He/Him, Anarchist/Communist Front End Developer, originally from BC, currently in coastal Albania. Perpetually looking out for my next exchange community empowerment project across the globe.
Are there guidelines for backend data structure and distribution solutions for activist/investigative groups?
Recently some group published an interactive, 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:
- Skills and preparations required by investigative teams to publish structured data to the world.
- Assessment of the torrenting and IPFS solutions to ensure recovery of the data in perpetuity.
- Assessment of the RESTful or GraphQL format to disseminate investigative data.
- Assessment of using established package managers and repositories to disseminate investigative data.
- Ideas on what should be eventually exposed to the user, who can be assumed to be a developer as well.
- Further comments.
I would be glad to get some feedback on these thoughts.
Not to mention that people have jobs and use their credit cards, no way even to hide the most important personal identifying information.
Exactly, this is a lost cause. If you participate in society your essential data are simply out there. For most people the task is to minimize their footprint. If we are talking about evading mass surveillance, then we should take for granted that the person will be to one or another degree marginalized, or lead a fringe lifestyle.
Sure, I see where you are coming from. I used to be in favor of PGP as well, but I think I just was conditioned to it because it was everywhere, eg Linux repositories. The argument I found more convincing in this article is that PGP is a swiss-army knife. You might want to use it in an emergency, but professionals have special tools for each different task. In fact, the article suggests very nice alternatives for each task: Encrypt with age , sign with minisign. Two different tasks, two different tools, no need for a web of trust. Just for the arguments sake why do you think that PGP is worth it given the burden of entry?
Perhaps we could benefit from sth like MetaCritic for science.
As far as I know the peer reviewers are in most cases now selected by the editor, they self-select to respond, are not paid for their work, and the process for alarmingly many journals is not even blind. I always thought that this makes the process vulnerable to network effects in the field, since people are obliged to a certain etiquette when commenting on established figures in their own field. So yes, I get where you are coming from, but similar to the scientific method, peer review is also great to describe in theory, in practice it would require much more precise protocols, like Web protocols I might say. I really don't want to be a pessimist about science in the current political climate, but if we want these great ideals (Scientific method, Peer Reviewed evidence) we will have to abandon the existing situation as soon as possible.
People say this over and over "depends on your threat model" and yet people seem to have a hard time understanding that. Your threat model is "who is your adversary and what he is willing/able to do". Your security goal is what do you want to keep from your adversary.
As others said, if you are an activist or sth important, perhaps you might want to build a working knowledge of cryptography yourself. If you just want META not being able to see your NSFW chat with your romantic partner Signal might be more than enough. In fact, people way more relevant than me also suggest that Signal is good even for bounty hunter vulnerability reporting.
Having said that, what bugs me most is that people think the instant messaging format as suitable for everything: activism, jobs, crimes, broadcasting 1970's prog rock for extraterestrials , whatever lmao. Do you really want to use your phone for all that? Like, just carrying the phone around in the first place nullifies your other precautions, for all advanced threat models beyond privacy of non-critical social messaging.
Persistent/resourceful adversaries can eventually get to you, using a set of penetration and intelligence techniques, which means, if you are involved, the convenience of messaging your partners in crime from the phone in your pocket while waiting for a bus is a convenience you probably can't afford.
protected by PGP
Someone here recently linked to this gem https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem/
The article warns PGP over Email is a safety concern. They suggest Signal instead. (And several other tools to replace PGP)
This is not just about the pressure put on academics to publish, but it is a whole systemic rot, that is not even remotely living up to the "peer reviewed evidence" myth.
The whole idea of an intermediary authority for scientific publishing is a scam, and it corrupts people who want/need to be in the pyramid. The whole thing is ill-conceived, needs to be abolished, and a new thing should be put in its place. At some point someone said, "I can ditch all this and just publish research on my blog, then people will criticize and build upon that". No publisher, no paywall, no problem. If we follow this example, all of these issues can disappear overnight. But the vast majority of professionals value their career more than anything else, including our tantamount tenets of what science communication should look like.
You might object that "intermediary authorities" and "peer review" are essential to prevent disinformation and conspiracy theories. Well, we are past this point aren't we? Did this system prevent conspiracy theories and disinformation, hoaxes, and fraudsters this far? No, so how exactly will it prevent all of these terrible things in the future? If anything, building arguments in the open without paywalls might deter at least some of the conspiracy theorists that brandish paywalls as further evidence of cover-ups and secrecy, and ditching the horrible jargon and high-brow style might actually help the common sense of scientific arguments just shine, and combat the rising anti-intellectualism of right-wing conspiracy theorists.
Like, if you explain Elsevier's etc business model to any lay person (Pay me money so that I let you publish to my super-selective journal and feed your vanity) they have the most funny reactions, because to anyone who is not conditioned to this absurdity, it just sounds like a pyramid scheme.
I can't help wondering what is up with all those people fighting in comments about encryption. You make the point time and again that having encrypted media is somehow suspicious. I see where you are coming from.
- There are cases where people have gotten in trouble for using TOR/Signal, because it was presented to the court that "this is what criminals use".
- There are those Wall Street companies that got in trouble for using encrypted messengers with trading partners.
We know about these, because it makes headlines when it happens.
Yet, there are people here, in any similar discussion, not just this one, that keep telling us that encryption is useless because authorities can more easily break your bones than brute force your private key, and you are going to be in trouble just for having encrypted media.
Is that so? Remember the fuss when federal regulators wanted Apple to install backdoors to encrypted i-Phones? Why so? No no, bear with me, if you people are correct, then every person with an encrypted i-Phone should be in a watchlist? What about all these Linux laptops all with LUKS on the main hard drive, flying around?
How come we don't hear about those people being prosecuted and brutalized every other day in all of these alternative media we are following?
Regarding encryption, I have a right to my fucking privacy and if you want to know what is in my hard drive, then you are the weird one. Now let's discuss criminal prosecution. If the authorities have something on you and they need whatever is in your encrypted drive to convict you, then they do not have anything on you unless they break the encryption. The more people practicing encryption the less fruitful their efforts will be. Your argument amounts to little more than the very authorities slogan "if you don't have something to hide". More people using encryption should make it sink that not only people with something to hide will use encryption, and indeed, all these everyday, non-criminal people are already using Encryption in i-Phones and Linux without having their bones broken.
Yet you keep repeating this rhetoric, which seems to have no other purpose than deter people from using encryption.
Now let's discuss brutality. If you live in a police state that can kidnap you and rough you up to forgo your protected right to privacy, then you don't have a problem with encryption, but a huge political problem. In that case encryption won't liberate you, but at the same time you have much bigger problems, and an entirely different threat model.
So the only thing you people could, in good faith, add to the discussion is "If you live in a police state, don't rely solely on encryption, and update your threat model". The other things you keep going on and on about are essentially a rebranded "if you don't have something to hide" and they only seem designed to discourage people from adopting encryption altogether, and the fact you don't let go can only mean one fucking thing.
I mean, even the struggle to self-censor crap beliefs is pathetic. Most guys don't even censor themselves or outright announce that they self-censor. Like refraining from spewing transphobia and misogyny in front of women is like refraining from farting on a date. Most women are not even that pedantic with these things. The fact that this poses a mental toil on you as if you cannot tell a radicalized incel from an average dickhead is really alarming. I hope you find peace.
Right enough, the old standard is toxic and must go. You can wear a dress, cry in public, take it up yours. You still will be a manly man.
there are legal reasons to worry
"You could go to jail for saying the wrong thing! And how you are supposed to know what is considered offensive this month? Who knew you will have to subscribe to a feminist newsletter to be a man? " Did someone get addicted to old privileged sex roles, and now they feel they will be persecuted for hating women's bodily autonomy?
That is why I say it is suspicious, and given recent UK history they just might say that students protesting TERFs are extremists and round them up.
This might also be virtue signalling so that other groups are persecuted. Several things it can be, except the one they claim it is, because if it was, the general consensus is that modern extremists target all those groups of people.
Their choice shows that they don't care that much for those other groups. Effectively, it can be understood as a pink washing move for throwing all the other classes under the bus. I hope I am wrong.
so easy to get label as misogynistic where do we call it extremism
Um, incels have long been in the spotlight as possibly violent extremists. TBF research says that a minority of them become mass shooters, but their ideology is as clearly misogynist as it gets.
over and over that 50% of the population sees them as a threat
It is so easy to pick up some minimal etiquette, which most guys use to feint decency and lead normal lives, despite being more or less misogynist on the inside. If you can hardly stick to that ridiculously low bar, then in good faith, you might need to talk to a professional?
If you spew Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson nonsense at your first encounter with a woman, then yes you are perceived as a possible threat and women are smart enough to show one the door.
It is pretty unclear what you are trying to say. If you are suggesting that this regulation (good or bad in itself) bears a relation to the mental turmoil suffered by young men, you should back it up with some evidence. This is some remote innuendo.
In reality, mental health organizations like APA recognize that young men are under lot of pressure, which leads to addiction, violence, self-harm, steroid abuse, depression, and even suicide. There are special guidelines for counseling young men, and there is active research about the root cause.
A rigid traditional understanding of masculinity is shown to be the main culprit.
Do you have anything to back up your claim that regulating misogyny somehow has an effect on young men's and boys mental well being? So far it is shown that the likes of Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson cause greater harm than this ill-conceived law.
This is a story from August 2023, and was covered in many outlets (I quote here NYT for reference only)
Federal regulators continued their crackdown against employees of Wall Street firms using private messaging apps to communicate, with 11 brokerage firms and investment advisers agreeing Tuesday to pay $549 million in fines.
Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Bank of Montreal were hit with the biggest penalties by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Together, the brokerage and investment advisory arms of those four financial institutions accounted for nearly 90 percent of the fines, according to statements released by the regulators.
You might have a different type of person in mind than other commenters. Most commenters had such people in mind who won't install a password manager or an ad-blocker, or won't hard reboot their Windows unless supervised. Having said that, I don't think that even if you had technical people in mind this fits the question. They tend to take substantial more effort to learn and use effectively than the scope set by the original question. I thought this question was for little things that have a quick, lasting, and substantial effect. Learning awk and sed is a different thing entirely, I think of those more as productivity tools you can invest in mastering, and pay off in the long run.
Mixed feelings about this. First things first, misogyny and online harassment in the wider "internet" is rampant, and yes I believe someone has to do sth about it. I am not sure a super-surveillance nation state expanding its definition of extremism is what I wished for though. What if it was Russia? On top of that: This coming from the highly transphobic UK rubs me the wrong way. I am not sure they will not label transgender rights activism as extremism as well, given how many outlets in the UK entertain Rowling's delusion that it is a misogynistic movement, no less while UK TERFs' litigation is piling up, accusing trans people of harassing them. I am not buying it, yet.
In a win for equality, misogyny will be treated as extremism under new UK Labour government plans set to be completed by October.
Depends on the jurisdiction. In many countries directly insulting someone in his face is a misdemeanor or similar level violation.
Misgendering someone is an insult like calling someone names, or bad mouthing someone. There is no fundamental right to insult other people, even when you rationalize it with beliefs that happen to be protected.
For example,
I might believe whatever I want about my neighbor, eg that he is a fascist cunt, and I am allowed even to say so in private.
But saying it to his face is like a breach of the rule of law, as is saying so to others. I might think he should be lynched daily, but saying so might well be a crime.
You might even say that ignoring him in the elevator when it is customary to greet your neighbor, although not illegal, it is considered just rude by society standards.
So at the very least we have a teacher being systematically rude to his students for religious reasons (or "Gender critical", all the same), thus making him a dick. See my recent comment on Maya Forstater for some quite similar case, only this asshole is aggravated because he is in a position to scar kids.
Even if your belief is protected like religion, or you push it to be (TERFism), you have no right to violate another person's dignity because of your beliefs.
Bigots are bitter about it, and that is why they want to destroy the constitution and the rule of law to have their way. By extension they are against some basic principles like freedom of religion (of others).
Plus, there is research that shows that respecting pronouns is a mental health protector for trans and non-binary teenagers, so this make the teacher a perpetrator of demonstrably abusive behavior towards his students. For these reasons I believe he was quite rightly discontinued, and I would believe the same if he were outright terminated.
Rowling has been silent on X since August 7, when she shared a post from researcher Maya Forstater, who was fired from her job after making anti-trans statements.
(my emphases)
I don't know where Newsweek takes its facts from but this is another lie pushed by the TERF propaganda machine. Forstater was a tax expert whose contract was not renewed after she was horrible to her trans and non-binary colleagues. (Yes the 'researcher' wording is put there on purpose, to amplify the perception that her freedom of speech was violated, or as Rowling likes to put it 'her livelihood was threatened for disagreeing with the trans lobby'.)
She then went to a labor tribunal court or sth, to claim that her belief in the "immutability and reality of sex" is a protected belief, and made a fuss about being fired for her beliefs, when in reality she was merely discontinued for being a dick to the people she worked with. Her Twitter feed was full of conflating trans people with rapists and pedophiles.
The first judge took into account her definition that requires working plumbing to name someone a woman, and consulted a biological expert, impartial to gender identity, that precluded any scientific basis to Forstater's childish views on biological sex. The judge deemed her belief is "unworthy of respect in a democratic society", but later, an appeal court said she has a right to believe that but she still cannot misgender people.
Critical legal theorists suggested that the appeal court held a very low bar as for what opinions "worthy of respect" should be, and that its ruling should be better interpreted as "marginally better than an outright nazi".
It is a red flag for both the author and the outlet that they lead with a snippet of propaganda which is as false as unsubstantiated claims that Khelif's trans or DSD. So should we conclude both toxic narratives are pushed by the same epicenters?
As a basic security precaution, first make everyone here use the provided setting option and link your Lemmy to a (fresh) Matrix, unrelated to your broader life. This will allow secure messaging between members. Good moderator response will follow from establishing a secure communication channel, primarily for mods, but also for members.
Responding to common transphobic truisms about women in sports for the past couple hours. Result is, some good arguments and references can be found in my profile page.
I hope someone will find those helpful
Is this for real? (Please see text)
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
- "Der Aufruf und seine Erstunterzeichner". Verein Deutsche Sprache (in German). 6 March 2019. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
- 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.
- 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.
- "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
Iceland's minister for the Environment mandates gender neutral toilets
Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, the Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources of Iceland, has announced a new regulation that requires...
> 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.
In a major decision on Friday, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that geofence warrants are “categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.” Closely following arguments EFF has made in a number of cases, the court found that geofence warrants constitute the sort of “general,...
Logitech’s Subscription Mouse Idea Pulled Back After Backlash
It was just a few months ago that we had some fun with Logitech over it’s amazing, never been done before AI mouse… that was actually just a rehash of a previous mouse that had a button…
RAND report to Pentagon suggests Memes Pose a Threat to the US Financial System
Learn about the dual nature of memes in shaping beliefs and behaviors.
Money for Nothing in Tech?
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?
An idea from a random comment that you think we should appreciate more?
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.
Fediverse as activist tool?
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?
Assimil is a 1950's publisher of language books which some of you may appreciate.
These archived versions might give you an idea.
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!
Please keep using Shinigami Eyes
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 , 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.
The TERF propaganda machine has already superspreaded the boxer's Imane Khelif's Olympics row is about trans identification. In fact she appears to be born woman with DSDs
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif’s Olympic participation is “not a transgender issue”, an IOC spokesperson has said.
> 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).
According to Wikipedia Khelif is natal woman with DSD making her having high testosterone levels. Not much detail is given about fellow boxer 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 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.