meadowlark @meadowlark@computerfairi.es

We all know the concern trolls who are "raising some concerns" when talking about protections for marginalized folks, and who already know that they're not problems, they're just trying to sow discord.

But another, more insidious form of this are the people - usually centrists or liberals - who legitimately believe that they are raising legitimate concerns, and are doing so in a harmful manner.

There's an obvious form of privilege here; those raising the concerns are typically not part of the affected group, and so unlike the affected group, they can afford to treat it like some hypothetical thought experiment, whereas the affected marginalized folks are living the consequences right here and now.

But that's not what I want to talk about. Because it goes much deeper than that.

For example, these "concerns" are usually the absolute most obvious things that you could think of - and somehow, the concern-raisers believe that they are specially qualified to have such a novel insight.

They don't stop to consider that maybe this concern was already raised hundreds of times before, and relitigated over and over again, and found to not be (sufficiently) relevant. They don't really take the time to research it - instead just assuming that they're the first.

That's privilege.

This usually combines with another problematic factor; when the concerns are raised, a response like "yeah we've thought of that" isn't considered enough. Instead, the concern-raiser will not stop pushing until *they, personally* are satisfied that it's addressed.

They are not merely raising a concern to help; they are considering themselves to be the arbiter of truth, as if their approval is required to go ahead with the plan. They are assuming authority.

That's privilege.

Those in the best position to understand the circumstances and needs of marginalized folks, are those marginalized folks themselves. Approval by the privileged is not required.

Listen to marginalized people. Yes, even if you have "concerns".

Hey, if you're in Washington state, please call Senator Cantwell's office. According to this article (paywall-free link), Cantwell is one of the people pushing hardest for KOSA, which Republicans have admitted will be used to drive LGBTQIA+ content off the internet. (Everyone else, also please call your Senators!)

https://wapo.st/44OTpNZ

The engineers who designed the #Voyager probes half a century ago even thought of the possibility that a wrong sequence of commands may point the antenna dish away from earth (like someone did a couple of days ago).

And they implemented a self-adjusting mechanism that a few times a year scans the positions of a few known stars to infer the position of the earth, and point back the antenna in the right direction.

50 years later, these wonderful machines are still working, tens of billions of km away from earth, with only 69 KB of RAM, and even a wrong sequence of commands won't put them out of use, while nowadays 4 GB of RAM aren't even enough to start VsCode or IntelliJ.

The more I understand how they were designed, the more I feel like an early Medieval engineer looking at the Pantheon or other marvels or Roman architecture. Some amazing skills, knowledge and attention to details have been lost from that generation to ours.

Identifiably ai-generated art is the new stock photo of a customer representative wearing a headset for immediately thinking a business website is shady

"Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly, and focused on happier things than 'politics'. They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren't nice people? Resisters." — Naomi Shulman

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