alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org internet gryphon. admin of Beehaw, mostly publicly interacting with people. nonbinary. they/she
minor PSA: we have a Spirituality community now
Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience—something that touches us all. People may describe a ...
this was made a few days ago when i was off but nobody announced it, so i guess i'm doing that now. the sidebar describes its purpose as follows:
> Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience—something that touches us all. People may describe a spiritual experience as sacred or transcendent or simply a deep sense of aliveness and interconnectedness. > > Some may find that their spiritual life is intricately linked to their association with a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue. Others may pray or find comfort in a personal relationship with God or a higher power. Still others seek meaning through their connections to nature or art. Like your sense of purpose, your personal definition of spirituality may change throughout your life, adapting to your own experiences and relationships
Five comedians of color—Gabby OK, Abenezer Merdassa, Aron Woldeslassie, Alicia Kismet Eler, and Comrade Tripp—talk about the Twin Cities comedy scene.
Access, education remain barriers for people seeking gender-affirming care in rural Nevada
The LGBTQ community faces obstacles accessing gender-affirming health care — having to travel nearly four hours to receive care to treat gender dysphoria. The hurdles come as the state struggles to maintain an adequate number of health care providers, and shortages are especially acute in rural area...
More incentives are coming down the road.
> It’s official: Colorado has the country’s most generous electric vehicle tax credit available to all residents. On July 1, the state’s incentive jumps from $2,000 to $5,000 for any electric vehicle with a starting price of less than $80,000. Data from the U.S. Department of Energy show that’s larger than any state-level discount on battery-powered cars.
The First Pride Was a Riot, This Pride Is a Strike: Starbucks Workers Shut Down Over 150 Stores
This June, Starbucks implemented a new policy which prevented employees from decorating their stores for Pride. Instead of accepting this hypocrisy from the supposedly queer-friendly corporation, workers at over 150 unionized locations shut things down.
As public housing vanishes in the UK, one apartment was converted into a gallery to reinvigorate a 20-year struggle against gentrification.
> As public housing vanishes in the UK, one apartment was converted into a gallery to reinvigorate a 20-year struggle against gentrification.
the July 2023 Beehaw financial update
our June 2023 financial update.
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obligatory preface: we're 100%-user funded and everything you donate to us specifically goes to the website, or any outside labor we pay to do something for us.
because of the unique circumstances of this month i won't report an expected yearly expense like i did last time. that'll probably come next month, when our finances are closer to a useful baseline.
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overall expenses this month: $566.98
this is a mighty looking expense, but only $371.98 of it is infrastructure (and even less of that is actually site hosting).
$312.54 for Digital Ocean hosting, which can be further subdivided into
- $241.47 for hosting the site itself
- $48.29 for backups
- $11.87 for site snapshots
- $10.91 for bandwidth overage (1091.10GB @ $0.01/GB)
$15.28 for Hive, an internal chat platform we're trying to set up (also being hosted on Digital Ocean, but distinct enough to break out from overall DO hosting)
- $13.89 for hosting Hive
- $1.39 for backups
~$39.16 for email functionality, which can be further subdivided into
- $35/mo for Mailgun (handles outbound emails, so approval/denial/notifications emails; also lets us not get marked as spam)
- ~$4.16/mo ($50/yr, already paid in full) for Fastmail (handles all inbound emails)
$5/mo for 1TB of backup storage with BackBlaze (redundant backup system that's standalone from Digital Ocean)
the remaining $195 of this month's expenses have gone to paying @[email protected] for his community icons. we do so at a rate of $5 per icon and he's done 39 of them for us (36 of which are live so far).
overall: we definitely think we're able to downsize infrastructure costs going forward. we're already investigating how best to do that (both in terms of host and overall cost)--there's no ETA for a few reasons, but this month should not be representative of many more subsequent months.
overall contributions this month: $3,870.44
we also have an incredible amount of support, so that really helps things as far as "being able to take time to get everything right". according to OpenCollective, we currently have approximately:
- 97 monthly contributions, totaling $549.58
- 9 yearly contributions, totaling $254.99
- 149 one-time donations, totaling $3,065.87
between monthly and yearly contributions, this means we are still more-or-less breaking even and sustainable overall with this month's costs. obviously, we would like to be substantially moreso though, through either lower costs, more donations, or a combination of both.
total end of month balance: $3,591.33
- yes yes, this is already out of date by a bunch. expect it to be like that, i use UTC for our reports lol.
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expense runway, assuming no further donations
- assuming expenses like ours this month: we have about 6 months and 10 days of runway
- assuming just expenses like our infrastructure this month: we have 10 and a half months of runway
if you'd like to make the runway longer (and reward us for even having this site up today after yesterday's complete fiasco), now is a good time to donate :)
Children’s books that feature Asian protagonists are rare. Two scholars decided to offer their own in their attempt to reduce racial prejudice.
Insurers’ denial rates — a critical measure of how reliably they pay for customers’ care — remain mostly secret to the public. Federal and state regulators have done little to change that.
> Insurers’ denial rates — a critical measure of how reliably they pay for customers’ care — remain mostly secret to the public. Federal and state regulators have done little to change that.
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> [...]how often insurance companies say no is a closely held secret. There’s nowhere that a consumer or an employer can go to look up all insurers’ denial rates — let alone whether a particular company is likely to decline to pay for procedures or drugs that its plans appear to cover. > > The national group for state insurance commissioners gathers a more detailed, reliable trove of information. Yet, even though commissioners’ primary duty is to protect consumers, they withhold nearly all of these details from the public. ProPublica requested the data from every state’s insurance department, but none provided it. > > Two states collect their own information on denials and make it public, but their data covers only a tiny subset of health plans serving a small number of people.
During their strikes, journalists at Business Insider and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette continued writing – just for not for their own publications.
quick announcement: the first of our three new communities are live
you know the drill i'm sure, let's not waste time. many of you have already noticed we've created the first batch of our six new communities, which are:
- AskBeehaw: a community which is exactly what it says it is, asking the Beehaw community stuff! this was our most popular community on the survey, and it's also inclusive of AMAs or stuff like out of the loop (which overlaps somewhat with Chat--we're fine with that).
- Tabletop Gaming: after some delay, the tabletop and boardgaming communities have their own section! this community is, as noted, inclusive of boardgames and similar things to them--we've already got a mod in the section looking out for that side of the community, so that's nice :)
- US News: we've converted !news into World News (see here for why in brief) to accommodate that popular demand, which means that US News now gets its own community! in conjunction with us the community there is being cultivated by @[email protected], who has quite a lot of news experience and has a pretty clear vision of what that community will hopefully bring to the community table. we hope you'll like that vision.
other three communities should drop about next week, so be on the lookout for those.
as noted in the other announcement we're also taking mod applications. we're taking them for both new and old communities, so please feel free to apply over there if you're interested. thanks
First published in 2011, the late David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years was transformative in understanding what debt is and why we should push for debt cancellation.
New Communities + Beehaw is once again looking for community moderators
quick dual announcement
New Communities
we've tabulated the easiest part of the survey (other results coming NOW) and we're pleased to announce that, in the future, we'll be creating six new communities. these six choices can be stratified as:
most popular, community picks
- World News
- AskBeehaw
hand picked, also popular with our community
- Tabletop Gaming
- Anime and Manga
hand picked, base exists in our community for it and distinct enough to take a chance on
- Vegan and Vegetarian[^1]
- Parenting
in the specific case of World News, the [email protected] community will be converted into the "World News" section, and a separate !usnews community will be spun off for US-centric news.
these communities will be created in batches of three. you'll see WN+US news conversion/AB/TG first, then A&M/V&V/P about a week after that.
as for communities that didn't make it, these are best fits for now:
- School & Education: [email protected]
- Camping & Hiking: [email protected] or [email protected] or [email protected]
- Fitness: [email protected], occasionally [email protected]
- Photography: wherever it fits
- TIL: [email protected]
- Travel: [email protected]
- Spirituality: [email protected] and [email protected]
- Health: wherever it fits
- Sustainability: can mostly go in [email protected]
- AntiWork/WorkReform: [email protected]
- Retro: wherever it fits
Community Moderators
this also means we're taking on new Community moderators. as with last time: this is not a full time job and we don't want it to be, but this is also not a completely trivial commitment either, so please only apply if you're comfortable with making that commitment. (if you think it's becoming overwhelming or too much for you at a later point, that's different and we can discuss that then.) our community mods haven't had many issues though, so i doubt you will either.
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What is expected of community moderators?
I'm sure you can surmise, but to be specific:
- Encourage and promote respectful and constructive discussions, and address any behaviour that goes against our community's spirit to be(e) nice.
- Assist people by answering their questions, offering guidance, and helping them navigate the platform effectively, ensuring they feel heard.
- Where possible, give us and/or your fellow active mods concerns, improvements, or insights you have from your section of our community.
What powers do community moderators have?
You'd be expected to use these responsibly, obviously:
- The ability to remove or hide posts, comments, or other content that violate our community guidelines.
- The authority to issue warnings to users who breach our mantra, and in severe cases, temporarily suspend their accounts.
We generally encourage a compassionate approach to moderating, though. Unless someone is clearly unproductive, we encourage you as a mod to engage in constructive dialogue before banning. And if you don't have the energy for this, you can flag a post to bring it to our (or another mod's) attention.
Additionally: blatantly misusing these or using them maliciously will be instant grounds for demotion, and in the latter case likely permanent banning from the site. Do not do that, please and thank you.
If I'm selected, how can I report stuff to the admins?
On site, you can flag it and leave it for us to deliberate. You can also reach one of us by DM on here.
If you need to immediately contact us for mod stuff, our main hubs of operation are Discord (where we have a specific channel for community mod reports) and Matrix (which is pretty relaxed and easy to follow). You can also use a DM on Beehaw itself.
How will mods be selected?
Hand selection. In the future we may supplement hand picking mods with another method—any mods selected by that method would most likely serve on a temporary basis (and that would be made clear to them on appointing).
Applications can be made here.[^2]
[^1]: because i've already seen moderately concerning posts w/r/t to this: please do not make us regret this community. it is currently this grouping or nothing. [^2]: we are working on a non-Google platform here but our first alternative failed to materialize today and there are easily half a dozen other things we need to prioritize right now (including the big 0.18 update, which had its timing on here derailed by a crippling bug). we'll get to an alternative when we do. if you do not want to use the form, DM me and we can arrange something.
In Borneo, Indigenous communities are using mapping tech to claim their land rights and fight the expansion of oil palm plantations.
Freight rail unions have gradually achieved their key demand from the labor dispute last year.
The town is supposed to move, but federal funding and complex logistics mean most residents are stuck.
if you hit a paywall (you should not, HCN has a fairly generous one and they aren't posted much), try this link: https://archive.is/jEJ3M
The fight against the militarized police training center dubbed “Cop City” is one of the great struggles of our time.
An Indigenous woman in Bolivia has earned international recognition for her work in the production, transformation and commercialization of cañahua, a resilient crop and nutritious grain with the potential to reach international markets.
also even Christians can't agree on what it means--do you know how many fucking schisms Christianity has? (and don't ask about the one which created the Southern Baptists...)
I’m personally kind of a prude and am uncomfortable with oversexualization but I don’t think this puritan, regressive path is the way to go.
the thing to remember is: it's perfectly fine to be uncomfortable with some things--this is a normal part of existing in spaces with other people and it's important to set boundaries for yourself. but in general it's also not necessarily someone else's problem to tailor their online existence to your discomfort.[^1] it's good if they respect your wishes of course, and especially if you're close with them it's probably worthwhile to see if they'll respect some of the ones you have. but with exceptions for the most heinous content it is mostly going to be/should be incumbent on you--at least as possible with the tools at your disposal--to curate your online experience so that you're not exposed to that stuff.
[^1]: this is especially true in what are essentially public spaces like Twitter, rather than smaller and more tailored communities
on the news front, i think we can both do better than this story (which seems to center on one redditor being duped, from a quick skim) and the New York Post, a tabloid which isn't exactly known for its quality.
every time i look at Texan urban planning, i die a little inside. most US urban planning is bad, but it's so uniquely bad in Texas that it's not even funny, and there's almost no way to systematically improve it short of nuking the suburbs and starting over because of how bad the sprawl is
Graeber is basically "must read" as far as i'm concerned; for anarchists and would-be anarchists, i'd say a comparable figure is Peter Gelderloos.
on the more obscure end, i've found the bibliographies of Walter Rodney and Amílcar Cabral to be quite good; perhaps not broadly applicable to modern socialism, but both definitely profile worthwhile international and historical perspectives (Rodney with Caribbean, Guyanese, and Black socialism; Cabral with the liberation war fought in Guinea-Bissau against the colonial Portuguese) that shouldn't be forgotten. since they're lesser-known you probably can't find their stuff in print, but most of their works can definitely be found on libgen
In the meantime, do you have any suggestions for a provider to host such a space?
hmm, good question. i've paged other people who i think are better able to socially or technologically answer this one than i, and hopefully they'll be able to direct you and others toward something
this is just another effort by another city to chase unhoused people out of an area, rather than, oh i dunno, building a mother fucking housing complex.
the bar is actually much lower here technically, because an easy solution would be to just provide the service generally. you don't even need housing to solve this specific facet of the "problem" (although nobody should be homeless and we should build housing and rehouse them, to be clear!)
The residents don’t want the homeless hanging around outside the library and turning off the wifi would reduce their incentive to be there.
i mean bluntly, sucks to be them? but get over it. homeless people are people too! the obvious solution is to provide them with social services first if this is the objection (which, to be clear, it generally isn't--it's that homeless people exist and aren't out of mind)
this is less of a dichotomy than i think is described here, though: almost all people in the second category were at one point people in the first and end up there because the support described in the first category disappears. when you become homeless, that frequently means you lose almost everything--and it's really, really hard to build up from nothing in modern society because the expectation is that you have money to survive, and there's only so far people are willing to pay your way forward.
(there's also the reality that even if you have something, there's only so long you can make that last without a job--and for a homeless person getting one can be functionally impossible, no matter how menial. housing is also catastrophically expensive, so even if they clear the job hurdle once they're down, the housing one may be likewise impossible to clear. this treadmill is a big part of why so many people become visibly and persistently homeless)
I do wonder what the plan is for growth, though? I can’t imagine it’ll be feasible to screen every sign up in a future where Beehaw continues to grow so quickly.
late to this but:
- we all sort of rotate in and out of approvals, so it's been pretty feasible to this point;
- the tide has ebbed from its peak and other instances are really taking the pressure off of us, so we can definitely keep up better now;
- worst case, we can just ignore all applications (or shut them off, if there's a toggle, not totally certain).
the big problem is actually the ones we don't approve, which are stuck in limbo as noted. we have about 5,000 of those and counting to get back to and we're working on how best to do that.
(we're also discussing how to scale on the fediverse side of things, but that's really preliminary)
I’m no doomer, but realistically, I think the best the left can hope for in 2024 is a vocal challenge from outside the DNC as any challenge from within would surely be muffled. In 2028, I’m all for a hostile takover FWIW.
yeah, i'm hoping in the 4 years between now and 2028 someone on the broader "left" is truly able to take the mantle from Bernie and become the front for all of the stuff he's been talking about--and in between that time the broader left is able to build up unions and connections within the unions so there's some sort of apparatus that can be tapped into by a candidate in 2028.
i'm also not under any pretenses that electoralism is the be-all-end-all, but right now it's the reason there's a broader American left worth thinking about. even if we wanted to mostly or entirely abandon electoralism (and i don't think it'd be good to abandon that domain entirely, personally) we just don't have influence outside of the electoral arena like we do within it--and we don't have much electoral influence to begin with!
I’m glad to see he’s moving to the Green Party and trying to build a leftist 3rd party coalition run.
i'm unfortunately not super enamored with the Greens either, tbh--they're not exactly a competent party in their own right, nor did the 3rd party coalition approach go all that well for Howie Hawkins in 2020.
speaking as a user for a moment and not as an admin: i do think this is a good idea for the site and community as a whole, and i'd like for us to eventually be able to accommodate stuff like this.
but speaking as an admin and not a user: ...the main issue (besides specificity) is that we're grappling with how we can responsibly facilitate any kind of mental health-focused community on here. in our current position, i don't think we're capable of doing that, nor do i think we'll be able to any time soon. this is why we balked on anything closer to that space than [email protected] and [email protected], which we think mostly avoid what we're worried about. (even then, we have three mods covering the first and i regularly keep special eye on the second.)
you've probably noticed that we really care about making sure our community and everything about it exists responsibly and ethically--and that also applies here. there are very real, immediate harms that can be caused by irresponsibly moderated health and mental health spaces and we don't want that. but ensuring stuff like that doesn't happen takes a lot of work and we're just not in a place where we can do that work or promise we'll get around to it.
while we also appreciate that people out there would volunteer to moderate such spaces, we're also not in a place interpersonally where we can trust someone to watch over such a community. we'd ideally want legitimately qualified people to watch the space, and we just can't promise that kind of thing. this obviously isn't just a matter of pruning hate speech or getting correct information about how to take care of a plant--bad information in a mental health context can irreversibly harm or kill people. (and obviously there's potential threats of violence, self-harm, and/or suicide that are really opened up to being expressed in such communities that must be handled with care. we've been fortunate to not deal with something like this yet.)
all this to say: this something we want to be able to have on the site, but i hope everyone can understand why this is a thing we're not able to right now, and probably won't for awhile.
this is symptomatic of how genuinely subhuman American society at-large treats homeless people, even though it is trivial in American society to become homeless. one wrong bill, one bad week, or one day of being in the wrong place is enough--and yet it is completely accepted that something of that sort happening to you places you into a class unworthy of rights and basic services afforded to others. it's absurd!
probably easier to make a long post (or posts) and link to it on our sidebar; there's no wiki feature that i'm aware of alas
probably yeah; i do think it's a little US-centric for my liking and a little sparse on ideological content (i want it to be sort of agnostic overall, ideologically) so improvements from the crowd would also be helpful here
echoing most of the points made in here so far:
- if an admin is toxic, the best step is likely to defederate from their instance
- if a mod is toxic, the best step is likely to see if the instance will intervene and if not, the next best step is probably to vote with your feet and start somewhere else
since this is only incidentally related to Beehaw, i'm going to remove the post in here. you're welcome to repost it in [email protected] if you feel a need to, but i think the general consensus here is already pointing you in a certain direction and i don't know that you'll get novel answers with a repost
The best thing Beehaw can do along those lines is to have clear, comprehensive guidelines about defederation; enforce them consistently; and be ready to update them when unforeseen variations arise.
yeah, we're in a very early stage but already rethinking some of our priors here thanks to federation and the lack of granularity with tools we have at our disposal
I’d be interested to know if there’s a strategy in place to ensure there are no super moderators on Lemmy. Or at least, not on Beehaw.
speaking for Beehaw: mods are currently (for practical and purposeful reasons) only limited to one or two communities, so we're not worried about accumulation as on Reddit.