Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

It's so weird when I look up a thing and see a thread where one of the first replies is the simplest and most elegant solution that achieves the desired result perfectly... and then the thread continues and people start posting objectively worse solutions involving extra steps and software and then other people start posting asking for help with the convoluted methods instead of just going for the good one 💀

Especially when the good one is already marked as the solution

Anyway I'm talking about the Steam forums here, not some super techy stuff lol, I kinda made it sound like some programmer nonsense but it's just about getting old games to run better

I Am No Longer Attending Vintage Computer Festivals

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5587

You know why marginalized folks like me so often don't trust "allies"? Because they are not bound by their plight.

Marginalized folks *live* their oppression; they can never opt out from it, they cannot choose to escape it. They need to either fight it, or drown in its consequences. Every consequence of their oppression is one that they will experience personally.

They will be in the fight for however long it exists; that is a guarantee. And that means you can rely on them being there to have your back, as they are able to.

Allies, however, have no such plight. As an ally, you have a price. It may be high, it may be paid in something like safety or convenience rather than money, but you have a price.

There will be a point where you have the opportunity to leave marginalized folks and their plight behind, for your own benefit or comfort. You will have the opportunity to opt out. Sooner or later, you are likely to take it.

You will convince yourself that it is "better for everyone this way". That you have "changed perspectives". That you have "discovered more nuance". That ultimately, you made the right choice by leaving behind the most vulnerable in society, when the price for doing so is high enough.

Depending on what you do to support marginalized folks, we may appreciate it. It may be genuinely helpful. But we will never be able to *trust* you. Because when the stakes are highest, you are going to be the first ones to leave.

i hate how acting that janitors are these invisible untouchables is so prevalent in our culture yet thanking pigs for their "service" (to the ruling class) is something we are taught

There now is an event sponsorship policy for #nix #nixos https://github.com/NixOS/foundation/blob/bb7af14ae242ab87c8312bb4122b2a3cd184462d/policies/sponsorship_policy.md

I was gonna post this on the discourse, but to be honest, it’s a very toxic and unproductive space, so instead I’ll post it here, since what I’m really interested in is speaking to minorities about the state of the project.

This committee is designed to offer fair representation of the community as a whole, including the various minorities that compose it.

So the minorities being represented here are event organizers, foundation board members, moderation team members and marketing team members….

Just to recap:

Foundation board members: 5 men
Moderation team: 1/5 non-binary
event organizers (NixCon NA): 2/14 women (as far as I can tell)
marketing team: 1/6 women

This is absolutely not a fair representation of the gender minorities in NixOS. The story is similar for sexual identities, people of color etc… And further all these positions are positions of power, there isn’t any representation of people that haven’t already been pre-selected through governance decisions and community hazing, limiting the perspectives of this committee severely (specially considering that the community, and its discourse is also dominated by cishet white men).

One great first step if everyone wants to take these issues seriously is to not pretend that there isn’t an issue. That means not misusing the word minorities in this context, there clearly are no special provisions or design decisions that actually make makes this committee a fair representation of minorities.

This is a shame, considering how many great PRs and commits to the Nix ecosystem come from people that are part of these groups. They deserve better representation, specially if our goal is to keep them happy with their participation in the project.

We aren’t represented. And until we are, I think “proper channels” and committees where a bunch of people that won’t listen to us anyway and can veto us at any time aren’t gonna be viable options for advocating for the policies and changes we find important. The power structure you have created doesn’t provide us more security than “we promise”. And promises have been broken before.