Should you be buried in a biodegradable wicker basket? Your family might not like it but do you really care?

This has absolutely nothing to do with caskets and coffins... it is about Mastodon

UPDATE DEC 16

Most recent story about Mastodon

Scroll down for the whole story

Here's a toot I just put on Mastodon

I wanted to see what was listed as trending on Twitter to add hashtags to my link to my Mastodon blog story which doesn't mention it and saw #ThursdayNightMassacre and found out that we have a new member @joyannreid who tweets are still there (see screen grab of her tweet) so a BIG welcome to her. Hard to track all the journalists moving here. Welcome to @pkrugman@mastod JenRubin@masto.ai and Rachel Maddow -  maddow@beta.mstdn.cf

Morning Joe is on Mastodon

So is All in With Chris Hayes

Excerpt:

Twitter suspended the accounts of more than half a dozen journalists from CNN, the New York Times, The Washington Post and other outlets Thursday evening, as company owner Elon Musk accused the reporters of posting “basically assassination coordinates” for him and his family.

The Post has seen no evidence that any of the reporters did so.

The suspensions came without warning or initial explanation from Twitter. They took place a day after Twitter changed its policy on sharing “live location information” and suspended an account, @ElonJet, that had been using public flight data to share the location of Musk’s private plane.

Many of the journalists suspended Thursday, including Washington Post technology reporter Drew Harwell, had been covering that rule change, as well as Musk’s claims that he and his family had been endangered by location sharing.

Twitter did not directly respond to questions about the suspensions. But Musk suggested on Twitter, without evidence, that the journalists had revealed private information about his family, known as doxing. “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” he tweeted late Thursday.

Other Recent news article about Mastodon:

 

I originally posted this on Twitter like this:

Now my new tweet looks like this:

I was hoping some of my followers would click the first tweet but hardly anyone even looked at it.

Changed the tweet to see if I can lure more people to click on the link without getting kicked off Twitter.

This blog, despite the title, really has to do with the alternative to Twitter named after a prehistoric beast. It is growing in popularity.

The Twitter bird evolved for a few years (read about it here) but until Elon Musk bought it the bird, with notable exceptions, like most birds mostly tweeted. Now with Musk, it is screeching. 

We don't know what a mastodon sounded like but presumably it was something like an elephant. You can listen to elephant sounds here. Mostly they trumpet and this is how they are depicted in most movies. They rumble when communicating with each other, they also roar, bark, snort, and grunt. Tooting isn't on the list, but why quibble. I think the term "toot" conveys that Mastodon wants to be a civil and respectful town square.

Not tooting yet. Click above to create an account.

Not ready. Learn more about it here.

Excerpt:

Mastodon is an innovative open-source and self-hostable microblogging platform similar to Twitter or Tumblr. Its development was started in 2016 by Eugen Rochko and since then Mastodon constantly attracted new users and communities looking for a social environment independent from big company logics and censorship.

Mastodon is not a Twitter clone: by concept, structure and functionalities it is something completely different and much more interesting!

This page is an introduction to Mastodon’s basic concepts and features which you should know to fully understand how Mastodon works. It is structured in independent sections which you can jump to from the Index (see the link in the upper-left side), but it can also be read as a single text.

The site also hosts an Instances search engine that you can use to find the Mastodon instance that best fits your needs.

I've posted the link to this blog on Mastodon and have been working to add as many links to Mastodon servers as I can find for those who want to get a feel for what it is like, and hopefully if they like it they will join. Scroll down to see the links.

This is what Twitter is doing to those who tweet a link to Mastodon 

This is what someone tooted (the same as a Twitter tweet) on Mastodon:

If you’re wondering about Mastodon’s impact, Twitter is now automatically marking links to mastodon as “sensitive” (aka dangerous) and forcing users who get them to “appeal” the claim. In case Elon didn’t seem desperate enough for you already…

Below is a screen grab of what they tooted with their identity blocked out by me because there's no established convention or policy there about sharing the identity of someone who posts there.

Those who want to view or join Mastodon can do so at web addresses for Mastodon servers which are decentralized. You can use any of these. More will be posted as I find them:

 https://mastodon.social/explore 218k members

https://masto.ai/explore

https://mastodon.world/explore

https://mastodon.online/explore

https://universeodon.com/explore

The five above appear to have the most members.

Others have fewer, even some less than 200.

https://mas.to/explore

https://zirk.us/explore

https://kinky.business/explore A Mastodon instance for the kink community. Safe, sane, consensual.

https://zeroes.ca/explore  COVID-aware Twitter escapees ♥️ COVID content, science, resources, advocacy; social, meetup, chat, etc.

https://mastodon.ie/explore Irish, with 10k members

All the images below are links

https://universeodon.com/explore

This one has a cute logo, click above

https://toot.community/explore "We're a generic, free-for-all Mastodon instance hosted in The Netherlands. We're welcoming to all that seek a place of enjoyment online while being excellent to each other."

.

https://hachyderm.io/explore "Here we are trying to build a curated network of respectful professionals in the tech industry around the globe."

If you have followers on Twitter (I have 154) who you want to be able to know you are leaving there and moving to Mastodon you may be able tweet without running afoul of Elon's attempt to keep anyone from finding you. Just figure out a way to persuade your followers to click my link without alerting the evil genius.

If you want to promote Mastodon on Twitter you may be able to avoid their algorithm tagging their tweet by 1) not using the word Mastodon and 2) trying to outfox them by tweeting something innocuous which will also clue in your followers that you are doing something that you want them to know about.

I recommend you that if you have things to share that don't fit into the word limit for a toot that you try out a free website builder.  I  have used Google Blogger since 2012. It costs extra to have dedicated web address. I chose a dot org after my name because dot com was taken. I am an organization of one. If you have a website you can write anything at any length, include pictures if you like, and put a link to your page in a toot.

Most popular web building platforms have a free version and some you have to pay for extra features. Popular platforms are Wordpress, Weebly, Wix, and GoDaddy. Musk said he was open to buying another website platform, Substack, another popular platform. They weren't interested

 I can only see how many people looked at the tweet (impressions), 17 so far, but without paying I can't see how many people click the link (engagements). Before Musk took over a tweeter could see both for free.

This is what I tooted on Mastodon:

Click above to enlarge.

My Mastodon are toots in right column here.

The original story about my own moving to Mastodon

null

The normalizing of delusional sociopathic grandiose narcissism

 The normalizing of delusional sociopathic grandiose narcissism

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

Comment on Mastodon (see right column )

or use Facebook to comment

Select comments may be shared here. 

I was a practicing psychotherapist for 40 years before retiring, the first 20 of those I work as the director of a small mental health center. I have posted numerous articles online about the dangerous psychopathology of Donald Trump. 

There are myriad examples of people in the news who demonstrate by their behavior, their actions and words, that they, to put it bluntly, have one or all of their hinges so loose that if they were the door on the jam it would be hanging and about to fall.

Creative Commons Flickr

I don't have to tax my brain by coming up with a list of clinically deranged people in public life. Just a look at the stories on various websites will provide many examples. A Salon article by one of my favorite columnists, Amanda Marcotte, this morning offers a list of five:

Of course these five are just losers even though Trump could actually become president again. We still have winners like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Loren Boebert who are still in the House and now that the GOP controls it have even more power.

From Elon Musk whose unhingedness knows no bounds as he just yesterday tweeted "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci, a sentiment supported by said Rep. Greene who is saying that if she was in charge of the January 6th attack on the Capitol the crowd would have been armed (something that could end her in front of a grand jury), to Ye and Herschel Walker (who I wrote about here) 

There are enough people to be analyzed for in a PhD dissertation titled "Abnormal psychology as manifest in people in public life."

In some ways it is more disturbing to know that there are so many ordinary citizens who embrace the Big Lie and the conspiracy lunacy of QAnon. There are uncountable millions people not just in this country but around the world who, if objectively assessed by mental health professionals, would be diagnosed with one or more psychiatric conditions listed in the DSM-5.

There are several hundred diagnostic categories in the DSM  and new ones are periodically added, for example:

• Binge Eating Disorder.
• Caffeine Withdrawal.
• Cannabis Withdrawal.
• Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder.
• Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder- DMDD.
• Hoarding Disorder.
• Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder – PMDD.

 "According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), about one in five adults lives with a mental disorder (any mental illness in the US, and about one in 18 American adults has a serious mental illness. Some psychiatric conditions may be temporary, occur occasionally, and never return again." Reference includes entire list.

It should be obvious that most people with psychiatric disorders actually suffer, thus the term "suffering from" one or another disorder. There are other people who don't suffer themselves. They make  people in their lives including family, friends, and co-workers, suffer. Just consider the number of books about being married to a narcissist.

Of all of these the two most relevant disorders to consider when looking at the people I am writing about are what is now called antisocial personality disorder but is often referred to by the previous name, sociopathic disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. Some people meet enough of the criteria for having both and would be considered to be malignant narcissists. This diagnosis never made it into then DSM but in my opinion and the opinion of many mental health professionals including, notably, Dr. John D. Gartner, the founder of the Duty to Warn society, Donald Trump has this disorder. Gartner wrote about this in 2017:

If any single person could be described as causing an extreme and dangerous mental pathology as becoming normalized it is Donald Trump.

Gartner is, as far as I know, the only mental health professional critical of Trump to appear on Fox News. In 2017 he was on "Watters World" in an interview which, to put it mildly, did not go well. Here's the video:

Full disclosure: Dr. Gartner and I have had a relationship since the formation of his Duty to Warn society. 

Currently the media, with some notable exceptions like MSNBC which regularly has clinical psychologist Mary Trump on and others experts discussing Donald Trump, reports the behavior of Trump and people like those mentioned above as if it is normal. 

I have followed the media closely since 2017 to see whether any mainstream publications addressed the issue of public figures like Trump, Taylor-Greene, Herschel Walker by interviewing mental health experts. 

Salon stands out for having Chauncey DeVega who often publishes interviews with mental health experts like psychiatrist Lance Dodes like "Trump is a dangerous sociopath — but he's sane enough to stand trial" and Psychiatrist Bandy Lee says White House officials told her Trump was "unraveling".

Of course, Salon with its progressive slant, can't be considered mainstream the way USA Today can. As far as I have been able to tell USA Today is the only widely circulated publication to publish a story about Trump's dangerous psychopathology.

It is about time that the mainstream media, including publications that the far right fringe considers to be fake news like The New York Times and The Washington Post, have regular columnists who are mental health experts who can analyze the behavior of public figures based on their knowledge of personality.

It is about time dangerous psychopathology stops being normalized by the media. It must be called out for what it is.

You can post comments directly by clicking below.

What would our country be like without Fox News?

 What would our country be like without Fox News?

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

Posting now on Mastodon (see right column there) 

I read this story in The Guardian:

When I looked at RawStory it was the top article:

Several hours later it was the number one trending story:

This got me into a flight of fancy about what it would be like if Fox News was forced off the air. 

Since I never watch the channel I don't know where their various hosts stand on Donald Trump's candidacy for president but I do know there are signs the network may no longer be a reliable mouthpiece for him. For example this story:

Regardless of whether or not they lavish praise on a particular candidate as long as they are on the air they will promote right-wing, often far-right candidates, and the far-right agenda and with the likes of Tucker Carlson give air to conspiracy theories. 

While other networks aren't likely to broadcast the various House committee hearings like the attempt to hang Hunter Biden, I expect Fox News will do so as long as the ratings are good.

I don't know any, but I know people who know people including family members who get all of their news and commentary from Fox News. They tell me they never discuss politics with them. If it went off the air what would they and others do?

First, there would be a cable TV vacuum since there is no current alternative. They might turn to CNN which is now under the new leadership of its president Chris Licht who is promising changes might try to pick up former Fox News viewers by adding more right, but not far-right, commentary.

The only way MSNBC could pick up any of these viewers would be to create a show with, oh, this is a hard one, a convincing Elvis impersonator interviewing other far-right dead (John Wayne) or alive heroes (91 year old Clint Eastwood perhaps) and using subtle but not too subtle humor getting viewers to question their beliefs. I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect some people thought Jon Stewart was really a Republican and they didn't "get" what he was trying to do with satire.

The only other way for those who relying on a daily far-right fix is to switch from television to their computer so they can look at sites like Breitbart.

My sense is that not too many people will do this. 

I think some people who aren't really political junkies, so to speak, and just turned on their television to be entertained will fill the void by watching more free or subscription series and movies. There might even be an uptick in subscribers to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services.

The crucial question is what will happen down the road towards the elections to decide whether the country becomes a fascistic white-makes-right dystopia?

The answer to this question really seems to me to rest in human nature and how open people are to being influenced to reassess and change their deeply-held beliefs, their fears of being disenfranchised (the great replacement theory), and in an unfortunately large number of people, prejudices they have had most of their lives.

I have a few, albeit not well thought out, ideas about how to influence these people. We can't kidnap then and reprogram them as if they were in a cult (this was done in the 1970's) and we can't round them up and send them to China-type reeducation camps.  The literature on cults does inform us about their personalities. See, for example: 

Experts In Cult Deprogramming Step In To Help Believers In Conspiracy Theories

One thing that can be done is to find out through surveys how they are spending the time they previously devoted to watching Fox News. If they are online there's no way to reach them. If they are watching streaming video they can't be gotten to that way. If they are watching free television they can be reached. This is where they can be influenced both through advertising and programming which is aimed at leading them to engage in self-reflection and introspection. 

We do have one thing going for us, or put another way, one person: Donald Trump. Because he is the leader of a cult, who even Mary Trump on MSNBC this morning called charismatic with a grimace when she said the word, has a luster which is fast fading. His DumptyHumpty fall which was now famously depicted on the cover of the Murdoch owned New York Post, should it occur so all the kings horses and all the kings men can't put him together again, may open a window where believers are vulnerable. These windows don't stay open forever. Even a dead despot can come back from his grave and be the figurehead for a movement.

Changing a significant number of people wouldn't be easy. People with fears and prejudices they've had reinforced repeatedly by their peer group and the media are exceedingly difficult to change.