They #murdered this young #bear & got off on killing it 🤬
The #RCMP spokesperson said police were in communication with the #Saskatchewan Conservation Officer Service throughout Thursday, but there were no conservation officers on site when the bear was shot.
People in a local Facebook group expressed #outrage about a photo circulating on social media of two RCMP officers posing with the dead bear in the bed of a pickup truck.
We got a new treat which was chicken and cheese flavour. I was concerned because I've never had cheese flavour before, but by the time I'd considered trying it, Eric had eaten it all. He then went to sleep on the floor, not on a scratcher like cats should.
Removing wild horses from their wild homes to be placed in #corrals and auctioned off puts these sensitive animals at risk. It also costs #taxpayers millions of dollars.
State officials and community members have expressed #outrage at the proposal to remove the historic animals, according to AP News.
“They’re like cultural artifacts, almost, because they reflect several generations of western North Dakota ranchers and #NativePeople,” researcher Castle McLaughlin
The Outrage Industry is talk radio, cable news shows, and political blogs.
The #outrage#industry dictates the behavior of elected officials (particularly conservatives) who are terrified of getting on its wrong side because they know if they do, they will be #primaried.
Outrage discourse, as a rule, ignores complexity and nuance. It is not about conveying accurate information or stimulating meaningful discourse.
♦️Outrage arose because it was #profitable
♦️Outrage created or exacerbated the problem of #polarization, not the other way around.
Because of the fragmenting of media and the clutter of outlets, blogs, and talk shows, there is a lot of noise.
There is also a lot of #money in the outrage business.
🔸Outlets or pundits in search of an audience need to break through.
🔸The easiest way to break through is to be an “agent provocateur."
Both sides use the same tactics but #conservative#outrage is more outrageous, more hyperbolic, and more prone to misrepresenting the facts.
The conservatives are better at all things outrage–including making money.
In the speech in support of the ceasefire resolution, the #Democratic Florida #StateRepresentative Angie Nixon said: “We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians. How many will be enough?”
Puh, a really controversial topic that seems to cause strong emotions by many people on Mastodon.
I am not one of the big fish involved in the discussion. But I think it is important because how our community interacts depends on ourselves.
First, I want to say that shared blockslists can make sense. Basic lists to filter out the really bad shit. And maybe some stricter versions with keywords to facilitate new instances the creation of a safe space for certain groups (ok, here we could discuss why not blocking ALL kinds of harrassment, but in practice -and in the spirit of the fediverse as a community of distinct, but federated instaces- different people have varying levels of tolerance and set the threshold differently).
Currently, I see many posts about TBS, both in favour and against. Here I wanted to share my thoughts about TBS. I see basically the following problems:
The trusted instances are hard-coded and not independent from each other (correct me, if I am wrong). I think that a lot of controversy about TBS comes from concerns about the influence of one of the persons at mastodon.art, both directly because they are used as trusted source but also because of indirect influence on the other instances via their moderation-discord channel. Everywhere are power dynamics. Also informal hierarchies don’t disappear if we don’t call them out.
There is no appealing mechanism (TBS-banned instances would need to go begging on their knees to the “trusted instances” power circle). There is usually no “defederation will last for 6 months” or similar.
There is no mechanism to resolve the issue of binarity of defederation: It is the nuke of moderation tools. However, the problem is that there are no intermediate tools to separate real nazi/pedo shit from “many months ago there was a disagreement regarding moderation style”. TBS was announced to be for the really bad stuff, not for more controversial/personal decisions.
Blocklists are a huge responsibility. It is really easy to fuck things up (on purpose and by accident), especially if the blocklists are widely adopted. It is crucial to have very, very good mechanisms in place to avoid power issues. Therefore it is important to be open to (constructive) criticism.
Just to try out, I looked how kolektiva.social (the lovely anarchist instance I call my home for almost a year now) scores on TBS. Currently, kolektiva.social is suspended by 4 and silenced/limited by 2 of the “trusted instances serving as reference for the The TBS blocklist. If TBS would be widely dopted by the fediverse, this would mean adiós to my beloved instance* 😢
I have to admit that I lost a little bit of track of the multiple blocklist projects:
Pesonally, I see Fediseer as a promising project. It has the optionto select the instances you “trust” and get their blocklists. It is really not necessary (and inefficient) that the mods of every of the 10-20 k Mastodon instances have to dive through all the really, really bad places to block them. There is still the issue of structural power dynamics of the instances that are used by default, but I understand that you have to begin somewhere and with the really, really bad instances, there should be less of a controversy.
However, seeing the current heat of the debate, it is important for me to make also the following statement: The level of harassment and personal attacks that the person most visible behind TBS ( @Are0h ) is receiving from many sides is totally out of place. There are unclear power dynamics that should be addressed. Maybe this person is not the best at taking criticism, but a human being enjoying some privileges while suffering also discrimination. And also yes, Mastodon has definitevely a whiteness problem (and harassing a prominent black person provides exactly their point). Listen to black people when they talk about discrimination. Listen to queer people when they talk about discrimination.
But please, folks. Try to take a few breaths before writing an outrage post. Destructive group dynamics don’t seem to be what we need to resolve our problems. Maybe some of you will hate me for this. My apologies. I don't want to dismissing your experience, but to bring us back to the table to find ways to first keep the really bad shit out while trying to make the fediverse a more welcoming place for all.
sorry for the hippie speech. English is not my first language, s
Of course, a very valid question is also: why is kolektiva.social considered by such a considerable proportion of the set of instances that some people consider “trusted sources” as worth of being defederated because of “Moderation issues, Poor moderation, abusive/harrassment behaviour” (on mastodon.art’s ‘about’ page even “racism”). I recall a complex conflict last year. However, whether kolektiva.social is currently a place for abusers/racists, is not really an assessment that can o should be made by a privileged white person like me, I guess.
Am I being grumpy or have low quality baseless #outrage posts, sometimes with possible propaganda motivation increased drastically in frequency lately?
Legal and political experts are expressing #outrage and #disgust after ProPublica's latest investigation into the alleged unethical and unlawful actions of U.S. Supreme Court Justice #Clarence#Thomas, with some demanding his resignation and others calling it "#corruption of the highest level," "#PayToPlay.," and one simply saying, "This #sickens me."
The whole thing with #Ro has proven one thing: that so-called "safe spaces" on #Mastodon were NEVER meant to be for anyone other than #white#LGTBQ people. Just look at all the #AntiBlack racism, showing that even #BlackTrans folks are not safe here.
#Whiteness is the only thing that provides any protection here. Offend a #WhitePerson, and prepare to get #fediblocked. Anything else is fair game.
It's ridiculous that all these #Republican#candidates are expressing #outrage and sadness about the #racist#Florida#massacre of three black people. It's so phony and disingenuous. It's their #policies and their actions that are to blame for this, and other #shootings. It's their refusal to take any meaningful action on the subject of #gunViolence that leads to tragedies like this.
Because republicans have no solutions and are unable to govern.
Never forget this: The GOP’s manufactured crises are meant to distract you from obscene wealth consolidation, climate annihilation, and the subversion of our democracy.
He spots someone in the crowd waving a rainbow fan. He takes the rainbow flag, snaps it open, and #werks it like any good #runway#queen. The song “#BornThisWay” by #LadyGaga soundtracks the clip.
Stop thinking of Twitter, TikTok, IG, (et al) as social media sites.
They are Content Refineries.
Like processed food manufacturers they take user content & extract the most addicting/engaging content. Brains eat it up but in an unhealthy “devour the whole bag of chips” way.
They make hyper-processed social media junk food.
Mastodon is more like a potluck. We're all bringing dishes. It's a mess. Kids are running all over. But we are, at least, real people sharing real things.