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i despise the argument that adults need to be thoroughly vetted for medical transition because surely, people need to be protected from making such a life-altering decision too quickly, or for the wrong reasons?

they do not, actually. people have the freedom to make an untold number of radical, life-changing decisions with potentially serious consequences at the drop of a hat, and for all the wrong reasons. we call this “being an adult”.

and the process of checking yourself to make sure you’re not making the wrong choices is called “responsibility”.

and every adult has the right to decide for themselves whether to act responsibly or not.

New rule! New rule!

Techbros are not allowed to invent any new ad tech apps until someone invents a bowl that doesn't heat up to a million degrees hot in the microwave while the food stays lukewarm

There should be fewer products named like "Eightfold.ai" and more like "Kyle's Ultimate Brush Pack"

gender roles, economy 

It's difficult to discuss this topic without veering into Men's Rights Activist garbage or incel rhetoric. But both of those groups offer no solutions to the fundamental problem. They just drill men into embracing the traditional gender roles even harder, becoming more violent and unfeeling and even more dangerous to anyone who isn't a man or doesn't sufficiently fulfill his role as a man, be they queer, be they emotional, be they jobless.

What really needs to happen is men rejecting and rebelling against the gender roles that get forced on them. Laugh. Cry. Hug each other. Spend time with your family. Treat women and queer people with respect. Say no to your boss and to your career, if it brings you closer to fulfilling your own dreams.

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grumbling about the light/dark theme discourse 

@joepie91
This is why having easily-changed settings with a few variants for different people to use (and switch as needed) should be the default. That's the ramp that everyone can use.

While we're here, can we also talk about the proliferation of the use of terrible (blurry, poorly scaled, grey, etc) webfonts for body text in text-heavy spaces like blogs?

re: grumbling about the light/dark theme discourse 

This whole thing uncomfortably reminds me of the more general tendency to see different inclusivity and accessibility needs as "competing with each other in importance", rather than as a reason for mutual solidarity

An absolute plague in individualist politics, to be honest

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grumbling about the light/dark theme discourse 

I've seen a lot of grumbling about the lack of light themes lately, and those complaints are generally valid, but also

Y'all do realize that this was *exactly* the situation for people who couldn't use light themes until a few years ago, right?

Depending on the ambient light level I have (different) issues with both light *and* dark themes so I get to experience *both* sides of the problem on a daily basis...

And I gotta say that I'm very unhappy seeing the current discussion framed as "dark themes are inaccessible" without any acknowledgment at all that *both* are problematic for different people for different reasons, and that the real solution there is for *both* options to always be available

Reminder that fascists believe whatever is convenient for their goals at the time and are utterly unbothered by people pointing out inconsistencies or hypocrisy in their actions, statements, policies, or ideology

What would a doctrine of squatter's rights look like for digital places?

I don't really think this is realistic. It would be nice if there were provisions to more easily turn a website over to collective ownership. Leave it to the users to keep the server coffers full. There are places that work in this manner but in a legal sense they aren't really governed this way. Almost always there are 1 or 2 people who could simply shut the place down. Or let it slowly fall apart neglecting software.

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Online communities are real communities. People have met future spouses, weathered difficult life events, organized politically, raised money to help each other all through the panoply of social websites.

Often community rules and culture are guided by moderators, who almost always work for free.

Despite all of this we generally accept that these are not the people who own the website or the ones who control its fate.

Over and over this creates heartache and disappointment.

on bad necrocomputing takes 

Sometimes I see takes like "computers used to be able to do the same job using way less resources, software is shit nowadays"

And I can only wonder whether they've ever developed software back when real-time compositing was unaffordably expensive, and so was proper process isolation, and a million other 'modern conveniences' that make software, y'know, not suck

Everything happening with Reddit will happen with GitHub.

@cemhend not that I know of unfortunately, though at the least pleroma's history as a gnusoc frontend and having been hosted on gitgud is verified by the git history for the pleroma-fe readme git.pleroma.social/pleroma/ple

I wonder if there's any games out there that exploit the "moving black shape on an OLED screen" phenomenon

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I found the post, here's a thread of me banging on about about how recency-focused social media makes good stuff harder to find

mstdn.social/@ifixcoinops/1104

It took me a bit to find it because I had to scroll past all the memes and shite I posted since then

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Grumbling about Open Science advocacy 

Open Science advocate: You can tell we're doing it right because even big companies are getting on-board with Open Access! Open Access means better science!

Large corporations: (Under their breath) It also means an extra $4000 Open Access charge per article

Open Science advocate: Huh?

Large corporations: We just love uhh transparency, actually

Open Science advocate: 😍

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Grumbling about Open Science advocacy 

Open Science advocate: I got a great idea, let's uncritically emulate the Free Software community, their goals and tools! They did everything right!

Large corporations: Hey we'd like to exploit your naivete to advance our own narrow interests

Open Science advocate: (Checks notes) Omg the plan is working already

Grumbling about Open Science advocacy 

Corporations managed to manipulate us

Into getting government funding institutions to mandate

That we pay those corporations a huge sum of money over and over

To waive the rights to protection of their copyright

That is granted to them by the government

If we cared about openness in any meaningful sense

We would just abolish that form of copyright

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