If you live or visit Malaga and are craving a perfect coffee, there’s a cafe called Santa cafe (holy coffee) which wipes the floor with every other cappuccino in the city by a mile. I recommend it.

@realcainmosni I have no idea what that means.

@DaveRussell We all need a little more cognac. It's going to be a long few years.

@emc2 It has to be both frustrating and bewildering.

@tomjennings I'm going to say something that sounds harsh, and I don't enjoy saying it.

The people who won't change their habits simply aren't in enough pain yet.

But also, I think, we've been brainwashed into believing that democracy is easy - that it should be easy.

And for a while, for many, it really was. But no more.

@tomjennings Hey, Tom, no need to apologise at all. But I also want to warn against the trap of nostalgia. It simply is so unproductive.

Love it or hate it, the internet has changed us profoundly - socially and individually. It isn't going away. The challenge is, to find a way to keep the things we cared about before it came, and to mitigate the obvious damage it can do.

We can never go home. But we can have some say in the new place we find ourself in.

@mikesax I do back their cause. But their cause is not my cause. I am not American.

And if you have looked at the totality of my timeline, you would know that.

But when criticism is due, it's due. And better now than when all the accounts on all their tech-bro owned plaforms disappear at once, perhaps my criticism will have prompted them to diversify.

@padinero Here's the thing:

If they depend on a platform owned by someone who has a specific interest in hindering their organization, then people will get confused and stay at home.

The solution is to train people into using alternative forms of communication. And the actual act of training people to on teach using mastodon, will, in itself create a community of trust.

@cj Well said. At this point, you can't afford to. @Quasit

@tomjennings This technology is here to stay, it isn't going away.

It is what we do with it and what we demand of it and how we shape it (where we can) that matters. But we can and should mitigate the perils as much as we can.

And yes, you are right: the internet is not a safe space. But then where is a safe space?

I agree wholeheartedly that meeting in the flesh is good - not just to lessen dependence on digital communication - but because what is experienced in the body more powerful.

@FranceskaMann All language hacks the neurotransmitters. And yes, of courses it is a construct, but what is not? Society is a construct. And yet some societies are really wonderful, life-affirming constructs.

However, it should be as consensual as possible.

@tantramar

@ghouston @acm_redfox possibly, but that would present the gov't with a stark first amendment issue. Wholly owned companies are not legally obligated to host free speech.

@edebill That's very encouraging.

@djmitche Yay!

@kelleynnn I'm not in the US. I'm not American.

@dalias True. That might be a silver lining.

@politipet I'm not American.

@tasket If people cannot deal with that, do you really think they're going to have the staying power to triumph over authoritarianism?

@DoomsdaysCW Maybe if there is a silver lining to what Meta did, it will serve as a wake-up call to other organising groups.

Bluesky is no better. It has no independence.

@ambiguous0 I don't think Meta gives a shit. They are incredibly shortsighted and greedy as evidenced by their overt support of Trump.

@indivisibleteam