æʃliŋ, purrepurrocessor @aescling@cat.family

#introduction Hi my name is wallhackio and I need a replacement for my addiction to twitter so I am here now.

I am a fan of good videogames (Outer Wilds) and bad videogames (Super Smash Bros Ultimate). Occasional discover weekly listener. Film and animation enjoyer. Future maine coone owner.

If I say something sucks, then I love it. If I say something is okay, then I think it sucks.

What is an ohio

The GlitchCat #SundayPost offers news and updates from our corner of the fediverse to yours.

§ Current Events :—

• The World Cup is happening, which many people have predicted will be the death knell of Twitter. We’ll see.

• Of probably more relevance to the fediverse, Elon Musk erpragyl qrpvqrq gb erfgber gur nppbhag bs Donald Trump gb gur cyngsbez, which may cause additional people to leave there for here. Mastodon was already facing heavy strain after Elon bssrerq gb cnl frirenapr gb nalobql jub qrpvqrq gurl qvqa’g jnag gb jbex sbe gur pbzcnal nalzber, juvpu zbfg crbcyr npprcgrq, guebjvat Gjvggre’f bcrengvbaf vagb punbf naq yrnivat gur shgher bs gur cyngsbez hapyrne.

• For those of you who have not yet checked the news today, it is with sadness that I must acknowledge ng yrnfg svir crbcyr jrer xvyyrq naq gjragl‐svir bguref vawherq va n fubbgvat ng n tnl avtugpyho—Club Q—yngr ynfg avtug. Qrgnvyf, ng guvf cbvag, ner fgvyy hapyrne.

§ Instance News :—

• We have a new member! Everybody welcome @wallhackio to the fediverse!

• We have updated the server to GlitchSoc as of PR №1875, which is just before the new user interface was added. I’m currently working on drafting acceptance criteria for moving past that point; thanks to everyone who responded to my posts asking for feedback on the new changes.

• Dealing with constant Mastodon things (new users, security patch, gathering feedback, new users part two) over the past two weeks has honestly left me pretty exhausted so please be understanding of any delays in responses.

§ From Our Users :—

• @aescling played the new Sonic game and had thoughts and this is me pressuring them to record those thoughts somewhere.

• @Lady is playing the new Pokémon game.

• I·d·k what games the rest of you are playing but feel free to tell me in the replies.

§ Holidays and Observances :—

• Orange Week continues through 25 November. As a reminder, Orange Week is a weeklong observance recognizing the cost of genderbased violence in lives and debility. As noted last update, today is Transmas, a·k·a Transgender Day of Remembrance.

• 👗 21 November is Day of Red Dress, a day of remembrance for indigenous people dead or debilitated as a result of genderbased violence. The name of this day comes from the notable REDress Project by Jaime Black, aimed at drawing attention to the large number of missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada. The success of this project has lead the colour red, and red clothing in particular, to be widely recognized as a symbol of genderbased violence against indigenous people, especially women and girls.

• ☂️ 22 November is Umbrella Day, a day of remembrance for surviors of intimate partner violence, who are now dead or debilitated as a result of (the same, or subsequent) genderbased violence. The umbrella connotates simultaneous meanings of shelter, unity, and selfdefence. It has been used in an antiviolence context by, for example, the U·N·E·S·C·O “Orange the World” campaign, which states: « Under an umbrella, we stand united to fight physical, verbal and emotional violence, both online and offline and SAY NO TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN. »

• 🚼 23 November is Flissmas, a day of remembrance for reproductive labourers, including care workers, dead or debilitated as a result of genderbased violence. In the Catholic tradition, 23 November is the Feast of St Felicity, of whom we know basically nothing about. According to (improbable) tradition, she was the mother of seven sons, who she comforted through their torture and death before being executed herself.

• 💪 24 November is Rosiemas, a day of remembrance for productive labourers dead or debilitated as a result of genderbased violence. The shortage of male labourers during World War I and World War II led to the employment of a large number of women—popularly known as “Rosies”—in jobs which had traditionally been seen as mens work, such as manufacturing. These jobs were frequently hazardous, underpaid, offered little security, and after the wars ended, the women who held them were quickly forced back into lower‐paying work or the home.

• 🗣 25 November is Cathemas, a day of remembrance for political activists dead or debilitated as a result of genderbased violence. Cathemas is formed from the union of two observances, which happen to share a date of 25 November. The first of these is the Feast of St Catherine of Alexandria, who was probably not a real person, but has been nonetheless popularly venerated on this day since mediæval times. According to tradition, she was an educated woman who spoke out against Emperor Maxentius and was subsequently put to death, perhaps after refusing his hand in marriage. The second observance is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, established by the United Nations General Assembly in memory of the assassination of the very real Mirabal sisters, activists in the Dominican Republic who organized against Rafael Trujillo, the man in control of the government at that time.

The GlitchCat #SundayPost offers news and updates from our corner of the fediverse to yours.

§ Instance News :—

• In light of the recent flood of new users from Twitter, concerns about the moderation capacity of some larger servers, and increased concern on my part regarding the potential for boosts of posts from our server to reach instances which do not share our values, I am currenty planning to upgrade silences on several large instances to suspends. These blocks will be open to revision, but only if the servers in question can demonstrate they have their moderation act together. Expect them to be carried out imminently.

People on other servers: This is a good time to remind that moderation on GlitchCat isn’t about what content ⁜we⁜ can see, but who can see ⁜us⁜. We trust in our users. My hope is for people here to feel comfortable posting on the public timeline without fear of it getting boosted into the wrong hands. Preventing federation with large, poorly‐moderated instances is essential to cultivating this environment, as those instances form the hubs through which others might encounter our posts.

We will continue to federate with large instances which ⁜do⁜ appear welmoderated, like mastodon.art and scholar.social, and look forward to working alongside their moderation teams to resolve any issues we might have.

• We have modified our robots.txt such that even the root page of glitch.cat.family will not be indexed by search engines. This website is now entirely part of the “deep web” 🌊😱.

• We have added a new feature to Kibicat Mastodon—the fork of GlitchSoc that we run—vayvar fcbvyref! This feature is only available in the H·T·M·L and Markdown content modes: Wrap text in a <spoiler-text> element to make it require a clickthrough, like on Discord. This feature ⁜does⁜ federate, but considering no other instance has implemented it (yet), everybody else on the fediverse will see Rot·13, which is the fallback.

• We’ve optimized the settings for GlitchCat to make it run smoother. We weren’t experiencing any problems before, but now we’re extra not‐experiencing‐any‐problems.

We also recently upgraded the amount of RAM this server uses, so now is a good time to mention that you can support this instance financially if you have the means.

§ From Our Users :—

• @Lady and @aescling: See above. We’ve been hard at work improving this instance!

• @noracodes: Recently @noracodes did some great work helping our friends at weirder.earth to scale their instance in the face of the current migration of users from Twitter. She also wrote about it!

§ Holidays and Observances :—

• 🟠 19 November–25 November is Orange Week, a week of mourning and activism focusing on genderbased violence and its impact around the world. The colour orange is used to symbolize the spectrum of antiviolence work, from 🟥 emergency response to 🟨 education & advocacy, and is the official colour for the United Nations UNiTE campaign to end violence against women.

• 🤍 19 November is White Ribbon Day, a day for recognizing the cost of genderbased violence in terms of human lives. The White Ribbon Campaign was formed by a group of profeminist men in London, Ontario in response to the École Polytechnique massacre on 06 December 1989. This is recognized at various dates depending on location, but we do 19 November because it is six days before Cathemas.

It so happens that 19 November is celebrated in some locations as International Men’s Day. It also so happens that men are disproportionately the instigators of genderbased violence, so this observance could be seen as a counter·observance of sorts.

• ⚧️ 20 November is Transmas, a·k·a the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day of remembrance for trans people dead or debilitated due to genderbased violence. Transgender Day of Remembrance was begun in 1999 to memorialize Rita Hester, a transgender woman, who was murdered on 28 November the previous year in Allston, Massachusetts. Although the original organizers solely emphasized remembering those trans people lost to murder, we also recognize those dead or debilitated from other violences, such as systemic violence and suicide, on this day.

The other day I was talking with some friends about the “old days” before Mastodon supported CWs, and how we used to EBG13 nyy bs bhe cbfgf because, guess what, if Mastodon didn’t have CWs we still wouldn’t throw nyy guvf fuvg out in the open. I realized that I actually kind of liked ROT13 better than the current system, because you could only ROT13 ⁜cneg⁜ bs n cbfg and the remainder would give the reader context as to how the problematic bit was being used.

Then I realized that our old ROT13 system was an effective plaintext fallback for pbagrzcbenel Qvfpbeq-fglyr fcbvyre gntf and that I could just implement that in Mastodon, so I did.

GlitchCat users! You can now create inline spoilers in your posts by using a <spoiler-text> HTML tag in either the Markdown or HTML content modes. Spoilers ⁜can⁜ include emoji but ⁜cannot⁜ include other markup like links, mentions, or hashtags.

Spoilers federate as ROT13 with special properties so that other servers can recognize them. If you are on another Mastodon instance which supports Markdown and HTML content modes, let me know and I can get you a patch!