If you can accept that chairs can have varying functionality and be made of different material yet still all be valid chairs you can do the same for trans women and trans men. #transgender
A consideration already made for cis people of course, it's just inconsistently applied when trans people are involved
Is there a #FOSS self-hosted version of discord?
What about something similar to twitch that does streaming?
One of the reasons twitch is popular is because it's easy to have your audience help support the cost of running your channel. So, systems for micropayment are also an area for possible future expansion.
Or are there technical hurdles or cost hurdles to building such things?
#OSS
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Our president just fired head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because the most recent jobs numbers didn't match his feelings about how good the economy is. He did not explain WHY he thought the report was incorrect. Naturally many people now say we won't be able to trust future reports.
To me, faking such numbers seems difficult.
Dr. Reich, @rbreich as a former Secretary of Labor and guy who knows about The Economy can you tells us what might be tell-tale signs of a "Fake Jobs Report" ?
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"Faking the numbers" is only going to be difficult if one cares about _convincingly_ faking them.
But bullies and fascists don't work like that. Faking them badly, baldly, obviously is better for them, because it shows their contempt and their power. "We're screwing this up and there's nothing you can do about it. We control the baseline assumptions of your world; tremble before us or be ruined."
TFG has been consistent in one sense: Everything he's doing 1) Makes the US weaker and less likely to be a military, cultural, or commercial force in the world of the future, and 2) makes him feel like king, even if, in the end, he's king of an ash heap.
Really, his behavior becomes a lot more explicable if you can accept that he hates America, because he views America as a rival for the attention and adulation he craves for himself.
The last time there is a whole lot of controversy around the dude "Pirate Software" aka Thor aka Jason
For years he presented himself like some sort of god in software / game development because he "worked at Blizzard" for years
He worked on a game for over 7 years now and on release it turned out to be a walking / talking simulator that was incredibly bad written in code
The reason he worked at Blizzard for years is because his daddy is an exec there and no one dared to fire him
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Responding to claims about Psalm 22
youtube.com/watch?v=Zc1Kx-htoXโฆ
#psalms #theBible #biblicalScholar #BibleScholar #psalm22 #bible #religion
Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom know they're lying about trans kids.
If they'll lie about literal children and watch the wolves feast, what will they do to you?
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I'm mad because they get NOTHING for this horse trading. The voter who is like "oh I was going to vote for a democrat but if only they just hated trans people just a little (but not too much) then I would be OK with it" is not a real person.
So, even if you want to be cynical and say "we must make sacrifices" all they are doing is sacrificing me and my trans friends and STILL not even winning.
"You know at least the Democrats aren't bigots" was all that was left.
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@futurebird I've thought Buttigieg had some good moments, and then he'd go out of his way to show how he highly values bipartisanship.
He's just fundamentally not on our side.
I kind of question the political instincts, desire to survive and ability to learn from recent history of *any* Democrat who is still trying to do bipartisanship.
Listen.
They are just not that into you, OK?
I could bring up lucy and the football but that meme about Democrats is older than some kids who can vote now.
And bipartisanship has been blown up with no hope of repair.
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@foolishowl
Have we forgotten that two Democrats in Minnesota were targeted for assassination and one died with her husband just a few weeks ago?
And none of the Republicans had anything kind or "bipartisan" to say in that moment. Some even made jokes.
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IDK. When people like MTG or Hawley stumble through their vague populist impulses towards possibly good bills such as banning congress from trading stocks it makes sense to help them in the most narrow possible way to pass those bills I think.
Very important: You don't need to be nice to them as you do this.
Is that bipartisan? Or just a broken clock colliding with good legislative ideas?
(Public support for banning stock trading is huge and we should do it.)
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@futurebird @PallasRiot @foolishowl
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Neolibs have been continually trying to make the Bill Clinton "triangulation" strategy work for 30 years now. And it never really works. The only way they still manage to win occasionally is when the Republicans have been especially awful recently or they have an incumbent advantage so they can laze around, change nothing, and wait for the pendulum to swing back. And it kinda sorta worked in the era of the neocons. But now that Rs have swung extreme right populist, the "middle ground" they want to try and triangulate on simply doesn't exist, because that's simply going to be fash-lite. And if someone is willing to vote fash anyway, they'll just vote ACTUAL fascists.
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This is one of a few words that I have a very deep negative reaction to hearing. I feel like it's ruined everything.
The Democrats have never understood why they win. When Bill and Obama won it was thru vibes, mostly, but they never manage to recreate them.
Instead they constantly (as shown above) move the "middle" to the right to stay "in the status quo" to catch the theoretical "undecided conservative" that has never existed.
@CurtAdams @JessTheUnstill @foolishowl
I agree that those are motions in the right direction, furtive ones. However then you have:
"Listen, I do not agree with Zoran on many issues, and I think we have some important conversations to have about the future of this city, but the voters have spoken and I am proud to endorse him for mayor as our Democratic nominee"
- The Thing I Did Not Hear From Cuomo and Others After The Primary.
If you think ACA and Build Back Better were "major left policies" I have some shocking and disturbing news for you.
@johnzajac @JessTheUnstill @futurebird @foolishowl Can you name a bill, anywhere, in any country, that did more to stop climate change than Build Back Better?
Do you think 20 million people getting insurance, and *everybody* insured actually getting to use their insurance when they get sick, is small? And, of course, Obama wanted even bigger, with a public option and bigger subsidies. But DINOs, especially Lieberman, stopped that.
Friend, I'm telling you that neither of those bills was leftist, or sufficient.
You're saying "well, they made our extraordinarily brutal and evil system slightly less brutal and evil", and that's true-ish.
Like most Democratic "compromises", they gave away the long term for very minor and transient short term wins. I can't name a bill that did more, because the US is notorious for not doing *anything*. So kudos, I guess?
@johnzajac @JessTheUnstill @futurebird @foolishowl Can you answer the question? When, any wherre, any time, was any bill passed that did more to fight climate change than Build Back Better?
The answer is "never". It was the largest by far. If you're saying the biggest policy ever to address IMO the biggest issue in the world is too little to justify support, then your standards are unreasonable.
I think this question is changing the subject. John's point is Democrats have not done enough, did not use their time in power to good effect. You have highlighted some of the things that they did do which were very difficult.
But what if part of what makes it difficult is that it's not enough?
Frankly I get mixed messages from Democrats. Voters when polled think they are as corrupt as Republicans.
Why is that?
End NY fundraising, Trump foundation told
Donald Trump's charitable foundation is ordered by the New York attorney-general to stop fundraising in the state.BBC News
@CurtAdams @johnzajac @JessTheUnstill @foolishowl
People who don't care about right-wing fake scandals also think they are corrupt. I'm talking about people who always vote for democrats and don't care about the emails.
This isn't about media.
This isn't, in my view, a problem of messaging or of voters "not knowing all the good things Biden did" I did my best to push that too! No. They would just say "but what about Pelosi trading stocks?" or "why is our foreign policy like that?" or "but what will they *do* about immigration?"
Last one is interesting because it *wasn't* that they wanted harsh enforcement. Just a real change from this quasi-legal black market labor nonsense.
@futurebird @johnzajac We *did* have an immigration bill. Trump blocked it.
The important point is that when the policies aren't good enough, the problem is almost always that the Democrats don't have a large enough majority.
@futurebird @johnzajac Well, because the Democrats had to have some Republican support to pass the bill.
When Dems are really in control, like here in CA, we get sanctuary policies and healthcare for undocumented immigrants.
Do you think that if Democrats keep doing what they have been doing they will win?
Frankly, as a very practical matter, that's my top concern. How do they wrestle back enough power to move us away from this cliff? And further, if they do get power will they be able to use it effectively?
I have been trusting the democratic leadership "knows what they are doing" and I think that's a big mistake now.
For example: They could stop trading stocks. They could do that today.
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In this post I make a suggestion for one thing they might be able to do right now:
sauropods.win/@futurebird/1149โฆ
This is a "contract with America" style idea. The Republican party used the contract with America when they were a minority party to re-energize their base and define who they were (eg. horrible, but some people like that?)The thing about a Contract or Party Pledge is you get EVERY (or almost every) member to pledge to do something significant that people care about:
* No more stock trading
* Contribution Limits eg. end to special interests1/
@futurebird @johnzajac I very much like a "Contract with America" proposal, and no Congressional/Presidential stock trading belongs at the top of the list.
Except - they've already proposed such a bill!
At some point, this question has to evolve into a statement about intent. And when it does, we need to be ready to chuck the DNC into the Potomac and replace them.
I respect people who aren't there yet, but the clock's ticking on a host of issues, and the timelines we're working with are natural, merciless, and not political. We don't have another generation to ease the Dems out of their torpor and send the "party elders" off to the Undying Lands in a boat.
It is very hard to get much done as a minority party and they have a few actions-- but, nothing that helps to define who they are other than "not Trump" (don't get me wrong for some of us that's enough, but not everyone)
I have a possible suggestion since I don't think they will unite behind any left wing ideas, not all of the democrats.
But one thing they could all do is clean up the roots of corruption that no voters like.
sauropods.win/@futurebird/1149โฆ
This is a "contract with America" style idea. The Republican party used the contract with America when they were a minority party to re-energize their base and define who they were (eg. horrible, but some people like that?)The thing about a Contract or Party Pledge is you get EVERY (or almost every) member to pledge to do something significant that people care about:
* No more stock trading
* Contribution Limits eg. end to special interests1/
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I am deeply afraid that they share those roots. Why not stop trading stocks? Because ... insider trading makes them rich and that's important.
It seems like when Democrats are the minority party, "it's very hard to get much done as a minority party", but when Republicans are the minority party *they literally set the agenda, define the conversation, and hound Democrats until they walk into the sea*.
I don't think this is a "minority party" problem; it's a *Democratic* party problem.
I don't think there's much the Democrats can do, because the problem is mostly that the Republican have taken control of the media and constantly push anti-Dem messages. They flood social media with people saying the Democrats are "useless" and "not enough".
The actions of the billionaires prove that's not true. If the Dems really were useless, Musk wouldn't have spent 40 billion dollars to make Twitter into a right-wing propaganda machine,
@futurebird @CurtAdams @johnzajac
Top Dems and top GOP are the same these days: itโs all about the money, now more than ever.
What the GOP understands better is the money depends on image and clicks, not values or facts.
That is the environment, like it or not.
Things will not change before some calamity or the Dems catch upโand manage to do that without sliding into their own form of extremism.
I think this is a distraction because political leadership is about so much more than legislation, which is something Republicans have understood since Reagan and something Democrats haven't understood since JFK and RFK were assassinated.
The real missed play here isn't "immigration legislation"; it's calling out GOP lies about the impact immigration has on the country. It's acknowledging and celebrating our reliance on migrant workers. It's supporting their unions.
On every one of those cultural ideals Democrats failed to make the case on moral OR statistical grounds, despite having the better hand.
I don't think it's because they hate immigrants; I think it's because they've convinced themselves that neoliberal economic policies are *worth widespread unrest* and *some ethnic groups...not making it*. Because they're ideologues.
That's not a hit; it's an observation of their commitment to policies that don't work.
"It's supporting their unions."
The union angle is the perfect one IMO. Because people who have had their wages depressed by immigrant labor are just people we pretend don't exist. Republicans also don't talk about this exactly, they just do racism.
If the line were "everyone should be able to unionize. no one should have to compete against off the books labor" I think it'd make a real difference with the kind of voters who have drifted away from democrats.
I agree with this.
IMO, the real issue then is one of credibility: Biden breaking the railroad strike harmed the Democrats far more than they acknowledge. That New Palestine happened weeks later, and they spent weeks trying to bury the story (despite the *black mushroom cloud* lol) just highlighted how wrong Biden was.
Democrats need consistency, and they need to enforce loyalty in the party ranks. WE know they can do that, because they *routinely* do it on the left.
Let's be fair: you can't "course correct" a betrayal. It's a betrayal. He didn't just mess up; he did something politically suicidal during a time of extraordinary requirements on our political leaders.
He was the wrong person for the job, foisted on us by a scared and ideological DNC leadership, including Obama.
And yet, none of them have taken responsibility; they'd rather whistle past the graveyard than try to regain people's trust.
It's kind of our earlier discussion: a scheme to eliminate big donors doesn't work if you fudge it just a *leeeetle* bit for these specific big donors.
A loud support of unions doesn't matter if it comes and goes depending on what the consultants say.
EDIT: I think Democrats are addicted to default votes and have literally forgotten how to get affirmative ones. That's why absent a completely re-do of their leadership, I struggle to see the party doing any of this.
"Are you a real one?"
If this is a battle against the corrupt it's important to ... not be corrupt. And I don't mean "corrupt" as in breaking laws, I mean not being beholden to special interests of big business or foreign governments.
There is this idea that if the Republicans are "just as bad" on an issue we can ignore it. I think that's a mistake.
Yes, they should win because they are "better" but nobody believes them anymore and that is a problem.
I have literally written essays on why the ACA was, in the end, a net negative for healthcare in the country, but this will have to do for this forum:
1) The ACA made assumptions about good faith on the part of the insurance companies that have proven to be naive
2) The resultant regulatory framework looks like it was written by industry consultants, and probably was
3) So today, millions "have" health insurance, but...
@johnzajac @JessTheUnstill @futurebird @foolishowl Just the ACA Medicaid expansion alone saved 19,000 lives over 3 years. cbpp.org/research/health/medicโฆ. And would have saved 15,000 more if the Republicans on the Supreme court hadn't rewritten then law.
It's now been 11 years since implementation, and I think a law that was written to save about 100,000 is a very good thing. Do you disagree?
I don't know if many people here are even suggesting that we wouldn't be "better off" with democrats now and in general?
My concern is that I am terrified that their lack of vision will mean that they do not win.
I don't think trying to tell people they are amazing worked well at all. Because they are not amazing. They are simply "much better than Republicans, technically" that is a hard sell.
..claim denials have skyrocketed, to the point where "having" for-profit health insurance just keeps you from actual healthcare. Special categories of deductible have proliferated so that literally everything has the max allowable under the law, and unlike pre-ACA, getting one procedure or device *doesn't lower any of the other deductibles*. Co-pays and Rx tables swarm people's bank accounts and deny them the medication they need
@futurebird
๐ฏ ๐ฏ ๐ฏ
The right has their base indoctrinated that anyone as far left as Reagan might as well be Satan himself. There is no middle ground to seek to appeal to those voters.
The way to win is to appeal to the colossal base of Americans that want lower housing costs, lower medical costs, and higher minimum wage.
But almost all Democrats at the national level would quite literally rather lose than fight for any of those things. Sanders, AOC, Ilhan Omar - outliers.
Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, John Fetterman, Cory Booker would all rather see Trump in office than AOC. That's where we are.
I don't expect much from cishet men like Newsom, but Buttigieg really showing his Rohmian credentials
but honestly my expectations with gays who work for corporations that bust unions and help corporations fix bread prices are about as low as with cishet men, so, I'm not really surprised. He was probably one of those "yes well marriage is preferable but civil unions..."
none of these fuckers know what liberation means, or if they do they hate it
"Gender Critical" nurse EXPOSED over racist comments
https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ks0tNKkB80
#SandiePeggie #Transphobia #racism #terfs #LGBTQ #transgender #trans #bigotry #youtube
"Gender Critical" nurse EXPOSED over racist comments
The current darling of the "Gender Critical" movement is Sandie Peggie, who is known for being absolutely vile and bigoted towards an innocent doctor she wor...YouTube
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treblinkโฆ
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The first widespread success in curing HIV may come from children, not adults.
arstechnica.com/health/2025/08โฆ
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do The Youths these days still know about Pokemon Crystal Vietnamese? So called because it was discovered in a market in Vietnam, it's a romhack translation from Japanese to English (presumably before the real English version released), except it seems to have been made entirely on the basis of a Japanese-to-Chinese dictionary and then a Chinese-to-English dictionary. For example, what's semantically quite close to "insert"...?
(my own screenshots from 2013)
#pokemon #romhack #localization #translation
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Debunked: "Trans Affirming Care is Non-Essential"
youtube.com/watch?v=pJ-yBrgNocโฆ
#GenderAffirmingCare #trans #lgbtq #transgender
Debunked: "Trans Affirming Care is Non-Essential"
[Quick References][1] https://youtu.be/AgYLNID4_EI [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60273z28des[3] https://youtu.be/4zok0BxqO44 [4] https://youtu.be/DFQ7k...YouTube
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Where are all the queer & gender-fluid people on here? ๐ฉท Can you help me find em?
Boost me to help! ๐
#Trans #LGBTQIA #Transgender #Queer #LGBT #GenderFluid
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Responding to DHS propaganda
youtube.com/watch?v=Vg2pl-gVNSโฆ
#BookOfIsaiah #Isaiah6 #theBible #bible #OldTestament #DHS #DepartmentOfHomelandSecurity #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates
This morning I gave someone an introductory talk on how HTTP works, by demonstrating a few simple HTTP transactions by hand using "openssl s_connect" (gone are the days when you can do that using nc), explaining what all the bits and pieces are, and then showing how to look up what Firefox is doing in the developer tools to see full-sized examples.
Right at the end of the talk, I thought "hang on, this seems like exactly the kind of 'learn a thing from basics' material that @b0rk likes to write about, I wonder if she has a blog post covering the same ground?"
Better still, she has a whole zine! jvns.ca/blog/2019/09/12/new-ziโฆ Moral: perhaps I should think of that _first_ next time.
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Nice breakdown of a biblical contradiction you probably didn't know existed
"My favorite contradiction in the Bible"
youtube.com/watch?v=fBsynf_CnGโฆ
#KingDavid #religion #theBible #Goliath #DavidAndGoliath #1chronicles #OldTestament #Elhanan #2Samuel #BibleScholar #BiblicalScholar #bible
Why people claim the Bible has no contradictions
youtube.com/watch?v=S30arBPuo-โฆ
#bible #theBible #BibleContradictions #BiblicalContradictions #religion #BiblicalScholar #BibleScholar
๐ Bugfix release 2.0.1 for Solarus
solarus-games.org/news/2025-07โฆ
#foss #free #libre #opensource #gamedev #gameengine
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Thank you anyways for the feedback, we'll add a very short presentation in the posts, the next time.
:)
Transphobic "comedy" Lady ballers was originally going to be a documentary but the daily wire couldn't find anyone willing to meet the requirements for trans women in sports.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Balโฆ
#Transphobia #TransRights #TransAthletes #TheDailyWire #LGBTQ #LGBT
Nurse at centre of trans changing room row used racial slurs, tribunal hears
thepinknews.com/2025/07/29/sanโฆ
#transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA
Nurse at centre of trans changing room row used racial slurs, tribunal hears
Former NHS Fife nurse, Sandie Peggie, used a host of racist slurs during a tribunal hearing earlier this week.Amelia Hansford (PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news)
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With Microsoft Office integrating AI into itself ANNNND charging subscription fees, I'm finding myself using LibreOffice for almost everything now.
LibreOffice is free. Period.
But! Nothing saying you can't take that MS subscription fee and do an annual recurring donation to LibreOffice ๐
Good way to increase LibreOffice's already great functionality.
Edit to Include: They're on Mastodon! @libreoffice
Donate to LibreOffice | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft
Donate, donation, donations, funding, help, support, LibreOfficewww.libreoffice.org
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"Why does it say the hospital is equipped for stroke emergency? We were there. They denied!"
"Maybe you should contact them that their website is wrong. This is dangerous."
"It wasn't on their website..."
*starts googling a specific question*
"Weird now it says no instead of yes."
I go to take a look and realise with horror, yes: Google AI summary.
Google AI summary made my parents-in-law visit the wrong, unequipped hospital for a potential stroke emergency. ๐
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My partner got me a set of gouache paints for my birthday. I decided to break them in with a sketch of a scene I saw at our suet feeder yesterday: a grackle staring down a blue jay over taking too long at his turn.
#art #MastoArt #watercolor #gouache #birds
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We all need some good news. And this is very good news.
newatlas.com/infectious-diseasโฆ
The first 100% effective HIV prevention drug is approved and going global
An epidemic that's been sustained for 44 years might finally be quelled, with the milestone approval of the first HIV drug that offers 100% protection with its twice-yearly injections. It's a landmark achievement set to save millions of lives.Bronwyn Thompson (New Atlas)
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And more good news.
goodnewsnetwork.org/flint-finiโฆ
Flint Finishes Replacing 11,000 Lead Pipes, Concluding Activists' Decade-Long Effort to Secure Clean Water
A decade after lead-contaminated water was found in Flint's water system, the legal battle to replace lead water pipes is nearly finished.Andy Corbley (Good News Network)
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#Fedilab 3.34.0 has been published.
Release notes:
codeberg.org/tom79/Fedilab/relโฆ
Release 3.34.0 - tom79/Fedilab
Added: - 3-Dots menu for remote conversations (Federation in background) - Quote support for Mastodon - Long press on tags: Follow / Mute Changed: - Improve accessibility in media activity - Improve content descriptions - Update languages -โฆCodeberg.org
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Hello,
I translated all the strings into Catalan but I got the version's message all in English anyway.
So was I too late or is there something wrong?
Did you try in settings > languages > reset languages? Maybe you have to restart the app. It should use your system language.
I checked commits, your translations were merged after we published 3.34.0. So they will be available in the next release. Thank you for your contributions.
>Quote support for Mastodon
How.does that work ?
>Fix text selection stop working when composing
Nice, that has been super annoyimg for some.
Great App !
I tried playing with using Dijkstra maps for enemy pathfinding in my small #SNES game. Turns out that with a small map like this one they're easily viable on SNES and aren't too expensive; you can spread the calculations over multiple frames and spend a variable amount of CPU time on it per frame if you want.
This does mean movement that's very clearly grid-based, but you can do stuff to make it less prominent. I have the enemies here slowly center themselves on the axis perpendicular to the one they're moving in, which helps a little bit.
Some enemies probably will use this pathfinding style all the time, though for others I think it'll be something that will kick in when an enemy is having trouble finding the player using atan2 or other methods.
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This sentence was quite hard to parse: "This is the criminal Trumpโs DOJ granted limited immunity to"
My brain was unable to put "criminal" and "Trump" in two separate noun clauses...
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Study Ordered by Utah Republicans Finds Gender-Affirming Care Benefits Trans Youth
them.us/story/utah-gender-affiโฆ
"Rate of regret after Gender-affirming surgery is approximately 1%. Other life decisions, such as having children and getting a tattoo have regret rates of 7% and 16.2%, respectively."
americanjournalofsurgery.com/aโฆ
Trans women and fairness in sports
Transgender Athletes Could Be At A Physical Disadvantage, Research Shows
forbes.com/sites/lindseyedarviโฆ
Specific claims of unfairness are self debunking if the source is at all honest about the situation.
For example trans marathon runner Glenique Frank finished 6,159th in the female category but you would get an entirely different impression if you didn't read past the headlines in the daily mail: archive.ph/udkN7
Similarly, Riley Gaines's fairness grievance was literally a tie for fifth place.
Nobody's placement changes if Lia Thomas didn't compete and again, the complaint was that a trans women dared to perform equally to a cis women athlete.
Then there's the chess controversy which is so ridiculous and misogynist that I don't need to dignify it with a debunking. It's just sexism dressed up as concern for cis women.
Miscellaneous
Critically appraising the cass report: methodological flaws and unsupported claims
doi.org/10.1186/s12874-025-025โฆ
Further citations to research on the subject of transgender healthcare thanks to this archived reddit comment by tgjer web.archive.org/web/2019082319โฆ
#transgender #transRights #TransAthletes #LGBTQ #GenderAffirmingCare #GenderAffirmingSurgery #trans #TransWomen
Critically appraising the cass report: methodological flaws and unsupported claims - BMC Medical Research Methodology
Background The Cass Review aimed to provide recommendations for the delivery of services for gender diverse children and young people in England.BioMed Central
Transgender people over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime
"Trans-inclusive bathroom policies are linked to lower assault rates against transgender students."
"Trans-inclusive bathroom policies are not linked to higher rates of assault against cisgender people."
Mx. Eddie R
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Payments are a problem because any time you touch real money you're dealing with 8000lb gorillas (Visa, MasterCard, Thiel's PayPal, Canada's 6 banks, etc) or with bogus "money" you're dealing with Nazis and other crypto grifters.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to Mx. Eddie R • • •@silvermoon82
You can do crypto transfers with python, it's very code-able, but none of the coins are stable enough to make this viable. And, of course, how do you get money into and out of the system?
I do think the payment network problem is important for the alternative web. Using patreon or paypay isn't great.
What about partnering with a credit union?
The problem with money is as soon as you make systems that do anything with money you are swarmed by grifters and need to be perfect.
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myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •DannekRose likes this.
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ัะตัะฐัะธะผะธ ะผะฝะพะณะพ๊ฎัะธััะธ
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@silvermoon82 I've been trying to work out where GNU Taler sits in this zone: banks have KYC requirements which preclude some innovative stuff.
Maybe the trick would be to set up a fiscal edge node: i.e. a credit union which had the situational awareness and expertise to handle integrating and also working with free software people.
And that'd be a great hobby to do with all our free time and money! /s
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Billiglarper
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@silvermoon82
#Wero might become the next best thing?
www.wero-wallet.eu
It's kinda Paypal done by European banks (๐ฉ๐ช๐ซ๐ท๐ง๐ช๐ณ๐ฑ), without any fees.
Not sure if it will be available internationally.
But the two major German coop banking groups are on board, so that might be as good as it gets from a "power to the people" perspective.
Mx. Eddie R
in reply to Billiglarper • • •In Canada we have Interac email transfers. To and from any (?) Canadian bank account, low or no fee (some small banks still charge $5, I think?), but still subject to opinions of the 6 apex banks so have to be careful about sex and drugs and such.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to Mx. Eddie R • • •@silvermoon82 @billiglarper
That is so civilized. Meanwhile in the US they just eliminated the free electronic way to do your taxes.
Not to save money. So that you either have to do the form by hand OR pay one of the many "services" to do your taxes.
Why doesn't that make more people as angry as it makes me? I suppose most people still use the services. And it's just $100 bucks or so, going to whoever and NOT the government.
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myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@silvermoon82 @billiglarper
You don't have to just pay taxes. You have to pay the tax collector too.
Mx. Eddie R
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Yeah, the tax-paying situation is ridiculous here, too. Not as bad, but bad.
Then there's the Nordic countries, where once a year you get a form from the revenue service that says "This look right? Anything to add? Sign here" and your taxes are done.
Rich Puchalsky โฉโ
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •"Why doesn't that make more people as angry as it makes me?"
What are you going to do, if you support the idea of a state? Once you accept a state you accept that it can do whatever it wants, in practice, because the alternative is no state and you don't want that.
In this case it's like the state wants you to pay $100 in taxes to a state crony. So yes, historically all states are corrupt. It's a better use of your taxes than funding the military.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to Rich Puchalsky โฉโ • • •@richpuchalsky
Sometimes when the state does things people get angry about it. I don't see how this answers the question.
Are you saying it can't be changed? That isn't true. There is a great deal of inertia and other issues that compete for attention and time. But, there is a principle here:
There should not be third party fee for basic government services and interactions.
I am wondering if this value exists for many people.
Rich Puchalsky โฉโ
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •"Sometimes when the state does things people get angry about it."
I think that this gets absorbed into the general, and politically not fruitful, anger that people always feel about paying taxes.
I don't see any principle in this case at all. The state can do whatever it wants, like commit genocide. Since people don't care or can't do anything about the genocide why stand on principle about some corruption.
๊ฑธ๋ฐด๋ ๊ดด์ง GIRLBANDGEEK
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Log ๐ชต
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •cuan_knaggs
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •reshared this
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myrmepropagandist
in reply to cuan_knaggs • • •@mensrea @silvermoon82 @billiglarper
There is *no reason* why it couldn't work this way in the US. Or rather there is no rational reason other than a deliberate ongoing pressure to make all government services and interactions terrible lest the people start liking anything about the process.
And the people who say "we need to privatize* it" are often behind the poor service, and deliberate Obfuscation.
*Think of the last time you were on hold. Are private companies "better"? No.
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Patrick Lam
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@mensrea @silvermoon82 @billiglarper no reason except for lobbying. propublica.org/article/inside-โฆ
NZ being a mostly reasonable country also has the "we'll tell you what your taxes are" approach.
Inside TurboTaxโs 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free
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der.hans
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@mensrea @silvermoon82 @billiglarper There is one reason, Grover Norquist.
But, you're right, Norquist isn't rational.
Phosphenes
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •There should be a Federal tax boycott.
1. Fed taxes are the financial foundation of the oppression machine now.
2. Every service we pay taxes *for* is being dismantled.
3. The regime stupidly crippled the IRS and its ability to go after tax evaders, let 300 million at once.
And now they're making it harder to pay taxes anyway. So fuck 'em.
toerror
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Diane
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@silvermoon82
I have thought GNU Taler could be interesting for payment handling.
taler.net/en/index.html
It's a system designed to provide a digital cash like protocol, in use it might actually be kind of like poker chips. It using a form of cryptography to implement it, but it's not a proof of work system like the right wing cryptocurrencies.
Customers would buy tokens from an issuer with some currency, be able to anonymously purchase items from vendors using those tokens, who then can deposit the tokens with a transaction log, and be able to redeem them for the original currency.
The developers have done some test deployments at an EU university and they've got some prototype django websites and android apps available.
I suspect the next actions are doing security review of the code, find a pool of people interested, and figure out governance and business organization issues.
I think doing modest purchases like the prices for I see for quick art commissions or donations (<$40) to a stream probably could be set up with a small business
But to really roll it out my guess would be to found a credit union, and then that could offer issuing taler tokens to it's community
Here's the NCUA documentation on founding a credit union, and they recommended figuring out your community and raising about $500,000 USD to be able to start.
ncua.gov/regulation-supervisioโฆ
GNU Taler - Taxable Anonymous Libre Electronic Resources
www.taler.netmyrmepropagandist
in reply to Diane • • •@alienghic @silvermoon82
This is so cool! I've never even considered the concept of a local non-profit credit union ... you know not for old people. The focus should be digital payment independence.
I assume if you try to do this someone from Mastercard comes to your house and beats you up. But I just found my old bike lock and it is very heavy.
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myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@alienghic @silvermoon82
I think key to making this work would be having many limits on size of accounts and to keep it local so you know who is in it.
And never lend any money.
hmmm
Diane
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@silvermoon82
I absolutely think something like my work campus's stored value card would be a great use case for Taler.
For a while we could deposit money on our ID cards and then spend it at stuff like the coffee shop or the library photocopiers.
I think that's a good low risk situation to experiment with Taler.
Also one their, demos included issuing a fictitious currency "Kudos" which you could spend on FOSS projects.
So I bet one could also make up an ARG game that uses fake currency issued via Taler as digital playing pieces, for a really low risk way of experimenting.
Daniel Lakeland
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@alienghic @silvermoon82
>But I just found my old bike lock and it is very heavy.
LOL, your family and online friends are very lucky to have you.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@silvermoon82
When my mom became interested in bitcoin I decided to learn about it because the way that my mom works is if she wants to know about something she will get into it and you can do it with her... or she will do it on her own. I wanted to keep her safe.
So I learned how the whole thing works. I had some bitcoin left over from years ago and set up a wallet for her. We did transfers with my own code in terminal.
Fun mother-daughter bonding!
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myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@silvermoon82
We had to use coinbase to get the money out and that annoyed me. The alternative was going on facebook and using shady "cash for bitcoin in person" groups. *shudder*
But I can see why people had utopian ideas about the technology.
Mx. Eddie R
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist reshared this.
crazyeddie
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@silvermoon82 USDC is stable enough and Solana is maybe an OK solution.
Getting it in and out though, THAT is a huge problem in the USA. First, you have to use an exchange unless you want to find someone that'll trade money for coin (very possibly a criminal). They are all owned and run by terrible people. Then there's the KYC process, which is entirely automated by AI.
Could maybe partner to create a better USDC option for people. Something with real customer support and shit.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to crazyeddie • • •@crazyeddie @silvermoon82
Could this be a credit union service?
crazyeddie
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@silvermoon82 Probably. I'm not sure what, if any regulations are around USDC. Circle is the company that is mainly behind that one.
Theoretically anyone could take in USD and put out a token they promise can be cashed for USD. Getting people to accept it though...
I would really like an actual bank account that held USDC but the choices there are VERY limited in the US. You may need to get e-residency somewhere for that, though I did find a CU a couple hund miles away that may
Jรผrgen Hubert
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I looked into streaming some months ago, and some #Peertube instances seem to allow it. There is also #Owncast , but that looked like too much effort for my purposes.
I don't know of any #Fediverse equivalent of #Discord , however.
๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐ช๐จ๐ณๅผ ๆฎฟๆ๐จ๐ณ๐ฉ๐ช๐จ๐ฆ
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Reverend Elvis
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist reshared this.
Lightfighter
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Gib ๐๐๐บ๐ฆ
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •The problem with twitch is the enormous bandwidth and computing power needed to distribute the stream all over the world in close to real time. Chat-interaction seems to bring many people to the platform. And that gets increasingly difficult the longer the delay between streamer and viewer becomes. Open P2P platforms start with an extreme disadvantage in that regard.
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Hypolite Petovan
in reply to Gib ๐๐๐บ๐ฆ • • •@Gib ๐๐๐บ๐ฆ @myrmepropagandist I disagree with your initial assessment. Discord's value proposition isn't its IRC-like channel feature or built-in video/audio chat, but the seamless Single Sign-On experience once you've created your account when you want to join an additional server. Until this is possible with Revolt (and this post in the same thread suggests it isn't yet), Discord won't be easy to replace.
xyhhx
2025-08-04 12:40:23
der.hans
in reply to Gib ๐๐๐บ๐ฆ • • •Benji Mauer
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •xyhhx
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •ive got experience with this. frankly, most of the other replies are not good
for discord, matrix and revolt. revolt is an attempt at a discord clone directly, but isnt federated or e2ee iirc. matrix is, and supports video calls; but it's not a 1:1 copy, is a pain to host, provides little in the way of moderation tools. for matrix, the best client is cinny for a discord-like experience
for twitch, people will suggest owncast and openstreamingplatform - theyre woefully inadequate if you want a twitch-like experience unless you're ready to make lots of changes. that said, there is a new attempt at a federated twitch alternative i saw the other day. ill try to find it again
Sven Slootweg (๐ WHY2025)
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Sensitive content
I've looked into this sort of stuff a few times, and have come to the same conclusion pretty much every time: none of the payment infrastructure (both technical and legal) is remotely built for self-hosting.
Even if you add support for a particular reasonable-API-having payment provider, or even multiple, it's always going to limit who can actually use that feature due to region-specific coverage, sanctions, and so on. And even if that somehow works out, under a lot of circumstances you take on additional tax liabilities by actually doing so because payment processors simply will not give you an account without a company registration, usually. Not to mention all the verification processes.
Specifically for micropayments there's an additional problem: platforms can make these happen because they do a single charge for multiple bundled payments (to different creators), or even just operate a prepaid balance thing (which itself also has extra tax liabilities). This is necessary because most payment methods have base per-transaction costs that are like $0.50, so anything smaller than $2 isn't even really worth processing. But when you self-host, there's nothing to bundle *with* and so that's going to eat into your revenue significantly.
So... is it *possible* to integrate payments and/or donations into FOSS software? With a lot of effort and headaches, yeah, possibly. Can it be competitive financially/administratively with the big platforms if you do? Probably not.
FoolishOwl
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •People ask about FOSS alternatives to Discord a lot, and there really isn't a viable alternative. The main things Discord has going for it are a common interface for text, voice, and video chat, and a good set of moderation tools. I can't think of anything else that does all that.
The most frequently mentioned candidate is Matrix, but Matrix has many problems. It has practically no moderation tools, and while ostensibly designed for self-hosting, has exceedingly high resource usage.
Jess๐พ
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@jerry supports a number of payment processors for funding infosec.exchange
I mean, every credit card processor is their own brands of bad. The "least bad" for US donations IMO is Zelle, since it's basically just a bank to bank money transfer though it requires your bank supporting it, and many of them don't allow for a recurring payment. But at least the fees are just payed for by the banks, not adding an extra payment to visa / MasterCard / random fin tech or payment platform etc.
@futurebird
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DannekRose
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •As purely informational, PeerTube has optional monetization plugins, but the only one of those plugins I feel is viable currently is a premium content plugin that works with a Stripe account to accept payment for a subscription. PeerTube has live streaming but is harder to self-host than Owncast. I currently use PeerTube now but have used Owncast before.
As for Discord alternatives, I think XMPP with the Movim front end works well. Itโs way more lightweight than Matrix and allows you to also blog with it if you want. There are some easy to self host XMPP servers.
Someone already mentioned webmonitization which is powered by Interledger which I agree could offer some options, but I think it needs a lot of buy-in from a LOT of financial institutions before it gets to a point that it could offer a way to survive financially for users. I donโt know too many details though.
George B
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •To the monetization question specifically: I have seen that pixelfed is planning on integrating webmonetization.org/ for monetization.
It looks like that's a draft standard but if it does start to take off, it would make a huge difference in the space.
Web Monetization
webmonetization.orgity [unit X-69] - VIOLENT FUCK
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •payment processing is essentially a no go besides pretty much just paying a company a lot of money to do it for you because payment processors do not allow sensible usage
Also there's tax issues and whatnot
That is all to say, most folks just stay away from payment things. The only thing possible to impl without paying anyone is cryptocurrency.
As for FOSS discord, there are many attempts. I wouldn't say any had success.
As for streaming, it's a pretty difficult problem. Huge amounts of bandwidth needed, depending on how many concurrent streams you want.
Nazo
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •People have already mentioned Matrix and Revolt. These are definitely the closest to Discord in the way that Discord works.
I do want to add that Discord is a modern thing that in many ways actually isn't so different from the ancient tech of IRC. IRC was text only, whereas Discord and the similar things can implement media, but otherwise the basic mechanisms weren't so dissimilar. (There were still methods of transferring files, but they're P2P, so require open ports and didn't embed.)
Revolt is probably the closest to being a viable competitor to Discord. Matrix is better in some ways, but doesn't seem to be taking off.
I'm not sure what could truly replace Twitch or Youtube or etc. The bandwidth those things use today is wild. Owncast/etc are for small scales.
undead
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Reliability and community level funding hurdles for long term infra.
Doing this as small volunteer groups works only so long as everyone has free time.
Can't trust the big silos. Setting up a local silo may be good, but getting community involved requires intentionality that evades more than 80% of USians.
Also, reliable infra requires reliable staffing. That staff, in the US, need medical benefits, esp for the level of experience needed to run it with minimal staffing.
Seph
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to Seph • • •@melivia
It's to tickle those kinds of ideas that I keep bringing this kind of thing up.
estelle
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •in the mid-2000s, that would be irc and shoutcast (and if you wanted live chat you'd just run the channel name in your stream somewhere and people will join)
if you needed a bigger pipe, someone runs a relay and the audience connects to that instead
somehow, technology has gone _backwards_ from there
jeremiah
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •There's revolt.chat
Their GitHub has a repo for self hosting the server. When I used it, it felt very similar to Discord. I opted to not use it for our migration because being able to use the app with multiple services was a goal, so we went XMPP (a ton of tradeoffs with this too).
Revolt - Find Your Community
revolt.chatDale Hagglund
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •If it's been mentioned already, I apologize for the repetition, but as far as an alternative for discord, maybe check out www.discourse.org? I know little about it, at least in any detail, but it's a modern take on forum software. You can pay for hosting, but it appears to be open source and self hostable. Also, you can start with paid hosting to experiment with it and migrate to self hosting later if desired with, I believe, help from their support team, although I suspect that support isn't included in the basic plan.
One of the cofounders is Jeff Atwood, @codinghorror, who can no doubt correct any egregious errors I've made above.
Jeff Atwood
in reply to Dale Hagglund • • •Michael K Johnson
in reply to Dale Hagglund • • •@DaleHagglund @codinghorror Discourse is open source forum software to which chat functionality has been added; Discord is a chat service to which forum functionality has been added. The difference shows in the implementation.
Discourse is open source and well maintained. It's thoughtfully designed to help foster and grow a community. It's not hard to self-host, and there are multiple sources of full-service hosting. It has a Subscriptions plug-in that integrates with Stripe I think, though I haven't deployed it myself.
Unlike with WordPress, the company that builds Discourse (Civilized Discourse Construction Kit) works actively and cooperatively with multiple third parties that host and extend Discourse, including recommending their services and even sponsoring outside parties' work on the code.
It's a really shining example of how to do open source right.
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myrmepropagandist
in reply to Michael K Johnson • • •@mcdanlj @DaleHagglund @codinghorror
Can it support real-time chat with video? How good is at doing that?
Michael K Johnson
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@DaleHagglund @codinghorror Discord does not have video chat built in; the integrated chat feature is text chat. The plug-in ecosystem supports both major open source video chat platforms I'm aware of:
meta.discourse.org/t/jitsi-vidโฆ
meta.discourse.org/t/bigbluebuโฆ
I have not used either, so I don't have experience with deploying them, but they are available. If I were starting out from scratch today to build something like this for a community site, based only on my gist of what I remember hearing/reading from others, I'd try jitsi first.
In both cases, you need to follow the documentation for the chat platform (Jitsi or BigBlueButton) to set it up for self-hosting, then use the plug-in to integrate it into Discourse.
Jitsi Video Conference
Discourse MetaJeff Atwood
in reply to Michael K Johnson • • •Netux
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •promโข๏ธ
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •mcc
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •there are several OSS discord-likes, the one I use is Matrix/Element. The dev team for "Tusky" makes heavy use of self hosted Matrix. Everyone I know who runs Matrix servers complains about the product quality tho.
The open source Twitch alike I'm currently trying out is stream.place . I've done one successful stream there already. The one thing I don't like is it is partially built on top of Bluesky which creates awkwardness.
Stream.place
stream.place