Honestly, I think this is a wakeup call for the fediverse. This time it was mostly harmless spam images.
Eventually though, someone is gonna use the same trick to send seriously nasty stuff to our servers, and our timelines. The sort of stuff that you need therapy to try and unsee.
We, collectively, need to try and stop that before it happens.
The patriarch of a right-wing Canadian family of 11 had had just about enough of gay people in his country. “We didn't feel safe for our children there in the future anymore,” father Arend Feenstra told Russian media. “There's a lot of left-wing...
@godzero It'll probably cost you another 100 euros to get from whatever random airport they fly to to your actual destination, but sometimes it works out 😀
@gz @Ghost of Hope back rows first is actually terrible. There’s a video about this somewhere.
The best way to do it without assigning everyone a unique birding number is to just go, “plane’s here. Get on”, which is basically what Ryanair does, only they use both doors simultaneously.
@gz @Ghost of Hope it creates congestion because everyone is trying to reach the same rows at the same time. It’s better to introduce a bit of randomness because the gaps that develop stop things bunching up.
Ryanair planes all have air stairs, which they deploy before the ground staff even get there. My record from fan stop/seatbelt lights going off to divining away in my car, via passport control at Faro is 4 minutes.
@gz @Ghost of Hope last time I came through there a few weeks ago I was first off the plane. As I passed the gate area for the return flight on my way to passport control, I heard, “Ryanair is now starting boarding of flight FR-whatever to London Stansted. Please have your passports and boarding passes ready for inspection”
More than half the incoming passengers were still on the plane. They’re that fast.
@gz @Ghost of Hope All their planes have airstairs. They use both front and rear entrances (with ground steps for the rear one), and they only have two classes of boarding: priority (where you get to use the overhead bins) and non priority (where you do not, unless you’re in an exit row). You wanna use an overhead bin, you have to pay extra.
@Michael Vogel a pleasure. I know nothing of php but … code is code, I guess, and once I went and had a look at where the error was coming from, the place to look became obvious.
@Sarah Brown Specifically in this situation, you would be better off disabling PHP errors showing in pages and cutting the deprecation messages from the logged errors (respectively display_errors and error_reporting in the relevant php.ini file)
@Sarah Brown It's likely the very display of these error messages was preventing loading of proxified remote content. Since it runs through a local PHP script, any text output in what is supposed to be binary content would have broken media decoding.
@Sarah Brown Not precisely, but you can figure this out by going to Admin -> PHP Info. This page will list the configuration files PHP is using. The default on Debian-like is /etc/php*/[apache2|php-fpm]/php.ini.
@Hypolite Petovan OK, so the docker image doesn't have a php config file. It has two sample ones in /usr/local/etc/php/. I Just did cp php.ini-production php.ini in that directory in the docker container and restarted, and it seems to have picked up sensible defaults, including the ones you mention above.
!Friendica Admins Has anyone found a better way to deal with these spam instances than degenerating them one by one in the "Moderation" page? It's a bit tedious.
I don't seem to receive the spam here. How do these spam messages look alike? Are these posts with a huge amount of hashtags? If yes, then this is handled by the automatic spam protection in the current release candidate.
It looks like this. I get it via academicchatter@a.gup.pe which I do not want to block. It was way more two days ago or so. Allow Spammers for vegan steaks!
Thing I don’t get is people believing that hydrogen is going to be a useful automotive fuel. Are they all oil company shills?
Hydrogen is an objectively terrible fuel for pretty much any use with the possible exception of aviation.
It has abysmal energy density for a given volume, even if you liquify it (compare Falcon heavy to Delta IV heavy: similar lift capacities but the latter is fucking enormous because hydrogen takes up stupid amounts of space and the former runs on kerosene).
It doesn’t stay where you put it, ever. It’s literally impossible to keep hydrogen in a container. A hydrogen molecule is so small that it will fuck off through the gaps in soils iron. You cannot store it long term.
To get ANY kind of sensible energy density from it, you have to liquify it (where it’s still shit compared to pretty much any other energy source in the same volume), and that’s cold. Seriously, seriously, mind bendingly cold. It makes liquid nitrogen look like lava.
Oil companies like it because atom for atom, crude oil is mostly
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Thing I don’t get is people believing that hydrogen is going to be a useful automotive fuel. Are they all oil company shills?
Hydrogen is an objectively terrible fuel for pretty much any use with the possible exception of aviation.
It has abysmal energy density for a given volume, even if you liquify it (compare Falcon heavy to Delta IV heavy: similar lift capacities but the latter is fucking enormous because hydrogen takes up stupid amounts of space and the former runs on kerosene).
It doesn’t stay where you put it, ever. It’s literally impossible to keep hydrogen in a container. A hydrogen molecule is so small that it will fuck off through the gaps in soils iron. You cannot store it long term.
To get ANY kind of sensible energy density from it, you have to liquify it (where it’s still shit compared to pretty much any other energy source in the same volume), and that’s cold. Seriously, seriously, mind bendingly cold. It makes liquid nitrogen look like lava.
Oil companies like it because atom for atom, crude oil is mostly hydrogen. Go figure.
But it’s an objectively dreadful fuel. Stop trying to make hydrogen a thing. It’s never going to be (again, planes maybe excepted).
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Even some of the high temperature industries that 5 years ago I was guessing would want hydrogen have tuned to electricity. There have been electric furnaces for steel recycling for years and recently smelting furnaces have gone into production.
Michael Liebreich's hydrogen ladder makes a nice graphic and even that keeps shifting (away from widespread hydrogen use) and is now on version 5.
look, it was late and I did say I didn't put any thought into it.
I was thinking of the ass end of Australia, but you are, rather cruelly using my own argument against me that electrons are easier to move than explody gas
I'll go back to my previous position of "I'm open to ideas, but cant' think of any" and this time not offer half ass, clearly not thought through ones 😀
You won't find much intelligence on Diaspora either, like the kind that knows that hydrazine has been in TERRESTRIAL use both in water and in rocketry. Ta ta.
@argv minus one That upper limit is orders of magnitude more than humankind's entire energy use of all forms put together.
We don't need fusion power on earth, and probably never will, and of the people experimenting with it, the only ones making significant process are just using as a cover for thermonuclear weapons research (National Ignition Facility).
Because it is the only facility that can create the conditions that are relevant to understanding the operation of modern nuclear weapons, NIF is a crucial element of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program.
NIF can repeatedly simulate those conditions inside the Target Chamber’s controlled environment, giving dedicated teams of scientists and researchers the ability to reconstitute and improve upon the capabilities of underground testing.
NIF’s high energy density and inertial confinement fusion experiments, coupled with the increasingly sophisticated simulations available from some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, increase our understanding of weapon physics, including the properties and survivability of weapons-relevant materials.
@argv minus one BTW, the Space Shuttle and its stupid obscenely eye waveringly expensive bastard child, the alleged "space launch system" was/is also, in a very large part, nuclear weapons programmes. There's a reason that government "space" programmes use solid rocket boosters and commercial space programmes don't: it gives their ICBM engineers something to do.
Thinking about UK Labour and the US Democrats, and their ideological clones across Europe.
Progressive parties seem have decided they don’t need to provide HOPE any more.
Literally the only people offering hope and the possibility for change for the better in the future are fascists.
And they’re liars, but if the only other option on the menu is “we will keep things exactly the same and stuff will slowly get worse. Fuck you, and be grey”, then I can understand the temptation to vote for ANYONE offering something different.
It’s notable that none of the various articles on the far-right co-opting farmers seem to notice this - if the fascists are the only people offering hope to <any group>, while regular pols don’t give a toss, don’t be surprised at the outcome.
Nothing stopping Rutte or VdL saying “farmers need to be paid to apply their skills as the spearhead of better environmental management, forestry, river and flood management, etc etc ”, for example.
@Alexandra Lanes @BashStKid They literally had "things can only get better" as their campaign song.
And now the attitude is like, "we must not make any improvements to anything ever. All the shit that the Tories did, that you're voting them out for? Not gonna change any of it. Tough titty."
@ajlanes @BashStKid Aye. I recall the scene at quarter to 10pm on 1 May 1997 My mate: I've spoilt my ballot paper. You don't actually think Tony Blair's left wing, do you? Me: I know exactly what I've voted for. One night of excellent television. Let us now get a taxi to my flat and watch it.
Like the facist press will savage them no matter what so fuck them and be bold and honest
Racist Uncle will vote Nazi^wReform no matter what so fuck him with a .303 and be bold and honest
And I understand that putting hard numbers on things is daft but for the love of god you can sell net zero as "yes, it's a bit up front, but you get *free* 'leccy for 6 months of the year and it fucks the Saudis and Putin with a wirebrush dipped in battery acid"
"This term makes no sense to me. Does anyone know the history and why it is used? Don't explain why you think it makes sense"
Me: "This is the history. Its common and established usage across many fields. Why don't you think it makes sense?"
"I mean it when I said don't explain why you think it makes sense"
So I told them that I answered their question, but had no time for miserable cunts, and blocked and eradicated all trace of them from my own server's database, because I can do that.
Fucksake though. Some of the stereotypes here are true.
"There are legitimate ways to conceptualise power dynamics which do not centre whatever US-specific racial category Americans have decided you belong to"
As Tom Lehrer said, they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide...
Lyrics: view or download PDF
Sheet music: view or download PDF
--
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer, track 1
Album: stream playlist
Audio File: download MP3
The Remains of Tom Lehrer (disc 1), track 13
Album: stream playlis…
I've defederated from most of the worst of the "Mastodon HOA", and most of what's left gives me a pleasant and constructive social media space mostly without the massive knee-jerk navel gazing.
But sometimes a bit of it breaks through and ... yeah. Let's just say that the reputation that the fediverse has amongst those who mock and caricature us isn't entirely undeserved.
@Uraael If I'm making main posts, I will go to the effort to add alt text. I recently did a long form blog with loads of images that didn't have it, which were all screenshots, and I don't always do it in personal or limited audience replies. Nobody gives me shit over that, possibly because of the scope of my interactions, or possibly because I've defederated from the worst offenders (especially that lot who are compiling the list of racists and trans women, but mostly trans women), or possibly because they know I'd just tell them to fuck off.
My understanding of UK prosecutions is that publicly speculating about the identity or motivation of the perpetrator can fuck up the case? It's very different law than in the US, and I'm not at all clear on it.
re: Discussion of attempted murder of a trans woman
@Charles "Gender Ideology" ☭ H @Transgender World I think if it's all over the press being called a transphobic attack, anything I say in a place nobody is going to read anyway isn't going to make any difference.
re: Discussion of attempted murder of a trans woman
@Charles "Gender Ideology" ☭ H @Transgender World In the uk a publication is in contempt of court if it creates a substantial risk that a trial will be impeded or prejudiced. I don’t think that’s the case here
And here I am on Friendica, which already integrates both, and which has quote posting and full text search of fediverse posts, thinking that sometimes it’s good to be small.
for every feature which would "ruin mastodon forever", there is at least one fediverse platform which already implements it (and it is typically friendica)
This is a long form post. It includes lots of images. If you're viewing on a microblogging platform such as Mastodon, you may wish to click through to read it properly. That said, here goes.
Like many people, I have a bunch of smartphone stuff, or so-called "Internet of Things" devices. Some of them use proper smartphone protocols such as Zigbee or Thread, via a hub. Others connect directly via WiFi or Ethernet.
These things can variously be security risks (the recent story about toothbrushes making a botnet was fake, but illustrates the threat vector), or massive privacy invasions if they can just randomly probe stuff on your network (hi Alexa).
So I wanted a VLAN to segregate my stuff off. Of course, this also requires a bridge with a firewall between your LAN and IoT VLAN, which many people use their router for. I wanted a separate bridge though, for the learning exercise, for compartmentalising things, and also to reduce the traffic load on my router.
I was considering writing a long post about how to create VLANs and what they are, but this tutorial as
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This is a long form post. It includes lots of images. If you're viewing on a microblogging platform such as Mastodon, you may wish to click through to read it properly. That said, here goes.
Like many people, I have a bunch of smartphone stuff, or so-called "Internet of Things" devices. Some of them use proper smartphone protocols such as Zigbee or Thread, via a hub. Others connect directly via WiFi or Ethernet.
These things can variously be security risks (the recent story about toothbrushes making a botnet was fake, but illustrates the threat vector), or massive privacy invasions if they can just randomly probe stuff on your network (hi Alexa).
So I wanted a VLAN to segregate my stuff off. Of course, this also requires a bridge with a firewall between your LAN and IoT VLAN, which many people use their router for. I wanted a separate bridge though, for the learning exercise, for compartmentalising things, and also to reduce the traffic load on my router.
I was considering writing a long post about how to create VLANs and what they are, but this tutorial assumes you already know that, and how to do it. For my purposes, I created a VLAN tagged 10, a new WiFi network (2.4GHz only but no reason you couldn't enable 5GHz if you wanted) tagged with that VLAN, and forbade it from accessing my router.
In fact, the only places VLAN 10 can go are the backbone between the switches and access points, and the one port we are going to put out bridge on. That one allows both untagged and VLAN 10 traffic.
So now I need to create the bridge. The VLAN as set up has no DHCP server and no route to the Internet. If you join the VLAN's SSID, you will not even get an IP address at this point.
This is where the bridge comes in, and I wanted to build one using a spare Raspberry Pi 4 and OpenWRT. The nice thing about OpenWRT on a Pi 4 is that it's really lightweight. You can get away without a fan. I just stick heatsinks on the chips.
Anyway, the first thing to do is flash OpenWRT. There are instructions for getting an RPi 4 build here. Note that you don't need the USB Ethernet driver; we're going to build this using only the builtin ethernet port in a "router on a stick" configuration.
If you ask me nicely, I might give you a binary of my custom build, which has a bunch of nice stuff added to it.
Anyway, flash the Pi, and DO NOT CONNECT IT TO YOUR NETWORK. This is because, by default, the OpenWRT build is running a DHCP server. I assume you probably already have one of these on your LAN. You don't want another one.
Instead, get your laptop, or whatever, anything with an ethernet port, disconnect it from your local network, and plug it directly into the VLAN bridge, AND ONLY THE VLAN BRIDGE.
If, at this point, you can see your home network or the Internet, you are doing it wrong.
Power up the Pi, and wait a bit. Then navigate to:
http://192.168.1.1/
In your web browser. You will be asked for a login. The default username and password is root/root. Change it (system - Administration).
Now navigate to System - System and change the name of your device. I called mine "VLANBridge". Hit Save & Apply:
Now we need to stop that DHCP server I just talked about. Go to "Network - Interfaces" and you'll get a list of network interfaces. There may be a "Wan" here. If so, delete it. Then click the button to edit the settings for Lan:
You'll be presented with a bunch of option tabs. Under General settings, you want to change "Protocol" to "DHCP Client":
Under "Firewall Settings", make sure it's in Firewall zone, "lan":
And under DHCP Server, click "Ignore interface", and then under IPv6 Settings, just disable everything:
OK, you're good. Save everything, then on your laptop, pull up a shell and do:
ssh root@192.168.1.1
Enter the password you just set, then once logged in:
shutdown
Wait until everything stops. Power down the Pi, unplug it from your laptop, then you can connect your laptop back to your own network.
OK, now take the Pi which is now configured as a DHCP client and plug it in to the router port you intend to use. Configure that port to allow both VLAN 10 and the default LAN.
Power up the Pi. Now go to your own DHCP server and assign it a static IP address on your LAN.
Now the next bit is going to either be very easy, or very difficult, depending on the capabilities of your router. You will need to set up a new static route to the IoT VLAN so that stuff on your main network (like your phone) can still talk to it.
Now I'm going to assume that out IoT VLAN is 192.168.10.0/24. This means that the router needs to advertise the static IP address you just assigned as the destination for that route.
If your router can't do that ... well, you're gonna need to go away and solve that problem. It's beyond the scope of this article. If it's an ISP supplied piece of crap, put it into "modem mode" and get a more capable router.
I actually use OpenWRT for this as well, and it makes it really easy, It's just this:.
Assuming you've done all that, let's go and log in to your VLAN Bridge. Presumably it isn't using the static IP address you've assigned it yet. Find where it is (or browse to either:
http://VLANBridge.lan/
or
http://VLANBridge.local/
... one of them will probably work, and reboot it. It should now come back up with the IP address you assigned.
Log bak on. It's time to create the VLAN interface.
Navigate to "Network - Interfaces" and select the "Devices" tab. Add a device configuration.
The device type is "VLAN (802.1q)"
The base device is "eth0"
The VLAN ID is "10"
And the name is "eth0.10"
Probably go ahead and disable IPv6 as well for shits and giggles. Probably doesn't matter much. Don't touch anything under "Advanced device options", because there are dragons in the and they will break something if you bugger about with them.
That's created the VLAN Ethernet device, sharing the main ethernet port. Now we need to create an interface. Navigate to the "Interface" tab and select "Add new interface" at the bottom.
Under Name, we want "VLAN". Protocol is "Static address", and Device is "Software VLAN eth0.10". We then get to configure it. We'll get a page like this:
A couple of things to note: the IPv4 address and net mask are standard. The IPv4 Gateway is your Internet gateway on your main LAN. Mine is 192.168.1.1. Yours may be something else. Enter the right value, or nothing on your VLAN will be able to find the Internet.
Under "Advanced Settings", just make sure that "Use default gateway" is checked.
Under "Firewall Settings", assign it to the new firewall zone, "VLAN"
DHCP settings are nice and standard. The lease time may be a bit short. I set mine to "24h". These are the DHCP settings for your IoT VLAN, not your main network.
As before, go disable all the IPv6 stuff. Probably doesn't matter.
Save and apply. Now go to "Network - Firewall" and replicate this setup.
What's important are that you have two Zone forwarding rules: one from lan -> VLAN with "accept, accept, accept" and VLAN -> lan with "accept, accept, reject".
The last bit is what protects your main network from IoT things being naughty.
We're getting there. Now we need a few custom firewall traffic rules. Click through to the "Traffic Rules" tab and clear out any rules which are already there.
There are two rules you absolutely want. The first is to allow DNS queries to your local DNS server, which will likely be your router. I have two DNS servers locally: one on 192.168.1.1 and one on 192.168.1.3. I want to add them both. Here's what that looks like:
The next rule we need is a catchall-rule for denying access to any local subnet, other than stuff we explicitly allow.
Note that the order they are in matters. You can drag them up and down with the little hamburger icon next to "Edit".
OK. Save everything and we should now have a working network. There is one more thing we need to do, but I'm going to come to that in a minute. First let's test what we have got.
Take one of your devices and connect to the new VLAN SSID you have created.
Do you have Internet access? You should.
Can you ping devices on your main network? You shouldn't be able to.
Can you ping the device on your VLAN from your main network? You should be able to.
If it's not working, check your managed switch settings. You may be blocking packets at the hardware level.
If it's working, then well done!
There is something else we want to do. It's optional, but you will likely want it. A lot of smartphone stuff is found by systems like Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit, via multicast DNS (mDNS). Now stuff is going to be on a different VLAN, this won't work.
Fear not! We can fix it. There's a package for multicast DNS forwarding in OpenWRT based on Avahi.
The tutorial is written for an older version of OpenWRT, and the way Avahi is packaged has changed.
If you go to "System - Software" and then hit "Update Lists", click on "installed" and then type, "avahi" into the filter.
You want to see this, AND ONLY THIS. If these packages aren't installed, install them. If there are any others installed, remove them. These instructions are current as of OpenWRT 23.05.0
You will also want to ensure the "dbus" package is installed. Once you've done that, follow the tutorial but ignore the bit that says to type:
opkg update
opkg install avahi-daemon
You will need to add a firewall traffic rule, to allow multicast DNS to propagate, as per the tutorial. Here's my rule, which allows propagation in both directions.
And here's the order I have my rules in:
And that's it. I think I have remembered everything I did. If you try this and it doesn't work for you, ping me and we'll see if I can work out what I've forgotten. Now your network is set up, you should be able to start moving your IoT stuff over.
NB: I checked and that isn't even showing the intro paragraph on Mastodon. It's a tutorial for building a VLAN bridge. If it interests you, you'll likely need to click the link to show it natively on my server.
Sometimes we forget that the IEEE defined some frame types, such as Pause, that have particularized rules regarding whether they may cross a bridge or not.
@greygirl27 ah yes, 'both sides'. One side harassing and abusing the very small number of trans runners who happen to be fast enough to be the fastest in their age category at a few (but nowhere near all) events (whilst the vast majority of these records are not held by trans runners). Sell transphobic t-shirts and harass volunteers. The other side: existing and running whilst trans (and in accordance with parkrun's rules).
2009: Harriet Harman is squeamish about trans women and so lets the Equality Act get drafted in a sloppy and ambiguous way.
2010: The coalition government passes it and can’t be arsed to read the damned thing, despite trans people (and I was one of them) waving frantically at MPs and senior civil servants.
A decade of dominoes fall…
2025: “I know he was goosestepping past the water cooler yelling ‘Heil Hitler’, but the courts have decided that the Equality Act means we can’t fire him.”
Oh, here’s another fun “ticking time bomb that trans people were ignored about”.
The UK’s same sex marriage legislation modifies the gender recognition act with what came to be known as the “spousal veto”. The rationale, in the act, for this necessarily implies that a same sex marriage is worth less than a mixed sex one.
I want it on record that I, and several other trans people, spent much of 2011 and 2012 frantically warning cis gay MPs and Lords about this, and they did not do a damned fucking thing other than brush us off.
So it’s sitting there, an unexploded bomb against same sex marriage in legislation, waiting for some TERF to set a legal precedent in some fucked up way that will ruin marriage for same sex couples in the UK, the same way they’ve now made it basically impossible to fire raging bigots because of wiggle room in the equality act.
And I know that self interest is insufficient to overcome squick about trans people, but that’s not on us.
THEY WERE WARNED.
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Oh, here’s another fun “ticking time bomb that trans people were ignored about”.
The UK’s same sex marriage legislation modifies the gender recognition act with what came to be known as the “spousal veto”. The rationale, in the act, for this necessarily implies that a same sex marriage is worth less than a mixed sex one.
I want it on record that I, and several other trans people, spent much of 2011 and 2012 frantically warning cis gay MPs and Lords about this, and they did not do a damned fucking thing other than brush us off.
So it’s sitting there, an unexploded bomb against same sex marriage in legislation, waiting for some TERF to set a legal precedent in some fucked up way that will ruin marriage for same sex couples in the UK, the same way they’ve now made it basically impossible to fire raging bigots because of wiggle room in the equality act.
And I know that self interest is insufficient to overcome squick about trans people, but that’s not on us.
Well here in baboon-butt red Utah a small minded white ass bigot just helped get a law passed forbidding trans people from using any restroom in a public building that doesn't conform to the sex they were assigned on their birth certificate.
This without any proof that trans people are in any way doing anything harmful in bathrooms other than - well, using them to go to the bathroom.
I'm gay myself, but when I go to a restroom I go there to pee or poop. That's it. And I expect to be left alone and have privacy. But who keeps wanting to get into our drawers and check out our junk? It's the straight bigots out there.
In most cases where I've felt threatened in public bathrooms it was by leering straight guys, not by anyone on our "side of the fence."
Anyway I don't envy the white "perfect" human who gets the job of checking out the sex designation on other people's birth certificates whenever they use a public restroom.
I read through the amendment to the GRA at legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/… but the understanding I took away from that is that the Spousal Consent provisions that are the subject of that amendment apply exactly the same to heterosexual marriages as they do to homosexual ones: the text just uses the term "protected marriage". I don't think it matters which piece of legislation that schedule happened to ride with, the schedule itself applies only to the GRA 2004 and doesn't distinguish types of marriage. IANAL though, of course.
You did mention however that the worrying bit comes from the rationale, which I unfortunately didn't find. Nonetheless, if it's in the rationale but not in the law, then does it matter?
An Act to make provision for the marriage of same sex couples in England and Wales, about gender change by married persons and civil partners, about consular functions in relation to marriage, for the marriage of armed forces personnel overseas, for …
@Kim Vandry Consider the context. There was no such thing as a “homosexual marriage” when this was enacted. In theory it applies equally NOW but as passed it was “protecting” the poor long suffering wives (and it was them, not the husbands, because I was in the room when the civil servant who drafted it said that she imagined what she would want and wrote that) of trans women from becoming “legally gay”.
Oh definitely! I have no trouble believing those were the people in the room, forming the momentum behind those changes. Largely that'll have just been due to the dominant demographic at the time of who was transitioning at an age old enough to be likely to have spouses who could get upset.
But there's clearly a massive gap between being upset and inventing the preposterous and homophobic notion of "legally gay"!
@Kim Vandry Well, that’s what they did, and the gay parliamentarians we told didn’t do anything to change it (some actually “accidentally” left the room when votes were happening), so you know, when this unexploded landmine eventually explodes … told you so.
@Kim Vandry To a degree. If there’s doubt about the meaning of a bit of law it’s sometimes permissible to look into what Parliament’s intention was to resolve the question.
UK employment law some time ago set a precedent that trans-hostile beliefs were protected in a workplace environment.
So I'm doing the Cassandra thing again, where once again we warned the rest of you that if you didn't push back, the shit flung at us would start hitting other groups.
Programmers: we are utterly Anglo centric. We work in English and only think about English. We require English naming conventions in name and address fields.
Also programmers: YOUR USE OF AN APOSTROPHE WAS ENTIRELY UNEXPECTED!
I hate that TERFs have taken phrases like, "women and girls", "suffrage", and "equity" and made them into the feminist equivalent of countries with "democratic republic" in their names.
@arroz in nearly 30 years of ignoring letters, we did actually get an inspector once. Was really nice and apologetic, actually, and seemed delighted and surprised we didn't try murder them. I'm sure plenty are arseholes, though.
It’s the “we can apply to court for a search warrant” that particularly irks me. Yes, and I could apply to court to get a search warrant for your knicker drawer. Not getting it though, am I?
@Ryan Frame the thing is, everything in that letter is a lie. They send them to all properties without a licence, but they imply that they have powers that they don’t have, and they pretty much never follow up.
If they ever actually send anyone, you just tell them to go away.
You know, we should really invest in this licensing scheme in the US. So much more opportunity for swatting with no-knock raids. Seems like a no brainer politically.
@joshie 🏳️🌈 They have no procedure for keeping track of people who have contacted them so the only thing that stops the letters is a TV licence. Or possibly a harassment lawsuit. Dunno if anyone has tried that.
Pretty sure I got badly glutted earlier. Immune system throwing a shitfit, joints sore, and my breath stinks. Have calmed it a bit with acetylcysteine, but just gonna have to ride it out. 😞
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