Notices by Velocirooster adminensis :bc: (theropologist@beige.party)

The trees are acting falsely demure today, blushing daintily here and there. They have plans but are in no hurry to get to them. They stand on the side of the road, waving coyly. Oh hello, I didn't see you there. Nothing really, just taking my air. It is really a lovely day isn't it? Don't you just love the sun beating relentlessly upon your person? Doesn't it make you feel sticky and alive? Oh, this old thing? I just found it lying around the underbrush and threw it on for a splash of color. Oh really, you're too kind. Don't mind her, she doesn't say much. She's a cell phone tower.

@SymTrkl @Alice @RickiTarr This is beautiful and it's the exact reason I started this instance. Humor is not superfluous or unserious. It's how we process the inherent absurdity of the world around us. It's even more important when things are bad and there's no way to make it better by trying to rationalize it. Even from an evolutionary perspective the theory is that it developed as a way to process cognitive dissonance in a way that was non-threatening and reinforced social bonds. We all need a place to get real weird with it sometimes.

Beige-bless 🇧🇧

I have to complete my self evaluation today and I really just want to write, "This year I did work and you compensated me for it, as per our agreement."

Them: We're forcing you to go back into the office because we believe work is more meaningful when employees are together and have a shared sense of comradery.

Me: So, unionize?

Them: No, not like that.

I'm in a ridiculous meeting about end-of-year performance evaluations and all the presenters are infected with corporate-speak so they are insisting on calling managers "people leaders" but all I can hear is "people eaters"

Ha but now custom emojis appear to be broken ⁉️

I did a hard reboot of the web server and that seems to have fixed it 🤷

Question for #MastoAdmins. I just did the upgrade to 4.3.0 and everything seems to be working except for notifications. I ran the pre and post deployment database migrations, and the old notifications got pulled over, but no new notifications are showing up. Anyone else have this problem?

:bc: Attention Beige Party-goers! :bc:

I have reviewed the upgrade procedure for Mastodon version 4.3.0 and I will be performing the server upgrade this Friday/Saturday, depending on where you live.

This is a major change that will require a database migration, so I will be taking the servers offline to take full snapshots prior to starting the upgrade. You should expect the site to be down for approximately 30 minutes while I take these snapshots.

The maintenance window will begin at 3 AM UTC on 10/19 and continue until 6 AM. If you are in the Western Hemisphere, that's from 11 PM EDT on 10/18 until 2 AM on 10/19.

The only downtime I'm anticipating is the 30 minutes it will take to make the server snapshots, but as always, please be prepared for the site to go down at any time during the maintenance window.

Thanks, and Beige-Bless 🇧🇧

At an airport bar and briefly saw a news chyron asking "What's up with Gen Z?" Idk, they slap? What else do you need to know Mr news man?

If you ever find yourself biking through Vernonia, OR, be sure to steer clear of this fascist shithole.

I have defederated from fediverse-lite(.)com. It promotes Christian facism and homophobia. I'm feeling ambivalent about including receipts because even with a CW it can serve to amplify hate speech. And I really don't like writing out the alt text for screen caps of hateful bigoted posts. If anyone would like to confirm for themselves just take a look at their about page, specifically their block list and the reasons given.

#fediblock

I recommend defederating from shortstacksran(.)ch. The admin is an obvious troll.

#fediblock

@BeAware @amiserabilist @BruceMirken Oh, that suspension would have only affected people trying to view the account on beige party. There may be something additional going on with your instance if you can't see the account.

@BeAware @amiserabilist @BruceMirken Also, the Cosmically business was because it became more than just being anti-Israel, he was starting to rail against Jews in general.

@BeAware @amiserabilist @BruceMirken I did suspend him pretty early on in the life of this instance, but I think it was a bad call on my part, so I have now reversed it.

As someone raised by a single mother, who, once I got my license, often got sent on errands to go buy pads, and who has continued to do so, having been married for over 20 years to a real live woman who's a whole fucking person with bodily functions and everything, I really appreciate the type of masculinity that doesn't wilt in the face of totally normal and necessary sanitary products.

If there's one thing these fascists have made abundantly clear is that they value women primarily for their reproductive systems. And then they are gonna get squeamish about the normal functioning of that reproductive system?

And these are the same people who think you should have no problem seeing some white dude cosplaying in tactical gear carrying around an AR-15 in public.

Fuck these Nazi clowns and their fragile china-doll egos. I don't claim to know what it means to "be a man" but I sure as hell know it doesn't involve making women feel shitty about their bodies and forcing everyone around you to wonder if you're gonna murder them at any given moment.

How about just trying to be a decent human being?

Calling the fascists weird isn't ruining weird. Weird can be a compliment if you don't happen to be an insecure chest-puffing man-child. The fact that they are so triggered by it is the point. It makes weird even better.

:bc: Attention Beige Party-goers! :bc:

State of The Instance - July 2024

Well, better late than never! I'm in the Pacific time zone so it's technically still July over here. It's been another busy month so I'm running behind again, but I did want to briefly go over moderation policy, because I've gotten a few reports related to an issue that's not covered by our current server rules and I would like to have a more defined policy in place.

New Rule Proposal: Content Attribution and Generative AI

When I started this instance I pretty much just ripped off mastodon.social's instance rules because I figured they knew what they were doing over there and their rules seemed like a good place to start. Over time I have tweaked them slightly to further clarify things that I thought were too ambiguous, and for the most part I think they have been sufficient to effectively moderate this instance. But I adopted these rules in late 2022, before generative AI really took off.

Since then, mastodon.social has adopted a new rule:

Rule #6: Content created by others must be attributed, and use of generative AI must be disclosed

Content created by others must clearly provide a reference to the author, creator, or source. For adult content, this should include performers. Accounts may not solely post AI-generated content.

What I like about this rule is that it's founded upon the principle of proper attribution. If we are posting content that is not our original creation, we should provide attribution so that it is clear who the original creator of the content is. This is generally good manners, and if we're talking in terms of copyright, it's the law. I live in the US, so in order to start this instance I had to register as a DMCA agent, which means I'm legally required respond to DMCA takedown requests.

Unfortunately, as we all know, Silicon Valley tech billionaires are exempt from such trifles as obeying the law. They designed large language models that are basically automated mass-copyright-infringement machines. They knew that they were violating the law, but they did it anyway because they figured that if they could get generative AI to the point where it actually worked, everyone would be so amazed by the technology that nobody would care about the massive copyright infringement going on under the hood. This tactic seems to have worked, which is, to put it mildly, not great. Like it or not, however, this technology exists, and it will continue to exist, so we need to deal with it.

I know there are those who will disagree with me on this position, but I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to punish people for using these tools. The fact of the matter is that it's not us who funded this technology, it was billionaire assholes like Elon Musk. Generally speaking, most AI-generated content I have seen here has just been silly fun, and I think that living through the slow decline of global society, which has been instigated by billionaire assholes, entitles the rest of us to have a little silly fun as a treat. Given all that, I think a fair compromise is to require that AI-generated content at least be attributed as such, so that people are aware of the source of the content and can make their own decisions about how they choose to interact with it.

I'm not really sure what to make of the adult content clause. I haven't had to deal with that much here, and to the extent that I have, most of it has fallen into the "original content" category. I don't see any reason not to adopt it, so I am proposing that we adopt mastodon.social's rule as written.

I invite you to share your thoughts in the replies. As always, whatever policy we adopt, I want to make sure it's something that we can all understand and build a consensus around.

Ok, on to the numbers!

New sign-ups:

In the month of June we gained 25 new party-goers, for a grand total of 460 nifty non-fungible fedizens. Of those, 260 accounts have been active in the last month.

Welcome new party-goers! if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me directly.

Finances:

For the month of June we received $290.00 in donations. After PayPal fees, that comes out to $253.53. We had $1,803.44 left over from May, so our total available funds for paying the June hosting fees was $2,056.97.

The hosting fees for June break down as follows:

VPS Hosting: $129.57
Foreign Transaction Fee: $3.49
S3 Storage: $10.87
SMTP Relay: $17.00

Total: $160.93

After paying the hosting bills for June, we have $1,896.04 left in donation funds. That's enough to keep us running for about a year, so we are in good shape. Thank you to all who donated!

I've already mentioned this in a previous post, but I'll restate it here for greater visibility. I have recently come down with a spot of that awful affliction known as hope, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that most of you are here, at least in part, because you really don't like fascists. That was a big reason why I started this instance in the first place. So, if you are a US citizen, and were planning to donate to the ko-fi this month, I would encourage you to consider donating to ActBlue instead:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/kamalaharris2024

I know this is specific to US politics, but unfortunately the consequences of US politics do not remain politely confined within the borders of the US, and a fascist takeover of this country would have disastrous effects around the world. I won't make a habit of mentioning US politics in my official capacity as admin of this instance, but the stakes of this feel too high for me to just stand by and say nothing.

For those who are unable, or would just prefer to donate to the ko-fi, you can do so here:

https://ko-fi.com/drinky

The link can also be found in my bio and on the about page for the site.

And once again a big thanks to all the Beige Party-goers. I am really proud of the community we have created here, and that has everything to do with you fine folks.

Beige-bless 🇧🇧

I just defederated from nationalist (dot) social. I would have done it based on the name alone, but of course it also contains all of the Nazi garbage that one would expect.

#fediblock