SecondJon @SecondJon@social.cleverlibre.org

@SecondJon @wilw

Not a single one of us is totally innocent and we all have views that may, or may not offend others.

And that's fine. People are free to offend and be offended as they will. That's life. Not everyone is going to get along.

I won't pretend to know if Mr. Wheaton is phobic to anything at all. I won't pretend to know him as an individual.

I certainly won't deny that one of the reasons I'm willing to defend to him is that he was involved with one of my favorite things in the world, Star Trek. I'm a human being, and there are certain mental processes that just sort of click. My biases will always play into my decision making process.

It is totally unforgivable and unacceptable for what amounts to the 2018 version of a pitch-fork wielding mob to tar and feather some poor dude who was- as near as I can tell- not doing anything at all to try and harass anyone.

Personally, I don't care at all what your outlook on life is, what your gender is or isn't, your religion, or your creed, or race- none of those things truly matter to me whatsoever.

What does matter, however, is your behavior and how you treat others..

You can't change how other people act- but if you're someone who feels it is okay to attack someone else because of a traditional bias, bad actors, social issues effect you than you are, quite simply, part of the problem.

You aren't going to change the world by attacking other human beings. Nobody responds well to the proverbial (or literal) punch to the face.

This doesn't mean you accept bad behavior, or people who's opinions (or actions) are destructive. IT does mean, however, that you- as an individual- have to behave in a way that is almost entirely consistent with the values that you claim to hold. Integrity is, without a doubt, a far better measure of a human being than any spoken, written, or followed ethical/moral code.

TL;DR: Be Excellent To Each Other. Treat people like people and *be consistent* in the application of your chosen morality. Being a member of a minority does *not* give you a right to be a douchebag.

@wilw You should come to #QOTO we wouldn't ban you and everyone would love to have you here.

I have been asked to keep things short with a Content Warning. I apologize in advance, I won't be doing that here:

I am exceedingly upset that @wilw has more or less been chased off Mastodon.

He absolutely doesn't deserve to be treated badly, to be maligned, or abused. This admin who's banning Mr. Wheaton because of the actions of OTHER PEOPLE is, quite frankly, a total hashtag. I'm going to use Hashtag here as an insult, because honestly I can't think of anything else without swearing loudly.

I don't know the full story. I don't want to know the full story- because some dude, and it *doesn't matter who said dude is* just got bullied and harassed right off of a social network by toxic, garbage people.

And do not for a moment think that you are not garbage people, those who did this. You are. You are garbage. Rationalize your behavior however you want, but at the end of the day? You are a dumpster fire of a human being and you need to look at yourself good and close and do something about it because I don't want your toxicity poisoning the well any further.

I've recently been reading "The Gay Science" (perhaps a misleadng translation) by Nietsche and I came accross a quote that's a perfect summary for why I made this Mastodon.

Nietsche despite his talent for writing was profoundly embarrassed by it, to quote him "even a parable [of my writing] disgusts me" and he goes on to say

"B: But why, then, do you write? A: Well, my friend, to be quite frank: so far, I have not discovered any other way of getting rid of my thoughts."

@absolutus @freemo There are two very major reasons why 'Be Excellent to Each Other' is my vote.

One: It comes across much less arrogant and is a more neutral term compared to 'Be the bigger person'. It feels counter productive to use that sort of thing given our desired and stated goal.

Two: Wyld Stallyns.

Hey there #QOTO ! It's time for another #ShareTheMusic

The band I'd like to talk about today is near and dear to my heart.

They Might Be Giants is one of those bands that a lot of people have heard without realizing that they know the band.

Maybe you heard them on Tiny Tunes as a kid, singing 'Istanbul' or Particle Man

Maybe you heard the theme song to Malcolm in the Middle, Boss of Me.

Either way, they're a fantastic band that has been pumping out albums for quite some time.

They've got too large a discography for me to actually share all my favorite songs- I do recommend you check them out.

Here are just a few of my favorites:

Answer: https://youtu.be/0cpawwRbSNY

Youth Culture Killed My Dog: https://youtu.be/_uejz92M-SM

And, of course, Particle Man:
https://youtu.be/3_mEctH8e4w

Enjoy and don't forget to #ShareTheMusic!

@Surasanji @freemo latter is best as "bigger" may be interpreted as physically bigger and we wouldnt want someone confusing things, plus we're on the keto diet 😀

#introduction

Excited to be here at Mastodon

Am an opinionated world traveller with interests in travel, movies, environment, society, naturopathy, naturism, politics and all that is associated.

Looking to interact with like minded fellow travellers around here and also looking at calling out hypocrisy where it needs to be called out.

Must confess: I am not a Liberal! I believe in people and I believe in doing what's right. I believe people know wants best for them and no one need tell anyone else how to lead their life, what to say, how to behave.

I am very open to friendly debates on any topic that I know about. The rest I leave to the judgement of more intelligent others. 😊

Please engage for a better world.

#ReachAcross is a new hashtag we came up with over at #QOTO where you say something you admire about a group you view as an opponent to a cause you are passionate about. For example if you are a Liberal you would compliment Conservatives, if you are a Conservative you compliment Liberals. Whatever group or groups you feel passionate for whether its politics, activism, religion, whatever it might be.

Use the tag and list something you respect or admire about the opposing side. When you see someone mention a group that refers to you, then return a compliment in a reply.

I will kick it off:

#ReachAcross for this week is for the extreme left and extreme right political spectrum (non-moderates). I admire the passion and energy you put into your activism. There are many people who would love to have that sort of passion for anything.

(Some people who helped flush out the idea in the original thread: @arteteco @Surasanji @hashtaggrammar @commandelicious @comphys @QuentinMann @rnitsch @Nyoei @spinflip @hodot @SecondJon )

Hi there everybody here!
Is there a way to view the timeline of another instance in a pinned column?
For example, we're at qoto.org but would like to follow the local timeline of botsin.space. is there any way to do it? Do instances have a public timeline #RSS for example?

#QOTO is back!

The migration to the new server ran rather smoothly. We had a postgres version mismatch but it was resolved and we are rebuiding the feed. But no data was lost and all should be good. Welcome back and enjoy the new servers, we have doubled our capacity so hopefully everything will be far more responsive now.

Spoken languages vs Software languages:
For complex ideas translation between English and French is not perfect, translation transforms the information... you can not express the exact same thing in different languages.
Software, however can be “perfectly translated” you could implement the same application in Python as you can in JavaScript.

One thing that interests me about human nature is that EVERYONE tries to be a good person. There dont seem to be any exceptions to this.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone IS a good person. Only that everyone tries to convince themselves that that their morality is good.

Even serial killers often claim they were doing "gods work" as if somehow murdering innocent people is a good thing.

I think it is in this quality that there is the most hope for humans, even when we loose our way. The fact that everyone, no matter how disturbed they are, is always looking towards a moral compass, even if that compass is broken.

Meta-post: I think this is the third time I've made an account and tried to commit to mastodon. The others times lasted for about as long as it took for the novelty of tooting about mastodon to wear off: once we all got that point, it turned out that nobody really had much in common and engagement slowly dropped to zero.

This time around, I'm actually genuinely enjoying being here. There's a lot more activity, and a far smaller proportion of it seems to be of the boring "mastodon is good and better than twitter" ilk. Maybe the critical mass to keep people around has finally arrived?

More and more valid everyday.

Hi, Folks!

I am a tenured Associate Professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia, PA, USA. I have my B.S. Degree with a Double Major in Chemistry and Physics and my Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry with specialties in Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy, Instrument Design, and Automation Software Development. I teach in an interdisciplinary undergraduate program called Integrated Science, Business, and Technology in which our students study the process of developing scientific discoveries into new products and services using collaborative business practices. I develop and teach courses in Energy, Materials, and Informatics, and have personal research interests in Robotics and Machine Intelligence.

After joining Facebook as soon as La Salle was added to the Facebook servers in 2005 and Joining Twitter in 2007, I created the Facebook and Twitter accounts for the University as I was unable to convince our IT department that it was important for the University to have a presence on social media.

After openly sharing my personal Political positions as a Constitutional Conservative and my support of Donald Trump, the backlash on Facebook and Twitter was so severe that I no longer use those networks.

As a Conservative Academic, I understand and deeply experience what it means to be a minority. I'm giving Mastadon a spin in search of respectful conversation. #introduction