Mastodawn

Social Justice Warrior🦍Apr 28

@ExtinctionR Follow ideas, not people.

Nina Felwitch

@ExtinctionR
"imperfect allies aren't enemies"
This. A million times this.

@ninafelwitch @ExtinctionR

contrasocial Apr 28

Eh, this rhetoric isn't actually helpful, it's a way of laundering awful, destructive politics and then trying to blame those who don't accept them as the intractable ones.

It's why the frame has been moved to far to the extreme right that dems are supporting genocide and saying we should throw trans people under the bus, let politicians who take fossil fuel money off the hook etc.

Personally I'm over the wishy wash bullshit. Time to actually stand for something.

Nina Felwitch

@contrasocial @ExtinctionR We're talking about imperfect allies. Not "allies" who aren't actually allies because they go against everything we stand for.

Nina Felwitch

@contrasocial @ExtinctionR It is horrendous how we treat other leftists. If you're not perfect, you're excluded at best and hunted at worst. One bad joke and that's it, you're forever shunned and pray to god they don't find your bad takes from when you were a teenager.

The left spends more time fighting against themselves than against the actual enemy.

Pino Carafa Apr 28

@ninafelwitch @contrasocial @ExtinctionR indeed. Have pointed this out on a few occasions in the past but it bears repeating and repeating and repeating again until the ideological purists start to pay attention

@ninafelwitch @ExtinctionR

contrasocial Apr 28

That's not a thing that happens though. Again, the fear mongering around "cancel culture" is just another way of wedging a right-wing foothold into the political discourse.

Buying into the right's "anti-woke" bullshit is not going to help Democrats.

That is absolutely what happens. It happens here all the time, where whole mastodon instances are blocked just because one person there fucked up.
It happened on Twitter, where I personally witnessed entire wars being fought between different camps of leftists.
And this also happens during elections, where leftists refuse to vote for a specific party because that party isn't left enough.

Get out of your US-centric mindset.
You mentioning the democrats shows clearly that all you know is the US and nothing else.

But even in the US people rather voted for a small fringe party with zero chance of winning instead of voting for the dems to prevent a trump presidency.
Sure, in the end those votes didn't seem to have mattered anyway, but you couldn't possibly have known that.

And now you're under fascist rule. Have fun with that.

Cuteroll, autistic transgender otter Apr 28

@ExtinctionR is this AI

Vi 🦄🏳️‍⚧️🦄Apr 28

@ExtinctionR I sure wish this message wasn't delivered via an AI generated image.

Argie Apr 28

@AnhedoniaIsReal @ExtinctionR q.e.d., I think?

Vi 🦄🏳️‍⚧️🦄Apr 28

@SemAntiKast @ExtinctionR I am critiquing to build a movement without AI slop.

Mark Wyner Won’t Comply

Hear! Hear! SO many people need to hear this.

Broken Social Graph Apr 28

@ExtinctionR WTF

https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/ai-the-new-aesthetics-of-fascism/

AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism

It's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right.

New Socialist

GeofCox Apr 28

I think there are quite a few Mastodonians that could usefully bear in mind that 'perfection is the enemy of progress'.

There's an odd symmetry between the right-wingers that (for example) think since perfect equality is unachievable, working towards it is the wrong direction, and those left-wingers that criticise any attempt to reduce inequality because it won't lead to perfect equality.

Bishop Joey (he/him)Apr 28

@ExtinctionR Words to live by.

Shine McShine Apr 28

@ExtinctionR c'mon fellas, we can do better.

Esme Ciredutemps Apr 28

@Shine_McShine @ExtinctionR
This is generated by AI ?
How do you know ?

mL Apr 29

@ciredutempsEsme @Shine_McShine @ExtinctionR AI can now reliably produce legible text, but their output always has the discernible sepia tint. There are a lot of these circulating recently.

Esme Ciredutemps Apr 29

@ltlnx @Shine_McShine @ExtinctionR
Thanks

Shine McShine Apr 30

@ciredutempsEsme @ExtinctionR force of habit, I've seen this style of AI "art" so much lately I can recognise it on the fly. But if you want some proof, just look at t'he text. Each letter looks the same, but a closer and more careful look will reveal each one is different from the others (look at the Es, for example). So they are not typed, but drawn, which makes no sense whatsoever unless it's been drawn by a gAI.

Clinton Anderson SwordForHire Apr 28

@Shine_McShine @ExtinctionR

"I used AI to...." is the new "Listen, I'm not an asshole but".

#FuckAI

Respectable Normie, Esq.Apr 28

@Shine_McShine 💠 what's the tell to you? it looks feasibly hand drawn to me

To me I see very noisy whisker dots near the mouth, and whiskers that kinda blend in with the fur in the body. But simultaneously it looks more uncanny if you zoom out on the image and put it down to thumbnail size.

It’s hard to describe but image generators are really bad at knowing when to stop adding detail and you end up with a sort of fractal noise effect in the margins

🔥 Mireille Sillander 🔥May 10

@taq @Shine_McShine
There's hatching in the fur textures that humans don't do this haphazardly, a dark area in the face just above the brow that's too uniform to be a mistake but in the wrong place to be a brow shadow, and there's a weird double line around the edges which an artists would've removed or extended to go all around the image.

Saupreiss #Präparat500 Apr 28

+ Focus on sound arguments instead of good sounding Frames
+ Take arguments and interests that don‘t fit in as an opportunity to improve or as a clear decision instead invalidating them directly.
+ When someone disagrees, don‘t assume they‘re automatically evil, but might have considerable rationales instead, even if you don‘t Share it.
+ Using the very same tools like trolls won‘t help your case if your intention is not trolling.

David Apr 28

AI generated crap. You loost the retoot.

I can't believe you are so careless.
🤬🤬🤬

Hov! ~ Lethal Cheesecake ~Apr 28

@DBG3D @ExtinctionR With that style is a lot easier to fall for it (seems from another source, not made by them)

no need to be so harsh yet

❣️pro-guillotine Apr 28

@Hovenduck

checking the origin of a resource before using it seems a reasonable expectation, for anything that one takes (instead of creates). ?

Adelaide あで Fisher Apr 28

@ExtinctionR "whoosh" is the sound of the point going right over the heads of several commenters on this post

@actualwitch @ExtinctionR

Bargearse Apr 29

The entire thread is a shit show of a mess, not the orignal post but sooooo many disappointing replies.

I just hope #XR arent as disheartened.

St Woke of Pronouns Apr 28

@ExtinctionR why the FUCK are you using ai slop for this post? Of all the groups who should know better.

Hov! ~ Lethal Cheesecake ~Apr 28

@ExtinctionR I wish someone could remake the message without usin AI

If someone does, please, notify so we can share

@ExtinctionR "Imperfect allies aren't enemies", sure, but what if an ally's imperfection is that they're transphobic, how would you expect me, a trans person, to work with them? If a lot of the allies' imperfections are racism, how would you expect people of color to join the movement?

Russell Apr 28

@MxAlba It depends on how that imperfection manifests. If they're actively calling for bans, etc, that's not a potential ally. If they're passive or squeamish, that's still a potential ally.

Personally I take it to mean stop applying purity tests (those only serve to make enemies, not allies). For example Tesla used to be the car for climate conscious folks; now those same climate allies are being vilified for a decision made years ago. Yes to boycott dealerships, no to burning people's cars.

@zimzat I largely agree with you but at the same time you're basically saying that trans people should just put up with anti-trans micro-aggressions from cis allies, and people of color should just put up with racist micro-aggressions from white allies, and disabled and chronically ill folks should just put up with rampant ableism... What'll happen in practice, is that those marginalized people will leave the movement. And you actually see that happening. I'm a member of a radical intersectional movement in the Netherlands, but over the years, I've seen more and more disabled people and people of color drop out of the movement. The movement is gradually becoming whiter and whiter, and more and more able-bodied, further accelerating those effects.

Russell Apr 28

@MxAlba I don't mean they should just put up with it or ignore it; it should absolutely be called out. It's a question of how or when (or who; those with disabilities shouldn't be the only ones speaking up for themselves but they may be the only ones who know what's best for them, catch-22)

The often snarky exclusionary replies aren't helpful.

Then there was a post that put an accessibility problem on blast and rejected all solutions. Sometimes people just want to be outraged. 🤷

@zimzat But when such things are called out, that usually prompts a fragile response (white / male / cis / able-bodied fragility), and then you get the good old "leftist in-fighting"... Caused mostly by people who have not unpacked their own privileges or don't know how to deal with their own fragility.

Russell Apr 28

@MxAlba You're not wrong. It's challenging and those responses can be disheartening.

I take the attitude of Today's Ten Thousand https://xkcd.com/1053/ and at least try to inform and advocate and hope for the best. It's not much, but ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ten Thousand

xkcd

Nicola Apr 28

@zimzat @MxAlba A lot of ER's UK supporters are vocal TERFs though.

@CryogenicIce9 @zimzat Right... So... Then basically the dilemma for XR is, do they want to include TERFS and exclude trans people, or vice versa? If they keep including TERFs because "you shouldn't exclude imperfect allies", they will implicitly exclude trans people... And then trans people get called out for "not being able to play nice with imperfect allies", basically blaming THEM for the scism...

Nicola Apr 28

@MxAlba @zimzat I suspect that what this post (up there...) represents is them trying to give non-TERFs a plausible way to continue their support of ER, knowing that they've already tossed away the smaller percentage of trans supporters.... ie damage control.

@CryogenicIce9 @zimzat The interesting thing is... Here in the Netherlands, XR is queer AF.

Nicola Apr 28

@MxAlba @zimzat Yeah, the UK is weird when it comes to TERFs, I blame mumsnet

xorox Apr 28

@MxAlba @ExtinctionR Simple. Those are not an imperfect allies, they literally enemies.

Bargearse Apr 29

@MxAlba @ExtinctionR
>sure, but what if an ally's imperfection is that they're transphobic, how would you expect me, a trans person, to work with them

----

Then they're not allies and this post doesn't apply.

An example might be, people advocating for climate change lambasting #JSO or #XR becase their commute was longer one day.

Everyone is human and we can find many things in common with the most horrific people. Reductio ad absurdum, hitler loved animals, like many other folk do, doesn't mean a jewish dog lover would be an ally.