Catherine Clase @cmclase@social.cleverlibre.org

During COP27, we urge the Egyptian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all those held simply for peacefully exercising their human rights, implementing criteria set by local NGOs for these releases: fairness, transparency, inclusiveness and urgency. One of these prisoners is Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who is now on a water strike since the beginning of COP27. (thread)

👋
I'm a #kidney doctor working in Sussex and an Associate Professor in #Epidemiology in the EHR group at #LSHTM. I do research into drug effects. especially related to kidney disease, and into #COVID-19. I get to work with the cool kids at the Bennett Institute in Oxford which is pretty great. I think about better use of observational evidence. Except tomorrow, when I will be eating cake

#MedMastodon
#nephrology
#epidemiology #bigdata #realworld evidence
#OpenSAFELY

Some Mastodon thoughts, for bird-site expats (which include myself). I'm aggregating these from posts I've boosted before, so little of this is my own brain.

- There's no algorithm here. That means favoriting/liking doesn't do anything except communicate approval to the OP and others (which is still nice!).

- No algorithm means boosting ("retweeting") is the true method to increase a post's visibility. Do that more than you did on birdsite.

- There's no post-quoting here, and that's by design. Look at quote-tweets on the birdsite; it's a feature primarily used for toxicity.

- There's no direct word-search here either; that means you want to use hashtags to make posts more searchable. This is also intended, since word-searching posts was often used to harass/stalk on the birdsite and elsewhere, so that was left by the wayside here. This also means hashtags are much more a thing here than any of the algorithm-powered sites.

- It's encouraged to put in text descriptions when you post images; a lot of Mastodon users use screen-readers due to various disabilities, and getting an image description read out loud helps them immensely.

- Speaking of screen-readers: using capitalization in your hashtags allows the screen-readers to read them more easily, especially if you're smashing multiple words together. #rockmusic = unreadable. #RockMusic = readable.

- The best way to make threads is to make set your first post as public, but "unlist" all of your replies. This prevents your whole thread from clogging up feeds.

- Content Warnings should be used more liberally here. If you haven't gotten the impression yet, much of Mastodon was built and populated by marginalized groups who were harassed/bullied off of other platforms. This is the culture they built, to respect each other's mental health. It's not a rule, but it's well-appreciated.

- Consider chipping a few bucks towards whomever runs the server you're on; the strain is real, and most server admins were likely paying out of pocket before so don't have an existing donation base. The growth here has been extremely fast, and that means money's needed.

- DMs are just posts with privacy settings. So if you @ someone in a DM, you pull them into the thread. That could be embarrassing.

- Also, no, DMs aren't end-to-end encrypted, but they aren't on Twitter either. Don't use either if you want true privacy.

- Including your Mastodon handle in your birdsite profile will help people find you here; there's a tool (pruvisto.org/debirdify/ is one of them that's used) people can use to pull Mastodon handles from Twitter profile.

- Use the blocking and reporting features liberally, if needed. This should go without saying, but they work, and work well!

- If there's an entire Mastodon server you don't want to hear from, you can block the whole thing too.

- Preferences -> Appearance -> "Slow Mode": this can make larger "Local" feeds and any "Federated" feed much more readable.

I'll reply with some more as I see them, or reply here too. I've only been here 4 days but I'm loving it so far.

Hey, so, we've hit 1,028,362 monthly active users across the network today. 1,124 new Mastodon servers since Oct 27, and 489,003 new users. That's pretty cool.

It's a sample size of 1 but this new study measuring #aerosol #SarsCoV2 RNA gives us a target size for effective removal by #filtration. In line with what we already know about aerosol generation. Paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23744235.2022.2140822

A system that doesn't address the needs for climate justice and securing human rights is a system that has failed everyone – we need to keep both in mind.
Human rights and climate movements are stronger when we stand in solidarity together. Then we can also successfully push those in power to live up to significantly increased adaptation finance and immediately, drastically reduced greenhouse gas emissions. There is no climate justice without social justice and human rights.
#FreeThemAll #COP27

Mastodon Top Ten Server Status 11/7/2022
Just Amazing! It keeps doubling!
Almost 64,000 new users today on the top ten servers.
Over 34,000 new users yesterday
With around 16,000 2 days ago!.
133,454 in five days!
Servers are stained, but adjusting to the mass influx. Be patient.
Link to 11/6/2022 Status >>> https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/109300393953171450
#twittermigration #mastodonmigration

A detailed tutorial about Mastodon:

https://blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2022-11-03_what-i-know-about-mastodon/

HT @SchoolingDiana in Twitter

Sample size of one, but 90% virus found in the under 5 um so droplet hypothesis is stupid and we should put it to bed already

Night night droplet hypothesis

#COVIDIsAirborne as we knew in the 30s. 1930s. #tw

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23744235.2022.2140822

It's a sample of 1 but a good start on target size of #aerosol #filtration for #COVIDisAirborne HT @linseymarr paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23744235.2022.2140822

Beautiful blog post reviewing the cognitive capacity of multiple animal species. Their work focuses on #animalwelfare and #cognition. #cognitivescience #behavior #physiology
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tnSg6o7crcHFLc395/the-welfare-range-table

#CovidIsAirborne #TwitterMigration

Welcome to Mastodon, where there is no engagement algorithm! Its a change, for the better!

Favorite ⭐ - Just between the author & the reader.

Boost 🔁 - Send the post to your followers.

⭐ posts, you tell the author you liked their work.

If you 🔁 posts, then more people see them!

No text searching here.
#Hashtags are how you search.

Remember, report any harassment.

Block, Mute & Filter to curate your experience.

Okay this might be a long post

One thing that I realised is making #twittermigration harder for people to switch is because the whole concept can feel daunting & overwhelming for non-tech savvy people.

With Twitter to them it was straight forward and easy to find topics they enjoy but with mastodon its a bit different.
So if you're new to mastodon or you want to introduce someone to mastodon here are some tips, useful sites & tools:
### Tips:
- Choosing a home instance isn't as importance as it seems, don't overthink it. Yes moderation rules & policies may differ but they all have one thing in common: Be a decent human. You **always** have the option to migrate your account to a new instance.
- Toots (or posts if you think toots are cringe ) are what we call micro-blogging instead of tweets
- You’re supposed to "boost" AKA "reblog" toots that you like.Since Mastodon does not have an algorithm that surfaces toots that have been liked a lot, boosting is the best way to help spread stuff that you like, and to show appreciation. (credit to @orsvarn for this comment)
- Another way to fill your timeline with content you enjoy is to: Find other people with similar interests, follow them, favourite their posts, boost their posts, use hashtags. rinse, repeat. (credit to @garry)
- If you ever feel yourself getting sucked into arguments on the #Fediverse, you might want to take advantage of the instance mute/block feature!
Instances tend to foster a culture, so if you find people from a specific site tend to be bothering you, muting/blocking that instance will keep other members of that community from bothering you as well.
- Finally do not share private/sensitive information via DMs on Mastodon. Direct Messages are not E2E. **Keep it in mind**

### Useful tools & resources:
[Twitodon](https://twitodon.com/) - Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon
[FediFinder](https://fedifinder.glitch.me/)- Similar to Twitodon
[Fedi Tips](https://fedi.tips/) - an informal, unofficial guide for non-technical people who want to use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse
[Fedi Directory](https://fedi.directory) - A human-curated small selection of accounts to spice up your timeline.
[Trunk](https://communitywiki.org/trunk) -Trunk allows you to mass-follow a bunch of people in order to get started with Mastodon or any other platform on the Fediverse
[Fediverse.info](https://fediverse.info/explore/people) -growing list of people and topics can help you discover mutual interests with people around the world
**Mobile Apps:**
[Metatext for iOS ](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/metatext/id1523996615)
[Tusky for Android ](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keylesspalace.tusky&hl=en&gl=USt)

Lastly if you are interested in setting up your own instance you can learn via https://learnfoss.org/ its completely free and its made by the wonderful @stux

I apologize for the long post lol, just hope this helps anyones transition over

RT @ChandraPasma@twitter.com

A massive 71% of Ontarians believe the government is taking the wrong approach and should get back to the negotiating table.

The people are making their voices clear about what must be done.

Can you hear them @fordnation@twitter.com? Get back to the table.

#onted
https://globalnews.ca/news/9256193/most-ontarians-blame-ford-government-school-closures-cupe-poll/

As soon as I saw the Ontario government drafting legislation to shut down negotiations by overriding the Ontario Human Rights Code and Canadian constitution, I suspected Ontarians might have had enough of extreme far right tactics.