we know how institutionalism fails to meet the moment, time and again, so it's not a surprise to us that nobody has stepped up to fund remote conferences. any thought that we might be headed towards a world that tries to grapple sincerely with this stuff left us a few years ago, when conferences that had gone full-remote for COVID stopped having remote options
again, not to call out anyone in particular. every conference did this. every professional organization did this.
"Why did you come to this time? To warn us?"
The time traveler laughed. "Why would anyone listen to me?"
"You're from our future-"
"No, I'm from a different timeline, a different future. I'm a refugee."
"To here? Now?"
"It looks fucked right now, but this is the timeline that pulls through."
We need fewer little princes and more decentralization, not just in technological structure, but in organizational structure. The solo genius, the hard working, self-made man, these are myths that we need to let die because they are killing us.
We need to stop fucking falling for the narrative of the maverick programmer creating a Better Internet Thing from his garage that now needs a bunch of money or subscribers so let's help him become another Fuckerberg and never you mind about all the clear evidence he's not worth your trust, it won't make it into the script of the Hollywood movie anyway.
After plenty of experimenting, I'm leaning towards using my own project (iocaine) over #nepenthes, mostly because I want to be more offensive than Nepenthes allows me to be.
While Nepenthes is meant to be running alongside a site, and provide a path into an infinite maze, I want to run my garbage generator in front of my site. I want my reverse proxy to replace the real site with garbage if an AI agent is seen.
This has the downside that I need to redirect explicitly, so unknown agents will not be trapped (while they will be caught in Nepanthes' maze!). On the other hand, it means that my content is unavailable for AI crawlers in the first place - at least to known ones.
I don't want to slow down crawlers on the generator level, either. I want the generator to spew out garbage as fast as it can. I'll rate-limit the crawlers on the reverse proxy level instead.
There are also subtle differences: I don't use a pre-shared seed to provide stability across restarts and nodes, but derive the seed from the original URL of the request instead. There is no database, no persistent storage apart from the configuration file, a wordlist, and the markov chain training data.
Training is also done on startup, rather than by POST-ing to an API endpoint - I don't need runtime training, and on the servers I run, training with a few megabytes of text (which is plenty to generate garbage from!) takes a few seconds only.
So I guess this is an announcement of Iocaine!
Amazon's Swedish e-commerce drops into loss [for 2024]
Remember y’all, it’s not your job to be the hero, it’s not your job to change the world. Your job is to show the world you exist, and to make it home alive.
I’m telling you what Black women have told their husbands and children for generations. You don’t have to argue, you don’t have to fight, you don’t have to be the hero.
Your job is to let them see you, but it’s mostly to get home alive.
Once again, I'm warning about the LGBTQ Kakuma Refugee Camp mutual aid/crowdfunding scam.
It is a con which abuses the Fediverse culture of mutual aid and preys on our broad support for queer folks. Posts will often use photos manipulated to include pride flags/merch or new text on signs using "handwriting" fonts.
They link to a variety of GoFundMe pages with creators in Italy, Germany, England, France, Canada, USA, and more.
Many accounts use the names Justice Mayanja or Lukwago.
🧵 1/3
re: psa, uspol, immigrant safety
a reminder that ICE is actively arresting and deporting hundreds of people, just since monday.
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/24/birthright_citizenship
familiarize yourself with any immigrant rights organizations in your area, so you know who to report sightings of ICE to!
you can help by reporting if you see ICE, by donating to your local volunteer org helping to resist deportations, or even by volunteering if you're able. some may even offer classes or organize protests.
psa, uspol, immigrant safety
ICE is expected in the #Denver #Colorado area soon, if they're not already there, as well as around the rest of the country.
https://www.denver7.com/news/politics/as-trump-assumes-office-fear-and-uncertainty-grow-for-potential-ice-operations-in-denver-metro-area
Trump has also announced that ICE is allowed to make arrests in previously protected places, such as schools, churches, and hospitals.
https://globalnews.ca/news/10970657/us-immigration-arrests-churches-schools-donald-trump/
Localities have their own stances. For instance, Denver's mayor has spoken about resisting arrests in protected areas, whereas the mayor of Aurora intends to fully cooperate.
If ICE is spotted in #Colorado, please contact the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition!
https://coloradoimmigrant.org/our-work/ice-resistance/
@hyenagirl64 has a similar thread with information about the #Seattle area: https://yiff.life/@hyenagirl64/113862972194549333
uspol, tactics on the right
just wanted to say like
conservatives don't care about the contradictions
it's not the same as a democrat lying. republicans are about power. if they lie to achieve their goals, that's savviness. if a democrat does it, it's betrayal
if their politician lies to them or keeps their intentions secret, it's probably for the authoritarian ends that the republican either wants or trusts - due to authoritarian leanings - is actually just strength and playing the game well.
Technical debt collector and general hype-hater. Early 30s, non-binary, ND, poly, relationship anarchist, generally queer.
Sometimes horny on main (behind CW), very much into kink (bondage, freeuse, CNC, and other stuff), and believe it or not, very much a submissive bottom :p
Feel free to flirt, but if you want to actually meet up and/or do something with me, lewd or otherwise, please tell me explicitly or I won't realize :) I'm generally very open to that sort of thing!
Further boundaries: boosts are OK (including for lewd posts), DMs are open. But the devil doesn't need an advocate; I'm not interested in combative arguing in my mentions. I am however happy to explain things in-depth when asked non-combatively.
My spoons are limited, so I may not always have the energy to respond to messages.
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. That all also applies to technology and how it's built.