whydudothatdrcrane 3d ago • 100%
Reads the title
Goes WTF
Goes back to reread the title in moderate disbelief
Notices the website is theonion
Fuck you onion, you almost had me the first time around!
whydudothatdrcrane 3d ago • 100%
As for this valid focus on critical mass of users, perhaps a linked tags approach is better than a multiple-communities structure, until specific tags gain enough friction to become communities. Just thinking.
whydudothatdrcrane 3d ago • 100%
Musk tweeted that the accounts violated Twitter's "doxxing" rules, meaning they revealed nonpublic personal information.
ban posts on other people's live locations because of "increased risk of physical harm."
- Shall we expect he shows consistency in case of troll harassment campaigns, which feminists have been bringing up for a lot of time.
- Also reinstate the API that made feminist anti-harassment apps possible?
- How does this (obviously personally motivated) cater to personal safety generalizes to his free-speech absolutist views about yet other platforms: KiwiFarms for example.
whydudothatdrcrane 4d ago • 66%
He rather questions modus ponens? Things can have many causes, that is why the presence of the effect in absence of the cause does not mean there isn't a causal effect. Rain makes grass wet, even if the grass is wet without it having rained first, because there are presumably many reasons the grass can be wet (eg sprinklers), even if they are unknown to us. That having been said, this specimen is a hilarious face palm, all the same.
whydudothatdrcrane 4d ago • 100%
Very good point indeed.
whydudothatdrcrane 4d ago • 100%
In a society that values money above everything else, his status as richest person for lots of people makes his views seem relevant, even if unconsciously so. Then there come the fanboys to idolize him. But let's consider the obsession with wealth that creates this halo effect even in the "non-fan-boys". Musk, Trump, Tate, should all be irrelevant, but they're not, which is in fact a systemic problem.
whydudothatdrcrane 4d ago • 98%
As for your original question: Musk helps oppressive states enforce censorship on his platform .
His passion for free speech is only for white supremacists and conspiracy theorists now running rampant on his platform (there is a John Oliver segment about it).
He opposed an anti-hate-speech law in Ireland, although the law makes clear that it is still allowed to express unfavorable opinions and offend others, but forbids incitement to violence.
This shows he is not interested in defending "unfavorable reasoning" against the "woke" inquisitors, rather than advancing hate-speech and white supremacist causes in particular. This is not only a hypothesis, but a reported outcome of his actions with X/Twitter, which is now a nazi bar.
Don't forget Russel's tolerance paradox: If you tolerate nazis in order to defend freedom (of speech, political association, and the like), they will overtake the state apparatus and verbot freedoms for everyone, not only speech, but freedom of life as well.
He is doing exactly that, not only permitting, but promoting white supremacy, and at the same time treating the term "cisgender" for example as a slur.
This shows he is not all in for defending free-speech for all sides, but he is out to "destroy to woke mind virus" because it "stole his son from him".
Musk is a nazi apologist, a big cry baby, and a media gatekeeper who enforces censorship both as a platform owner and as a service to totalitarian states.
He is a national security risk, according to Wired.
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 100%
Best thing after "Those people who enjoy your memes, are they in the room with us now?" - therapist session.
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 91%
IA is a pillar of internet activism, and an exceptional instance of the spirit of the web pioneers. No real hacktivist would take them on. These guys are spooks, black hat, or corporate actors.
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 88%
Archives work against information control. "Who controls the present now controls the past". They wouldn't like archived versions of things get in the way of their very, very expensive narratives they are pushing, now would they?
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 100%
All this is speculative of course, but those domains you listed are vanity domains in lucrative markets. I call them vanity domains, because it can easily set you back 3-4 figures to get a domain like me.blog , let alone yourname.cars which is quite desirable if you sell cars. As with everything else, domain prices are simply subject to the laws of supply and demand.
Regarding .io , compared to average country code domains, such as .de for example, that tend to be quite modestly priced, .io has seen substantial increase in the past 5 or so years, transformed from a geeky exoticism to a symbol of AI-hype tech companies.
At least from my perspective.
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 100%
Are you my ...therapist?
(Read this as in the butterfly meme LOL)
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 100%
At the same time they are OK with Hooters.
(Let alone they root for child labor, child marriage, domestic violence, corporal punishment, sexual harassment and rape of women by prominent figures, and covering up for tens of dozens of republican sex offenders against minors and women. But this is where they draw the line: "sex ed is PorNoGraPhy librarians should be LoCKkKeD uPp".)
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 60%
Redefine it and then ...criminalize it, right? Otherwise how is a librarian a "sex offender"?
A librarian of all people!
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 100%
Certainly. I try to do the same, in fact I craft my comments so that they are immediately useful to others. Nonetheless, this might be not enough. Trolls are there for a reason, and you have to accept that our comment-section skirmishes do not add up to much, especially when you consider state-sponsored trolling and mega-corporate push of the far right agenda, across all media outlets, including social media.
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 100%
Perhaps peppering responses with links is counterproductive. Why not follow a more consistent strategy? Such an approach would for example summarize the opposition's view in good faith, give a name to the fallacies in it, and respond not only by providing a link, but a short synopsis of what the link is and how it refutes those fallacies. This approach helps not only rebut the opponent, who may be unwilling to listen to reason, but everyone following the conversation in real time or in the future. For this reason it is also great to use archived versions of links, whenever you can.
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 100%
organised system of reproduction
Yes, that would be great. People put so much stock in peer review because there is the myth that every statement undergoes under a rigorous process of verification in multiple laboratories. The reality is, as you said, there is a culture of active discouragement of reproduction and the pushing of novel results.
Not to mention that to foster reproductions, researchers should be trained into a culture of replication and collective metanalyses. As it is now, reproductions are less than an afterthought for the vast majority of researchers, and virtually none knows how to handle multiple replicatory studies instead of p-hacking.
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 100%
As an innocuous example of sharing data with pure bash and Arise, these people here have preserved the Trigedasleng dictionary, the fictional language from the science-fiction/young adult show The 100, after another fan site was taken down. They use a github repo as data backend, and Arise as a static-site generator for github pages. All their data are stored in lots of version controlled JSON files instead of a database. According to the authors, this democratizes the process of forking and adding data to the repository.
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 100%
I think Arise is sth I had seen and at the time motivated these thoughts. It is a bash based static site generator, that, according to its docs, it is build with the philosophy of minimal language requirements as well as other dependencies.
I would argue that a solution like this is better than heavily nested JSON files, or a cascade of Ordered Dicts in Python, or even a db.sqlite that would require the user parse or query the data somehow. In fact, a user could retrieve the static site from their own distro package manager and run it in bash with minimal dependencies.
I haven't tested this solution yet, but it looks very promising as to what I originally had in mind.
whydudothatdrcrane 2w ago • 100%
Possibly the domain is visible with a traffic monitoring tool. Everything else is between you and the bank via HTTPS. Having said that, whatever is not over https is visible to whoever sits on the same network as yourself.
Recently [some](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41283149) group published an [interactive](https://lemmy.ml/post/19175470), javascript based, website, to graphically explore data broker companies. This is just one group doing similar research work in different fields. I applaud the cause, but I take issue with the format. An organization, that is, or group that frequently needs to provide structured data. In turn, developers might want said data, in order to deliver apps. Interactive websites seem flaky to me, since no one guarantees they will still be there two years from now. I think it is only natural that groups doing important work would do a great service to communities if they served a RESTful or GraphQL API, depending on the complexity of the data. But even in this case, when the group stops serving the API let alone be coerced to stop, or access to the API is blocked, this great service will be discontinued. Obviously the raw data must be shared for this to work. Lately I was thinking about these edge cases. Journalists or activists doing this type of work may lack the sophistication to structure the data in useful ways. They probably do the journalist work and then have some developer they either hire, or is part of the group, make the important backend decisions, including structuring the raw data. Regarding the retention of the data in case the group disbands or goes away, there are some existing solutions like torrenting or IPFSing the datasets. Both methods can help the data be online forever, but what about content integrity and versions? They would still need a static webpage or something to provide the hashes, and IPFS is by its design not very well suited for versioning. There are no clean cut guidelines on how to go about this, or at least, what is a handful of good ways to go about this, so that a current or future group can rely on to deliver this type of work. Another idea that popped into my head is that the ecosystems of repositories and package managers are very mature in all major distributions. Structured data could be uploaded to distro repositories (including FDroid and the like), just like any other software with underlying data structures. Hashing and versioning would be then natively taken care of by existing package managers. But the question still remains, what data structure is the best for this kind of relational data, and what kind of API should best be exposed to the user. So, if you feel like it, I would like to hear your thoughts on: 1. Skills and preparations required by investigative teams to publish structured data to the world. 2. Assessment of the torrenting and IPFS solutions to ensure recovery of the data in perpetuity. 3. Assessment of the RESTful or GraphQL format to disseminate investigative data. 4. Assessment of using established package managers and repositories to disseminate investigative data. 5. Ideas on what should be eventually exposed to the user, who can be assumed to be a developer as well. 6. Further comments. I would be glad to get some feedback on these thoughts.
[Archived](https://ghostarchive.org/archive/9QuBG)
I hope someone will find those helpful
Is this for real? I can't draw no other conclusion than **US defaultism in trans activism gives a free pass to TERF politics in Europe**. This kind of news from Germany cannot mean anything good. According to Wikipedia: > In 2019, the German Language Association VDS (Verein Deutsche Sprache; not to be confused with the Association for the German Language Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache, GfdS) launched a petition against the use of the gender star, saying it was a "destructive intrusion" into the German language and created "ridiculous linguistic structures". It was signed by over 100 writers and scholars.[11] Luise F. Pusch, a German feminist linguist, criticises the gender star as it still makes women the 'second choice' by the use of the feminine suffix.[12] In 2020, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache declared Gendersternchen to be one of the 10 German Words of the Year.[13] > In 2023, the state of Saxony banned the use of gender stars and gender gaps in schools and education, which marks students' use of the gender stars as incorrect.[14][15] In March 2024, Bavaria banned gender-neutral language in schools, universities and several other public authorities.[16][17] In April 2024, Hesse banned the use of gender neutral language, including gender stars, in administrative language.[18] **Here are the original Wikipedia references** 11. "Der Aufruf und seine Erstunterzeichner". Verein Deutsche Sprache (in German). 6 March 2019. Retrieved 5 April 2020. 12. Schlüter, Nadja (22 April 2019). ""Das Gendersternchen ist nicht die richtige Lösung"". Jetzt.de (in German). Retrieved 5 April 2020. "GfdS Wort des Jahres" (in German). Retrieved 13 December 2020. 13. Jones, Sam; Willsher, Kim; Oltermann, Philip; Giuffrida, Angela (2023-11-04). "What's in a word? How less-gendered language is faring across Europe". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-04-05. 14. "Schools in Saxony are forbidden to use gender language". cne.news. Retrieved 2024-04-05. **I got into this rabbit hole from this news article** [News article in German](https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/sprache-verbot-von-gender-sternchen-an-berliner-schulen-erst-2026-12201095.html) [Archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20240815100811/https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/verbot-von-gender-sternchen-berliner-schulen-setzen-beschluss-erst-2026-um-12201095.html)
grapevine.is
> Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, the Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources of Iceland, has announced a new regulation that requires toilets to be labelled based on facilities rather than gender. This change follows a query from Andrés Ingi Jónsson, a Pirate Party MP who has been advocating for the issue since 2020. > The regulation mandates that gender-neutral toilets must be provided wherever separate women’s and men’s toilets are available. > “For those of us who haven’t experienced it personally, this might seem minor, but it’s crucial for people to know whether they can access a toilet at work or school. It really matters,” says Andrés Ingi Jónsson, highlighting the importance of this change. [Archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20240815085541/https://grapevine.is/news/2024/08/14/gender-neutral-toilets-become-law/)
Due to the nature of my work, I have been in different places over the world, building websites for different causes, usually community projects with a tech angle. Most of the funding proposals I have laid my eyes on are rife with buzzwords. Even when (either me or other devs) clean up proposals to get rid of all superfluous hype, I have noticed that middle management tends to puts those back in, or worse, they chastise us for taking them out in the first place. The argument they make is that the committees that will evaluate the proposal will need to see the buzzwords. Few things are as disheartening as seeing people having prepared a robust life cycle for a tech or outreach project, and middle management chiming in, to literally say "Great now we need to beef this up with as many buzzwords as possible". I don't know if this is supposed to mean "we will fool them with the buzzwords" or "they are fools that only understand buzzwords". If anything, I believe that the buzzword salad would make us come down as less-than-credible windbags. I just think is wrong, and if this is happening at scale, then I think lots of funding goes to crap projects, that end up being an abandoned website somewhere on the internet, just to commemorate that this project was once funded. What is your experience? What projects would you rather see be funded, be it community empowerment open-source tech or other domain?
Sometimes we come across a random comment and we find it is the most important, urgent, and/or funny thing in the world. Then we forget about it and we move on to the next post. Here is your chance to salvage those.
I recently made a post about Shinigami Eyes and BlockParty and started thinking about activist tools. The ones mentioned are of course merely mitigation tools, but speaking of activist tools more broadly, like some people suggest Signal and Tor Browser for activists, as a fine balance between security and a low technical bar for entrance. I am not really sure that any of these differ substantially from Matrix and Firefox and why they are so special. The ActivityPub protocol. the one Lemmy uses, is a mature protocol and people have put thought in various aspects of it. Apart from Lemmy, there are ActivityPub applications that foster activist and IRL communication, like Framasoft's Mobilizon. The main issue I would think of about ActivityPub instances for community organizing is the lack of specialized features for this type of work, like polling. And the major issue of course is the pseudonymity/anonymity and completely open signups renders existing apps like Lemmy untenable for community activism organizing. In your opinion, what would it take for an Activity Pub application to be a secure, efficient tool for community activism?
These archived versions might give you an idea. - [Archive.org - German](https://archive.org/details/german-without-toil-lessons-60-125) - [Archive.org - Russian](https://archive.org/details/russian-without-toil-51-100) - [Archive.org - French](https://archive.org/details/french-without-toil-lessons-70-140) - [Archive.org - Italian](https://archive.org/details/italian-without-toil-part-5) To be honest, I don't know about the PDF versions you can find in Anna's Archive or similar archives/libraries. These methods had apparently been optimized for **printed, pocket-sized books**. I consider these methods among those things that have not been necessarily superseded "just because" we have more advanced technology. They were very sophisticated for their time, marketed like many courses of this type to the busy working person, and at the same time were effective and entertaining. We always had a couple of those books lying around the house (German and French). The annotations and explanations for native English speakers are superb, and the overall presentation of the volumes was of very high quality with minimal typos and errors. I only have found a couple omissions over some three hunded pages or sth which is virtually excellent. With a good command of the English language that many possess, these books are accessible and effective in language learning, and if I don't omit some books, then you can teach yourself German, French, Italian, and Russian, using these methods. Let me add, they have accompanying cassette tapes (yes! Tapes!) which you can also find ripped in some online libraries. The texts are tastefully chosen, they involve funny stories, anecdotes, proverbs. The culture and gender roles depicted in these books are dated of course, but it is like traveling back in time to simpler times, where you have to call the music teacher on their landline to tell them they forgot their umbrella, but you don't find him at home, so you have to leave a message to the housemaid, whatever. I look at these stories with a time traveler's curiosity. I do find this kind of thing enjoyable, but this might be a matter of taste. There is no need to say that the grammar progression is gradual. and there is some opinionated, sublime structure you can vaguely discern, but well perhaps ...you shouldn't? The books make you feel you are in the good hands of some wiser people who have in store for you more and more tips on the language you are trying to learn, which is comforting and takes a load of your head. At some point you do have to pull up a notebook for some grammar stuff, but unless you are serious about learning the language you can as well skip this part and consult the self-contained appendices all the same. Now there are several things that I think are quite special about this series. Page numbers are transcribed in a simplified pronunciation system. Lessons are numbered too. Under the text you can find a phonetic transcription, which is not IPA but a custom system, that somehow makes sense to a speaker of English, for instance u with umlaut in German sounds like the last syllable of "view". This is not a novelty of course, but it is very well thought out how discretely it is placed on the page, that you can seamlessly ignore it for pages and pages over, without ever looking at it, but when you actually need it, it is consistently there. Then, there are some footnotes, as well as some proper notes that are part of the subject matter. These are very thoughtful. Every time you wonder "what now?" about either a grammatical or a cultural thing, you will find the explanation right in the notes. Everything is made to fit in pairs of pages (English on the left, Target language on the right), so you can look up translations both ways. Everything is discretely numbered so you can cross-reference everything: sentences, notes, lessons, appendices. (See note 7 in lesson 24). After the various stories and episodes that form the main lesson, there is one exercise (also numbered and phonetically transcribed) that delves deeper in grammar stuff and is more bland/repetitive, but usually relates to the main story. The hidden treat here is the comic. Yes, there is a comic strip next to the boring exercise always , so you are tempted to go right through the exercise to get the joke. Every now and then there are some revision chapters that are blocks of English text breaking down different grammar phenomena. That is enough said about the design. Everything is designed and placed on the page with taste and sophistication that not all modern apps provide. The whole book fits in a pocket and is dense with compressed, promptly retrievable, information for a language learner. Design issues aside there is the actual method. At first you just read the texts and the exercises. When you start to get better at it, you have to be able to translate the whole lesson and the exercise. At some point they ask you to get back to first lessons and try to reverse translate from target language to English. Later on they ask you to stop memorizing the main text, but you have to keep on memorizing the exercise and continue the reverse translating. Each lesson can take you up to 20 minutes tops. Anyway, I don't know if this works for everybody or if it is demonstrably any better than other methods or apps, but I think it is very advanced for its era because every little thing seems to be very well thought out, and it is very smartly designed, so it has set some standards for me personally as to what a good piece of work should look like, be it on paper or on screen. The stories are enjoyable to me, and I reach out to these books as a pastime quite often, and I have picked up some German and French on the way. Now I have found the whole series in Anna's Archive and I am tempted to look into Russian and Italian too, but let me tell you, these books really shine in the printed book format for which they are designed. I tried to use them with a PDF viewer and they are not as easy to handle as the printed book. So if you happen across any of them in a thrift store or something give them a chance, they might become treasured items of your collection, especially if you are into languages. Still bugs me how this level of detailed organization and proof-reading was even possible before computers, but it is really impressive!
Shinigami Eyes is an indispensable tool for trans people and allies alike, as it lets others know whether an account/username is transphobic or trans-supporting across several websites/social media. I sometimes look up some new transphobe and they are not highlighted yet, so I suppose the popularity of the extension has dropped? Shinigami Eyes is an important activist tool and we should not let it be forgotten. In my opinion it has been under-harnessed by journalists and other outlets, as it could - possibly - protect from spreading transphobic disinformation. Let me take this opportunity to remind you of other important tools like Tweeter extension BlockParty, for example, which used to allow you to block en masse anyone who has liked or retweeted a particular tweet. Among other mass blocking options. Here is an [archive of this app's hiatus announcement](https://archive.ph/zK5bC) , but this together with shinigami can be said to form the seed of a toolbox for safer experience online for trans, feminist, queer and other groups. Don't forget Activity Pub itself, the protocol Lemmy uses, has this philosophy built-in, and it was designed with these people in mind that want to evade "unsolicited communication". For an inclusive and activist open-source enthusiast community it is important that the Internet is equally safe for all people to use, and with the global developments we see, it is daily getting more and more important for tech-savvy activist communities to invent and foster similar technology tools.
thepinknews.com
> Algerian boxer Imane Khelif’s participation at the Paris 2024 Olympics is “not a transgender issue”, a spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said. Khelif beat Italy’s Angela Carini on Thursday (1 August), in a fight that has reignited an online storm about her participation in the Games, despite the fact she has been confirmed as eligible to enter the women’s boxing event. >The welterweight bout lasted just 46 seconds, with the Italian boxer saying she was forced to concede defeat. “I am heartbroken,” Carina said, reports The Guardian. “Regardless of the person I had in front of me, which doesn’t interest me, regardless of all the row, I just wanted to win.” >Khelif previously competed at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. She and fellow boxer Lin Yu-ting were disqualified from last year’s World Championships after failing to meet eligibility criteria. >Lin, who represents Taiwan, was stripped of third place at last year’s World Championships after failing a gender eligibility test. Khelif was disqualified in New Delhi for failing a testosterone level test, following information from the IOC. >Further details on why the pair were disqualified from the World Championships were not given at the time. IOC spokesman Mark Adams addressed the controversy again on Thursday (1 August), reiterating that Khelif and Lin both comply with Olympic eligibility rules and clarifying that their participation had **nothing to do with trans issues**. >“I repeat, all the competitors comply with the eligibility rules”, Adams stated (via The Guardian). “But what I would say is that this involves real people.” >He added: “And, by the way, this is not a transgender issue. I should make this absolutely clear.” Khelif told the BBC after her latest victory: “I am here for gold. I will fight anybody, I will fight them all.” >The IOC previously said that “all athletes participating in the boxing tournament of the Olympic Games comply with the competitions eligibility and entry regulations as well as all applicable medical regulations”. > In response to claims about Khelif, the Algerian Olympic Committee said it “strongly condemns** the unethical targeting and maligning” of their boxer**, calling the attacks on her “deeply unfair”. > Featherweight Lin is set to take on Sitora Turdibekova on Friday (2 August). [Archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20240801230301/https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/08/01/imane-khelifs-olympic-participation-not-a-trans-issue/) According to [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif) Khelif is natal woman with DSD making her having high testosterone levels. Not much detail is given about fellow boxer [Lin_Yu-ting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Yu-ting) also cleared to fight in the Olympics after being stripped of a medal for gender issues before. It seems she competed in women's tournaments throughout her life. So this makes this another [Caster Semenya case](https://apnews.com/article/sports-africa-cape-town-south-caster-semenya-73e18bfbf031d15c65e5d4edc9de3ed8) with a notable difference, the amount of anti-trans propaganda coverage the IOC boxers' issue has received is objectively more troubling even compared to Fallon Fox's MMA matches. Please have this in mind and debunk whoever claims that this is a trans issue. Point out that their definition of woman leaves actual women out of it, unless they are the Marjorie Taylor Greene type.
