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

Reminder: unionization is the "meeting the employer at the middle" between workers not getting what they want and beheading the employer.

Union busting only tells me that they want their heads removed.

I was asked to review continuing education for a summit on autism and I was ready to be so angry but they're platforming and highlighting neurodiversity-affirming conceptualizations and supports and I feel so happy right now that this is becoming mainstream in my field 💜

@JessTheUnstill: I have a strong feeling about this point. It seems to me that as a society, we've been too willing to allow a hierarchy between "developers" and "end users" to creep into the "software products" that we use, and I believe that technical means encouraging people to see, and treat, software not as black boxes but as systems of rules that can be modified on the fly would help neutralise the worst abuses of this unpleasant development.

I'm not entirely sure how to get there yet, though. In the context of web browsers, adding simple and powerful tools to enforce the notion the user has power over what happens in the browser, by means of easy-to-use archival and scraping and "content" re-formatting tools would probably be a good start.

@ariadne

Been looking at the feedback on mask policies from two separate conferences. People seem to fall into three groups:

1) I'll go with the policy, whatever it is

2) The risk of attending an event without masks is too high, so I will not attend without a strong mask policy

3) You cannot force me to wear a mask, so I will not attend if you require them.

You can always get group 1 at your con. Choose between groups 2 and 3.

My random sampling says that group 2 is nicer than group 3. Group 2 is both easier to hang around with, and safer.

Easy choice.

"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. +