starless @starless@pixie.town

It got dark while I was roughing in the treeline. I started on the left and by the time I got to the right, I was working petty much blind. I like the right side better. Still plenty more to go.

I'm working through some trauma around relaxing and doing art in an unstructured way. Today, I took a walk and tried to do some on my own. It's harder on me emotionally than I thought it would be. Waiting for paint to dry, listening to the crickets chirp, and breathing the green, earthy summer air.

#mastoart

Friend: [over text, after sending me a picture of an outfit they had on a few days ago]
$thing is one of your triggers, right?

Me: [taking deep breaths while trying not to think of anything while texting back, feeling my heart rate spike]
Yes, $thing is still one of my triggers.

Friend:
Oh, okay, cool. I had a picture of $thing from last night, so I figured I should check with you before sending it. Glad I remembered right!

Me: [thoroughly spiraling, triggered]
Yeah.. Thanks. 🙃

Friend: [radio silence]

PSA: Check in with how your friends are doing before asking them to list of their triggers. For maybe obvious reasons. When they're feeling good, ask them how they'd like you to address content around their triggers (warn you, discussion okay but not photos, etc).

Once you're finished discussing potentially triggering content or have accidentally brought it up, consider changing the topic to something nice to help draw their attention elsewhere for a while.

@f0x

My current favorite in that niche is probably The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22733729-the-long-way-to-a-small-angry-planet) and the corresponding series.

Worth noting is also basically anything by Elizabeth Bear, but I really enjoyed Ancestral Night (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26159745-ancestral-night).

There's a MN-local author named Lyda Morehouse that's written a very cool near-future, super cyberpunk-y, theocracy. The first novel is called Archangel protocol (https://wizardstowerpress.com/books-2/books-by-lyda-morehouse/archangel-protocol/) , and it's a five ish book series with truly stunning worldbuilding. The first book, IIRC, reads a bit like a trashy, straight romance/old-school detective pulp novel, but the latter ones feel pretty dang cool. If you can get through the straightness of book 1, there's some nice vintage (early 2000s) queer delight in here. Lesbian author, later published/re-published by a transwoman editor. Nice people.

For something a little more involved, I highly recommend Ninefox Gambit (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26118426-ninefox-gambit). This series is an absolute delight. I gotta go now, but it's sort of a blend between Korean culture and Texan culture and folks are homosexual by default. It's pretty rad.

@aurynn good morning, Aurynn!

@t54r4n1 IMO, institutional sexism persists because companies aren't willing to fire "good developers" for being sexist or slowing down colleagues.

Until an org is willing to fire someone for even suspected discrimination (because it's very hard to prove, IMO), these kinds of cultures persist. People usually freak out when they hear this and shout things like 'thought crime' because implementing something like this when looking at purely individual situations is really hard.

If we shift from the idea that developers are individual 'rock stars' and onto the idea that developers are teams (and that a single mean dev can ruin team dynamics), management gets more complicated, but you see much better performance, IMO. Without a team-focused management strategy, you get a situation like "it's fine for an individual dev to be biased because it doesn't impact personal performance" and "my senior dev isn't sexist, the junior female dev just isn't learning much because she's less good".

It can often take a long time for the junior dev to find out that they're being treated differently by seniors than other peers, which can add to disenfranchisement.

Without changing management style, other ways to help combat this include requiring basic documentation, encouraging collaboration sessions that include the entire team, and keeping track of how much non-spec work is requested through various teammates PRs.

@bright_helpings in the US, people might say "I'm an x-generation immigrant", where x might be 4+, or whatever the right number is. It's not quite what you're looking for, but maybe there's a phrase along those lines?

'Citizen by birth' is also nice, since it encapsulates the distinction between being born somewhere vs documentation status.