https://bsky.app/profile/newseye.bsky.social/post/3lgxwkshqx22n
This bsky post says: "Trump has just mentioned the following as possible causes of the Washington plane crash:
You can see what I believe are his full remarks here: https://youtu.be/R88Eg-Y28O8
It's almost like blaming disabled people en masse for any and everything under the sun is a well-known Nazi tactic or something...
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I will continue to be puzzled when people are shocked that the Democrats have decided to largely ignore the rapid descent into fascism that the current administration is spearheading, instead preferring to occasionally point out how Trump is not in fact saving the government money.
It's giving fishbowl memory because haven't they been abandoning us over and over for decades now? Haven't they demonstrated, day in and day out, that they will never lift a finger unless there's something in it for them?
It has become increasingly obvious that there is an extremely simple calculus behind their decisions: what is going to benefit them the most? What is going to make them the most money? What is going to allow them to stay in power the longest so they can keep getting richer? What is going to make them look the best without actually having to do too much or risk anything?
Everything they do follows this. They won't do anything to jeopardize it. So why wouldn't they lie and pretend that open fascism is "just a distraction" from the "real" economic issues. They don't want to be locked up, and they definitely don't want to have to engage with the left's criticism. From their point of view, any taking of responsibility for the current state of affairs would be political suicide. So they continue to pretend they haven't done anything wrong and sit there and write social media posts while their fellows confirm all of Trump's appointees.
I just hope more people will figure this out so we can make some more movement towards actually resisting. Focusing on organizing, mutual aid, direct action..... All of which will offer actual potential for change, unlike continuing to be shocked about the fascist enablers enabling fascism. That's what they do; that is who they are. That is why they exist. It's their job.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Love to see silicon valley crying n throwing up
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
So I want to provide some elaboration on this fediblock post I made: https://blackqueer.life/@tillshadeisgone/113891510610086508
I want to remind you all of a selection from of my pinned post on conflict with comrades, which I believe is relevant here.
The thing is, just as I mentioned in said pinned post that antiblackess destroys unity, ableism destroys unity too. Black disabled folks have been saying for YEARS on this and every other digital platform that they feel excluded from just about every single community space, on the left or otherwise. This is not new information by any means.
Therefore, ESPECIALLY given that as our server's About section points out, 1 in 4 Black American adults are disabled, it is my responsibility as the admin of BQL to make sure that our space does not reproduce that same dynamic. If I want Black disabled people to feel like they can be in our community, I cannot allow ableism in our community. Full stop.
As I feel like I keep repeating, this is something I take very seriously. And sometimes, despite my best efforts, attempts to convince people that they are doing harm are not going to be successful. That is what happened in this case. The person did not listen to me or anyone else who tried to convince her, including Black disabled people who were impacted by her words. She continued, over the course of the past two or three days, to double down, saying that racism is a mental illness. Then, she started defending using the R slur and blaming disabled people for Trump being elected, explicitly referencing alleged decreases in average IQ scores.
When someone is repeatedly insistent on echoing eugenics ideology and Nazi talking points about intelligence, that is several steps past what is acceptable. To steal some language I got from communists, the contradiction between her deeply held beliefs and the presence and value of my disabled users was clearly antagonistic and not resolvable through dialogue.
Sometimes, you have to do the hard thing. It wasn't pleasant, but guess what? That's the job. Do you think it was pleasant for me to suspend instances like tech.lgbt or aus.social where we had a lot of connections, cutting our users off from theirs? To make public posts about it before and after? No, it was extremely stressful and upsetting and brought a lot more harassment my way. But I did it anyway. Wasn't the first time, won't be the last.
Oh, and it is worth mentioning that I have been accused of catering to the "white political gaze" by making my fediblock post, implying that I am doing so for the optics and because I care about getting accolades from white people more than I care about my fellow Black folks. It has been implied that this is all theater, and has no connection to any real beliefs on my part. To that, all I can say is that ableism is a bigger danger to Black folks than white people. White supremacy is inextricably tied to ableism, and I have referenced and boosted multiple works by Black disabled advocates and academics in the past two days who discuss that exact concept. In short, disability justice is not just for fucking white people.
To close, I just want to restate that at the end of the day, ableism is a violation of rule #1 on BQL. Anyone who doesn't agree with the existence of that rule or who doesn't like it when we enforce it is no comrade of mine.
Thanks for reading.
[#]FediBlockMeta
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT2Nn9LR5/
This link is to an Imani Barbarin Tiktok where she talks about how important it is for us to divest from ableism in our minds to allow us to fight the system that uses ableism as a weapon against the people. She has so many other good videos that among other things go in depth to explain how ableism is rampant in both leftist and liberal spaces.
I don't know if she ever checks her account on fedi but she has an account on here at @ImaniBarbarin. I've learned a lot from her writing as well.
These days I think a lot about how in times like the ones we're living in now, solidarity is actually even more important, not less. I am far from an expert and am largely just repeating what disabled comrades have said, but I know that ableism is not some fringe issue for leftists to compete about and that disability justice is not a matter of empty virtue. It's not a purity test or a way to seem better than anyone else; it's about humanity and compassion and survival. And it's not optional! We need to do better!
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
https://mastodon.social/@ErickaSimone/113883945144966522
I think it's very very important for us to be clear that racism is not and never has been a matter of mental illness, disability, or intelligence. In our commendable haste to condemn the fascists and Nazis, it is absolutely crucial to not do their work for them by echoing their own rallying cries.
A few days ago, this user (formerly my mutual) made a fediblock post about racism calling for getting "the mentally disabled and/or bots" off this platform. I reached out over DMs to try and explain why this was harmful and a rallying cry for Nazis and eugenics supporters, and was not successful in convincing her. She made similar justifications that you can see in this post, accusing me of deliberately assuming ill-will on her part, trying to force respectability politics on her, and participating in misogynoir.
It's true that racism and misogynoir are rampant on this platform, and she has had a slew of those experiences. There's no denying it. But in this instance she is perpetuating serious ableism and refuses to admit it or apologize for it. Not okay.
I don't believe in rendering people disposable just because we disagree, but due to the harmful nature of her posts and arguments, I feel like a FediBlock is unfortunately needed.
Edit: here she is back in November having the same argument. Same ableism, same excuses, no accountability: https://mastodon.social/@ErickaSimone/113527681698818580
[#]FediBlock
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I want to lay on a bed of gnocchi
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
https://blackqueer.life/@tillshadeisgone/113839125213305749
Endlessly funny to me at this point to hear that not only is dansup antiblack, he's also....very bad at his work? Multiple issues have gone months without being addressed on GitHub? People are very concerned about user safety? And he's transmisic too?
Like damn pick a struggle
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Some folks on Tiktok are speculating that Meta has been all up in Tiktok for awhile, interestingly. Saying that they have started to see Reels ads on TT and also that while the app came back from the ban, Capcut didn't. And that at the same time, Meta is releasing their own proprietary mobile video editing software. And that it looks almost identical to Capcut. And (admittedly unclear if this is true) they are self reporting that their FYP seems to have a different algorithm. And folks have also been noticing a lot of Meta's stock being bought up and the timing all just being a little to convenient.
A lot of that is unconfirmed speculation, so take it with a grain of salt. But imo I would find it very convincing that this whole theater of taking it down and bringing it back up was a cover for the fascists getting control of yet another social media. Meta is obvs in bed with the fash and they already took twitter. Now looks like they may be taking TT too. We'll see. Independent social media like the fediverse might become all that much more essential very quickly.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/14/tech/rednote-china-popularity-us-tiktok-ban-intl-hnk/index.html
I think this event has been an excellent way for people from the United States and people from China to converse with each other. These are two groups of people who rarely have the chance to interact at all, and often are forced to rely more on propaganda from their respective governments to learn about the other.
I am not so naive to think that the Chinese government is not monitoring these conversations very closely (and there are a number of political topics that are rarely or not at all discussed on Xiaohongshu) but I think even keeping that in mind it has been incredibly eye opening for me and many others.
I know a lot of other USians have been expressing how much our propaganda has distorted our cultural understanding of China and what life is actually like there, and I've been hearing similar sentiments from some of the Chinese users, who have said it's often hard to know what is true about the US and what is propaganda from their government.
Unfortunately, of course, there have also been several things that they thought were actually propaganda but were actually true such as working two or three jobs, cost of school, paying for ambulances, no paid maternity leave, etc but we are in a very dystopian country so I can see why they would have been skeptical about that.
Anyway, I think this has been a very good thing! I hope to experience it more!
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
OH AND THEIR LUNCH BREAK IS TWO HOURS LONG ON AVERAGE. TWO. HOURS!!!!!!
I saw a video of a guy who goes and eats lunch with coworkers (in their delicious looking in building cafeteria) for the first hour. Then they all went back to the office to play Hearthstone for the second hour. Bro. Bruh. WHAT
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Been browsing Rednote bc like many other Tiktok users I'm very curious about what day to day life is like in various Chinese cities and..... y'all. I just saw a video breaking down monthly utilities costs and folks from the US and China are in the comments discussing...
I knew we were getting screwed but I never knew how bad. One person totaled up electricity, gas, water, sewage, internet, phone, and property management fee. And it was about $120 a month altogether. That person makes equivalent to $3000 a month, a single dad who owns his home and has no car payment. Pays about $1000 a month for food for him and his kid. School is free.
Retirement age is 55 for women and 60 for men (and yes, I too find that... interesting). Everyone gets a pension paid by the government upon retirement, although the amount varies. Their public transportation is excellent. I........ Wow.
Yesterday someone was talking about how they knew a person who took 8 months paid maternity leave before going back to work. 8. Months.
Needless to say, the Chinese users are horrified by American utilities costs etc. They seem to be in disbelief at what we put up with.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
This guy is like a laundry list of microaggressions too "white people have had a hard year too you know!" average mastodonian
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
https://mastodon.social/@yacc143/113851301965054334
"Oh you hate racism? Yet you use your phone and social media. Curious"
https://mastodon.social/@yacc143/113851314368056966
"Oh you hate racism? Yet you likely use substack. Curious"
This guy has no clue what I use or don't use and he obviously doesn't care about racism. He just wants me to shut up.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Unsurprisingly, I've got a lot of folks who haven't heard about these instances of antiblackness from dansup. This is how I know most fedi users in general either aren't connected to Black users or don't listen to the ones they are connected to, since this is something we have spoken about before. This is a systemic problem.
Anyway, here's a post from WP (AKA a White Person) discussing several of his posts: https://mastodon.art/@welshpixie/113822469270748843
And here's a thread going into more depth about AAVE, with links to contextualize and explain why his consistent appropriation of it is indeed antiblack:
https://mastodon.art/@welshpixie/113825727607965530
Edit: not because of anything anyone said, but just my own reflections-I recognize that everybody doesn't know about everything. This is part of the way the fedi works, everyone ain't connected to everyone else and that's okay. However, white folks hearing about racism and expressing surprise and/or shock is not a neutral event but a part of how white supremacy works. Y'all are sheltered by design, not happenstance. So while I am not specifically criticizing the people who came into my mentions asking for more info, I am noting that I am aware that they are part of a larger system of whiteness. Do with that info what you will.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
So, so typical of the fediverse that an open source, non-corporate platform like pixelfed (and/or loops) is getting increasing amounts of attention while reports of the head of the project consistently and loudly being an antiblack weirdo are ignored 🙄
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I've been quieter on here in recent weeks, and it's been nice. that will probably continue. But on to the point.
I've been thinking about meta posts I've seen recently and previously on here, some of which are quite robust and some of which are straight up disinformation, along with everything in between. I started to write a long ass post about it but tbh that's a waste of time, so instead you get this reminder:
If your take on blocklists, fediblock, etc fails to interrogate the reason behind why most Black folks who have joined the fediverse have packed up and left, your take is antiblack.
I'll say that again. Unless your opinion on what Black folks are doing on the fediverse centers the undeniable fact that almost every Black person who set foot in this network fled and never returned, your opinion is antiblack.
We've got oodles of white folks. both cishets and queer and trans people. We've even got a smattering of people of color, also with wide ranging sexualities and genders. Who's not here? Who don't you really see many of?
You can't tell me it's not obvious.
Anyways, it's bad enough that I feel like I should start calling this place the Sundowniverse or something. Catchy, ain't it?
[#]Sundowniverse #Sundownstodon #FediBlockMeta
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
https://mastodon.social/@kjhealy/113765040222504912
This is some truly sinister shit. Not the first time digital blackface has been done with AI but the first time I know of a huge megacorp like Meta is doing it openly.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Also I am suffering over there because I have gotten used to 10,000 character posts 😭 I keep having to do threads and it's cruel and unusual punishment!!
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Some real weird following shit going on over at Bluesky. Because of how feeds are integrated centrally into the app, a lot of folks really only scroll through a specific feed rather than their entire following list.
As a result, tons of folks are mass following folks (I'm talking 25k, 60k, 90k people) just to get their own follower numbers up due to some people following back just because.
But in my experience, engagement is much less there than here. I've even seen people with thousands of followers more than me who get little engagement with their posts, have to repost em a few times, etc.
Real weird behavior. Bluesky tires me out sometimes due to this. I've posted before about how it almost feels charged and the energy is so frenetic. Or maybe I just got used to the fediverse and having no company trying to force me to spend as much time as possible on their platform. Idk
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
=> This profile with reblog | Go to tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life account This content has been proxied by September (3851b).Proxy Information
text/gemini