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CHARACTERISTICS - WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE

“While white supremacy culture affects us all, harms us all, and is toxic to us all, it does not affect, harm, and violate us in the same way. White supremacy targets and violates BIPOC people and communities with the intent to destroy them directly; white supremacy targets and violates white people with a persistent invitation to collude that will inevitably destroy their humanity.”

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Support our work

Speaking of The 19th:

The 19th is a non-profit newsroom that reports at the intersection of gender, politics, and policy. We were one of the only newsrooms to call this election correctly - because we listened to women and people of color.

Some pieces we’ve published include a dashboard exploring abortion legislation in the post-Roe world, coverage of nursing shortages, and an exploration of whether women will qualify for the draft.

We need your help. This Giving Tuesday, please consider donating to support our inclusive newsroom and help us keep reporting. Even a little bit helps. Thank you.

By the way, how cool is this preview image? Rena Li is a genius.

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Doing management training today

I’m doing management training today with all the other managers at The 19th. We're spending a lot of time considering how to be an anti-racist leader, which I'm finding tremendously valuable. I’m very glad to be doing this, and I’m glad for techniques and tactics to actively work towards equity.

I will never work for an organization whose leaders are not invested in DEI or consider it to be a hindrance. It says so much about what they care about and who will benefit from their work. I won’t link to them here, but there have been lots of examples lately of leaders complaining about movements for equality. I find it mind-blowing: the reddest of red flags.

I’m really glad to be working here. Equity should be distributed, not hoarded. And I’m grateful to listen and learn how to do this more effectively.

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1 in 4 hiring managers say they are less likely to move forward with Jewish applicants

“26% of hiring managers say they are less likely to move forward with Jewish applicants; the top reason for negative bias is belief Jews have too much power and control […] Respondents also wrote in a number of derogatory comments regarding how they identify an individual as Jewish. These write-in responses included: “voice,” “mannerisms,” and “they are very frugal.”” Horrifying.

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Thinking about taking your computer to the repair shop? Be very afraid

“Researchers at University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, recovered logs from laptops after receiving overnight repairs from 12 commercial shops. The logs showed that technicians from six of the locations had accessed personal data and that two of those shops also copied data onto a personal device. Devices belonging to females were more likely to be snooped on, and that snooping tended to seek more sensitive data, including both sexually revealing and non-sexual pictures, documents, and financial information.”

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Post, the latest Twitter alternative, is betting big on micropayments for news

“Consumers have changed their behavior. They want to consume their news in their feed. And so, obviously, consumption from a feed does not work with subscription. And social media networks, with their advertising-based model, promote the worst in us because it works. I mean, the algorithms are don’t really care. They just, you know, try to achieve the engagement at any cost, right?” OK, but open, non-proprietary feed technology is available and widely used …

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With no child tax credit and inflation on the rise, families are slipping back into poverty

“U.S. households are having to pay between $300 to $400 more each month compared to last year because of inflation. Food insecurity is rising once again. Now, advocates are pointing to a growing body of work that shows how low-income and marginalized families relied on the program to survive.”

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News Outlets Urge U.S. to Drop Charges Against Julian Assange

“In a joint open letter, The Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País said the prosecution of Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act “sets a dangerous precedent” that threatened to undermine the First Amendment and the freedom of the press. “Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists,” the letter said. “If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.””

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PSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate The Internet

“If posts in a social media app do not have URLs that can be linked to and viewed in an unauthenticated browser, or if there is no way to make a new post from a browser, then that program is not a part of the World Wide Web in any meaningful way. Consign that app to oblivion.”

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I find it very emotionally hard when my baby is sad. I wish I could fix it for him. Poor little guy.

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Finding Affordable Child Care Has Never Been Harder

“America’s child-care infrastructure was broken before the pandemic, but the past few years have pushed it to the brink. Now, as more employers expect workers back in the office, a perfect storm of day-care closures, staffing shortages, and inflation have made finding affordable child care harder than ever.”

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Bye, Twitter

“Speaking as a random was-successful-on-Twitter person, I can see no good arguments for redirecting my voice into anyone else’s for-profit venture-funded algorithm-driven engagement-maximizing wet dream.”

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Defederation and governance processes

“To “keep things the way they are” is always an option, never the default. Framing this option as a default position introduces a significant conservative bias — listing it as an option removes this bias and keeps a collective evolutionary.” Some great thoughts on collective decision-making that pertain directly to open source.

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"Feedback is a gift but not a demand for change," I tell my infant son, thinking I'm being very funny.

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Hip! Hip! Phooey!

I had no idea: “The phrase [hip hip hooray] does have anti-Semitic roots. Rioters in Europe sometimes shouted "Hep! Hep!" while on prowl for Jews, and mob harassment of Jews in Hamburg, Frankfurt, and other German cities in 1819 became known as the "Hep! Hep!" riots. Hitler's storm troopers adopted this jeer.”

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Twitter Blesses Extremists With Paid 'Blue Checks'

“Hatewatch’s investigation of extremists’ use of Twitter Blue, based in part on a third-party public list of paid blue-check accounts, found that white nationalists, anti-LGBTQ extremists and other far-right individuals and groups now sport what was once a symbol of credibility on the platform.”

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How to Weave the Artisan Web

“Now, why should we bring back that artisan, hand-crafted Web? Oh, I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a site that’s not run by an amoral billionaire chaos engine, or algorithmically designed to keep you doomscrolling in a state of fear and anger, or is essentially spyware for governments and/or corporations?”

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I really hate the pushback against “woke”. Modern civil rights movements have felt like real progress that has been a long time coming. The backlash is disappointing and regressive. We do live in a fundamentally unequal society; it’s past time we did something to change it.

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The cost of your cat pictures

“Anyone who thinks that social media sites are “public spaces” is welcome to propose that Congress gives Facebook $30,000,000,000 a year to keep up that infrastructure. Otherwise, no, it’s not. That’s $30,000,000,000 a year in private money being used to buy private property.”

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ConsenSys Under Fire for Collecting MetaMask Users’ Wallet and IP Addresses

““When you use Infura as your default RPC provider in MetaMask, Infura will collect your IP address and your Ethereum wallet address when you send a transaction,” Consensys said.”

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Thankful

My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is the admittedly slightly hokey tradition of going around the table and saying what you’re thankful for. There’s a lot to be skeptical about - this is a holiday that celebrates colonization and the eradication of entire nations - but this one act, bringing gratitude front and center, is good.

As I write this, I want to acknowledge that my baby and I have directly benefited from the occupation of Ohlone, Wampanoag, Lenape, and Latgawa lands - and indirectly for the occupation of North America as a whole.

I have a lot to be thankful about.

This year, I’m thankful for my baby: his sly grins and the sense of humor I can already see develop give me life. He is responsible for my permanent state of absolute sleep deprivation, but also, far more importantly, for so much fun and purpose.

I’m thankful for my family and friends: my allies.

I’m thankful for all the wonderful people in my life who embody kindness, empathy, wisdom, mentorship, and knowledge.

I’m thankful that I live in a context of peace and democracy - however imperfect it might be, I did not wake up in fear of my life this morning, unlike so many other people today.

I’m thankful for my job: it’s a big deal to have found a place to do meaningful work that also happens to be full of empathetic, lovely people who genuinely care about the world and about each other. I’m thankful that it gives me space to be a three-dimensional human.

I’m thankful for the internet, and for the web. The real web, that is: the one that operates as a commons with no central ownership and is a bedrock for us all to build on, for all the definitions of building.

I’m thankful for everyone who is working towards a kinder, more equal world, even when so much is aligned around individualism over community, profit over equity, and exclusivity over inclusion. It’s often rough, thankless work, but it makes the world so much better - and it gives me hope that the world my baby grows up to inhabit might not be terrible after all.

I’m thankful to have health. I’m thankful for healthcare: for vaccines, for the miracle of transplantation, for genetic therapies, for mental health support, for ICUs and children’s ERs. I’m thankful for all the scientific research and testing that makes all of this possible.

I’m thankful you’re here. I’m thankful we’re all here, together, not just surviving but building something better.

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Someone keeps trying to sign up to my newsletter with my own email address. That's not how it works! But also, it's got me worried that there's a weird bug somewhere on my website. Let me know if you're trying to subscribe and it's not working.

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Let’s just say I’ll be very excited when my baby can sleep through the night.

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They sell boy pacifiers and girl pacifiers. Our baby is biologically male, and - this will shock you!! - sucks on girl pacifiers. The whole thing is ridiculous; even more ridiculously, some people would actually care about this.

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The best TV show ever made is 59 years old today. Happy birthday, Doctor Who.

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