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We're looking for help to build a wireless, solar-powered chat network across the Philly area! Are you interested in learning about off-grid solar power? Do you have a sunny place on your roof, in your yard, or near an upstairs window where you can leave a small radio transceiver? This workshop may be for you!

Each participant will receive a free kit with all the parts needed to build a solar-powered LoRa radio node. You'll assemble the kit, mount it in a weatherproof enclosure (provided by you), and use the Meshtastic app to start sending encrypted text messages.

Registration opens Monday, April 3rd at 8:30 p.m. You can sign up on our site:
iffybooks.net/event/solar-chat

Supplies for this workshop are provided by a grant from the Engaged Humanities Studio at Swarthmore College. Many thanks to @pixouls for helping plan the event!

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"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?

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Listen up all you foolish mortals:

Someone talking about a weird thing their computer did is not a cry for help. *Especially* when said someone clearly said they solved the problem.

I understand this particular platform is very-much filled with computer nerds who want to be helpful, but please check whether help is being requested before you pop out of the woodwork like some sort of Clippy

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Erotic art, partially nude men 

Some oil paint sketches I did a few years ago, feels like a good place to show them. #gayart #eroticart

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In case you needed to hear it, trans and nonbinary people are an important part of my life. I am happy and secure in my masculinity because they exposed me to a world where I can be anyone I want, and I finally felt peace with being a man in a society with some awful ideas about what a man should be. If you enjoy my masculinity, consider accepting other people's expressions of their gender. Daddy says trans rights.

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"[Screen readers] often stumble on PDF files, which have long been the default digital format for journal articles and other research materials"

"In a detailed survey, six scientists with vision loss described how they frequently found themselves unable to access or read PDFs. One respondent mentioned that they encountered problems two-thirds of the time, and that they use at least six different approaches to read papers"

nature.com/articles/d41586-023

So please share article links as HTML not PDF!

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US pol, trans safety 

So Minnesota is now officially a trans refuge state.

Not only are the state laws protecting queer folks in Minnesota, but folks who come to Minnesota for gender affirming care are safe from extradiction orders, subpeonas, and other attempts by states they leave to control them.

If you are looking to get out of dangerous spots, Minnesota just jumped to the top of the 'places to move' list.

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If you're still on my Patreon at the print & sticker tier, maybe you missed my announcement so: this tier was deleted in january.
I'm not handling physical rewards through Patreon anymore, if you'd like to continue receiving them, you can switch to my Ko-fi ko-fi.com/anaisfae/tiers

In any case it'd be great if you could edit (or cancel) your pledge because Patreon still charges you the same amount as before, and the only thing I can do is manually refund you each month.

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transfemminine underthings recommendations thread, links, nsfw 

Hi fedi!

Sometimes, friends or lovers want pretty underthings that are sized for trans bodies. Often, finding these things is a painful process. There's a lot of really crap sites that come up in search engines and, as someone who doesn't get squicked that same way, it's a way I can help.

This isn't a list of any particular merit, it's just the resources I'm aware of. I've bought from most, but not all, of the companies listed here and have been reasonably happy with the results.

Have a resource thread, boots and (well-labeled) additions welcome:

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alt fashion brands worth supporting [reviews], mention of dollskill, purchasing/money, police brutality 

A month or so ago, some larger alternative fashion brands got hard-cancelled.

They'd been problematic for years, but some friends and I had struggled to find cool alternatives. And then one of them rallied in defense of police brutality and Geneva Convention violations, and frankly, it was the last straw. I decided that boycotting these brands wasn't enough-- I had to fall in love with their competition.

I set aside about $200 and decided I'd see what I could find from more ethical shops. If I can get threads working, this'll be a thread. :)

International Women's Day, showing some love for trans women in technical spaces 

Happy international women's day.

About half the I interact with in an average week are . Trans women make my life and the spaces I hang out in online immeasurably better. They've rounded sharp corners and added a sense of emotional availability that men just tend not to do. They bring an air of femininity to a space that helps me feel like I don't need to do extra social work to balance things out myself.

It's really wonderful.

Last week, at the local hackerspace, I had a great chat about ethical alternative clothing shops with knowledge and nuance. These conversations rarely happen when I talk to men-- not because they don't care, but just because the topic is more complicated for feminine clothing than masculine. There's deeper changes to manufacturing processes than men's clothing silhouettes seem to feel, so less nuance (and digging) is necessary to achieve a pretty reasonable effect in comparison. Anyways, it was great, and it just felt very 'normal'. But I've also never had such a good fashion conversation in a technical space before, which is interesting because fashion is a highly technical art. This was, in a small way, revolutionary.

When spaces make femininity a comfortable thing to bring, they make everyone else feel more comfortable being a wider breadth of themselves. You see wider ranges of expression from everyone. Making women feel more comfortable often helps everyone feel more comfortable.

When spaces restrict those energies, everyone feels it. When I'd been in technical spaces without women, I used the phrase "caustic culture" a lot. The feeling of this pervasive, inescapable, slow ooze that just eats away at you little by little. Since then, I've spent a lot more time in spaces without that energy. I can't think of a single online technical space that doesn't feel caustic that hasn't had trans women in it. As a professor of mine once said, correlationdoes not imply causation, but it does often waggle its eyebrows at it.

So, happy international women's day to all the women everywhere, and especially to the trans women that've helped make the spaces I've been in so comfy. So many of you are leaders, and you are all wonderful and beautiful beings capable of immense gentility and soft strength. Celebrate yourself a bit today. 💙

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inspired by a tumblr post i saw- what’s the dark sky rating for where you live? you can check here:

lightpollutionmap.info/

Going to a wedding with my girlfriend today. In peak queerdom, I'll be wearing her old suit, and she's borrowing a dress from another girlfriend. I've also managed to successfully remove the scales I was wearing to an art show last night, so I guess that's another fashion win.

It's my first time wearing a suit to a party. I considered a very nice dress, but it was a bit tight in the hip and I was worried it may become structurally unstable should I laugh while sitting.

We're gonna look great.

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by the way, we have enough vacant, livable homes in the united states to give every single person who is homeless right now (sheltered or unsheltered, temporary or chronic) 15 whole entire homes each.

based off of:

2021 US Census Bureau vacancy statistics: data.census.gov/table?q=B25004

2022 US Department of Housing and Urban Development Annual Homelessness Assessment Report: huduser.gov/portal/sites/defau

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Simple FYI for US:

If you last had a COVID vaccination more than two months ago (and no diagnosed COVID infection since then), you are eligible for another booster under CDC guidelines.

As someone in a higher-risk group about to head off to several conferences, I got another booster yesterday. (No improved 5G reception yet, though.)

And, if you have yet to get the bivalent booster (only 16% of US has), then do it! Not only will it help protect you, but it will help protect others -- like me!

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