Had Anita Hill been a White woman, Clarence Thomas never would’ve made it to the SCOTUS.
Had Obama been a White man, the Affordable Care Act would’ve been a fait accompli instead of the years-long, knock-down, drag-out affair that racist GOP sociopaths — excuse the redundancy — made of the bill’s path to approval.
Had Trump been a Black man, given his history as a career criminal, he’d have been impeached, removed from office, arrested, tried, and imprisoned years ago. #ClarenceThomas#racism
The Republican Party has no choice but to cheat. They can no longer win elections. The count of decent voters in the U.S. outnumbers the the lowlifes. Were it not for the bullshit Electoral College and gerrymandering, the party would’ve met its demise decades ago. It’s official: the GOP is a party of moral decay and human rot. #GOP#MAGA#racism#bigotry#misogyny#LGBTQIAphobia#nativism#xenophobia#WhiteNationalism
@Erik
I'm from a Scandinavian country, with of our own issues of course, but this is for us beyond comprehensible.
Very confusing to observe the Free country of USA, then read the history, and especially this.
When looking at documentaries about the civil right issues "over there", it almost feels like a third world country in some way.
I apologize if I insult some of my very dear friends from USA.
This is something we never understood in Europe, despite all our wars.
America’s worst citizens, MAGA Republicans, have absolutely no problem voting for a candidate to become POTUS while knowing full well that the candidate’s sole desire is to — ONCE AGAIN— ATTEMPT TO OVERTHROW U.S. DEMOCRACY in order to install himself as a dictator.
This is about race and power. #WhiteNationalism#DonaldTrump#MAGA#racism#election2024#January6
The Confederacy lost the Civil War; Hitler lost World War II; Trump lost Election 2020. Racism and bigotry continue to be proven losers.
“MAGA” types, the ugliest Americans, can’t stand history, because it echoes truths that they don’t like to hear, and refuse to accept. My message to them:
You don’t own everything.
You don’t get to control everything, or anyone — with, perhaps, the exception of any minor children you may parent;
And
YOU ARE NOT SUPERIOR TO ANYONE. #MAGA#GOP#racism#bigotry
Despite its sensationalist pulpy title and #ColdWar premise, Jack Arnold's adaptation of the #RichardMatheson novel is an existentialist treatise.
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) plays with the understanding of what it means to be acknowledged as a human, and one's place in the world. The story is told through the eyes of the titular Shrinking Man – Scott Carey – who after being exposed to strange fog, finds himself increasingly lost in this world.
“[…] in the ballroom circuit, it is so obvious that if you have captured the great white way of living, or looking, or dressing, or speaking - you is a marvel.” –Pepper LaBeija
Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990) is probably best known for its fabulous #ballroom and #vogue-ㅤing scenes but in its heart, it tells the story of #family, of people who found their new ménage where they can live and love without fear and prejudice. While you may expect a fierce #documentary about #TransRights, or maybe merely a glamorous parade, you will be confronted with the flagrant #racism that made the #BallroomScene so essential for the Black and #Latinx#LGBT+ (comm)unity who founded it. And the tragedy of its demise in the name of pop culture even more heartbreaking.
I'm a researcher working on political violence, its effects, and its discursive and cultural legitimation and delegitimation. So far, I've especially focused on social media discourses about state violence from #Colombia and #Turkey. Specific topics that I've worked on include #dehumanization, #racism, #neoliberalism, #authoritarianism, and anti-intellectualism. I also write columns about #Kurdish and Latin American politics, and I have a blog on the problems of academia.
🆕 blog! “A practical example of the social construct of race”
I've been reading lots of books about race, justice, and history. One of the things which confused me when I started this journey was the notion that race is a construct. But then I started reading about how Blumenbach literally invented the concept of distinct human races. And about how the discredited "S…
Part of what makes police brutality and racism so terrible is that, unlike other risks, it can't be escaped.
I can choose a safe car to guard against crashes. I can exercise for heart health.
But there is nothing I can do to guard against racist, violent cops. Even being an attorney who is wearing a suit doesn't help, as I've been racially profiled on my way to court, and physically grabbed by courthouse security on multiple occasions.
Unveröffentlichte Studie: 12.000 Verdachtsfälle unrechtmäßige Polizeigewalt pro Jahr
"Unrechtmäßige Polizeigewalt kommt in Deutschland deutlich häufiger vor als bisher bekannt.
Strafrechtlich geahndet werden sie nur selten. Weniger als zwei Prozent der Fälle kommen vor Gericht, weniger als 1 Prozent enden mit einer Verurteilung, so Singelnstein. Oft stehe das Wort der Bürger gegen das der Beamten."
I'm overdue for an #introduction, especially with all you new followers…so here goes.
I'm a software engineer with a degree in Anthropology. I highly recommend the combo.
Most recently I was tech lead for Scaled Human Review at Meta. I worked in the Integrity Foundation (what other companies call "Trust and Safety") on Better Engineering initiatives and #Metaverse integration, with the teams that build human review software for the 30-40K external reviewers. I'd sworn I’d never work at Facebook, but I decided to see if I could make a difference. I couldn’t. And it wasn't a good fit for either of us. But I learned a lot about how the sausages are made and why they have such a hard time with #contentmoderation.
I've been on #socialmedia for four decades (seriously, I saw someone catfished in chat in 1978—this stuff isn't new), and virtually everyone I know I met online somewhere—many I've still never met in person. Needless to say, that's made me pretty passionate about making online communities safe for everyone, and especially marginalized groups.
I'm now a freelance #consultant, working on my own projects (I'll write more on that later), and with my wife's #consulting company (see below). I'm planning to do a lot more writing about #society and #technology (as well some #SFF), and to travel more.
I tend to write long posts (like this one). They may get shorter once my blog is back up. I don't stick to one topic, but I'll try to tag them so you can filter. I post about tech stuff (recent, as well as old geeky #Unix stuff), #social issues, #LGBTQ issues (especially the T), pretty #photos, and random personal anecdotes. When I boost, it's because I think it's something that might be interesting to someone, or some group, that follows me. Those tend to include all the above topics, plus SF&F-related things, and cool science stuff.
I'm #pan, #poly, #nonbinary (or #genderqueer, if you prefer). I prefer "they" for pronouns, but "he" is fine. I spent most of my life thinking I really was a straight cis man who just happened to be a bit quirky and a passionate and tearful ally, so I'm not too picky about how you refer to me. I'm also more than happy to answer any questions about all that, public or private.
I grew up mostly in #Maine and then lived in Massachusetts for a long time, but I now live on sovereign #Swinomish land in #WashingtonState (US), on the edge of the San Juan islands. Despite my first name (that's a story) and current location, I'm not Native American, although I focus a lot on Native American rights. My parents were both active in that area, and that was my introduction to civil rights in general.
I've been a #software engineer at various levels (from programmer to CTO to company founder) for 40+ years. I learned BASIC in high school, taught myself Pascal, FORTRAN and PL/1 in college, learned C as an intern at Bell Labs (Murray Hill, one floor up from the Unix crew), and went on from there. In college, I majored in #Anthropology with a concentration in #Psychology, and that's influenced the way I look at software ever since. Software is designed for people. Software systems build communities (whether intended or not). Anyone who does that damn well better understand how people and #communities work.
I've worked for Bell Labs (psych stats), Sperry Research (window systems, UX design), Apollo/HP (programmable shell, windowing systems, Unix porting, UX design), Bright Ideas (cookbook, educational games), OSF (windowing standards), Alfalfa (multimedia email - SMTP and X.400 :)), Wildfire (phone-based voice assistant), Utopia/USWeb (web and security consulting), Saroca (small boats), Messagefire (anti- #spam software), MessageGate (corporate compliance software), Somewhere (software consulting), ZeeVee (web video aggregation, metadata scraping), TiVo (video content correlation, #metadata pipelines), and Meta. Plus a few others.
I've been with my wife, Dr. Mollie Pepper, for over a decade. She's a #sociologist with a focus on #refugee migration, #gender, and violence; the kind of work that gives you PTSD. She did her dissertation on women's roles in the (now extremely defunct) peace process in #Myanmar (aka #Burma). A year ago she was at a military base frantically processing thousands of Afghan refugees and managing translators. She has a consulting company that specializes in evaluating and designing refugee service and placement programs. You can find her at https://carlsonpepper.com/. Everything I know about #feminism, #intersectionality, #queer theory, #CRT, and #racism I either learned from her, or she gave me the theoretical underpinnings to understand them properly.
I have two grown daughters from my first marriage with Nassim Fotouhi; a kick-ass software engineer/engineering manager who came to the States just before the Iranian revolution.
Shadi Fotouhi is an artist (see my profile background photo, go look up the drug codes and compare them to the mermaids' behavior) turned software engineer; building dynamic room installations will do that to you. She worked in QA at a gaming company, and then at Jibo; a robotics startup. Now she's a senior software engineer at Wayfair--Kubernetes, release configuration, and all that fun stuff.
Shireen Hinckley is a documentarian, digital image technician, video editor, and co-founder of Somewhere Films (https://www.somewherefilms.com/shireen-hinckley); a womxn's filmmaking collective. She works for #Beyoncé at Parkwood Entertainment, where she's an editor and post-production supervisor for all of their video releases. She worked on "Black is King" and just about every video since then, whether it's for Instagram, Times Square, Tiffany's, the Oscars, or Chloe x Halle. No, I can't tell you when the Renaissance visual album will be out—but it will be amazing.
I'm incredibly honored to have those wonderful women in my life. I wouldn't be who I am without them.
A couple other things that may come up, especially in my photos. My mother is an artist who lives in Maine in a round house she designed, and the family built, when I was in high school. And I'm part owner of a #lighthouse on Cape Cod.
From white people, I’ve heard anything from “Racism isn’t really that bad anymore“ to “I didn’t do anything to them so why do I have to go out of my way to learn anything” to “I’m not racist so I have nothing to learn.”
If you’re white and you read this and it stings, you might be part of the problem.
Elizabeth Warren is raising concerns to Tesla Board Chairman Robyn Denholm that its Board of Directors failed to meet its legal responsibility to protect Tesla and uphold its fiduciary duty to shareholders from Elon Musk's actions after he bought Twitter.
A jury has ordered #Tesla to pay a Black former worker about $3.2 million in damages after he endured racist discrimination working there in 2015.
He was previously awarded a verdict of $137 million in 2021, including punitive damages, after a jury determined Diaz had suffered civil rights violations at Tesla, and that the electric vehicle maker failed to take all reasonable steps to end and prevent the racist harassment.
"Once you're willing to debate whether one group of people or another should be abused, then abusing and expelling people from society is something that is up for debate."
~@JuliusGoat
Really good thread about being "reasonable" when discussing intolerance from A. R. Moxon.
Re-posting this 🐤 thread from 2018 which, sadly, is still relevant:
#WomenInSTEM who talk about #harassment and sexual misconduct get a lot of antagonistic & unhelpful replies. @shrewshrew and I (a woman & a man in science) tried to categorize them. #9ReplyGuys
so it may be worth mentioning that ALL of the toxic reactions described in the #9ReplyGuys thread above are used by white people (including WW) against people of color all the time, especially against Black people who talk about racism. None of it is exclusive to gender harassment/discrimination.
Mastodon can be a safe place for everybody, or it can be a comfortable place for white people, but while #racism exists it can’t be both.
Elon Musk is threatening to end his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter, accusing the company of refusing to give him information about its spam bot accounts.