Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

A straight white guy friend was complaining about not being able to find any gaming groups for WoW that weren't full of MAGA assholes. He said he keeps joining guilds with older (60+) casual gamers like himself because he can't keep up with the kids, and he'll start to make friends, but then they will reveal themselves to be Trump-lovers. He asked, "What am I doing wrong?"

I said, "First of all, your screen name is Russian. Leftys are gonna be wary of that, and the Alt-right loves it.
Second, you should put some social signals in your bio, like pronouns."

"Okay, but how do I tell people I'm cool, but I'm not gay or trans?"
I explained to him what "cis" and "ally" mean. He had never heard of this before, which showed me what kind of online spaces he was landing in.

Next, I said, "Look for the furries."
"But, I'm not a furry?"
"Yes, but the presence of furries are like lichen. They are a sign of a healthy ecosystem."

This was about 3 months ago. Now, he tells me he joined a guild labeled as LGBTQ-friendly and has made several new cool friends. He says, "I thought they would be talking about sex all the time but it's just a regular group." He mentioned that there are many women and PoC in the group too, and "Everyone's so nice on dungeon runs, telling people they did a good job and being supportive, sharing loot."

I didn't tell him that this is what the whole world would be like without patriarchal toxic masculinity, because I think he figured it out himself.

Last month I asked to hear from employers in trans-friendly countries who actively sponsor visas. Here's an update. https://werd.io/2025/an-update-on-searching-for-trans-friendly-employers-who-sponsor-visas

I'm frequently struck by the phrase "unintentional bias" which comes up frequently in work on LLMs. Whose intentions are in question? Why do we have to absolve those people all the time?

Let me explain a typical nightmare scenario for an autistic person, which tend to happen a lot in our youth: Someone like a parent or a teacher is very mad at you. Maybe for saying or doing something. But usually you have NO IDEA what it is. Or if you happen to figure out what it is, you don't know WHY they got so mad. Any attempt of explaining makes things worse, because it looks like you did it on purpose! Imagine this happening many times while you grow up. In the end you probably end up learning to feel guilty without reason.

proprietary fonts are so funny
"if I pay you money, I can use this font for stuff, right?"
"no. absolutely not."

I can promise you that the feelings of isolation and abandonment you'll feel after all your friends dump you for having Long COVID will be much, much worse than the feelings of isolation and abandonment you will feel from masking to prevent developing Long COVID.

We're in an age where important video and audio online may be deleted without warning and without any ability to find it elsewhere. There's a very useful tool which lets you store an offline copy of video and audio called YT-DLP:

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

I don't normally like command line tools, but this is pretty easy to use. After you've installed it, you just type yt-dlp and then the URL of the video or audio, then it saves it as a DRM-free file on your computer.

It works with a variety of different video and audio platforms.

(This replaces an earlier tool called yt-dl which is no longer maintained.)

#YouTube

hey fedi :)

i want to put some 88x31 buttons on my website (liv.town), do you have any that i should add? perhaps your own or a cool one or a page where i can take some from (hyperlinked of course!)

​:boost:​ welcome!

the gaming industry in France is on strike. they’ve released a bundle on itch to support striking developers! ten bucks gets you 57 items. Def worth talking a look.

they are currently at 130% funded!

#gaming #gameindustry #unions

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/frances-biggest-game-industry-union-puts-together-a-greve-bundle-to-support-striking-workers/

Fucking spat my tea, how did the postman whip out his phone to immediately play the bagpipes as soon as he saw a scottish destination on a parcel to go 😭

I MOVED IN!!! LET'S FUCKING GOOO

Well? It is back!!
Thanks to @internetarchive indexing it back in 2000 I was able to extract the interface and point it to the DB Navigator API

IDK it's just really neat to me that something that started out seeming like a chore I had to do for other people ended up benefiting *me* so much. Even informing the rest of my work.

I think things work like this more often than we think.