At this point, the British court system is actively transphobic, acting as the judicial arm of a state that seeks to eradicate trans people, especially women.
When the law is unjust, it must be ignored. Resist transphobia.
It is disappointing to see the Open University back down in the face of obvious justice denied.
I suspect actual judges might have applied the law. Employment tribunals are generally one Employment Judge (not a very senior member of the judiciary) and two lay members, one from an employer's organisation and one from a trade union.
Agreed, but you need to appeal the right cases. I suspect Phoenix is not the right case cos of various facts. I hear the OU had pretty good trans lawyers on their team. Appeal wouldn't just be £200k+, low-success-chance, but endless time and ongoing stress for the OU witnesses & staff.
Forstater's appeal success means Forstater is now binding and the TERFs are super smug about it. That employer had shite policies which left the door open for legal awfulness.
@pdcawley I grieve for my UK friends. We have plenty of dysfunction and scary crap in the states but at least we’ve managed to undo some of it the last four years.
@petealexharris @ajlanes Interestingly Phoenix was in the Times last week moaning about how no ex-colleagues from OU have talked to her (I don't think anyone likes her, funnily enough).
Phoenix also whined that the GC Research Network has run out of oomph and blames "TRAs" & OU of course, but not herself for being the only one obsessively bigoted enough to care, not doing the work from new job cos it was prob only ever a "do thing to get challenged & initiate legal action for".
I haven't seen any sensible trans-clued people's review of it and I'm wary of the Guardian for hosting/promoting transphobia/transphobes.
It's a shitty 150 page read. I don't know how you can force people to be nice to you when you're an obsessive bigot. Open letters about uni stuff happen ALL the time. ET said the letter writers did it to get at Phoenix not the GCRN but they barely knew Phoenix so that's an Assumption...
I've had a quick read but given I am an OU law student, I don't particularly want to stick my head above the parapet with a proper analysis as the VC's statement has made me worried about backlash. And as you say it's 150 pages so LONG. Generally, the impression was of a tribunal that did not understand academic politics and was quick to believe every allegation made even without any evidence to back it up. (See, for example, paragraph 85)
There was also a strong undercurrent that the tribunal believed in forced work in an academic context (e.g. paragraph 56, which stated the OU should have compelled academic staff to organise a conference promioting aims they did not believe in) and had misunderstood the law. (E.g. 560)
I don't think the judgement would necessarily stand an appeal. But the OU are likely worried about cost and reputational risk against an extremely well-funded opponent with extensive backing from right-wing media. Nevertheless, the statement from the VC was clearly panicked and unnecessarily obsequious towards transphobic views.
I think that's a fair overview. I'm not even a law student, just a disability-law nerd.
I don't think you can appeal mis-facts in a judgment if you just a rando witness and not sure even if you're Claimant/Respondent.
I wonder how much was cis white lady tears by Phoenix getting sympathy from the ET panel and the OU witnesses being perceived as unsympathetic cos they didn't cry (I know one of them, they're fucking livid). It becomes a DARVO.
@NatalyaD @ajlanes Well yeah it was obviously exactly that. What research was expected to come out of it?
Intellectual enquiry can be into new understandings of things, or the psychology of why people hold to their views, but it can't simply seek to re-affirm a mainstream view. That's not research in any meaningful sense.
Only imagine my surprise that someone who doesn't understand that turned out not to handle robust criticism well and became unpopular with her colleagues.
@petealexharris @ajlanes Phoenix is whining that in criminology there's ~300 academics in the field (seems an under count) and she's been ostracised by them.
That's cos most criminologists follow the Actual Evidence not some "I get to wave my trauma to be a bigot" like Phoenix did. Also there are already prison policies (not always followed) which Phoenix-and-friends (there's a disturbing children's TV prog title) never talk about either.
My Fediverse app of choice, @Mona app is gradually decaying so it copes less and less well with Friendica. I’ve coped with it being unable to parse notifications on my phone for a while but it’s stopped being able to do it on the desktop either. I asked them about this problem a while back and they said it was Friendica emitting notifications in the wrong form. I lack the cutlery to investigate further so… anyone suggest a good Fediverse client for iOS and MacOS that works nicely with Friendica?
Building out an IoT VLAN with an OpenWRT RPi functioning as a VLAN bridge (via a single Ethernet port).
Getting mDNS proxying working was a PITA. Everything you can Google is out of date, so you have to poke round a bit. Firewall rules take some getting right too, especially if the bridge isn’t also your internet gateway (it’s not).
Still, it’s working, and I’m quite pleased. Can’t AirPlay across it yet, but that’s a project for later.
Sarah's Theory of Modern Politics: When we were young, some of us liked to build sandcastles. Others liked to kick them over.
The Republicans, UKIP/Tories, AfD, Chega, and so on, are the people who kicked sandcastles over, asking for the votes of people who kicked sandcastles over.
"We have to kick over your sandcastle so we can sell the beach to our friend's sandcastle company, and you'll be able to buy ready-made sandcastles from them instead. We're only laughing and pointing at you because you haven't worked out how much better that market-based solution is for your sandcastle enjoyment."
Yup. Approximately 20-25% of the population are permanently fuelled by hate and a desire for revenge on a world that they imagine has always treated them unfairly. But, dangerously, in the present era their ranks are swelled by those whom the world has genuinely treated unfairly. The selfish ultra-rich are unwittingly creating a powder keg. They won’t care until it blows up.
Imagine being Elon Musk, or Donald Trump, or Boris Johnson. You have more money than you know what to do with. You could literally afford to go to whatever paradise you want and spend the days of your one life doing whatever you please.
They came so tantalisingly close to having more fulfilling and carefree lives than 99.99% of humans who have ever lived, but instead they want the masses to fear and adore them.
And they are utterly miserable, because nothing will fill the void, and the more they try, the more they debase themselves in front of billions, and the people they most need to respect them probably think they’re losers.
Idiots. Fools. Losers.
Musk is the worst of them. Read some Iain M Banks books, didn’t understand any of then, decided to save the world by becoming a solar power and electric vehicle magnate with space colonies.
But instead he is approaching old age as the proprietor of a bankrupt nazi chat room, and none of his kids will speak to him.
How can you have so many advantages and yet fuck up so amazingly completely?
I wonder whether one day we will look back on these people and know that, as well as being shitty as people, they also didn't have anywhere near as much actual money as they claimed; that it was mostly a shell game.
His wealth isn't enough for a personal space program, but it's enough he's free from ever having to worry about money again as long as he doesn't waste it on crap like super yachts. Now he has multiple homes across the world and spends his time travelling and enjoying himself. That's a much more mature approach and I would wager he's far, far happier than Elon Musk will ever be.
I suspect the advantages are part of the problem. They make it hard to see how tough it is for everyone else to do things, and that is easily translated into blaming them for being useless.
I've recently been doing some cognitive behavioural therapy care of the NHS, with a particular emphasis on activation (getting up and doing things) and self esteem. The last session is this coming Thursday. I think it's been net beneficial, in the sense that it's given me space to talk about things and think about things, and acquire a few more tools to manage my mind.
And the past week or so working for Hughes Hall to understand their Linux and database systems has been a big boost; it's clear that I'm actually pretty damn good at doing this kind of stuff and people seem impressed as if I'm working some kind of deep magic. And yet somehow when I'm sitting here alone it all feels like some kind of illusion in the face of that sense of stuckness and uselessness and yearning. Which I know is lies. I can effect change, I am capaable, I am cared about.
Could all be hormones. My tits are aching with another growth spurt.
Finally got myself an official Pi 5 power supply, so hopefully the thing won't just randomly die under load any more.
Raspberry Pi Foundation love making videos about their "not invented here" approach to power supplies, but guys, you actually suck at it and your continued inability to implement USB C Power Delivery (and PoE) sensibly is getting fucking old.
USB C has this annoying rule that the downstream has to ask for power before the upstream provides anything above 100mA.
The workaround that I used with RPi4 was, I'd use some noname Chinese 3A USB 2 charger — USB 2 doesn't really know or care about this particular rule, the cheap chargers just provide 5V at whatever amperage they can put out — and an USB A <–> USB C cable to connect that 5V 3A to the RPi.
Because of the recent developments at the Raspberry Foundation, I don't think I'll be getting any RPi5:s, so I can't test it myself, but I think odds are good that this approach still works.
oooohhh but if we implement USB-PD and use anything >5V then we would have to add another voltage regulation stage and ooooohhh woe is me
i understand their "lets not add cost for a feature only 2% of users might actually want" philiosphy, but yeah no fuck off pi foundation. power delivery is not one of those things worth saving 12 cents a board on
@joshie 🏳️🌈 Particularly because it ONLY works with their PSU. It will boot up massively degraded from anything else, but at less capability than a Pi 4 (like, it will disable USB boot and if you force enable it, it will randomly die from lack of power).
And don't get me started on the PoE hats that scream and function as heaters when the pi shuts down.
I'm sure the person who wrote this caption wasn't thinking of it this way, BUT:
That truck is stuck directly under the main fan blades of a high-bypass turbofan engine, which function essentially as a ducted propeller. They get rotated by a turbine in the jet exhaust and generate much more thrust than the escaping exhaust gasses themselves.
Propeller is a specific thing in aviation, and that doesn’t include turbofans. It does include turboprops, which is why they have “prop” in the name, and not “fan”.
I wasn’t on Usenet back then, as I was still in elementary school rather than university. But I heard the story later in the 90s. On the radio. I guess that last part makes me old after all.
Was on Usenet (rec.aviation mostly) through most of the second half of the 80s. Left the job that gave me that access in 1990 and had only limited (and pay-per-minute phone call) access for a few years (CIX and Compuserve, don't remember the order) so just used email a bit until a few years later and came back to a very different Internet.
This is not the future we thought we were building in the 90s tech industry. We thought we were going to help people. What we built could have been used to help people, but it’s not. It’s being used as a misery amplifier on a massive scale.
It's pretty frustrating for me. I twigged to the Californian Ideology pretty early; pointed out often that anything which empowered the grass roots also empowered the powerful, if they were smart enough to leverage it. Which they were. I saw no evidence people were actually using the net to do the empowering things they said they wanted to do, but people were too happy to roll their dice on dotcom payouts. I got a career out of it so at one level I guess I shouldn't complain.
@FeralRobots I was 21 and being "on the grid" meant using payphone, realistically. The internet at that point was pre google, and the idea of just being able to use a satellite navigation system, text messaging and email when out and about seemed utterly transformative.
> I pay a small fortune to streaming services and there’s nothing fucking on.
I feel your frustration. Having said that, I've been enjoying New Amsterdam over the past few days. Plus I finally gave Star Trek Prodigy another go and it wasn't bad. Aspects of it were pretty good.
Things I've enjoyed recently: Slow Horses on Apple Fargo s5 on Prime Percy Jackson on Disney Kin and The Tourist on iplayer True Detective s4 just started this week and looks very promising
Asked in an interview with the BBC if he had complete confidence in Boeing's quality control processes after the incident which saw a part of the aircraft's fuselage fall off, the Ryanair boss said "no".
I was today years old when I worked out that Trading Places with Eddie Murphy is literally an adaptation of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, and I feel very slow on the uptake.
Oof. “We find it hard to see why the defendant's legal liability should turn on the court's impression of whether or not the facts of the case fit the dramatic pattern of a Greek tragedy.” I do love a good judicial putdown. (From Paul & Anor v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust [2024] UKSC 1 bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2024/… )
Except, in the salient aspect, that the events described *don't* really follow at least the strictest, Aristotelian criteria for Greek tragedy, where the tragedy takes place in a single place on a single day.
The original Cocklecarrot mentioned "Sophoclean" (great word). Now, dragged up in a Secondary Modern, I'm not an expert on such things, but Oedipus Rex and Antigone follow the unities, iirr?
So it was a weirdly specific (-ly wrong) analogy to use to extend a single event to 36 hours and the length of the M1.
After the point UK law diverged from EU law, EU regulations became UK law that could be modified. So now, if I’m talking about Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (aka “the GDPR”) I need to clarify that I’m talking about the UK’s fork of the codebase. Can I find a standard way of doing this? Can I bobbins. If legislation was in git I’d just cite the commit ID and annoy everyone.
Some months ago, I asked about trans women who were long term post op and who have had dental implants with bone regeneration.
I am pleased to report that at my 3 1/2 month appointment to place the healing abutment, I have had more than satisfactory levels of bone regeneration. The procedure worked really well!
2mg estradiol, oral, twice daily, FWIW. I also supplement vitamin D3.
Reddit mods embrace the fact that nobody has time to give a shit about your special snowflake arbitrary community rules novel when you are just one of thousands of subreddits and this is social media, not a job application 2024.
Reddit is tens of thousands of communities each run by someone for whom working as a petty bureaucrat with no oversight somewhere in the Iberian peninsula is their dream job.
TAP’s refunds department are incompetent rather than malevolent. They made the news for accidentally giving a full seat price refund for a baby that was on a lap so hadn’t had a ticket in the first place.
@timberwraith I imagined they won a really impressive bowl, you know, like on Mastermind, a super bowl.
It turns out big Mercian Football games are known as bowls after the first such, The Rose Bowl. Which is named after the Rose Bowl Stadium which is kind of bowlish tbf. It looks like the superbowl trophy is a weird, phallic trophy somewhat resembling a prostate stimulator, so not at all bowlish.
21st century capitalism, for me, has as its salient feature the flight away from quality. There is now an inbuilt acceptance that everything will just get slowly worse. There are now entire areas of commerce where you simply cannot buy a well designed high quality product, when you used to be able to. Everything is a race to the bottom.
This is most exemplified in my mind by the way Telsa enshittified DOOR HANDLES.
If you’ve never used the door on a Tesla, the thing is that you cannot close and latch the door if you’re holding the handle. Holding the handle means that the latch is disengaged.
Which means you have to slam it.
Whoever designed this must never have lived anywhere windy.
Earlier I posted about what I want in a car, and how it’s getting harder and harder to buy one that isn’t an SUV/iPad crossover. They look great, but are just dreadful from an ergonomic and safety point of view.
And they’re getting worse. There have been a few joyous years when you have been able to use the satnav system on your phone f
... show more
21st century capitalism, for me, has as its salient feature the flight away from quality. There is now an inbuilt acceptance that everything will just get slowly worse. There are now entire areas of commerce where you simply cannot buy a well designed high quality product, when you used to be able to. Everything is a race to the bottom.
This is most exemplified in my mind by the way Telsa enshittified DOOR HANDLES.
If you’ve never used the door on a Tesla, the thing is that you cannot close and latch the door if you’re holding the handle. Holding the handle means that the latch is disengaged.
Which means you have to slam it.
Whoever designed this must never have lived anywhere windy.
Earlier I posted about what I want in a car, and how it’s getting harder and harder to buy one that isn’t an SUV/iPad crossover. They look great, but are just dreadful from an ergonomic and safety point of view.
And they’re getting worse. There have been a few joyous years when you have been able to use the satnav system on your phone for directions via CarPlay or the Android equivalent, instead of the dreadful shit the manufacturers include.
They’re now moving away from letting you connect your phone. In the future, not only will we be forced to use their dross; we will have to pay a monthly subscription for it.
All so true. When our kids were small and I had an iPhone (a 4S), my BIL and I were wanting to share pics of our kids, post Christmas. No problem, he says, I'll just Bluetooth them over from my crappy, old Android (my sister wouldn't let him buy a decent phone as he was *constantly* breaking or losing them 😁) .
And he couldn't, because on my spanky new iPhone, Apple had deliberately broken Bluetooth connectivity.
I thought then, this is going to get worse. I think of that often.
Capitalism does to products what it does to everything else: the wealth gap, here visible in quality and price tag.
The midrange products are kinda gone or turned to shit. We now have a lot of shitty cheap stuff (getting less cheap by the day in many cases) and very high end quality stuff, unaffordable by most.
On top of that, all the crap technology now allows like subscriptions to be able to use the hardware we paid for are not prevalent.
Regarding cars, if I was on the market for one, I would look into the Hyundai Kona (or Kauai or whatever it’s called in Portugal to avoid the c word). It’s a bit SUVy so you probably won’t like it, and I’m not sure about the enshittification factor. However it seems to be the car that usually gets higher ratings on range per kW second only to the fascist EVs (and I’m almost sure the battery has active cooling).
@llwynog I have the same experience when it comes to clothes and textiles from the parents' or grandparents' generation: clearing out my parents' house I remember handling old clothes (coats, blouses, shoes, gloves and scarves), and the realization on the first touch: "Wow, this such a great, thick and built-to-last quality of textile!" This was clothing that was 50 to 80 years old.
I wasnt used to feeling that kind of quality in my clothes lifetime. Mindboggling. Sad.
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar...
@@shezza_t Here in the western Algarve we are 10 years into a drought. We are now in a situation of essentially having to abandon our reservoirs because it looks like they will never actually fill up ever again.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Zoe O'Connell
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Alexandra Lanes likes this.
NatalyaD
Unknown parent • • •@ajlanes
Agreed, but you need to appeal the right cases. I suspect Phoenix is not the right case cos of various facts. I hear the OU had pretty good trans lawyers on their team. Appeal wouldn't just be £200k+, low-success-chance, but endless time and ongoing stress for the OU witnesses & staff.
Forstater's appeal success means Forstater is now binding and the TERFs are super smug about it. That employer had shite policies which left the door open for legal awfulness.
@goatsarah @celesteh
Alexandra Lanes likes this.
Andrew Hinton
Unknown parent • • •NatalyaD
Unknown parent • • •@petealexharris @ajlanes
Interestingly Phoenix was in the Times last week moaning about how no ex-colleagues from OU have talked to her (I don't think anyone likes her, funnily enough).
Phoenix also whined that the GC Research Network has run out of oomph and blames "TRAs" & OU of course, but not herself for being the only one obsessively bigoted enough to care, not doing the work from new job cos it was prob only ever a "do thing to get challenged & initiate legal action for".
Alexandra Lanes likes this.
NatalyaD
Unknown parent • • •@godzero
The judgment itself is at gov.uk/employment-tribunal-dec…
I haven't seen any sensible trans-clued people's review of it and I'm wary of the Guardian for hosting/promoting transphobia/transphobes.
It's a shitty 150 page read. I don't know how you can force people to be nice to you when you're an obsessive bigot. Open letters about uni stuff happen ALL the time. ET said the letter writers did it to get at Phoenix not the GCRN but they barely knew Phoenix so that's an Assumption...
J Phoenix v The Open University and others: 3322700/2021 and 3323841/2021
HM Courts & Tribunals Service (GOV.UK)Zoe O'Connell
in reply to NatalyaD • •I've had a quick read but given I am an OU law student, I don't particularly want to stick my head above the parapet with a proper analysis as the VC's statement has made me worried about backlash. And as you say it's 150 pages so LONG. Generally, the impression was of a tribunal that did not understand academic politics and was quick to believe every allegation made even without any evidence to back it up. (See, for example, paragraph 85)
There was also a strong undercurrent that the tribunal believed in forced work in an academic context (e.g. paragraph 56, which stated the OU should have compelled academic staff to organise a conference promioting aims they did not believe in) and had misunderstood the law. (E.g. 560)
I don't think the judgement would necessarily stand an appeal. But the OU are likely worried about cost and reputational risk against an extremely well-funded opponent with extensive backing from right-wing media. Nevertheless, the statement from the VC was clearly panicked and unnecessarily obsequious towards transphobic views.
like this
Alexandra Lanes likes this.
NatalyaD
in reply to Zoe O'Connell • • •@zoeimogen @godzero
I think that's a fair overview. I'm not even a law student, just a disability-law nerd.
I don't think you can appeal mis-facts in a judgment if you just a rando witness and not sure even if you're Claimant/Respondent.
I wonder how much was cis white lady tears by Phoenix getting sympathy from the ET panel and the OU witnesses being perceived as unsympathetic cos they didn't cry (I know one of them, they're fucking livid). It becomes a DARVO.
Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫
in reply to NatalyaD • • •@NatalyaD @ajlanes
Well yeah it was obviously exactly that. What research was expected to come out of it?
Intellectual enquiry can be into new understandings of things, or the psychology of why people hold to their views, but it can't simply seek to re-affirm a mainstream view. That's not research in any meaningful sense.
Only imagine my surprise that someone who doesn't understand that turned out not to handle robust criticism well and became unpopular with her colleagues.
NatalyaD
in reply to Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ • • •@petealexharris @ajlanes Phoenix is whining that in criminology there's ~300 academics in the field (seems an under count) and she's been ostracised by them.
That's cos most criminologists follow the Actual Evidence not some "I get to wave my trauma to be a bigot" like Phoenix did. Also there are already prison policies (not always followed) which Phoenix-and-friends (there's a disturbing children's TV prog title) never talk about either.
Shouting about being cancelled=attention.
Alexandra Lanes likes this.