I've actually been here for a while already, though mostly inactive! The Birdsite Situation prompted me to pop in here again. And I'm terrible at writing introductions, so I usually just say "I do stuff on the internet".
But uh, I do all sorts of activist-y stuff, work on radical FOSS (see http://cryto.net/~joepie91/manifesto.html), write (educational) stuff, am more or less a lonely polyamorous gender blob of indeterminate sexuality who likes both cuddles and kinky things, and I always have 10 times as many projects as I have time for, as is customary with ADHD brain :) Sometimes I even finish some of them!
While I'm an introvert and need plenty of time to myself, I *am* happy to meet like-minded people and spend time with them, and as long as you're not a bigot or apologist, you should feel free to interact with me and/or follow me!
Also, I live in Rosmalen (near Den Bosch) in the Netherlands, and honestly would like to get to know more local folks, and I also have some vague intention to start a queer hackerspace around here if I can find enough interested people. Eventually!
Unlearning How White People Ask Personal Questions
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2014/05/05/unlearning-how-white-people-ask-personal-questions/
tech, rant, techbros
Honestly, techbros have kind of ruined tech for me... 😐
As a hobby, I can barely even enjoy it anymore - I have to constantly be on the lookout for people trying to squeeze a buck out of me, platforming fascists, or generally being shitty asshats to other people with zero accountability.
Even worse when I'm trying to build on existing work by someone who turns out to be like that - it feels like I'm perpetually building on quicksand, and good-faith collaboration is almost impossible.
And even a lot of supposedly leftist tech spaces have adopted (parts of) this kind of toxic culture... like the "contempt culture" shit (https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture)
Relatedly: with every passing day, I more and more understand why some people just don't bother explaining their judgments/conclusions anymore as soon as any nuanced understanding is required
apropos of ~nothing~ ::
it is a COMMON & well-documented tactic for abusers and narcissists to adopt whatever suit gives them power. nothing is sacred to them.
radical language? they'll co-opt it.
idpol? they'll abuse & warp it.
abusers aim to dominate & control. they want power for themselves. they do not want liberation for everyone.
**this is very dangerous & can be seductive as hell, especially to new folks.**
be careful out there. be wary of who you trust. keep your comrades safe from manipulation, by calling out this bullshit.
just speaking radical language does not make someone a revolutionary.
fuck a snake tongue. 🐍
It's very sad seeing people on fediblock posting from big 'known' instances that should have a core blocklist of the known bad actors in place already, getting harassed and attacked by accounts from very well known 'just fucking block these, they're gross' instances.
Preventing people from being the victims of targeted harassment is *always* better than waiting until they get harassed then dealing with it. There are so many block lists out there with these known bad actors on - use them.
protip: those tuna meals (usually with pasta, couscous, bulgur wheat, etc.) that come in foil packaging have a shelf life of like 3+ years *unrefrigerated* and are relatively cheap, so you can buy a heap of them and have instant acceptable-tasting meals if you hyperfocused / time-blindnessed yourself into feeling hypo, plus something to fall back on if there's another rush on the shops.
I bought some during the pandemic and they've all still got at least 2 years left on their sell-by date.
programming discourse, personal, rant, "native" languages/libraries
Something that really really stresses me out whenever I run across it, is people going on about wanting "native binaries", "native UI", and so on.
One part of this frustration is technical; "native" is an extremely ill-defined term, and in basically 100% of cases I've seen, the comment was based on some extremely wrong underlying assumption, and valid options are being discarded for no reason.
But of course, that *in and of itself* isn't really enough reason to be so bothered by it. People make wrong assumptions all the time. So what makes it so bad?
It's that it's such a widespread and *intangible* misconception.
There is no escaping it - people constantly complain about "non-native" things everywhere, often to the point of shitting on other people's work. Every day, in every community, everywhere, all based on wrong assumptions.
And it's intangible; everybody who does this has a *slightly* different set of wrong assumptions underlying it. There is no one catch-all answer that quickly corrects the assumption and helps people understand. It is always a long process of drawing out the exact wrong assumption.
The end result is a situation where it feels like I'm constantly assaulted with this stuff, often to the point of people being quite nasty to me or other people in the process, but if I ever say anything about it, I automatically sign up for an hour-long debate session.
An hour-long debate session. Every time. Frequently while getting harassed by every onlooker pelting me with every problem they've ever had with JS, Python, Lua, React, Electron, whatever else, even though it has nothing to do with even their inaccurate concept of 'native'.
And the alternative option is to shut up and have it grate on me every day, all day, every time it is brought up, with half the (solicited) suggestions I give to people while trying to help them, getting dismissed out of hand (sometimes aggressively so) because it's "not native", whatever that means.
This really sucks. I wish people stopped doing this.
Dat de politie enerzijds blokkadeacties van boeren faciliteert en anderzijds honderden klimaatactivisten oppakt wanneer zij precies hetzelfde doen, is alles behalve hypocriet of inconsistent.
Integendeel: het suggereert juist dat politie en justitie zéér consequent zijn in het behartigen van gevestigde belangen en het uitvoeren van een bepaalde politieke agenda.
Sometimes perseverance is constructive, but at other times, it’s maladaptive and harmful.
I wish we didn’t teach young people that grinding away at a pursuit that isn’t a good fit for you (or isn’t anymore) is a character-defining virtue.
There is joy in quitting, peace in knowing when to move on, dignity in valuing your work and your time on earth enough not to spend it in ways that don’t fulfill you.
(When you can. When it’s safe. When you have the choice. Sometimes you don’t.)
When you see hypocrisy, most of the time what you're really seeing is the exercise of power.
uspol, police murder
do all cops want to beat people to death? No. But, like, if you were a nurse and you found out that one of your coworkers was murdering their patients for fun, and you DIDNT STOP THEM or DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT?
Technical debt collector and general hype-hater. 30, NB, ND, poly, generally queer. Flirting okay, though I might not actually recognize it :P
I have strong views about abolishing oppression, hierarchy, agency, and self-governance - but I also trust people by default and give them room to grow, unless they give me reason not to. You probably know the ideology I'm talking about here, but I'm deliberately not naming it :)
Those strong views extend to technology and software, and I think that almost everything about how the technology industry currently works, is wrong. Both on a technical and a social/political level. If you feel the same, we should probably talk!
If I don't respond to your messages, I'm probably just out of spoons, and it's nothing personal. Feel free to boost anything that I post myself! I'm more cautious with boosting other people's posts to avoid dogpiling, but that's probably a bad Twitter habit.
I'm involved in a lot of public activism-y things, and you might know me from something I've done in the past. While it's nice to see people appreciate that, please don't treat me like a famous person! Fame kinda sucks, even if it's sometimes necessary for activist purposes. I'd much rather get to know people on a personal level.