After some years, rescuers arrived at the deserted island to find the man had set up farms, shelter, and modern amenities. He had even cobbled together a server out of fragments of wreckage and was self-hosting two single-user fediverse instances on VMs running Alpine Linux.
"But what is the second one for?" the rescuers asked. "Are you running glitch-soc, or trying out Calckey, or what?"
"Oh," said the man proudly, "that is the instance I refuse to federate with."
(The original joke, if you don't know it, is no. 2 on this list: https://forward.com/schmooze/421730/the-10-best-most-classic-jewish-jokes/)
Seriously, though, the #meta is over the instance simcha.gay/simcha.lgbt defederating from babka.social, another Jewish instance. the announcement: https://simcha.gay/notes/9h9ji15xigz8yctv
a user posted a link to a satirical article (tw: transphobia https://preoccupiedterritory.substack.com/p/use-my-pronouns-also-i-override-the) that likens western leftists calling all Arabs in Israel & the Palestinian territories "Palestinian" as akin to trans people demanding gender-neutral pronouns and claiming there is a trans genocide, implying both are attention-seeking ploys for political convenience.
(this echoes various pro-Israel arguments that "Palestinians" are not really a thing that existed before the establishment of the state of Israel, and that Arabs are well-treated in Israel and self-styled Palestinians are just angry Jew-hating holdouts who simply need to reject their leadership and become Israeli to access rights and equitable treatment.)
so basically a double whammy, virulent transphobia and an attempt to erase Palestinians/paper over existing inequalities and increasing anti-Arab violence in Israeli society.
the babka team deleted the post without disciplining the user, which simcha did not consider sufficient, so they defederated.
then babka announced they would also defederate because of harassment and bullying from simcha admins (https://babka.social/@babka/110726254078880716 / https://archive.is/ieFqJ). needless to say, simcha denies this. the babka team has not gone into specifics or produced receipts/logs.
this is hardly the first time i've disagreed with the babka team's judgement on Israel-related issues and what constitutes bigotry and been like 🤨
scattered thoughts:
- as an trans Asian anti-Zionist Jew, this is why I am not even going to bother with a Jewish space unless it's explicitly anti-Zionist, secular-friendly, and anti-racist.
- some of my fellow diasporic Jews resent being involved in discussions about Israel/Palestine but, like, I don't think it's always inherently antisemitic or irrelevant. As long as Israel wants to be The Jewish State, defenders claim criticizing it is antisemitic, and diaspora communities and organizations pour resources into Israel, it's every Jew's problem.
- some things SHOULD be polarizing. Jews are divided over this! We've always been! If we're not going to fight about THIS, what the hell are we going to fight about, gefilte fish recipes?
ok that's all i have actual work to do
@nev @aRubes
Not sure I get your second point 😕 any chance of you elaborating on it please?
Also, you are more than welcome to leftodon.social and tooot.im ; it's mostly in Hebrew, yet content wise, I believe it could be of interest. In case you don't follow anyone there yet, I would be happy to recommend. There are plenty of people there who are worth it!
@niamh @aRubes ah, i just mean that in much of the diaspora, many mainstream institutions/organizations have been overwhelmingly supportive of Israel and quick to suppress criticism…even if the government wouldn't necessarily support them back.
The recent judicial reforms mayyyy be pushing things too far, though.
@nev I can tell that over here in Israel, half of us are fighting the latest fascist attempt. Sadly barely 5% of us speak out against the occupation and are forced to wear the post-zionist or anti-zionist tag, even though we feel patriotic to a state that never quite lived up to the promises of our declaration of independence.
For us avoiding mixed online spaces is a luxury now, escaping into a political echo chamber feels nicer but won't effect injustice IRL. Food for thought
@nev
The way Judaism approaches it is really humanistic in a way, which works well with my atheism. They say you need to fraternize to change minds, and I'm all for that.
Sadly things heated up here in the last few months to the point nobody wants to even try. Temperatures are running crazy high, also literally which makes it worse. People are actually out in the streets today since 7am, and it's 75% humidity in TLV and in the 90s (34 centigrade expected).
So chill ;)
@I …I assumed you all would only get *dry* heat
another idealized vision of the holy land shattered..... 😢
@nev oh, it all depends where you go. The land is tiny but located across three very different micro climate areas. Jerusalem gets the dry desert climate with mountain rain seasons, Tel Aviv is a subtropical sweat gland, and up in the north you get all sorts of microclimates depending if you are in a valley, mountain area or the Golan heights. We even have a snow slope in the winter.
The land is great, it's the people who are ruining it :)
@hannah
> in my defense it was pretty small when i started
A lot of fediverse server admins seem to labour under the misapprehension they're obliged to have open sign-ups, and to keep them open even when they're being overwhelmed by newbies (not to mention spammers, trolls etc).
#PublicServiceMessage: They're not.
It's perfectly legitimate to make new accounts invite-only from Day 1, or to close signups when your population reaches whatever size you consider manageable.
(1/?)
@brennen
> i'm going to gently suggest that no one in this thread is in need of a lecture on these particular topics
It was a general information post, which is why I made it public. Had it been directed at you specifically, your @handles would have been at the start. I included them at the end as a courtesy, since the post tumbled out of your thread. Apologies if it seemed like I was teaching Grandma to such eggs : (
I suspect there's an unquestioned assumption lurking beneath this perceived need to keep signups open; that signup policy for servers is akin to immigration policy for countries. Ergo, closed signos are akin to being anti-immigration.
This assumption would be fair enough on a centralised platform. Where not being able to join the one server excludes someone from the whole platform. But it does *not* hold water in a decentralised network like the fediverse.
(2/?)
In decentralised networks, being selective about who joins your server is more like being selective about who lives in your home. People can immigrate into your country, even into your neighborhood, without necessarily having to move into your place. Even if you want to share a home with everyone who lives in your neighborhood - or your country - it's seldom practical to do so.
Being selective is unavoidable, if you want to keep your server sustainable and fun.
(3/3)
@nev The other volleyball Tom Hanks hid on the opposite end of the island, Bilson.
Bilson knows what he did.
nev
Niamh (he/him)
ኢራ עירא Ira عيرا 🍓🎗️
historic drystone sheep dyke
brennen
Strypey
Frank Barton
CoolBlenderKitten
Mark T. Tomczak
LAUREN