Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

Please, USAmericans, when you refer to this org or that org as being a 501(c)(whatever) please could you also give us the plain English version of what that means? There seem to be a lot of different designations and to those of us not familiar with the details of the Internal Revenue Code, they all look the same.

Hey #neuroscience folks, for some reason my university thought it was a wise idea to be put me in charge as director of our neuroscience institute for a little while. Those of you working in the trenches at all levels (e.g. students, RAs, postdocs, faculty) I'd like to hear from you.

What are specific things that a department/institute can do to either inject more joy in the work or make the process of research easier?

#academicchatter #science

We should make a law where if a piece of media becomes popular enough, it gets seized into public domain, including any potential source code.

how do you folks organise cables?

(deliberately left open. please boost)

If anyone has any resources on queer biker culture or history, please send it my way! I'm thinking about doing some worldbuilding relating to it for my writing projects!

I just learned that there is an app to simulate train inverter sounds and it's very sophisticated

I love it omg

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qtsoundlab.ototetsu

How Decentralized Is Bluesky Really? https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

A technical deep-dive, since people have been asking me for my thoughts. I'll expand a bit on some of the key points here in a thread. 🧵

How to defend yourself during a police interrogation

„An interrogation is not a harmonious exchange between two individuals. It’s a conflict.
And in this conflict, our ignorance is their strength. Ignorance of the meaning of police work, ignorance of the manipulative techniques used, ignorance of the legal framework and, last but not least, ignorance of our means of defence.
In response to this observation, this book is intended as a tool for self-defense against police interrogation practices of interrogation…“

Evasions-Project Releases English Translation of the #Book

PDF:
https://projet-evasions.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/How-the-police-interrogate_english_projet-evasions.pdf

Thanks to @unsalted
https://unsalted.noblogs.org/post/2024/11/21/evasions-project-releases-english-translation-of-how-to-defend-yourself-during-a-police-interrogation/

German and french Version 👆

#Police #Data #Privacy #Repression #Antireport #Zine #Distro

Here's some highly condensed pointers on building better user interfaces, in the form of a few rules of thumb:

1. Make things look like what they are. Buttons should look like buttons, checkboxes should look like checkboxes, and so on. Familiarity works.

2. Think about functionality in terms of 'tiers of need'. Make the most commonly needed features immediately visible at all times, hide less common features behind a predictable menu, really uncommon features in a *submenu*, and so on.

3. Present data in the form and context that someone is likely to want to see it, in the common case. This usually will not match the shape of your internal storage at all! Much of your UI work should be converting between these two representations.

4. Look at accessibility guidelines like the WCAG. This not only makes your UI more accessible for those using assistive tools, it also makes it more predictable for everyone else. Don't forget about contrast!

5. Make things immediate where possible, and avoid things jumping and changing too much. Loading indicators should only exist for fundamentally slow tasks, and as much as possible should be done/reflected locally without waiting for a server.

A lot goes into building good UIs, but these are the things that people most often get wrong. If you get these few things right, you are halfway there!

Good morning! I have thoughts about the internet.

https://www.wrecka.ge/against-the-dark-forest/

its so absurd to me that humans have known the importance of ventilation and clean air for centuries or more, when now that it's more important than ever, when we have cheap and plentiful devices to objectively and easily measure air quality, and the technology to do so much better, is when the world decided to reject the idea altogether

Snow traffic calming tonight in Ravieres 🙂

Ed Zitron yelling abuse at CEOs for twenty-three minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Slib2bbMs4

the city shivers, like a giant beast, covered in snow and fog. lights in modern glass skyscrapers and decrepit soviet blocks alike make the air glow. cars move in circles, like rats racing against each other. music — fiery guitar solos of rock, punchy hip-hop kicks and snares, and butter smooth rhythms of jazz; vocals and rhymes in english, kazakh, russian — spill in the streets of almaty from cars, bars, night clubs, and instruments and mics of street musicians.

tonight, the city lives.

you know what's worse than "please see our discord for download links"

when you have a documentation site

that documents every other step of the process

apart from one absolutely critical step

When I say that demos don't really do anything other than diverting energy, that there's no point in begging for the goodwill of our rulers (and threats that are never followed up is just the macho way of begging), the retort I get most often is that demos help radicalise people, build connection, show solidarity. Even if the demands are never listened to, it feels good to do *something*, to have agency.

Does it, though?? They're kinda terrible at that too though??? I don't see people energised by demos, I see them push themselves to go joylessly to the marches, "como quem dá-se ao carrasco", with the attitude of a religious penitence, a moral duty, inevitably leading to the well-known extreme rates of burnout. Connection is a joke, people cop-jacket everyone and only ever trust their little cliques, every potential recruit is kept at arm's length, it's borderline impossible for an immigrant to find at a demo people to go back home together let alone the level of opening and interdependence that comradeship would require.

Displays of solidarity I think is the least bad one, sometimes it can be helpful to see support for you on the headlines, particularly for heavily persecuted causes like Palestine or sex work, or invisibilised ones like Kurdistan or anarchists in Ukraine. But even then, is this really the best way to show solidarity? How many demos even make it to a headline, and is the effort worth those few seconds of feeling seen? Compared to receiving a letter when in prison, a visit, material support?

I suppose there's a point in taking a stance *locally* for global causes, e.g. when you march for Palestine you can see the relief on the face of every single non-German person you pass by, because this massive genocide whitewashing doesn't hurt just the targets of genocide, it vicariously hurt all of us watching it. (Though what we have to deal with, German cops and unconvincing gaslighting, is peanuts compared to, you know. Literal fucking ethnic cleansing. But it's not *nothing*, to be the witness to it, to live in the belly of the beast).

But once again, is that the best way to reach out to marginalised ppl around you, to march with slogans and worried faces? What if you, dunno, sit by the station with a guitar and play happy resistance songs? Proposition all the libraries and cultural spaces you can find until you find one willing to host poem readings from Palestinian writers? Make friends with refugee families and learn some Arabic while offering a sympathetic ear? Offer your professional skills for fundraising efforts? Start a fundraising effort? Set up a little infostand challenging media narratives, armed with facts, zines, a smile and a lot of diplomacy? Bring those supportive banners to the legal hearings of criminalised immigrants rather than distant protests? Go visit cultural centres, get to know people, then act as a bridge between scenes (e.g. talk with both queer Palestinians and traditional queer orgs to invite the one to speak at the other)? Bake vegan+halal cookies and bring to the Palästina-tresen? Spot a person wearing a kufiyyah or watermelon pin and, look I know this is my most extreme and controversial proposal by German standards, but: fucking open up to a stranger, tell them "I stand with you"?

If the goal is to show solidarity, or to build a revolutionary personality, or to make bonds, then I challenge you to this exercise: If you stay home rather than going to the demo, what else could you do to advance those goals? If 5 or 30 or 100 people drop out from the demo and spend the same amount of time and energy on another activity--what kind of other activities can you imagine? Do you think they'd be more or less effective than calling the cops to inform them that on such and such day 1000 ppl are going to walk around holding signs?