You know how they have those memory villages for people with dementia or other degenerative memory ailments? If I ever succumb to such a thing, please place me in front of a VT100 and let me browse a Usenet archive tweaked to act like it is 1989. Perhaps occasionally provide me with some cool ranch Doritos and a cherry coke. I'm pretty sure I could spend eternity that way fairly happy.
If you are not a US citizen and you are thinking about coming here, please strongly reconsider. I would be concerned for your safety, and to be honest these idiots need to feel the pain of tourism and international business drying up.
The US has what are effectively secret police snatching up people and disappearing them into a detention system. Some people reemerge in two weeks, some stay in there.
Don't risk it until something changes.
Security and hacker conferences and the like should really be considering alternate venues for international audiences, and consider whether they are being held in places queer folks within the US can safely attend.
I am appreciative of people who broadcast their support of trans people with signs like “Trans healthcare is suicide prevention!”... which is true, but it doesn't capture why, and it makes it sound like “Humor them or they will hurt themselves!”
The reason "Trans healthcare is suicide prevention" is because denying trans people affirming care is literally torture, it turns out tortured people often don't want to continue to be tortured.
You don't see people holding signs like “Anesthesia is suicide prevention!”... it's because _ withholding care for physical or psychological pain, when it exists and is easily available, is inhumane _
After all I do dangerous things, like ask women “do you think this shade is more of a meadow dawn or a marigold?”, or “hey, don't you think everyone should have bodily autonomy and that being defined purely by presumed reproductive capabilities dehumanizes and objectifies all women of all types?” or “Don't you think the implication that women need ‘protection' from trans women perpetuates societal messaging that women are weak and incapable of defending themselves solely so they won't recognize that they are a large and capable repressed class capable of defending and liberating themselves from their actual oppressors if they coordinated?” or perhaps “do you think this is more of a midi or a maxi length?”
Actual wide-scale resistance groups operating under a repressive regime rarely look like what many movies have led you to believe.
What they look like are a lot of normal people who maybe lose a document, maybe forget to latch a gate, maybe take a little longer to do a task than they would otherwise.
It requires no command and control, no leaders, no connections to be compromised. For most, it is not the work of great measures, it is the thousand.. million.. cuts that grind the oppressor to a halt while never being something they can prove.
Think less about secret handshakes, and more about an unfortunately bad case of ADHD at an inopportune time.
Tinkerer, maker, breaker, philosopher, hacker, spell weaver, woodland creature. Former CISO-type, Director of IT, Pen Tester, Lead Architect. I secure the stuff other people are afraid of. 🏳️⚧️