IzabelaKaramia

drahardja, 9 months ago to random

A study on #UniversalBasicIncome #UBI from 2020 is now peer-reviewed and published. The study gave $7500 cash to homeless people in Vancouver and compared their outcome versus a control group. The result was clear:

“The recipients of the cash transfers did not increase spending on drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, but did increase spending on food, clothes, and rent, according to self-reports. What’s more, they moved into stable housing faster and saved enough money to maintain financial security over the year of follow-up.”

Further, each person who moved into stable housing one year faster saves the city over $8000 per year, which makes this program cheaper than existing housing programs.

Universal Basic Income works. It sounds so obvious when you say it out loud, but: giving people cash lifts them out of poverty. We need to do that more.

“A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it.”

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21528569/homeless-poverty-cash-transfer-canada-new-leaf-project

IzabelaKaramia, 9 months ago to random

Awake.

Slept pretty well. Remember having a long dream overnight, in which I wasn't present, it was like I watched a movie, that had 2 young autistic men falling in love with each other and building to a climax where finally one of the young men asked the other one for a date.

Now it's time to get my brain starting to function. Let's start with decaf tea and a banana.

Natalie, 9 months ago to random

I'm very into dillydallycore and thankful that it is getting a lot of attention.

IzabelaKaramia, 9 months ago to random

Awake.

Slept really well, that I slept deeply and rather peacefully. Still won't be surprised if I nap late morning or early afternoon.

I definitely will watch Spirited Away again today and likely again tomorrow. There is so much imagery in the movie.

I want to make today a really slow day. By that I mean keeping my own pacing slow and deliberate. I've been getting better at that this summer, but it's an easier mindset to maintain when it's not a workday. So let's be slow today.

cat_news, 9 months ago to Cats

Figgy (BC, Canada) is a nice Jewish mama’s boy who loves a party, especially after taking a nice, big, stinky poop. Once he’s finished, let the celebration begin! He races up and down the hallway in his tuxedo, back and forth, over and over again, sounding literally like a herd of buffalo. You were sleeping? It’s 3 a.m.? Too bad – Figgy pooped!

#cats #cat #CatsOfMastodon #CatNews #Caturday

https://www.cat-news.news/

stevelieber, 9 months ago to random

When I talk to comic book artists I always emphasize the importance of clearly separating their planes of depth. This rule is only for comics and does not apply to Turkish photographer Sami Uçan.

itsOasus, 9 months ago to random

hahaha yeaaaaaaaaa....

IzabelaKaramia, 9 months ago to animals

Awake

but it's a tough wakeup this morning.

I didn't toot this photo of Ginza last evening, but here it is now this morning. I was sitting cross legged on sidewalk and she was with her belly flat on the sidewalk. We were happily hanging out together. #CatsOfMastodon

mynameistillian, 9 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to KindActions

is anybody willing to house my friend and his mother anywhere around Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, or anywhere inside Wisconsin??

he is HIGHLY LIKELY to end up homeless and I am getting desperate

he is a disabled queer person and because of that he can't work

please

someone help

EDIT: WE CANNOT AFFORD HIM TO STAY AT THE MOTEL ANYMORE. WE NEED IMMEDIATE HELP TO FIND HIM STABLE HOUSING IN 2 WEEKS. HIS LIFE IS AT STAKE. WE NEED TO ACT AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.

#mutualaid #wisconsin #help

Sheril, 9 months ago to nature

Tardigrades have survived every mass extinction on Earth since they evolved about a 1/2 billion years ago.There are ~1,300 known species.

And millions of years from now, they won’t even notice we’re gone.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tardigrades-turn-out-not-be-dna-thieves-180964236/ #nature Image: Eye of Science/Science Photo Library

littlemonsters, 9 months ago to animals

I hear it's #InternationalGingerCatDay, so please admire Alfred, a most excellent and magnificent ginger cat.
#FediCats #CatsOfMastodon

Alfred, a big orange cat, in loaf mode on his window bed. He is alert, focusing on something off screen to the right, ears perked up. He is very fluffy and handsome
Alfred, in the round grey cat bed. He is facing and looking at the camera, his two front paws sticking out. He looks severe and regal, with a green sheet in front of him bringing out his beautiful green eyes
Alfred sitting on my closed laptop, next to the TV. He is looking with curiosity to the left. From this angle you can see his white chin and very fluffy ears

des, 9 months ago to random

okay I have my second planned parenthood appointment tomorrow so I can continue getting my hrt! most of what I saved up last time was used on groceries and shit. sigh help this indigenous trans woman get $160 by donating or boosting this!

cash app: $desbandit161

TheBird, 9 months ago to trustandsafety

This post is going to be about the loss of cultural knowledge/memory about moderation because of the corporations growing enshittification of the Internet and attempts to control and throttle it. I'm going to briefly reference with no names a fediverse meltdown related to modding, and then I'll dig into my own experience with modding.

I'm a researcher, so I'm the one on mod teams that often digs deeply to find resources, knowledge, tips, etc. by other marginalized people on how to best do things or hands-on approaches that worked or didn't work. However, having said this, the big issue I've found is a growing loss in our knowledge and ability to pass on knowledge.

So let's talk about it.

I read through a long thread recently about a recent fediverse meltdown between admins/mods and a user, and do people not realize time stamps are a thing?

The time stamps help unveil the truth. The incident also revealed how people in positions of power may go to great lengths to avoid holding themselves accountable. It also showed yet again the problem of gaps in our moderation knowledge and transmission of said knowledge.

In many ways, corporate media has broken the flow of cultural knowledge of how to moderate safer spaces.

Note I safe "safer" for a reason. Creating a truly "safe" space is very difficult if not near impossible in our current society. However, we can work in solidarity to create safer spaces for our most vulnerable people.

To create a safer space, we often must make hard decisions, but we also need to approach it from a learning standpoint, a willingness to own our actions, take responsibility for mistakes, document to aid in learning from the mistakes, engage in repair, and do better. We also need to learn from our more vulnerable members, and listen to their needs and find ways to incorporate a safer approach for them. This isn't easy to do for sure.

There's a really great book that digs into ways to build up a safer space. Yes, it's more about the punk scene, but it has some decent tips that can aid in moderating spaces. "Making Spaces Safer" by Shawna Potter.

Honestly, I think mods ought to read the book and have hard discussions about its topics.

Moderation is difficult. I know because I was a mod for Legendfire (before we had to close it in 2017, though we reopened it in 2021) for eight years. I'm going to talk about this experience a bit to illustrate the difficulty in having a group of mods and the gap of cultural memory that hindered our efforts.

In the old version of the site, we had a mod for each sub forum (sometimes a mod would handle two subforums rather than just one, depending on the frequency of use of that subforum.) I handled the highly trafficked Shredder forum -- called that for the thorough word-by-word, line-by-line critiques that are done there -- and the resources forum (highly read but people didn't post as often there).

One of the big issues I found was some of us didn't have a good handle on what moderation meant. I'm a researcher, so I researched what I could on moderation to make sure I could do the role well. I found a lot of good advice on various parts of the web that are now lost to us today - I was searching for stuff in the late 2000s. (So many lost livejournal blogs, MySpace accounts, Facebook groups, Twitter accounts, even fediverse accounts from servers that died). I also did a lot of the documentation and compiling these resources.

So at the time I was a mod at Legendfire, I was able to access some of that cultural memory for moderation, many of it written by marginalized people on how to craft Safer spaces.

One of our big issues was privileged people failing to understand the needs of marginalized people in building up a safer space. Despite all the research I did, sometimes privileged people fail to listen to us, who are more marginalized.

Why? Part of that is society socializing us to not trust marginalized people's stories and knowledge, and some people don't realize they are subconsciously doing that. They double-down in the harm. Although they can be ousted from a moderator role, the damage done while they were in that role has a lasting impact, which can take a long time to repair.

Knowing how to engage in repair is not easy either, but it's absolutely required for moderation of communities. We will mess up as human beings as no one is perfect, but we MUST own our mistakes, we must be willing to listen and learn, and we must then do better. That's part of moderation too.

The knowledge of how to handle such situations, by the time this issue escalated in 2017, had started to vanish from the web. It became harder to track down and share, and thus, at the time, we were floundering on how to handle a growing schism on how to handle all of this.

However, at this same time, we were getting swamped with a lot of problematic users, and there was a growing burn out amongst all of us mods and admin. Bad faith actors started to try to take advantage.

I, being the researcher, tried to find resources on identifying and stopping bad faith actors. I also sought resources on burn out, on recovering from burn out and maybe even preventing burn out. That's when I discovered just how bad the growing gap in cultural knowledge was becoming.

Many of the reputable sites that had great advice written by marginalized people? Were missing, broken, or lost. Some of their writings had gone to published books instead, but it would take me a few more years (which wasn't in time to save the old LF) to find those.

At the time, I also was escaping abuse, and my friend had her own struggles. I had just left as a mod due to my health, so I witnessed the end. It was traumatic for the community as a whole. Some of us migrated to Discord and kept in touch, and one day we would rebuild it (in 2021).

We learned a lot from those mistakes and from the problems we faced. We kept receipts and still have most of those documents to help guide the new version, so we could pass on our personal knowledge to the new mods. Modding is improved, but as it always will be, it's a work in progress as we learn, rebuild, try out things, learn from mistakes, and do better.

However, even as we built up a new version of the forum, we realized there was gaps in the cultural knowledge of moderation and the tips folks shared online about it.

Some blogs that had excellent tips were lost or missing. Others existed in small snippets in the Internet Archive. Those that existed on corporate media were lost forever. Some ended up locked up in inaccessible formats, particularly for us disabled users/mods.

This gap made the rebuilding of the site a trifle difficult. Our personal history and documentation helped us rebuild somewhat, but the growing lack of knowledge concerning building up safer spaces was mostly due to the corporate world's enshittification of the web and it's harmful targeting of marginalized voices. Plus, some of the information became inaccessible (sites like Reddit are highly inaccessible spaces to begin with, and when they start blocking APIs, that shuts down access for those of us with disabilities, who already struggle to access information.)

I retell this story to show just how difficult it can be to locate accessible information, to find that cultural memory, and to lean on it in the process of rebuilding a safer space.

Some of the knowledge has reappeared in the form of published books or archived sites (like Potter's book above or in some of the excellent books by writers in the Black Lives Matter movement and in Sins Invalid Disability Justice movements). But other parts of this knowledge, especially some of the hands-on knowledge was effectively lost to the corporation's growing destruction of the web that was.

Now we're being flooded by misinformation and bullshit from the terrible LLMs/AI craze that pumps out randomized crap that makes research even harder. This enshittification also disrupts the passing on of cultural memory/knowledge.

This loss of cultural memory of forum modding holds a heavy toll on folks, especially those somewhat new to this. For those coming from corporate sites that handled the "modding" by outsourcing, they may have little knowledge on best practices, especially for building up safer spaces. Then there's the issue of those that did modding in "groups" on the corporate social media, who may not realize all the behind-the-scenes modding that the corporate site did that bolstered (or hindered) their own. So often I see folks overwhelmed by how much there is to modding when you are building from scratch.

We struggle to share that cultural memory/knowledge and we struggle to keep what we still have alive to pass on to others who may need it.

I don't have a solution to this. I'm only identifying that this is a problem.

I also recognize that some people also see this problem and are trying to gather information to build up various tools to assist. But there's only so much software tools one can build.

In the end, what works for moderation, prior mistakes and what was learned from those, how to do things better -- that cultural knowledge cannot be built by software. It is built by people.

We must build it together, but that requires listening, being honest, taking accountability, working in collaboration, doing repair when needed, building in support networks to help avoid burnout because modding can be painfully hard, and learning and seeking understanding.

It also means if the evidence shows your actions are fucked up? (Time stamps, people, time stamps)

Then don't go back to edit shit to paint yourself the "good one." Own your actions. Take accountability.

Learn from the mistakes.

Do better.

Collate the knowledge learned into the archive, so we don't lose the cultural memory again.

Anyway, I rambled enough. Hopefully that made sense. Thanks for reading!

#moderation #ThoughtsOnModeration
#BirdRambles

Edited for spelling/grammar issues and to delete a three sentences that got repeated later on almost verbatim.

ReimanSaara, 9 months ago to random Finnish

The narrative about autistic people as cold, uncaring, emotionless half-humans incapable of feeling empathy is just another hateful myth.

Says science.

I wonder when mainstream society gets the memo.

"We investigated social discounting in autism and found that autistic adults were more generous than neurotypical participants, which was driven by greater generosity to socially distant others. Crucially, we also investigated framing effects during prosocial decision-making. Autistic participants were less susceptible to whether decisions were framed as causing monetary gains, compared to preventing monetary losses, for the potential recipient. Our results support the view of ‘enhanced rationality’ in autism as participants’ prosocial decisions were less influenced by potential biasing information, such as the closeness of the recipient or how choices were framed. Therefore, the differences seen in autism, as well as posing certain challenges, can also have prosocial consequences."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13623613231190674

thadd, 9 months ago to Cats

Are you in northern California and looking for a new friend? We've been fostering kittens rescued from a nearby colony and have 4 more that need homes (we've rehomed 10 so far this summer). All of them make wonderful pets and are used to kids, dogs, and other cats.

The rescues are all full and we don't have a way to find homes for these without just surrendering them to the SPCA. We've tapped our network of friends and family and hope Mastodon can help.

1/3

#Cats #CatsOfMastodon

10 week old gray tabby kitten crouched in a cat bed looking at camera
Two kittens cuddling in a basket in a crate. One is a gray tabby, the other is white and gray. Both are looking at the camera.
Two 4-week-old tabby kittens sitting on a couch looking at the camera. One of them has kitten formula smeared on its mouth and whiskers.

exocomics, 9 months ago to random

gimme gimme

Fury, 9 months ago to random

I’ve been recovering from burnout. It’s not enough to rest. Instead, I found it therapeutic to do things slowly. The last few days I have been mindfully cooking, reading slowly, reordering my pantry and sorted through my kitchen drawer. Regardless of the outcome, the act of doing these things has helped immensely. I think I will change my #BurnoutRecovery hashtag to #SlowLiving from now on.

IzabelaKaramia, 9 months ago to random

Awake.

Slept pretty good, about 9 hours, the wakeup interval time was only about 45 minutes.

Brain is a dark nebula, cold and distant.

IzabelaKaramia, 9 months ago to random

Awake.

So yeah I didn't sleep til 530 AM like I had hoped, but otoh I will say that while I was asleep, it felt like the melatonin helped me get down real deep and I remember there had been some long dream going before I woke up.

Perhaps tonight I will again take melatonin before bed, but also prepare a half-tablet and a glass of water so if I wake up and don't fall back asleep in 20 minutes, I take the half-tablet and see if that can get me back asleep.

qirenni, 9 months ago to random

Everything went to hell while I was hospitalized and I owe $350+ in bills with no funds or income. I can’t work (disability) and state assistance is limited while I live here. Crowdfunding is my only option. If you can spare it, please can you help me? https://cash.app/$qirenni

IzabelaKaramia, 9 months ago to random

Awake

A pretty good night's sleep, probably 9.5 hours of time asleep. The wakeup was kind of wrenching and I was highly tempted to shut the alarm and go back to sleep.

But Ginza. I can take a nap later if I need more sleep.

Plan to buy melatonin when I run errands today and use that this evening to try to help me get 2 good nights' sleep in a row.

Working on decaf tea and a banana to try to get brain engine sputtering to life

Brain is well smashed potatoes cold in fridge

stavvers, 1 year ago to random

IT'S TUMBLR THREAD TIME! I'll be posting about 5-10 screencaps a day from the very best of tumblr. The mob wants it. The mob will get it.