Showing posts with label Mastodon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mastodon. Show all posts

January 8, 2023

Rep Cory Mills malicious malevolent tweet about Pelosi's husband shows why we need Twitter

  Rep. Cory Mills malicious malevolent tweet about Pelosi's husband shows why we need Twitter  

Today's blog is a twofer. I address both the malignant narcissism on the far-right and why Twitter is, like it or not, a necessary town square.

by Hal Brown, MSW

Read HUFFPOST article here.

I wish it wasn't so. I wish it was possible to dismiss the benefits of Twitter out of hand. I hate the fact that because so many newsworthy tweets are on Twitter Elon Musk is able to make money off the platform.

President Biden has 36.8 million followers there:

It isn't like it or not, I don't like it at all, but Twitter has become the national (and international) town square. We can try to live in fantasy land about Twitter just going away. Case in point, read the HUFFPOST article and see how tweets are used. Consider what this dirtbag would have gotten away with without Rep Swalwell posting on Twitter .

There's nothing to say about this despicable new member of the GOP contingent of the House that isn't in the HuffPost article except for me to add my perspective as a retired psychotherapist who has written a lot about a particular psychological personality type.

Brought into the public awareness by the founder of the Duty to Warn group Dr. John D. Gartner malignant narcissism was a conceptualization several psychopathologies described by noted social psychologist Erich Fromm in 1964.

Malignant narcissism is an extreme mix of narcissismantisocial behavioraggression, and sadism. Fromm described it as a "severe mental sickness" representing "the quintessence of evil". He characterized the condition as "the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity. Wikipedia

From Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Tucker Carlson to a witches' brew of actors on the public stage like Putin and the two Steves, Bannon and Miller, those who love democracy, not only in America but in Ukraine and elsewhere, are suffering because malignant narcissists wield power. 

Back to Twitter and the story on HUFFPOST. You can see just from this one example how Twitter functioned as a worthwhile town square. 

Cory Mills, in his malignant narcissism, was unable to resist making a tweet which sent a message to hard-core extremists and showed his true colors.  When it proved to be against his own best interests he deleted it but it was too late since like with many similar tweets it had already been noticed and copied. In this case we can thank Rep. Eric Swalwell:

His tweet generated the dozen replies which augment the HUFFPOST article. None of them are notables. They are from ordinary people with Twitter names like Jack-O'Lantern and booklady2002.

Just as the open mic*, sharp-eyed photographer, or accidental video can catch someone whose impulses outweighed their good judgement, the ease of making a tweet without considering the negative consequences can reveal one's true character and beliefs.

Consider the recent example of a CSPAN camera catching liar Rep. George Santos making what appears to be a white power symbol.


C-SPAN video of the incident shows that Santos had pre-positioned his hand along his body in an unusual way to create the gesture.

Far-right extremists, mainly white supremacists, have coopted the gesture to symbolize a “W” and “P” for white power, according to the Anti-Defamation League. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center also categorizes the gesture as a white power gesture but explains that on the right, the gesture is often used to troll liberals. YahooNews 

Click "Read more" below to continue.  

December 18, 2022

A blog devoted to finding a Fediverse server to join Mastodon

This has been a blog page devoted to finding a Fediverse server to join Mastodon
put together by Hal Brown

I'm not going to keep updating this blog because I discovered that there was a more comprehensive list which people can use to decide which Fediverse  Mastodon server they want to use to read and toot on. Click below:



This is my blog about Mastodon from Dec. 16


Below: Just a few servers on Mastodon

Click above to enlarge image

Those who want to view or join Mastodon can do so at lots of web addresses for Mastodon servers which are decentralized. They are all on a Fediverse. 

The fediverse (a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe") is an ensemble of federated (i.e. interconnected) servers that are used for web publishing (i.e. social networkingmicrobloggingblogging, or websites) and file hosting, but which, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other. On different servers (technically instances), users can create so-called identities. These identities are able to communicate over the boundaries of the instances because the software running on the servers supports one or more communication protocols that follow an open standard.[1] As an identity on the fediverse, users are able to post text and other media, or to follow posts by other identities.[2] In some cases, users can show or share data (video, audio, text, and other files) publicly or to a selected group of identities, and allow other identities to edit other users' data (such as a calendar or an address book). Wikipedia

You can read more about Mastodon here:

The images below are about 42 of the links which you can use to view or join Mastodon. Click to join. There are over 160 as of Dec. 20 and more are added just about every day. 

These two appear to have the most members:
Mastodon Social

This is where I toot. I can't find a logo for it so I'll use my version until I find an official one.
 

These are other popular ones:




This one is called Pachyderm

The servers above appear to have the most members.

Others have fewer, even some less than 200.



All the images below are links.  The newest links are on the bottom of the list.






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This one is in German

















Homelessness: Daytime nightmare about to unfold in Portland

  Public domain, Creative Commons.. By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist This is a classic case of municipal decision makers putting t...