Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es

"[...]RAID array[...]"

"um, 'RAID array' is redundant"

"yeah, that's what the R is for"

Google is too big to fail, and yet they seem to be failing at basic things they used to do well (like search) while removing useful features (like cache) and adding a bunch of crap nobody needs or wants.

Want to know if a given domain name shows up anywhere in search? Well screw you, we're not going to tell you that anymore, but here's 1,400 completely useless and irrelevant results that could possibly have some info (but don't). When the search engine could have done what it's done for years, and admit that it doesn't know WTF you're talking about and say "no results found." Now it just makes shit up if it doesn't know the answer.

Hey cool! My search result shows the term I was looking for is present on 7 website. Shoot! None of them are online anymore. How about showing us your cached version of the site, you know the one that was used to create this search result? Oh wait, no, you can't see that anymore. Why? Here's Danny Sullivan's dismissive and mystifying explanation: "“It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading,” Sullivan wrote on X. “These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.”

Want software? Great, Google will serve a malicious ad on top that looks a lot like an organic search result but which is paid for by scammers and installs malware.

I was having to read some "neuroscience and education" stuff for a training I'm in at work and there was this part:

"The human brain reward system in the 21st century is an evolutionary mismatch. There is a discrepancy between the conditions that the reward system evolved to serve and those that it often faces in the 21st century. The reward system evolved over millions of years to motivate humans to work hard (invest time and energy) in maintaining their survival needs (e.g., nutrition, protection, reproduction, and the learning of new skills). However, this system is not designed for the abundance and immediacy of stimulation in the digital and instant reward era, which promotes the persistent release of dopamine that leads to an increased craving for reward (seeking behavior; wanting) and a decreased sense of pleasure and satisfaction (liking) "

and I see this kind of assertion a lot: we live in an era of instant gratification, carefully designed addictive apps that hijack your dopamine release system, &c.

but is it true?

No, really, is any of it true. Like do people get stuck infinitely scrolling because silicon valley has figured out how to hijack your brain or is that just still tech sector auto-fellatio because "we can override your volition but that's bad" is still asserting their own power and importance.

Because honestly it feels more like everyone is exhausted, bored, isolated, and largely broke so you're going to gravitate to the free thing that requires almost nil activation energy, which would be the opposite of "I need constant dopamine" and more like "I am a tiger in a tiny enclosure and I am so fucking bored and trapped that I'd do anything to be distracted from it"

Its interesting that it took psychotherapy a long time to come around to the understanding that a sizable chunk of what troubles us in our minds is the direct consequence of trauma.

I'm thinking of everything from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freudian_Coverup
to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Family_Systems_Model

Nowadays, it's considered a pretty reasonable belief that a significant amount of the suffering of otherwise healthy adults is the consequence of earlier trauma.

Shout out to Epistemic Injustice.

Female propensity for autoimmune diseases tied to X chromosome inactivation

A system that shuts down one of two X chromosomes is targeted by auto-antibodies.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/female-propensity-for-autoimmune-diseases-tied-to-x-chromosome-inactivation/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Okay, we've now updated to the latest glitch-soc version.

For anyone else; PLEASE update (or nag your admin to update) your mastodon version, this vulnerability is serious, it allows people to inject posts into others' feeds, impersonating them, and the advisory also says that they can "takeover" their account; https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/security/advisories/GHSA-3fjr-858r-92rw

Albuquerque, NM, has become the largest U.S. city to permanently make public transportation free for everyone. The city found that fares didn’t cover the administrative fees, so they actually save money by making public transportation free.

There is quite the list of "more common" diagnoses found in the trans populace than genpop:

Chronic Bowel Diseases:
Crohns Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, IBS.

Connective Tissue Disorders:
Rheumatoid Arthritis, Ehlers-Danlos, Marfan, Lupus etc

(the above means Raynauds as an issue with blood circulation is also common)

Hormone disorders:
PCS and AIS

Autism, ADHD/ADD.

Some you may be aware of prior to transition, some you may become aware of after in the "oh so thats why my body has always done that". Transition can heighten certain conditions, reduce symptoms or bring them into a new light through different changes to the body or the sudden onset of being in your body and no longer ethereally detached from it as a coping mechanism.

The list above is worthwhile looking through and briefly reading up on, partly because you're going to meet a lot of people in community who have these issues, but also because it may be you who does.

apparently the thing about YouTube "intentionally" slowing down browsers with adblockers was just a bug in two specific adblockers that affected multiple sites, per the ublock origin dev

https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1746696423385514331

I don't see this talked about like, ever.

So I'll talk about it.

If you realised you're trans but find yourself sometimes not really hating your assigned gender and being like "meh" to it?

1) That doesn't mean you've been cis all along;
2) It doesn't mean you just imagined your dysphoria;
3) You're not "pretending" anything or lying to anyone, least of all yourself.

It just means you're more tired than dysphoric. Your brain can't keep negative feelings at full steam all the time, which is good. It's not supposed to.

Do not measure your transness by how much you CURRENTLY need to transition. Dysphoria comes and goes. So does euphoria, for that matter.

I went through several cycles of "I am trans. Wait... I don't feel strongly about this anymore. Was that real? No, wait, ARGH, I'm trans. Wait..." and so on, before I started transitioning. Fooled me every single time.

I still experience this. I'm experiencing this today. I am currently wondering why this whole transition thing is such a big deal to me.

But guess what. I know I'm trans, I've been through this before. Doubts that something is true are not the same as knowing it is not.

You will have doubts whether you're trans years after you transition to your general satisfaction. You will. It just happens. You will still be almost certainly happy that you transitioned. That's what being trans means.

If you don't MIND your assigned gender at the moment, but still your actual gender sounds neat, you're still trans.

You're allowed to pause things and recalibrate, or focus on something else. Your transition should go at your pace.

But you haven't suddenly become cis. I promise you that you haven't. You still prefer to function as your real gender, don't you?

I've done this enough times that I need to say it. It's OK. It ebbs and flows. As long as you're not actually *satisfied* with your assigned gender, as long as you have ANY overall need to transition, you're not cis. You may be genderfluid or genderflux or bigender or agender or genderqueer or non-binary. Knock yourself out exploring those (I sure did). There's no penalty for concluding with "nah".

You may also very Very, Very Tired.

But none of those things mean "cis". I'm begging you, believe me.

EDIT: one good way to figure this out is - OK, so you don't jump for joy at the thought of transitioning. Now imagine yourself in your actual gender. Imagine it's all done and dealt with. Is your imagined self repulsive, do you want to *avoid* this? Does the idea of HAVING transitioned fill you with discomfort?

If not, then you're not cis. Cis people are *uncomfortable* with the idea of transitioning because they inhabit their AGAB. That's their entire deal.