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

"just trying to help" is like a very particular flavour of ableism

"don't push my wheelchair without my consent" - "i'm just trying to help"

"don't lecture me on scammy miracle cures" - "i'm just trying to help"

"stop trying to diagnose me with made-up fad conditions" - "i'm just trying to help"

"don't give me advice i didn't ask for" - "i'm just trying to help"

"no, i don't care which diet you think will cure my genetic disease" - "i'm just trying to help"

"please stop making suggestions for jobs you think i could do" - "i'm just trying to help"

"don't make assumptions about our needs without even asking" - "i'm just trying to help"

"please just give me the prescription i need instead of expecting me to somehow magically fix myself" - "i'm just trying to help"

"please stop forcing me into treatments and rehab programmes that only make me sicker" - "i'm just trying to help"

why are we supposed to be grateful for any of that?

one could argue that copyright maximalism is directly responsible for high profile compromises

after all, genesis market spread their malware through fake warez sites, which were and are the only results to show up in google because the REAL sites get removed from the search results due to takedown requests

The opposite of “return to office” advocates isn’t “work from home” advocates. It’s a rich tapestry of “open offices are distracting” people and “I’ve never gone this long without being sick” people and “commutes are a waste of time I don’t get paid for” people and “I’m an introvert and playing house with coworkers sucks the life out of me” people and “I have a family and appreciate the flexibility” people and “I primarily communicated with coworkers through Slack anyway” people and “no one wa…

Ooof. Scholastic, that's a terrible look, and I'm glad she is letting everyone know, but what a shitty, shitty thing to try and do. https://www.prettyokmaggie.com/blog/2023/4/11/scholastic-and-a-faustian-bargain

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