Jenn Dolari @dolari@driveinsaturday.org

In the 1970s, conservative activists used the rhetoric of parental rights to oppose protections for lesbians and gay men against discrimination.

Today, the movement is fuelled in the United States by Moms for Liberty — and has made its way to Canada. 🇺🇸🇨🇦

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2023/09/21/Parents-Rights-Sexual-Orientation-Gender-Campaign-Push-Back/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial

This is such a mood

?utm_source=UNIONIZE

#transrights #transrightsarehumanrights

The USPS will start shipping free COVID-19 tests again. You can start placing orders next Monday, September 25

https://special.usps.com/testkits

#Covid #Covid19 #CovidTests

And honestly, the best possible thing you can probably do right now, just go back on Twitter and use your DMs to reach out to the people that you want to see here instead of there, and offer them invite codes, offer them assistance, ask if there's anything you can do to help them come join Mastodon.

And above all – this is such unappreciated praxis – tell them that you miss them. Tell them that you would love to see them around here. Tell them that there's a grand old party here, and it makes you think of them, and you are sad that they are missing out.

So by all means, express your concerns for how using Twitter is supporting a fascist and all his little fascist minions. Exhort people to stop using Twitter because using Twitter helps a fascist. Beg people to find alternatives to the sinking ship that Twitter is, because the communities that grew on it are much too precious to allow to go down with the ship, and need to be rewoven somewhere else.

But don't *attack* the people you want to pry away from Twitter. Don't belittle them, even in the abstract, even when you don't think they're present. If you think they are on your side, if you want them to join your side: treat them like you're on their side. Treat them with respect. Treat them with sympathy. That doesn't mean you have to give up your arguments. It just means you have to not be a sphincter.

So let's be clear: calling people fascists for still using Twitter at this point – and I do understand where you're coming from – in the course of exhorting them to join the Fediverse is pretty much the definition of being verbally abusive. You're using name calling to attempt to berate someone into doing what you want.

The thing that makes it clear that it's just being verbally abusive is that it's *specious* name calling. You very clearly do not actually believe that a person is a fascist because they're still using Twitter at this point. If you actually believed that, you wouldn't want them here.

That's what reveals that you're just saying insulting things that are meant to hurt people's feelings, not actually making an actual accusation that you actually believe.

Don't do that.

It doesn't work, for one thing.

Also, it's a real shitty way to treat your fellow human beings. More specifically, that really shitty way of treating other people has a name. It's called bullying.

Shooting off your mouth on Mastodon about how anyone still using Twitter is a terrible human being is not going to convince any Twitter user to use Mastodon.

At best, they are on Twitter, and will not see it.

At worst, they will be checking out Mastodon, and WILL see it. And they're not going to be convinced that Mastodon is a wonderful place where they'll fit in and be welcomed with open arms: their first impression, quite possibly before even signing up for an account, will be that they are already hated here.

If you're castigating Twitter users in the course of arguing that anyone who applies for an account on your instance should be vetted to make sure they're not one of those awful Twitter users, well, I think you're an asshole, but at least that's logically coherent.

Ranting that anybody still using Twitter is a fascist but also still exhorting them to join the Fediverse is obviously self-contradictory, unless you like fascists.

David Cronenberg's "Turbo Teen"

“#Science is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”

- Jules Verne #books

We are going into our 5th winter of the #COVID pandemic (4th with any kind of data), if you can believe it.

The patterns of our collective infection of each other are very, very predictable. Our highest waves respond directly to social behaviors we choose, like return to schools with no infection controls, & holiday travel. The only thing that has successfully reduced the waves of infection have been public health measures we take as a collective, like masking, ventilation & physical distancing