anarchistelfliege 🚲 @distelfliege@todon.nl

weirder.earth is back!

so here is an overview of where to find me now:

@distel - main account

@distel - arts and crafts + reading stuff

@muz - where I toot in german

@distelfliege - where I toot about politics

overlap will happen, but that's roughly the plan.

habemus even newer, old avatar from 2017 :D

habemus new avatar

#mastobikes first tip is: always assume that motorists turning right will not respect you, especially trucks.

try to use bikelanes as often as possible.

don't be afraid of rush hour, that's when motorists will be stuck in traffic jams and relatively harmless to you, and cyclists will be moving in big convoys of disciplined riders, giving you safety. it's a pleasure to ride with them!

#mastobikes yesterday at spinning group, several people who had gotten back into cycling complained about the constant close calls and being harrassed by motorists.
while I don't wish that on anyone, I'm kind of like "welcome to my world, everybody.. "

But I still tried to encourage them to ride more, and had some tips on how it still can be fun.

I have to say that the massive amount of bans against leftists, feminists, and activists of color in my twitter TL alone grossed me out so much that this was the reason I ditched twitter and came here.

currently, 3 women of color I followed are permanently banned and everyone writes solidarity tweets, but it doesn't help much.

#deletetwitter

especially feminist women of color got targeted. blogs, facebook groups and discords were set up to monitor their tweets and mass-report them.

sometimes a tweet of them was reportet 30 times per day.

it seems that twitter uses algorithms more than actual moderators, so that the sheer amount of reports leads to the banning of victims of hate speech, not ppl who spread hateful ideologies.

what had happened?
in germany, one law that was supposed to force big networks to do more against hate speech was designed: the "netzDG" (netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz)

soon nazis, identitarian assholes and "normal" white people found out that they could take advantage of it: they mass-reported leftists and leftist people of color, and twitter banned them permanently.

some time ago I wrote a few toots about how I don't think big proprietary networks are safer for #marginalized people.
the argument was that big networks are held accountable to obey andi-#disrcimination laws.

I was reminded how several women of color in my #twitter TL were repeatedly banned for tweeting about their experiences with racism in a sarcastic way.

now they wrote about it on akweb (in german) https://www.akweb.de/ak_s/ak639/43.htm

I just read this article (in german) about the right government cutting budget for feminist projects AND writing an essentialist difference between men and women into the administrations' program: https://derstandard.at/2000081081117/Holterdiepolter-und-passiv-aggressiv-gegen-Feminismus?ref=article

I think this is one fundamental difference between rightwing and leftwing: leftwing is for equality of everyone, rightwing stands for being treated differently, depending on the (constructed) category you were born into.

still: when I DID get harrassed, the response to that was far better on mastodon.
I'm not a "law and order" type and I don't believe that centralized networks will really go through with anti-discrimination laws (of some countries). they will follow the letter of a law when they absolutely have to, but that will be all.

here, I can find instances that are moderated by people who really care, how can that be worse, I don't understand.

yeah well, I'm white, for some ppl I might appear as a dude, so I'm less likely to get harrassed a lot.
so take my personal experiences with a grain of salt, please.

as a user on twitter, I always got told that I have to provide my telephone number if I want to report anything or they wouldn't accept my reports at all, making me go through a lot of menus and in the end telling me I just should block the person. (depending what boxes I checked..sometimes they let me report stuff)

on masto, I chose 2 instances in the beginning. a safer one and a more "laissez faire" one. When I was harrassed, both instance admins/mods acted promptly.

I don't habe the link right now but someone argued that marginalized people are safer on centralized networks like twitter, because they at least can be held to obey anti-discrimination laws.

I was wondering how that can be true, because everyone has to abide by laws, so if illegal hate speech is illegal, every network has to remove it, be it centralized or not.

also, twitter really sucks at removing hate speech. instead, marginalized people are banned regularly.

#berlin was so full of cops today, it wasn't funny any more. I was a little ignorant/oblivious what was going on and when I finally realized it, I was rather glad I missed it: it was quds day, so there were likely religious anti-israel demonstrations.

(I was riding out into the woods and to the river to enjoy the summer. and I forgot my towel so I couldn't jump into the water! meh.)

outside someones playing the song for sacco and vanzetti 💜

afaik Gargron is not a "white cisgender man on top of the hierarchy", but also, that is his business.

could we just stop to assume these things about other people?

it's ok to criticize someones' actions.
it's ok to argue.

it's not ok to assume other people's gender, ethnicity, sexuality, any of their social position even if you think you know all about it.

today was "sternfahrt" which is once a year in berlin, and it means that thousands of cyclists ride together from all directions and meet in the middle of berlin. the closer they get the larger the group gets. I was about to leave for taking part and received a call that a coworker was sick so I had to work instead.
one part of Sternfahrt directly went by my workplace and I heard the tingling of their bells for a long time.
#mastobikes