Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

@silberfuchs

Something that I think was not clear to me and maybe to many more people at the beginning: We all have an idea to not say anything incriminating during an interrogation, but cops will be fishing for *any* information at *all* times, and they will use sketchy emotional strategies to catch you off guard or provoke a reaction. A formal interrogation in a room is 1% of it.

**Edit**: Details about laws in these examples are specific to Germany, but the general idea and cop behaviour apply universally.

"Good cop" in my experience looks less like the nice detective from the cop show, and more like a non-cop-looking woman in cleaning lady clothes coming to you at the corridor and asking if you would like a cup of coffee. If you accept the next question will be "are you doing OK?" or "are you being mistreated? would you like to file a complaint? I can ask for a female officer if you prefer." This is a trick. Your emotions are high, you'll be thirstier for support and a bit of fucking humanity than you can imagine right now, and they'll deliberately exploit that to get you to slip more info, about yourself and others.

So your answer to "would you like a cup of coffee" is silence. If you're pressured to say something that's not silence, you say "no comment". "Is this your first time here?" No comment. "If you don't follow the proper procedure we'll have to hold you for longer" no comment. "You know, I don't really want to do this, actually I'm really proud that young people like you are taking a stand, this is just my job, can we just get this done so you can leave earlier?" No. Comment.

"Bad cop" in my experience looks less like the tough guy Dick Tracy slamming on the table, and more like snarky xenophobic or transphobic remarks, or punching protesters under the banner where the cameras can't record it, more to rub on your face that they can do what they want than to hurt, angling for a reaction; or flashing a heil hitler from the van when they pass antifas. If a cop shows my gender marker to others and make mocking comments and I say "that's transphobia and it's illegal", I fall into the trap. This will start a conversation and in the conversation they'll have all sorts of *other* tricks to enrage and scare and provoke you to talk. Complaints are to be filed with a cool head and through your lawyer.

They get you angry enough to return an abusive insult with "fuck you, you bigot"? Congrats, you just did a crime. Furthermore, anger leads to mistakes. At one protest, a cop doing a torture hold on my hand while dragging me around whispered on my ear like, "had enough? I can do much more". The beard of this creep rubbing on my ear while he got off on hurting girls got me so pissed, so eager to be a hero of the resistance, to defy them even harder and prove that pain won't break me, that I refused to show my ID when requested later. Had he not said the thing, I would have been clear-thinking enough to remember that refusing to show the ID, in my particular situation, would just give them a pretext to fingerprint me anyway while increasing my punishment.

Cop walking with you on the corridor: "We know you broke the Starbucks window at the protest, we have you on camera." You, indignantly: "That's preposterous, I was at the other side of the march, I have witnesses!" Now you just helped the cops figure out that one of the other 3 comrades they detained is the culprit, and in addition they get some fresh new witnesses to do their manipulations on.

A trick I heard of: Cop: "We have a complaint that you have been photographing those right-wing protesters, that's illegal." (It's not actually illegal to take photos here, only to publish them; it's also not illegal to photograph cops doing abuse; but they often will tell you it is.) "You must delete the photos from your gallery immediately." (This is not a thing they can demand, but they will anyway.) You, indignantly: "I have no photos of them, look!" Cop will swiftly grab your unlocked cellphone from your hand and take his time scrolling through all folders. Cops are not instant street prosecutors and can't accuse you of things. If an angry cop shouts and accuses you of a crime, you don't prove that you're innocent, you say nothing. "No comment". Criminal lawyers are trained to deal with this type of trick; leave your defense to them.

Want to file a complaint about this type of illegal yet omnipresent cop behaviour? Good luck proving it, it's your word against theirs and who do you think the judges will side with, antifa radicals or cops?

Mikola Dziadok from Belarus recounts that a favourite of cops who catch anarchists, in the post-Soviet world, is to do 4chan-ass political debate, like "you claim to be anarchist but you do judo, that's hierarchical!" Or for good cop, "in my heart I think anarchism makes sense, can you recommend me something to read?" (Your book recommendation is "no comment".)

Queer Hacker Community question: I know a few folk who experience and exist with plural identity, but in many regions they're a minority within a minority.

At least one such person is looking to relocate to Minneapolis and is hoping to connect with community there. Anyone want to raise a flag? I offered to post here (and I also did over on Bluesky) since my reach is broader than theirs, and they'll monitor the replies. 🤝

(Also, please forgive if your experience and understanding of plurality falls outside what you'd label as queer. I'm less familiar with this territory but I recognize that some folk feel comfortable with that categorization while others may not be.)

German is a dialect of Belgian

i wonder if and how languages are responding to the ever-becoming-more-commom "second-and-a-half person" (i.e. someone that the text is addressed to but isn't yet present at time of writing, e.g. viewer, reader).

in contemporary Hebrew it's usually 2nd person plural (usually masculine, though wild queers like myself often opt for the feminine), which interesting because i'm pretty sure a few decades ago it was 2nd person singular (and masculine, of course). here's a thesis in linguistics in case someone is interested.

in English it's harder to discern, but i'm pretty sure it's still 2nd plural, with the exception of the "chat" form, which is often singular. but otherwise it's still "readers". i think, anyway.

and from what i've been seeing so far, it seems Czech uses 2nd person singular (formal or informal, depending on context)? Czech speakers reading this, please correct me.

anyway, am i right in my observations?

Edit: Got lots of stuff to look through now. Thank you for all the boosts!

***

Hey, does anyone have a list of resources for someone who is rapidly losing their sight and will soon rely on screen readers or other blind accessibility software? I can suggest a few things I've heard about, but it would just be the two of us googling, really. #Accessibility

Edit: Got it, thanks!

🦾maybe my chromosomes don’t make me a source of violence?

Maybe my first puberty doesn’t make me an inherent shitbag?

Maybe rape culture is a goddamn *culture* and not some kind of inevitable, natural fucking order!?

This isn’t feminism, it’s just patriarchy viewed from below.

🦾transphobic cisgender women like to punish transgender women for awful things cisgender men do to them

They are totally fine allowing a cisgender woman who sexually assaults other cisgender women to pee next to them or be housed or imprisoned with them, but they won’t tolerate a transgender woman who doesn’t do those things sharing facilities with them because of the actions, both real and hypothetical, of cisgender men

Imo, These transphobic cis women have found somebody they can take their frustrations with cis men out on safely

Thats probably why they scream about “feminism” when they hurt us. Instead of avenging themselves on the cis men who hurt them, they punch down because it’s easier

something i kinda forgot about today because of irl stuff, the nixos installation disc thing that i made some days ago


#graphicDesign #linux #nixOS #nix #foss

Years ago, I’ve seen a phrase saying that some people always remember that “I am not like others”, but always forget that “Others are not like me”.

For #neuroqueer me, the first one is because, well, the society just doesn’t let me forget: I am always reminded that I am weird, wrong, not adequate, not appropriate etc
The second one, I suppose, is firstly because of exposure: #neurodivergency usually runs in the family - plus it’s more likely to be surrounded by somewhat relatable people, so #neurodivergent traits are seen as more common, and, secondly, because of innate human trait to see oneself as a baseline, to measure the world in relation to ourselves.

For me, that second thing makes it sometimes hard to believe that the things represented in the culture as normal and common are actually real:
- Wow, guys, you have your real selves? How do you know it’s not just another mask?
- No, it can’t be that loud music in shopping malls is not overwhelming for someone!
- I’m sure, that spontaneous love-at-the-first-sight is totally made up by poets and writers!
- Why would they even care about that person’s gender, it doesn’t matter?

And, from time to time, it would create some common dismissive phrases to raise as a center of doubt:
- Isn’t everyone having the same problems? Do NT people actually exist and are not just the same NDs like me, just masking better, with NT stereotype being nothing more than just a fairy tale made by exploitive society everyone is chasing hopelessly?
- Isn’t everyone pan by nature and just putting themselves into certain frames according to societal expectations?
- Doesn’t everyone just decide first that they want to fall in love with this particular person - based on their merits or potential candidates availability, and work towards feeling something later, and all those crazy spontaneous love stories being just late justifications of bad choices?
- Doesn’t everyone sometimes have dreams about having a different kind of body?
… and so on

The worst thing is, that despite knowing how ridiculous such doubts are, despite knowing all of the reasoning and all, part of me will still often have this doubts - because it’s not about actual reason, it’s much more about that basic instinct of having yourself as the origin, keeping all the coordinates relative to yourself.

Do you guys sometimes have these doubts about ‘maybe I am not so different after all, and others are just masking better?’ Are you also sometimes frustrated ‘It can’t be that some people actually do that’? Which are the things that you stumble upon most?
@actuallyautistic

Folks tend to think being a polyamorous transbian is mostly fun and sex, but it turns out there's actually an awful lot of talking, holding each other, yearning, and crying involved

Oh, and seriously hating the concept of distance

“Amid a national backlash against criminal justice reform, Illinois has achieved something extraordinary. It’s working better than anyone expected.” #Illinois #Chicago #CashBail #JBPritzker https://www.thenation.com/article/society/cash-bail-reform-illinois/

adding a touch of enby to my terminal