Ad blockers are my best disability accommodation. The things they do with ads to capture attention f with my brain. I'm really going to struggle if this happens. And I'm dependent on the internet for so many things, from groceries to prescriptions to people.

The replies to the post by the sh.itjust.works admin are fascinating. Admin's post is calming, reasonable, minimises outrage and indicates ways forward which will improve the platform. Win win win, with some temporary inconvenience. So of course others are forgetting all of that and inventing things to get upset about. How do we (collectively) unlearn this habit? I learned by observing it in action and reading others' writing about it. Maybe someone will learn something from reading this. Tiny drop in the vast ocean but I don't know how to scale it. We need to figure it out though.

I have zero interest in spending that much time wading through crap just so I can have the personal decision to block it.

Something with environmentalist and sustainability goals and principles rather than forms of destruction. I don't want to kill things or chop down trees or blow stuff up. The world is difficult and I am tired.

The current climate of "discourse" in the US works against effective teaching. I do know what I'm talking about here; teaching emotionally charged subjects was my strength but it's nearly impossible to online these days.

I have no idea how you get out of this dynamic when it's become so deeply embedded in how things are done, just that for every person who manages to learn something amidst the shouting, another is driven further away from what you wish to teach. But this is where we are and what we have to work with.

This can be true along with the unfairness of putting the burden on the disadvantaged side. I don't know the answer. Perhaps there isn't one.

Same-day delivery is such a recent expectation. To call it a "thing of the past" may be accurate as in "no longer available" but it's also misleading with its unintentional implication of a longer history. If it was just a brief blip, we'll manage just fine. Livable cities and a livable planet have to be our priority.

Jewish schools in Europe are closed today. Synagogues and other places where Jews gather have been evaluating the risk they face and acting as they need to. Some might say that the claims Hamas has called for a "Day of Rage" today are internet rumours but we have to take them seriously because the consequences of failing to are so severe.

There will be calls for jihad against Jews. There always are. As emboldened as militants and wanna-bes are by Hamas', as they see it, success in killing Jews (and yes, I chose that designation specifically and intentionally) last weekend, it won't be different now. There have been and will be calls for jihad against us.

When Palestine attacks Israel, antisemitic violence around the world increases. When Israel attacks Palestine, antisemitic violence around the world increases. This is what diaspora Jews live with.

Bomb threats on diaspora Jewish organisations started last Saturday. Diaspora Jews have been on high alert all week.

The majority of people at those demonstrations will be peaceful. But some won't. Some will use the gatherings to foment violence against diaspora Jews. There's no right answer in this. If you're affected and chaffing at the denial of your right to shout in numbers, please consider that this ban will very likely save lives, especially in France. Please don't dismiss this just because those lives are diaspora Jews and you don't much care about us.

Edit: Notices the number of people who have convinced themselves that putting French Jews in danger is alright, cause you know, Palestine. Terror attacks against Jews in France is a thing, you know. Done in the name of freeing Palestine, as if French Jews had the power to change anything in another country.

Is anyone checking the AI "summariser" bot for accuracy? I'd rather not get misleading ideas in my head from a poor summary.

My central and autonomic nervous systems. Mine are shite and have been since I was wee. Even a clean reinstall of the original operating system would likely help a ton, but if the open source community could go through the files and find the all the bugs, who knows what I could make of my life. At the very least I'd be able to work again.

Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Olmert was working on a plan to withdraw from West Bank next.

If militant Palestinian leadership were willing to live in peace with Israel there would be peace. They've refused so many opportunities to become their own independent state because it requires allowing Israel to also exist in peace.

I have photosensitivity. I need to get animated emojis off my screen as quickly as possible since they bring me closer to my seizure threshold.
Think of it like a cup. Skimming quickly past a few animated emojis won't fill the cup on their own, but if it's already full from other things, even that little bit is a risk for it spilling over into a seizure. If I were to try to read a lengthy post with animated emojis, forget it.
Laugh at me if it makes you feel superior. You probably are.

I don't come anywhere near close to meeting the requirements for intentional communities. Chronic illness is a real bastard. I don't need much and the quality of my life could so easily be improved by just a little help from others, but everyone - even intentional communities - is caught up in focusing on how much others can help them. What I can give is less tangible, and therefore dismissed.

I don't want to abandon society but I do recognise we'd all be far better off if we lived in ways which were less isolating. Every person/family for themselves harms us all.

So a protected category for women only, because of social factors rather than inherent physical differences.

This makes some sense to me based on my own experiences in other areas like mathematics and science competitions. The boys in my school who knew me were mostly alright but it was still a very strange environment to be a teenage girl in. I was always keenly aware of being an outsider. And it was so much worse in rooms full of strangers at competitions. Intimidating and overwhelming.

For all that I was consistently at or near the top in our school, I always fell at the outside competitions. Felt horrible too, that I was letting everyone down. I was too young to understand the sexism at play so I just beat myself up about it and stopped participating.

In general, I support protected categories for women. We haven't come anywhere near far enough in reducing sexism to make them unnecessary. I don't know if it's a big enough issue with trans women in competitive chess to make this sort of ruling. It might have the balance wrong. But it would be good if there was more understanding of what these kinds of environments can be like for cis girls and women.

This just happened. It's far too early to do more than speculate.

Like we can also connect dots from known things like FBI agents being killed because Trump leaked documents, his connections with Russia directly and thus Iran, to the possibility that information also leaked which compromised agents acting on Israel's behalf within Gaza. To be clear, this is also speculation.

But yeah, we can create all sorts of scenarios based on bits of information and our biases and ways of looking at the world. We'll never know everything which factored in.

I'm really sorry you're going through this. Much sympathy for trying to juggle this.

You've come out to your mum. Take a step back and appreciate that you did this. You found the strength to do it and you've done it. Take another moment to stay with this thought. Congratulations. Well done. You did it.

How she deals with it now is a her-thing. How your other people deal with it will be them-things. Just like your mum's reaction says more about her than it does about you, your mum's reaction also says more about her than how your other people will react.

Since her dad is a really vocal ally, you could try approaching him with a request for his help. Something like "Grandpa, I need your help. I told Mum I'm gay and she said I'm too young to know." This will hopefully put him in ally mode, rather than worried parent scared of what you'll face in this difficult world, and it would provide him with a useful course of action. People tend to like useful courses of action.

Does this sound like a good enough plan? I have life and youth work experience but you know your people best.

Whatever you choose to do, we're all here to support you as you find your way.

Has fond memories of the Yahoo Answers Etiquette section.

You've seen in unarguable terms how little Hamas cares for life. They'll exploit the suffering and deaths of Gazans in their war against Israel. How can you possibly continue to think Gazans are able to "speak up" against Hamas after what you've seen Hamas do?

Hamas is the second richest terror organisation. Funding from Iran but they also grift 13% of all aid money going into Gaza via charges for currency conversion. "Not for resale" aid food products are routinely sold for profit in Gaza.

Hamas routinely chooses military spending over social spending. It's always been their way.

A Jewish teacher was killed by her student in France today because of Hamas' call for a "Day of Rage".

morning thought: I've definitely joined the right instance. (also the start from the assumption of good faith guidelines linked to in Gaywallet's recent post)

You know guys, you don't have to actually outdo the UK for unhinged politics. I mean, our lot just won't have that and things are bad enough here already.

A downside of open source platform software is that it can be mis-used for purposes the developers and most users abhor. There isn't much they can do to stop that. Defederation, however, can be very effective in keeping those instances separate - far better than on proprietary platforms like Twitter, where the only defenses are moderation and individual blocking. Neo-nazi instances using Mastodon software are just using Mastodon software, they're not part of the broader Mastodon community. Clickbait news headlines thrive on misrepresentation. But when it comes up, we can use that as an opportunity to teach others about how these sorts of platforms work.

There are 15 LGBTQ+ specific instances on the joinmastodon list. More which aren't on the list, but any of these are a place to start. https://joinmastodon.org/servers

6 on calckey's list https://calckey.org/join/#lgbtq+. The main devs for Calckey are very LGBTQ+ friendly.

You can browse the local feeds of instances you're considering to see what others on that instance tend to post. More important IMO is that you find an instance whose moderation policy suits you. But you can always migrate to another server so don't over think picking one. Sign up, follow lots of hashtags and groups (in the Explore box, type in # or @ followed by various keywords for your interests to get started), follow lots of people.

Basically, you're spoilt for choice. Dive in. :)

Given the US war on, erm, libraries of all things, are they coming after museums as the next culture-warring locus? Like people who couldn't care less about ethics trying to close museums lest people learn something about people somewhere else.

Israel is such a small country that the percentage of population killed in these attacks is greater than the percentage of the US population killed in 9/11. Everyone knows someone who was killed, kidnapped or injured.

So yeah, 9/11 has some accuracy as a metaphor.

saw a translator post elsewhere for these terms as used by Israeli media - critical condition means head wounds, very unlikely to survive; seriously wounded means living changing injuries. if i can find the post again i'll link.

Bottled sexuality isn't healthy, mentally or physically. (Asexuality is different.)

Maybe it's time to start coming out of your comfort zone that way? At least in terms of your thinking if not your doing.

I have a high enough regard for sex and its importance in to mental, physical and relational health to believe it deserves respect. It is powerful. Many of our subcultures don't give it respect, either seeking to limit and control it overly or going too far in the opposite direction. I'd like that to change, but people are going to people and there's next to nothing I can do to influence others on that. Only in myself and (back before female middle age made me invisible) who I chose to share my sexuality with.

Consent is another of my guiding principles, where all involved agree on whatever sexual activity is happening. But I don't consider things like holding hands or being out and about with a partner or family to be sexual activity. They're about relationships and they're probably not bringing on sexual arousal in the participants. And most of the things people do in public are more about relationship than sex.

Does anything in this help you?

What a bizarre and unfounded leap. Your assertion is completely and entirely false.

Hamas is funded and armed by Iran. Iranian leadership really doesn't want Saudi Arabia to make a formal normalisation agreement with Israel. Hamas leadership is dedicated to maintaining the wealth they gain from being Iranian proxies. The rest of Hamas is dedicated to destroying Israel.

Hamas is also fighting Fatah for control of the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority government. The worse things are for residents of the West Bank, the better it is for Hamas.

So it's in Hamas' interests, both as proxies for Iran and for their own in the West Bank, to do everything they can to force the Arab world to choose sides and scupper every normalisation agreement, especially the big daddy Saudi one.

They seem to be applying the correct gender retroactively, with a key difference being that there's a women's protected category and an open category. Women, cis or trans, can play in the open category so change in gender status for someone who competed as if they were a man (and thus necessarily in the open category) is irrelevant to the titles.

At present I'm inclined to disagree with this apparent retroactive application so I'm not defending this, just explaining my understanding of their thinking. It's about open and protected categories. If it was men's only and women's only, it would be different.

UK infrastructure, especially our shite housing is not set up for us to become Scandinavian.

The Scottish government is moving to require Passivhaus standards in housing construction - beginning 2025. And we're progressive on this for the UK. Meanwhile the local council is slowing putting ceiling insulation in its council-owned housing. We're at the basic ceiling insulation level here. Whenever the Gulf Stream goes, it's going to be incomprehensibly painful.

fair enough. how about writing something?

This IS a proxy war from Iran.

Iran will give Hamas and other militant terrorist groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad as many arms as they can get across the border.

That's a rather significant fact to be unaware of.

I'm generally in favour of casting the actor who can best get the non-physical elements right, like the character's way of thinking and being in the world. So for any single example I'm open to arguments why that person was the right choice.

BUT there's a larger issue also at play in which roles Jews are cast in. Generally speaking Jews get to play Jews when it's a negative stereotype - think the loud, shrill, NYC Jewish woman trope, but when it's a more positive character, those roles generally go to non-Jews. That's the real problem.

I was never so glad I'd bought a normal telly as the week I spent in a rental with a "smart" one.

"propitiatory indexing" is a delightful autocorrect :)

I'm part of the We're here, we're queer, get used to it generation, so for me it will always include everyone, even if fashions change.

LOL. No. Jihad against Jews existed long before Hamas become an organisation for a small part of it. Your grasp of both history and current events isn't anywhere near as solid as you seem to think it is. The gap in your logic and knowledge here is a chasm.

False equivalence from you there. Oh so false. I'm pointing out some of the flaws in your thinking. Don't downplay Hamas' resources.

We've all seen what happens when Hamas breaches the border now. That's why the border and checkpoints are there.

Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 wasn't an "empty political gesture". Far from it. So far from it.

It was met by violence. It was met by the rise of Hamas.

And now that Hamas have told you very clearly exactly who they are, believe them. I know you won't listen to Jews, so look at the utter barbarity and scale of the atrocities Hamas carried out. Look at that honestly and listen to what Hamas is telling all of us about who they are.

Can you do that and still maintain they should have free run of Israel? They slaughtered 260 kids at a music festival for peace. Their charter calls for the slaughter of Jews OUTSIDE of Israel as well as within. And you want Israel to give them open access so they can fulfill it?