And it’s like, if we (humans, collectively) want to make our spaces welcoming and safe, then we (again, humans) need to actively police our spaces to enforce the kind of social norms that we want; community building takes work, after all.

But bloody hell, it’s exhausting when that typically just means that we (women) are expected to do a disproportionate amount of the emotional and social labour. Quelle surprise

This is a great explanation

In addition to what others have said, the UK also has long had some pretty concerningly broad anti-terrorism laws, which have been wielded against Palestine Action. Now, anyone who supports Palestine Action are deemed to be supporting terrorism.

Even before that, we had some pretty scary stuff restricting peaceful protest. Planning a protest that involves a slow march on a street can net you a prison sentence of several years. In addition to penalising people protesting against genocide, this has also been used against (and likely was motivated by) climate activists.

What’s especially scary is that people don’t seem to be aware of how chilling these laws are for human rights. I think it’s a cultural thing, where the overton window for what people consider to be normal levels of the state suppressing people like this. We’ll be fucked if Reform ever get into power and show us just how easy laws like this make it for fascists

Wedinos is a great service! I love that this is a thing that’s available. I’ve recommended it to a few friends who use recreational drugs occasionally. I’m a big advocate of harm reduction, and stuff like that gives people information on the risks they’re engaging with is a much better way of keeping people safe than preaching abstinence

I wrote a long comment that ended up being lost due to my app crashing. I’m too burnt out to write it all out again right now, but I wanted to leave something, even if brief.

My advice is to not do it. I looked into this myself due to chronic pain, and I concluded that even if I felt like I could manage the risk of dependence/tolerance if I were self medicating, that it would be impossible to do safely if buying stuff on the darknet.

Aside from it being hella expensive, there’s also the constant risk of the particular market you use going down, either due to law enforcement, or “exit scamming” — when a market or vendor plans to leave, but they continue accepting new money for a while, without sending out parcels/paying out to vendors.

If you find a market that you’re able to access, it isn’t a question of “if” it goes offline, but when. When it does go offline, you might be in a really tricky spot of struggling with withdrawal symptoms from not having access to your regular medication whilst you try to find a new alternative.

Even setting aside that problem, there’s the issue of finding a reliable vendor. Dark net markets function sort of like eBay, and you may have some trial and error finding someone who sells reliable stuff for a reasonable price. But even then, you need to be prepared for parcels to not reach you, and the anxiety of not knowing if you’ve been exit scammed; or for your regular vendor to temporarily pause taking new orders; or for them to just close their shop, never to return. Even medications that look legit might not be. There are reagent tests you can do to keep yourself a bit safer, but what would you realistically be able to do if the tramadol you had purchased showed up as negative for opioids, and you suspected they were just Xanax. Depending on the market and the manner in which you purchased them, you might be able to get your money back, but in the meantime, you would be without your medication.

If you go this route, it’s not a question of if your supply gets interrupted, but when. Honestly, you would be better served seeking proper medical care, privately. I’m guessing that if you have considered going private already, it’s not an option for you because it would be too expensive. Well trust me, it’s probably more reasonable than jumping down into this forsaken money pit.

This goes extra to anyone reading this who is disabled, chronically ill, or struggles with mental illness. The world is richer with us in it.

It is pretty scientific. It involves inserting a tiny probe into the pore where a hair grows, and then administering a small shock that kills the hair follicle for permanent removal. It’s basically an alternative to laser hair removal, except unlike laser, it works for people with fair hair too.

It’s pretty grim to be as immersed as I am in all the tech news bullshit (which I continue to do largely because I am the most techy person in most rooms I exist in, and the closest thing to an AI expert (it feels so weird to say that, but I do have a fair bit of experience coding machine learning from scratch in a scientific context, so I probably do need to get more comfortable with thinking myself as an expert — it’s a relative term, after all)

However, I really enjoy that in addition to there being names that make me grimace because I know they will have dogshit takes on things, there are also names that I really respect. It makes me feel more connected to people, because it makes me reflect on how meaningful knowledge production is based on trust. Emily Bender, for instance, is someone whose work I am familiar with, and thus I am far likely to spend the energy to read stuff like the thread you linked.

As grim as modern tech is, it makes me smile that there are so many people who are fighting the good fight.

Damn, your smoky eye makeup is incredible. I can never get mine looking so natural

“[my name], you have more punk in your little finger than I do in my entire body”.

Said to me by my late best friend, who was the punkest dude I have ever had the privilege of knowing — the kind of punk that reminds me to get angry at systemic injustice in the world rather than internalising it all and spiralling. I can’t do much to fix the world, but it’s good to be angry at the right things.

When someone gives a compliment, the weight of it is determined by a combination of what the compliment-giver values, and the values of the person receiving that compliment. For instance, I deeply value ideological pinkness, and so that compliment hit harder than if I didn’t. But even if I didn’t especially value punkness, the compliment would’ve still landed because I knew my friend deeply valued punkness.

Man, I miss the dude. But I carry him with me everywhere I go. I loved him so dearly because at the start of our friendship, he saw aspects of myself that I couldn’t see. Knowing him helped me to become who I am today, and it’s compliments like this that helped me along the way.

I like crochet or knitting. When I’m working on something, there’s usually a period where I do have to focus on the task, but once I get going, I love how I can just do it ambiently, as I’m either doing something else, or nothing at all — I used to take crochet to my university lectures, and it actually helped me to focus on the lecture.

Similarly, when I made a chainmaille hauberk, I liked how easily I could just zone out once I had a bag of rings and I just needed to interlock them, using pliers. When I was piecing all of it together, I needed to focus, but I spent tens of hours just mindlessly linking rings together

I wonder if it would be possible to do direct government funding but via legislation that states that it needs a supermajority or something to be repealed

I want this as a sticker