it's actually really interesting - and really *bad* - that the general public feels that database software that a huge number of organizations use is so arcane and so boring that it's not worth a two-sentence explainer in a mainstream newspaper. it's a clear sign of the formation of a priesthood, in my opinion
i feel similarly about the lack of interest people tend to show in, say, water treatment, waste management, and manufacturing processes. it's good and important to know and care about the way your life is built and maintained
and especially for us middle-class white people in the imperial core - we have more power than most in re: these systems, and it's incumbent upon us to understand them to at least some degree for that reason
uspol, passports
given the recent shitshow i think we really should stop pushing for X gender markers and start pushing to strip all gender markers from ID documents in general, the netherlands was weighing it recently-ish, not sure where thats gone. anyway all it does is give bigoted officials a free pass to go "well you don't look like insert gender here" or worse
Ask yourself this: will fares in self-driving cabs be cheaper? Will subscriptions to vibe-coded SaaS cost less? Will tickets to see model-generated movies be a fraction of the current price?
Or do all these technologies just solve the problem of having to pay people, with no benefit to anyone else except shareholders?
And then ask yourself this: if nobody's getting paid, who's hailing the taxis, using the SaaS and watching the movies?
"Burnout, I’ve come to believe, isn’t just about time or tasks. It’s about purpose, alignment, and whether you believe the system you work in deserves your sacrifice."
via @wingo boosting https://mastodon.social/@CdnCurmudgeon/114228687712438487
on furnal equinox and their fascist bs
and like let’s be fucking real lol - this was always going to happen because we kept pretending the fandom wasn’t political. in many spaces i have been in there's an air of politics being this unspoken taboo that nobody talks about. as a result we have chosen to willingly commodify and gentrify ourselves.
on furnal equinox and their fascist bs
fascists and bigots, unlike many assert, *thrive* here. yes, they fucking do, and many of them do not wear the "furry raiders" type beat pawprint badges. people in this fucking community are so afraid of conflict and politics that they let everyone walk over them. the white, cis, male, abled majority refuses to take a stand, dismissing every attempt to call this out as "drama" or "discourse." it’s cowardice dressed up as neutrality, and it’s killing us.
Uspol rant
"who would have thought that building a militarized police state that outdoes stalinist Russia would end up being used to oppress people?"
Almost everyone.
The socialists saw it from a mile away. Everyone from anarchists to tankies to social democrats all realized it. Left liberals also mostly got the memo as well, to their credit.
The GOP intended to use the police state for their authoritarian capitalist pet project, and they were among its architects. Of course they fucking knew, they're far right freakazoids who get a hardon from killing Black people and Middle Easterners.
The only people who didn't get the hint were centrist liberals who thought it was for "public safety" and "fighting drugs" and "eliminating terror". The Democratic leadership is generally high on official US propaganda, and really they've politically suffered for it.
The idea that some tech company is being benevolent by "giving you a platform for your community" while pocketing the ad money themselves to supposedly "keep the servers running"...
... really isn't any meaningfully different from the myth that employers are benevolent by "giving you a job" and you should be glad to have it, when in reality it's *your* labour that sustains them.
The 'platform economy', especially where it involves people voluntarily creating media and content on those platforms, is just the same old worker exploitation with a new coat of paint.
If it were truly about 'supporting communities', then the platform wouldn't be run by a for-profit company.
Technical debt collector and general hype-hater. Early 30s, non-binary, ND, poly, relationship anarchist, generally queer.
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Sometimes horny on main (behind CW), very much into kink (bondage, freeuse, CNC, and other stuff), and believe it or not, very much a submissive bottom :p
My spoons are limited, so I may not always have the energy to respond to messages.
Strong views about abolishing oppression, hierarchy, agency, and self-governance - but I also trust people by default and give them room to grow, unless they give me reason not to. That all also applies to technology and how it's built.