Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

Never let anyone tell you that trauma is a categorical requirement for plurality.

Don't get me wrong. It's really common. It's quite likely that any given system split due to some amount of trauma. The "systems without trauma are invalid/faking it" narrative still fucking sucks.

It's actually a really really good metaphor to think of this the same way you'd react to someone saying that dysphoria is a categorical requirement for being transgender. Yeah, it's really common. Saying you need it is truscum shit.

The metaphor goes deeper: Not only is it not true, but EVEN IF IT WAS TRUE, trying to police it the way people do is actively harmful.

I, a trans woman, experience dysphoria. But when I was brand new to being trans, I'd have told you I didn't. I had feelings about myself that genuinely didn't feel like they were connected to any gender-adjacent stuff. It was only with time and processing who I really was that I was able to finally understand how deeply those feelings were rooted, and what they were rooted in. If I had been told and believed that dysphoria was necessary, and I had given up, I'd never have realized I had it.

Similarly, if someone's got trauma that their brain is processing by going "wake up babe, new person just dropped", that's... kind of a big deal. That's a pretty extreme reaction. Their brain is handling it the way it has to handle it. And you know what's shared by a lot of trauma severe enough to necessitate that kind of reaction?

Not realizing it's happening.

If someone's plural, and new to it, and says they don't have trauma, who the fuck are you to force them to interrogate that? Like even if you personally think it's a requirement for plurality (which is still wrong btw), there's a very real chance that you're going to dig up some shit that they're not ready to handle. Their brain is currently trying to figure that out! Let them deal with it the way they have to!

The last thing I want to say here is to not feel bad if this is rhetoric you've seen and believed, it's unfortunately pretty common out there. I'm not going to be upset with people who are misinformed if they're still trying to learn. But I will say that it's a good reminder to ask yourself if you're defining anyone else by their suffering, and if there's not a better way.

"And yet, very few members of the AI pundit class seem capable of imagining, let alone understanding, AI technology (or its potential) through any other lens—while also rarely naming or acknowledging this very limitation. Tech bro fish: Meet water. You can read AI news and newsletters for weeks and months and never come across the work of decolonial AI experts Sabelo Mhlambi, Meredith Broussard, Stephanie Dick, Shakir Mohamed, Marie-Therese Png, William Isaac, or any of the folks behind Just AI, who founded a think tank responding to “the narrowness of dominant frameworks in data and AI ethics research,” or the feminist tech theorists delving into thorny issues around consent and computing. (There are exceptions to this, and they’re worthwhile.) The AI. commentariat is vastly more concerned with stuff that interests and implicates nerdy white dudes—AI porn, data security, business and finance, right-wing conspiracy theories—than about the AI industry’s exploitation of the Global South, the threat AI’s energy demands pose to the environment, or the existing exacerbation of the already dangerous and sometimes deadly racial and gender biases held by the creators and funders of AI technology. +

"This worrying picture has led several scholars and activists—among them Sareeta Amrute, Nanjala Nyabola, Paola Ricaurte, Abeba Birhane, Michael Kwet, and Renata Avila—to characterize Big Tech’s global impact as a form of digital colonialism. On this view, primarily U.S.-based tech corporations function in many ways like former colonial powers. Driven by an expansionist ideology, these companies arrange digital infrastructures to fit their economic needs on a global scale. They contribute to the exploitation of low-wage, marginalized workers across the globe. They extract truly staggering profits with very little accountability and with harmful consequences for local communities. They institutionalize social practices designed by a small group of largely white, male, and American software engineers, undermining the self-determination of the societies they seek to expand into. And much like the colonizers of yore who tied all this to a so-called “civilizing” mission, they claim to do all this in the name of “progress,” “development,” “connecting people,” and “doing good.” +

If you've ever wondered if you're the villain of the story, arguing with the interpretation of reality as told by people with less power than you is a big hint.

OMG can we please stop using Islamic concepts to criticize Christian theocrats in the States.

The US far right doesn’t want to establish a ‘Christian caliphate’, they’re not ‘Christian taliban’, and they’re not going to introduce ‘Christian shariah’.

Don’t use Islam to try to scare white people. Muslims are not the ones trying to dismantle our secular republic.

me rn

saving PNGs from blender on minimum compression so optipng has something to entertain itself with

ok this is stolen directly from birdsite but i am also delighted. they should hand out these to everyone who is forklift certified https://twitter.com/acheyri/status/1645787480808116224?s=46&t=zk5VGdiXk1MkAodmYvtKsA

heard a weird sound. turned around. my supervisor is controlling a tiny RC forklift and placing a tiny pallet on a real pallet.

(the entire thread is also very good)

whoa, this is awesome, I've never had a white friend before!! haha yeah.... hey man, does this mean I can use the uh... the b-word? y'know, like, "how's it hangin, my buddy?" is that inappropriate?

“hermeneutical injustice” is a word i wish everyone knew and understood. it's like when you can't explain to someone how you are or what you need because you don't have good words for it. maybe you can't even understand yourself because you don't have the concepts. Even if you can explain it it takes so long and is confusing so it's unjust because most other people can explain themselves and understand themselves easier

The Rust Foundation is currently planning to set an extremely strict trademark policy, essentially prohibiting everyone for using the word “Rust” for the project names and domains (affecting project names like rust-crypto, names of YouTube tutorials about Rust) and also from modifying Rust logo (affecting e.g. Actix). They also managed to trademark the word Clippy, despite taking it from Microsoft.

They’re currently accepting community feedback. I think that proposed policy, if accepted, would greatly hurt Rust-related projects for no clear benefit. If you also have an opinion about that, please, give them your feedback.

https://nitter.cz/rust_foundation/status/1644132378858729474

UPD: I’ve been corrected: the current draft explicitly allows books, and I think allows websites as long as the domain name doesn’t contain the word “Rust”. The other interesting case is YouTube videos, since they’re commercial due to monetization.

Reminder to everyone that your encrypted backup is only half as useful if the only backup of the encryption key is in the backup.

OH: “oh, speaking of money laundering…”