"Ask someone trying to cobble together a living as an Uber driver or Instacart worker how well the power of a tech industry completely unchecked by labor power is serving them. Either we organize tech, or it will organize the rest of us to serve it."
https://inthesetimes.com/article/union-tech-industry-labor-2020
I keep reading GPL fans bashing other licenses as if the _license_ is going to solve the problem of capitalism
Yeah.
Ever been poor? Apparently not. Here's what your BS license does for the poor:
ABSOLUTELY JACK SHIT
"Just put this magical set of words on your code and no one will ever steal it ever!"
Nope.
Also: arguing about this is not going to solve anything. The issue is that the system is broken. More lawyers is not the solution, either. It is leveling the field to be equal.
Your license doesn't do _shit._
Richard Stallman is indefensible (CW: pedophila, sexism, ableism)
He says kids can consent to sex, has supported child pornography, has expressed extremely ableist views in general, and consistently makes sexist comments and "jokes" in person.
If you are a techbro and want receipts because you doubt this:
CW: child sexual abuse and dehumanizing ableist speech
https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
My thesis advisor attested to this as well, back when he visited my university. The extreme sexism had people walking out of his guest lecture because it was extremely uncomfortable.
You wanna support the GNU project and the GPL still? Fine whatever that's not what this is about. Just stop pretending this guy is an infallible hero when he's said some terrible shit and call people out for idolizing this shithead, because they are forcing diversity out of the free software community.
US Pol. Voting
If your state gives you a "mail in ballot" you can almost certainly go drop it off and either a drop box or a county office at a time of your choosing.
Mask up and go drop it off as soon as you can. Avoid any possible shenanigans.
Please repeat or boost this message so folks who haven't done this before understand.
Also early voting is your friend!!
Thanks.
Remote work is here to stay. Writing screeds about how it "sucks" might be fun, but the more interesting conversation is about what do we do about it.
How might we use remote work to make ourselves, our communities and our society stronger?
18/?
I just gotta say, I was really weary of this trend in academia to try to do everything using AI.
I never saw why AI would be "cool".
But this talk, thanks to "explainable AI" on a topic I'm actually interested in, changed my mind. This is really cool.
Talk on automating #censorship evasion, featuring some really cool #TCP tricks:
https://invidio.us/watch?v=ksojSRFLbBM
Their system, called Geneva, is using AI to find censorship evasion strategies.
Paper: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~dml/papers/geneva_ccs19.pdf
Okay here’s an opinion. Markov bots should have a CW on every toot they make, that reads “output of markov bot” or similar. Because when they get boosted onto my timeline with no CW I’m left stressing out trying to work out why I don’t comprehend what this person is saying, until eventually I work out it was a bot and I wasted that energy because it was meaningless. Can y’all see why an autistic person would find text that looks like real language but doesn’t make sense a trigger and a drain of energy? And that it’s a valid position to not want to waste my time reading words recycled by an unthinking computer script even if other people find them hilarious?
Even putting “bot” or “ebooks” in the display name isn’t good enough because people do that too as a joke! But it’s more ableist than it is funny.
The Applied #Networking #Research Workshop is happening on July 30 and 31, online.
https://irtf.org/anrw/2020/attend.html
It costs $25 to attend, but you can request a fee waiver.
Also, the recordings will be made available afterwards.
Here's our program: https://irtf.org/anrw/2020/program.html
nonbinary identities in French? please boost
How do you and your Francophone loved ones manage grammatical gender in French? I have a nonbinary friend who's a native English speaker and is learning French. They're trying to figure it out for themself. They're aware of «iel», and I'm planning to tell them about e.g. «amusant·e·s».
Please boost.
I'm much more interested in direct experiences from nonbinary Francophones and their loved ones than theory. Thank you <3
mfers really gotta learn that queerness is about Breaking The Rules On Attraction And Gender, not making a new set of "more inclusive" rules. the cishets won't respect you anymore if the Queerness Rules are more coherent.
"if you allow bi lesbians, cishet men won't respect lesbians' lack of attraction to men!" is an inherently flawed and self-defeating way of thinking. the cishet men won't respect you any more either way; stop trying to *earn* their respect, and start *demanding* it.
covid19, study
Does Density Aggravate the COVID-19 Pandemic? Early Findings and Lessons for Planners
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01944363.2020.1777891
"In this [...] study, we find that density is not linked to rates of COVID-19 infection, after controlling for metropolitan area population, socioeconomics, and health care infrastructure in U.S. counties. Surprisingly, we find that COVID-19 death rates are lower in denser counties and higher in less dense counties, at a high level of statistical significance."
Status update / continuing my thread about moving to the US:
It's been more than 3.5 months.
I've finally got my own apartment now (as opposed to temporary housing, for which I'm really grateful to $job).
Yesterday my furniture and household stuff arrived. Today I got an Internet uplink set up -- Gigabit fiber for the first time! <3.
Things are getting better.
Slowly, I'm arriving.
On blocking
Block and mute early
Block and mute often
Do it for reasons that are entirely "selfish"
No one is entitled to your attention
There will not be a test
Nothing bad happens if you don't hear them
Too many techbros? Mute 'em all
That one guy's jokes need a CW? Your timeline can be full of other stuff
You can even mute that one person's boosts while keeping their posts
It's not censorship; you're not hurting that person
And you don't ever need to explain it or tell anyone
“Being Alone”
An interesting look into managing loneliness by developing a relationship with yourself. Might be why some folks didn’t find lockdown all that uncomfortable
I hate cops cause I'm queer and I know my history
Cops are responsible for upholding the Law. Historically, the Law where I live in France, the Law in the US, and in even more countries to this day has been written and geared against queer people like me. Being a cop meant and means having the duty to oppress, intimidate, kill me.
If you're queer you should know this. If you're queer you should show solidarity to black people and people of color who still face this issues to this day.
Crass language; Techbros
this is where I wish that academia could come together and actually build a fucking commons
imagine a massive nextcloud instance federated together from all unis globally. collabora online to replace google office suite. nextcloud talk to replace google meet. nextcloud deck for trello. all self-hosted in each institution and then federated to make sure people can ALWAYS talk to each other/collaborate cross-institution
(i wish this for everyone ever too)
Network geek and researcher. Recently moved to the Bay Area. Queer feminist, bisexual, fights for social justice.