Notices by Nora Reed (norareed@mastodon.social), page 7

this is definitely new information to you all

USPS has a special form for COVID tests that are accessible to blind and low vision people. https://special.usps.com/testkits/accessible

converting isn't actually the best word for talking about this, what we need is queernormative places and media and stuff but it just makes me crazy that any hint of "have you considered trying being queer?" is supposed to be some kind of fucking violation when forcing everyone to try to be cishet until they become too miserable to continue is the default

sorry i know this is a really basic ass opinion but i think it fucking sucks that we're always on the back foot about converting people to being queer. like. if we were doing that it would be fine. i am sick of starting from the point that no one would choose to be queer if given the option

im sick of pretending that there would be something wrong with hypothetically wanting to make people be queer when there's so much fucking pressure from mainstream culture to convert LGBTQ people to be closeted

mainstream culture straight up fucking evangelizes cisheterosexuality and we're supposed to be going "being queer is ok because we can't help it" and frankly fuck that

kids should be allowed to have secrets from their parents and people who believe otherwise don't see kids as human beings

has the military tried walking around pressing the button on the key fob to make the plane beep

@noracodes i think the guessing gender with AI is more of a crypto brained guy move than a linux guy move tbf

@noracodes there's just this Programmer thing of wanting to fix social problems with Technology that people who aren't super sociologically aware get, and Linux people tend to be more Programmer-y, i think

@jbwharris last time i brought this up i got a lecture on how it's not a scientific poll

@Homebrewandhacking @welshpixie @aral thanks for explaining that to me, I was born yesterday so i really needed it

@aurochs @anderspuck as someone on cohost and bluesky this is the straightest place i go, except instagram

@aurochs @anderspuck following other people doesn't seem to prevent straight men who misgender me and treat me like i was born yesterday from talking to me.

i want to add: this wasn't nearly as much of a problem on twitter when i left. partially this is because i blocked so many people who sucked but we did largely manage to fix the problem over there. i think if mastodon wants to compete with other social media we need to be having these conversations and making people self aware so they change their behavior. cultures are malleable.

every time i talk about the problems with mastodon i get people who seem offended that i am still here even if there are problems, and what it feels like is that i am supposed to couch my problems with the site in a compliment sandwich, as if we are all children incapable of receiving critique

when i talk about the problems people like to tell me to solve it by hand blocking, as if i wouldn't know how to do that already after 15 years on twitter. one of the hardest parts of starting up over here isn't finding an audience, it's blocking everyone who sucks but doesn't suck bad enough to have gotten banned from their instance

i'm about as tech literate as you can get without being a coder and i still experience significant friction following people whose profiles i found offsite, stuff like that. i understand that there might be a sharper learning curve here than in places like bluesky, but there are places with sharp learning curves that are welcoming to new people (Second Life, for example)

the fact is that i see this place as a lot more likely to succeed as a microblogging platform than bluesky, and i want people to know what the problems are so they can be on their way to being fixed before we get that influx of users

i actually *do understand* why the cross instance stuff is hard! i am not honestly really expecting it to be fixed! what i would like is "yeah it's kind of hard to figure out at first but it's worth it" instead of "this is hard for you? you must be a brainless clout worm"