Notices by Derek Powazek 🐐 (fraying@xoxo.zone), page 2

Today, on my drive to the vet, I passed 2 MAGA flags, 1 Trump yard sign, and a truck flying 5 US flags.

Those people are all gonna vote. Are you?

Voting is not about perfection, it’s about direction.

Harris is pointing forward, Trump is pointing backward (to the 1930s, specifically).

Vote for the direction you wanna move in.

About damn time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/17/us/politics/harris-trump-fascism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TU4.rqyp.UI_7JqBDA6hl&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

I have realized that I am now a one issue voter and that issue is preventing a fascist takeover of the United States.

Arguing with people online is not The Work. Arguing with people online is not The Work. Arguing with people online is not The Work.

The rich and powerful want us to think they're smart and scary, but the truth is they're just people with more luck than smarts, with way too much money, forever coddled by a system that protects them from their own bad decisions.
https://archive.is/jSzWN

What if voting wasn’t something you did to express your personal preference? What if it was something you did to protect the people you love?

I keep hearing people I know who I thought genuinely cared for the people on the ragged edges of US society saying that they’re not going to vote for Harris. I wish they’d see voting as a thing we do *for each other* instead of something that speaks to your own self-centered opinion.

It’s just moral narcissism - the idea that how it makes you feel about yourself is the most important thing. It’s wildly, WILDLY selfish. And these are the same people who lecture others about privilege.

Wild.

People say I shouldn’t shame others for not voting, but fuck that. We have this one lever we get to pull. This one task. If you can’t make that bare minimum requirement to participate in a democracy, I have no goddamn respect for you. You’re not more morally pure for opting out, you’re just a petulant child.

Voting isn’t everything, but it’s the first thing. If you have this right that so many fought and bled for and you don’t use it, shame on you.

And if you’re so radical that you’re willing to take up arms to fight fascism, but you’re not willing to cast a vote for someone who isn’t perfect, you’re no radical, you’re just a fucking poser.

Repeat this daily for at least the next 100 days: don’t fight friends, fight fascists.

“It's weird to be so obsessed with genitals, who has them, and what they do with them. It's weird to the point of fetishistic to be so concerned with people "breeding" to avoid being "replaced." It is fundamentally weird to care so much about what other people do when it doesn't affect you at all. Nobody wants to be around people like that, and we should say it.”
https://defector.com/look-at-these-fucking-weirdos

Anyone who donates to Trump loses my business forever. It’s that simple.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/us/politics/elon-musk-trump-super-pac.html

Every Republican who talks about the attempt on Trump’s life should be asked about photos like this.

Hey for no particular reason let’s all read up on this, kay?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

Finally. A community company acting in a pro-community way and protecting their people from AI bullshit.

“Vimeo will not allow generative AI models to be trained using videos hosted on our platform without your explicit consent, even if you use our free offerings. In addition, we prohibit unauthorized content scraping (by model companies) and continue to implement security protocols designed to protect user-generated content.”

https://vimeo.com/blog/post/vimeos-position-on-ai/

Props to Vimeo.

@evan I see. So what other metrics could be provided to instance admins to monitor the behavior of their users? Or, could blocks be federated anonymously?

@evan that’s good to know! Thanks!

@evan Heh. I almost invoked you.

So an enterprising fedi app could do what I outlined in my original post?

Mastodon feature request: an automated process that tells instance owners how many people blocked users on their instance, or their instance entirely, per day, with warnings when the rate goes up significantly, and a roundup of the most-blocked people.

Admins need tools to better manage their communities and know who on their servers is ruining it for everyone.

Call it Bad Apple Detection.