Tilde Lowengrimm

I believe in the life-enhancing and capability-extending possibilities of technology as well as its potential to surveil, control, and misdirect. I work towards tools which are respectful, trustworthy, and safe enough to be used even by the most vulnerable among us, even when those with power oppose that freedom.

🌸 "High-end nondescript." 🌸 #Nonbinary 🏳️‍⚧️ #Trans 🌈 #Queer 🧠 #Disabled 🕍 #Jewish 🌹 #Socialist 🏴🚩 #AntiFascist 🏙 #Urbanist 🗄️ Guerilla #Archivist & #Pirate 🏴‍☠️⛵.

💻 [#Technologist 📣](https://infosec.town/tags/Technologist 📣 ) #Activist & ☔ [#ProductManager in 🤫](https://infosec.town/tags/ProductManager in 🤫 ) #Privacy, 🔒 #Security, &. 👁️ #TrustAndSafety. 🛡️

💼 Currently: [available for work](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tildelowengrimm ).

⌛ [Previously](https://tildelowengrimm.com/#experience ): ♦️ Red Queen Dynamics (npub1reg…2h79) 🌷 [Tall Poppy](https://tallpoppy.com ), 🦁 Brave (npub1t4g…ml9t), 🔥 [Committee to Protect Journalists](https://cpj.org ), 🧅 The Tor Project (npub1vwv…cqgs), 🦖 [@mozilla](https://mozilla.social/@mozilla ).

🎠 Volunteering &c: 🧭 [Explorers Guild](https://semperexplorandum.com/ ), 💬 Meta Encryption & Privacy Roundtable, 👁️‍🗨️ [Cornell Clinic to End Tech Abuse](https://ceta.tech.cornell.edu/ ), ⛵ [Call of the Sea](https://callofthesea.org/ ), ✨ [Techies for Reproductive Justice](https://techies4rj.org/ ), 💻 [Stanford Center for Internet & Society](https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/ ), 👟 Journey to the End of the Night, 🚑 *Redacted* EMS & Technical Rescue.

🏳️‍⚧️ Pronouns: [they/them/theirs](https://en.pronouns.page/@tilde.lowengrimm )
📢 Name Pronounciation: [/tɪldə loʊɛngrɪm/](http://ipa-reader.xyz/?text=t%C9%AAld%C9%99%20lo%CA%8A%C9%9Bngr%C9%AAm )
💬 Signal: [*tilde.69*](https://signal.me/#eu/AX-sOSEAjICN2vWJgHs8lVuZH3uY35vB0or_An5f9xUhDzAlyBdDZJGcD84WKiPT )
📮 Email 🤮: ~@lowengr.im*
🌐 Homepage 🏡: [tilde.lowengr.im](https://tilde.lowengr.im )
🖋 Writing/Blog 📑: ~/writing (npub1pt8…0x3h)
📚 Bookwyrm 🐉: Tilde Lowengrimm (npub1c42…eq4v)
📨 Newsletter (very low volume): [buttondown.email/tilde](https://buttondown.email/tilde )

Public Key

npub1ekc6wflqj20075cz2x38q8hkjw3etdks6075mmf8dcggkq2xa2dsrx6wll

NIP-05 Address

tilde_at_infosec.town@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsvmvd8ylsf98hl2vp9rgnsrmmf8gu4kmgd8l2da5nkuyytq9rw4xcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds4eukua

Publishing to

relay.snort.social

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1ekc6wflqj20075cz2x38q8hkjw3etdks6075mmf8dcggkq2xa2dsrx6wll

Show more details

Published at

2026-04-21T14:39:02Z

Kind type

0 Metadata

Event JSON

{ "id": "9163e8f38ae3fafe8c4394f69afcd8f57e4aacd2756e5b11637af35426fa366c", "pubkey": "cdb1a727e0929eff530251a2701ef693a395b6d0d3fd4ded276e108b0146ea9b", "created_at": 1776782342, "kind": 0, "tags": [ [ "t", "nonbinary" ], [ "t", "trans" ], [ "t", "queer" ], [ "t", "disabled" ], [ "t", "jewish" ], [ "t", "socialist" ], [ "t", "antifascist" ], [ "t", "urbanist" ], [ "t", "archivist" ], [ "t", "pirate" ], [ "t", "technologist 📣" ], [ "t", "activist" ], [ "t", "productmanager in 🤫" ], [ "t", "privacy" ], [ "t", "security" ], [ "t", "trustandsafety" ], [ "proxy", "https://infosec.town/users/9j1yglrfulxu0enn", "activitypub" ], [ "L", "pink.momostr" ], [ "l", "pink.momostr.activitypub:https://infosec.town/users/9j1yglrfulxu0enn", "pink.momostr" ], [ "-" ] ], "content": "{\"name\":\"Tilde Lowengrimm\",\"about\":\"I believe in the life-enhancing and capability-extending possibilities of technology as well as its potential to surveil, control, and misdirect. I work towards tools which are respectful, trustworthy, and safe enough to be used even by the most vulnerable among us, even when those with power oppose that freedom.\\n\\n🌸 \\\"High-end nondescript.\\\" 🌸 #Nonbinary 🏳️‍⚧️ #Trans 🌈 #Queer 🧠 #Disabled 🕍 #Jewish 🌹 #Socialist 🏴🚩 #AntiFascist 🏙 #Urbanist 🗄️ Guerilla #Archivist \u0026 #Pirate 🏴‍☠️⛵.\\n\\n💻 [#Technologist 📣](https://infosec.town/tags/Technologist 📣 ) #Activist \u0026 ☔ [#ProductManager in 🤫](https://infosec.town/tags/ProductManager in 🤫 ) #Privacy, 🔒 #Security, \u0026. 👁️ #TrustAndSafety. 🛡️\\n\\n💼 Currently: [available for work](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tildelowengrimm ).\\n\\n⌛ [Previously](https://tildelowengrimm.com/#experience ): ♦️ nostr:npub1regxvwgzwpxfxjymnkmg528hh9xn80adn5ue8l4m8g8rq39wz6zqdf2h79 🌷 [Tall Poppy](https://tallpoppy.com ), 🦁 nostr:npub1t4gtc4cyj3cznz83um3w2u45kwnyyg7w8kznvcqzhds2qldndwrq5lml9t, 🔥 [Committee to Protect Journalists](https://cpj.org ), 🧅 nostr:npub1vwvtra8vq0zy7wtd9mzhz2xfyzq4r5nae5tzfffhzfg76tz0ml3qsacqgs, 🦖 [@mozilla](https://mozilla.social/@mozilla ).\\n\\n🎠 Volunteering \u0026c: 🧭 [Explorers Guild](https://semperexplorandum.com/ ), 💬 Meta Encryption \u0026 Privacy Roundtable, 👁️‍🗨️ [Cornell Clinic to End Tech Abuse](https://ceta.tech.cornell.edu/ ), ⛵ [Call of the Sea](https://callofthesea.org/ ), ✨ [Techies for Reproductive Justice](https://techies4rj.org/ ), 💻 [Stanford Center for Internet \u0026 Society](https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/ ), 👟 Journey to the End of the Night, 🚑 *Redacted* EMS \u0026 Technical Rescue.\\n\\n🏳️‍⚧️ Pronouns: [they/them/theirs](https://en.pronouns.page/@tilde.lowengrimm )\\n📢 Name Pronounciation: [/tɪldə loʊɛngrɪm/](http://ipa-reader.xyz/?text=t%C9%AAld%C9%99%20lo%CA%8A%C9%9Bngr%C9%AAm )\\n💬 Signal: [*tilde.69*](https://signal.me/#eu/AX-sOSEAjICN2vWJgHs8lVuZH3uY35vB0or_An5f9xUhDzAlyBdDZJGcD84WKiPT )\\n📮 Email 🤮: ~@lowengr.im*\\n🌐 Homepage 🏡: [tilde.lowengr.im](https://tilde.lowengr.im )\\n🖋 Writing/Blog 📑: nostr:npub1pt8xf06zy55cmtwqzg37zhfltjtpxuqk9zwsj508gt9wn2sudpxqvz0x3h\\n📚 Bookwyrm 🐉: nostr:npub1c42al3t8ckkuat5dtvcresm590qgemdy3pefv688nf0hc5e8xsps26eq4v\\n📨 Newsletter (very low volume): [buttondown.email/tilde](https://buttondown.email/tilde )\\n\",\"website\":\"https://infosec.town/@tilde\",\"picture\":\"https://media.infosec.town/media/webpublic-464e5458-39fc-4165-a302-7e5ea979f316.webp\",\"banner\":\"https://media.infosec.town/media/1f9172d0-a336-462f-a716-3a1ce11d4a66.jpg\",\"nip05\":\"tilde_at_infosec.town@momostr.pink\"}", "sig": "94d9d723c169669136b60b0ad3ac3890cf1c46ac44b5f5820b35dfbee037e8ab2dba29a12c2dca7700602c79041e0f6b2ad53f815c9097554b646d1deff03b5e" }

Last Notes

2025-07-31 03:11:41 UTC

Next time someone tells me that they asked an LLM, I'm going to tell them that I received an obscure prophecy from a divine oracle which disagrees. I think that this will be more effective than just giving them facts — **which I also have** — because clearly that didn't work the first time.

2025-04-08 06:03:45 UTC

I don't think I'll ever get over the attribution of "elevated sense of justice" as a "symptom" of autism. My sibling in science. This is not what you discovered. What you discovered is that "willingness to cheat when nobody is watching" or (perhaps, even) "virtue signaling" are symptoms of allism.
Autistic people have the sense of justice that allistic people *claim* to follow. Autistic people are more likely to *actually behave ethically*, regardless of whether anyone is watching or there is a social reward for it. This is not a weird foible with autists! This is a wild ethical breach by allists! Willingness to compromise on your stated ethical values is not "normal" regardless of how common it may be. Thats's weird! And troubling!
That's something worth looking into when it comes to allistic people. Leave autistic people with our propensity to simply believe and act accordingly out of your doublethink.

2025-04-01 03:11:01 UTC

I don't "have a messy apartment", my immersive worldbuilding uses environmental storytelling via diegetic ephemera.

2025-01-22 22:22:23 UTC

I’ve been thinking lately (always a mistake) about all the [cultural works to which we don't have access](https://infosec.town/notes/9yq5evnupxu5kimp). Everything removed from streaming; everything locked behind DRM so that most libraries and archives won't have copies which can redundantly survive disruption. Sometimes I get real sad about the future readers and historians and others who just won't be able to find copies of the incredible things made during the current digital dark age.
As ever, I try to let this radicalize me rather than lead me into despair. I know that there are lots of horrors worth raging against, but this is one I feel well-positioned to work against. It's low-stakes enough that I won't feel self-loathing if I burn out or need to take a break. It's no secret that [I](https://bookwyrm.social/user/tilde) [like](https://infosec.town/notes/9va6bfhaztq44230) to [read](https://bookwyrm.social/user/tilde/goal/2025) and [organize](https://infosec.town/notes/9zxd4kwjkfcqehz3) [books](https://bookwyrm.social/user/tilde/books) so this is a topic close to my heart and one which can bring me joy and allow me to share it with those around me too. There is a fair bit of tech nerd stuff to it, enough that I have an opportunity to learn & practice new things, but not so much that I’m totally out of my depth. And there are plenty of [communities](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/) out there to help and share strategies.
But the big thing I see missing from my understanding and many of the conversations about shadow libraries and unauthorized archivism is the social and professional practice of *librarianship* rather than mechanical practice of data storage. I don't have space to go to library school, but I could definitely stand to read (and archive) introductory books on the topic, or take an online class. Friends who know: what are some of the better places to get started with an introduction to library & information science and archive science?
#libraries #librarian #archivist #archives #archivism #archivist #libraryScience #informationScience #archiveScience #culture #repositories #dataHoard #archiving #piracy #unauthorizedArchives #guerillaArchives #shadowLibraries #libraries #librarian #archivist #archives #archivism #archivist #libraryScience #informationScience #archiveScience #culture #repositories

2025-01-20 21:10:59 UTC

Why, the heck, does Google allow an ad to show a domain/URL that the advertiser *does not control*, while letting the ad actually link to another domain. What kind of twisted advertising process logic conspired to overrule the security review on this? https://agora.echelon.pl/objects/310d887d-e111-48a4-9331-bc9e6b8cdd3b
#note1ne6…65nk

2025-01-20 20:03:41 UTC

I know that the world is a vast weird place full of fresh and recurring horrors of all sorts. But I can bring myself immense joy and satisfaction every morning by carefully crafting a perfect cup of coffee and bringing my partner a cup of tea just how they like it.
Things can be tough, but taking care of yourself is a radical act of resistance. You cannot spend all your time running at redline. Living a life with joy and comfort and companionship is essential. It also makes you better at everything — but that's not why you should do it. Do it because you matter and your joy is important.

2025-01-19 03:23:47 UTC

The ideal of the nuclear family — of two parents raising their kids alone in their own home with a two car garage — that nonsense was invented less than a century ago. It's not a law of nature. It's not how people have always lived. It's an outlier among the ways that families have been organized.
And there's nothing wrong with it, if that's how you like things! The problem is that we've fundamentally reorganized a great deal of society around the concept, treating it as not just normal but as the only thing. Most housing is built with this assumed default. Healthcare is rationed this way.
It's an idea that's ossified and trapped us in this narrow mold. The same way that most every US city has been reorganized around the car so that anyone who doesn't drive is working with one hand behind our back. (Though cars are obviously much worse in many ways).

2025-01-19 02:53:28 UTC

- reply

Oh, sorry, I was just doing a little joke. The Lumon keyboards at the macro data refinement terminals don't have any keys for control or escape, because, well, you understand?

2025-01-19 00:59:05 UTC

- reply

You might miss control and escape.

2025-01-15 23:36:08 UTC

- reply

Who are you sending the message to and what are they going to do with it?

2025-01-15 20:12:36 UTC

- reply

I guess my question is what you're imagining Meshtastic doing in this sort of situation? Who would send what sort of message to whom and for what purpose?

2025-01-12 06:38:24 UTC

So cool when messages from one side of my house to the other have to traverse us-east-1 first. What an utterly bizarre world.

2024-12-22 04:16:08 UTC

I know that we don't have control over languague. But I really dislike the noun "learnings" instead of "lessons".

2024-12-11 01:04:10 UTC

Hello, I have attention deficit disorder and managed to do a whole round of laundry inside of six hours. I would like a medal, please.

2024-12-02 04:35:48 UTC

Hot take. LED status indicators on devices are often (though not always) difficult to read. Charging lights make it hard to keep a bedroom properly dark at night unless you carefully cut little foil squares and neatly tape them over the LED. But then you lose the usefulness of a charging indicator!
My solution: replace most LED interfaces with little epaper displays. No light pollution, and clearer UX. Displays can spell out what's going on in words, like "Charging (fast, 35W)" or "Battery 69% (3h35m left)". Some devices need to work well in low light, so their epaper can have a warm backlight, as a treat, when you push the button or flip the switch.

2024-11-10 07:09:12 UTC

- reply

Neoliberals: half 👏🏻 those 👏🏻 concentration 👏🏻 camp 👏🏻 guards 👏🏻 should 👏🏻 be 👏🏻 women!

2024-11-10 07:04:28 UTC

Some people say that a second Trump regime will be bad for society. And they're right that it'll destroy jobs and wreck the rule of law and tank the economy. But what you've got to understand is that there will be new, different jobs to replace the ones we've lost. Jobs like underground railroad waystation-keeper, resistance cell courier, and concentration camp guard.
Well, that last one already exists, but you can bet that ICE is going to need a heck of a lot more of them!

2024-11-03 17:39:43 UTC

I don't use anti-virus or anti-malware tools other than whatever's in my OS by default. Instead, I have a sticker of a hamsa on my laptop to ward off the evil eye and the text of an ancient amulet written over and over to an unused partition on my hard disk to protect against dark forces. And I'm still better off than anyone running Norton or whatever.

2024-11-02 07:20:42 UTC

If you're going to talk to a smart assistant out loud in front of other people, at least give your shortcuts names which sound like like trashy thrillers.
Tired: Hey Siri, turn out the lights.
Wired: Siri, activate the Hades contingency. Alexa, initiate project Dædalus. Okay Google, proceed to omega phase.
Start with a dramatic action verb like "engage", "commence", or "execute". Throw in a mythological figure which needn't have any actual relation to the action set. Then round it out with a nonsense word from an espionage drama, like "protocol", "sequence", "directive", or so on.

2024-11-01 04:34:02 UTC

I've heard a couple of times this week something to the effect of "Nazis aren't people.". I know that it's really appealing to dehumanize them because that makes it easier to fight back and resist. And because it is horrifying to imagine people acting this way.
But it's so much worse than that. Nazis *are* people. Every single heckin' one.
They aren't forces of nature or hivemind aliens or demons without free will. They are people who are actively choosing to keep doing Nazi stuff. They wake up in the morning and decide to harm other people because they hate them.
That's the scariest thing about Nazism: from a few terrible seeds, these brainworms took over German society. Many Germans, nice decent people, were complicit in things which I would call unspeakable if it weren't so vital for us to name and remember them.
And now, again, people we know or knew are tumbling into that vortex. And it's horrifying to look around and see Nazis coming for the US with everything they've got. But what's even scarier are all the people in the middle who aren't sure whether they want to live under fascism alongside concentration camps, or elect a black woman.

2024-10-26 05:45:43 UTC

"You can't just live in fear all the time!"
Actually, I can, and I am *extremely* good at it because of years of practice. What you mean is that I *shouldn't* live in fear all the time. Which is completely true. I would be absolutely *thrilled* not to live in fear, and will get started as soon as the world stops being utterly terrifying.
What I will *not* do is blithely business-as"usual" myself off a cliff just because your preferred way to deal with risk and danger is denial. And frankly it's pretty frustrating that you're pretending everything is fine, because that actively prevents you from helping us deal with with these real, substantial, but ultimately solvable problems.
Fear is what tells you to run from the bear. Being unafraid doesn't mean that you are no longer surrounded by bears. You can't be brave and face your fear until you have acknowledged that there's something to be afraid of.

2024-10-18 23:56:02 UTC

I am once again trying to solve Problems with Email™ using technology. I am destined to fail because email problems are social problems. So adding technology just leaves me with two problems.
Nevertheless. I would like to store archived mail on my own hard drive, in an easily-accessed, portable format — like a maildir. Then I should be able to copy, move, access, archive, sync, whatever, using regular tools which interact with files. *Ideally* all the mail clients I use could just work with a maildir directly, but as you may be aware… kids these days… get off my lawn &c. &c. So I think that the practical compromise would be to run a little local IMAP server which just serves to read and write to the maildir in my home directory.
My question for the lazy/indie/fedi-hivemind is this: what’s the safest, smallest, simplest tool I can run to speak maildir to my filesystem and IMAP to my mail client? (And, implied: why is all of this the absolutely wrong way to go about this?)
I feel a little guilty asking a question like this at 5pm on a Friday; I worry that I’m going to nerdsnipe someone’s entire evening. Well, someone else’s, at least.

2024-10-14 16:49:47 UTC

- reply

According to the website: "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a compendium of new words for emotions. Its mission is to shine a light on the fundamental strangeness of being a human being—all the aches, demons, vibes, joys, and urges that are humming in the background of everyday life."
This definition sounded very much like the sort of thing which would be in that book. So I took a look and it does seem to be: https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/word/midding

2024-10-13 18:10:31 UTC

- reply

Is this from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows?

2024-10-10 16:54:44 UTC

- reply

In related news, I have just been informed that Master Replicas is doing a run of Picard's standard tea cups which were originally made by Bodum. https://www.masterreplicas.com/en-us/products/the-picard-tea-cup-set

2024-10-07 15:19:32 UTC

I guess the rest of my professional career is just going to consist of the following half-dozen-odd interactions:
1. Taking off my spectacles, pinching the bridge of my nose then asking "What is the problem you are actually trying to solve?".
2. Peering over my spectacles and asking "…and at the time, did anyone express any concerns about that course of action?".
3. Taking long drag from my cigarette and intoning the ancient proverb "The root cause is that our processes are not robust enough to prevent a person from making this mistake." before being told "Amy please not right now.".
4. Riffling my notes and beginning the explanation to the auditor or committee with "So, you see, what had happened was…".
5. Making direct eye contact with an engineer through a webcam and asking first how long that will take and then whether the plan is missing any steps.

2024-10-05 04:17:31 UTC

Conservative politics are not — as conservatives sometimes want to suggest — about order & caution, adopting change systematically and thoughtfully. Conservatism is a bait and switch. It synthesizes an imagined past out of whole cloth, then claims that we in our hubris are drifting too far from that fantasy.
The conservative agenda is a radical transformation of society into something it has never been while pretending that future is grounded in history. It is not just a rejection of diversity & inclusion, of creativity and human flourishing, but also of the arrow of time and our understanding of where we came from.
Modern conservatives have more in common with Stalin's totalitarianism than modern leftists have in common with Soviet attempts at communism. Stalin's revolution was a redefinition of history in order to control memory & society, while ejecting all those who do not fit the mold. Modern socialists simply want everyone to have what they need to live a fulfilled life with minimal suffering. Which sounds like the story conservatism tries to tell about stability & safety. Except that conservatism has never wanted to provide for everyone: it relies on deprivation and suffering as a constant threat to keep us in line.
Don't fall for it. The conservative fantasy has always been an ahistorical soft tyrrany. A better world is possible, and has existed many times before, in many places filled with people who look and think and love like you do.

2024-09-28 20:08:09 UTC

Corporations hoard & suppress culture. They try to lock the collected art of the last century behind DRM & streaming. They want us to own nothing & have no rights. Pay and consume; never create, never control. These artificial psychopaths (run by ordinary human sociopaths) are parasites. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Art and culture are just tools for profit, not things which hold meaning, tell stories, or inspire. They have no respect for the society which supports them or for the people who create. We should have just as much respect for them.
Simultaneously, the LLM-purveyors want to vacuum up every scrap of writing and every video & picture & podcast to replace human creation with synthetic slop. It's already ruined search & wordfreq. If the art-stealing robots are allowed to "train on" all art & culture so that they can churn out trash, then you sure as heck deserve to re-watch your own re-runs whenever you feel like it. Not just because it might inspire you to make something better than corporate synthetic dumbasses. But because you're a human person and that's a good enough reason to deserve a personal archive of all art and knowledge.
The only obstacles to this are corporate & capitalist. Dust off your tricorn hat & update your NAS. Make local copies of the art which matters to you. Actual files on a physical hard drive or SD card in your hand. Back up your bookmarks offline — the web rots and that one post with the answer might not be there next time you need it. Don't rely on the Internet Archive; it's under attack and may not survive. Share with others; rebuild Alexandria.
This is not a new thought. I wasn't the first to say it; I won't be the last. But it bears repeating. This is not a post about tools or tactics; it's about outrage and action, resilience and community. But I'd love to hear your suggestions. What's your favorite tool for guerilla archivism? How do you keep backups of your bookmarks? What should aspiring archivists know?

2024-09-22 20:58:21 UTC

- reply

Exposing WordPress directly to outside input makes me… nervous. Do you do anything special to reduce your attack surface?

2024-09-22 02:01:21 UTC

I want a federated blog where replies show up as comments on the post. A normal blog with pages for posts and an index page and an RSS feed. But also it's federated via ActivityPub. And if someone posts a reply via ActivityPub, that reply is rendered as a comment. Is this a thing which exists?

2024-09-20 03:19:30 UTC

It's so weird talking to lawyers about important court cases right now. In the past, you'd ask about a case and they'd be like "Aah yes, the doctrine of Bibbity Bobbitus first promulgated under the Smithers court in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram which pertained to the rights of ranchers to interfere in the curtilage of unincorporated Res Materia…" and then make the Charlie Brown teacher noise for twenty minutes. But now you just ask something innocent like how many crimes the former president did and they say things like "Law is just an exercise of raw political power through another form; hundreds of years of precedent, gone in an instant; there is no justice in the world, or meaning in life…" and then make an inhuman keening wail which awakens all the dogs for miles around as the they sob into their hands. It's just different now, you know?

2024-09-18 17:44:39 UTC

This just in: tools to avoid responsibility for making decisions really just bake in bias and make injustice more difficult to interrogate. It’s exactly the same with other forms of unaccountable decision-laundering and unsubstantiable suspicion. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/17/2024/black-teenagers-twice-as-likely-to-be-falsely-accused-of-using-ai-tools-in-homework
An accusation that you used a plagiarism bot is easy to make and difficult to rebut. It creates an easy excuse to mask the accuser’s racism (or classism, or transphobia, or…). Trans exclusion is an excuse to police gender & presentation for *all* women. It’s much easier to accuse someone of being trans than to prove you’re not trans (not that anyone should have to). Too femme? Could be hiding that you’re trans. Not femme enough — are you really a woman?
“Predictive policing” is just an excuse to keep sending cops into black neighborhoods so that they can continue to control black bodies through assault & execution. Other decisions made by the powerful like welfare or healthcare or parole work the same way. “Delegating” “decisions” to synthetic software-based dumbasses actively opposes the presumed goals of those systems: which is to make good decisions consistently. Instead, they achieve the actual goals of the system: creating barriers to access & avoiding accountability.
Computers are incapable of making decisions. They do not think and are not responsible for their actions. Computers have no agency; they are not moral actors. People make decisions. Saying that a computer made the decisions is just an excuse, avoiding responsibility for the decision *you’re* making. It’s like flipping a coin and then pretending that the coin made the decision.

2024-09-14 03:32:02 UTC

I hadn't seen Tuvix before today, and wow this episode is *brutal*. I had always thought that the (ex: Lower Decks) commentary was overblowing the situation somewhat to make a funny metacommentary.
Nope! Janeway just a straight-up executes a guy. She is a murderer.
She should absolutely have been relieved from duty. Ideally by Chakotay, when she made it clear that she was about to conduct an extrajudicial execution. But if not, Tuvok's first words after the separation should absolutely have been to relieve her of duty and place her under arrest. Every other person on the bridge and in sickbay are guilty of some combination of accessory (such as Harry Kim, who handed over the murder weapon) or dereliction of duty in their failure to intervene or to apprehend her afterwards.
And this may not seem like much of a bonus, but since Tuvix was the only person like himself, it was also a very mild little bit of a genocide. But definitely a murder.
And the freaking wildest thing is that a season and a half earlier, in Phage (1x05), she made exactly the opposite call in an almost-identical situation! (Arguably a worse one.) A Vidiian steals Neelix's lungs, which would have killed him without the Dcotor's inspired holographic intervention. Even with the Doctor's help, Neelix's life from that point on is incredibly constrained to the Star Trek equivalent of an iron lung. And yet, Janeway elects not to retrieve the stolen organs from the criminal who stole them. Because that intervention would imperil the criminal's life. And, just to recap, that Vidiian *stole Neelix's lungs* without regard for the fact that Neelix would most likely die.
Yet, when Tuvix comes into being after a transporter accident which tragically kills Tuvok & Neelix, she choses to execute Tuvix in cold blood. ACAB may include Tuvok, but it definitely includes Janeway. There are no good Starfleet admirals — they're all bastards. And, in this case, a murderer.

2024-09-14 02:45:56 UTC

Why does Unicode not have a code point for the cool S?

2024-09-08 15:57:40 UTC

I love reading ancient cuneiform tablets. Classics such as "Fuck you, this copper sucks." (Ea Nasir), "I should get more new clothes, my dad's employee gets new clothes twice a month and it's embarrassing.", and of course "The sesame harvest will die — let nobody say I did not warn you!", which is absolutely a set up for "Per my last clay tablet.".
Social media & email may be *part* of the problem. But if we're still like this when we have to carve our petty bullshit into clay then it's clear that we're the problem. It's us.

2024-09-05 23:17:00 UTC

Absolutely trolling the commenters by guesting on an EDC/gear show and ostentatiously not covering my keys' bittings when showing off what's in my pockets. But it turns out that they're all just common keys like the CH751 & FEOK1 plus a classic KW1 stamped "HOME" cut to a bitting of 42069.

2024-09-02 02:47:56 UTC

- reply

Just in case you're looking for other originals, there are two more sets available on Ebay right now: https://www.ebay.com/itm/256384770271 & https://www.ebay.com/itm/135126885080 . Just, you know, FYI.

2024-09-02 01:58:43 UTC

- reply

If you're more of an espresso fan, you can definitely splurge for the originals. They're available on Etsy in this listing https://www.etsy.com/listing/1647417483/1970s-carlo-giannini-italy-black . And I suspect that other sets are available elsewhere.
The pictures in this listing (or one like it) are likely more than detailed enough to build a model if that's your sort of thing. And literally a minute of searching was sufficient to find some stainless steel cups which seem compatible with this sort of modification. https://amazon.com/Stainless-Espresso-KITCHENEXUS-Insulated-Unbreakable/dp/B0C9SZHFKD . This seems like a pretty straightforward adventure in modeling & printing — well, as straightforward as a printing project can be.

2024-09-02 01:51:11 UTC

The coffee cups used on Voyager are vintage 1970s Carlo Giannini espresso cups which look beautiful. Tragically they are only two ounces — perfect for espresso, but not ideal for me. I prefer a cortado, more of a 4oz drink.
Clearly, the thing to do is create a 3D model of the complicated base and print it at around double scale with space to fit neatly around a regular ~4oz stainless steel cup.
It wouldn't be a perfect replica, but it would have an essence of Voyager. That mild aroma of space coffee. A little stellar twinkle in the morning routine. #StarTrek #Voyager
https://media.infosec.town/media/webpublic-58ce1d19-21d3-4c66-bcba-d2cdf240ab62.webp

2024-08-31 00:55:13 UTC

Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office. If you need to reach me, I have left an intricate trail of clues, each more fiendish than the last. Beware, though — for if you seek me out, so may the hunter become the hunted. And perhaps you will reveal secrets best left buried.

2024-08-09 16:00:57 UTC

Super fun when an app replaces their search bar with an "AI-powered" conversation interface. Thank you for ruining my muscle memory. I know the exact name of the thing I want to find. I do not need to talk about it with a synthetic dumbass. Why are you turning a perfectly useful automated feature into a conversation nobody wants?