?

Mastodon wasn't really ever the "only game in town" but it was the only game polished enough that a lot of people could probably figure it out.

But I think Calckey is now a side-by-side contender. Like at this point, I wouldn't recommend one over another anymore from a user experience standpoint. I think Calckey actually looks more approachable in some ways.

Though I haven't looked at server moderation capabilities of Calckey yet, and that's one of my remaining concerns.

@shoq They are always like, "Of course I believed in the mission of Fox, I thought I was doing good in the world, I thought we were exposing all the woke trash libs and fighting for our way of life. And then I realized...my coworkers....were sexist." hangs head in shame

Lady, you work for a right-wing propaganda news network, I trust nothing you say.

"Wow, look at that, Jim! He's calling for his supporters at that political rally to beat up the protesters and offering to pay their legal fees!"
"My, Terry, that really *is* something we've not seen before."
"What should we do about it?"
"Talk about it *incessantly* of course!"
"Exactly! Just not in a judgmental way."
"Not in a judgmental way, just in more of a 'how do you like that, liberals, will you respond?' kind of way."
"Sound byte! Love it."

"I believe that the people who are in charge of resisting this sort of thing, I mean, of course that's what political parties do, right?"
"They certainly do, they resist each other!"
"Who knows why they do it, really. They're basically both the same."
"Indeed. We should always report them as both equivalent."
*both together* "That's fair and balanced!"

"Oh my, it appears he's now calling for....did I hear that correctly?"
"I believe we did, Jim. He's calling for the eradication of trans people."
"Oh my my, he *is* a naughty boy isn't he?"
"Very naughty, Jim."
"Shall we share some of his necessary political discourse?"
"Live and unedited, I'd say."
"In the interest of news, of course."
"Oh, of course, of course."

"Well, that's about all the time we have tonight for our TL;DR show tonight, Terry."
"That's right, join us again in 45 minutes for our next episode where we'll terrify the shit out of you about what's going on in the middle east."
"Not that we care about it."
"Right, but you'll be SO GLAD to live here and not there when we're done."
"You won't even mind the cost of healthcare!"
"Haha, good one."
"Thanks!"
"Good night everyone, that's our show!"

"Some are asking what they can do."
"Well, there really isn't anything you can do, Jim."
"That's true, Terry. Very true. Well, except you go on about your lives."
"Exactly, you go on about your lives."
"And then you VOTE."
"But vote for who?"
"Well, that's not important. What's important is you vote, and then when you vote, the right thing always happens."

"Tonight on TLDR Media: Which of these two fascist candidates will appeal more to fascists who want to vote for fascism, and persecute all their political enemies? Day one of our 386 days of coverage of this topic begins!"

Apparently my blog posts are getting blasted directly into your Mastodon feed with all their massive wordcounts since Mastodon 4.1.

I was shocked as anyone to see it.

Anyhoo, since it's not just a link to an article but in fact a massive wall of text (with *none* of my Markdown formatting, gdi) you may be seeing it in your feed if you follow my blog on masto.

Just note I can't put it behind CW, because WriteFreely don't know wtf a CW is.

Normally I'd be giddy with excitement that blog posts go directly into your feed, just like on Hometown!

Except (womp womp) unlike Hometown, the Gods of Mastodon have decided they *hate* text formatting and will not accept it.

So now you see the entire blog post in your feed, with none of the formatting, and no link to the original post.

WTF? I demand to speak to the Manager.

@nazgul I was informed that it appears they *are*

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/23913

"You should enjoy the wizard lady's story and not let her take away the great stories she loved from you."

Yo, I read those stories, too, because it was kind of neat to read a children's book as a lark but you know that was just a CHILDREN'S BOOK and it really wasn't that amazing considering *looks around* literally all the other books out there, I promise you you're not missing much.