Contact the National Weather Service, suggest they join Mastodon or similar

“Critical government communications can’t depend on walled gardens,” says David Slifka on Mastodon. And yesterday, we learned that National Weather Service accounts were not granted API exemptions by Twitter, meaning that Musk the Billionaire wants $42,000 a month to let the NWS keep using Twitter for weather notices. So far, the NWS has no plans to do so.

So now is a great time to tell the NWS to set up a Mastodon – or some other Federated social media like Akkoma or Misskey or Friendica – server. They’ll never have to worry about API access again.

Send email mail to:

nws.social.media@noaa.gov

Now is the time to do it, because now is when they’re in a period of uncertainty and transition, which is to say – the time they listen to suggestions like this.

And, as always, now is a great time to leave Musk Twitter forever.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Fascism Watch for 19 April 2023 – Sanctuary States

There are two action items down at the bottom. Go do those, then come back.

Montana Republican Governor Gianforte sends back their Republican ban on trans youth health care saying it’s not restrictive enough. This isn’t a veto; it’s a referral back with commentary. The Senate has passed a bill with his amendments; the House is voting today (April 18th) and we can assume it’ll pass there as well, and then he’ll sign it. It’s the fairly typical criminalisation-and-lawsuit bill, so Montana will be another no-go state.

Here’s the current list of sanctuary states. (Last updated: 2022/5/2) The first list through legislation:

• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• District of Columbia (not a state, but still)
• Illinois
• Massachusetts
• Minnesota (originally executive order, now in law)
• New Mexico
• Oregon
• Washington State

Via executive order:

• New Jersey

Washington, DC also has some forms of protection in place but I do not know by what mechanism.

Minnesota is working on codifying their govenor’s executive order, which would be good. (ETA: Passed Senate April 21st). Nazi Republican Lauren Boebert has raged online about Colorado’s sanctuary status, to which I say good, go fuck yourself, you fucking nazi.

FiveThirtyEight, a tool which can be useful but must be watched and sorted very carefully, included a push-poll in its article citing widespread support for anti-trans action – not even just in the numbers, but as a directly and individually-linked source for quoted, standalone data. Push-polls are pseudo-polls, written to produce desired numbers for political use, and should never be shown as actually indicative of public opinion. And yet, here they are, doing that again.

I will link to and occasionally use FiveThirtyEight, but goddamn you have to watch them carefully.

Meanwhile, Republicans are bringing back child factory labour, because it’s forever the 19th century for them, and Republicans in Tennessee are adding to their ban on teaching “divisive concepts” and setting up a system for students offended by content to report that content. Quoting 10news, “Educators can also only teach about controversial aspects of history, such as racial oppression or slavery, as long those discussions are impartial.”

Tennessee Republicans are requiring that teaching the history of slavery has to be “impartial.” Christ.

Some number of Portland Police responded to LGBTQ-interaction training with racism, abelism, and outright white supremacy rhetoric in feedback. Because it’s the PDX Police, the chief responded by basically not responding, having his spokesman Lt. Nathan Sheppard dismiss the reports saying that they could “literally mean anything in today’s world where almost anything someone says can be offensive to someone else.”

TechDirt has a transcription of the full interview with the Substack CEO who basically demonstrated that he wants Substack Notes to be the Nazi bar. It’s no better than the video, but it goes longer.

In Twitter news, Musk went on Tucker Carlson’s show to Big Lie about the Feds having direct access to DMs on former-Twitter. Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Radio is following NPR, PBS, and Canada’s CBC off of Twitter, for the same reasons. And the National Weather Service was not granted any sort of API exception, despite the disinformation going around about that, so whether emergency notices go out is a crapshoot at best. They’re recommending people look at weather.gov.

So here’s your first action item: Tell the NWS that they should start a Mastodon server.

Send email mail to:

nws.social.media@noaa.gov

It’s also a great day to leave Twitter.

And here’s your second action item: Federal Republicans are working to override state laws and enact a national trans sports ban with H.R. 734. It’ll pass the House on party lines, but you should still contact your representatives to oppose this bill so it stays as much strict party lines as possible and shores up the Senate.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.