thatstormygeek

[thatstormygeek]

Ragen Chastain's newsletter is another great resource for information on anti-fat bias in healthcare:

Y’all really out here thinking being fat will kill you as if there aren’t fat 80 year olds with 10 grandkids doing aqua fitness at the Y right now

[thatstormygeek]

One obvious (to me) omission is the mention of how all of this affects disabled folks. You have people already heavily discriminated against for being different now being expected to jump through additional hoops to prove their humanity.

Digital imposter scams aren’t new; messaging platforms, social media sites, and dating apps have long been rife with fakery. In a time when remote work and distributed teams have become commonplace, professional communications channels are no longer safe, either. The same artificial intelligence tools that tech companies promise will boost worker productivity are also making it easier for criminals and fraudsters to construct fake personas in seconds. ... But some corporate professionals are turning instead to old-fashioned social engineering techniques to verify every fishy-seeming interaction they have. Welcome to the Age of Paranoia, when someone might ask you to send them an email while you’re mid-conversation on the phone, slide into your Instagram DMs to ensure the LinkedIn message you sent was really from you, or request you text a selfie with a timestamp, proving you are who you claim to be. Some colleagues say they even share code words with each other, so they have a way to ensure they’re not being misled if an encounter feels off. ... Ken Schumacher, founder of the recruitment verification service Ropes, says he’s worked with hiring managers who ask job candidates rapid-fire questions about the city where they claim to live on their resume, such as their favorite coffee shops and places to hang out. If the applicant is actually based in that geographic region, Schumacher says, they should be able to respond quickly with accurate details.

[thatstormygeek]

Y’all really out here thinking being fat will kill you as if there aren’t fat 80 year olds with 10 grandkids doing aqua fitness at the Y right now

[thatstormygeek]

I think the very simple truth is that the Republican Government is arguing that they should be allowed to choose who the constitution should apply to, and way too many people are letting them do it. Either you have constitutional rights, or you don't. There is no middle ground. You can't say constitutional rights are only for 'this class of people' without giving the government the right to decide who's in that class, which means anyone they want can be excluded from it. They've already been doing it with 'terrorist' or 'drug criminal' 'gang member', now its just 'non white people'. Literally jesus christ, they've convinced you that your rights end if a cop interacts with you.

[thatstormygeek]

Generative AI isn’t about helping you or me do things — it’s about making new SKUs, new monthly subscription costs for consumers and enterprises, new ways to convince people to pay more for the things that they already used to be slightly different in a way that often ends up being worse.

Nothing about anything that Anthropic or OpenAI is building or shipping suggests we are anywhere near any kind of autonomous computing. They've used the concept of "AI safety" — and now, AI welfare — as a marketing term to convince people that their expensive, wasteful software will somehow become conscious because they're having discussions about what to do if it does so, and anyone — literally any reporter — accepting this at face value is doing their readers a disservice and embarrassing themselves in the process. If AI safety advocates cared about, say, safety or AI, they'd have cared about the environmental impact, or the fact these models train using stolen material, or the fact that if these models actually delivered on their promises, it would deliver a shock to the labor market that would meaningfully hurt millions — if not billions — of people, and we don’t have anywhere near the social safety net to support them.  These companies don't care about your safety and they don't have any way to get to AGI. They are full of shit and it's time to start being honest that you don't have any proof they will do anything they say they will.

[thatstormygeek]

my deadname/legal name is something heavily associated with that "stereotypical transmasc name" shit like essentially every list has it on there and I feel like that has intersected with my intersexuality in a very uncomfortable way. due to the fact that I look vaguely trans no matter what I do and I have one of those joked about names in the mainstream online queer community that I can't detach from right now because Legal Name, I have been approached so many times by people loudly asking me if I'm a trans man or fully assuming, including people in professional places like a new job I'm working at. Often actively mentioning my name as a reason. which is so unsafe. it's additionally personally distressing because all of the assumptions people are making are based on things I did not at any point decide on, but because they believe me to be a trans man, it's easy for them to therefore think that my deadname is actually the name I chose and my appearance is something I actively contributed towards, so I am outwardly socially and physically transitioning in their eyes, and therefore there's no harm in pointing out The Obvious. "stereotypical transmasc name" jokes are so deeply unfunny

[thatstormygeek]

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg called the Trump White House's bluff, and published all the explosive details (paywall) about a private Signal group chat that, contrary to administration LIES, did indeed contain sensitive military strike plans.

They called him a liar. He posted the receipts.

Shit is flying.

[thatstormygeek]

I knew the slur had made a big comeback with the cryptobros, but I didn't get the context. It's even fucking worse with the context.

Meanwhile, people continue to pile into unpromising memecoins. Pump.Fun, the memecoin launchpad, is currently generating revenue at a rate of between $1-2 million a day as a one percent cut of trades, third party calculations show. On April 14, the anonymous Telegram user who had threatened me posted two screenshots to X advertising large profits they had supposedly made on recent memecoin trades. “We are so [r-------],” they wrote, using the slur adopted by memecoin traders to celebrate the level of risk they take. They completed the post with an emoji with dollar signs for eyes.

[thatstormygeek]

A trio of business analysts at Duke University has found that people who use AI apps at work are perceived by their colleagues as less diligent, lazier and less competent than those who do not use them. In their study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jessica Reif, Richard Larrick and Jack Soll carried out four online experiments asking 4,400 participants to imagine they were in scenarios in which some workers used AI and some did not, and how they viewed themselves or others working under such circumstances.

Continue Reading.

[thatstormygeek]

One obvious (to me) omission is the mention of how all of this affects disabled folks. You have people already heavily discriminated against for being different now being expected to jump through additional hoops to prove their humanity.

Digital imposter scams aren’t new; messaging platforms, social media sites, and dating apps have long been rife with fakery. In a time when remote work and distributed teams have become commonplace, professional communications channels are no longer safe, either. The same artificial intelligence tools that tech companies promise will boost worker productivity are also making it easier for criminals and fraudsters to construct fake personas in seconds. ... But some corporate professionals are turning instead to old-fashioned social engineering techniques to verify every fishy-seeming interaction they have. Welcome to the Age of Paranoia, when someone might ask you to send them an email while you’re mid-conversation on the phone, slide into your Instagram DMs to ensure the LinkedIn message you sent was really from you, or request you text a selfie with a timestamp, proving you are who you claim to be. Some colleagues say they even share code words with each other, so they have a way to ensure they’re not being misled if an encounter feels off. ... Ken Schumacher, founder of the recruitment verification service Ropes, says he’s worked with hiring managers who ask job candidates rapid-fire questions about the city where they claim to live on their resume, such as their favorite coffee shops and places to hang out. If the applicant is actually based in that geographic region, Schumacher says, they should be able to respond quickly with accurate details.

[thatstormygeek]

"A private equity firm can invest a hundred million dollars to build a steel plant and potentially earn a 7% profit starting in two years, or it can borrow a hundred million dollars and buy an existing company and sell that firm’s real estate immediately and lease it back to the company it just bought while shedding labor contracts in bankruptcy. Which one is a better return on investment?"

-Matt Stoller, explaining how America consciously created an environment hostile to making things; instead, we take things apart for profit, leaving ashes behind. Wall Street, not China, stole America's productive capacity.

[thatstormygeek]

found out my coworker who believes very strongly in astrology and always plans his day around his daily horoscopes just got fired for swiping probably about a hundred bucks in cash from his boss like five feet away from a security camera pointed right at him. bestie the things that affect your daily life are much much closer to you than alpha centauri. like that security camera, and your boss

[thatstormygeek]

I don't know why people don't seem aware of this, but going out of your way to step in and say "this does not apply to me because I am not part of this conversation :)" does not contribute to the conversation. If you're aware that you have nothing to do with this subject, you are allowed to just skip it. It's always morally correct to not step into something that doesn't involve you just to announce that it doesn't involve you.

"I don't need this advice for how to avoid contaminated meat because I'm vegan :)" that's nice dear. This information has nothing to do with what we were talking about and brings nothing of value to the conversation.

"I don't need this advice for how to stay safe in these spaces because I don't go to those places :)" that's nice dear. This information has nothing to do with what we were talking about and brings nothing of value to the conversation.

"I don't need to pay attention to these culturally gendered red flags because I don't date that gender :)" that's nice dear. This information has nothing to do with what we were talking about and brings nothing of value to the conversation.

"I already avoided this fun but risky activity because I didn't like doing it in the first place :)" that's nice dear. This information has nothing to do with what we were talking about and brings nothing of value to the conversation.

You don't need to announce that some situation, post, or piece of advice doesn't apply to you. Your perspective on such matters is not valuable.

[thatstormygeek]

Making a post about this since several people seem to be confused or unaware of how bad what tumblr did to John Green was; he has OCD and this website gleefully harassed him with accusations of pedophilia because Hazel and Augustus have non-explicit sex in The Fault In Our Stars until he had a mental health breakdown and left Tumblr. The cock monolog was NOT a one off event he overreacted to(though I would argue it's homophobic as the entire joke was "man likes penis" like how tf else are we supposed to interpret that) it was part of a targeted, abelist harassment campaign against a mentally ill author who simply committed the crime of being too popular and writing teenagers accurately.

Like...not to get too heavy but being a pedophile is the most common intrusive fear OCD causes, I should know, I have it and those intrusive fears(not using intrusive thoughts becauss that term has been ruined and imo doesn't convey what's actually going on, they aren't thoughts they're obsessive phobias with no basis in reality) are the worst ones. Makes me break out into a cold sweat and feel like I'm going to cry and vomit at the same time. Sometimes makes me scared to even be around kids even though I know I am not going to harm them because OCD fears are not usually about things you're actually at risk of doing, just things you're terrified of doing accidentally somehow. So harassing someone who has been very open about his OCD like that specifically with unfounded and untrue accusations of csa is an ableist hate crime as far as I'm concerned. Every single person who took part in that should be fucking ashamed and I assume they are given that all most people remember is the fucking cock post. Ofc it gets boiled down to that, to hide what people were actually saying and how bad it was. It's just a guy overreacting to a silly post about sucking dick, nevermind that he's a YA author with a debilitating mental illness, nah. He's just being a wet blanket.

I won't say the Green Brothers are perfect they've both dropped the ball imo on a few occasions, but that's normal for huge public figures and does not justify what happened. No one should ever take pride in that moment, nor should they behave as though it was just one stupid post, and if you didn't know what actually happened that's because people act like it was just a stupid post, but it wasn't. It was so much more than that.

[thatstormygeek]

people on here will be blorboposting about their averagely named blorbos with their first names only. "john is sooo wet cat coded especially when he made that lady shoot herself" john who exactly. john as in the republican kid who goes to my school and swears he isn't gay but likes mens thirst traps on instagram ? we must elaborate on the johns.

[thatstormygeek]

I went to the most ... disappointing comedy show last night. Like, truly.

It especially sucked that the headliner was so bad bc the opener was - surprise! - Mx. Dahlia Belle, who made me laugh so hard. Like "almost literally peed my pants".

And then the headliner (James Tom, formerly Jes Tom) came out, and... part of it is that he was workshopping new material, and that's always tough, but...

I SWEAR TO FUCK I DO NOT EVER NEED TO HEAR A "NON-BINARY PEOPLE ARE ALL 19 AND NAMED SOCK AND STICK AND BARREL." JOKE EVER THE FUCK AGAIN.

I especially do not need to hear it in the context of "haha, I became a trans man bc These Kids Today make being non-binary so weird. I was out as non-binary in 2011! And now I'm a man! Now I'm going to make a bunch of jokes making clear that I know that it's bad that I became a man, and I'm very sorry for that, and a lesbian wants to murder me with a chainsaw for it and that's okay!"

I was literally one more fucking Sock joke from walking out.

He had some solid material - his "I was a slut as a lesbian, too, but that just means dating someone in the same area code" made me laugh so loud and so long that he said, "Ah, I see I hit home for somebody."

But... holy FUCK.

Legit though... the big reason I didn't walk out was bc the place was only like 1/3 to 1/2 full, and it would have been Very Noticeable. And a) I didn't want to be rude and b) I didn't want to be Reacted To.

I just didn't want to be listening to that anymore.

But Mx. Dahlia was incredible.