Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

Had to use Google Maps today due to circumstances and yep, their bike routing is still fucking awful

One of the most frequent bits of advice I hear towards radical activist groups, is that they shouldn't be so demanding of people, and they should compromise on their values to have a broader reach.

Let's talk about why that strategy doesn't really make sense, when you think about it.

Now, let's start with the goal of such a movement: it's, usually, to 'shift the frame' in public debate, to change what is considered morally acceptable by a general public. For that, you only usually need a relatively small group of people to start with (think hundreds or thousands).

The unspoken assumption in the advice is that if you don't compromise, then there will simply not be enough people who agree with you, to create that change. But that assumption is not actually true!

So if you have the choice between "sticking with your values and reaching like-minded people", and "compromising on values and reaching people who don't really agree", the former makes a lot more sense.

This then sets into motion a gradual shift of the public opinion, which will slowly grow the group of like-minded people - and with it, the group of people interested in getting involved. All without any compromise on values!

In short: we don't actually *need* to compromise on our values, to reach our goal. That would only be helpful to instantaneously have broad reach while getting little done - but that is the goal of marketing companies, not of activists.

"But it's important to get criticism from people who think differently, or it'll be an echo chamber!"

First off, "echo chambers" in that sense do not exist - they are right-wing rhetoric, not some sort of social-scientific concept. Really. Go look for the origins.

Secondly, the values we're talking about here are values like equality and basic human rights like agency. We generally don't really care about the opinions of people who do not share those values, like transphobes or racists.

"But you might miss out on valuable criticism that way!"

This hides another unspoken assumption - that racists, transphobes, etc. are somehow uniquely qualified to provide criticisms that *nobody else* who isn't a transphobe, racist etc. would come up with.

I would invite you to sit for a bit and think about what you're implying with that, and what that means for your own worldview.

Food brands should be legally required to disclose the manufacturers and suppliers for their products

I wonder what would happen if there were an easy-to-install automatically-synchronized blocklist of LLM scrapers that functioned on a webserver level

Does anyone have a userscript or something for Mastodon, that lets me auto-CW any posts from specific accounts?

(Also, I can assure you that the trans folks around you are very carefully watching the way that people act towards them - you won't need to signpost that you're being supportive, it will be noticed in the same way as when you're not)

I've been seeing that picture going around again that tells you to "repost this if trans people are welcome and safe with you", so I guess it's time to bring this up again:

I understand the intention, but it's really not as helpful as you might think. Like most marginalized groups, trans folks often have to deal with being told that they are 'welcome' somewhere, only to discover that there are hidden conditions attached - don't act too queer, don't act too outspoken, don't be too weird, don't be too sexual, and so on.

The result is that "trans people are welcome with me" is a meaningless statement - we have no idea whether that is actually true, or whether you just *believe* that that is the case, but have never engaged with the subject enough to understand what that really entails.

Intention alone is just not sufficient to provide safety; you also need to do the work of actually understanding what is needed and providing those things.

So again, I understand the intention, but this doesn't really help. The best way to show trans folks that they are safe with you, and that you are *capable* of creating that safety, is to *act* as such, rather than just *saying* it.

Proactively speak out against abuse that trans people receive, extend an open offer of help in whatever way is needed to the trans folks in your social circles, and so on.

I can't speak for everyone of course, and it's possible that there are trans folks for whom such posts *are* helpful. But I don't think I've ever talked to any trans folks who felt that way, at least that I know of.

(This implies it being compartmentalized or composable in some way, such that the library or function also does not need to care about trampling something else's data)

Actually, you should be able to provide a database instance (not a connection string, not a hostname, an *instance*) as an argument to a library or function, with that library or function not needing to care about where the data is persisted exactly