bigshoulders.city is a Mastodon instance for Chicagoans current, former, and future. Its name comes from Carl Sandburg, who once compared ships pulling out to “mastodons, arising from lethargic sleep.”

Our goal for bigshoulders.city is to build a community of friends and neighbors across the Windy City. Toot your pho place recommendations, meet-up ideas, pothole gripes, creative dibs, and cross-town baseball taunts—whatever you want, as long it abides by <a href="https://bigshoulders.city/terms">our short and sweet content policy</a>.

Bigshoulders.city welcomes all sexualities, gender identities, races, levels of mobility, and ages; we embrace a user base as diverse and vibrant as nature’s metropolis, Chicago.

If a user posts a message that mocks, harasses, endangers, threatens, or otherwise puts at risk any other person on the basis of the criteria above, they will be banned from bigshoulders.city.

Whatever the intentions behind it, unsolicited advice—especially involving a user's health and wellness—is often indistinguishable from harassment and will be treated as such.

Please use the Report button; it is the easiest way for an admin to identify abuse. Decisions to ban do not have to be justified or detailed by the admins, nor will they be.

When in doubt, follow the Midnight Amendments.

Bots can be fun and useful under the right circumstances. Partner with the admin if you’re interested in adding a bot account to bigshoulders.city.

Mastodon’s robust support for content warnings (CWs) is a valuable part of the platform. Please consider using CWs for images that might be considered “not safe for work”, for video in general, and for film/tv/game spoilers. We do not have formal rules around CWs, but repeated posts of sensitive content without them may result in a message from an admin.Before you ask another person to CW something that is disruptive to you, consider whether one of the myriad other options for personal content moderation—muting, blocking, unfollowing, or filtering words—would achieve the result of removing that content from your own timeline.

bigshoulders.city implements Dzuk's "BLOCKchain" to block interactions with instances that might put our community at risk. Detailed reasons behind each ban can be found on the list's GitHub page.

Land Acknowledgment

Bigshoulders.city respects and honors that the Chicagoland area resides within the traditional homelands of many Indigenous nations. The history of Chicago, the city, cannot be seperated from the genocidal acts carried by white Americans against the original holders of this land:

• Hoocąk (Winnebago/Ho’Chunk), Jiwere (Otoe), Nutachi (Missouria), and Baxoje (Iowas)
  
  
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  Kiash Matchitiwuk (Menominee)
  
  
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  Meshkwahkîha (Meskwaki)
  
  
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  Asâkîwaki (Sauk)
  
  
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  Myaamiaki (Miami), Waayaahtanwaki (Wea), and Peeyankihšiaki (Piankashaw)
  
  
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  Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo)
  
  
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  Inoka (Illini Confederacy)
  
  
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  Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe), Odawak (Odawa), and Bodéwadmik (Potawatomi)

1. monsterfuckers.online: sospensione