Gil (he/they)
- 16 Posts
- 37 Comments
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgto
Technology@beehaw.org•4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!)
16·2 years agoJust a side note - I would caution about directing non-Black folks to spaces like # BlackMastodon and @ blackfedi, just because those spaces might not be intentioned for non-Black people to look at, directing us there might be encouraging our participation in spaces where it’s not necessarily invited or wanted, etc. Great spaces to direct Black folks to if they’re looking to build a community for themselves on fedi, but I would just say it’s best for non-Black people to not look/participate unless the space is specifically inviting that.
The other thing about the “just listen more to more Black people” discourse is that while it may fix representational issues of whom you’re choosing to listen to, it won’t help if there’s no intention to work on racial biases or challenge one’s own racist behaviors - so I would even implore that type of introspective work. Connected to that would be, even if a white person starts doing these things and working on this practice, that work of interrogating your own biases/behaviors never stops. I feel that white people (especially on fedi) often need reminding that just because you’re doing X, Y, Z, etc. doesn’t mean that you’re done working on your own racism or that your reasons for doing X, Y, Z, etc. are all genuine.
You might also want to mention how having some marginalized identity even as a white person doesn’t excuse you from doing this work - there’s a lot of harm done on fedi by people who use their own oppressed identities as a way to avert accountability for being racist. In your piece, you already mentioned that supporting Black people and fighting anti-Blackness means supporting all Black people - you could make that understanding of how anti-Blackness is interconnected/intertwined with other oppressions more apparent by appealing to white people who might consider themselves staunch advocates for other communities but refuse to confront racism.
This is kind of a mess of different comments but those are just my raw thoughts after reading what you wrote.
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgMto
Politics@beehaw.org•Biden at peace if he loses to Trump: "As long as I gave it my all"
19·2 years agoA country born by old white men which will die by old white men. Begins with a revolution to sever ties with a monarchy, ends with a coup to bring it back. We are truly coming full circle. 🤡
Asked if anything could convince him that he was on track to lose to Trump and should step down, Biden responded with a smile: “It depends on if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that.”
Sir, the Lord Almighty better come down and take you back with him. Take Trump too, while he’s at it.
After that debate and all the things he’s said since, Biden’s image is at an all-time low. As ableist and ageist as it is, people think he’s a senile old man in the late stages of cognitive decline, with no business running a government. I doubt he or his campaign are going to do what they need to do to overcome that perception, and I doubt the Democratic Party will make the right calls either. “Decades of civil service” and “somewhat better than Trump” etc. are not going to be enough.
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgMto
Politics@beehaw.org•Donald Trump Says Fake Electors Scheme Was 'Official Act'
43·2 years agodamn, who could’ve possibly seen that coming? 🫥
finally getting more time off from work versus the 60-70 hour weeks i was pulling before, so i started participating in a game jam and trying to have a presence on fedi again.
not so hot because things are tense around my house, but i’m moving out towards the end of the week so hopefully it’ll be over soon.
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgMto
Politics@beehaw.org•Trump Seeks to Review Classified Evidence at His Own Secure FacilityEnglish
1·3 years agoWhat an audacious request. I hope it’ll be rejected — this just has “bad idea” written all over it.
Cloaks are really a cool idea and I miss them, not that I was ever alive for them being en vogue haha
A great look despite the obvious hazard of them getting caught on things
omg happy belated birthday!! 🤠🥳
i give my week a 4/5, been busy the past few days trying to set up a Firefish instance with my partner which has been just awesome and i’m super excited to open it up and get people on it! rly inspired by beehaw’s community-building style.
in less awesome news i’m moving back home at the end of the week and i’m not looking forward to it. moving is so stressful and i don’t want to be back home with my dad either lol.
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgto
Programming@beehaw.org•The C Programming Language: Myths and RealityEnglish
4·3 years agoI’m surprised to hear that anyone would complain about this with C. Even the Wikipedia page about encapsulation cites C as a non-OOP language example.
While I appreciate the anger please consider that “mediocre <ethnicity>” is not a very nice way to phrase this.
They are using the original title of the article. As per the sidebar rules - “Preserve the original title when possible.”
Also given the recent demographic pole there are many “white” people here who are likely on your side. It particularly hurts when people on your side use language like this.
To be honest, I don’t find this phrasing nearly as harmful as people of color being told for decades that they weren’t as qualified or deserving to be admitted into Ivy League schools compared to white applicants and that the only reason they were “allowed” is because of their race. Nor does it really compare to the harm caused by decades of subjugation, discrimination, and generational wealth disparity.
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgto
Technology@beehaw.org•Unity unveils AI tools Unity Muse and Unity Sentis
0·3 years agoI figured it was only a matter of time before Unity made AI tools of their own - not too long ago, people in r/Unity were showcasing their own AI projects for building 3D scenes and UI. I wonder what this means for those projects.
I’m more partial to using Godot to develop games though, so I’m more interested in seeing how AI shows up on that front.
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgto
Programming@beehaw.org•Good resources for learning Rust?English
4·3 years agoI recommend checking out fasterthanlime’s “A half-hour to learn Rust” if you want a brief breakdown of Rust syntax and key features, in addition to The Book and Rust by Example.
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgto
World News@beehaw.org•(Texas Tribune) ERCOT can’t be sued over power grid failures during 2021 winter storm, Texas Supreme Court rules
4·3 years agoCould you add the link to your post?
It’s crazy to think that when I joined, Beehaw had <2k users, and now it has about 6 times that. So many server upgrades happened in just one weekend, many new moderators (a dream team, one might say), and many new servers to federate with as well.
Love being part of this ❤️
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgOPto
Technology@beehaw.org•@panos@calckey.social on the Fediverse & Meta's Threads
6·3 years agoI agree - my main reason for sharing with this post in particular is because the tie-in it has with Beehaw’s recent decision to, at least temporarily, defederate with .world and sh.itjust.works; I just found the framing about decentralization, esp. the fact that the Fediverse is not a monolithic entity mandating a uniformly aligned approach, useful.
On the whole, I do think either ActivityPub’s protocol spec would need some kind of privacy revision, seeing as it’s already been a Problem where microblogging admins have had to block access by servers dedicated to mirroring Mastodon posts which don’t delete their copies after posts are deleted by the user, or the software itself, Lemmy in our case, will have to make adjustments to its implementation of federation like you said. Of course, I’m mostly just conjecturing here and I don’t actually know what either of these might look like 😅
The main part of this which I problematize are the people who are sticking their necks out for Meta and suggesting instances shouldn’t be quick to defederate because this is, supposedly, a good opportunity to bring federated social media into the mainstream. Yet, in my opinion, they’re not making enough of the fact that, even with their open-source contributions, Meta’s software manufactures discord and bigotry on a massive scale. Letting them federate with an instance opens floodgates on that and for the stealing and selling of Fediverse participants’ data.
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgto
Technology@beehaw.org•What are your favorite browser extensions?
1·3 years ago- uBlock Origin is pretty self-explanatory
- Highlighter + Notes helps my ADHD a lot by letting me highlight important phrases in big blocks of texts, especially any articles or posts I might be reading and replying to
- Archive Page for archive.today is also self-explanatory, I like using it to create permalinks or de-paywalled links to news articles
Gil (he/they)@beehaw.orgto
World News@beehaw.org•Senate Republicans introduce plan to tackle student loan debt
14·3 years ago“Unlike President Biden’s student loan schemes, this plan addresses the root causes of the student debt crisis. It puts downward pressure on tuition and empowers students to make the educational decisions that put them on track to academically and financially succeed,” he added.
Lowering people’s ability to borrow doesn’t really address the other problems which underlie high tuition costs - such as newer facilities costs, more administrative staff (both of which, IMO, heavily relate to the competition between schools to provide the most services to their students and court new student admissions), and decreases in federal and state funding coming from tax revenue which has led to many of these financial burdens being passed onto individual students.
Plus, as @misguidedfunk mentioned, we already tell students their upfront cost of attendance - multiple times even before they decide to enroll or start classes - and they have to acknowledge it as part of receiving aid.
Yeah, I remember when it was first launched and it’s come a long way already.
AFAIK, the quad column layout in Mastodon is based on Tweetdeck. I don’t like it either, but some ex-Twitter users do, so that’s neither here nor there.








still riding out my burnout but otherwise good. i’m going to a birthday party for a friend shortly, starting off my week by reading Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
my week is all about planning to start a local Working Families Party group and preparing a series of campus teach-ins as a protest against new policy re: gender in the classroom. fueled by dense bean salad. lots of dense bean salad.