Just a side note - I would caution about directing non-Black folks to spaces like # BlackMastodon and @ blackfedi, just because those spaces might not be intentioned for non-Black people to look at, directing us there might be encouraging our participation in spaces where it’s not necessarily invited or wanted, etc. Great spaces to direct Black folks to if they’re looking to build a community for themselves on fedi, but I would just say it’s best for non-Black people to not look/participate unless the space is specifically inviting that.

The other thing about the “just listen more to more Black people” discourse is that while it may fix representational issues of whom you’re choosing to listen to, it won’t help if there’s no intention to work on racial biases or challenge one’s own racist behaviors - so I would even implore that type of introspective work. Connected to that would be, even if a white person starts doing these things and working on this practice, that work of interrogating your own biases/behaviors never stops. I feel that white people (especially on fedi) often need reminding that just because you’re doing X, Y, Z, etc. doesn’t mean that you’re done working on your own racism or that your reasons for doing X, Y, Z, etc. are all genuine.

You might also want to mention how having some marginalized identity even as a white person doesn’t excuse you from doing this work - there’s a lot of harm done on fedi by people who use their own oppressed identities as a way to avert accountability for being racist. In your piece, you already mentioned that supporting Black people and fighting anti-Blackness means supporting all Black people - you could make that understanding of how anti-Blackness is interconnected/intertwined with other oppressions more apparent by appealing to white people who might consider themselves staunch advocates for other communities but refuse to confront racism.

This is kind of a mess of different comments but those are just my raw thoughts after reading what you wrote.

Thank you for your service, coyotino

A country born by old white men which will die by old white men. Begins with a revolution to sever ties with a monarchy, ends with a coup to bring it back. We are truly coming full circle. 🤡

Asked if anything could convince him that he was on track to lose to Trump and should step down, Biden responded with a smile: “It depends on if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that.”

Sir, the Lord Almighty better come down and take you back with him. Take Trump too, while he’s at it.

After that debate and all the things he’s said since, Biden’s image is at an all-time low. As ableist and ageist as it is, people think he’s a senile old man in the late stages of cognitive decline, with no business running a government. I doubt he or his campaign are going to do what they need to do to overcome that perception, and I doubt the Democratic Party will make the right calls either. “Decades of civil service” and “somewhat better than Trump” etc. are not going to be enough.

damn, who could’ve possibly seen that coming? 🫥

saddam hussein is in there twisting my bones. i should be gripping rat

finally getting more time off from work versus the 60-70 hour weeks i was pulling before, so i started participating in a game jam and trying to have a presence on fedi again.

There is no should or shouldn’t, they’ve always had and been entitled to that choice. People who develop and host those platforms can make whatever choice they want.

ActivityPub/the Fediverse is only a protocol. If you philosophically disagree with how a platform makes use of that protocol, then you can (theoretically) just use another platform.

not so hot because things are tense around my house, but i’m moving out towards the end of the week so hopefully it’ll be over soon.

Genuine question: what happened last time?

Yup! If the software supports it, instance admins can usually add relays from their control panel.

It does work that way, but Mastodon and some other microblogging software like Firefish (fka Calckey), Pleroma, etc. can also use relays to populate their federated timelines.

What an audacious request. I hope it’ll be rejected — this just has “bad idea” written all over it.

Respectfully, how on earth did this design get cleared? 😭

Cloaks are really a cool idea and I miss them, not that I was ever alive for them being en vogue haha

A great look despite the obvious hazard of them getting caught on things

omg happy belated birthday!! 🤠🥳

i give my week a 4/5, been busy the past few days trying to set up a Firefish instance with my partner which has been just awesome and i’m super excited to open it up and get people on it! rly inspired by beehaw’s community-building style.

in less awesome news i’m moving back home at the end of the week and i’m not looking forward to it. moving is so stressful and i don’t want to be back home with my dad either lol.

Ok lol.

This is pretty much the position we took when clearing that comment thread — I didn’t scrutinize between ideologies, I removed a variety of comments just for not being nice or for being potentially inciting/inflammatory. I had to remove several comments in that thread by liberals as well for being unproductive or even toxic.

Only nit I have about your comment is that “sanitized space” is a term we came up with for the mod philosophy. We explicitly meant it in the context of removing “not nice” comments. It expresses the fact that we can’t perfectly clear the space of anything which an individual user might find offensive or harmful. The standards for gauging safety/harm in a space vary from user to user; our moderation has to consider our users collectively rather than just one of them. This is part of why Beehaw is not a sanitized space and aims, rather, to be what one might describe as a safe space, a brave space, an accountable space, or other similar term.

Really just putting this out there for the benefit of others, as it seems some are mistaken about the word “sanitized” and what we really meant by it.

VS Code, but may switch to VSCodium or Neovim eventually.

Not to mention that thread about Affirmative Action, in which the comments seemed to espouse a purely Black point of view, not taking into account how it may have a positive effect on Asian admissions, and completely ignoring the discussion of how admissions should be merit-based no matter what

Honestly, there was no shortage of people arguing the type of position you’re discussing, but if you see a lack of it, you’re more than welcome to post/comment.

I don’t have high hopes for any sort of meaningful discussion happening here.

Then have discussion elsewhere, nobody is forcing you to post or participate here. You already said yourself that you have an account on another instance because you feel that way. There’s no need to come here and wax poetic about how you don’t see any “real discussion” happening, and doing so isn’t going to dramatically alter moderation policy. If you disagree with a discussion, again, feel free to post or comment. If you don’t think any real discussion will come of that or you disagree with moderation policy, you’re welcome to find community elsewhere.

As an aside:

Asian students […] historically place a much higher importance on education than the rest of the world

This isn’t really historical so much as it is stereotyping. Asian people aren’t a monolith. We don’t all align culturally, and we don’t all have the same attitudes. We aren’t all treated the same as other Asian people, nor do people in Asian diasporas all have the same socioeconomic outcomes.