PCCs were a mistake. Never should we have let the ruling class impose a politicised police force upon us. It was inevitable that it would lead to ignorant nonsense like this.

What an absurd comment. As if defederation were ever a suggestion? As if it were even possibility? I’m struggling to understand what point you were even trying to convey here.

Did the previous lack of transphobia-specific guidance somehow negate the fact that abuse and bigotry, including transphobic bigotry, was already against the rules and banworthy in this instance? Do we constantly having our finger hovering over the ‘defederate’ button, just in case an instance is not deemed ideologically pure enough?

Well apparently, yes! In spite of the fact that this guidance takes a very sensibly neutral tone, it is precisely that neutral tone (predating this specific guidance, but as a response to the same neutrality that it embodies) that has directly resulted in this instance being defederated by at least one major instance already.

That the fediverse supports defederation does not mean that it’s acceptable for everyone to bring it up at every opportunity, as if it should be the action of first response. Defederation is a last resort for rogue instances, and to bring it up outside of that context is dreadfully gauche.

I never cease to be baffled by the seemingly boundless glee with which Americans will repeat this myth that has no basis outside of Internet cope. Literally nobody born in the last 100 years would read “trump” to mean “fart”. The only meaning of “trump” to British people is the winning suit in a game of cards, or the concept of winning in general. There’s literally a collectible card game in Britain called “Top Trumps”, and let me tell you, it ain’t about huffing farts. Unlike your absurd comment.

And even if people did understand “trump” to mean “fart”, it’s still an astonishing feat of mental gymnastics to claim that “it makes no sense that you would elect someone called that”, because funnily enough, a person’s name is totally unrelated to their ability to do the job, and lots of people have funny-sounding names that go completely unremarked upon, because people understand that a name is just a name.

I absolutely hate the guy, and yet when I see people purporting to make fun of his name based on something that isn’t even true, rather than, y’know, attacking his actual policies and actions, it makes me despair at the pathetic state of American politics. Seriously, your country is going to the dogs, and the best thing you could think of to combat that is to baselessly make fun of a guy’s name?

There was certainly a ‘no-brain’ somewhere in her thought process, I’ll grant her that.

But a tomato isn’t even an actual fruit…

“Actual” refers to the ordinary “plain English” meaning. Under the “plain English” definition, i.e. non-technical, non-domain-specific, a tomato is a vegetable.

It’s a botanical fruit, but an actual vegetable.

That feels like a rather tactless choice of phrasing in the headline, given that there are people literally under fire by Israel right now.