silveradept: Domo-kun, wearing glass and a blue suit with a white shirt and red tie, sitting at a table. (Domokun Anchor)
[personal profile] silveradept
Let us begin with A meditation on the question of who is allowed to know things, and whose knowledge is allowed to be valid. While the example situations involve software development, the pattern of "the people with more power get to define what qualifies as knowledge, and whose knowledge is more important" rings solidly through the history of the world, especially in places that attempted to erase their indigenous populations and destroy their culture and knowledge, and that practiced human slavery with the same intent of reducing people and the cultures they brought with them to inconveniences, their spiritual beliefs to "folk and fairy tales" and so forth. A process that is, I am sure, still at work, especially in my profession, where the participants are still even more than a supermajority of white women, and whose profession is often framed as a sacred calling of bringing civilization to the Poors, the Immigrants, and the Others so that they can be brought up to the standards of petit bourgeois white people. (To borrow a phrase from a friend, the library profession in itself is very invested in the business of making sure that people are "bougie-ass," regardless of whether that's actually the right idea or a good one.)

Ward Christensen, co-creator of the Bulletin Board System that preceded many of our online forums and social media sites, has died at 78 years of age. He also created a protocol that allowed for binary files to be broken into packets and then sent over the wires, which would allow for file-sharing over the BBSes (and other sites.)

An anonymous, collective, but extremely well-sourced and cited report on the continued conduct and political advocacy statements of one Richard M. Stallman, who insists on several positions that say sex with those that cannot meaningfully consent is not actually a problem (barring children under the age of twelve), possession of child sexual assault material is not an issue, and that sexual assault and sexual harassment are overly-broad umbrella terms that include things that are not criminal at all. The report also mentions the lack of action on the part of the Free Software Foundation in trying to get Stallman to either retract his statements, to condemn those statements, or to remove Stallman from positions of governance from the FSF, and then concludes with actions for Stallman, some FSF board members, and the leadership of GNU to take as both apology for and acknowledgement of responsibility for Stallman's conduct. It's based on several decades of statements that he's made and people that he's defended and is pretty consistent over time, so in this case, it looks like someone has finally decided to point out that the stair is missing and has some suggestions on how to repair it.

In favor of allowing things to be good, without having to engage in the War of Superlatives. (And, as has been stated many times before, the obverse is also true: things can be allowed to be bad without needing to have superlatives attached to them, either.)

On genres as large amorphous objects with a core spirit and similar vibes, rather than anything approaching a list of defined elements that must be present.

Rose Horowitch at The Atlantic fundamentally misunderstands the practice of reading and of scholarly reading and analysis by lamenting that incoming college students haven't read, and aren't expected to read in high school, the works of old dead white men in their most archaic translations or language. Rose parades a rogues' gallery in front of the reader, whether it's Standardized Testing producing more excerpts of language instead of whole books, or those distracting pocket computers that keep kids and teens from sustained reading practice, or the necessity that some students have to fund their education through work, which gives them less time to work on their studies. One of the cited scholars wrote their response to how the article itself misrepresented them and fit the words of the scholars to the prejudices of the writer, while they talk about the necessity of giving students works they will relate to, and time and practice at developing the close reading skills that will be asked of them. The Atlantic piece sounds very much like someone complaining that nobody reads the classics any more, while studiously turning their head aside at the possibility of seeing a student reading something that is important and relevant to their lives, but that was written by a black woman this year, rather than a white man four hundred years ago. Or who decries attempts to translate texts in ways that bring them to the era they are being translated for, rather than trying to make sure the reader understands this is Serious Literature and they will be expected to put in large amounts of effort for small amounts of understanding.

On the usefulness of deep pressure stimulation to manage anxiety, and the method of providing deep pressure stimulation through the use of rope to tie harnesses on the body. Which has its benefits, compared to weighted blankets and the like, in that rope harnesses are often more easily hidden or made discreet through the use of other coverings that do not cling to human forms quite so much, and said harnesses also move with a person throughout the day, rather than being only usable in certain environments and situations. (As with all things, there is risk involved in doing ties, to others or to yourself. Thus, the recommendation of good scissors being on hand in case of needing to remove the rope in a hurry, and in making sure that your ties are not too tight or restrictive of important things like breathing.)

A Pennsylvania school district decided to cut windows so that anyone in the school who wanted to could observe what students were using the restrooms in the school that were for persons who identified with the gender on the door. They did not, of course, also cut windows into the rooms that were restricted to assigned sex at birth, because that would be an invasion of privacy, while windows into the rooms where trans students might be using them is, according to the quote, "adding privacy in the toilet facility." This is also in a school district that has restricted sport participation to assigned sex at birth and prevented the use of proper names and pronouns for a student without a parent first giving approval to do so.

After being appropriately roasted for their clear discriminatory actions and attitudes, the school decided that they had gone too far in pushing an anti-trans agenda and boarded up the windows. The excuse for the windows was that they would allow for better enforcement of policies forbidding vaping, bullying, and the like, but again, they only cut windows into the rooms where trans students might be using them. And the school board is unlikely to reconsider their other discriminatory policies. They've learned where the boundary is and what will draw unwanted attention.

And this is why all of those down-ballot races matter, if you're in the United States, because the people who want to do the most damage to people are usually running in local elections for school board and other such positions. They expect low turnout and little information, and believe they can then enact a terrible agenda from that position.

And if you let them in on local races, then eventually they start running for and getting elected to higher offices to spread their poison further. This is how you end up with Oklahoma putting out a request for 55,000 Christian bibles to put in all of the classrooms in the state, as part of new requirements that it be included in the state's curricula, and tailoring the request so that the only bibles that can meet that request will result in the state spending funds to support the current Republican nominee. Not to mention, the version suggested is a terrible translation, and that they want versions that don't have commentary in them (because that might require the students to think about the role of translation and word choice and whether the text in front of them is faithful and accurate. You know, scholarship.) Supposedly, the state skirts the extremely obvious First Amendment problem by saying the bibles are only supposed to serve as historical reference documents, but if that were the case, surely there are better versions, ones with proper annotations so that when it comes up in the appropriate classes, there's an easy way of gathering more context about the use (and misuse) of the scriptures to achieve certain ends.

It certainly is possible to teach about those foundational writings and their function in history without crossing over into apologia or evangelism for Christianity itself, but I severely doubt that's what the Oklahoma Education Department has in mind here, including with the quoted statements in the article.

In Utah, having seen how material banned from schools and libraries might still be distributed using the network of Little Free Libraries, lawmakers now want to make the maintainers of those libraries criminally liable if someone else puts a banned book in their library. And there are already threats of stochastic terrorism against the libraries and possibly their maintainers as well, because the image that you want to invoke about how a functioning democracy that tolerates many points of view is having roving bands of citizens looking to do violence to anything or anyone that they believe is inferior, dangerous, or subversive. One might even place them in the tradition of such groups as lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan.

Author Martha Wells provides excellent alt text to the Authors Against Book Bans graphics that translate how Project 2025 intends to classify all queer people and content, or anything that acknowledges the existence of sex (as something that might be enjoyable, or recreational, or anything other than penis-in-vagina after marriage with the explicit intention of getting someone pregnant) as pornographic, strip any First Amendment protections from the same, and insist that anyone who then has such material available or mentions in a classroom or otherwise should be arrested and registered as sex offenders, which would destroy their ability to work with or around children in most places. And I couldn't say this in any kind of official capacity, lest a state agency charged with enforcing the law that says we can't use any kind of government asset to promote or endorse one candidate over another, or support or oppose a ballot initiative investigate and determine that we have violated the sacred neutrality. Even as men with government contracts go about being hype men for specific political candidates because they expect to have those candidates then further rig the courts in favor of themselves and for the opposition party not to punish him for taking a political side, because they wouldn't want to be perceived as doing it for political reasons. (And the sacred neutrality returns to us once again.)

After having encamped at the UK Department of Education with the slogan that "Trans Kids Deserve Better", and earlier having occupied the National Health Service on the same slogan, trans activities released 6,000 crickets into a conference of the LGB Alliance, a group that believes it fights for the rights of gay people and bisexuals but in practice devotes most of their time to the denigration of trans people. The crickets did their job, disrupting the conference and canceling several of the planned speeches.

A cogent explanation of how the reluctance to engage with women's bodies in both practical and theological components makes Christianity not a particularly friendly or welcoming religion to women, and how much that reluctance has compounded over the eras.

As best as can be ascertained, there definitely was sex before marriage in the United Kingdom's past, but it was not widespread, nor was it commonly between persons of higher classes and their servants or lower-class women.

In a transparent attempt to produce more men to fight their war, the Russian strongman's parliament is considering a bill that would outlaw being childfree or discussing the possibility of such, with narrow exemptions for religion, for medical reasons, and in case someone was pregnant by sexual assault. (The last one surprises me, honestly, but I'd be willing to guess that trying to claim such an exemption would be difficult to succeed at.)

Teron County Library in Wyoming used to host Harry Potter-themed literacy programs, but will not do so any more after Warner Brothers sent them a cease-and-desist letter. One hopes that this might be a goad for Teron County Library to reduce their holdings of Potter material, as well, in spite for the C&D, and also because they hopefully know by now about how the works and the author have not held up well at all over time, either. (Potter had its time, but that time has finished, and it is probably best now to let it spin itself down to a stop without providing any winding.)

Hurricane Helene's pathway ravaged a North Carolina plant that had been producing sixty percent of the country's intravenous fluid supply. There's no timeline on when the plant will reopen and begin manufacturing again. And we learn, once again, that the phrase about not putting all of one's eggs in a single basket is there for a reason. Even if having redundancies and spreading manufacture across several regions is not as immensely profitable as concentrating everything in one place.

Several FEMA aid stations re-opened in North Carolina after the arrest of a man who was making threats against the aid workers. Because we are in the kind of world where the big lies and the cynical manipulation has created real problems when it comes time for government actors to say "no, this part of government is fine and necessary, take the aid that you're getting, please," after having made significant campaigns that all of government is in fact, the Deep State that is out to get you.

In the vein of science fiction making commentary about our world, but with trappings that stop us from realizing it immediately, the character of Dr. Julian Bashir and how Deep Space Nine substituted "genetic engineering" for "neurodivergence".

The X-Files is responsible for a fair amount of additions and consolidations to the shipping lexicon, but one of the things it did that was different than other shows of the time was to have a male lead who had genuine respect for the female lead.

The ways in which the 1950 Disney animated Cinderella is in conversation with and makes changes to the original tale and many of the adaptations that had been produced before it.

We have a winner in Fat Bear Week for 2024.

In technology, unsurprisingly, when you give someone carte blanche to collect data, even if it is supposedly for a legitimate purpose, you find both over-collection of data and the data collected being useful for more than just its supposed stated purpose. Thus, license plate readers are also capturing yard signs, bumper stickers, shirts, people's faces, and recording the precise locations of those expressed sentiments. Supposedly, the database is only restricted to law enforcement, but given that cops are the kinds of people who will proudly harass someone for their skin color, I somehow doubt that they will show any kind of restraint about harassing people for their political beliefs, either. (And history says I'm right about that.)

The reasons you do not build backdoors into systems is because you cannot control who will use those backdoors once they are discovered.

If you run the Firefox browser, or any of its derivatives or forks, it's a good idea to update, as there are some exploits in the wild that use it as their vector of attack. Most Firefox installs auto-update in the background, but if you have a system that requires triggering an update command, then that's best to do.

While there are people who are trying their best to find a guaranteed way to live to and past 100 years of age, it turns out we don't know nearly enough about it to make even educated guesses, and much of the data we might be pointing at has significant possibilities of contamination by fraud or other such decisions to keep people more alive than they are so as to continue receiving pensioner support.

An explanation of how difficult it is to find the correct Fediverse instance to join, and how difficult it is for instance administrators to advertise how they handle the things that are most important to a good experience on the Fediverse. Using shoes as the metaphor.

Last for tonight, the unflappable Ursula K Le Guin, and the visit she made, and the person who was assigned to escort her about who learned far more than she ever had the confidence to say to her.

And the ways in which the vision of Japan as austere and minimalist have been related more to the elites of the society, and how there is an equal current of additiveness and curation of clutter and maximalism. For an outside audience worried about their own clutter, the subtractiveness and minimalism appeals, but it elides how much of the country has little to do at all with minimal and austere spaces, because a lot of people don't have the money and space to live in such a manner. And, of course, there's the usual amount of exoticising things that come from the outside, often in pretty racist ways.

Plus HTML for People, a tutorial on learning how to use HTML to build your own webpages meant for those who have no experience at all in markup languages.

(Materials via [personal profile] adrian_turtle, [personal profile] azurelunatic, [personal profile] boxofdelights, [personal profile] cmcmck, [personal profile] conuly, [personal profile] cosmolinguist, [personal profile] elf, [personal profile] finch, [personal profile] firecat, [personal profile] jadelennox, [personal profile] jenett, [personal profile] jjhunter, [personal profile] kaberett, [personal profile] lilysea, [personal profile] oursin, [personal profile] rydra_wong, [personal profile] snowynight, [personal profile] sonia, [personal profile] the_future_modernes, [personal profile] thewayne, [personal profile] umadoshi, [personal profile] vass, the [community profile] meta_warehouse community, [community profile] little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
Depth: 1

Date: 2024-10-19 09:02 pm (UTC)
silvercat17: pretty black lady astronaut (pretty lady)
From: [personal profile] silvercat17
I don't have energy for much reading right now, but I devoured the post about Ursula Le Guin, so thank you for that.

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silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
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